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Post by Gary Riccio on Jul 23, 2020 13:48:17 GMT -5
This thread addresses the notional adequacy and structural inequalities across the voting infrastructure in the United States, such as - Poll workers
- Voting equipment
- Precinct structure
- Administration
It also includes posts on various Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) initiatives in which you can participate and about which you can learn and teach. - Contact voters to provide information about registration and voting
- Recruit poll workers and watchers
- Collect information from counties that can be curated and aggregated by third parties
- Share experiences with GOTV initiatives
- Share information about voting rights issues in various localities
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Post by Gary Riccio on Jul 23, 2020 13:52:30 GMT -5
See link to article from the NCSL, May 2020, on "COVID-19 Brings Historic Changes for Citizen Initiatives" From the article: Under a new court judgment, Massachusetts has become the first state to allow citizen initiative campaigns to collect electronic signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Jul 23, 2020 13:57:28 GMT -5
See link to article from the NCSL, June 2020, on "Elections in the Time of Civil Unrest" From the article: Election data shows that more people opted for absentee, or mail, ballots this election, but others still needed or chose to vote in person on June 2... America’s election administration is sturdy, but with a presidential election (already a handful on its own), a pandemic, civil unrest and a hurricane season predicted to be intense, election emergency plans and clear, early communication are more essential than ever for the smooth running of elections.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Jul 23, 2020 14:13:52 GMT -5
See link to article from NCLS, June 2020, on "Do You Want Your State’s Details on Absentee/Mail Voting?" From the article" Have you followed the news about elections lately? If so, probably one-third has been about the horseraces, and two-thirds has been about election administration, a complete reversal of the usual status at this point in a general election year. [Hard as it would have been to imagine, there is even more interest in fairness of participation in the democratic process than in candidates or ideology in 2020. Thus, nonpartisan initiatives to protect voting rights have become a priority. Such efforts are a fitting tribute to John Lewis.]
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Post by Gary Riccio on Jul 23, 2020 14:22:45 GMT -5
This link on was recommended to me by someone at NCSL to "HELP STAFF YOUR LOCAL POLLING PLACE." Power the Polls is a big initiative sponsored by several organizations like Patagonia and Uber that is working to recruit young and diverse poll workers. Note that getting involved in these kinds of initiatives doesn't limit you to your own congressional district or State. You can share this information with friends and relatives in parts of the country where participation in the democratic process in more precarious.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Jul 23, 2020 14:26:08 GMT -5
See link to Work Elections, one of the sponsors of Power the Polls, which has created a database to connect interested poll workers with applications and resources to become a poll worker in their area.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Jul 25, 2020 17:57:32 GMT -5
The scale of volunteer involvement that is required to make voting work is mind-boggling. It is a source of immense pride in a nation that makes this work, at least in principle. It also is a fragile system rife with opportunities for meddling and frank suppression. Here (link) are some stunning statistics about the requisite infrastructure. - During the 2016 elections, local election officials operated 116,990 polling places, including 8,616 early voting locations, across the country. These polling sites were operated by 917,694 poll workers.
- Nearly 65 percent of jurisdictions reported that it was “very difficult” or “somewhat difficult” to obtain a sufficient number of poll workers.
- There has been a continued decrease in physical polling places, which can likely be explained by the expansion of alternative voting options, the increased use of these options by voters, and the corresponding decrease in in-person voters on Election Day.
- More populous jurisdictions faced greater challenges when recruiting poll workers.
- Of the age data reported for approximately 53 percent of poll workers who served in 2016, 24 percent of poll workers were 71 or older and another 32 percent were between the ages of 61 and 70.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Aug 14, 2020 15:16:35 GMT -5
TO: Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service: Remove Louis DeJoy"I am a tax paying American Citizen. Louis DeJoy is taking actions that are disrupting the mission of the United States Postal Service, which is to deliver US mail to the citizens of the US in a timely fashion. DeJoy has no experience or expertise that pertains to the USPS. In the last 3 weeks mail delivery has begun to take longer than it had prior to Mr. DeJoy being appointed to the position of US Postmaster General. Mail that would normally take 2-3 days to receive is now taking 4-6 days. This is in direct correlation to actions taken by Mr. DeJoy that deprioritize the timely delivery of our mail. With a federal election less than 3 months away in the midst of a global pandemic it is imperative that the timely delivery of United States mail be made a priority. Mr. DeJoy is a barrier to this necessity."
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Post by Gary Riccio on Aug 15, 2020 10:55:23 GMT -5
This thread is for discussion of actions that can be taken to facilitate voting by mail, including experiences of individuals and groups who have engaged in such actions. The problems of mail-in voting will be discussed elsewhere.
Almost the actions we are identifying involve providing information to voters--whether by phone calls, letters, postcards, texts, social media or face-to-face interactions. Most of the information is available through the third-party sources described in Box Pew Climate Forum, thus your opportunity is simply to gather and distribute it to others. The most powerful strategy is to encourage the people you contact to pass the information along to people they know so we can leverage the power of social networks. Third-party sources can suggest strangers you can contact. It also can be your decision who to contact, and there is no need to be limited on your own locality.
