Current Agenda - 3.1.23 (Wednesday) at 2 p.m. (ET)
Welcome/Announcements | Kathy Harms
Failures allow us to learn
State updates and/or successes
Lynn Taylor | VIPP: House passed some great legislation and all died in senate.Absentee ballots sent - only need last 4 digits of SSN. Thought this was a win as signature verification wa never done properly, some good RCV billed were killed, Lindsey is head of VILWG with 18-20 people helping with legislation
Kathy Harms: Killing a bad bill is as good as passing a good bill
Lindsey Zea | VIPP: Request if your state coalition has a LWG, please email kathy, moonhee or lindsey and let us know who is the main contact with you state Kathy Harms: tomandkathyharms@yahoo.com
Moonhee Bischof: moonhee.b@gmail.com Lindsey Zea: lzea@virginiainstitute.org
Jane Bilello | NC: State LWG is having their 2nd action day. Jim Womack went to the capitol and was there to make sure the group was represented. If anyone from NC on the call, please stay connected. Working on Poll observer bill has a good chance of passing. Will have another update next week
Kathy Harms: the NC poll observer bill might be some good model legislation..
Jane Bilello | NC: Has a powerpoint with the 60 deficiencies
Kathy Harms: Have to know your states priorities and what the statues are and what your legislative calendar is.
First slide - recap
Legislative priorities/Tools & Tool kits
Kathy Harms: Whip card - small little piece per committee with each member. Have one for every committee, then we have a record of what the legislator's stance is. RCV resources - slide presentation, train the trainer, resolutions that can go to units and fact sheets - and entire tool kit.
RCV screenshot Take this info and incorporate it into your state. Going in with real data is helpful for legislators Richard Bell CO: CO institute of fair elections. rwbell1414@gmail.com Working on RCV in CO, SOS wants to change some rules and would like some help Kathy Harms: Karen question: about national popular vote bill sounds a little like RCV. FGA may be able to help, Karen: Great lakes doesn't have anything that prevents RCV
Kathy Harms: RCV is a top priority
Lindsey Zea | VIPP: Nancy Smith instrumental as VI Fair election cabinet addressing RCV bill that would have even allowed for federal and presidential elections. Educated legislators that RCV is trying to be ramped up and bring awareness to what some of the negative aspects of what RCV would do.
Ann Grigorian: Big push to submit during republican committees to educate
Kathy Harms: using resources as well as bringing your own data really helps
Martha Cohen: Relationship with members is so important.
Kathy Harms: criticize in private, but supportive in public. Helps with those relationships.
Richard Nutt | FL: How do you get a hold of RNC? Not able to get in touch with them. What are their EI stances? Lindsey Zea | VIPP: Can send RCV info to you directly. There was an EI GOP in FL, are you in FL fair elections group?
Zoe Miller | FGA - RNC was thinking about dissolving their EI group.
Lindsey: 31 min
Cheri Whitney | GA: GA has an idea to get on FB and follow all the GOP pages as well as making a contact list of all the GOP chairs. Sending facts sheets and such to them.
Kathy Harms: Cleta’s legislative priorities…need to be forward looking. Cleta’s put together 10 principles for state laws. This slide condensed from larger document. We say we are nonpartisan center, Carter center has 3 major points to election, Transparency, auditability, and simplicity
Transparency - Look through tally tapes after an election with open records request
Do you have procedures for your elections that need to be enforced?
Do you have backdoor funding for your elections coming into your state? Ned Jones leading some great national calls and doing some FOIA requests to get information about what your state is doing.
Do you have civil procedures to protect election law?
Mark Bainbridge | OH: Some of these are very clear, others are not clear. Will help define some of these items that are unclear
Kathy Harms: Audit the process? Maintaining the artifacts? Process has the match the law. Often needs to happen at the state level.
Chuck Christman | TN: Reconciliation required…important to examine the machine as well as the paper ballot votes.
Kathy Harms: these items often require you to know what your county does for an election.
Janet F | NC: Working on voter data. Reconciliation - has put an 47 min Voter roll clean up in NC is difficult because there is no standard and they are inputting bad data. Voter roll topic is massive.
