Our nation has been through a lot of turmoil with our elections. We do have a new president-elect and vice-president elect. Hopefully, we can have a nation of smooth transitions as these new people govern our country. Your state league has been working diligently – sending out news about how the voting process worked throughout the state, updating you on information as we received news, and continuing to work for the voting rights of all of our people in North Carolina. We cannot sit down and relax; we must continue our fight in “Empowering Voters and Defending our Democracy.” There will be issues we will need to tackle in the future as well as our continued fight for fair redistricting, the ERA, and more.

With the pandemic, we have had to adjust our plans; however, we are becoming experts in using Zoom to carry on our mission. Please note for your calendars: We will not host an in-person convention in May. We will have a virtual convention, similar to the LWVUS convention held in June 2019. Your Board has decided to only hold the plenary session of our Convention and save our celebrations and speakers for 2022 Council. It's not the same, but we will prevail. I will miss seeing all of your faces and our interactions with each other. But we will come through this, too.
 
In January, you will begin your planning opportunities for your League as well as programs you may want to visit at the state level. Make sure you have researched your ideas and checked their status with LWVUS Impact on Issues. Programming is a critical part of League functions. We appreciate all of your hard work.
 
On behalf of your Board, we wish you happy holidays and a safe remainder of the year!