by Mary Coltrane, LWVWA 1st Vice President, Program Chair

Studies, updates, and concurrences are all important elements of the League’s Program of Work. Studies lead to new positions for the League, at all levels of our organization. They require a lot of effort on the part of study committee members and the state board so there is always the question: are they worth the effort? The League is committed to producing studies that are accurate, unbiased, and properly credited. These criteria ensure League studies and reports meet our high standards, as studies are the foundation for well thought out positions that stand the test of time.

LWVWA has many positions on the books right now, but there is room for more! Times change and the League changes with them. New positions may be needed for new areas of concern so we can advocate for changes in public policy. Thus, studies, updates to positions, concurrences with another League’s position, and even educational reports are all on the agenda when local Leagues take up program making in January of odd-numbered years. Local League Presidents have received the 2023 Program Planning Packet so that they can engage their members in this process.

What comes from this effort?

Let’s look back at 2019. That year, an interest in shorelines surfaced from January program planning efforts and at the 2019 Convention, it was the first study to be approved by Convention delegates in several years. The study was completed and is now with local Leagues; they are reviewing it and will develop consensus statements that LWVWA will use to craft a position on the topic. The new LWVWA position will then be available for both state and local Leagues to use in advocacy and lobbying. How exciting is that!

Fast forward to January 2021. The Journalism affinity group shared a concern that local news reporting was in jeopardy. What to do? With no positions on the books, advocacy wasn’t an option. The state board recommended The Decline of Local News and Its Impact on Democracy as a study item. Delegates to the 2021 Convention adopted it and the study commenced. Local League meetings to arrive at consensus will begin in February 2023. Positions that come out of this work will be incredibly timely as communities across our state grapple with the problem of local news deserts.

What else is happening? In addition to studies, updates of studies, and concurrences, local Leagues may also submit ideas for educational efforts at their January program planning meetings. In 2021, Leagues proposed an educational project on Public Hospital Districts. What do people need to know to best understand how Public Hospital Districts work in local communities? This effort, like the Shoreline Study and the News Study, began with Program of Work planning.

Program planning is one of the rights and responsibilities of members. It goes back to our founding, and is fundamental to our grassroots nature. We encourage all members to participate in the process, and if anything above interests you, we would love to have you join us and participate.

What will come out of January 2023 Program Planning meetings? Will there be new studies proposed to generate new positions? We shall see. But whatever happens will begin with the League’s grassroots: our members and their member Leagues. 

by Beth Pelliciotti, LWVWA Board & Nominating Committee

Knowing that The Evergreen Voter is designed for League members as well as an audience outside of LWVWA, here are my general comments about board work from the perspective of a second year of recruiting board members. 

Prospective board members usually ask the question, "Will I have the time to do this work?"  Those being recruited are busy people. They may be members serving on their local Leagues' boards, working full-time at a demanding job, or balancing more than one volunteer commitment.

This question deserves an honest answer. Board work takes time—reading detailed agendas for monthly meeting, preparing reports, asking questions of treasurers about financial statements in advance of the meeting, and more.  Board work calls for an ability to pick up information quickly and ask questions about things that don't make sense.

There is a payoff for this time commitment: LWVWA board work is very interesting. One meeting alone may involve detailed reporting on current advocacy work, a summary of statewide efforts in candidate forums, and innovation in voter outreach and civic education. The people board members meet are also interesting and are doing amazing work:

• A League member from Clallam County is partnering with her local Boys and Girls Club to help young people learn more about civics in general and voting in particular.
• A League member from Kittitas County created an opportunity for little free libraries to offer children’s books on voting. 
• A 50-year League member from Thurston County was recently honored for her 20-year commitment to managing LWVWA's civic education textbook, The State We’re In: Washington. In this moving ceremony, legislators spoke of this member’s dedication to creating and passing legislation to making civics a high school graduation requirement.

