SPECIAL EDITION

AAUW Ohio Public Policy E-Newsletter

By Jackie Evangelista, AAUW Ohio Public Policy Chair, 4-22-12

Dear AAUW Ohio Presidents, Public Policy Chairs, their Stand-Ins, and Newsletter Editors: This is a special edition of my e-newsletter with only one focus: the Ohio Legislative Voting Record project that was presented in the public policy breakout at the recent AAUW Ohio Equity Day and Convention 2012. Unfortunately, due to health problems, I was unable to attend the convention and had to ask Karen Rainey to step in at the last minute to cover the breakout. It appears that there was some confusion about the project after the session, which I am hoping to clear up. The Voting Record project offers branches the opportunity to play a meaningful role in the upcoming election of state legislators. So it is important that you understand it. After reading this newsletter, if you still have questions, I invite you to correspond with me by email at jevangelista@roadunner.com so I can answer any questions you may still have. Jackie

ADOPT THE OHIO LEGISLATIVE VOTING RECORD PROJECT
At the AAUW Ohio Convention in Findlay last weekend, members attending the public policy breakout heard about developing a booklet that shines a light on how your local state legislators voted on bills that are important to the AAUW Public Policy Program and therefore to women called the Ohio Legislative Voting Record. I would now like to share it with all AAUW branches including those unable to send a member to this breakout and ask you to feature this project at a public meeting you sponsor in September. The sample booklet presented at the convention (first attachment) scored the votes of Northwest Ohio legislators on bills related to the AAUW Public Policy Program because the convention was held in that part of the state. Please bear with me as I attempt to describe this project.

Customizing the Voting Guide Booklet for Your Area

To carry out this project in your branch territory, you will only need to slightly modify the booklet by inserting the votes of your local legislators.

Please open these three attachments now so that you can follow what I am saying:

1. Voting Records Template
2. Voting Record Ohio District Maps
3. Voting Record Directions

Here is the correct order of the pages and a brief explanation of/rationale for their content. The agenda for your public meeting should cover these topics in the order presented in the booklet. You may wish to have different members or partners present different portions of the program. In general, the approach should be to point out that these bills are designed to carry out a War on Women, a War on Public Workers (especially teachers) and a War on Government in Ohio and at the national level.

• Page 1: Cover—summarizes the purpose of the project and ties it into the national “It’s My Vote” project.
• Page 2: Titled “Ohio Legislative Voting Record”—Explains why your branch is doing this project and how voters can use and read the booklet.
• Page 3: Titled “AAUW/Ohio Public Policy Priorities”—Explains the portions of our public policy program that have been especially impacted at the state level by bills we have decided to score. It is important that voters understand where we are coming from and the rationale for selecting certain bills to score.
• Pages 4-5: Center spread with two pages titled “Vote Descriptions;” page 4 explains bills related to public education and page 5 covers reproductive choice.Page 6—Third page titled “Vote Descriptions” completes the reproductive choice section and covers the Civil/Voting Rights bills. It also explains the huge impact an under-the-radar organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has had in getting ultra conservative legislation passed in the states. Note that a section of the “directions” handout identifies which legislators have been associated with ALEC.The pages explaining the bills we are scoring should earn special focus at your public meeting because mostly they describe the many attacks that current legislators have made on our public policy beliefs and women. There are only two bills of the many listed that AAUW Ohio supports–one related to bullying and one related to trafficking. You may want to look up additional information about the bills to present at your public meeting. My short descriptions are simply designed to pique your interest and give attendees to your public meeting some idea of what the bills do. You should make clear why we support or oppose the bills.
• Page 6—Third page titled “Vote Descriptions” completes the reproductive choice section and covers the Civil/Voting Rights bills. It also explains the huge impact an under-the-radar organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has had in getting ultra conservative legislation passed in the states. Note that a section of the “directions” handout identifies which legislators have been associated with ALEC. The pages explaining the bills we are scoring should earn special focus at your public meeting because mostly they describe the many attacks that current legislators have made on our public policy beliefs and women. There are only two bills of the many listed that AAUW Ohio supports–one related to bullying and one related to trafficking. You may want to look up additional information about the bills to present at your public meeting. My short descriptions are simply designed to pique your interest and give attendees to your public meeting some idea of what the bills do. You should make clear why we support or oppose the bills.
• Page 7—Titled “How Our Legislators Voted” reports how your legislators have voted on the bills we chose to score. It may be that your legislators voted the way AAUW recommends, in which case you will have the happy task of supporting a legislator who agrees with our goals. It is important to support legislators who vote with us. On the other hand, there were more legislators who voted against our goals during the past term, and it is vital that we express our opposition and work to replace these legislators. Note that we are also reporting bill sponsorships because through that action legislators signal their stronger support for the bill’s provisions. This is the meat of the Voting Guide and the information that hopefully will persuade attendees to your public meeting that change in the legislature is much needed.Page 8—Titled “Information about the 2012 Election” gives fundamental information that you may also wish to take time to expand on at your public meeting. Since one focus of our project is to encourage more women to register and vote, you may want to assign someone to register voters and clarify when and how voters may cast their ballot. Some confusion exists since the successful referendum of HB 194 and the legislature’s subsequent repeal of HB 194 and replacement with HB 295. In the final version of the Voting Guide that we post at www.aauwoh.org, we will include information about this topic. You may also want to obtain cards from your Board of Elections that voters can mail in to request an absentee ballot. That leaves about one-half page that you can use to promote your local branch and/or recognize co-sponsors or individuals who helped put your meeting together.Since many of you hold program planning meetings in May and June, the main thing you will need to do soon is decide whether to adopt this project. September is being suggested as the best time to hold the program because early voting starts 30 days before the Nov. 6 election. This would also give you some time to mount follow-up efforts to register women and reach out to those who do not vote frequently. This project complements a national AAUW project named, “It’s My Vote: I Will Be Heard,” which asks branches to get involved in encouraging women to register and vote in the 2012 election. The national project is aimed at involving younger women, and you may want to read about its interesting rationale at the link reported below.

