The San Juan County Democrats met this past Saturday, and we had several new faces grace our presence. The big news, if you haven’t heard already, is that at the state Democrats meeting a week ago in Pasco, the choice between a primary and caucus was finally decided. The state party had heard comments more than 9:1 in favor of a primary, and the vote at the state meeting was 3:1 in favor of a primary. So the Washington Democrats will be determining the allocation of delegates to presidential candidates by primary. One thing to be aware of is that only candidates who receive 15% or more of the vote in the primary will receive delegates; if you vote for someone who receives less, your vote essentially doesn’t count. We were hoping this would be a ranked choice primary, but the DNC has not yet advanced that far in its thinking, which means we will need to lobby for this for the 2024 election. Should we have ranked choice voting, if your first candidate doesn’t make the cut, then your second choice would receive consideration.
Delegates for the various presidential candidates will still be chosen at a caucus, but you don’t have to show up unless you want to run to be a delegate. We will no longer have precinct caucuses, but I am not clear yet on whether there will still be a county caucus to choose delegates to send on to an LD caucus, or whether we will use a Congressional District caucus, or what. I am asking the state party for clarification.
More big news: Three states have recently passed the National Popular Vote (NPV) Compact in their state legislatures. Those three states are Colorado, Delaware, and New Mexico. This brings to 189 the Electoral College votes’ worth of states passing this legislation. Just to remind you, the NPV is a way of circumventing the usual process of amending the Constitution by a formal amendment, which is an extremely cumbersome process. Instead, legislatures over the last 11 years or so have been proposing and adopting NPV, which states that the winner of the popular vote in their state will receive all the Electoral votes from their state. It takes 270 Electoral votes to win the presidency, so once we have states worth at least 270 Electoral votes who have passed NPV, the Electoral College will no longer determine the president. Instead, as would have been the case in 2016, a candidate who wins the popular vote by 3 million would become president.
How can you help to make this a reality? The following states have bills in their legislatures proposing NPV: Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Kansas, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, Maine, Hew Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. These states together are worth about 150 Electoral votes. If you know people in any of these states, please email or call them, asking them to contact their state legislators to support this legislation. Legislative sessions will end soon, so there is no time to wait—please contact them now. Here is language you can paste into an email to your friends and relatives in relevant states:
Did you know there is a way you can help get our president elected by popular vote instead of by the Electoral College? Many states have already passed the National Popular Vote (NPV) Compact, which says that the state will award its Electoral votes to the winner of the presidential vote in their state. About 15 states and DC have already passed this, and they are worth a total of 189 Electoral votes. 14 other states are considering this legislation, and yours is one of them. Please email or call your state legislators to urge them to vote for NPV legislation. Once we reach 270 Electoral votes worth of states, we will no longer elect our president through the antiquated, non-democratic Electoral College; instead, we will do what other modern democracies do, which is to elect our president by popular vote. I think we can safely say that the future of our country depends on this.
And here is some text you can tell them to paste into an email to their legislators: I understand our legislature is currently considering a bill to enact the National Popular Vote Compact. Many states have already passed the National Popular Vote (NPV) Compact, which says that the state will award its Electoral votes to the winner of the presidential vote in their state. About 15 states and DC have already passed this, and they are worth a total of 189 Electoral votes. 14 other states are considering this legislation, and ours is one of them. Please vote for this legislation when it comes up for a vote. We need to move to electing our president by a national popular vote, not an undemocratic Electoral College. The future of our democracy is at stake.
Several members of the local party have submitted a Public Records Request to the County Council regarding the decision of the three councilors to vote for Liz Lovelett for the recently filled state senate seat. Local communications of citizens to our three councilors overwhelmingly favored appointing Kris Lytton, who was clearly the more experienced legislator. In addition, at the PCO meeting to nominate three candidates, Kris Lytton received almost twice as many votes as Liz Lovelett. Yet all three of our councilors voted for Liz. The goal here is to find out if there was any violation of the requirement that all meetings of our councilors be conducted publicly. This is to take nothing away from Liz Lovelett, who has jumped right in and seems to be doing a fine job so far. Instead this action is to insure transparency in our local government.
