AAPDREV UP Campaign Conference Calls

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>> Hello, everyone. This is Zach Baldwin with the American Association of People with Disabilities and the National REV UP Campaign. We'll give it a few minutes to make sure people have called in and we'll get started a couple minutes past the hour.

>> Hello, anybody there?

>> Hi, this is Zach with AAPD and the National REV UP Campaign. We're giving it another minute or two for a few more participants to join and make sure all of our speakers are on the line.

>> Hi, Zach, this is Bob Kafka.

>> Thanks for joining. I see Mark and Maggie have dialed in. Are you on the call?

>> This is Mark, I'm here.

>> This is Maggie, I'm here.

>> All right... great, so we're just waiting on Carol. Carol Westlake, if you're on the call, we need you to dial in on the speaker code we sent over so you can be unmuted.

>> Operator: Conference recording started.

>> Hello, everyone, is this Zach Baldwin with the American Association of People with Disabilities and the National REV UP Campaign. Thank you so much for joining today's call regarding the 2018 National Disability Voter Registration week. The goal of today's call is to talk about the registration we have coming up in July. We'll share resources we have available to help you organize in your own communities and online and we have some of our fabulous state REV UP partners online who will share tips they've learned, challenges they've faced and overcome and they'll share recommendations for you all to go out and organize and participate in a week, this year. By the end of the call, we

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should have time left for a live question-and-answer period. I'll give instructions at that time for folks to get into a queue to ask questions and AAPD and all of our speakers will be here to address those.

With that, I'll turn it over to Helena Berger to talk about the REV UP campaign and National Disability Voter Registration weak.

>> Thank you. I don't think there's anything we can do more on that getting people up in time. REV UP stands for Register Educate Vote. The Genesis of REV UP, the credit goes to our friends in Texas. They started the campaign in the state and basically turned over the name and activities to APD so we can run with it, nationally, and we're about two and a half years old. Our main objective is to increase and demonstration the power of the vote. We've noticed a ground flow of support from our local partners throughout the country. We developed about 21 state disability voting coalitions and... there's a lot of information on our website. We have a pretty robust page at ww.AAPD.com/revup in terms of what's happening in the states. Feel free to reach out to AAPD any time if you want more information and we'll definitely connect you to the folks on the ground.

I think it's important to talk a little bit about the 2016 stats. In 2016, 16 million people with disability voted. The voter turnout of people with disabilities was six percentage points lower than people without disabilities and the voter registration rate of people with disabilities was 2% lower than people without disabilities.

If we voted at the same rate, as people without disabilities, with the same demographics, there would have been 2.2 million more votes.

So... in our minds, there's no doubt that if we're registered and voting, we can make a difference and absolutely influence the outcome of elections and all levels of government. Which ultimately would get more of our political candidates paying attention to our issues and ultimately resulting in better policy outcomes for people with disability. And... you know, we feel that you know... one of the ways, if not the best way to start is making sure that people with disability and their families are registered. This is the third year, now, that we're conducting a National Disability Voter Registration Week. Last year, we had 100 events in 20 states. Our goal this year, with our friends around the country and hopefully the folks participating today, we're going to shoot for 150 events. In 25 states. And we also are trying to capture data. Again... over the last two and a half years, we can point to some real tangible successes that we've had with the campaign, in partnership with folks on the ground. But... the only way that we can really demonstrate that is through the numbers and the impact that we're having.

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So... I hope for the folks that are going to be participating in National Disability Voter Registration Week, that you help us capture that information and capture those numbers, because... as this campaign moves forward, again, it'll be really critically important that we can demonstrate our impact and our effect.

That said, I don't want to take up too much time, we've got some really great speakers who are doing some phenomenal work on the ground. So... I'm going to turn it over to them, but I want to thank everybody, oh! I'm sorry, I'm going to turn it over to Zach first that has information he needs to share, but I, just, again, want to thank everybody for joining us today. Don't hesitate reaching out to us if you have any questions and... we all just have to get out there and make the disability vote count and... I know we can do it, so thank you, everyone.

>> Zach: Thanks, Helena, before we get to our guest speakers, I wanted to quickly review the National Disability Voter Registration Week toolkit that we produced for 2018. Working in conjunction with some of our REV UP partners around the country. This is really our guide to help you all organize voter registration events or other events during the week to make sure that you're engaging voters with disabilities in your community and helping provide them with education so they can be informed voters and participate in the upcoming elections. If you haven't downloaded it yet, you can access our 2018 voter registration week toolkit at AAPD.com/NDVRW. The acronym for National Disability Voter Registration Week. I know it's a mouthful.

