VOTER-March-2008

March Stir the Pot Program Features
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN OAKLAND
Can you imagine a classroom where respect is a given and anger and hostility are handled so that everyone can learn their causes and effects? Restorative Justice brings more attention to the needs of the victim in a crime than our current criminal justice system by involving the perpetrator in an agreement to repair the harm done. Come on March 24th to learn about the restorative justice program now being used at the Cole School in Oakland.
Monday, March 24
6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
Dimond Library
3565 Fruitvale Avenue
Bring your favorite food and/or beverage (no alcohol in the library).
NOTE THE LATER STARTING TIME--to accommodate those coming from work.
- - - - - -
Restorative Justice Indicators
We are working towards restorative justice when we...
focus on the harms of wrongdoing more than the rules that have been broken
show equal concern and commitment to those harmed as well as the rule-breakers, involving both in the process of justice give attention to the unintended consequences of our actions and programs
show respect to all parties, including those harmed, the rule breakers, and educators who must enforce the rules.

THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT

FROM CORSETS AND BLOOMERS TO BODY PIERCING AND TATTOOS: THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
Don't know much about women's history? Take a new look at the Woman Suffrage Movement and its leaders. Learn what we all should have known years ago.
Tuesday March 18
11:30 AM
The English Center
Reinhardt Hall, Mills College
The campaign to win the vote took over 72 years, involved thousands of women and men and was one of the longest and most dramatic political battles ever fought in the United States. Inspired by idealism and grounded in sacrifice, the long struggle has great political and social significance, yet it is virtually unacknowledged in the chronicles of American history.
Playing founding mothers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Bloomers" Renee Chanon and Nikki Harris bring the women's rights movement to life in a 30-minute dialogue that is both educational and entertaining. "From Corsets and Bloomers to Body Piercing and Tattoos" tells the story of the rebellion that started in Seneca Falls, New York, highlights key figures and events, and links the story of the suffragists to today's status of women's rights and the current political scene.

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

By Helen Hutchison
We knew that 2008 was going to be a busy Voter Service year with three elections scheduled. We started off on a great note. You'll see elsewhere in the VOTER a report on all the work done by Oakland League members for the February election. A huge thank you to everyone!
And now a plea to everyone to get active for the June and November elections! We expect a very active campaign season in Oakland: elections for City Council and School Board in 4 districts, plus the at-large City Council seat and City Attorney.
We have one shot jobs: voter registration, delivery of Easy Voter Guides; opportunities for people for want to work from home: making phone calls to candidates for Smart Voter and the Easy Voter Guide; opportunities for people who like to speak to groups: presenting the ballot measures; opportunities for people who like to help organize events: candidate forums. If I haven't listed something that sounds like what you'd like to do, then let us know what you'd like to do and we can very likely figure out a job that fits your skills.
Finally, if your true love is advocacy work, we hope to get a small group together for the June and November elections that will be trained to be advocacy speakers, in addition to our traditional Pros and Cons speakers bureau.
For more information about any of these opportunities you can contact me (helen@helenhutch.com or 510 654 2216). For more about voter service work, contact Leslie Smith (lesliesmith@aol.com or 510-891-9033). For more about advocacy, contact Marion Taylor (mariontaylor@mac.com or 510-532-5797).
REMINDER: As you do your taxes, remember to "check the box" in the first question and designate three dollars of your tax payment to the Presidential Election Fund. Checking the box will not increase the taxes you pay or reduce your refund. It simply puts three dollars of the tax you've already paid into the Presidential Election Fund. The size of the Fund and the strength of our democracy depends entirely on the number of people who choose to check the box.

BOARD NOTES

At its February meeting the LWVO Board:
Heard report on outstanding work done by LWVO members for Feb. 5 election, and preparations being made for June 3 election
Approved the Program Planning report to LWVUS
        Update the position on U.S. Relations with Developing Countries
        New study on National Popular Vote Compact to Elect the President
Local program planning report:
        No changes to local positions recommended
        Local action priorities:
                Single payer health care
                Functioning of city government
The next Board meeting is Monday, March 10, 6:30 pm at Piedmont Gardens. All League members are welcome to attend.

Alameda County Coalition for Abolition of the Death Penalty

The Leagues of Women Voters of Alameda County have joined this coalition, whose goal is to "end the use of the death penalty in Alameda County." Steps in the Action Plan include educating members of participating organizations, outreach to other organizations and educating them, working with media, and political action.
In order to educate participating organizations, we have scheduled an Activist Training Session on Saturday, June 7 from 10 to 3, place to be announced. Please mark your calendar now. If you cannot attend this meeting you may be able to attend a later one which will be scheduled.
Interested in learning about current statewide death penalty issues? The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ) is conducting a four month study of the fair administration of the death penalty in California. As part of its study, the Commission is holding three public hearings: the first was in January in Sacramento; the second is in February in Los Angeles, and the final one will be the morning of March 28 at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara. Invited witnesses will include representatives of victims' organizations and advocacy groups concerned with the fairness of California's death penalty law. More information including time, location, and a list of invited witnesses will be available soon. Let me know if you would like to attend. We can organize car pooling.
For more information ask Marion Taylor, LWV Oakland, the League's liaison to the coalition: 510-532-5797 or mariontaylor@mac.com.

