September 2024
Editor Jennifer Bales
jbales@me.com
| Co-Presidents Susan Saunders and Peggy Leech | | By Peggy Leech and Susan Saunders | How quickly we can put a team together and then begin pulling it apart! You may have heard before reading this issue of the VOTER, that Susan Saunders is moving to Oregon towards the end of September. Grandchildren are the excuse so please forgive her. Technology may provide the link to her continued participation, but it would be terrific if another member or two indicated an interest in learning what it’s like to participate on the Board of Directors and assist in the leadership of our League. In the meantime, we’ll be focusing on the election season which is moving into full swing as well as the selected planning goals of operational efficiency and volunteer growth. By becoming more efficient and growing volunteer numbers we believe we will be growing the pool of potential leaders. | Moving Hearts & Changing Minds
Advocacy Campaign for the Right to Abortion Amendment
| | By Holly Monkman, Advocacy Director | Maybe you’ve listened to an interview or read an article about a family’s struggle during a pregnancy & felt relief that it wasn’t you. Maybe you heard about the recent Supreme Court Case decision concerning women being air-lifted out of Idaho for emergency care & hoped that your daughter never travels to Idaho while pregnant. Maybe you remember when Roe vs Wade was decided in 1973. Maybe you or someone you know has had a personal experience with abortion.
Stories have connected us for millennia. They are relatable & memorable in ways that statistics are not. Would you be willing to share your story? I would like to show LWVBC’s support for the amendment with a social media campaign using very short stories & statements. Stories and/or statements can be posted anonymously if preferred. Please contact me at advocacy@lwvbc.org if you’d like to participate.
The League of Women Voters of Colorado and of Boulder County support the constitutional right of privacy of the individual to make reproductive choices & the upcoming ballot issue to amend the Colorado Constitution to include the right to abortion.
|  | Living Wage Campaign Update
| | By Peggy Leech and Deborah Hayes | This is a crucial time in the campaign to achieve a living wage or self-sufficiency wage throughout Boulder County. City and town councils in Boulder, Longmont, Lafayette, Louisville, and Erie are holding study sessions, receiving public comments, and making decisions. Information is posted on the lwvbc.org home page (under “Living Wage”) on how to make your voice heard.
Last November, our Boulder County Commissioners unanimously passed an ordinance that increased the minimum wage in unincorporated areas of the county to $15.69 per hour beginning January 1, 2024. That is 15% above the state minimum, as the law allows. The Commissioners also voted in favor of reaching a minimum wage of $25 per hour by 2030. (The self-sufficiency coalition that includes LWVBC advocated $25 an hour by 2028.)
Our League’s letter to the editor, published in the Camera on August 27 and sent to city and town councils as well, urges the adoption of a minimum wage increase schedule that matches the county's:
| Boulder County workers, businesses, and residents can all benefit from a regional approach. We support efforts to advance a self-sufficiency wage, based on our organizational positions and advocacy in the recent past. We believe that alleviating poverty is the shared responsibility of government, employers, individuals, and non-profit assistance organizations.
Consideration about wage levels should include a focus on people struggling to afford to live here—notably low-income single heads of household, service workers, and people of color who may disproportionately be earning insufficient wages. Any regional minimum wage agreement should take place at a pace that acknowledges the deep needs in our community.
It is time to take the first step in a series of incremental increases to close the gap between the current minimum wage of $14.42 and the current self-sustainable wage in Boulder County, which is over $22/hour. The longer we don’t act, the larger the gap becomes.
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By Susan Curtis
Membership count:207 | | | Welcome to these new members who joined in August: Deborah Blake, Erika Winter, Kimberly Michaelsen and Anne Wilson. Kendal Smith is a new student member. Ann MacMurray is a transfer member coming to us by way of Florida and the Jefferson County, CO league. We’re happy to have you join us!
Longevity Awards:
At the Annual LWVBC Fall Kick Off August 21, we honored the following members for their long-term LWV membership. Honorees included:
5 Years — Julia Collins, Mary Anne Davitt, Martine Elianor, Florence Fetterer, Susan Franta, Dan Gould, Pirie Jensen, Jeffrey Kash, Anne Lindsey, Janice McCallister, Betsy Neely, Jeffrey Nytch, Ruth Parker and Honora Wolfe
10 Years — Mary Ann Wilner and Mark Young
15 Years — Jeanine Pow and Julie Zahniser
25 Years — Diana Haskell, Neal McBurnett and Nan Phifer
35 Years — Judith Warner
50 Years and New Lifetime Member — Jeannette Hillery
Jeannette spoke briefly of her long time membership and how the League of Women Voters has been meaningful in her life.
Congratulations to all!
Smile, Please!