So... very quickly, in the guide, we have a step-by-step guide to organizing voter registration guides, the steps you need to take to pull it together, get staff involved, what you should be doing during the voter registration drive and then we've also included several links to other voter registration guides that some other civic organizations have put out so there's a wealth of information about how these events come together.

We've also shared directions and instructions on how and where to submit information about any planned events or activities that you have. Every year, I try to update our REV UP state resources and events webpage to serve as one place to see all the different events and activities happening around the country. It helps us keep a tally of what's going on, but also serves as a way for people who come to our website to see what is happening in their state and get connected directly to you all. So... please follow the link through to the online submission form in the toolkit or send an e-mail directly to programs@AAPD.com.

Also in the toolkit is a pledge to vote form. We have an online form you can use directly or create your own. This is important to capture information

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on voters you engage that say they're already registered to vote and by using the pledge to vote form, it's a little reminder for them to make sure they go out and vote, it's also a way for you to count an engagement with a voter and to collect some contact information so that you can do follow-up in advance of the election and send out some get out the vote messaging.

I really want to highlight a tool from our partners Rock the Vote. They have an online voter registration tool that they offer free to non-profits and you can customize the tool for your organization, and makes it very simple to get registered to vote. If you're from a state that allows online voter registration, the rock the vote tool syncs directly with the online voter registration tool in your state. The information from your tool goes in and gets the voter registered, very seamlessly. If you are from a state that doesn't have online voter registration... the Rock the Vote tool will guide you through the process, collect the necessary information and then prepare a form that the voter would have to print out and mail or deliver to their county election department.

So... still makes it very easy. The upside is that you can go out and ask voters to pull out their own phones, SmartPhones or tablets and access this on their own device to get registered or if you happen to have tablets or SmartPhones you can use through your organization, they can get registered on that. You capture all this information on the voters, you have their name, their e-mail, you can do that very important follow-up around get out the vote.

Throughout the toolkit, we also have a few other ideas on activities to organize during National Disability Voter Registration Week. Sometimes voter registration itself, isn't the sexy thing that attracts people to come into your office and you need a little something more to get people interested, so... you can pair voter registration with another type of voter education or voter engagement work. That can be a voter rights training, partnering with your state protection advocacy agency. You could do a demonstration of an accessible voting machine, partnering with your local or town board of elections.

Similarly, you could reach out to candidates running for office and ask them if they'd come in and meet with members of the community. The one caveat there, to stay nonpartisan, to invite one candidate, you need to equally invite all the other candidates.

There are also other ways to participate in the Voter Registration Week, if you can't organize an event. You could do social media and e-mail promotion of the week. Especially if you're from a state that allows online voter registration. You could reach out to your mayor, your governor, your state legislature and ask them to issue a proclamation, officially declaring the week of July 16th through 20th at National Disability Voter Registration Week.

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Or you could work on organizing a candidate questionnaire for certain elections. Happening in your state or local area. The REV UP Campaign does have a template candidate questionnaire guide that has some sample questions for folks to use to create their own guide, similarly, if you really want to go all in, you could work on organizing a candidate forum event, we also have a guide to that and... it goes with the candidate questionnaire. All of that is available at AAPD.com/revup.

Just a couple other things to highlight before I turn it over to our first speaker, again... on data collection, as Helena hammered home, we really need your help gathering strong data on voter registration or voter engagement so we can show that people with disabilities all around the country are getting involved. They're being politically active citizens. Having this information helps us get attention, helps us get the attention of elected officials, of candidates, of the media and election officials to make them realize that they need to pay attention to the disability community and the issues that are important to us. So... please share information on any events or activities that you have with the National REV UP Campaign, so we can keep a tally of that and get our goal of 150 events across 25 states, hopefully blow that out of the water, and do even more. Please send us information on the number of voters you register during the week or the number of voters who complete a pledge form or some other way you engage with them so we can start talking about our impact nationally.

The last couple things in the toolkit, we have some ideas on other community partners to engage, including local libraries, where again... partnering with every library, who has helped us get to, I think, over 100 libraries around the country to participate in the Voter Registration Week last year. We're excited to continue working with them. And to make it really easy for everyone to participate, our toolkit also includes several sample social media posts and graphics, including a photo campaign where you can print out signs, talking about why voting is important to you and we're trying to encourage members of the community to snap a picture of themselves holding a sign and post it online so we can have a larger digital presence in addition to organizing on the ground during the week.

That was a lot of information. I want to get to our guest speakers now, to start, I'd like to turn it to Maggie Knowles with the Protection and Advocacy Agency in South Carolina. Maggie, please go ahead.

>> All right... can you hear me? >> Yes. We can.

