This category showcases the way Leagues have had to innovate their work over the past biennium. The catalyst for innovation could be anything from the pandemic to severe voter disenfranchisement to natural disaster or something else that required your League to come up with a new way of performing parts or all of your work. 

LWV of Glen Ellyn (IL)

Meet Them Where They Are—Engaging Young Voters During the Pandemic: A campaign to break through to young voters utilizing innovative platforms and engaging graphics. Prior to the pandemic, we arranged for several in-person events at three local high schools and local community college. These events provided an opportunity to register voters and engage with young adults regarding the importance of voting. With the pandemic surging, the schools switched to virtual learning and in-person events were not possible. This led to the creation of an alternate young voter registration/engagement campaign. We engaged young voters outside of school setting: During three days of Chicago’s Lollapalooza event (a popular music festival), LWVGE volunteers distributed bilingual QR coded cards at our commuter train station to young voters heading into Chicago for Lollapalooza. The cards encouraged voter registration with a link to Illinois’ online registration site. We used the cards to start a conversation, and gave them free masks as well. We now distribute bilingual QR coded cards with info on registering to vote at all LWVGE Community events. (See link in last question for visuals.) We also utilized fun selfie photo frames which drew attention to our presence and encouraged young adults to share their voter registration experience on social media. This allowed them to "picture" themselves as voters! Now, selfie frames are used at many of our community events. We have always forged strong relationships with the high school teachers who teach the government and social studies classes. This year, we created dynamic, eye-catching postcards for students turning 18, and collaborated with three high school social studies departments to distribute the postcards to 1,730 students. We found that students were sharing photos of these cards on social media like Snapchat and Instagram. Young, would-be voters are hard to reach, so we met them on their turf!  Learn more and see photos at:

https://www.lwvge.org/youth-voting-effort

LWV of Greater Pittsburgh (PA)

Voter outreach has always been a major component of the efforts by LWV of Greater Pittsburgh to Make Democracy Work by engaging with marginalized groups of voters. Because the coronavirus pandemic prevented us from implementing our usual person-to-person contacts, we had to revamp our voter outreach to reach a maximum number of potential voters. One way was by completely redesigning the LWVPGH website with greatly enhanced online material which became a resource of unique printable materials for individuals and non-partisan agencies in the community. Besides housing these printable resources, the new website connected online users with comprehensive voter, election, and government information. An example was the Municipal Election 2021 web page with short videos of all the 39 candidates for the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, which received more than 1200 views. Because pandemic data informed us that 40% of citizens in underserved communities did not have reliable access to the internet, we realized we needed other ways to reach potential voters with trustworthy information. Our Voter Services Committee reorganized their efforts by creating nine subcommittees, each of which targeted a specific component of our outreach: Social Media, Poll Workers, Rides to the Polls, Naturalization Ceremonies, Food Pantries, Senior Subsidized Housing, Religious Institutions, Civic Education in Schools and Community, and Colleges and Universities. Each subcommittee developed new avenues for reaching their unique constituents. These avenues included partnering with The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, Carnegie Public Libraries, Allegheny County Library Association, the local Junior League, local HUD office, senior housing managers and management companies, local university representatives, and staff and students in high schools with underserved populations. We also collaborated with resilient community partners including the Black Political Empowerment Project, Voter Empowerment Education & Enrichment Movement, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Casa San Jose, and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh.

LWV of Kansas City (MO)

If you had asked us a year ago to explain why municipal courts were important, why our police force is not locally controlled, or how exactly a citizen can get a question on the ballot, we would have made a valiant attempt to answer, but we would have fallen short. When we realized that most likely we weren’t alone, we decided we had identified a key area where the League could step in to Empower Voters. Thus Talk Talk Vote!, our podcast, was born. On our podcast, we explain civics topics, interview local leaders, and keep listeners abreast of the good work the League is involved in. During Missouri’s legislative session, which comes fast and hard and is over before you have time to take a breath, we provide a weekly, 5-minute Legislative Update. This Sunday afternoon update gives our listeners a heads up on bills that are coming up in committee or on the floor for a vote and provides specific calls to action. Talk Talk Vote! has gained steam in recent months going from just a few downloads each week to an average over 110 per week and more than 2,000 total downloads as of this writing, 1,000 of which have been downloaded in just the last two months!

The podcast can be found at https://redcircle.com/shows/talk-talk-vote