As with all these information-gathering activities, it can be time consuming. The important point about this is that for every hour you invest in such effort, you will saved that amount of time for every interested person to whom you pass the information. You thus can be a "force multiplier" through any effort you put into this. It's not just a matter of making the lives of other voters a bit easier. In many cases, it will be the difference between whether someone else gets involved or not (e.g., if they would not have been able to put in the effort that you did about how to become involved).
If you do ten hours worth of work, and you share it with ten people, you will have saved your social network up to one hundred hours of work. If each of those people contact five other people, you will have saved a broader social network up to five hundred hours of work, directly and indirectly...
Collectively, this information sharing will turn the tide in voter suppression by helping voters overcome impediments of time, money, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, motivation and unequal access to representatives and election officials (de facto poll taxes in the modern age of myopic privilege).
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Post by Gary Riccio on Aug 15, 2020 14:14:53 GMT -5
I am sorting through copious amounts of information on various pages on the website for the National Council of State Legislators. I will post items as I curate. This post is the first on funding for voting machines. Call or write representatives at the National, State, County and local levels to find about the status of voting machines and its implications for access to voting and electoral justice: - How many machines per registered voter at particular polling places, and how does this compare across polling places with different demographics?
- How much funding has been acquired for voting machines in a particular locality, and how does this compare across polling places with different demographics?
- What has been the average length of waiting in line to vote at particular polling places, and how does this compare across polling places with different demographics?
- Fact finding need not be limited to one's own locality or state.
=> Make your fact finding as widely known as possible, so that representatives and election officials know that constituents (voters) know and so that voters can make accommodations or seek help if wait times will be long. Note that in wait times in some precincts can be as long as five hours if not longer.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Aug 15, 2020 14:27:54 GMT -5
My friends in a suburb of Houston TX are making and handing out "voter safety kits" (containing mask, gloves, and hand sanitizer) in a pointedly nonpartisan effort to make all voters feel safer about voting in person at their polling place during the pandemic. This is exceedingly important given the likelihood that the USPS will not have the funding and capacity to count mail-in ballots in a timely manner (e.g., several weeks) and, in some localities, not in time for votes to be recorded given "current understanding" of the law in particular jurisdictions.
These actions are taking place in what has been called the most diverse district in the U.S. TX-22. Located in the Houston suburbs, it is the epicenter of change in America: It is the fastest growing and now the largest district in the country. It is 51% college educated. It is 58% people of color. One in four people in TX-22 are immigrants.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Aug 15, 2020 14:43:20 GMT -5
I am sorting through copious amounts of information on various pages on the website for the National Council of State Legislators. I will post items as I curate. This post is the first on funding for voting in person. Call or write representatives at the National, State, County and local levels to find about factors affecting access to voting and its implications for electoral justice. See, for example, the NCSL's " Guiding voters through the polling place." => Make your fact finding as widely known as possible, so that representatives and election officials know that constituents (voters) know and so that voters can make accommodations or seek help if access is challenging.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Aug 15, 2020 14:48:52 GMT -5
I am sorting through copious amounts of information on various pages on the website for the National Council of State Legislators. I will post items as I curate. This post is the first on poll workers. Call or write representatives at the National, State, County and local levels to find about the status of poll worker staffing and its implications for access to voting and electoral justice: - How many poll workers per registered voter at particular polling places, and how does this compare across polling places with different demographics?
- How much funding has been acquired for poll worker staffing in a particular locality, and how does this compare across polling places with different demographics?
- What has been the average length of waiting in line to vote at particular polling places, and how does this compare across polling places with different demographics?
- Fact finding need not be limited to one's own locality or state.
=> Make your fact finding as widely known as possible, so that representatives and election officials know that constituents (voters) know and so that voters can make accommodations or seek help if wait times will be long. Note that in wait times in some precincts can be as long as five hours if not longer.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Aug 15, 2020 15:05:06 GMT -5
We have been finding out about numerous Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) initiatives, and we have communicated our initial findings and experiences to peers in our community. The resulting peer review has revealed that most people have many more questions than conclusions. Some questions are based on curiosity, and some on skepticism. In general the review suggests that most people have a very difficult time knowing where to start. Dorie Seavey put together a table at this link, based on questions from our peers, that compares three different kinds of GOTV initiative to show how a GOTV volunteer can assess and choose one to participate in. In addition to the table, the document also is accompanied by a longer list of initiatives that we have not (yet) specifically compared and contrasted.
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Post by Gary Riccio on Aug 15, 2020 15:46:23 GMT -5
The NCSL has some guidance on recruiting poll workers including: Snowball recruiting (become a force multiplier)Adopt-a-polling place Retired or former county workers Future county workers High school and college students See also materials from the NCSL Advisory Committee for Elections, coupled with guidance from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) about Becoming a Poll Worker. Pass along the relevant information to people you know, whether in your locality or not. Encourage young people in particular to sign up. The EAC has state-by-state links that describe how to sign up. The process varies from state to state, so you may want to focus on one or a small number of states to do the fact finding and share it with people you live there.
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