LWVWA board work calls for a commitment of time and talents, but the benefits are real and long lasting. Here are a few benefits- new knowledge, new people, and new appreciation for statewide advocacy work.

If you would like to speak with a Nominating Committee member about LWVWA board work, we encourage you to contact the committee members below. League members can also access more information and the application form. Consider the benefits!

Nominating Committee Members

• Shelley Jones, LWV of Pullman, Chair
• Amanda Clark, LWV of Seattle-King County
• Kathy Sakahara, LWV of Seattle-King County
• Mary Coltrane, LWV of Seattle-King County 
• Beth Pellicciotti, LWV of Spokane Area

Timeline

• Fall 2022/Winter 2023: Nominations for positions elected at Convention
• Applications for Election at Convention Due: End of January 2023
• Interviews with Candidates Scheduled for: January/February 2023
• Slate Announced: March 15, 2023
• Election at Convention: May 2023

by Jeanne Crevier, LWV Snohomish County

Originally published in LWV Snohomish County's December 2022 edition of "The Voter"

A good project offers three things: an objective that achieves a vision, clear direction, and focused action within a manageable timeframe.

Emma White, the Elections and Voting Outreach Specialist from the Auditor’s office provided the League with a really good project when she asked if we wanted to help “cure” ballots. And many of you enthusiastically responded to this opportunity!

Curing ballots involves contacting the voters whose ballot signatures could not be verified, making their votes not count until verification is received. After attempting to process these ballots, the Auditor’s office sends a Signature Resolution form, then tries to contact the voter by phone or email, depending on the contact methods given on the ballot envelope by the voter, to urge them to complete the Resolution form.

The pilot program that Emma devised sends a postcard to the voters with missing or mismatched signatures, to remind them again to validate their signatures on the Resolution form. Our League volunteers found a list of thirty names and corresponding address labels and instructions with a script inside a packet. Several of you took more than one packet to get as many postcards out as possible by the end of the business day on November 22^nd.

And your efforts were amazing! It’s too soon to know the measurable effect of the postcard as of this writing – that is, how many signature challenges were resolved after the postcards were sent – but you certainly worked hard at making all votes count when you sent 3,475 postcards to the more than 4,300 voters with signature challenges. That’s over 79%!

The longer-term action for the League is to incorporate the importance of having a valid signature into our voter education. Let’s find ways to emphasize this lesson.

Thanks so much for all that you did, and the Snohomish County Auditor’s office is equally grateful. When we get the official results, they will be posted on the website. Way to actively participate in your democracy there, League members!

by Liz Bander, LWVWA Director

Did you see the 2022 Election Impact Report from LWVUS? Around the country, we did amazing work empowering voters and defending democracy, including here in Washington. While this report looks fantastic, it's built on a strong data-driven culture. While it can feel awkward to ask for data, or even to consider it, we don't know what we don't measure, and most importantly, we can't assess our impact without measurement.

This year, we experimented by adding in more data collection at various points to understand the work we're doing across the state, to understand who we are reaching, and to see if what we're doing is making an impact.

What did we do during Election Season?

Shelley Kneip, LWVWA Voter Services Director, detailed some of the incredible and creative voter services work Leagues across the state did during Election Season. We also sent a survey to local League presidents, asking them to respond with some numbers, so that we could assess our reach. Seven Leagues responded, for a 33% response rate, which is not bad for a first attempt!

Between the survey and events shared to the LWVWA calendar, we found that across the state we had a big impact-- and because we are missing data, our impact is likely even larger:

• 20+ Primary Election Candidate Events
• 40+ General Election Candidate Events
• 110+ Volunteers
• 1000+ Attendees & Views
• 15+ Partners & Co-Sponsors

it's very normal to not have all the data, and while we should want to collect what we can, there are reasons why we don't have it all. Some of our data is owned by our partners- for example, while we can see the number of views on a partner organization's YouTube channel when it's publicly visible, we can't see anything further. That's okay. As we discuss what we want to do in the next election cycle, we can look at if and how we want to work with partners to collect additional data, as well as decide what we want to collect internally.

