March 2024 League Lookout - LWVNAZ News/Events Northern Arizona and Greater Verde Valley
| LWVNAZ Members and Supporters:
Our goal with the monthly newsletter is to provide you with a quick snapshot of our monthly events and activities all in one place. Hope you enjoy it!
We are providing information that the League is sponsoring as well as information about events that you might find of interest. Feel free to share this information with anyone you think would benefit from this information!
To get information about other league activities, see our website.
| Message from the President
Hello fellow Leaguers,
Well, the Election Season has officially begun with the March 19 Presidential Preference Election. This election is only open to registered members of each party. After that, the next major date for our area is the Primary Election. As you may have seen in recent news, in order to deal with a compressed timeline for potential recounts, the date of the primary has been moved one week earlier. The statewide primary election date, and local municipal election date is now July 30. Our voter registration volunteers are increasing efforts to register and inform voters about these important elections.
Recently I have reached out in a separate letter to inform all of our members and friends of our urgent situation. I have been privileged to serve as your President for the past two years. During that time, I have not had a Vice President willing to assume the President role after me. This is despite the great efforts of our board, and a nominating team. I have repeatedly stated that I will not be President for a third term. My term will end JULY 1, 2024.
In our local community we provide extremely useful and popular nonpartisan local candidate forums, provide input to Vote 411, run voter education programs, help register and inform voters across our community, host a monthly political book club, and run occasional social events. I hope many of you know of these activities and have joined some of them.
MUCH OF THIS IS AT RISK OF ENDING IF WE CANNOT FIND A LEADERSHIP STRUCTURE. We face some stark choices –
- A president steps forward to lead our league.
- We establish a pared down leadership team to address the basic needs.
- We disband the local league in an orderly fashion This requires a vote of the members, which would likely be done electronically this summer.
If you have not read this recent email, I urge you to do so and consider what the League has meant to you, and to our community, and especially what it may mean in the years ahead. If we wish to continue our efforts, we need members to step forward.
Yours in league,
Maryann Kenney
President LWVNAZ
| Voter Education Programs
The LWV of Northern Arizona is sponsoring Voter Education Programs on the Independent Voter, produced and facilitated by long-time Sedona residents Paul Friedman and Jon Thompson.
Here is the link to the first program:
The second part will be rescheduled. Stay tuned for updates!
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The Political Book Club meets at 3:00 pm MST on the last Monday of the month.
The Political Book Club discussion for February was Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson and was led by Jim Gibson.
Democracy Awakening explains how we got to this perilous point, what our history really tells us about ourselves, and what the future of democracy can be.
Books for the next two months will be the following:
March 25 - The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic, by Stephen Vladeck.
Since 2017, the Court has dramatically expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes “shadow docket,” regularly making decisions that affect millions of Americans without public hearings and without explanation, through cryptic late-night rulings that leave lawyers—and citizens—scrambling.
Stephen I. Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) holds the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at The University of Texas School of Law and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law and military justice. He has argued multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court and the lower federal courts; has served as an expert witness both in U.S. and foreign tribunals; and has been repeatedly recognized for his influential and widely-cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching and his service to the legal profession.
Vladeck is the co-host, with Bobby Chesney, of the popular and award-winning "National Security Law Podcast." He is CNN's Supreme Court analyst and a co-author of Aspen Publishers' leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is an executive editor of the Just Security blog and a senior editor of the Lawfare blog.
April 29 - Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson
Cassidy Hutchinson’s desk was mere steps from the most controversial president in recent American history. Now, she provides a riveting account of her extraordinary experiences as an idealistic young woman thrust into the middle of a national crisis, where she risked everything to tell the truth about some of the most powerful people in Washington.
The only requirement to join us is to have read the book. The standard format consists of each person giving a brief (1-2 minute) statement concerning the book’s overall impressions and implications. This segment is followed by group questions and discussions of the material.
We are still meeting via Zoom. If you would like to join the group, contact ann.holland99@gmail.com to obtain the Zoom link for the meeting.
