The Hot Sheet

Check our voting machines before the election!

TOMORROW, Tuesday Oct 20th at 10am there will be a Board of Elections Meeting at the County Courthouse, Conference Room 1. We should arrive en-masse to discuss software auditing as well as any other election issues. No one needs to sign up in advance to speak, but if you’d like to carpool down there or meet up early, email terry@theleague.com!

Tags: allegheny county, election, election protection, pa league of young voters, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, turnout, vote, voting machines, Youth Vote

Registering Voters makes the News!

We got a spot in the Post-Gazette for our jail registration work in conjunction with Just Harvest; Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN; the Community Voters Project; Work for Progress; and Duquesne University nursing and political science students last week!

“Spearheaded by inmate program director Jack Pishke, it was the largest registration effort to date at the jail and the only one jail officials knew of statewide, in anticipation of the last registration day: Oct. 6.

In a dizzying two hours, the group helped to complete 456 new registrations and about 700 absentee ballot applications.

Unlike most of the younger volunteers, Ms. Rabinowitz, 67, of Park Place, had been in jail before. She was locked up with a group of organizers for two separate stretches in 1963, after the group was arrested for registering rural black voters in the south with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Those voters, she said, were scared because “they’d never had the right to vote before and we couldn’t tell them it wasn’t dangerous.”

The jail inmates today were just eager. And hopeful.”

Read the full article

Tags: allegheny county, Allegheny County Jail, disenfranchised, election, ex-offenders, inmates, pa league of young voters, pa league of young voters education fund, Pennsylvania, registration, unlock the vote, vote, voter, Voting

It’s a new record!

Roxanne Banks-Williams and Terry Griffin (and former League interns Justin Witmer and Moshe Sherman) and about 50 more amazing volunteers registered the inmates at the Allegheny County Jail today — and came back with 456 new voter registrations!

Now don’t you wish you were there?  Volunteer to help copy and stamp all of these so we can turn them in to the Division of Elections!

Tags: allegheny county, disenfranchised, election, inmates, jail, pa league of young voters, pittsburgh, unlock the vote, vote, voter, voter registration

All eyes are on D.C.

Our business brought us to Washington D.C. to collaborate Election Day efforts with partner organizations, and to also promote our mission to ourselves. Monday and Tuesday proved to be very busy days on Capitol Hill, as Wall Street and banking interests, market accountability advocates, congressmen, and Treasury Department officials gathered to prod questions about this century’s Great Depression.

D.C. provided certain lessons and revelations. For one, it truly is where the big levers of our nation (and in many ways, our world) are pulled. But those congressmen, staffers, police, White House officials, and D.C. itself are nothing but people, like the rest of us, albeit with a little more pomp and polish than is evidently deserved. However, there are a few good ones who do care about the fallout and consequences of the decisions made in America’s Rome, not because they will personally loose out, but because their country at large is losing out. There are individual congressmen, organizers, directors, lawyers, and staffers who do devote themselves to pointing out corrupt and unprincipled practices at the public’s expense. They are doing what we need them to do.

But they can not do it alone. They do it to help us inform ourselves so that we can take action in a stronger and sounder capacity. All eyes are on D.C. and our representatives’ practices. Going to D.C. this week better helped us Young Voters understand that if our nation’s culture is lead around by the wrong motivations, and not held to account for upholding our best interests, then we have no choice but to correct the decisions of our elected officials, and do a hell of a lot better when it is time to decide who will be pulling the levers.

Sincerely,
Terry Griffin

Tags: Congressman Steve Cohen, election, pa league of young voters, politics, Terry, vote, Washington DC

Volunteer Orientation — Monday Sept. 8th

Get yourself orientated to be able to get out that vote for this election!
Sure, you probably think that people would have to be crazy to not vote in an election that’s received as much attention as this one has, but you would also be surprised. People need to be encouraged, to know that others think it is important, to overcome apathy, and to vote down the whole ballot, dagnabit.

There are tens of thousands of inactive voters in our area.

