Annual Meeting April 20 at Berea College

Mark your calendars for the League of Women Voters of Berea Madison County Annual Meeting!

Monday, April 20, 2009
6 PM
Berea College Seabury Center Trustees Room
Berea, KY

We'll have a delicious meal of mostly-local foods; a silent auction featuring prints by African-American historian and artist Margaret Burroughs; great company of League members and friends!  

Our program speaker will be Dr. John Heyrman, Political Science professor at Berea College:  "How We Elect the President," a review of the electoral college and national popular vote.  This is a critical issue currently being addressed by LWV for which our input is needed.

Do we need to change how we elect the President?

Join the League of Women Voters of Berea and Madison County on Monday, March 23, for a primer on the electoral college and popular vote election processes and an important discussion on the merits of the national popular vote compact.

The member meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the Richmond branch of the Madison County Public LIbrary at 507 W. Main St. All LWV members and the general public are encouraged to attend the presentation. Refreshments will be served.

Guest speaker is Dr. John Heyrman, a political science professor at Berea College who has studied the presidential election process.

Our chapter will use this discussion as a basis for our national consensus study on whether or not to support adopting an alternative process for presidential elections called the National Popular Vote Compact.  The NPV compact is an initiative to elect the president by nationwide popular vote. It does not abolish the electoral college, but instead allows a state to award its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the largest number of popular votes nationwide. For more information, see the LWV Web site under For Member/Projects and Programs.

Revival of Observer Corps begins

LWV Observer Corps held its first “revival” meeting Feb. 23 in the Community Room of the Madison County Public Library in Berea.

Board  members Jeanne Hibberd and Howard Bowden organized the training session. Long-time LWV members and observers Joan Peoples, Betty Wray and Elise Andre provided helpful examples of present and past day situations that observers might be exposed to and the positive influence the League was and is able to exert due to observers’ diligence.

The session also included topics on: local government; sunshine laws; what is the Observer Corps; who we observe; what are our goals; best practices; observer reports; role of Observer Coordinator; and resources.

Although the majority of attendees expressed an interest in becoming an Observer, we still need more volunteers. Our initial goal is to have a pair of observers available to attend each of the county and city governing bodies’ and planning commissions’ meetings.
 
There will be more specific training, in the near future, on the purpose and scope of the Madison County Fiscal Court, Berea City Council, Richmond City Commission, and all three Planning &/ Zoning Commissions, LWV positions, and convenient  reporting procedures.
 
Members interested in expanding their and the communities awareness of the decisions that impact their lives and promoting government transparency and accountability are encouraged to contact the Observer Coordinator, Howard Bowden at (859) 624-5453 or Howbowden@aol.com .

A successful program requires citizen power. With a large enough group, we can share the task.
 

Local leaders address State of Communities

Photo by Cecile Schubert

Mayor Connie Lawson met with LWV and the public Jan. 22 to summarize the status of projects in Richmond. Download our February newsletter to read what she said as well as reports from Mayor Steve Connelly and Madison County Judge Executive Kent Clark.

LWV to join KFTC lobbying efforts in Frankfort

February 10 RESTORATION OF VOTING RIGHTS LOBBY DAY

. Kentucky is one of just 2 states that take voting rights away from all former felons and this impacts 186,000 Kentuckians, weakening our democracy and our justice system. We'll have a rally and will form lobby groups early in the day, including a mix of experienced lobbyists and first-time lobbyists to talk to their representatives and senators.

Schedule for the day:

- 8am-9am Annex Room 171 - Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee. HB 170 might be heard on this day. If it hasn't been heard yet, it is still valuable to have members in the room to make an impression on committee members.

9am-2pm, basing out of Annex Room 113 - We'll form lobby teams, orient people, and assign legislative targets. This will be our base of operations throughout the day.

10am-11am Annex Room 131 - Press Conference/Speak-out (continued lobbying)
- 1:45pm - 2:05pm - Last chance to talk to legislators as they walk to their respective chambers.
- 2pm-3pm - Debrief in room 131.


FEB. 17 I LOVE MOUNTAINS DAY
11 a.m. Gather at the Kentucky River where Capitol Ave crosses the River and intersects with Route 60.

11:30 a.m. Begin March to Capitol (the route is .6 miles and mostly flat.)

12 p.m. Rally on the Capitol Steps

1-3 p.m. Lunch in the cafeteria in the basement of the Capitol Annex, followed by efforts to see our own legislators.

1:15-2:15 p.m.: Optional orientation in Capitol Annex Room 113 for people who plan to visit their own legislators.

2:30-3:15 p.m.: We have reserved Room 113 of the Capitol Annex for residents of Madison County to meet with their legislators.

1:30-2:15 p.m.: We have reserved Room 154 of the Capitol Annex for residents of Fayette County to meet with their legislators.

2:30-3:15 p.m.: We have reserved Room 154 of the Capitol Annex for residents of Jefferson County to meet with their legislators. 


3-4p.m. We will all gather outside the visitor’s entrance to the Capitol Annex in order to be visible as legislators head to their afternoon session in the Capitol.



Feb. 23 meeting to revive Observer Corps

Plan to attend and bring a friend to the next LWV member meeting when we work to revive the LWV Observer Corps. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 23 in the Community Room of the Madison County Public Library in Berea. Bad weather in December led us to move the meeting to February.

Board members Jeanne Hibberd and Howard Bowden are organizing the training session with help from long-time LWV members and observers, Joan Peoples and Betty Wray.

LWV hopes to make use of its Web site and televised meetings to make the task of observing and reporting on local government more convenient. Observers will be able to write up their reports and place them on the newest “blog” on our Web site: LWV Observer Reports.

Through the revival of the Observer Corps, LWV hopes to expand citizens’ awareness of the decisions that impact their lives and to promote government transparency and accountability.

