| December 2022-January 2023
Editor Jennifer Bales
communications@lwvbc.org
| | | For the New Year, Get More Involved With the League
By Holly Monkman | | It’s that wonderful time of year with dinner gatherings, holiday traditions, special foods, twinkling lights and soon, toasts & well wishes for the New Year. If you’re looking to make a resolution to improve your life in some way, may I suggest a resolution to get more involved with the League? Some options:
Join a League of Women Voters of Boulder County Issue Team
We have Issue Teams at the local level working on school policy, gun safety, climate action, voting methods and election timing. Contact me or go to LWVBC Join an Issue Team to get connected with a team or to chat about forming a new team.
Join a League of Women Voters of Colorado Task Force
Currently there are 9 Task Forces: Alternative Voting Methods, Climate Emergency, Education, Elections, Gun Violence Prevention, Healthcare, Housing, News Access & Literacy, and Reproductive Justice. Go to www.lwvcolorado.org to learn more.
| | | | Help With LWVBC Activities
Consider helping out with event planning or fund raising, or resolve to get involved with Voter Services during the election season. Contact me or Susan Curtis, our Membership Director, to get started.
| | Above: Alternative transportation. From left to right, member Jackie Sollo with a skate board, and Deborah Hayes, former president of the (then) LWVB, with a bike. Publicity for a LWVB luncheon and panel discussion of alternatives to the automobile. Camera staff photo by Charles Wendt, published May 6, 1979. | | | Check Out Issue Teams Blogs | The LWVBC website now has blogs primarily for the various issue teams. The teams will use the blogs to share meeting minutes, news relevant to their issues, upcoming events, etc. You can subscribe to blogs of interest by clicking on the blog's name and then clicking "Subscribe."
| From the Climate Action Team - Wasted Food
By Jeannette Hillery | The USDA estimates that 13.3 billion pounds of food at the retail and consumer level goes uneaten. Wasted food represents 22% of our total waste stream to landfills. Wasted resources including energy, pesticides, labor, land and fertilizer invested in growing, transportation, storage and distribution amplify the economic and environmental impacts.
We advocate employing best practices by helping to clarify unclear and inconsistent food dating systems presently used on packaging - sell-by-dates, use-by-dates and best-before-date.
Be part of the solution – 43% of wasted food in the US is generated at home. SaveTheFood.com was developed to help consumers mend their food wasting ways. Good tips for meal planning and shopping preparation. | 2022 Elections – RCV Makes Uneven Advances; STAR and Approval Voting Looking to the Future
By the Voting Methods Team | Voting methods were on the ballot from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, and from 3 places in Washington State to Fort Collins to Palm Desert, CA. The city of Boulder even had a ballot measure that will impact its use of a better voting method starting in 2023.
Replacing plurality in the US with a better voting method usually involves one of these three more-expressive ways to mark your ballot:
• Rank candidates: 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, etc – used in all forms of RCV (Ranked Choice Voting)
• Thumbs-up or Thumbs-down on every candidate – used in Approval Voting
• Score candidates from 0 to 5 – used in STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) Voting
Any of these ballot forms can be used for single-winner (e.g., governor, sec of state) or multi-winner (e.g., Boulder and Lafayette city council) contests. Our LWVBC Voting Methods Team would like to see the conversion of more single-winner contests for legislative (e.g., US House of Representatives) and executive (e.g., county commission) bodies to multi-winner contests. | | In particular, we would like proportional voting methods used to elect more multi-member bodies, ensuring diversity through structural changes rather than depending on voters to support ideologically, racially, ethnically, gender, and socioeconomically diverse candidates who are not necessarily establishment candidates, but who may represent a sizable minority. Proportional representation (PR) results in an elected body that proportionally reflects the characteristics that the electorate most cares about. | | | | Read the rest of the article here to learn more about proportional representation, recent election results, and future plans. | LWVBC Volunteers at New Citizens Swearing In
By Barbara Hill | On November 1, 2022 at Twin Peaks Academy in Longmont, 21 men and women from 16 countries were sworn in as fellow United States citizens and 6 LWVBC volunteers were on deck to register voters!
It was a moving ceremony complete with a personal welcome message from President Biden, the pledge of allegiance, a heartfelt video rendition of America The Beautiful and plenty of smiles and pictures as each citizens' name was called.
Having never attended this life cycle event, one of our volunteers said it perfectly, "I should have brought my grandchildren to this ceremony because they would've learned so much."
| Welcome to these new members who joined in November: Amber Lloyd, Michelle Murphy and Ryan Shea.
A Gift to our LWVBC Scholarship Fund in memory of Marlys Robertson
LWVBC is grateful to Marlys Robertson’s husband Philip Robertson for his generous gift to our LWVBC Scholarship Fund in memory of Marlys. Please see our article about Marlys in the August 2022 “Voter.” LWVBC was honored to have such a distinguished member of the League of Women Voters among us. Before retiring to Boulder, she served as Vice President of LWVUS and President of the California State League. She had a remarkable ability to listen carefully and ask questions that guided good decision making. Her obituary can be read here. This gift will enable LWVBC to continue granting a $500 scholarship to a qualifying student member who is attending a post-secondary educational institution. Scholarships have been granted in 2020 and 2021.