>> Maggie: Great. Thank you for having me. Again, my name is Maggie and I'm not only the voting coordinator for the South Carolina P&A, but I'm the chair of the South Carolina Disability Voting Coalition. This coalition has

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been around since about 2006 and we have about 40 member organizations that are part of this coalition that includes non-profits, state agencies, and self-advocacy groups. We meet once a month all year. And work on a variety of topics. Our main goal is to increase the number of people with disabilities who are voting and increase the accessibility of voting by working with our state and county election commissions.

Last year was our first year to get involved with National Disability Voter Registration Week. Although... we have done different types of events... previously, this is our first time doing this one.

The coalition... you know, really talked about a lot of ins and outs of what we wanted to do. They were excited to get involved with this project and... be part of something that was bigger, a national event. With the hope it would really bring a lot more recognition. We decided not to combine them with anything else, something we had done before, had super great turnout for, but we really wanted to try it, doing it a different way. We spread out our events across the state. So that we could make sure we were reaching all the different areas and use volunteers from within the coalition to host these. And... we decided to use libraries to host the events. Basically for two main reasons. That they're free and that they are usually always accessible. And we were familiar with all of them. We were new to avoid one that we didn't think was extremely accessible. We did know the ins and outs of accessibility with all of them.

We went with lunch time sessions, so... we hosted all of our events from 11:00 to 1:00, hoping they'd bring people out during their lunch breaks and it'd be an easy time to come in. It's hard to find a time where you think you're going to reach everybody, but we thought that would be good. We just advertised the event through the coalition outlets, which has always been one of the best parts of our coalition. We have so many member organizations that each of us has our own social media websites, newsletters, and we were able to kind of use the power of that.

Overall... we think our event was very successful. We hit five different cities in South Carolina and registered 27 people. Despite saying I think it was overall successful, we definitely learned some lessons. That's what we were going to focus on. So... I think one of the first lessons that I learned that I thought was very interesting, I had a hard time coordinating with the libraries. I thought it would be easy, but it was hard getting in touch with the staff that would know what to do.

So... we had actually spent a good amount of time trying to find the right staff members that could sign us up and get us set up at the different libraries. A lot of them appreciated us having the event and letting us know what was going on. That was good.

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Our cities, our more urban area events were pretty successful and had lots of people in our rural areas. At one library, we only saw five people at the library the entire two hours we were there. That was definitely, probably a hit, it wasn't as good. We found that some libraries were already doing weekly events with their counties at a registration office, so... obviously the libraries weren't as good either.

But... then the libraries that advertised it in their own calendars and had it, fliers printed up and we had some of the libraries went well out of the way to try to advertise the event. Those two of the five libraries that did that, we had much greater turnout at them.

We learned we needed to gain better recognition as a coalition within the community. When we looked at how many people we had registered to vote, although it was a great number of people, 27 people, we hadn't reached as many people in the disability community as we hoped. And... a lot of the number of people that we had, talking to our volunteers, the majority of the people that registered to vote that day, were random library patrons who had no idea we were setting up, didn't know we'd be there and that type of stuff.

One of our biggest takeaways as a group, we needed to really work on name recognition for ourselves as a group. So... since then, last summer, we started a Facebook page, so that we can start kind of advertising events on social media and gaining name recognition on social media, as a group within the community here. We started talking about the group, not just our vote, you know... usually when different members of the group go to talk about voting rights, we talk about voting rights and we started talking more about our group and our entity and what we're trying to do. Now we also, because all of us do presentations without other members, we have a Google doc where we can track what type of outreach we're all doing and make sure we get a bigger picture of what we're doing all year-round and how much we're -- of an impact we're making and how many registrations we're doing all year. All of that has been a really great takeaway for us as a group, things we've focused on for improving this year.

This year, for National Disability Voter Registration Week, we're going to continue to focus on kind of our PR and name recognition. We're focusing on a lot of online social media disbursement and put together a social media toolkit and things we plan to get across and hopefully plan to boost posts with small amounts of money to gain recognition of what we're doing.

I think we're going back to our idea that we've done in the past, rather than having stand alone voter registration events, but hosting them with trainings. In the past, we had better turnout with trainings, it gives us the ability to let people sign up, rather than just seeing who shows up. That way, we can

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make sure we provide all accommodations that are needed and we know how many people will turn up and what their interest levels are, whether they're an experienced voter and just have questions or whether they've never registered to vote and where you know... kind of what we need to be talking about.

That's where we plan to go this year and... we've enjoyed our experience so far. And... can't wait to see what happens this summer.

>> Zach: Great, thank you so much, great to hear how you've organized in South Carolina. Next, I'd like to introduce Carol Westlake with the Tennessee Disability Coalition. Please go ahead.

