This category showcases the work Leagues did in partnership with others and how those partnerships empowered our League work and supported our communities. This can include work in which the League was a lead partner, supporting partner, worked with one partner, or worked in coalition with several partners.  

LWV of Palm Beach County (FL)

Our project is a multi-issue pro-democracy three-day forum event series created to advance key LWVPBC education and advocacy initiatives as we approached the 2022 election cycle. The project was designed to execute and sustain a high profile and public focus on key League issues with partners, thought leaders and influencers in multiple locations throughout Palm Beach County. Plans included a significant promotional marketing lead up to the forums. The communications sustained a focus on our issues over a four-month period during which the Florida Legislative Committees were meeting and redistricting was underway. The forum events were scheduled a mere eight weeks before the Florida Legislative Session began.

A central element of our project strategy was spotlighting the Honorable Michael S. Steele. He’s former Lt. Governor of Maryland, former Chairman of the RNC and currently a much sought-after media political analyst. He is a thoughtful and passionate pro-democracy/anti-authoritarian advocate who opposes voter suppression, partisan and racial gerrymandering, supports the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact Initiative (NPVIC) and is a very forceful speaker about the importance of citizen engagement in elections. Mr. Steele was an excellent draw and speaker, aligned with our key issues and was cooperative in promoting the League’s mission to Make Our Democracy Work. 

Key forum events included: 

November 7 – Dinner forum with Mr. Steele, Forum Club Board of Director members and Palm Beach community leaders.

November 8 – Editorial Board Meeting with the Palm Beach Post

November 8 – Mr. Steele addresses the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches. Examples of influencers and officials who attended include Former Ambassador Nancy Brinker, Constitutional Tax Collector Anne M. Gannon, Florida Rep. Matt Wilhite, Palm Beach Town Councilman Lew Crampton, Wellington Town Councilman John McGovern, numerous community and business leaders and students from Palm Beach State College and Palm Beach Atlantic University who had the honor of asking the first two questions after the keynote. There were 414 attendees plus viewers on Zoom.

November 9 – Interview with the Tampa Bay Times.

November 9 – Mavericks & Heroes, a LWVPBC forum and fundraising event at Florida Atlantic University featuring Michael Steele in an up-close and personal conversation. The event was moderated by Michael Williams, our WPTV partner. The interview and discussion questions were developed by our League’s Issue Committee Chairs. Florida League President Cecile Scoon and LWVPBC President Kathi Gundlach addressed the sold-out crowd.

November 9 – Immediately following the Mavericks & Heroes event was a keynote address and program in the FAU auditorium by Dr. Kevin Wagner, Michael Steele and Michael Williams to another capacity crowd of FAU students, League attendees, FAU faculty and its Osher Lifelong Learn Institute members, south county community groups, political leaders and activists.

November 9 – Interview with WPTV News.

Project primary organizing and production partners:

Floridians for National Popular Vote – The NPVIC means that the President and Vice President would be elected by a majority of all Americans—without regard to which state they live in—making this consistent with elections for all other U.S. public officials. The Floridians for NPV and the League’s NPV issue committee were project team leaders and members.

The Forum Club of the Palm Beaches – Florida’s largest non-partisan public affairs organization with 800 members and founded in 1976. The Forum Club’s purpose is to inform and educate the community’s social, business and political interest and to promote a more active participation by all citizens in the democratic process.

Florida Atlantic University – Florida’s most diverse public university with over 30,000 students. Our partnership included the FAU’s Political Science Department and its Chairman, as well as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, both of which are located at the Boca Raton camps. Dr. Kevin Wagner (Ph.D. Political Science and J.D.) was part of our planning team and was also involved in programming. 

WPTV – WPTV is the NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach.  It is owned by the E. W. Scripts Company. It is the leading News programing in the market. Our partnership included Lead News Anchor Michael Williams in a planning and programmatic role.

The project partnerships dramatically elevated the position of the LWVPBC in our community. Partnering with the Forum Club, a very influential membership club, enhanced the reputation of the LWVPBC and project key issues. The same is true for our relationship with FAU and its Osher Life Long Learning Institute – viewing the League as an organization that considers important political issues and one that follows through with plans that produce powerful results.     

