Heidi Rand Actions, Call and Email MoCs, Events, Get Involved, State & Local Calls/Emails

Phone and text bank for special elections

Updated May 1: Read below for all details and to see all upcoming dates (and check back for additional dates). Note that if a date has no link to RSVP you can RSVP and send any questions directly to host Nancy Klein at nancyklein44@gmail.com or 510-917-4045

Think nothing is happening in May 2019, so far from November 2020?  Think again – a steady stream of special elections needs YOUR help – texting and phoning is up and running. For example, PA-12 House seat is vacant (the repub resigned right after being re-elected) and we have a shot at flipping another seat!  There is a primary in North Carolina in May.  Virginia elects a new House of Delegates this year.

Hero phone and text bankers in West County, who wore their fingers to the bone dialing and texting for the 2018 Blue Wave, are jumping back into weekly (mostly) phone and text-banking parties on Tuesdays from 1 to 3 PM in El Sobrante, and in Richmond starting on May 14.

They’re focusing on the many upcoming special elections, and you can come help slow the trump train by texting and making calls! Join any of these West County phone or text-bank parties, Tuesdays ongoing, anytime between 1 to 3 PM. We’ll update this article as more events are added, so check back!

All are welcome, from newbies to experienced! The hosts will train you and make sure you’re comfortable calling or texting. Bring your phone, charger, and earbuds (for your comfort) AND a laptop or tablet (or when you sign up, let them know you’d like to borrow one), and don’t forget your good cheer and positive energy to #Resist! And bring friends!

To RSVP (if there’s no link for a date) and if you have any questions, contact host Nancy Klein at nancyklein44@gmail.com or 510-917-4045

Heidi Rand Actions, Election results, Events, Get Involved, Our Impact, Uncategorized

Ballot Marking Devices: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Ion Y contributed to this article

The 2020 election may be the most consequential election of our lives, and we must ensure that it’s secure and that all our votes are counted. Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs), electronic marking devices that don’t make a lasting paper record of a vote, are used in 20 states statewide; another 23 states, including California, use them in some counties. However, despite their rising popularity and claims about their safety, BMDs have serious weaknesses we need our state officials to be aware of.

The Secure Elections Network, made up of leaders and members of Indivisible groups in several states, including California (that’s us – Indivisible East Bay), are presenting a free webinar about BMDs. Join us for “Ballot Marking Devices: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” on April 28 at 5 PM. You can register here. 

The agenda and speakers include:

  • Introduction:  Jon Foreman, Indivisible Montgomery Maryland
  • Program: Andrew Appel, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University and expert on voting machines and technologies, will present an Analysis of Various BMD Systems
  • Discussion and questions

For more info about the webinar, email stephanie.chaplin20@gmail.com.  And see the Secure Elections Network’s past webinars here.

To look up what kinds of voting machines your county uses, look at the California Secretary of State’s list of voting machines used by county. For an overview of the three types of voting machines you are likely to use or read about see the Brennan Center’s overview of voting equipment.

Contra Costa County uses paper ballot scanners on Election Day. It uses BMDs primarily for accessibility and it appears they’re not intended for use by default. However in the 2018 election they were the only option to vote in person at the County’s early voting sites. It is unclear if this issue has been rectified since. Alameda County uses paper ballot scanners, and for accessibility they have “touchscreen devices”. Although they’re not explicitly called BMDs, that is what they are, and have the same concerns.

Can you help work on these critical issues with the Indivisible East Bay Voter Rights & Election Integrity team? Email: info@IndivisibleEB.org, or join the #voting-issues channel on IEB’s Slack. For an invitation to join Slack, email: info@IndivisibleEB.org

Graphic of Polling place equipment in California, November 2018 © Verified Voting 

Heidi Rand Actions, Call and Email MoCs, Events, Get Involved, State & Local Calls/Emails

Phone and text bank for 2019 special elections

Updated May 1: More phone & text banking dates have been added! Read below for all details and to see all upcoming dates. Note that there may not be links to RSVP for some dates – please RSVP and send any questions directly to host Nancy Klein at nancyklein44@gmail.com or 510-917-4045

 

Think nothing is happening in 2019, so far from November 2020? Think again! Hero phone and text bankers in West County, who wore their fingers to the bone dialing and texting for the 2018 Blue Wave, are jumping back into weekly (mostly) phone and text-banking parties on Tuesdays from 1 to 3 PM in El Sobrante, and starting on May 14, in Richmond.

