The 2015 State League Convention will be held on 

June 6-7, 2015, at the Desmond Hotel in Albany. Mark your calendars now to join us!

Happy Holidays from the State League office staff!

From left, Kate, Katrina, Victoria, Lisa and Laura

As the Nominating Committee for the June 2015 LWVNYS Convention we take our responsibilities seriously and passionately. We're genuinely excited about the terrific team of LWVNYS leaders that we are already assembling for 2015-2017 and invite you (or a League colleague of yours) to consider applying for one of our small number of open positions including directors for youth programs, membership, and citizen education.

 

The coming years will be both challenging and inspiring for League in New York State. Many local Leagues are in transition, and looking for ways to attract and retain new members in compelling ways. The state League stands ready to assist in these efforts, strengthening our skills, imparting information and tools, and sharing best practices across the state.

 

If you (or a friend) are passionate about League, willing to work with a team from all parts of the state to further League goals and engage with our talented and inspiring local League members and boards, please consider joining our LWVNYS board and working in an area you find compelling. It will be a way for you to share your strengths, learn from others, and help lead LWVNYS in the important years ahead.

 

For more information please contact Lisa Scott, Chair of the Nominating Committee (tel. 631-523-1653) or email lisawscott@gmail.com.

Over 30 members signed on for the call held on December 11.  Carol Mellor, as Grassroots Lobby Director moderated, while Barbara Bartoletti shared her extensive experience in the front line of our advocacy as Legislative Director and Laura Ladd Bierman described the role of the State office in implementing League advocacy. For more information on the state advocacy process, please see the power point presentation.

Program Planning

The process for evaluating the state League's program and positions begins now. We have emailed each local League all of the information and timeline on the process. Your local League should review the state League's positions and decide if you want to keep them, update them, revise them or delete them. You also have to discuss any new positions you might want the state League to consider for new studies. The responses from all of the local Leagues are reviewed by the state League Board in March. The Board's recommendations are then presented to the delegates at state Convention in June for consideration and a vote. Make sure you attend your local League's meeting to discuss the state League program and positions with your League members in January or February. This is your opportunity to influence our program - new items CANNOT be introduced at Convention; the ideas and suggestions must first be included in the local League's responses on Program Planning forms.

 

The Issue Specialists and state Board recently met to discuss a new legislative agenda document. It was decided that we will no longer be creating a legislative agenda brochure identifying a couple of the issues that the state League will be working on during the upcoming legislative session. Instead we will be creating a booklet with one page on each of the main issues that we monitor: election law, government reform (ethics, campaign finance reform), health care, judiciary, environment, women's issues, transportation, financing education. We will have a summary page which may include a couple of other issues that don't need a full page for explanation of the issue. We are still working on exactly what this document will look like, but we're hoping it will be some kind of booklet to be distributed. With this new approach, we believe that members, the public and legislators will see the full breadth of issues (rather than the few listed on the former legislative agenda brochure) that we are monitoring, even if we don't expect to accomplish all of these during this session. Watch for more info and forms to order your copies of this new booklet.

 

Advocacy Training Session

The state League will be holding its annual Advocacy Training session on February 3 (from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm) in New York City. The State Advocacy team, including our Issue Specialists, will be presenting information on the League's expected action during the upcoming legislative session. We hope that holding it in NYC this year will encourage more downstate members to come learn about our advocacy agenda. Plans are being developed to organize a lobby day later in the spring in Albany for members to directly lobby their legislators in Albany. To attend the Feb. 3rd Advocacy Training Day, please call or email Katrina at the state office (518-465-4162 or katrina@lwvny.org).

 

 "I always vote. It is a citizen's civic responsibility and a privilege." 

"I have never missed an opportunity to vote, never will. It's an obligation of living in a democracy."

 

 These quotes from two New Castle residents capture the sentiment expressed by many in our community who completed the recent voter participation survey conducted by the League of Women Voters of New Castle. Although New York State's participation in the midterm elections was the fourth lowest in the country at 28.8%, we are pleased to report that the 

 

The League's objectives in doing a survey were to find out whether the community feels it is getting the information it needs about the candidates and the issues, and the community's thoughts on what would make voting more accessible.

 

About 300 people participated in our survey; 82% of survey respondents had voted in the last election and 63% of respondents felt that they were sufficiently informed.