>> Carol: Hi, thank you. It's great to be with you all. Maggie, great to hear what you're doing in South Carolina. Appreciate that. I'm here today with two of the folks I work with, on our public policy and communications team. Because... that's the secret. It takes a team. And hopefully they will correct me if I'm wrong, but... the disability coalition is a formal coalition with about 33 member organizations and as Maggie was saying, I mean, disability, the work with others, and coordinate your efforts is so important, I think, in a state. None of us can get everywhere and do everything, and we all need partners to do that.

We have been doing a variety of work in voting since early 2000s, actually. In Tennessee and I will tell you that, you know... we have the distinction in Tennessee of having lower voter turnout than in all, but one other locality or the state and... in the union and our disability rate has improved over the years, it's not where we want it to be, so we continue to work. Things we've done in the past, around National Disability Voter Registration Week and voting work and I'll share a little bit of that.

I think that one of the things, and... I think Maggie really reflected this, this work is year-round work. You can't dash into July and expect to have huge success during National Registration Week, if you haven't done your footwork ahead of time. It's not just registration work, but doing a broader campaign.

If you look at the research, the most-common reason people say they're not registered or don't vote, they're not interested in elections, not interested in politics, they don't think it matters and so... one of our jobs, really, I think, year-round is to help people understand why it does matter. You know... the old dark quote about how you need to get into politics like your life depends on it. We can't imagine our brothers and sisters get that and if they did, they'd all be registered.

That's one of the things we've been doing in years past, trying to deliver that message. In education and in trainings and linking the voting issues to other kinds of public policy issues that we work on.

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So... in past years, we have organized a couple different ways. We've established, for example, local vote committees. So we work through our member organizations and others to find a handful, you know... maybe just four or five or six people with disabilities in a rural community, probably more folks than that in our urban areas and really support them to do work in their own communities. Getting to know their election officials, working with their friends and neighbors so that, so that really it is a home-grown effort and not just people swooping in and trying to get them to do things. We have used those committees to work on access issues at the polls, training each other how to use voting machines, for example, and demystifying that process. One of the things we've done is hold events at local election commissions, getting local voting committees to know their election officials and getting people to show up there, to do a training, to do one thing or another.

We often... also, during election cycles, when we get this last year, we did what we called Coffee and Conversation with Candidates. We'd do small, homegrown, at a library, at a community center, senior center, wherever we could find a spot, coffee and cookies and invite candidates to talk with folks, help to demystify the process. And help people see what voting gets them. The ability to work with somebody who has a public policy role, that sort of thing. One person will commit to going to town hall meetings, we produced palm cards about the disability vote and hand them out at those forums. Other folks with disabilities to work on that and then to really do voter education. We also have had a fair amount of success in specific parent to parent outreach, within family-based organizations, which are also part of our coalition, because I think that's, you know... we need our families and friends and supporters of disability rights, as well as we need folks with disabilities. It's retail politics in a lot of ways, in terms of what we do and that really has made a huge difference for us.

We have encountered a lot of obstacles. For a long time, our state, this year, is, has online registration for the very first time. So... actually, when I talk about what we're doing next, that is part of our new plan, to sort of really use our social media platforms and use the, the digital access that we have for the first time. So... I will be interested in seeing how that is going to go.

But... I think that, the obstacles that, that we have really encountered and that have been a little bit challenging to overcome in some cases, it's one that's sort of lack of information. And Maggie calls it sort of branding the coalition and really getting name recognition out there and that's part of it, but... we constantly encounter folks who weren't really even sure that, you know... voting was appropriate for them. You know... that's really that education piece that we have to get through a lot of voter education with trusted individuals. You have to build those local, on the ground relationships.

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In Tennessee, we could have, in the past, a lot of voter ID issues. We're also a photo ID state. Our challenge is that we have 37 offices where you can get a photo ID and 95 counties. So, transportation is a problem in fairly rural states, that has been a real issue.

We have been delighted this year, that Zach has introduced us to some volunteers who are helping people get photo IDs and helping provide transportation. There are two local chapters of that group in Tennessee. That's pretty exciting and we think that's really going to help.

So... our plans for this year. We've got a lot of them. One of the things that we are trying to do to sort of parlay the relationship AAPD has with libraries is we have a meeting set to meet with our Secretary of State, who not only controls our election commission, you know... in the election office, but... is also the state librarian. He's in charge of all the libraries in the state and he's actually kind of proud of that role. We are meeting with him to discuss his endorsement of a partnership between libraries and the Disability Coalition, especially during that National Disability Registration Week and... seeing what we can do about that. We've never worked with our libraries in that way before, so that'll be an exciting thing to do.

