by Martha Goralka, Voter Services Co-Chair

It's felt like a photo finish as the League of Women Voters of Diablo Valley has offered amazing Voter Services across the board, including Voter's Edge, televised roundtables, candidate forums, Pros &Cons presentations and special Voter Information presentations. Election Day is just days away, and we’ve done our best to inform the voters of the Diablo Valley region.  

We produced nine of twelve planned televised Election Preview roundtables (three were cancelled when candidates declined to attend – we don’t do “empty chair” events). Our partner, LWV West Contra Costa County, was the League producer on one of the three days of taping roundtables. LWVDV focused on county-level and city council races, so school boards were omitted. This year, we had additional duties. The Elections Department paid for the roundtables, while League invited candidates, did the follow up, wrote scripts and confirmed the moderators. (These tasks were handled by League in the past, but in recent years the Elections Department had taken over these responsibilities.) Special thanks go to Marian Shostrom, Shawn Gilbert, Nancy Thursby, Kathleen Ottaviano and Suzan Requa for their dedicated staffing to make these roundtables possible. 

Following these roundtables, we jumped right into our live forums, some of which were also taped. Our moderators -- Ann Flynn (in photo), Janet Hoy and Gail Murray -- did the moderating for all of our live forums.  It was great to have them out front during these contentious forums.  Who knew an off-year election would be so emotional? 

Our timers included Shawn Gilbert, Mary Schreiber, Vicki Gordon, Melissa Olson, Carole Woods, Susan Hildreth, Janet Berckefeldt, Kate Riley, Nancy Thursby, and Eileen Hinds.  Question sorters included Anne Granlund, Mary Schreiber, Ann Flynn and Marian Shostrom. Carol Murota made follow-up phone calls to candidates and also handed out question cards with Juliana Boyle.  We covered school districts -- Lafayette, Orinda, San Ramon, Walnut Creek, Acalanes High School, and the Contra Costa Board of Education -- plus city council contests in Clayton and Orinda, and the Moraga Orinda Fire Department. In addition, we did a live/taped forum for the Board of Supervisors, District 4.

We had requests from Martinez, Oakley, Brentwood and others for forums, but we didn’t have the days open or the volunteers to staff all of the forums. We plan to have a wrap-up session to review our invitations, rules and consequences if the rules are not followed, and to discuss strategies to offer at least three teams of volunteers to double or triple the number of forums we can offer during an election season.

Now we have just a few days left to get out the vote!!!  (Suzan Requa has taken the lead on the GOTV for the LWVDV and is working hard!)