 

The following chart illustrates where survey respondents obtained their information on the candidates: 

                         

Of the 50 respondents who had not voted, about 40% stated that they were disillusioned, disgruntled or otherwise not sure their votes mattered. Here are a couple of their quotes:

"My vote can't change anything in politics."

                     "Difficult to determine who was telling the truth and who was not. So many negative ads and constant phone calls left more questions than answers."

 Research shows that negative ads late in a campaign can reduce voter turnout (see http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/blog/what-matters-with-negativity-is-timing/). 

 

About 40% of nonvoters said they could not get to the polls because of their jobs.  Suggested remedies included early voting, voting on the weekend, voting by mail or online voting.  Early in-person voting and no-excuse absentee ballots are reforms that the League of Women Voters of New York State supports. In fact, New York is one of only 14 states where early voting is not available and an excuse is required to request an absentee ballot.  The New York State Assembly has passed an early voting bill over the last two years, but the Senate has opposed it.

 

Our survey findings reflect only the opinions of those willing to complete our survey and are not meant to be a statistically valid sample. However, the survey provided us good information from the community. While our survey confirmed that the League's Voters Guide-a Guide that the New Castle League provides free to every household in New Castle-is still a valuable resource to the community, the League's interactive voter information website,www.vote411.org, is a great resource for candidate information but rarely used. We now know that we will need to more actively promote this site. 

  

 

Many local Leagues are celebrating with a holiday event this month. Some of these events are:

• The LWV of Schenectady County hosted speaker Rowie Taylor who will talk about, "Adovocating for Women in Schenectady" 
• The LWV of Somers hosted a night of games, music, and chit-chat on December 8^th.
• Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk was the speaker at the holiday lunch for the LWV of Albany County.
• LWV of the Hamptons collects donations for their local Food Pantries at their holiday party; over $1300 was collected at last year's event.

Congratulations to the LWV of Buffalo/Niagara for distributing 22,000 Voter Guides!

 

The LWV of East Nassau is having a book discussion at their general membership meeting in January. The book they will discuss is, "The Parties vs. the People" by Mickey Edwards.

 

William Schneider PhD. in epidemiology and community health will speak about, "Citizen Science, Environmental Health & Social Justice in Buffalo's West Side" on January 16 for the LWV of Buffalo/Niagara.

 

The LWV of Somers will hear a "Report from the Legislature" by Peter Harckham and Michael Kaplowitz on January 12. The LWV of Somers also marched in the Veterans' Day parade (see photo left). 

 The LWV of Geneva offered a "Lunch With the League" program with the guest Speaker, Dennis Money, President of the non-profit corporation Seneca White Deer, Inc. (SWD.) The mission of Seneca White Deer is to conserve the world's largest white deer population and to preserve the military and civilian histories of the former Seneca Army Depot.  

 

LWV of Bedford, Lewisboro and North Salem hosted a forum, "A Local Example of Fair and Affordable Housing in Northern Westchester," a presentation by Westchester County Deputy Commissioner of Planning Norma Drummond.

 

Dr. Julie Davis Lutz, Chief Operations Officer of Eastern Suffolk BOCES, spoke at a recent meeting organized by the LWV of Brookhaven. 

 

The Elmira Corning Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People joined the Chemung County LWV, and All Saints Home COGIC to sponsor a health care forum entitled "Health Care, We Care."

  

Patricia Fuchs and Joyce Whitehead were recipients of the LWV of Huntington Voter Service Awards at the LWV-Suffolk County Post Election Brunch. Pat and Joyce went beyond expectations as members of voter service committee. 

 

LWV of Mid-Hudson continued its book club discussion with the book, The Price of Inequality: Why a Divided Economy in Endangering Our Future, by Joseph Stiglitz. LWV of Saratoga also has an active book club and is meeting to determine its books for the spring.  The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs will be discussed at the LWV of Scarsdale's new book club. 

 

LWV of Syracuse organized a tour of the new WCNY Studios to learn about their Enterprise America Program. The Enterprise America program is an exciting hands-on co-curricular program for middle school students with the goal of preparing them for the 21st century. Following the three week program students spend a day operating WCNY's Enterprise America City where they are responsible for governing the city and operating businesses.

 

Barbara Traynor of LWV of Albany County had the opportunity to volunteer with Vote Smart earlier this year in Montana; read about her experiences here. 

 

Many of our local Leagues are holding meetings for consensus discussions on the two state studies: term limits and ballot access. These meetings are very important and we appreciate the work by all of the local Leagues and members.