In June, we're planning a series of events around the state, it's not exactly the Voter Registration Week, but again, we're doing that front work. We have legislators that need thank yous for things they've done and we plan to brand those thank you receptions as kind of REV UP Tennessee recessions. We'll have a REV UP banner, we'll have voter registration materials available to people who come to thank their legislator, because we also want to demonstrate to our legislators that we are active in the electoral side of politics, in addition to, it's not just a candidate forum, these are folks that are already legislators, it'll be a thank you for things they've done in the past, but it is a way, to again, gather folks, provide education and get some of that branding going on.

We are planning that for June and that'll sweep us into July when we're hopefully working with the libraries. We have a number of digital and social media plans. Looking at my communication stats to make sure that's true. For... for, for registration week. We have a couple -- a Twitter chat set up. So... that we can begin to answer questions about voting and get people kind of excited about registering and that sort of thing.

We will be really trying to organize around our online registration. I was interested to hear Zach say there, were possibilities around maybe Rock the Vote and linking to online registration. I need to learn more about that. We really think that this year, there's a lot of good energy around that in our state. It's first time availability and we'll try to work on that. We've been building a lot of social media platforms for a variety of reasons, but especially for voting and... really

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plan a really big social media platform push during registration week and we'll let you know how that goes.

And then the last thing I'd say, we're also sort of reaching out and beginning to work with campus organizations and campus disability organizations to really get young people involved in the campaign in a variety of different ways and so... I'll let you know how that goes, that goes too, but... we -- we've been in business a long time. We know the things that do work and things that don't, but you have to change them up to keep things fresh, keep things new and get things going. So... I guess I'll stop there, thanks.

>> Zach: Excellent. Thank you so much, Carol. We appreciate you joining the call and the opportunity to learn from your experience and see how you're adapting to changes happening in your state and... putting forth new strategies. So... thank you for being part of the call.

Last but not least, our final speakers today are Bob Kafka and Mark Cundall.

>> Thanks. It's really a lot of similarities, but... I want to emphasize what all the speakers have said about coordinating all the various groups in the state. One of the things we found out about in creating REV UP Texas is how much individuals have to do on the voting issue. We really, instead of having to recreate the wheel... we sort of brought them together in a coalition and actually built on all the resources and so... you know... Voter Registration Week, really is just sort of another way to, and I think somebody used the term "market" because in fact, it's very difficult to get the word out. So... again, the various different partners we used last time and again, reinvigorating, we hope, this week, is basically our independent living, our SILC, our State Disability Coalition, one of the things we also did that we are also working with the ARC, the various disability groups. Another outreach area was the Governor's Committee. We reached out and brought them into the outreach and educating that is talked about, the mayor's committees with the different population, we don't always hook up with. And it's really important. I cannot, outreach with our disability rights, Texas, the P&A, last year, we did a voter registrar training and a press conference where we brought in people and we encouraged people around the state to do similar things. We got, like I said, the governor's proclamation declared that week. We also encouraged people, like we did here, in Travis County, we got our county commissioner to declare it was Voter Registration Week as well as our city council and we encouraged the various different groups across the state to do the same thing.

And... our one difficulty, which was talked about, was the, getting data and finding a way to collect it. I think we are fairly... you know, we have the marketing tools and Mark's going to talk about what we're doing there and what

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we did last time in terms of you know... outreach. The collecting of data was the thing that you know... I think the information Zach gave about Rock the Vote. With all the useful information, in terms of, if you need the information to disseminate, there's a relatively, really good outreach stuff on the AAPD website. That can be used without having to recreate the wheel. So... for those that -- we just use some of those things. We came up with the original logo, but AAPD put it into that people vote, particularly on issues, so... there's information about all the issues that people vote and that really helped in getting people involved. If you register to vote, you want to change something and it's usually an issue and it brings together all the various different partners in the coalition.

Mark, you want to talk about some of the outreach stuff we've been doing last year and this year?

>> Mark: Okay, hi, this is Mark. One of the programs that we started is to do outreach across the state, with the state roughly the size of France, it's essential to get partners out through various areas of the state. We started a program we call it the REV UP regional partners and we drew up a little outline of what we expect from people that want to join that network. And we tried to not make that too burdensome, but... we wanted a contact within various geographical areas around the state. To disseminate information to them and also to understand what's being done in various parts of the state. We felt it was essential to get contacts in different parts of the state that we could work with. We developed some media, contact information, that we could support our partners with and... help them to develop outreach to the various media. In the markets to help get information out. We have a person that's working with us, apparently-media savvy and she's developed some information that people can use to strengthen those relationships with media. I think that's always a challenge. And very important thing is to have the media kind of on your side so they know who you are and when you call a news conference, that they're familiar with you already. And... willing to cover your particular event.