It was mentioned that an issue we might want to consider working on is helping to promote paper ballots and mail-in voting. While we have those things here in WA, most other states don’t. And actually, even though we vote by mail on paper ballots, I believe our votes are counted by computer, so there is still an opportunity for hacking, is there not?
Geri told us about a canvassing opportunity with the 40th LD on Saturday, April 27, from 10:00-2:00 in Anacortes. If you are interested, the meeting place is the home of Bob and Andrea Doll, 1319 8th Street in Anacortes.
Becky Hellman and Alison Longley recently attended a workshop put on by the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL). CCL is working on getting a bill passed in Congress called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, identified as HR 763, and the bill addresses climate change. Becky and Alison presented an overview of their workshop and the bill. CCL tries to act in a bipartisan manner, bringing on board members of Congress from both major political parties to try to achieve a consensus on climate change action. If you are interested in joining with them, there are branches on all three of our largest islands.
This discussion led us into a discussion of climate change. Bill Severson had expressed interest in starting a hub of the Sunrise Movement locally. You may be aware that this is a movement of young people to try to combat climate change especially by getting our elected leaders to act. Unfortunately for Bill, he was told he is too old; this organization seems to only want people younger than 35. But not to be deterred, Bill is meeting with students from each of the three high schools over the next few weeks to drum up interest in starting a hub of the Sunrise Movement locally.
And this discussion led into a general discussion about climate change and what we can do to get our leaders on board, especially with the Green New Deal. We have formed a committee of Becky, Susan, Bill, Cindy, Keara, and myself to start to plan an event where we would invite our legislators to come to address us about their efforts on climate change, then we would address them with our concerns. We also discussed having possibly a second meeting where we would invite representatives of local groups and companies working on climate change, much like the meeting in January where Rep. Debra Lekanoff asked representatives of various local groups what they would like from her. We also discussed the fact that we need to change the thinking and behavior of everyone in relation to climate change; everyone has to be involved. There needs to be a transition to sustainability. A sci/fi or futurist writer talking about climate change could also be impactful. An important related book is What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Climate Change.
We also discussed the possibility of bringing Alison’s son James Longley to a local event to speak. James is a documentary filmmaker, and he has recently made Angels are Made of Light,a film about school children in Afghanistan.
Delegates for the various presidential candidates will still be chosen at a caucus, but you don’t have to show up unless you want to run to be a delegate. We will no longer have precinct caucuses, but I am not clear yet on whether there will still be a county caucus to choose delegates to send on to an LD caucus, or whether we will use a Congressional District caucus, or what. I am asking the state party for clarification.
More big news: Three states have recently passed the National Popular Vote (NPV) Compact in their state legislatures. Those three states are Colorado, Delaware, and New Mexico. This brings to 189 the Electoral College votes’ worth of states passing this legislation. Just to remind you, the NPV is a way of circumventing the usual process of amending the Constitution by a formal amendment, which is an extremely cumbersome process. Instead, legislatures over the last 11 years or so have been proposing and adopting NPV, which states that the winner of the popular vote in their state will receive all the Electoral votes from their state. It takes 270 Electoral votes to win the presidency, so once we have states worth at least 270 Electoral votes who have passed NPV, the Electoral College will no longer determine the president. Instead, as would have been the case in 2016, a candidate who wins the popular vote by 3 million would become president.
How can you help to make this a reality? The following states have bills in their legislatures proposing NPV: Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Kansas, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, Maine, Hew Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. These states together are worth about 150 Electoral votes. If you know people in any of these states, please email or call them, asking them to contact their state legislators to support this legislation. Legislative sessions will end soon, so there is no time to wait—please contact them now. Here is language you can paste into an email to your friends and relatives in relevant states:
Did you know there is a way you can help get our president elected by popular vote instead of by the Electoral College? Many states have already passed the National Popular Vote (NPV) Compact, which says that the state will award its Electoral votes to the winner of the presidential vote in their state. About 15 states and DC have already passed this, and they are worth a total of 189 Electoral votes. 14 other states are considering this legislation, and yours is one of them. Please email or call your state legislators to urge them to vote for NPV legislation. Once we reach 270 Electoral votes worth of states, we will no longer elect our president through the antiquated, non-democratic Electoral College; instead, we will do what other modern democracies do, which is to elect our president by popular vote. I think we can safely say that the future of our country depends on this.