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Arizona for Abortion Access Campaign and League Involvement | | | LWV Northern Arizona Collecting Signatures for
ARIZONA FOR ABORTION ACCESS CAMPAIGN
UPDATE
Let’s begin 2024 with a big push to collect signatures for the Arizona for Abortion Access Campaign! We have petitions, clipboards, instructions, and training to get anyone ready to help us reach the LWV Arizona goal of 10,000 signatures. With your help, we can help the campaign reach its 350,000+ signature threshold and get closer to enshrining abortion access in Arizona’s constitution.
LWV Northern Arizona members can pick-up campaign petitions and material from League member, Robyn Prud’homme-Bauer. Please email, Robyn at lwvnaz@gmail.com if you are interested in gathering signatures or have any questions. Robyn will deliver petitions to you! A link to a recorded Zoom training session for gathering signatures will be sent to League members volunteering to collect signatures.
LWV’s Role in the Campaign
The LWV Arizona has a key role as a member of the field committee organized under the auspices of Health Care Rising (HCR). The deadline for submitting signatures to the Arizona Secretary of State is July 3, 2024. Our goal is to submit our petitions to the campaign by June 30, 2024, to allow time for the campaign to quality-check the petitions.
Distributing and Collecting Petitions (Petition circulators)
- Ask for petitions from LWVNAZ member, Robyn Prud’homme-Bauer
- Collect signatures following the guidelines in the petition’s "Dos and Dont's" document
- Easy way to collect signatures: Ask family members, friends, colleagues or neighbors who are registered voters to sign a petition. If every League member collected 10 signatures – LWVAZ would easily meet their signature collection goal!
- Take signed petitions to a notary to be notarized (a list of notaries provided with your petitions)
- Return signed and notarized petitions to LWVNAZ or non-League AAA petition collection location (Drop-off locations will be provided with your petitions) or Robyn will pick-up completed petitions!
- Training and Support materials
- Copies of role-specific instructions will be given to all volunteers with the petitions.
- A recorded Petition Circulator Training will be sent to all volunteers
About the Campaign
Arizona for Abortion Access is a coalition of reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations working to ensure Arizonans can make the decisions that are best for them and their families — free from government interference.
This initiative will protect abortion access in Arizona and ensure every person can make this deeply personal decision with dignity. The “Arizona Abortion Access Act” would enshrine the fundamental right to abortion in Arizona’s constitution: Arizona for Abortion Access Website
***Send an email to Robyn at lwvnaz@gmail.com and ask for your petition today and start collecting signatures ***
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Candidate Forums
Volunteer needed
| | | The Statewide Primary Election on July 30 is also the day for many municipal elections. Depending on number of candidates and vote counts, this could determine winning candidates for local election, or select candidates for a runoff election in November.
The League has long played an important role in running local candidate forums in advance of these municipal elections. Our forums are a well respected source for nonpartisan information, often widely attended or recorded for online viewing. We are forming a team of experienced and dedicated members to work on this but are still looking for someone to take a lead role in organizing dates and venues as well as reaching out to candidates. This system is well-organized and laid out, ready for our next volunteer to come forward. These forums are so important to our local communities. Please consider stepping up to be part of the team.
Contact us at LWVNAZ@gmail.com
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Upcoming
Statewide Events
| | | Election Protection Arizona (EPAZ) helps at all stages of voting from registration to voting at the polls on Election Day. Join us in helping voters overcome any barrier from getting the right voter ID to voting from jail!
Sign up to be an EPAZ volunteer at allvoting.org/epaz2024
The Election Protection training schedule is:
●Wednesday, 3/6/2024 from 6pm-7:30pm MST
●Thursday, 3/7/2024 6pm-7:30pm MST
●Saturday, 3/9/2024 from 2pm-3:30pm MST
To sign up for a training:
●Fill out the form with your information
●Once you submit the form, you will receive an email from "devops+colab-kube-production-v1@colab.coop via amazonses.com" with "Log in to protectthevote.net" as the Subject
●Click the link to the portal to set up an account and select a training! | |