Other Possible Benefits of the Voting Record Project

Our Ohio Legislative Voting Record project affords you the opportunity to partner with like-minded organizations and draw in women who are outraged by what the legislature has done in only two years relative to public education, reproductive choice and voting rights. Hence, your meeting should be clearly advertised as public and could be a vehicle for not only recruiting new members but also women who might want to follow up by working to identify women who aren’t registered and who don’t often vote and promoting those ends.

Those who have followed the ideas I have proposed over the years may recall one that could hold promise in this situation—that of the public policy interest group. If you only have one or two members who feel motivated to carry out this project, why not work to develop a branch public policy interest group dedicated to carrying out this project and/or to continuing work in the public policy area?

By developing a separate group, you might create an environment that younger women would be willing to affiliate with. So long as you have one member willing to supervise the group and make sure it is operating in keeping with the AAUW mission and goals, it can operate independently of the branch. This might be a way to encourage a new generation to carry on AAUW at the local level where sadly in many areas branches are in danger of being lost or have already been lost due to the aging of members. AAUW research has indicated that younger women in the main are not interested in attending dinner meetings or sitting and listening to programs. Rather they prefer to be involved in projects that require more activity and accomplish goals that are more visible.

Customizing the Ohio Legislative Voting Record, finding and drawing out like-minded women via social networking to help, and promoting and staging a public meeting would qualify as such activity. While this approach might be easier to carry out with a college, remember that any interest group peopled mainly by students will by definition be transient. Your effort might be better spent trying to ferret out younger women from your area who are becoming aware of the Wars on Women, Public Workers and Government and want to maintain the progress women have achieved over the past 100 years.

Finally, I would also encourage branch members to brainstorm about how to reach women who aren’t currently registered to vote and/or don’t vote very often. It would seem that these women might be unlikely to attend a public meeting. But it wouldn’t hurt to try and brainstorm about how you might find them and encourage them to attend your public meeting. Or perhaps you could brainstorm about this at your public meeting and try to involve attendees in some kind of effort to reach out to these uninvolved women.

If your meeting is held early enough in September, there would still be time to have a more full-throated voter registration drive and encourage these women to vote. Certainly, letters to the editor should be sent from many individuals encouraging women to vote. This might also be a challenge you pose to a public policy interest group, should you decide to try and form one. Who are the women who aren’t registered or who don’t vote? Where can you intersect with them?