And here is some text you can tell them to paste into an email to their legislators: I understand our legislature is currently considering a bill to enact the National Popular Vote Compact. Many states have already passed the National Popular Vote (NPV) Compact, which says that the state will award its Electoral votes to the winner of the presidential vote in their state. About 15 states and DC have already passed this, and they are worth a total of 189 Electoral votes. 14 other states are considering this legislation, and ours is one of them. Please vote for this legislation when it comes up for a vote. We need to move to electing our president by a national popular vote, not an undemocratic Electoral College. The future of our democracy is at stake.
Several members of the local party have submitted a Public Records Request to the County Council regarding the decision of the three councilors to vote for Liz Lovelett for the recently filled state senate seat. Local communications of citizens to our three councilors overwhelmingly favored appointing Kris Lytton, who was clearly the more experienced legislator. In addition, at the PCO meeting to nominate three candidates, Kris Lytton received almost twice as many votes as Liz Lovelett. Yet all three of our councilors voted for Liz. The goal here is to find out if there was any violation of the requirement that all meetings of our councilors be conducted publicly. This is to take nothing away from Liz Lovelett, who has jumped right in and seems to be doing a fine job so far. Instead this action is to insure transparency in our local government.
It was mentioned that an issue we might want to consider working on is helping to promote paper ballots and mail-in voting. While we have those things here in WA, most other states don’t. And actually, even though we vote by mail on paper ballots, I believe our votes are counted by computer, so there is still an opportunity for hacking, is there not?
Geri told us about a canvassing opportunity with the 40th LD on Saturday, April 27, from 10:00-2:00 in Anacortes. If you are interested, the meeting place is the home of Bob and Andrea Doll, 1319 8th Street in Anacortes.
Becky Hellman and Alison Longley recently attended a workshop put on by the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL). CCL is working on getting a bill passed in Congress called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, identified as HR 763, and the bill addresses climate change. Becky and Alison presented an overview of their workshop and the bill. CCL tries to act in a bipartisan manner, bringing on board members of Congress from both major political parties to try to achieve a consensus on climate change action. If you are interested in joining with them, there are branches on all three of our largest islands.
This discussion led us into a discussion of climate change. Bill Severson had expressed interest in starting a hub of the Sunrise Movement locally. You may be aware that this is a movement of young people to try to combat climate change especially by getting our elected leaders to act. Unfortunately for Bill, he was told he is too old; this organization seems to only want people younger than 35. But not to be deterred, Bill is meeting with students from each of the three high schools over the next few weeks to drum up interest in starting a hub of the Sunrise Movement locally.
And this discussion led into a general discussion about climate change and what we can do to get our leaders on board, especially with the Green New Deal. We have formed a committee of Becky, Susan, Bill, Cindy, Keara, and myself to start to plan an event where we would invite our legislators to come to address us about their efforts on climate change, then we would address them with our concerns. We also discussed having possibly a second meeting where we would invite representatives of local groups and companies working on climate change, much like the meeting in January where Rep. Debra Lekanoff asked representatives of various local groups what they would like from her. We also discussed the fact that we need to change the thinking and behavior of everyone in relation to climate change; everyone has to be involved. There needs to be a transition to sustainability. A sci/fi or futurist writer talking about climate change could also be impactful. An important related book is What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Climate Change.
We also discussed the possibility of bringing Alison’s son James Longley to a local event to speak. James is a documentary filmmaker, and he has recently made Angels are Made of Light,a film about school children in Afghanistan.
If you aren’t getting Islanders Voice, I would encourage you to do so. This blog started during the run-up to the 2016 election, went dormant for a little while, but now is in full operation again under the able direction of Stephen Shubert and Ken Crawbuck. Each week they are sending out very informative articles about issues we are currently facing in this country. The most recent post had a lot of very important information regarding immigration. They also plan to profile all the Democratic presidential candidates.
If you aren’t already receiving Islanders Voice on your email, you can go to islandersvoice.com, or you can contact Stephen directly at scs73@rockisland.com.
It was a very high-interest high-energy meeting. Thanks for reading.