President's Report
Dear Members and friends,
It’s a new League year and a very new board. The Board had its retreat in June and there was much enthusiasm and creative ideas from our members. I am definitely discovering the many talents that this group has, and I very much appreciate all of the energy and willingness to take on new tasks. In an effort to be more inclusive, board meetings will be held on Zoom and will occur on the 4th Monday of the month at 7:00 pm. We are hoping that this might make it possible for more members to join the board. Alice Bartelt LWVOR President
Save the Date
Fall Workshop – October 7, 2023 in Eugene
Legislative Process Day – November 7, 2023 at the State Library in Salem
Youth Voter Summit – January 19, 2024 in Salem
You will receive more information about these events in the near future.
Help Wanted
LWVOR has an open board position: Voter Services Chair (formerly, Voter Education Chair). Voter Education includes Youth Outreach, Mock Elections, civics educational programs, etc., and no longer will oversee Vote411, Voters' Guides, or other General Election activities.
We know that local activities are important, but we cannot be effective during the next election cycle without state volunteers to cover these important tasks. The specific duties can be sent to you if you have an interest in doing any of these. We want to thank Susan Cobb for leading the effort to revamp this position so that several folks can do the work for Voter Services at the state level.
More News
The Sine Die Legislative Report (sign up here)will be coming soon. It had to wait to confirm which bills would be signed or vetoed by Governor Kotek. This was a fairly successful legislative session in many ways for the people of Oregon. We hope that you will have time to read it to see how much work our volunteers do.
As promised at the Convention in May, the Farmworker Issues position was amended by the State Board to replace “farmworker” with “agricultural worker.” This broadens our position to allow workers who do agricultural work to be included when we use our position in advocacy. This is especially important in this time of rising temperatures and other risks for these workers.
If you have not visited the LWVOR website in the last month, you will find that it has been updated by Sarah Andrews and Abigail Hertzler. It looks fantastic and we hope that it is more user-friendly. You will need to sign up to access members-only information but most of it is available to the public. This was a huge undertaking and we appreciate the work of our staff on this.
The Youth Council and the board advisors who liaise with them are very busy. They are planning the Youth Voter Summit in January, but are undertaking many projects before then. We are hoping to have a presentation by them at the Fall Workshop as well. If you were at our Convention in May, you had the opportunity to meet some of these energetic folks. We are extremely fortunate that this group has formed and that they are doing outreach to other youth.