 |  | Letter from Our President
Greetings, League community!
Welcome to our October newsletter. We have had a very busy September, and I have enjoyed visiting with many of you at events over the past few weeks. Here’s a snapshot of what we have been up to:
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Our signature high school voter registration/education program, First Vote, is up and running again after a summer hiatus. We have already been to three schools. Helen is adding more schools to the schedule every week. Some of our VDRs have also been helping the Austin area league with their First Vote program.
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On September 19, we joined over 3000 community partners in celebrating National Voter Registration Day. We held seven events across the county.
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Our fundraising chair, Brenda, jumpstarted a fundraiser to allow us to buy ad space in advance of the next election.
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Our Voter Services team prepared explanations for all of the local ballot issues for inclusion in our fall Voters Guide. The Voters Guide will be available at Vote411.org in early October.
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By the time you read this, our team will have staffed at least 18 voter registration events in September alone. Since mid-July we have registered over 300 voters.
Some of you may be wondering why we are putting so much effort into voter registration and education in an “off cycle” year (meaning not a presidential or midterm election year). One reason we do so: every voter we register this year is a voter we don’t have to register next year. But from my perspective, there’s a more important reason: we are building a community of engaged voters. It’s not enough to register voters if they don’t feel empowered to cast a vote and don’t make it to the polls. Many voters need multiple encounters with voting encouragement before they cast their first vote. Building this community of engaged voters takes intense volunteer commitment and financial resources. If you are not already involved as a volunteer, please consider donating a couple hours a month to our efforts. If you believe in the work we do as a League, we hope you will consider donating to our Get Out The Vote campaign.
Our next board meeting will be on October 11, at 6 PM at the Round Rock Public Library. We will also have a virtual option. Although it is a board meeting, it is open to everyone. I hope to see some of you there!
Felicia Miyakawa
|  | -by Christine Attoun
Members rightly want to know and sometimes ask us, "Where do our membership dues go?" That's a valid question and I'm writing to let you know a little about it and to provide links to League sites where you can find detailed information for yourself.
First of all, if the average yearly membership in LWVWilco is $80, did you know that our League doesn't get all of that money? In fact, in this scenario, $32 goes to LWVUS, $22 goes to LWVTX, and $26 stays with LWVWilco. We're grateful to have that income, believe me, but we also see how much good is being done nationwide and statewide with your generous support.
In Texas right now, there are 32 chapters of local Leagues throughout the state. These chapters represent the constituents locally, work on the Voter Guides for local and county elections, show up in many places to register and provide information to voters, go into schools to educate young people, use social media to get the word out, and more, and all of this work is totally volunteer. We maintain a website, we organize candidate forums, we give information to groups who request a speaker, we weigh in on matters that affect voting in our county.
In the LWV of Texas, in 2022, they published 4 Voter Guides for the four elections held that year, printed and distributed 80,000 Voter Guides in English and Spanish, and produced Vote411.org, an online voter information resource which has the Voter Guide and ballot information in a zip-code specific format, available in four languages: English, Spanish, Simple Chinese, and Vietnamese. In addition, the LWVTX conducts two election website reviews for all 254 counties in Texas, one before the primary and a second before the midterms in November. LWVTX is also engaged in defending democracy in the courts, filing an amicus brief in Moore v Harper and engaging in other lawsuits seeking to address voter suppression in people of color, the disabled, students, senior citizens, and the economically disadvantaged in Texas. They provided grants to Local Leagues amounting to $20,000 and were able to hire 2 new staff members. They run a statewide organization with all the costs inherent in this non-profit work. The $22 each membership provides to LWVTX is only part of the donation stream that funds all the efforts to empower and defend democracy.
It should come as no surprise that LWVUS does a lot with the dues they receive from us as well as well as the generous donations they receive from many sources. They run Vote411.org on a national level, produce the national section of the Voter Guides, are involved in election Get Out the Vote campaigns, work with state Leagues on voter registration, are involved in national election litigation, advocating for voting rights, advocating for fair maps and a fair Census, and run the UN Observer Corps.
I promised to give you links to financial reports for these national and state Leagues, so if you have read this far, there's no way I would let you down!! Please click here for League of Women Voters US LWVUS Financial Report and here for League of Women Voters of Texas LWVTX Financial Report 2022 .
At your next membership renewal time, we ask you to please remember that your financial contributions are spent in the pursuit of democracy and empowering voters all over Williamson County, our great state, and our beloved United States! Thank you for your ongoing and generous support. | Carrying Out the Mission of LWV |  | | Our Lovely Goofball VDRs!
This September 19th had the happy coincidence of being National Voter Registration Day AND National Talk Like A Pirate Day. So what do you think our VDRs did? A picture tells the whole story! Nan the Pirate is really getting into it at the Texas State University, Round Rock.
|  | Taking Talk Like a Pirate Seriously
VDRs from LWVWilco know how to combine pirate speak with encouragement to register to vote on NVRD at Georgetown Public Library.
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 | | -by Helen Cordes
I love how our LWV volunteers love engaging with potential voters! It's really inspirational to see them in action. On Sept. 26, volunteers Ro and Nina worked with me at a registration table at Georgetown's Eastview High School during the lunch periods. The two of them really enjoyed their mission, which was talking with the many students eating lunch about voting and registering while I was womaning the table. |  |
It was cool to see students' expressions, curious and pleased that someone was talking with them about this adult thing of voting. These personal touches that our volunteers provide at tables and First Vote presentations are invaluable in getting students motivated to register and vote. Big thanks to all our volunteers! | | |
 | We are working diligently to complete the Voters Guide for the November 7 Constitutional Amendments election and have secured volunteer assistance to complete this fall's Guide. We do need volunteers who can distribute the Guides all over Williamson County. But wait! There is more opportunity to help with the 2024 Primary election just around the corner! Work on researching races/propositions, developing candidate questions, and contacting candidates will begin in late November-December. If you like doing research, contacting candidates, writing, data entry, proofreading, or even distributing hard copies of the Guide, contact Judi Doyle, our Voters Guide lead, jdoyle30000@gmail.com for more information! | | | Welcome Back and Correction
You did something great! We wish to extend our warmest thanks for renewing your membership to Brenda and Dwaine Chlapek. Many of you already know Brenda, who is quite active in voter registration all over the county, and she is also the head of our Events/Fundraising efforts. And a mea culpa and thanks to April Peiffer, who's on my team as social media coordinator and whose NAME I misspelled in last month's The VOTER. My embarrassment is exceeded only by my thanks for all her hard work in Communications! | Open Board Meeting
The League of Women Voters is having our next open board meeting on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at the Round Rock Public Library at 6:00 PM. We encourage all members and interested people to come see the board at work. There will also be a virtual link. See our Facebook page or our website at LWVWilco.org. | | | The League shall not support nor oppose any party or candidates. It may take positions on governmental measures and policies in the public interest after significant study and consensus
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