Thank you so much to everyone involved in the early voting promoting we did at the library during the last full week of early in-person voting in Douglas County. For those who are unaware, from Saturday October 27th to Saturday Nov 3rd (except for Sunday October 28th) League members spent six days (over 30 hours) tabling in the lobby at the Lawrence Public Library where we gave out 100+ advance voting schedules, answered questions from dozens of prospective voters, and had many wonderful and spontaneous conversations about democracy with library patrons who stopped by.

Although the original plan was primarily to provide free rides from the library to courthouse to vote early, due to lack of need (which is a good problem to have) we realized that promoting early voting was where we should focus our efforts. I’m excited to report that we did have a rider on the last day of our tabling, and it also happened to be that voter’s birthday! In addition, we had many people stop by our table just to say “thank you” for the work the League is doing, and that if it wasn’t for us they wouldn’t have known about early in-person voting. It was a very rewarding experience for me, as I hope it was for everyone else who participated.

One of the most memorable and heartwarming experiences for me personally is when I was unexpectedly unable to coordinate volunteers on Nov 1st due to my son being home sick, and I thought we might have to cancel our hours at the library for that day. Our awesome volunteers still showed up to keep the table going.

 A special thanks to Kristin Soper, event coordinator at the Lawrence Public Library for allowing us to have a table in a prime spot in the lobby for the whole week. Thank you to all the volunteers and everyone who helped make the library event such a big success.