So, to be able to motivate and mobilize those voters for the future of PA,
come to our volunteer orientation!

Some things that will be covered:
- history of the League
- the Fall strategy for election turnout
- the keys to successful voter mobilization
- volunteer opportunities before and on election day

That’s MONDAY, SEP 8th, and 7PM, at our office (6101 Penn Avenue Suite 302).

Any questions, email field-pa@theleague.com

Tags: Education, election, orientation, Outreach, pa league of young voters, training, volunteer, voter

Fighting (in court) for the constitutional right to educate voters!

We’re still locked in a court battled with the Port Authority over their refusal to let us advertise ex-offender voting rights on buses. But the ACLU has our back, and we’re waiting for our jury trial to be scheduled to see if they think the Port Authority acted constitutionally by rejecting the ad.

Here’s a summary, taken from Judge McVerry’s opinion against partial summary judgment in our favor:

“Plaintiffs, Pittsburgh League of Young Voters Education Fund (“Fund”) and American Civil Liberties Foundation of Pennsylvania (“ACLU”), brought this lawsuit on December 8, 2006 by filing an amended complaint pursuant to 42 U.S. C. § 1983 alleging that defendants violated their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by refusing to accept and display their proposed ex-offender voter-education advertisements.

Plaintiffs have filed the instant motion for partial summary judgment in which they contend that they are entitled to judgment as a matter of law on the issue of the defendants’ liability because 1) Port Authority designated its bus-advertising space as a public forum, 2) Port Authority acted unreasonably and committed viewpoint discrimination by refusing to run their advertisements despite having run similar advertisements in the past, and 3) Port Authority’s advertising policy is unconstitutionally vague.”

(Read the rest if you’d like…)

Tags: ACLU, advertising, allegheny county, American Civil Liberties Union, constitution, constitutional, court opinion, ex-offender, pa league of young voters, Pennsylvania, pittsburgh, Port Authority, rights, United States Constitution, Voting

It’s a family affair at the Carrick Corn Fest!

movement…It’s a BEAUTIFUL thing!!

Oh yeah!…and Smacky the Clown (thanks for over 40 years of service!)

Thanks to Natalia Rudiak for inviting us to the Carrick Corn Fest! It was a great
opportunity to meet some people and get a little sun! (It was HOT! But
there’s always a silver lining right?  Like those ice-cold Ginger Ales?)

-Roxanne

Tags: Carrick, clowns, election, pa league of young voters, pittsburgh, summer, sun, tabling, volunteer recruitment, voter registration, Voting

Monthly Membership & Stakeholders Meeting

We’ve been hatching our plans to make it happen and it’s time for you to come hear all about our Western PA Expansion Program! We’re starting with Westmoreland, Washington, Beaver, and Allegheny counties this year and going from there.

Hope to see you soon,

Tags: pa league of young voters, vote

The League and Planned Parenthood get Warped!

Hey guys!  The PA League had an amazing time tabling at the 2008 Van’s Warped Tour with our good friends at Planned Parenthood (as you can see from the photo above)!  We had the opportunity to talk to a lot of amazing young people about the importance of voting and getting the youth voice heard!  Thanks to everyone who came out to visit our table, signed voter pledge cards, bought some of our rad homemade patches or registered to vote - we had an incredible time meeting all of you and can’t wait to see you at the next event!

Intern Alison

Tags: pa league of young voters, planned parenthood, vote, voter registration, warped tour

Help Get Voter Regs at the Penn Ave Art Crawl!

Mac and Terry will be crawling the crawl looking for unregistered voters — stop them and say hello if you need an absentee ballot form, haven’t filled out a voter pledge yet, or just want to give them a thumbs up.

Also, if you’d like to volunteer to help them at this event, fill out the volunteer form at the bottom of our webpage!

Friday August 1st, 6pm, Penn & Fairmount headed downtown

http://www.pennavenuearts.org/unblurred/unblurred.php

Tags: pa league of young voters, volunteer, vote