Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder was a longtime holdout on Instagram, but he finally joined last week to shed some light on the process of mail-in voting ahead of this year’s pivotal election season.
Voting by mail has been a frequent topic in the news of late as many Americans look to this long-running method in order to safely cast their ballots amid the ongoing pandemic. President Trump and his associates, however, have been vocal in their denunciation of voting by mail and even taken steps to limit the operational capacity of the United States Postal Service in an apparent attempt to minimize mail-in ballots.
Vedder launched his official Instagram account with a generic “welcome” post at the beginning of September. Two days later, after his account had garnered tens of thousands of followers, Eddie posted a series of photos of him voting by mail in which he explained the various steps and processes necessary to do so.
As Eddie Vedder began in his second-ever Instagram post, a selfie of him with his morning coffee, “GOOD MORNING. Hope you’re all well and hanging tough in these extraordinary times. Me, myself? I’m about to go POSTAL.”
In the next post, in which he’s holding his mail-in ballot, he clarified his message: “Ballot in hand. Lest there be any confusion, here is how simple, secure and verifiable it is to Vote By Mail. These photos were from this July as I voted early in the August primary here in Seattle. Piece of cake. In regards to something so huge as taking part in our democracy and putting your voices to great use, nothing could be easier. And at this intense time of a global pandemic, even more importantly, nothing could be SAFER.”
Related: Pearl Jam Launches Meet & Greet Sweepstakes To Promote Voting Rights [Video]
In one of the subsequent posts, Vedder decried President Trump’s baseless assertions that voting by mail leads to widespread voter fraud: “Whomever is attempting to make this process unclear or ripe for fraud should not be trusted. In Pearl Jam we had to request Absentee Ballots going back to 1992 cause we were always away from home touring. Now the state of Washington has been doing across the board Vote by Mail for over a decade. M.I.T. did a major comprehensive study of Mail in Ballots in the U.S. covering the last twenty years. Hundreds of millions of votes. They found the percentage of false or forged ballots to be .00006 percent. Please, let’s not be confused by the rhetoric being used by certain folks who apparently want less people to vote. Or would rather that you risk your own health and the safety of others when you could be using this tested, tried and true method that’s worked for years.”
In another post, a photo of his signed ballot, he illustrated the security measures in place on the physical ballots. “Don’t forget to sign! Your signature will be verified. Note the bar codes for sorting and further verifications. Along with the CLEAR WARNING that should anyone falsify a ballot, they’d be subject to 5 years in prison and a 10k fine. Quite a big risk for a simple vote. Again, the research shows, it just DOESN’T HAPPEN.”
After noting in another post that no postage is necessary to send in your ballot, he commented on the controversy regarding the apparent efforts to limit mail-in voting: “There are also many ‘drop boxes’ or ballot boxes where you can deposit your voting envelope that don’t require the Postal Service. Unless you’re in a state like Pennsylvania where the White House has just initiated a lawsuit requesting ballot boxes be removed. (Look it up.. it’s insane.)”
Of course, Vedder ended the series of posts with that necessary “I Voted” sticker selfie (he’s really getting the hang of this whole Instagram thing pretty quickly). “Wear it proud,” Vedder noted. “You’ve just participated in the SINGLE GREATEST FORM OF NON-VIOLENT PROTEST. Your voice will be heard. And speaking as a bit of a singer myself, I know that can be a pretty good feeling.”
For more information on how to vote by mail, head here.
You can view the aforementioned posts below:
View this post on Instagram
Official Voters Guide. All the info. We are best as a country when everyone’s voice is heard.
[H/T Consequence of Sound]