They’re focusing on the many upcoming special elections, and you can come help slow the trump train by texting and making calls! Join any of these West County phone or text-bank parties, Tuesdays ongoing, anytime between 1 to 3 PM. We’ll update this article as more events are added, so check back!

All are welcome, from newbies to experienced! The hosts will train you and make sure you’re comfortable calling or texting. Bring your phone, charger, and earbuds (for your comfort) AND a laptop or tablet (or when you sign up, let them know you’d like to borrow one), and don’t forget your good cheer and positive energy to #Resist! And bring friends!

To RSVP (if there’s no link for a date) and if you have any questions, contact host Nancy Klein at nancyklein44@gmail.com or 510-917-4045

Heidi Rand Actions, Election results, Get Involved, newsletter action, Our Impact, Uncategorized, Volunteer Opportunity

Help elect Barrow Georgia Sec’y of State

Secretary of State — that’s a position we often don’t pay attention to till election time rolls around and we realize we’re stuck with a Republican who has abused the position to disenfranchise minorities and suppress voters’ rights — Georgia, we’re lookin’ at you! Georgia, where Brian Kemp, who “won” (yeah, we do mean cheated and stole) the governor’s race against Stacey Abrams before resigning as Secretary of State (SoS).

Well, it’s time to pay attention! Democrat John Barrow is in a runoff election against Republican State Representative Brad Raffensperger to replace Kemp as the Georgia SoS on December 4, 2018. And even if you don’t live there, you can help ensure that the era of disenfranchisement ends now.

What you can do:

Ted Landau Election results, Events, Get Involved, Our Impact

We REALLY did it! IEB and the Blue Wave

We did it!

That was the cry — half delight, half relief — that all progressives expressed on Election Day 2018 … when it became clear that the Democrats would retake control of the House of Representatives.

But those of us in Indivisible East Bay could have more accurately exclaimed: “We really did it!” That’s because, over the final months of the campaign season, we engaged in a major push of canvassing, phone-banking and text-banking, all with the goal of flipping several key Republican positions. When the dust settled (which took almost two weeks to do, with one race still undecided), the results proved how spectacularly effective we had been.

IEB canvassing in Sanger for TJ Cox
Carl, Fiona & Ted canvassing in Sanger for TJ Cox – that’s TJ between Ted and Fiona!

To see for yourself, take a look at what happened in five important races where IEB put muscle into flipping seats from red to blue (note: races listed with CA- followed by a number were for the US House of Representatives; the number is the Congressional district):