With the regional partners, just, sometimes, it's important to listen to what's going on in the various areas and to share ideas. We always get good participation and feedback on what's working and maybe some ideas about what we could try in addition to information that we've been sharing.

We're working on another public service announcement, this particular one will be on the registration aspect of the register, educate and vote program. That PSA is underway and being developed. We always try to keep an eye on making that available, not only on the state-wide basis, but... sharing that with the, the folks at AAPD, making it portable on the national and state level.

We've obviously got our Texas disability issues forum coming up and we we're using our network that we're developing across the state to

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disseminate information for that as a lead-up and then to make that available, via streaming event, so... our various partners around the state can pull people in and do things like view have stretching parties and the like to make that event successful on a state-wide basis.

So... that's kind of what I've got and I'll turn that back over to Bob.

>> Bob: The last thing I want to say, I think it was said by earlier speakers, you can't just start and do it in a vacuum for the week, it should be a link to, obviously, the November election, but the other thing, in terms of the date, June 22nd is is the anniversary of the Olmsted decision and then you have, obviously the July 26th, the anniversary of the ADA and then Mark talked about, we have a Disability Issues Forum.

So... in our outreach about voter registration, can we try to link it back to significant disability dates that might capture people's attention and... the other thing we also disseminate when we do our voter registration is is the visual that is on the AAPD, where it's not just people with disabilities, it's family, it's providers, it's professionals, it's all our network, the visual is a pebble in the pond and the ripple effects. That, basically, then, expands the population that we're outreaching to and really gets to why people vote in the first place and self-interest and to bring about a change for a specific thing, you're not just registering to register, you're registering to actually cast a vote to change something.

So... again, it just reinforces what all the other speakers and really, learn quite a bit, that we're going to try to steal throughout this year and from some of the other experiences.

So... I think that's it, Zach.

>> Zach: Great, thank you so much, Bob and Mark. Appreciate you joining today's call and sharing your knowledge and experience.

So... now we've got some time for questions and answers for anyone who wants to ask AAPD or panelists a question to get into the question queue, please dial 5 and then star on your phone. And I will do my best to moderate and open the line for folks to get into queue.

Again... to ask a question, please press 5 then 6 on your phone.

And I hit the wrong button, so, if you do get into the queue, I accidentally cleared your question, please press 5 and then star and I'll make sure I do this properly this time.

All right... I have a question from someone with a 509 area code. You should be unmuted, please go ahead. 509 area code, ending in 9820? We will move on to the next one. I had someone who, their caller ID is blocked, I

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can't read your number, but I just unmuted your line if you have a question. Let's try going back to 509 area code, ending in 9820, I saw you entered the question queue again.

>> Yes, hi, can you hear me? >> Yes, we can.

>> Okay... great, my name is Gretchen Thatcher, I'm with Central Washington Disability Resources and I had a question, I wondered if any, if AAPD or any of the organizations today have utilized the League of Women Voters to partner with them.

>> Yes, that's an excellent question. So... we, at the national level, have talked to the national League of Women Voters, they participated on one of our REV UP advisory committee calls. Generally, they've been very supportive of what we've been trying to do and trying to have some of our state and local partners engage with their state and local leagues. I actually want to turn it to Bob or Mark as I know, Texas, specifically where worked with their league.

>> Bob: Yeah... this is Bob. It happened through Disability Rights Texas and the league, itself. Proactively, they saw what we were doing with REV UP Texas and now have active members of our coalition, both the local Austin, as well as the state. They've put up a lot of the REV UP information, the logo and what we're doing and... really, an amazing, helpful network in terms of voter education, and outreach. So... I know different people in various times we've had calls, have had various experiences, but... we have found them to be extremely helpful and like I said, I would start at the local level and then ask them, once you get a positive response, ask them if they can connect, also, with the state and... again... whatever name you're using, but again, we use the REV UP logo and to sort of brand and have that as the disability vote logo.

>> Carol: Hey, all, we are really active with the League of Women Voters. We have representatives who serve on the state league's action committee. We have a mutually supportive relationship. We have folks who are going down to present to the local league of Chattanooga in the next week or so. We've been invited to do a variety of presentations to local leagues and working on ways we can partner and we have actually tabled together a variety of events around voter registration. So... I think Bob is exactly right. If you get to know your local league folks first, they're more than happy to partner on the things you're working on. It's a great partnership.

>> Great question. Thank you, Bob and Carol. If folks have questions, please press 5 and then star on your phone and we'll get you into the queue. Next... I see a question from Stacey Ramirez. Please go ahead.

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>> Stacey: Yes, hi. Can you hear me all right? >> Yes, we can.