LWVO BOARD NOMINATIONS

Would you be interested in serving on the League Board? Do you know someone you think would make a good Board member? Contact Rosalee Schubert, Nominating Committee Chair, 510 834-3401 or rosaleeschubert@sbcglobal.net.

LWVO Annual Luncheon

Wednesday, April 2
Watch for your invitation in the mail!
The theme for this years luncheon is "Oakland Without Borders? Immigration and the East Bay." Our speaker will be Alex Saragoza who also spoke to us at the general meeting in September on immigration. He is an entertaining speaker with a great store of knowledge of immigration issues.
Preparations are continuing: we are choosing our Making Democracy Work awardees; Sponsors and Patrons are sending responses with their orders for tables. If you are available to help the day of the luncheon, please call the League office, 510 834-7640 or Sandra Coleman, Sandra@mbcarch.com or 510 451-6796.
To print out your response form now, please click here

VOTER SERVICE NEWS--February Election Roundup

PROS AND CONS
An active group of Pros and Cons presenters went to 45 locations, including a high school with 5 classes. (Are you noticing that the number keeps increasing each election? That's thanks to Speakers' Bureau chair Judy Merrill's continuing outreach.) Sandy Threlfall and Katherine Gavzy presented Pros and Cons on KPFA's "Morning Show" so successfully that they already have a date for the next election! In addition, we now are presenting to several young adult groups, including the Oakland Youth Commissioners and the CA Conservation Corps. Not all of the young people are old enough to vote, but they'll have a sense of it when their time comes. The speakers who rose to the challenge, even as requests continued to come in 2 weeks before the election, were Sandy Threlfall, Katherine Gavzy, Pat Raburn, Denise Fleig, Iris Winogrond, Mony Flores-Bauer, Marisel Brown, Suzanne Loosen, Rachel Kahn-Hut, Helen Hutchison, and Nikki Harris. Trainers were Nikki, Judy, and Helen.

VOTER REGISTRATION
Going back to September, 2007 thru January, 2008 we were present at the following locations:
St Louis Bertrand Church
National Treasurer Employees Union at the Federal Bldg.
WalMart Super Store
Rockridge Safeway
Urojas Ministries
21 volunteers (working 2-4 hrs each) worked 56 total hours. During that time, we registered 245 voters. Remember though, we don't measure our success only by the number of people we register. There are many reasons why the numbers may be less than hoped for - unsatisfactory locations, competition from other groups, ineligible persons and apathy in general.
While the count is considerably more than what we did in the previous drive, we look forward to increasing that number prior to the June and November elections!
Special thanks to Allene Warren, Polly Amrein, Nancy Auker, Michael & Sandra Coleman, Judy Cox, Karen Engel, Denise Fleig, Mony Flores-Bauer, Lorraine Force, Katherine & Jerry Gavzy, Ruth Hafter, Annmarie Hallin, Carmen Hartano, Helen Hutchison, Terry Kulka, Miriam Laska, Gordon Seligson, Rosalie Schubert, Fumi Sugihara and Lianne Campodonico of the Piedmont League. We hope you will all be available for the upcoming elections.

LOCAL AND STATE EASY VOTER GUIDE
Eighteen people volunteered their time, cars, or home to help sort and deliver a total of 25,500 state and local EVGs throughout Oakland for the February, 2008 election.
We delivered the guides to 60 agencies, churches, libraries and schools in five different languages for the state guides and four languages for the local ones.
We've encouraged agencies with large requests for state guides (over 100) to order directly from the state and many groups have done this, making our delivery much easier and more efficient.
This election, the Vietnamese translation of the local EVG was available for the first time and we plan to continue it. Korean translation is not available as yet.
Breaking it down, we delivered 5,700 State EVGs and 20,000 Local EVGs..
These wonderful people sorted, packaged and distributed state and local Easy Voter Guides to 60 Oakland agencies: Polly Amrein, Helen Bersie, Karen Engel, Annmarie Hallin, Lois Hansen, Helen Hutchison, Ronile Lahti, Judy Merrill, Donna Mitroff, Bea Rudney, Libby Schaaf, Charlene Stewart, Fumi Sugihara, Allene Warren, Gail Weininger, and Iris Winogrond. Bonnie Hamlin kindly opened her home to us. Trader Joe's (College Ave.) Store Manager, donated 200 Trader Joe brown bags. They were used to keep all the voter education material deliveries organized.