We would love to see your smiling face in your on line profile. Once your picture is included in your profile, it is only visible to LWVBC members. The Membership Team will continue to take pictures at events with your permission and then add them to your profile. You can add your picture as well which enables you to pick your very best smile. You can also update your picture on line.
To add or change your picture, log onto LWVBC.org. Under your name or picture in the upper right hand corner, click on your name and then select “profile” in the drop down menu. In your profile, move your cursor to your picture or the grayed image. “Click here to edit your bio image” will appear. Then follow the instructions to upload a picture. Please reach out to membershipdirector@lwvbc.org if you need assistance. | LWVBC 2024 Election Season Kickoff Meeting
|  | We held our election season kickoff meeting and member mixer on August 21 at the Boulder Junkyard Social club, and as you can see from the group picture above, it was a huge success. Events from the evening included a violin performance by Lucas Menza, son of LWVBC member Tara Menza. Members also heard from Molly Fitzpatrick, Boulder County Clerk and Recorder, who is seeking support for the Referred Ballot Measure: Amendment K which proposes to modify constitutional election deadlines. Clerk Fitzpatrick also thanked League members for their work in supporting voters.
The 2024 Election season is fast approaching, and the League of Women Voters of Boulder County Voter Team led by Stacie Johnson will be exceptionally busy moderating forums for candidates and issues, as well as registering voters and filling in information for voters on VOTE411.org. Please see the Voter Service Team page for more details. And if you have a passion for civic engagement and believe every citizen should be able and willing to exercise their right to vote, LWVBC needs your help! To join the Voter Service Team, email voterservice@lwvbc.org. In addition, please be on the lookout for email announcements which will list upcoming election related events and ways to get involved.
Below Left: Stacie Johnson was the election kickoff emcee for the evening. Below right: Molly Fitzpatrick discusses procedures for the upcoming election.
| Voting Methods Developing News | FRA Sponsorship
Congressman Joe Neguse recently became a co-sponsor of the US Fair Representation Act (FRA), also known as HR 7740. You can see the bill at congress.gov. Neguse was a co-sponsor in previous sessions and, while at the LWVUS Convention in June, Celeste Landry lobbied him to become a co-sponsor again. The FRA would create multi-member congressional districts and use a proportional form of Ranked-Choice Voting known as Single Transferable Vote. See last month’s book review here of Our Shared Republic for information about the FRA.
IRV Rules Change
The Voting Methods Team asked the Secretary of State to change the rules for reporting Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV) elections so that the Boulder mayoral election could use sequential elimination instead of being required to use batch elimination. (We also mentioned this request in a January 2024 Daily Camera guest opinion.) The proposed rules changes discussed at a public hearing on Aug 15, 2024 state: “Election Rule 26.5.4 At the end of Round one and in any subsequent rounds, if the combined votes of two or more candidates with the lowest vote totals in the current round are less than the number of votes for the continuing candidate with the next-highest number of votes, then the candidates in the lowest-vote group are MAY ALL BE eliminated.” The rules should be finalized soon!
Final-Four Voting on November Ballot
Initiative #310, which would adopt Final-Four Voting for most federal and state offices, will be on the November ballot. According to the Secretary of State, “Proposed Initiative #310 submitted 209,648 petition signatures. After reviewing a five-percent random sample of the submitted signatures, the Elections Division projected the number of valid signatures to be greater than 110 percent of the total number of signatures required for placement on the ballot.” We do not yet know the Proposition number by which it will be listed on the ballot. https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/titleBoard/index.html
Errors in Reporting About Final-Four Voting
Please see last month's Voter for more on Final-Four Voting. Two common language errors around Final-Four Voting are notable and worth explaining, especially to LWV members:
1. Final-Four Voting has a single all-candidate primary election ballot. The media often inaccurately call this an “open primary.” An “open primary” system maintains separate primary elections for each political party. States with an open primary system, such as Minnesota, allow any voter to choose which primary election ballot to vote. We say that Colorado’s current system is “open (only) to unaffiliated voters” to choose which ballot to cast.
2. No voting method can guarantee a majority winner when there are three or more candidates. LWVCO successfully educated and lobbied other state Leagues to remove the “majority criterion” before adopting the LWVUS Voter Representation / Electoral Systems position. The media and proponents often inaccurately claim that a “candidate must receive support from a majority [sic] of voters to be elected.” Only winners in the first round of IRV tabulation, if one exists, are sure to be majority winners. Winners in several high-profile IRV elections who have not received a majority of the total votes include US Rep Mary Peltola (Alaska, Aug 2022), Mayor Eric Adams (NYC, June 2021) and US Rep Jared Golden (Maine, Nov 2018).
LWV Presentations
The Estes Park LWV is hosting Celeste Landry on September 18 for a discussion of Final-Four Voting. Deborah Lycan will lead a similar discussion with her local La Plata LWV, tentatively scheduled for Oct 15.
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