  • Josh Harder, CA-10. We worked hard for this Congressional seat in CA-10, the flippable district geographically closest to the Bay Area. IEB members phone and text banked, and some traveled to the district to canvass. Initial results had Republican Jeff Denham, the incumbent for the past two election cycles, in the lead — and pundits were already giving up on Harder. But the race remained officially “too close to call.” Then on the Friday after Election Day, with mail-in and provisional ballots skewing Democratic, Harder pulled ahead and stayed there — resulting in a huge upset victory. The margin was narrow (50.9% to 49.1%) but we won!
  • TJ Cox, CA-21. If the current vote margins don’t change, this nailbiter may be a heartbreaker. Spurred on by Team Blue Wave Contra Costa organizer Kook Huber, IEB strongly committed to getting TJ Cox elected as CA-21’s representative to Congress, a rural heavily-Latino Central California district where Republican David Valadao is the incumbent. We canvassed in this district as much as or more than anywhere else. The race was unofficially called for Valadao on election night, but ballots still continue to be counted and the lead narrowed and keeps narrowing. While still considered a long shot, there is a real chance for Cox to pull out a victory. Currently, Cox is less than 1,000 votes behind Valadao, with around 22,000 votes still to be counted. Whatever the final outcome, there is reason to feel good about this race. In 2016, Valadao bested his Democratic opponent by 13 percentage points; this time around, the difference should be razor thin, perhaps within 100 votes! We’re headed in the right direction.
  • Harley Rouda, CA-48. This was perhaps the biggest shocker — and most welcome — of all the California races. Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher has represented this deeply red Southern California district for three decades! Known for his pro-Russia views and solid support for Trump, he was at the top of the list of Representatives we most wanted to oust. IEB sent postcards, text-banked and phone banked on behalf of challenger Democrat Harley Rouda. It worked! In the end, Rouda bested Rohrabacher by more than 5 percentage points. Postscript: With victory now declared for Gil Cisneros, the Democrats have swept all seven Orange County House seats!
  • Jacky Rosen, Senate, Nevada. IEB was approached by our sister Indivisible, Indivisible Northern Nevada, which asked us to join their highly organized Issue Voters Project focusing on Washoe County, which encompasses Reno. Led by IEB’s outreach team co-lead Toni Henle, we made a huge push via phone-banking and especially with canvassing, including knocking on doors in Reno for the final weekend before the election. The result was incredible: Washoe County, formerly solid red, turned blue and went for Rosen over incumbent Dean Heller by 4 percentage points! It was the key result that led to Rosen’s ultimate state-wide victory. Making the win even sweeter, this was a race where Trump got personally involved, derisively referring to Rosen as “Wacky Jacky.”
  • Kyrsten Sinema, Senate, Arizona. A Hollywood screenwriter couldn’t have scripted a more thrilling ending to this race. In Arizona, a traditionally red but increasingly purple state, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was challenging GOP candidate Martha McSally for the Senate seat currently held by the retiring Jeff Flake. Democrats believed they had a real shot to win this. But on the first days after the election, the situation looked grim as McSally built a seemingly insurmountable lead of more than 20,000 votes. Then came the surprise. By Monday November 13, after mail-in votes were tallied, a stunning reversal occurred. With a turn-around lead of more than 38,000 votes, Sinema was declared the victor — despite Trump’s and the GOP’s attempts to muddy the waters with baseless claims of voter fraud. This is huge! Sinema will become the first Democratic Senator from Arizona since the 1980’s. Once again, IEB contributed to this success via several phone-banking events.
Phone banking for Kyrsten Sinema
Phone banking for Kyrsten Sinema

The bottom-line message couldn’t be more clear: what we do can make a difference. It definitely did make a difference in 2018. But there remains much work to be done. There’s still time to help Mike Espy win the Senate seat in the Mississippi special runoff election on November 27. And it’s not too early to start building the Blue Wave that will take out Trump in 2020.

Heidi Rand Actions, Election results, Get Involved, Our Impact, Uncategorized, Volunteer Opportunity

Help Mike Espy win 11/27 special election

Deadline: today and through November 27 –

Surprise! Election season 2018 isn’t over! On November 27, 2018, Democrats have a chance to win a special election for the US Senate seat vacated by Thad Cochran in Mississippi. Representative Mike Espy, former Agriculture Secretary under Bill Clinton, is running against Trump-endorsed Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, who replaced Cochran on an interim basis.

Espy, who would be Mississippi’s first African-American Senator since Reconstruction, is running as a moderate Democrat. He has stated his support for an increased minimum wage, paid family leave, expanding funding for Medicaid and CHIP, and women’s health initiatives and the right to choose.

We’re organizing events and publicizing other groups’ efforts to support Espy’s run because this is a chance to narrow the Senate’s partisan divide and hopefully force the GOP to the table on more issues. Below is information about our events and other ways you can get involved on your own. Please keep an eye on this post, our website, and the newsletter as we continue to organize to win this seat!

What you can do:

Heidi Rand Actions, Events, Get Involved, Our Impact, Volunteer Opportunity

Text Out the Vote

Deadline: today and every day until November 6 –

We gave you the lowdown on canvassing and phone banking, the most effective Get Out The Vote (GOTV) tools. Next up, and ideal if you can’t travel to a flippable district or make phone calls: peer-to-peer text banking!