AFFIDAVIT BOXES
Fifteen Affidavit Box Watchers kept boxes full of registration forms in 74 places, including post offices, libraries, schools, community centers, senior centers, DMV's and other places such as bookstores, caf�s and title companies. In December we placed 1,774 and in January 2,130 affidavits, making many visits to refill our boxes in the last couple of weeks before the deadline on Jan. 22. This group includes Nancy Auker, Sandra Coleman, Sonia Due�o, Denise Fleig, Ruth Hafter, Bonnie Hamlin, Helen Hutchison, Terry Kulka, Miriam Laska, Barbara Newcombe, Mary Steven, Mary Strauss, Mary Ann Thompson, Allene Warren and Polly Amrein.

SMART VOTER
Smart Voter supported the February election by posting full sample ballot information about the Alameda County, City of Oakland, and City of Albany ballot measures, plus links to newspaper coverage of the issues, and to web sites maintained by the supporters and opponents of the measures. As usual, we also were a popular site for people seeking the location of their polling place and the status of their voter registration
If you would like to get involved in any of these activities, or help with the candidate forums for the June and November Elections, please contact Leslie Smith, lesliesmth@aol.com or 510-891-9033.

National Popular Vote Compact to Elect the President

At our Program Planning meeting in February the Oakland League endorsed a proposal to ask the national League to consider "The Advisability of Using the National Popular Vote Compact among the States as a Method for Electing the President." The New York State League is leading an effort to have the national League support this proposal which would elect the president by a majority of voters.
Under the current system most states, like California, give all of their Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins a majority in their state. In recent years no presidential candidate has spent much time in California because they assumed that they knew which party would win a majority in the state.
Under the proposed "national popular vote compact" California and other states comprising a majority of electoral votes, would not consider only the votes in their state; they would assign all of their electoral votes to the candidate who won a majority nationwide. Had this system been in operation in 2000, a majority of electoral votes would have gone to Al Gore who received 50,999,897 votes (48.38%) while George Bush received 50,456,002 votes (47.87%).
Here is a more detailed description of the idea: "After the people cast their ballots in early November of presidential election years, the popular vote counts from all 50 states and the District of Columbia would be added together to obtain a national grand total for each presidential slate. At the present time, the Electoral College reflects the voters' state-by-state choices for President (or, in the cases of Maine and Nebraska, the voters' district-wide choices). The proposed compact would change the Electoral College from an institution that reflects the voters' state-by-state choices (or district-wide choices) into a body that reflects the voters' nationwide choice. Specifically, the proposed compact specifies that each member state will award its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who received the largest total number of popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. That is, each state belonging to the proposed compact would award its electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote winner. Because the proposed compact would become effective only when it encompasses states collectively possessing a majority of the electoral votes, the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia would be guaranteed enough electoral votes (that is, at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes) in the Electoral College to be elected. By making the Electoral College reflect the voter's nationwide choice for President, the proposed compact directly solves the three shortcomings of the current state-by-state winner-take-all system, namely that (1) voters are effectively disenfranchised in two thirds of the states in presidential elections, (2) the current system does not reliably reflect the nationwide popular vote, and (3) not every vote is equal".
--Source: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/faqitem.php?f=11

Iron Jawed Angels

Come see Iron Jawed Angels on Saturday, March 8 at the Rockridge Library from 2 to 4 pm. This is sponsored by the Oakland East Bay NOW, cosponsored by LWV Oakland.
If you missed this movie when we showed it last year at the Parkway, don't miss this chance to see it now. It's a great show!

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

The United Nations Association--East Bay Chapter is sponsoring a celebration of International Women's Day. The theme will be "Moving Women's Global Agenda Forward". It will feature a keynote speech by Emily Murase, the Executive Director of the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women.
Date: Saturday, March 8, 2008, 1:00 - 5:00 pm
Place: Mills College, Bender Room, Carnegie Hall 2nd Floor
5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, California
The day will include a Japanese tea ceremony (Bon-Temae), Korean tea, Pakistani tea, Pakistani cultural showcase, classical piano and guitar music. Refreshments will be served during a networking time. $10 donation suggested, Students are free.
For details, refer to the UN Association's website: http://www.unausaeastbay.org.

