2014 General Election Activities

We need volunteers for our ambitious schedule leading up to the November 4, 2014 General Election.  Find what interest you and sign up with Phyllis Gale at voterservices@lwvbae.org  or 510-508-4389.  Many hands will bring success to all our voter services activities.

Below see activities for:

  • Voter Registration
  • Poster Contest and Library Display
  • Community Candidate Forums
  • Speakers Bureau

Voter Registration

We have four main thrusts for our Voter Registration work.

Solano Stroll on September 14th.  LWVBAE will share our voter information with the strollers.  We are recruiting now and will need volunteers to help set up, work the booth from 10 am to 6 pm (two hour shifts), and clean up.

National Voter Registration Day, September 23rd.  We are trying something new.  We are going to table at all high schools in Berkeley, Albany, and Emeryville.  We also plan to partner with the registration efforts at Berkeley Community College and the UC Berkeley campus.

Berkeley Sunday Streets, October 12th – just in time for our last big effort before the close of registration on Monday, October 20th.  We will be tabling and dancing in the streets to supply the community with our voting literature.

Voter registration boxes that we maintain at local locations (Berkeley Libraries, Emeryville Post Office, etc.) will be updated with new boxes and more registration forms.  We are contacting the “stockers” and locations to bring everything up to date for voter registration.

If you have any event at which you think LWVBAE should have a voter registration table, please let Phyllis Gale know.

Poster Contest and Library Display

Helene Lecar has brought to us great ideas for a high school poster contest on Voter Registration and a “Get Out the Vote” library display at the Berkeley Main Library for the month of October. The Berkeley Main Library has given us the street display cases on Kittridgeand the display cases on the second floor. We will be launching the contest later this month.

Community Candidate Forums

We are working on seven candidate forums for Berkeley, Albany, and Emeryville.  For Berkeley’s four city council districts we will have a new forum called “speed date your candidates”, an idea President Nancy Bickel brought back from the LWV National Convention.  We will find public locations in each district and invite the candidates to the forum.  There will be as many tables as there are candidates attending.  The public will fill the tables and the candidates will go from table to table for a more intimate way to get to know your Berkeley candidates for city and school board.  For the public whose council member is not up for re-election, we will have one large forum.  At this juncture, we are planning more traditional candidate forums for Albany and Emeryville.   Yes, that is seven separate candidate forums in three cities in a month.  Volunteers are needed to “host” the candidate for the evening in Berkeley and to emcee the forums.

Speakers Bureau

We need volunteers to visit community organizations to speak on the state and local measures.  We will hold a speakers training September 8 and will start the Speakers Series no sooner than September 15th.  Check the weekly e-blast for information.