Kathy Harms: That’s why Cleta has a whole national group working on voter rolls. What would be required to tighten up some of your voter roll issues? This too, will vary by state. Where in your code can you address it? Do you have and/or know the code for your state?
Janet F | NC: Legislators don’t often know what needs to be corrected. But need to know the law to know what needs to be done. So then you can come up with a solution. Don’t always have the legal expertise to help with this.
Kathy: We have to work with legal from the legislators can often help, Public interest legal foundation just came up with a resource to help clean voter rolls. They purchased a SSN list for death rolls.
Lindsey: Put it in chat. Risk limiting audits in VI - Shelly Oberlander, the expert in VI. If you haven’t heard, there are 3 types of RLA, one has been passed with bipartisan support. One would allow a few precincts to be hand counted vs machine counted. Some pushback but some will to work with. Can provide more info.
Ann: Need to start bigger push to require document proof of citizenship for voter reg. Any talk to push congress? We need to start contacting legislators.
Kathy: Cleta is addressing some of these issues on the voter roll call.
Martha: Duvall co FL is an organization called Beyond90? People are put under refugee title and this organization gives them money for housing but also helps them become citizens so they can vote. Duvall co in the process of buying new machines and helping people who can’t speak language (can’t learn english) and calling that a disability to help people vote.
Jane Bilello | NC - Citizen research group call with Ned Jones is very informative
Megan Brillon - Bill to change requirements to be written in plain english at the middle school level
Kathy Harms: please send us the bill
Chat Notes: Moonhee Bischof: This meeting is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice or instruction to lobby on behalf of any issue or organization. Ann Grigorian: Lindsey did an awesome job!! Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: It was most definitely a team effort! Lynn Taylor | EIN, Virginia Institute: GIANT team effort. The VA Legislative Working Group was just amazing Janet F NC: Where are the emails? Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Please email us letting us know if you have a state legislative workgroup in your coalition, and who the main contact is for that workgroup. Kathy Harms: tomandkathyharms@yahoo.com Moonhee Bischof: moonhee.b@gmail.com Lindsey Zea: lzea@virginiainstitute.org Jane Bilello NCEIT NC: Can you send us the Tool Kits? Kristen: I know a we have a legislative working group in our county but unsure about the state... I am in CO. Can I connect our counties legislative working group in that email? Richard Bell: Off topic for this call, but we here in CO want to request help with regards to RCV here in CO. Our SOS is proposing rule changes to election rules - law exists that allows for local gov'ts to use RCV. SOS will hold meeting next Tues 3/7 at 1:00 PM Mtn. The link to attend virtually is https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMDQsInVyaSI6ImJwMjpjbGljayIsImJ1bGxldGluX2lkIjoiMjAyMzAyMjguNzI0NDg1NjEiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5jb2xvcmFkb3Nvcy5nb3YvcHVicy9ydWxlX21ha2luZy9oZWFyaW5ncy8yMDIzL0VsZWN0aW9uUnVsZXNIZWFyaW5nMjAyMzAzMDcuaHRtbCJ9.fQLjegXq7HajsobY-lZw_Kc7D83nkm4v_1ZuV0j_lik/s/1156155145/br/155279887223-l. Martha Cohen: Will you be sharing this slide regarding AZ? Caryn Young l Michigan: A National Popular Vote Bill has just been introduced yesterday, and will be read in the Senate today. Any resources to tools to effectively combat this initiative would be greatly appreciated. Laurie Moore: Perhaps many states have the constitutional provision that the candidate with the highest number of votes wins? Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Kristen, yes, sure thing! Are you connected to the state election integrity coalition in CO? Janet F NC: Can you send this slide via email? Moonhee Bischof: These resources are shared on the call notes each week. Kristen: Replying to "Off topic for this c..." The link was not pulling up for some reason. Janet F NC: I haven't received call notes for this group ANNA PINGEL: Good afternoon all, the Center for Election Integrity at America First Policy Institute also has some good resources - fact sheets/issue brief/model policy. Feel free to use us as a resource as well on the issue of Ranked Choice Voting. Kristen: Replying to "Kristen, yes, sure t..." I assume we are but maybe not. I am in Boulder County and we just created this committee. How do we get tapped in? Richard Bell: Per my chat above, we would be appreciate folks with RCV expertise link-in to the meeting and then get back to us with any comments which might help us with follow up comments. My email is rwbell1414@gmail.com. Thank