LOCAL ACTION UPDATE

The following letter was sent to the Oakland City Council in preparation for its workshop on affordable housing, held on February 19:
Dear Councilmembers:
The League of Women Voters had observers at each of the City of Oakland Inclusionary Housing Blue Ribbon Commission meetings. We commend the Commission members for the hours that they spent working together, the care with which they listened to each other, and the diligence that they showed in working towards consensus on each of their recommendations.
The Commission reached consensus on several of their recommendations. However, on the condo conversion recommendation there was no consensus. There were two distinct philosophies represented on this topic. One group wants to provide new home ownership opportunities, while the other wants to preserve the current stock of affordable rental housing. What is shown by the hours of discussion that the Commission spent on this topic is that there is no real middle ground to be found except to maintain the current compromise situation of allowing a limited number of conversions each year. Recognizing these two distinct philosophies, the Commission chose to present two reports to the City Council. The Commission has distilled the two points of view very well, and now the City Council will need to make a choice.
There have been accusations of lack of good faith between Commission members and failure of the Commission. These accusations are spurious. Commission members should be commended on a very thorough job completed with good spirit and little animosity towards one another. It is now the job of the City Council to use their findings to create a fair, workable policy that will benefit the residents of Oakland, both renters and owners.
Sincerely,
Helen Hutchison
President
LWV Oakland

The League Needs You to Make redistricting Reform Happen

From LWV California
We're off and running on our campaign to effect fair and open redistricting reform in California. In order to get the California Voters FIRST initiative on the ballot, we need a million signatures. The League has pledged to do its part. So we're calling all League members to rally to the cause and help us get those signatures.
How? First, every League member will receive a petition with three signature spaces. Sign it yourself, get two more signatures from your family, friends or colleagues, and send it in. It's easy!
Second, volunteer to take more petitions and get signatures at meetings, rallies, parties, supermarkets, movie lines, wherever you go.
Contact Helen Hutchison (helen@helenhutch.com, 510 654-2216) to get more petitions.
Allowing legislators to draw their own districts is a serious conflict of interest that harms voters. This reform will put the voters back in charge. Read the text of the initiative, see the talking points, and get the very latest news about the campaign on our Web site.
Sign on for an exciting, hands-on experience in making democracy work!
Sat., March 1: Training here in Oakland!
2:00-4:00 pm
Location: 741 Santa Ray Ave, Oakland CA
RSVP: Joann Fuller, phone 916-443-1792 jfuller@commoncause.org

LWVC Leadership Council 2008: Bridge to the Future

Sacramento, CA
Saturday, May 17 through Sunday, May 18
Tour and Reception Friday, May 16
Invest a weekend, a day or just a few hours in being the best leader you can be!
This year's council has something for everyone: Engage in lively conversation with active, informed women and men from around the state Dive into topics you care about: health care, mock elections, member recruitment, voter service, education and more!
Not a member? Attend workshops and learn the value of League training and networking at one of our biggest leadership events all year--you'll be hooked!
More information is available at http://www.ca.lwv.org or by contacting Trudy Jarrett, LWVC Vice President at evp@lwvc.org

Membership Update

Welcome New Members:
Eleanor M. Luce
Judith Mann
Sandra M. Venning
Rae Victor
Hope Spadora's name was misspelled last month. Our apologies.

LWVUS NEWS

League Calls on Bush to Restore FEC Operations
The League and other groups are strongly urging President Bush to take action to help end the shut down of the Federal Election Commission. The full text of the statement is available on the LWVUS website, http://www.lwv.org.
League Voices Concern about Changes to the Freedom of Information Act
The League and other organizations sent a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey and Ranking Member Jerry Lewis regarding concern over changes to the Freedom of Information Act. If you'd like to read the full letter, it is available on the LWVUS website.
Two Climate Change Task Force Papers Online
Two background papers by the Climate Change Task Force have been posted to the LWVUS Web site." Cities Take Action to Curb Global Warming" and "Economic Effects of Not Taking Action on Climate Change" were written by League members to help Leagues educate members and communities about global climate change issues.
LWVUS Congressional Votes Tool
The League announced a new tool for researching congressional votes for the first session of the 110th Congress (2007), listing House and Senate votes on key good government issues. This tool, searchable by member of Congress as well as by issue area, includes key votes on LWVUS legislative priorities. This is a new tool to assist you in your advocacy. Check it by visiting http://www.lwv.org and clicking "Take Action". Here are some helpful tips for using the votes list:
1. Thank your members of Congress who voted the right way, and encourage those who didn't to reconsider their positions on key good government issues.
2. When lobbying in the future, research how your member(s) of Congress voted on key LWVUS issues.

Please note: The purpose of this resource is not to "grade" or "score" members of Congress, but, instead, to provide an accurate listing of key federal votes. We hope you'll utilize it starting today!

NOTE: If you would like to read any of these, and don't have access to a computer please call the office, 510 34-7640, and we'll find someone to help you.

Comments, suggestions, questions? Contact our webmaster. Last revised: April 26, 2008 16:13 PDT.