What were voters thinking about?

We were contacted many times by the press during this election cycle and one of the common questions was, "what's on voters' minds?" While we don't have our own polling information, we received some insights from folks who submitted questions to us for the WA Secretary of State and US Senate candidate debates at Gonzaga.

The word cloud above is imperfect-- you can see that words like "support" and "Secretary of State" are large, but that's because a number of questions were entered in the form of, "As Secretary of State, would you support..." However, you can also see a number of items that mattered to voters. The submitted questions were shared with the Voter Services team to inform the actual questions asked during the debates separate from any demographic data voluntarily submitted.

Who did we hear from?

We also asked demographic questions for individuals. This was to understand if we were reaching a broad segment of the population. We could have done better, and one of my insights for next time is that the outreach should start earlier, and especially by engaging partners immediately. Overall, we received 49 responses, some of which may have been submitted by the same person. All questions were optional and could be skipped entirely. Here are some of the results and a few key insights.

Result: Questions came from people in nine counties, with the majority coming from Spokane, followed by King and Kitsap.

Insight: We have Leagues in far more counties than those that responded. How can we ask Leagues and League members to participate more?

Result: The vast majority of respondents were over the age of 50, white, and women.

Insight: This makes sense, given our overall membership demographics, but we should review how we publicize question solicitation for future candidate events.

  

Result: Most folks heard about the debates via email, but a number heard via the newspaper.

Insight: Media partners really help out here. Also, we know what's a good way to reach this demographic! 

Did we make an impact?

I reviewed the data as it was coming in, and with the knowledge that we weren't seeing much movement on social media, worked with Amy Peloff and Carolyn Stewart to change our outreach strategy, particularly with Instagram and Facebook. We made two changes to how we use the platforms and one change to the content we shared.

First, we started using Instagram and Facebook Reels. Reels are short videos, and lately, Instagram and Facebook have been prioritizing them, which means people can more readily find our content. We made reels about candidate events, election information, and more. We'll continue to use them when we want to share video, though we will still share longer videos periodically. We also used Stories, including Story Highlights, to promote information. Using stories allows us to embed links, add emojis, and easily share content from other Leagues.

Finally, the fun part: if you were watching our social media, you may have seen Carolyn meme-ing our way to voters. From reminders about voting deadlines to encouraging people to participate, we reached a number of folks, beyond our usual scope. Our top performers were the Zoolander meme below and a reel commiserating with our followers about elections ads.

But did this work? In short, yes! We dramatically grew our reach, and overall, have increased our followers by 15%. And while we can still grow, refine processes, and build capacity, we know that we're connecting with folks across the state by having a good time with very serious work.

by Lunell Haught, LWVWA President

A humorous take on some lessons learned from candidate debates…

• There’s more than one way to skin a cat and there are many ways to let the public meet candidates
• Cash is king - remember to bring a coin to flip to decide the order of questioning
• Gremlins are everywhere - make sure to do a sound and light check earlier on the same day as the event.
• Nobody moves – once you get the angles and lighting set don’t let anyone "help" or just move one sign
• We’re running late - run through timing particularly if it is filmed for broadcast
• Gate crashers – be prepared and have a plan to deal with people who don’t have credentials or tickets
• Candidate late crashers – know the rules about write-in candidates
• Devil in the details – document who greets candidates, tells them where to sit, helps them when they’re finished, deals with photo ops and interviews
• It’s my party - we are the hosts and we have rules; make sure to know and use them
• Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt - the League has been doing this for decades and just about everything has happened at least once, so answers and resources are likely already available on the LWVWA and LWVUS websites
• Be prepared - yes, a candidate did use prayer in the response

If you haven't already had a post-election review, it's worth pulling your voter services volunteers together to chat about what went well, what can be improved, and what changes you want to implement for the next election. While leadership and volunteers may change in between then, having this documented will help everyone involved.

by Shelley Kneip, LWVWA Voter Services

Local Leagues across the state were busy this election season, continuing our work to empower voters and defend democracy through a variety of Get Out the Vote (GOTV) campaigns. While there were far too many actions across the state to report, here’s a highlight of League activities, lessons learned, and data on the work we did, because it’s time to start planning for 2024 while the memories are fresh!