>> Okay... so... I'm a cochair of REV UP Georgia, just started a couple weeks into this. They've been doing this a very long time and doing an amazing job, but... with fresh eyes, I'm coming in and seeing some opportunities that I don't want to -- you don't know what you don't know. The HAVA, Helping America Vote Act, Georgia has, I think about $10 million in funding and so, I was trying to dig down and see who is giving that funding because... Cindy and I are truly just volunteers. We have full-time jobs that are 80-hours a week, but this is so important to both of us.

So... my question is, has anybody on the call or on the phone, worked with their recipients of the HAVA funding? And what's worked well?

>> Thanks for joining today's call. I think I may put Maggie on the spot as a representative from one of the protection and advocacy agencies. I will say, give her a second to collect her thoughts. The REV UP Campaign is covering this. Funding for firms to use, primarily focusing around election security but we want to provide resources and support to have a conversation about how we still include accessibility issues within the larger conversations of election security.

>> Helena: I do know that some of our REV UP partners have been working with the P&As and some of the P&As are using that money and giving it, for example to ILC so they can go out and do polling place site inspections for accessibility. That's just one example that I'm aware of, of how some of that money, the HAVA money is being used and sort of trickling down to some of the local or state disability organizations.

>> If Maggie's not on, this is Bob. I want to say, our protection, the disability rights Texas, which is our P&A was one of the founding organizations of REV UP and goes around the state with that HAVA funding, doing trainings on the act, but also, is a, one of our biggest education purveyors in terms of REV UP registration, education and vote. So... I think, to express how much it is to partner with your P&A, not just because they have money, but because... they're traveling around the state, they have information which is great on, on a lot of the accessibility areas and so... you don't have to recreate the wheel because... a lot of the back and forth about voting, you know... usually ends up talking about access to the polls. That's just one thing that the HAVA dollars that the P&As use for that. So... I'd just contact you at the Georgia P&A and... I'm sure they would be happy to work with you. Like I said, Maggie must know more about how it's used in South Carolina.

>> Maggie: I'll jump in. There's two different types of HAVA funds to start with and you named a big amount, so I'm guessing you're talking about

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the new money. The P&As do get HAVA funds. We get a Protection Advocacy for Voting Access yearly grant. It's one of the main P&A grants. Each P&A in this country has people designated to work on voting access. That's to increase the number of people who are voting, to increase the accessibility, and it's every part of the voting system. So... we work systemically to make sure that things like online voter registration is accessible. We work on voter registration events, we work on accessibility and do it in a wide variety of ways, here in South Carolina. I'm an almost full-time staff member that works designated on this. Some other states, there's a variety of people that work across the state doing different things. I've heard somebody mention P&A's outsourcing to different organizations, some different projects and of course, I think all of us collaborate greatly, that's how South Carolina got its disability voting coalition, because collaboration is so important when working with voting. But... you named a really big figure, I of course, don't know Georgia's numbers. But... there was a brand new amount of HAVA funds that was just released and... this is going to the states in South Carolina. The State Election Commission. I think in Georgia, the Secretary of State's office that runs the elections. This money is mostly, it is highly suggested by Congress that states use this money to increase cybersecurity and so, the majority of it will be going to that, but... cybersecurity does affect accessibility and so, most all the P&As have been very involved in this, you know... in, in working with their state office to make sure that whatever efforts the state makes with this money, whether they'll try to build a new website and online voter registration system, that is you know, fully secured to make sure it's also an accessible website and accessible online voter registration system.

Some states, like my state wants to get new voting machines. We'll work with them to make sure these voting machines are fully accessible. The states were highly, the funds can be used on accessibility items. They can be used for things like the purchase of maps for polling places. Congress has just really pushed that they want this money spent on cybersecurity efforts, that's where the majority of states will be pushing them. If you want to get involved with that, I'd suggest that you contact your P&A, but contact whoever in your state is in charge of elections, in am states, usually the Secretary of State's office and ask how they plan to spend the money. Ask if they've considered accessibility... you know... ask them lots of questions and give them input.

>> Zach: Thank you so much, Maggie and thank you, Bob for jumping in as well. It looks like we have one question remaining from a caller in the question queue. If you were in the queue, please go ahead.

>> Hello? >> Yes, we can hear you.

>> This is Charlie from Massachusetts. I think the call's been very good. You mentioned early on, I think it was Helena, that the REV UP generic

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term REV UP is growing nationally and I wonder if you could share with us how many states currently have something like REV UP going in their states? Maybe a quick run through of some of the states that come to mind. That's one question and the other one is... what would your advice be to groups that are just starting out and some basics in terms of how to build a coalition?

