Postcarding

After a brief hiatus for the 2023 winter holidays, Indivisible Bainbridge Island is back to writing postcards. We meet Wednesdays from 2 pm to 3:30 pm on the upstairs level of the Town & Country grocery store on Winslow Ave. We call it “Postcards on Wednesdays.”

If you can’t make it to Postcards on Wednesday, you can pick up cards from homes on Bainbridge Island and in Suquamish and write them at home. Email Kathy for specifics.

2024 began with an all-out and successful effort to flip New York’s CD-3, left vacant by the o-so-sad George Santos, by electing Tom Suozzi.

Now, we are focusing on defending vulnerable U.S. Senate and Congressional seats held by Democrats and flipping vulnerable seats held by Republicans.

For the U.S. Senate, that means:

  • Defend
  • Defend/Flip (defend the seat/flip the office-holder)
    • Andy Kim (D), running to replace the indicted Bob Menendez (D) in New Jersey
    • Ruben Gallego running to replace Kyrsten Sinema (I) in Arizona; on March 4, Sinema announced her decision not to run for re-election
  • Flip
    • Colin Allred running to flip Ted Cruz (R)  seat in Texas
    • Lucas Kunce running to flip Josh Hawley (R) seat in Missouri
    • Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, running to flip Rick Scott’s (R) seat in Florida

For the U.S. House, that means (as of March 7, 2024):

  • Defend
    • Dina Titus (D), Steven Horsford (D), and Susie Lee (D) in Nevada
    • Susan Wild (D) and Mathew Cartwright (D) in Pennsylvania
    • Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D) in Washington
  • Flip
    • Arizona’s CD 1, currently represented by David Schweikert (R)
    • Arizona’s CD 6, currently represented by Juan Ciscomani (R)
    • Four Republican seats in California currently held by John Duarte, David Valadao, Mike Garcia and Ken Calvert
    • At least three Republican seats in New York held by Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito and Marcus Molinaro

We get names and addresses from Activate America. As of March 7, we are writing to voters in Arizona in support of Ruben Gallego. We do not know if Activate America will be supporting all of the campaigns listed above. We expect to get addresses for Marie Gluesenkamp Perez from Postcards4WA.org.

About stamps
We use 51 cent postcard stamps (they are less expensive than stamps for envelopes). They come in rolls of 100 for $51 or sheets of 20 for $10.20. We encourage postcard writers to provide their own stamps. Arrangements can be made for writers who are on a limited budget.

The Bainbridge Island, Suquamish and Poulsbo post offices usually have them in stock; rolls of 100 can also be ordered from the USPS.

Postcard writing tips

  • Don’t write with red ink. At least 8% of men and .5% of women have red-green color-blindness. If you use red ink for highlighting, it doesn’t look like a highlight to these people. Plus, red is the color of that party. Blue or black ink with yellow highlighting is preferable.
  • Write legibly. Printing often works best. If the recipient can’t read the message, what’s the point of sending the card?
  • Decorate your postcards. Some writers use stickers or draw stars or flowers, or use color to make the card more attractive to read.
  • Do not use the “flag” stamp or flag images. Research shows that people who see flags before voting tend to vote for Republicans. Do not use images or stickers of dogs no matter how cute, especially when writing to southern states, as dogs were and are used to intimidate.

How to get started with our postcarding program: Email Kathy.

What we’ve learned about postcard writing