By Mary Coltrane, 1st Vice President, LWV of Washington 

The LWVWA Voter Services Committee has been focusing on candidate forums and debates, with local Leagues gearing up for an important voter services season. With such major concerns as mis- and disinformation and hyper-partisanship, there’s much to do. If you would like to get involved, please let your local League know. There are many voter services jobs: tabling events, forums and debates, and the League’s online voter guide, VOTE411, are just some of the voter services the League works on. Here’s a roundup of what’s happening in voter services in the state League to give you a sense of the work we do.  

The Voter Services Committee will next meet Wednesday, May 11 at 6:30 p.m. Committee members will be sent the Zoom link and agenda closer to the meeting time. If you would like to attend as a guest, send an email to Mary Coltrane to be put on the list. 

Candidate Forums and Debates Workshops. I hope everyone who wanted to attend the Candidate Forums and Debates workshop on April 23 had a chance to do so. The recording and PowerPoint of the meeting will be placed on the state League website as soon as possible. In the meantime, you can access link to the recording and PowerPoint from the first workshop (scroll down to Voter Services). 

VOTE411 Questions. Cynthia Stewart is the go-to person for questions about VOTE411. She would like to hear from each League—in whatever manner works best for your League—regarding questions from your community to go into VOTE411. Please contact Cynthia and let her know if there is someone from your League she can work with directly: 

As for the last few years, I have agreed to coordinate local League questions for candidates that will go into Vote411 for this year’s election. Although filing for office is still nearly a month away, we can anticipate much of what will be relevant to the offices on the ballot this year. All House of Representatives positions will be on the ballot as well as half of the Senate positions. There will be congressional races as well and some local races (that differs by jurisdiction). 

So my request to you is to please let me know who in your League will be compiling the Vote411 questions, and that person’s email address. It may be you, it may be your Action Chair or it may be someone else.  I will let them know what our deadline is when I can verify it and send some guidelines for crafting the questions.  

If you want more information about how to help out with these kinds of voter services activities, please let me, Mary Coltrane, know!