>> That last one is a really good question. In terms of REV UP, we have... over the last two and a half years... to our town, had about 21 state disability coalitions, so... we're going to call those REV UP campaigns. To be honest, some of them are very strong, like Texas and Tennessee and where Charlie is from in Massachusetts and others of them are still -- and South Carolina and... some of them are still in formation, but nevertheless, you know... to Charlie's question, you have to start somewhere. And we also have, thanks to Charlie and to, to Bob in Texas, that we actually have a toolkit on our website that talks about how you can go about starting a REV UP in your state and I don't know, Charlie and/or Bob, if you want to address -- Bob, I think you did a little bit, finding out there are already folks in your state doing this work and organizing a coalition, but, I don't know if you want to talk about how you went about getting this off the ground.

>> Just real quickly. They've heard from me -- go ahead -->> I just want to say that the REV UP model is, which was mentioned

early on, came out of adaptive Texas (?) And Texas in general, not just Adapt. We, Massachusetts, wanted to organize, two years ago, a coalition of groups in the disability community to impact voting and... so... we actually had Bob and Stephanie and Jim Dixon come and speak with us and there were probably about 100 people or so, maybe a little less, but it was great. They really got us going, got our brains moving and our juices flowing and... really got us thinking about REV UP. And... the beautiful thing is that, there was so much information that it was already available, we didn't have to create it for nothing, there was, there's not anything like there is now... but, there still is a lot of information and... it was very helpful, but... looking into Harvard was huge for us. Chris Griffin was -- had been funding Intel living centers to do voter outreach for years.

The other thing is BD council, you should definitely reach out to BD council and for instance, they fund our webpage, REV UP, so... there's a little something that everybody can add to the, to the [indiscernible], really is nothing different than your basic community organizing model.

>> Bob: Real quickly, just... coalition building, small is beautiful, a lot of times we, we don't build because we think we have to get everybody at the table the first time. My experience in what we did with REV UP and other coalitions, is you just build with the initial people, like we partnered with Disability Rights Texas and our state coalition and our SILC and it's grown from there to be Texas Parent to Parent, the ARC, mental health groups and many more. The

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one -- just thing I'd say, even if it's only two or three groups to begin, then that's the way -- you build it and they will come. Because voting, to me, is very much like our advocacy to get the ADA, we're all in the same pot and... we, even though we have all our different organizations and our different labels, voting should be able to bring us together like the ADA did. We're not vying for funding and everything else, we're trying to make sure people who are sensitive to our issues are elected. That's the thing I'd suggest in building, whether you call it REV UP or not. I suggest calling it that because we have so many resources from AAPD that you can just take off the website and then just begin, because... very much like Helena said in the very, very beginning... 2018 and 2020 are really going to be significant elections, but... even more importantly, are all the state and city council elections and as soon as we can make the disability vote influential, that's when, we're not just going to go begging cap in hand, we will sit at the table as equals and so... like I say, for those on the call that don't have already... some coalition going... I would get in touch with Zach and Helena and they can probably set up a phone call to bring people together.

>> Thanks, Bob. I think that's probably a great place to end the call. I know we went over, but I think everything was spot on. I was thinking the same thing. Sometimes this can be a daunting task. In light of everything else on our plate, especially in this political environment... but... you know, even if you're just starting with two or three people, that's okay. You need to start somewhere. Like Bob said, if you build it, they will come. I think this is a great place toned. I want to mention two things before we hang up. I know, again, we threw a lot of information at you. But... all that information's on our website. We talked about some, some tool kits, I want to mention two things that are going to be coming out, hopefully in early June. One is our issues guide. We all talked a lot about having to educate our community, educate politicians, educate the media. We're looking for this issues guide to do that. It's, it's a comprehensive, but... yet, not sort of too wonky overwhelming document. We're really pleased with how it's shaping up. We had many folks on REV UP participate and again... we'll keep you all informed, but... look out for an e-mail in early June for the issues guide.

And the last toolkit we're working on is our election accessibility toolkit, which I think, also, will be really helpful as we look to 18 and 2020 elections so... again, we'll send out e-mails once those are done, but I think both of them will be, again... really informative and really helpful and Zach, is there anything you need to add before we close and just thank everyone?

>> Yeah... I think that covers it, other than to just underscore, again, we want to gather all the information we can on any events or activities you planned during the Voter Registration Week or points during the year. I keep the list updated year-round and whatever data you can collect on the number of

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voters you register or who fill out pledge cards or engage in some other way. Please send it our way, even if it's only five people at one event, we want to get as much as we can and every little bit adds up to a lot. So... thank you everyone, for joining today's call and please feel free to reach out to keep us updated or reach out with any questions.

>> And building a state disability voting coalition.[laughter]

>> Thanks, all.

>> Thanks, everyone.

>> Thank you.

[Call concluded at 3:11:00 p.m. ET].

"This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings."

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