you all. Richard Bell CO Kristen: I have not received the call notes either Jane Bilello NCEIT NC: Can you please flesh out precinct voting. I assume this has to do with RCV? Kristen: Thanks so much I will email you! Magan Brillon: Same here Kristen Caryn Young l Michigan: https://www.keepour50states.org/the-issue.html Caryn Young l Michigan: https://www.mifairelections.org/post/national-popular-vote-bill-introduced-in-michigan-today?utm_campaign=4a6352b7-da2e-4785-873f-54f2f4a3da0e&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&cid=449c3fcd-342c-4011-be0c-16d9f98d177c Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Moonhee, can we double check if Kristen and Janet are in the google group list for our email distributions? Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Amen Martha! Moonhee Bischof: Absolutely! Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Thank you! Mark A Bainbridge: Maybe the RNC doesn’t like Florida’s Governor. Richard Nutt Florida: My email address: Richie.nutt@proton.me Jane Bilello NCEIT NC: The RNC is not interested in election integrity. They fired everyone except for 4 nationwide. Cleta Mitchell had a conversation with Rhona and saved the 4. Their mission is not ours. They raise money and they get Rs elected. That's why they dismantled election integrity after the election. It's up to us. Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Thank you, Richard! I will get back to you once I have some good info for you. Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Richard, to your question earlier, I would reach out to Jason Snead and see if he can join that meeting that will be discussing new RCV rules in CO. Do you have a way to reach out to him? Magan Brillon: what if our states say there are "audits" but these risk limiting audits don't seem trust worthy? Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Also, Richard, are you planning on going to the RCV national workgroup Zoom tomorrow afternoon? You could bring it up there as well. Jane Bilello NCEIT NC: NCEIT collects poll tapes from all counties via FOIA requests. Lynn Bernstein analyzes the tapes. www.transparentelectionsnc.org Richard Nutt Florida: No, I am not involved in that issue. I am involved in two other meetings tomorrow. I simply need a way to contact the RNC Election Integrity people if they still exist. I have been very disappointed with the RNC election integrity efforts. I think that my assessment is common in the grassroots. Magan Brillon: our Rhode Island Deputy of Elections, Norelys R. Consuegra, is also on the advisory board for CTCL. Magan Brillon: Makes it kind of hard to fight Laurie Moore: Send a FOIA request for outside money coming into the finance office (as well as elections office) Suzanne Tanner | GA: @markbainbridge What state are you in? Mark A Bainbridge: Ohio Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: Sorry for the confusion Richard Nutt, my messages were responding to Richard Bell from Colorado who had asked about resources for fighting some new RCV rules in their state. Magan Brillon: We have a video of a group speaking with illegal immigrants getting driver ids to vote with while being told not to "stop for police" when using it to drive, vote for a specific person in our special election coming up with Cicillini stepping down , followed immediately by "who needs a car loan" How do we fight things like the bribary they are doing in "secret" before made law? Our plan was to push it to the public as much as possible but again....this state is not easy to get a voice in. Any advice? Caryn Young l Michigan: NEWS House and Senate to Introduce National Popular Vote Bills; Michigan to Consider Joining Pact BY AUSTIN GERGENS MARCH 1, 2023 LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Representative Carrie Rheingans (D-Ann Arbor) was joined by other members of a coalition that is advocating for Michigan to join other states that have agreed to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. At session on Wednesday, Rep. Rheingans and Senator Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit) will introduce legislation which could allocate Michigan’s 15 electoral college votes towards the Presidential Candidate with the highest number of popular votes. “The fundamental matter of fairness and safeguarding our democracy is what we’re here to talk about today,” Rep. Rheingans said, “The National Popular Vote ensures that every voter in every state will have an equal say in the Presidential election. It means that every voice will be heard no matter where you live, what you look like, or what party you support.” Representative Rheingans a Lindsey Zea | Virginia Institute: The Risk Limiting Audit that allows hand count to compare against the machine count is called batch comparison method of Risk Limiting Audit. Jane Bilello NCEIT NC:
... [Message clipped] View entire message