But a successful program requires citizen power. With a large enough group, we can share the task.

The informational session Feb. 23 will provide an orientation to observing local government, including how to get meeting agendas in advance and how business is handled in pubic meetings. It will also provide tips on reporting on local government for our Web site. For an example of an Observer Report, see Joan People’s report on the Nov. 12 Fiscal Court meeting.
We need your help and feedback. What agencies should we monitor? It depends on interest from our old and new members.

Wanted: Candidates with 'fire in the belly'

Enchanta Jackson questioned Richmond City Councilman Robert Blythe. Students from Berea College studying diversity in elections helped LWV with the workshop. View and/or download their research paper Gender and Racial Diversity in Kentucky's Public Offices. Elizabeth Crowe (left) and Joe Gershtenson welcome keynote speaker Eleanor Jordan to the LWV Running for Office workshop.

A diverse and enthusiastic panel of speakers treated 40 or so equally diverse and enthusiastic potential candidates to advice, analysis and inspiration during the League’s Running for Office workshop at EKU’s Perkins Building Nov. 22.

“Make sure you have a fire in your belly,” advised Eleanor Jordan, executive director of Kentucky Commission on Women and a former state legislator from Louisville. “Passion is a must. Voters will see through a reluctant candidate.”

It wasn’t the “glamor” of office, but an effort to save a Queen Anne Victorian home in her neighborhood that led to Jordan’s first campaign. When the incumbent alderman showed no interest in the issue, Jordan launched her own campaign for Louisville city government. She lost by 97 votes, but gained the attention of veteran state Rep. Leonard Gray, who encouraged her to run for his seat when he retired.

While she was being sworn in as a state legislator — the only African-American female among 138 members, she had a “deja vu” moment of looking down at the House floor from the visitor’s gallery on a school visit when she was 12 years old.
“I remember not seeing anyone that looks like me,” she recalled. And she pledged to give a voice to both blacks and women whose representation in the legislature were minimal.

Her victories over three terms in the legislature ranged from the commonplace--securing a women’s rest room on the Third Floor to the significant -- passage of a women’s health bill that would require insurance companies to pay for such items as reconstructive breast surgery following a mastectomy.

Jordan was the leadoff in a lineup that included Kentucky political strategist Dale Emmons, Lexington at-large Councilwoman Linda Gorton, Madison County Clerk Billy Gabbard, Richmond City Councilman Robert Blythe and District Court Judge Brandy Oliver Brown.



Joe Gershtenson , director of EKU’s Institute for Political Governance and Civic Engagement .moderated a panel discussion which included Lexington at-large Councilwoman Linda Gorton and Richmond City Councilman Robert Blythe


Blythe actually lost two early races for city commission, one by only 11 votes. When he examined voter registration rolls after his defeat he was discouraged when he saw the names of “50 or so of my friends who didn’t vote because they took it for granted that I was going to win.”

Those defeats in the 70s discouraged him from running again until he had a conversation with a retired pastor in Winchester who had served in the Winchester city council. That pastor told Blythe: “You need to let younger blacks know what they can do. You need to open that door for them.”

Face-to-face with voters
Linda Gorton, a working registered nurse, stressed the importance of a grass roots campaign. When she launched her campaign for Lexington-Fayette County’s Urban County Council, she and her husband and children went door-to-door several times.

“What people want is someone who will listen to them, hear what they are saying,” Gorton said, even if you have to vote a different way on an issue. “Respect folks and their opinions,” she advised. Her face-to-face approach paid off when she ran for an at-large seat on the council this year. “Voters remembered when I knocked on their door in 1998 and sat on their bench talking issues,” she said.

District Judge Brandy Oliver Brown agreed that people will remember if you ever treated them rudely. “Have a public servant attitude and appreciate and respect people,” she said.

Brown is concerned about the negativity that is entering even judicial campaigns. “We want to win, but how much are we willing to hurt society to get elected?” she asked. If people do not trust the integrity of judges, they may hesitate to bring suits or report crimes and justice in the community will suffer, she said.

Participants were treated to some post-election analysis from political strategist Dale Emmons, who managed Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Kentucky and Bruce Lundsford’s bid to defeat incumbent Mitch McConnell.

He applauded Barack Obama’s use of technology to expand the definition of “grass roots campaigning.” “ Facebook, MySpace, texting, e-mail are now absolute necessities,” he said. But he warned that technology is not free, and reminded the audience that “a doorstep poll is the best poll money can buy. You can only buy it with time.”

Emmons urged potential candidates to have a plan for the campaign which should first involve knowing how many votes you need to win and where you will get them. He also advised candidates not to be their own campaign manager, but to get someone more objective to handle the campaign decisions.

Technology now a must
Mary Sue Helm, described by Emmons as the state’s most knowledgeable source for candidates, gave participants packets of information on the state’s filing deadlines and elections schedules as well as the legal qualifications to become a candidate for a variety of positions. One of the keys is to file for office on time. Since there are no scheduled elections (other than those to fill vacancies) in 2009, the filing deadline for primaries in 2010 will be in January 2010. The earliest date to file is November 2009.

A publication titled “ Declaring Your Candidacy” has useful information including candidate filing procedures, sample forms for attaining ballot access, and qualifications for each elective office.  The manual contains an election schedule, sample filing forms of various types, contact information for state election agencies, and answers to candidates’ most frequently asked questions.

Disenfranchisement of felons explored in Dec. 1 film

EKU Students for Social Consciousness and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky are promoting awareness of felon disfranchisement by presenting a movie Monday, Dec. 1 in the Crabbe Library at EKU.

The film “Democracy’s Ghosts” diiscusses the movement to restore voting rights to convicted felons upon completion of their sentence.