JANUARY 30TH
Coalition NEWSLETTER
On January 30th a group of citizens gathered in Columbus to share their concerns and outrage regarding Election 2004 in Ohio, and to explore our opportunities for actions to address vote fraud and electoral reform. You were all in attendance. At that gathering we formed four committees, based on the ideas and interests you raised as important: Legislative, Media, Litigation, and Research. There is also”Coordinating Council" being worked out among the facilitators and advisors who have been serving as overall guidance. These committees have been in communication with each other and are working on establishing their priorities. There is a lot more happening every day, and the coalition is dynamic, positive, and directing its future. There are discussions going on about how we might formally organize. Stay tuned, and give feedback!
The Committee Chairs can be contacted via email if you are interested in joining their work:
Communications and
Media: Paddy Schaffer
Co-chair: Rose
Haninger
Legislative Committee: Kimon Kotos
Co-chair: Petee Talley
Research and
investigation: Rady Ananda
Co-chair: Paula Smith
Litigation and Legal: Brenda
Keltner
Co-chair: Donna Brooks christiansagainstbush@earthlink.com
Acting Coordinating Council: Evan
Davis, Dan Ashby, Kirk Roose, Victoria Lovegren, and Peter Jones
Emails
on Member list
We see a lot of citizens who have received a huge wake-up call from their experiences regarding the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio. Many of these folks have not been activists before. There is a lot of positive energy and ideas emerging. Many Ohio citizens have made new friends, learned more about the election process, are seeking good candidates to support, are looking for organizations to join, and are even forming their own.
Electoral Issues Database - One thing we can all contribute to:
We are trying to identify as many national and Ohio electoral reform (and related) organizations as we can. These should meet the following criteria:
National organizations dedicated to or working on
electoral reform, campaign finance reform, voting (civil) rights, and voting
technology issues.
Incorporated non-profit Ohio groups that are working on the
following:
Ohio election 2004
Ohio Democrat’s action groups
Ohio election reform groups
Ohio citizens working on legislative reform (the kind that
benefits not bleeds)
Ohio environmental groups
Ohio Meetups (that fall into the above categories)
We are also interested in identifying new organizations and
coalitions, as well as the less-credible groups that may only be websites, or
other unincorporated groups (like ours).
We need to know who’s out there, who’s doing good work (in your opinions), which’s spinning their wheels doing the wrong thing, and whom we should just leave alone.
Please send the organizations you know about via email to: Peter Jones,
Care of Philip Harlan email: Phil@ElectionReformNow.org The primary purpose of this list will be to identify other action being done in electoral reform, and to avoid redundant action with other groups. We also want to know who the players are, for alignment and joint efforts. This list will also be available for J30 participants who request it.
We ask for everyone to contribute to this living list, since all of us have contacts and opinions. We intend to turn it into a database – for that we will follow up with research on these groups and find out more about them: size, location, years in existence, membership, key contacts and board members, mission, etc. If you know these facts about the groups you submit, please list them. It will save us work as we go ahead and pursue this organizational research.
If you would like to assist, send the name of the organization you are familiar with and contact information to Peter Jones. We will gather this information and make it available to the group, and will report on progress in future newsletters. This will be an ongoing project, as there are always new groups coming up or taking on electoral reform.
P.S. We do not have a dedicated newsletter person yet - I am handling this now, and apologies for its lateness. Peter
(I have been asked to omit all but one of the email addresses on this newsletter, as it was never meant to go out to the public. I did get the authors permission to post this on our site.
If you want to assist in this effort or any other election effort Please contact me and I will hook you up.)
Sincerely,
Philip Harlan