Texting voters is effective, fast, and flexible. You can do it on your phone, computer, or tablet. And best of all, you can fit it into your busy schedule — during breaks at work, riding on BART, any time you’ve got a few free minutes. 

There are different texting platforms, but the basics are similar: sign up, read the instructions, join the platform’s Slack channel (a chat room where you interact with team managers and fellow texters), and log into the platform. Finally, follow directions to choose a workflow and request to be added.

For most platforms you can text from your phone using an app, or from your computer by logging into a website. Both have initial messages you’ll send out; after that you’ll reply to people who respond, using canned answers tailored for each workflow. You’ll also apply certain tags to help the organizers know how to proceed with each person texted. 

Here are some great choices to dive in and start texting for The Blue Wave!

IndivisiText

Indivisible National’s texting team, IndivisiText, uses the common texting app and website Hustle, which works either on a phone or computer. To get started:

  • Read the texting training guide
  • Take this quiz, then follow the instructions to join Hustle and IndivisiText’s Slack
  • Check the IndivisiText Hustle campaign tracker to see what’s available each day (9 AM to 9 PM local time where you’re texting), join one of the open channels, and post that you completed the quiz
  • Post in the campaign Slack channel you choose from the tracker, and tag a moderator to say you completed the quiz
  • Open the Hustle app or website and start texting! Post questions on Slack, where the moderators are great about responding
  • IndivisiText automatically reassigns to another texter to conversations that are inactive for about 20 minutes, so along with replying to the people you texted, you’ll also help out by following up for others.

Resistance Labs

Resistance Labs (RL) also uses the Hustle texting interface and communicates via Slack and a private facebook group

  • Sign up here and follow the directions at RL’s New Volunteer Training
  • See the Workflow Instructions, and once you’re set up, for new workflows fill out the Shift Sign-Up form
  • See the RL Texter Help Center here
  • Note that on RL only you can reply to responses from the people you’ve texted, so make sure to check frequently. 

MoveOn 

Moveon.org’s texting team uses Spoke rather than Hustle, and also has its own Slack chat room to organize requests for workflows and support. You can learn more and join the team here.

VoteWithMe app

Finally, want to personalize your texting along with reaching out to strangers? The VoteWithMe app uses public records and your own network to pinpoint the highest impact potential voters whom you already know. You choose who to text, and you can personalize a suggested reminder to make sure they vote. Read more about using this very effective app to motivate your friends to vote in our article.

 

The Bottom Line:

Don’t want to wake up on November 7, 2018 and feel like you did on November 9, 2016? If you haven’t done any canvassing, phone banking or text banking yet, the time is NOW. If you have, it’s time to DO MORE!

Phone Banking for our Future (North Berkeley)

Brett Kavanaugh is now a supreme court justice. How would you like to see Trump appoint a THIRD supreme court justice? (LIberal justices Ginsberg and Breyer are both over 80 years old.) Not to mention our nearly *Trillion* dollar deficit as a direct result of tax cuts to the wealthiest, and the almost too-big-to-think-about *imperative* of turning around U.S. climate policy. The next 2 years are of PROFOUND importance to our future.

So, let’s DO something about it. We are partnering with Indivisible to identify Democratic voters in the critical and too-close-to-call Nevada senate race, in coordination with on-the-ground canvassers to Get Out the Vote in Democratic-leaning districts. This is a chance to have a HUGE impact on the chances to take back the Senate.

RSVP here for details.

BRING YOUR PHONE AND A LAPTOP OR TABLET

We will be phone-banking from 4:00 – 8:00. A phone-bank trainer will be on hand to show you the ropes. If you’re hungry, I will have big pot of soup for you, so all you have to do is show up with your phone and laptop (or tablet) and get to know some of your fellow citizens from the state next door. (Feel free to bring a food contribution, but please don’t feel obliged.)

https://www.theguardian.com/law/ng-interactive/2018/jul/09/supreme-court-justice-trump-third-pick-possible

Heidi Rand Actions, Events, Get Involved, Volunteer Opportunity

Is this the voter to whom I am speaking?

