Voter Registration Moves Ahead, No Matter What!
Weekend rain has slowed us down a bit, but we continue to get out into the community to register new voters. We’ve tabled at Mel’s Diner, Sunshine Market on Cherry Ave., Community Day at Washington Park, UVA’s Community Fair for high-school seniors, Mudhouse on the Downtown Mall, Kardinal Hall, and of course, the Ix Market.
Please contact Suzanne (suzemichels@gmail.com) if you know of a local event or location ripe for our voter registration and/or rights restoration efforts or if you’d like to join the voter registration team! You’ll always have a partner and it’s pretty much always fun!
Volunteering for Campaign Efforts and Voter Registration to Get Out The Vote (GOTV)
Cville Dems will resume our Thursday Get Out the Vote efforts at IX Park after the June 18 primary election, from June 27 through October 31. As during the past four years, we’ll send postcards with voting information to anyone who has registered since January 1, 2024, until voter registration ends.
[In the meantime, if your fingers are itching to start writing postcards, there’s a (unaffiliated with Cville Dems) group meeting on Mondays from 10-12 at the Dunlora Club House. For more information, contact Mary Farrell at 703-655-3867 or wmekmf118@gmail.com. Also, May 24, 1-3pm with Donna Shaunessey, mail to: shaunesey@hotmail.com.]
Once early voting starts in September, we’ll call and remind them of the different ways to vote in Cville. Then, hopefully, precinct captains will coordinate a door knock for each new voter. We hope to to coordinate with Albemarle County Dems to reach out to their new voters as well.
We’ll also be mailing postcards, making phone calls, and knocking on the doors of Cville voters who voted in the 2020 Presidential election but haven’t voted since, urging them to once again exercise their right to vote!
But…postcard writing is just one of the many things we do on Thursday nights. We coordinate weekly with campaigns to launch canvassors, and have phone banks and text banks. So…for one night each week, volunteers from Cville and Albemarle County can come together to do whatever volunteer activity they choose while enjoying the companionship of fellow Dems.
This year, we’ll also be working closely with Rural Ground Game to increase the Democratic voter turnout in the 5th District as well as other rural Congressional Districts. We’re not sure what they’ll call on us to do, other than phone banking, text banking, and postcard writing.
RIGHT NOW, we need:
- volunteers to register new voters all over the city—at farmers’ markets, senior living communities, City of Promise, UVA Move-in Day, and many businesses and restaurants. If interested, email Suzanne Michels, suzemichels@gmail.com
- volunteers at Cville Dems tables at all polling places on June 18. If interested, email Mary Ann Harris, harrisma49@gmail.com.
- volunteers to do issue-related text banking for Rural Ground Game to the 5th District and other rural Congressional Districts. If interested, email Mary Ann Harris, harrisma49@gmail.com.
Senator Raphael Warnock is coming to Virginia!
Focus on Fifth District Candidates: Gary Terry
(We’ll be featuring the Fifth District Congressional candidates in this publication in random order, picked from a hat. This wording is taken directly from their campaign websites.)
THE COST SHOULDN’T KILL US!
Today, Gary confronts the urgent matter of price gouging in essential goods. To those shifting from rightful profit to cruel invasion of our essential supplies: step aside! Gary steps up to implementing strong measures that ensure consumers are protected and prices remain fair.
WOMEN’S HEALTH & RIGHTS
We face those who would deny a woman her rightful autonomy, who would tether us to a single narrative of family and choice. To them, our chorus rises: Step aside! We STEP UP for the sanctity of choice, for the liberty to forge families in all their diverse forms, to cherish and to nurture love that knows the bounds of respect and mutual consent.
GUN SAFETY & LIBERTY UNITED
When the specter of gun violence haunts our schools, our streets, what do we hear? Thoughts, prayers, and yet—hesitation. No more. To those who delay, who defer: Step aside! We are here to STEP UP, to enshrine safety alongside liberty, to uphold the promise of a nation secure and at peace.
Know Your Candidates and Vote!
Get to know the three Fifth District US Congressional Democratic candidates for the June 18 Primary Election.
How Does Virginia Fund Itself?
April 19, 2024 from the substack of former Del. David Toscano:
State Legislatures Control Budgets – Virginia’s More than Most
For over a month, Virginia’s legislature and governor have been embroiled in a “two scorpions in a bottle” fight over the new biennial budget, which must be passed by June 30, 2024, to fund the government. Last Wednesday, each of them loosened the cork in the carafe. After assembly-initiated discussions with the Governor, Virginia leaders showed, for one moment at least, how the commonwealth operates differently from Washington, D.C. Rather than force Youngkin to take the political hit from vetoing the first Virginia budget in recent history, the House of Delegates used an unusual procedural move, and killed it themselves. All sides committed to producing a new budget and to return on May 15 to pass it. As Churchill once said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Budget battles in the Commonwealth are not unusual, but this one has been unique, both in the number of changes Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin proposed to the bipartisan spending plan and the rhetoric that has accompanied the process. Youngkin called the bill a “backward budget” and traveled the state on this theme. Legislators fired back, did their own tour, and likened Youngkin’s actions to “what spoiled brats do when they don’t get what they want.” Read Full Article
David J. Toscano practices law in Charlottesville and served 14 years in the Va. House of Delegates. He is the author of Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives, University of Virginia Press, 2021, and Bellwether: Virginia’s Political Transformation, 2006-2020, Hamilton Books, 2022.
