By Mary Coltrane, Voter Services Portfolio Director, LWV of Washington
The Nov. 2 election is fast approaching and the 18-day voting period begins today, Oct. 15. Now is the time to log on to VOTE411 and see what your candidates have to say about important issues that affect your community. No candidate response? Go to the candidate’s website and let them know you are looking for their answers. The League strives to ask questions that are important to our communities, not just League members, which makes VOTE411 a universal tool. Contacting unresponsive candidates is an important way to maximize VOTE411 as a voter education tool. If you can help with candidate compliance, many thanks!
What else can you do to help GOTV? Check your local League website. You may be surprised to see how much local Leagues are doing and how many candidate forums are scheduled. Local Leagues include many communities; forums for three or four positions in three or four cities in a local League area isn’t unusual. And they are all recorded, so voters can view or listen at their leisure.
Local Leagues are also creative in calling voters’ attention to these important sources of information. The Whidbey Island League posted one of the questions on its Facebook page so potential viewers would know what’s up. Very clever! Knowing one of the questions could be just the tipping point to get someone to take a look. Let your family and friends know about forums specific to their community.
I hope you’ve had a chance to take a look at Your Vote, which the LWVWA published in partnership with The Spokesman-Review. A lot of questions have come up lately about election administration processes. Your Vote takes a look at those questions and helps voters understand this process. Vancouver’s The Columbian wrote two great articles about Your Vote in September, one in the Cheers & Jeers column and one in its From the Newsroom column by Editor Craig Brown.
Check the LWVWA website to access Your Vote. Please also notice the selected Your Vote stories in Spanish and English. If there’s someone in your circle who fits into one of the story categories, you can send that story alone. Maybe you know a future voter. Click on that story and send it to them!
We are working to get this information out across the state. The Skagit Daily Herald also printed Your Vote. And our partner, The Spokesman-Review, began this outreach process by sending Your Vote to their subscribers on Sept. 5. We are continuing outreach to other news outlets, with likely prospects at The Daily Peninsula, the Sequim Gazette, and the Daily Herald (Everett).
Schools are another place for Your Vote. Several Leagues have had good success getting Your Vote into the hands of students: Clallam, Spokane, and Mason Counties have all reached out to schools, with good responses.
Thurston County League members are calling schools to find out who teaches civics classes and then delivering tabloids and “Be a Voter” bookmarks to those teachers. If your League would like tips on getting Your Vote into schools, contact Beth Pelliocciotti, LWVWA Civics Education Portfolio Director. You can also reach Beth at 219-688-7263.
You can also find the Be a Voter bookmarks on the LWVWA website, on the For Members menu along with other Be a Voter tools, including voter checklists in Spanish and English, messages highlighting the voting facts that are in Your Vote, and whimsical messages with pets. Serious and fun. Look for these on social media. Be sure to “like” when you see them.
Thanks go to many League members for these great GOTV tools. Local League members came together to take on a coordinated outreach strategy to create tools to reach voters and, this year, emphasize how elections work. What League volunteers who do this work have in common is a commitment to democracy that focuses on getting out the vote. This can be a tough sell in the best of times. It’s needed now more than ever. Let your local voter services and civics education folks know how much you appreciate their efforts. Let your friends and family know how important it is to vote by Nov. 2!