Thank you to Chuck Leech for including LWVBC in his estate
Chuck Leech, who died in May, included LWVBC in his estate, donating $1000. Peggy Leech (an active LWVBC member and former president) says of her brother, " I think he mostly did it because he knew it would make me happy. But he also had a sincere appreciation of the League of Women Voters and the work it does in the community. I am very pleased to honor his request."
In Memory: Alice Alva McDonald
Long-time Boulder, Colorado resident Alice McDonald, 88, a loving wife, mother and grandmother, tireless community volunteer and passionate advocate for women’s rights, died October 20, 2022. She was born in Pocatello, ID, grew up there, and graduated from Idaho State College, Pocatello with a B.S. She also earned a M.S. in Home Economics from the University of Wisconsin. She and her husband moved to Boulder in 1965 and Boulder was their long-term home.
Alice was a member of the League of Women Voters and a volunteer in the school system and with Head Start. Her deep love of reading led her to volunteer in Boulder’s public libraries and she later was appointed by the City Council to the Boulder Library Commission, serving as chair. Her obituary is here.
| A Better Way to Report Results in Multi-Winner Election Contests
By Mark Parsons of the Voting Methods Team |  | Voting Methods Team member Mark Parsons created the above bar graph to show how our team would like election results reported for select-more-than-one contests. The orange bars show the true support that each candidate received. For instance, more than half of the Superior voters supported Neal Shah. You don’t get this information with the current (blue bars) way that results are displayed. Last year Mark Parsons and Neal McBurnett wrote a Boulder Beat guest opinion and were interviewed on KGNU about their ideas for reporting elections results.
Mark had hoped to provide a similar graph for the Erie Charter Commission contest, but he could not reconcile the Weld County information with the Boulder County information. The total Erie votes are listed on the Secretary of State’s Election page, but not the number of ballots. After the election results are finally certified, including the recount for Congressional District 3, we plan to reach out to the Sec of State’s office to ask them about displaying the Erie election results in a more informative manner. | LWVBC at CU Equity and Inclusion Event
By Pirie Jenson | | LWVBC leaders Pirie Jensen and Barbara Hill offered voter registration and education and information about VOTE411 at an equity and inclusion event for student athletes held at the CU Boulder Touchdown Club on November 1, 2022.
Panelists are from left to right (above):
Molly Fitzpatrick, Boulder City Clerk
JB Banks – Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs
Douglas Spencer – Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs & Research Associate Professor of Law, election law scholar
Donovan Wilson – Moderator, McLendon Future Leader, Department of Intercollegiate Athletics at University of Colorado Boulder
Panelists were eminently qualified to speak to student athletes to inspire them on the importance of voting.
Approximately 30 students attended. | Support LWVBC’s Successes: Make a Donation in December | We are enormously grateful to our 13 election sponsors who financed the amazing work accomplished by our Voter Services team over the past four months. During December, we look to you, our members, to support LWVBC’s work for the second half of our 2022 - 2023 fiscal year. LWVBC only keeps about 30 percent of each member’s dues. The remaining goes to LWV Colorado and national league. Our member dues pay for only 20 percent of this year’s annual budget of $55,000. We are extremely fortunate to have a 15 hour/week Operations Coordinator whom we must pay! We write grant proposals, but competition is intense.
Just a quick reminder…..the LWVBC is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt, non-profit organization led and run by volunteers like you. You believe in the need for an active, accomplished LWVBC that defends democracy and empowers voters. We trust that you will support our invaluable work. Here are the ways you can give by the end of 2022.
- Click on the red Donate Button below the member login at lwvbc.org. Ways to Give.
- Mail a check to League of Women Voters of Boulder County, PO Box 21274, Boulder, CO 80308.
- Donate smaller amounts monthly with automatic withdrawals from your bank account.
- For those members with IRAs, transfer a portion of your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) directly to the LWVBC.
- Family foundations can donate up to 5 percent of their principal to the LWVBC, a qualified 501(c)3 organization.
- Arrange to use Amazon Smile, or Safeway or King Soopers grocery cards, which automatically donate a small percentage of each of your purchases to LWVBC with no fee to you.
Our LWVBC is approaching its 95th year and our continued success depends on you. Please include LWVBC in your end-of-year donations!
| Election News: Women in Politics | |
According to LWVUS, 2022 saw some historical firsts:
Becca Balint First woman in Congress from Vermont
Maura Healey First lesbian governor in the US, first woman governor in Massachusetts
Summer Lee Pennsylvania’s first Black woman in Congress
Delia Ramirez First Latina woman in Congress from Illinois
Kathy Hochul First woman elected governor of New York
Yadira Caraveo First Latina in Congress from COLORADO
Mary Peltola First Alaska Native in Congress and first woman
to represent Alaska in the US House of Representatives
And in Colorado, the state legislature is majority women as of this election. Pluribus News article here
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