MEMBER NEWS 

LWVGC Annual Meeting - June 3 

League T-shirts

CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING REFORM UPDATE 

AG approves Summary Language 

Organizing Our Forces - SIGN UP NOW 

Food, Fun and Fix Gerrymandering - June 13 

Donate to the Redistricting Campaign

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES 

VOTE411 Candidate Follow-up 

Internet Tasks: Website, E-News

UPCOMING EVENTS

Northeast Ohio Public Policy Forums:

Transportation in Northeast Ohio - June 14 

Wildlife in Northeast Ohio - July 17 

The Election for Mayor and the Future of Cleveland - Aug. 29

City Club of Cleveland Meet the Candidates:

Mary Taylor, Republican Candidate for Governor - July 7

If you plan to attend, please register ASAP. Walk-ins are fine but advance registrations would assure an accurate head count and (more importantly) enough food. 

Saturday, June 3 

Sign-in - 9:15 a.m., meeting begins 9:30 a.m.

Catered lunch - noon, Speaker - 12:30 p.m. 

Canal Way Center 

4524 East 49th Street, Cleveland, OH 44125 

Lunch will be $10 per person. To register, click here.

The speaker, Rep. Stephanie Howse (D), Ohio House District 11, will talk about "Ohio Voting Rights, Women's Health, and Education Issues." More information about Rep. Howse can be found on the Annual Meeting web page on the LWCGC website.

All agenda materials to be presented and voted on at the meeting can be found on the Annual Meeting web page. These include a proposed budget, proposed advocacy program, and nominating slate. 

LWV T-shirts are available to LWVGC members for $20 each. This is perfect apparel for collecting signatures for the congressional redistricting reform referendum, staffing voter registration tables, or working on any other LWV events planned for this summer and fall 2017. Contact Patricia Carter 

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has approved the ballot summary language for the Fair Districts Ohio congressional redistricting reform proposal. The AG had rejected Fair Districts Ohio's initial submission, with instructions to add two more points to the ballot issue summary. Fair Districts immediately redrafted the summary, per the AG's instructions, collected additional signatures, and re-submitted it on May 10. 

The Ohio Ballot Board will meet next Tuesday, May 30 to certify that the proposal does not cover more than one topic, in which case the proposal would have to be split into more than one ballot issue. After that hurdle, the Fair Districts Ohio campaign can print up the petitions and begin collecting signatures statewide. If all goes well, we may have petitions ready for distribution in time for the LWVGC Annual Meeting. Stay tuned.

Now that actual petition circulation begins soon, a campaign committee for LWVGC has met and is working on the details and logistics for signature collection in the Greater Cleveland area. While LWVGC's focus is on Cuyahoga County, there will be overlap with other counties. Each petition booklet can have signatures from only one county, so volunteers working near county lines and at events and locations that attract people from multiple counties will need to carry petition booklets for more than one county.

At this point we are specifically organizing the following: 

• Training sessions for both how to collect signatures and how to present the Fair Districts proposal to voters. 
• Staging locations - places for petition pick-up, drop-off, and on-the-spot petition training. These locations will be located throughout Cuyahoga County and will include the LWVGC office at 2800 Euclid Avenue. Parking is available. 
• Petition circulation (collecting signatures) - we need to identify good locations and events for this activity and assign volunteers. Please, feel free to send event and location suggestions to [email protected].

A Special E-News: Calling All Volunteers was sent Monday asking volunteers to sign up for specific roles including speakers, petition trainers, staging area staffers, and signature collectors. If you cannot find that e-news in your inbox,  click here. This link is also available on the lwvgreatercleveland.org home page. To be sure that your name is on our list of local campaign workers, copy and paste the tasks listed, along with your answers, into an email message and send to [email protected]. Please forward your answers ASAP and feel free to share Calling All Volunteers with your friends and on your social networking sites. 

Campaigns don't have to be all work and no play. Come for food, fun, and fixing Gerrymandering. Meet others working to end gerrymandering in Ohio. 

Guest speaker: Chris Glassburn 

Tuesday, June 13, 7-9 p.m. 

Happy Dog at the Euclid Tavern 

11625 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106

See flyer for more information, click here

Campaign expenses are a daunting reality. Over $2 million will be needed just for signature collection and much, much more will be needed for the campaign. If you are eager to see reform succeed, help satisfy your passion now by boosting the effort with your donation. 

You can donate by credit card on the LWV of Ohio website. Click on the first "Donate" button (for the 501c4). On the credit card form click on the "+" immediately under the amount and type in "Fair Districts Ohio."

You can also donate by check made out to "LWV of Ohio" with "Fair Districts Ohio" in the memo line. Send your check to:   

League of Women Voters of Ohio 

17 South High Street, Suite 650 

Columbus, OH 43215

LWVGC will be using VOTE411, the League's online voter guide, to provide candidate information for local municipal and school board 2017 races. We hope to cover all contested races in Cuyahoga County. For this, we need candidate participation and the best means to assure their participation is by follow-up phone calls to non-responsive candidates. Let us know if you are willing to be a candidate caller to encourage them to fulfill our request for their candidacy information. Contact: Marcia Goldberg

If you are computer/Internet savvy or would like to learn some new online skills, consider being an assistant to the outreach director for updating the website and/or inputting text and data into our Constant Contact account for e-newsletters. These skills could be good resume builders. Our website is built on a WordPress platform and we subscribe to Gogiro for website design, hosting, and tech support. Constant Contact employs online software to create professional looking emails and organize contacts lists. Contact: Maryann Barnes

In 2018, Ohio will elect new statewide officer holders. Leading up to the election, the City Club will be hosting conversations with candidates seeking statewide office. The LWV of Greater Cleveland will be a community partner on these "Meet the Candidate" events. 

The next one, on July 7, features Mary Taylor, lieutenant governor of Ohio and Republican candidate for governor of Ohio. For more information click here.

Friday, July 7, 12 p.m. 

City Club of Cleveland 

850 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44114 

Tickets (includes lunch): 

$20 City Club members, $35 non-members. 

League members can use discount code LOWV17 for a 20% discount off the nonmember price. 

Register online or call (216) 621-0082