Some Final Pointers

We all need to recall and be motivated by the fact that while promising before they were elected to focus on the economy, Ohio state legislators instead quickly pivoted to highly ideological social issues like passing the hugely complex Senate Bill 5, defunding public and higher education (as well as local government), passing anti-abortion bills and reducing voting rights. The only way to reverse direction is to elect a new state legislature. It is vital to underscore and remind the public right up until the election about what our legislators have actually been up to and make the argument that they need to be replaced.

Here are a few additional points that expand on the above information:

• The Ohio Legislative Voting Record project is based on the national Congressional Voting Record project that AAUW has published since 1981. Please read the latest edition at: http://www.aauwaction.org/. Click on the first item. While there, you might also read the second item, which outlines AAUW’s “It’s My Vote: I Will Be Heard” project. Read AAUW’s Congressional Voting Record back to 1981 at: http://www.aauwaction.org/voter-education/congressional-voting-record/
• You will note that, like our Ohio Legislative Voting Record, the AAUW Congressional Voting Record also uses the plus and minus signs to indicate agreement with or opposition to the AAUW position. If AAUW is opposed to the bill and a legislator votes for it, he/she earns a minus sign; if the legislator votes against it, he/she earns a plus sign. Conversely, if AAUW supports the bill and a legislator votes for the bill, he/she earns a plus sign; if the legislator votes against the bill, he/she earns a minus sign. The sign AAUW Ohio wanted to see is indicated after the description in the booklet of each bill we scored. You will award plusses for votes all but the bullying and trafficking bills.Calculation of the legislator’s overall score is then made by dividing the total number of plusses by the number of bills scored. So if a legislator voted only once with the AAUW position and seven bills were scored, that legislator would earn a 14% score.The bills chosen to be scored relate directly to the AAUW Public Policy Program in the areas of public education, reproductive choice and voting rights. Read our Public Policy Program at: http://www.aauw.org/act/issue_advocacy/principles_priorities.cf
• At your public meeting you may want to make copies of the AAUW Public Policy Program available at a display table. You can get 150 copies for postage only at: http://aauw.source4.com/b2c/ProductInfo.asp?Category=1583&Itm=47031
• Another handout you might want to make available that documents the “War on Women” is the fourth one titled “The Top 12 Advances for Women’s Lives at Risk.” This handout focuses on the national level, where a War on Women is also occurring and was written by the HerVotes coalition, of which AAUW is a member. If you feel time would permit, you might also devote some time to what is happening at the national level at your public meeting especially how the Senatorial candidates stand on AAUW issues. There is a template for a Senate vote guide posted at www.aauwaction.org, which I will try to fill out and send to Paula Maggio for posting on the AAUW Ohio website along with the State Legislative Voting Record. I am mentioning it so you can consider whether you want to include it as a section in your program.The state legislators you select to score may depend on whether you decide to try and carry out this project in cooperation with a nearby branch. If you only have one House and one Senate member in your branch territory, you could reach out to another branch as the booklet format allows space to review two House and two Senate members. That would permit you to draw an audience from a wider area. However, it is not necessary to do two of each if you prefer to confine your project to your very local area.

More information is provided in the “directions” handout about how to carry out this project. I want to especially encourage you to read the section about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and encourage you to put an asterisk after the names of those legislators whose names appear in the list of those who are or have been affiliated with the organization. ALEC has been in the news of late because an organization called the Color of Change has been working to get large national businesses to stop funding the organization and has had considerable success so far.

It should be added that ALEC started out an an organization that concerned itself mainly with business-related legislation but in recent decades has expanded into pushing conservative social issues such as voter suppression bills and “stand-your-ground” or “kill at will” (depending on your perspective) bills. ALEC was instrumental in the language used in SB 5 and HB 194.I hope that you will recognize the importance of your branch stepping up to inform voters, especially women, about what has been happening in our state legislature. While recent events have led to greater reporting about what has been happening in states, there are likely still many citizens who are not aware of the radical nature of the legislation that has been passed or proposed in the Ohio legislature with the exception of SB 5. I urge you to take on this challenge.

Read past issues.