Registering Voters

Getting new voters registered is a crucial function for local Leagues, and Leagues were very creative in how and where they registered voters this year. Most local Leagues were busy throughout the summer at fairs, festivals, and farmers' markets registering and educating voters through tabling, often providing printed information and swag, like buttons and stickers. We learned that including children in our outreach inevitably brings their parents to the table. Thurston County asked children to vote for their favorite animal and gives them an “I Voted” sticker while Snohomish County provided coloring books.

Many local Leagues registered college students on local college campuses. This year, LWV Clark County participated in a “Floats for Votes” event at the WSU-Vancouver campus. LWV Pullman not only registered voters at WSU-Pullman, but also enlisted new League members on campus. With the changes in Washington law, Leagues have also started registering eligible high school students. Thurston County created the “Future Voter Advocates” program where they train teens to register and preregister their peers to vote. 

JoNell Edlin, LWV Spokane member, tabling at Gonzaga/Logan Block Party

Increasingly, Local League registration tables pop up anywhere and everywhere, because voters are everywhere. Clark County tabled throughout business districts, while other Leagues tabled at libraries, thrift stores, food banks, and transit hubs. LWV also teamed up with other organizations to celebrate National Voter Registration Day, a civic nonpartisan holiday and this year, LWV Kitsap had almost 40 volunteers at registration desks throughout the county, including riding the ferries!

Leagues also continued to broaden their outreach, registering voters within tribal nations and at cultural events. Snohomish County held a voter registration drive at a popular Mexican market, where two members who are fluent in Spanish provided registration forms and voter information in Spanish. Other local Leagues held voter registration drives at Naturalization Ceremonies; so far this year, the Benton-Franklin League has held events at three citizenship ceremonies.

Candidate Forums

by Beth Pelliciotti, LWVWA Board & Nominating Committee

December is the month for closing out the year, anticipating New Year’s resolutions and, for some of us, planning what to do next. If you are thinking about what to do next in League, consider yourself invited to the LWVWA Nominating Committee Meet and Greet on Thursday, December 8 at noon or 6:30 PM.

The LWVWA Nominating Committee would like to invite you to consider state Board work. Given the LWVWA Bylaws change on staggered terms at Convention 2021, every year the Board welcomes new members. With many new Board members starting each year, you would help shape the direction of the “new” Board.

We welcome applications from those who might enjoy planning statewide candidate forums, facilitating an exchange of ideas from local Leagues on voter services or civic education, or supporting state-level advocacy. As a new Board member, you would have choices of possible Board work; these are but a few.

If you would like to learn more about LWVWA Board work, come ask the two former and current Board members on the Nominating Committee on December 8, 2022. Then make a New Year’s resolution to fill out an application for the LWVWA Board, due January 31. 

These are special sessions for members- click the links below to get the Zoom information for your preferred session:

Option 1: December 8, 2022 - 12 PM

Option 2: December 8, 2022 - 6:30 PM

by Shelley Kneip, LWVWA Voter Services

The League of Women Voters of Washington Education Fund proudly sponsored two high-profile candidate debates in Spokane on October 23. Washington Secretary of State candidates Steve Hobbs and Julie Anderson, along with United States Senate candidates Patty Murray and Tiffany Smiley, chose the League of Women Voters and partners The Spokesman Review and KSPS-PBS TV to host the live debates at Gonzaga University's Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center. It is increasingly challenging to get the candidates, the date, the security, and the venue together, and it was thrilling for the League to take its place as a leader in democracy and voter information.