Deadline: today and every day until November 6 –

What do we want? To Get Out The Vote! When do we want it? Now through November 6! How are we gonna do it? By knocking on doors, making phone calls, and texting!

Our recent article went in-depth on the primo Get Out The Vote (GOTV) tool: canvassing. Next most effective, and ideal if you can’t travel to a flippable district: phone banking. We hear ya, maybe you’re not clinically phone-phobic, but you’ve avoided phone banking like many Indivisible East Bay members because:

I don’t like talking on the phone I’m too busy I’m afraid I won’t know what to say what if the person has a question I can’t answer I was uncomfortable making unwelcome & intrusive phone calls it reminds me of canvassing and how horrible some people were ….

The heroes who told us about these fears and obstacles are now confirmed phone bankers, dialing daily to save our democracy. How did they conquer those anxieties? A combo of using coping methods (snacks, bring a friend, pet a cat); finding out that IEB phone banks are run to address their concerns; and finally – the strongest motivation imaginable (remember how you felt on 11/9/16? this’ll be worse if we don’t do all we can).

I’ll let them tell you in their own words how and why they overcame their hesitations:

I’m so busy I can’t carve out two hours for the phone banks I saw listed, but I contacted the organizer for one near me and she was glad to have me come for however long I could. She also trained me so I now do phone calls on my own throughout the day.

I was scared I wouldn’t know what to say, but the training and the way the system is set up addressed that! The script is right there on the screen, and there are drop down options and prompts. The trainer also reassured us we didn’t have to know everything, we could refer people to the relevant website.

Phone banking makes me anxious, but knowing what to expect and how best to react is really important, and hearing positive stories of other people’s phone banking experiences.

Doing it in a group, and with the friend that I brought along, was so great. It’s stressful, but we took breaks for snacks and to swap stories about our best (and worst) calls.

I used to avoid phone-banking, but now I’m phone-banking a couple of times a week. I realized that if the GOP winds up retaining both houses of Congress I didn’t want to feel I had given less than a 100% effort to prevent it. I still get a queasy feeling before the first call each session but soon I’m rolling and even find myself enjoying the occasional conversations. The best part is I know how much better I’ll feel on Election Day.

So no more excuses, the stakes are too high. We truly need everyone to step up as we’re down to less than two weeks away from the election. One vote can make the difference in an election, YOUR CALL could tip a race.

  • Join us and bring everyone you know to The Last Weekend GOTMFV Palooza!! Saturday and Sunday November 3-4 from 9 AM to 9 PM: full service GOTV MACHINE – with phone banking and texting into multiple critical races, training and technical assistance, handouts, friendly competition, FOOD, and the best part: SAVING DEMOCRACY WITH ALL YOUR FELLOW WARRIORS!!
  • We list dozens of upcoming opportunities to phone bank and canvass on our calendar, and they all include mini-training sessions with experienced members to help you. Find IEB phone banks and canvassing trips and sign up at out our “Volunteer to Flip the G-D- Congress” list & calendar, also easily accessible on our home page
  • Sign up to get our weekly list of phone banks and canvassing trips
  • Check out opportunities to canvass, phone or text bank, write postcards, and more, with these great organizations IEB works in coalition with:
  • Join Indivisible Berkeley in canvassing, phone or text banking, and more! Check out IB events here.
  • See the East Bay for TJ Cox events calendar to support the CA-21 congressional candidate.
  • Canvass in CA-21 with Swing Left East Bay. Check upcoming events and sign up here.
  • Knock on doors to help flip CA-10 for Josh Harder. Info & sign up here.
  • Canvass with Working America AFL-CIO in CA-10 (Modesto) and CA-21 (San Joaquin Valley). You’ll get excellent training and can then sign up for volunteer shifts.

Finally, as a bonus for reading to the end of this article: phone banking can be fun — don’t take our word for it, Pod Save America says so. And read our article about our phone banks at Cat Town in Oakland!

Phone bank as if your future depends on it. Because it does.