Having a popular national speaker, who is on the Advisory Board of National Popular Vote, willing to put in the time for three highly scheduled days and evenings of grassroot activity with  local League’s project team, partners and members was invaluable. The project team’s June start for organizing our partnership outreach gave potential partners ample time for mutually beneficial outcomes. A July start of promotional marketing and issue communications gave us and partners a four month lead up for all the organizing, outreach and “butts in seats” efforts. Our project also presented an opportunity to work with organizations we had not worked closely with before, (Forum Club and WPTV for example) on issues relating to improving elections, redistricting and voting rights. 

LWV of Spokane Area (WA)

The League of Women Voters of the Spokane Area (LWVSA) has partnered with KSPS PBS, and Spokane Public Schools (SPS) to produce a unique project: a civics knowledge tournament for high school students. Members of the League provided the content and wrote questions, KSPS PBS produced the tournament and aired it during their regular programming, and Spokane Public Schools encouraged the participation of student teams from six high schools for this pilot season. LWVSA also did a fundraising campaign to make a financial sponsorship contribution. Avistafoundation and Eastern Washington University are additional financial sponsors. For details and opportunities to view the students in action, please go to https://my.lwv.org/washington/spokane-area/update-civics-bowl-full-swing

LWV Of Tulare County (CA)

Our unit formed a redistricting subcommittee in April 2021—little did we know what a year-long journey lay ahead! We first started by educating ourselves in the process. Then, in June 2021, we became one of the 13 local partners in what came to be known as the Equitable Maps Coalition for Tulare County—including organizations focused on equity for Latinx, Native Americans, the environment, gender spectrum and labor. This provided a remarkable force-multiplier for our Unit’s work. From April 2021-April 2022, we went to approximately 200 meetings with stakeholders! Our work was to promote a fair, free and accessible electoral system, and maximize civic engagement, by focusing our organization on redistricting. 

Our partners helped us understand community issues and needs, and prioritize the local jurisdictions to which we would pay closest attention. Although we monitored nearly every jurisdiction in our county, Unit capacity realities limited us to being actively involved in the following: Congress, Tulare County supervisors, Visalia City Council, Tulare City Council, Visalia Unified School District and Kaweah-Delta Health Care District. This experience exposed us to clear examples of “cracking” and “packing”; and to decision-makers who ran the gamut from enthusiastic and open to public input to those who wanted to do the bare minimum legally required, and others who were hostile to any change at all. More than one jurisdiction in Tulare County was ready to make short shrift of the redistricting process. We learned how significant our community involvement could be. 

For examples: The Visalia City Council process—and to a lesser extent, the Tulare City Council process—were transformed by our involvement (including questioning the demographer’s practices, extending the timelines, adding hearings and workshops, and keeping the ACLU in the loop). By contrast, incorporated cities we could not monitor had abbreviated timelines, little or no public outreach or input, issues updating their website postings, and other problems. The Visalia Unified School District process would have been exactly four weeks, from start to finish, with effectively no public input and no community proposals. Because of our involvement, the timeline was extended by 11 weeks, and resulted in more public input. The Kaweah-Delta Health Care District process was hosted by a Board that was open to League guidance from the beginning. We encouraged them to make a firm timeline, and introduced them to a tool for analyzing criteria. We, in coordination with the Coalition, also did effective public outreach. The result was a completely reimagined and profoundly improved map. By contrast, the Tulare Local Healthcare District process (which we were unable to monitor) was less than one month long, involved no public proposals, and adopted a map based closely on the current one. Even the Tulare County Supervisor process, stellar from the beginning, was enhanced by our involvement in two ways: 1) over 300 public testimonies were submitted, and 2) two criteria—one environmental and one for protected-class equity—became accepted as central to the decision-making for the first time ever. 

Our partnerships—especially the Tulare County Equitable Maps Coalition—enabled us to raise community awareness of the redistricting process. Together, we transformed participation at several local government levels; encouraged decision-makers to take the state requirements seriously; and fostered an understanding of the criteria and their ranking. Our partners helped us advocate for, and achieve, more—and more effective—Voting Rights Act districts at every level. We engaged grass roots, by providing education about the process and its importance, including the coordination of two town hall events on this topic. We managed to get the media to cover redistricting more fully, including publication of six of our op-eds. Over all, we provided much needed “sunshine” over the process. And, importantly, we have helped build a coalition of trust that is determined to work together on other issues moving forward.