Thanks to the LWV of the Spokane Area for providing volunteers to assist as ushers and security, and for providing voter education during the debates. With roughly 30 League members volunteering at the event, the audience got to see firsthand the League's work on our mission of Empowering Voters. There were displays and sales for The State We’re In: Washington textbook, as well as lots of buttons, stickers, and brochures for VOTE411 and the "Be a Voter" campaign. They also provided information about voting privileges for returning citizens.

In addition to the approximately 500 people who attended in person, extensive media coverage resulted in the debates being watched or heard online, on the radio, and on television by thousands of voters statewide. The Senate debate was covered nationwide by various media, including C-Span, Fox News, and other national and out-of-state media.

This election cycle local Leagues sponsored more than 40 candidate events. These Leagues used a variety of formats—including debates, forums, speed dating, and mixers—to give the public an opportunity to learn about their candidates. The competitiveness of the races and the innovative ways local Leagues handled helping voters learn about the candidates resulted strong (and informed) voter turnout across the state, as well as national media coverage and increased visibility of our work across the state.

by Liz Bander, LWVWA Director

At the 2021 Convention, the League of Women Voters of Washington awarded Karen Verrill the Evergreen Award for her tireless commitment to civic education. She was instrumental in developing our textbook, The State We're In: Washington, and we heard from a number of people about her impact on our state.

Celebrating Karen at her tree in Squaxin Park in Olympia.

Karen first joined the League in 1973 and has been an active member of the Thurston League since 1987. Her roles within the League include serving as the president of the LWV of Thurston, the president of the WA State League, the LWVWA development chair, and a member of the LWVWA Ed Fund Board. 

Since 2000, she has served as the project manager for the LWVWA civics education textbooks, The State We’re In: Washington. She has overseen the development, publishing, selling, and translation of these books and their companion teacher guides. In addition to a solid coverage of all levels of government, these are the first civics texts to include current and historic tribal governments. Chapters about sustainability and civics and the natural world are also included.

Thanks to her hard work, these books are used in classrooms and libraries across the state, giving Washington’s students a foundation for understanding our government and how to be actively involved participants.

Interested in learning more about these civics books? Visit our website to download free digital copies or to order hard copies.

One of the best parts of League is that we come together to do incredible work.

Karen sharing some of the versions of The State We're In over the years.

All images graciously provided by Oriana Von Specht Photography.

by Lunell Haught, LWVWA President

The midterm election may be over and the legislative session still weeks away, but the League of Women Voters of Washington is as busy as ever. So, what are League members up to? Here is a short list—we’d love to have you join us!

Listening Up 

At the League, we want to try to understand what what is going on from multiple sources. Shop the competition and the allies. Knowing what others are saying and how they understand a situation is crucial to being relevant and effective. At the end of listening, try saying “Let me see if I understand you…”

Standing Up

Sometimes at the front, sometimes alongside, and sometimes at the back. Standing up and showing support for the values and principles we believe in makes it easier for others to do the same. Act based on your underlying values and find opportunities when the world asks you to stand up for them.

Speaking up

There is guidance on how to speak up on the League’s positions. The League is unique in that when we speak about public policy, we have our membership—local, state, or national—behind us, as our positions are based on member research and consensus. We can speak up because we have real authority on the subjects and because we have learned how to do so.

If you would like to learn how to speak up, we have two virtual workshops that will teach you how to communicate effectively with your legislators.

Speaking up also provides safety for those who think they are the only ones who think “that way” and they agree with the League, but are concerned about being the only one publicly sharing their opinion. Vulnerability can be a very real concern, so if you are willing and able to speak up, we’d love to have your voice.

Stirring Up

Don’t just do something, stand there… and when you are finished considering the best strategy for demonstrating your values and moving them to the center of our culture, act. Relentlessly stirring up is a perfectly valid method to accomplish goals. Don’t give up. Pause and assess the situation, change your tactics if you must, but keep stirring. Be bold.