Dear Fellow League and Community Members-
The League of Women Voters of Boulder County (LWVBC) is in the beginning stages of promoting an outreach campaign called WHY I VOTE - VOICES OF OUR COMMUNITY. The aim of the interactive campaign is to prompt ourselves and everyone in our community to reflect on why we vote or why we may not vote. As we amass all our reflections and perspectives, we hope everyone will become more motivated, thankful, and empowered to vote and encourage others to exercise their privilege as well. Finally, we hope the collected voices of our community will educate and inspire us all to help secure and protect the right to vote for others.
Although as League members we want to highlight the importance of voting, we also want to recognize reasons for people choosing not to vote or why many of our fellow community members cannot vote. With this recognition emphasis, there is an option for community members to contribute a reflection to the campaign explaining their reason for not voting. Reasons can vary beyond voter apathy and they may include such situations such as immigration status, lack of knowledge about issues and candidates, lack of cultural understanding about our voting process and government, being overwhelmed, fearful, or intimidated, or voters seeing all candidates as unfavorable and not reflecting their values, or that a person’s vote will not create change for the better. On the other side of the voting voice coin, teeter totter, or spectrum, the campaign also aims to celebrate all the reasons and history that have supported our nation’s voting rights, successes, and privileges. Obviously, the voices, lived experiences, and perspectives of our community can run the gamut when we all think about voting.
So as we ramp up voter service activities towards the fall election, LWVBC needs your help to make the WHY I VOTE - VOICES OF OUR COMMUNITY outreach campaign a BIG success.
Here’s how you can contribute:
1. Please submit a statement reflecting why you vote (or not) and we will include it in our compilation of vignettes that we will showcase as the November election approaches. Again, if you cannot vote, choose not to vote, or you take part in other forms of civic engagement, LWVBC also welcomes your statement for this campaign.
The below link provides more details about the campaign and instructions for submitting a statement through the LWVBC website. You can also submit a photo of yourself that will go along with your statement.
https://www.lwvbc.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=629866&module_id=674314
Please note, when submitting your statement, you have the option to not disclose your name or provide extensive details about yourself. You can simply note that you want to be anonymous or limit the identifying information you share.
If you need inspiration for your reflection, the opinion article linked below just might help you gather your thoughts:
https://coloradosun.com/2023/10/08/voting-colorado-elections-ancestors-opinion/
2. If you are a social media user, please follow the League of Women Voters of Boulder County on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/lwvbc.org/) and on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/lwvbc/). We hope to showcase many of the WHY I VOTE (or not) reflections on social media as the November election approaches.
3. Once you see your WHY I VOTE (or not) statement profiled or you notice a reflection that really resonates with you, we encourage you to share the statements with your loved ones, family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues and invite others to submit a reflection or statement as well. To share the campaign reflections you care about, you can do that by simply talking about them to others, emailing, sending letters, or using social media. Again, the aim of the outreach campaign is for our reflections to ripple out or echo throughout our community and beyond. You may think your statement or the statement of others does not have clout, influence, or cachet, but one simple narrative can always change the course of how many of us think about voting.
4. Finally, we ask you to nominate a Boulder County organization or business that can temporarily host the WHY I VOTE - VOICES OF OUR COMMUNITY traveling outreach display. The traveling outreach display not only profiles reflections submitted online but also the written statements from community members as we visit with them one-on-one at events and forums. As LWVBC has a voter outreach booth at community events throughout the summer and into the fall, we are asking visitors if they would like to write a statement on an index card explaining why they vote (or not) and to place the statement on a wall grid panel using a clothespin. As the display panels are not being showcased at an event, we aim to have the panels “travel” or “live” temporarily elsewhere in the county during the days leading up to the November election. With this in mind, please alert LWVBC leaders with venues that might host the outreach panels on a short-term basis from now until election day.