Would you like to ensure that all Massachusetts voters have up-to-date information about the candidates on their ballots this fall?
We are looking for volunteers to help draft questions for all Congressional and State House candidates. Let us know if you’re interested by contacting Mary Ann Ashton or Meryl Kessler. We’ll be organizing a couple of conference calls before the end of May, and then working over the next few months via phone and e-mail. Local Leagues will have an opportunity to contribute specific questions for their legislators as well. All of the information will be available to Massachusetts voters for the September primary and November general election through our online platform, VOTE411.org. VOTE411.org will also include information about ballot questions as they become finalized over the next couple of months.
This is just one part of a complete campaign that LWVMA launched at Council for Massachusetts Voter Engagement (MOVE 2016). The slides for the plan presented at Council are posted on our website here. As part of the presentation we heard from several local Leagues about new initiatives for voter registration: Winchester shared its high school voter registration drive on laptops, Springfield discussed its partnership with community groups to register voters in other settings, and Greater Haverhill highlighted its work (shared with Worcester and Harvard Leagues) to register new voters at citizenship ceremonies.
Other highlights of the campaign include supporting local Leagues with legislative forums, educating voters about election reforms including pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds and Early Voting (for 11 days ahead of the general election in November), use of our winning videos to encourage voting among younger voters, tools for use with social media to Get Out the Vote, and promotion of League Choice books to encourage civic interest among the younger crowd.
We are also working on updating information materials about voting for our website, as well as the Voter Service toolkit. If you have suggestions about materials that would be helpful, please let us know.