 Hello. Welcome to this week's legislative update. I'm Jim Baumgart. Co-host is Lynette Bullabush who was sitting to my right. Glad to be here. It's a wonderful time because this is spring in Wisconsin and we have all kinds of elections coming up, nonpartisans early on and then in the fall, partisans. And so we wanted to make sure that we not only talk about elections but we try to get people involved in being registered and the reasons why. So we have Lauren Rose Huffman. President of the League of Women Voters of Sheboygan County. Correct. And we want to thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. And it's an important time in Wisconsin because people will have a chance to vote for people that are going to represent them. It is an important time and League of Women Voters as a nonpartisan organization, one of the most important things that we do is host candidate forums. And we are a new organization just started was it eight or nine months ago? Right. We determined. I mean new locally. New locally not right. Nationally we've been around since 1920 and just had our 98th birthday on Valentine's Day. So but locally we're very new and so for the past I don't know how many years American Association of University Women has sponsored candidate forums and this year for the first time with our new League of Women Voters we are co-sponsoring with them. So there are quite a few candidate forums. I think I brought a graphic for you to show but I wanted to to read if I could just the elections that are coming up on April 3rd and there will be forums for each one of those elections. So we have on April 3rd state offices which include the Court of Appeals judge and Circuit Court judge and then at the local level we're voting for the City of Sheboygan School Board and City Aldermanic Districts 2579 and 10 and Sheboygan County Districts 110 and 24. Does that sound right to you Jim? Sounds pretty close. Okay I hope it's I hope it's not just close but no no I think it's exact. So so with all those candidate forums you'll have the opportunity to listen to the candidates ask them questions and they will be moderated so there will be somebody there kind of the the circus ringleader who will direct everything to make sure that it's that everyone has a chance to speak and ask questions. And I believe they will all almost all be at me library is that correct? They will be with the exception of one which is I believe one of the school board one of the school board forums which is in random light. That's right. I believe. And if people want to know where and when these are we will have the flyer that will show here they can also go to your Facebook page. We have a Facebook page for League of Women Voters of Sheboygan County and you can find out not only about the forums but about the presentations that we have on a variety of topics that are political in nature but we are non-partisans. So topics that we've had recently involved climate change and other environmental issues related to the Lake Michigan watershed healthcare reform gerrymandering so if you keep track of that Facebook page you'll see all the things all the different presentations we do some of them are panel discussions some of them are viewing of a movie a documentary which we just did the before the flood documentary but they're all listed there and usually one or two a month so we're busy. And tell us about the league in our other show you you read the information about your purpose it's all about voting rights it's all about informed voters right are there here's your chance to clear up any misconceptions either about your organization or about voting. Well we'll start with about the organization because it's called League of Women Voters and it's not just for women. Okay good so we have we have men in our organization and we have men who are not just the husbands of the women so and we have very active men in our organization so we're a grassroots organization and as I said before we're political but we're non-partisan and our our goal is is twofold locally especially twofold one to get out the vote so anybody who is eligible to vote we want you to be able to register to vote easily and we want you to be able to get to the polls easily and then the second thing is it's not enough to be able to vote you have to be an informed voter we don't want you going to the polls and throwing darts at the at your ballot to see what's right or do any money mo we want you to be informed because democracy depends on an informed electorate so those those are the two those are the misconceptions sometimes people have about league is that that we're that we're all Democrats we're not we lean that way to be frank with you we do but our goal is is is to get a really representative membership representative of the county that we serve so we need more Republicans we need more men we need more younger people because that's the only way that's the only way we're going to be relevant we spend so much time talking about issues and if everybody in the room feels the same way it's there's no discussion there's no discourse there's just as we said we've said in the past just kind of patting each other on the back for being so darn smart well we want to hear the other side and we want to learn how how to be good listeners and how to have true civil discourse which is what the country was built on you asked about misconceptions about voting and and I made a list of those because I knew you were going to ask me so I wanted to to go through those so the first misconception is this isn't a misconception this is something well something people don't know is that you can actually register to vote online yes so if you've moved which is something else people don't know you need to re-register to vote and you can do that online also all you need is a Wisconsin driver's license it can even be expired I'm told but you need a driver's license or a Wisconsin state issued photo ID that's the first one and you can do that on myvote.wi.gov which is really a great website because that website will also tell you if you put in your name and your address it will tell you what's going to be on on the ballot not only will tell you if you're registered or not but what's going to be on your particular ballot based on the district in which you are and where you vote and where you haven't voted yes who your clerk is so you can find out more information that's right yes thank you that's right so the another thing a lot of people don't know but it was in the news lately is that if you have not voted for four years and you will be receiving if you will you would have received in June a postcard asking you pretty much saying hello are you there do you still want to be a registered voter and you needed to have returned that postcard in the state of Wisconsin 800 thousand of those postcards went out they send them after a presidential election or a gubernatorial election and 800 thousand went out they figure about half of those were people that had actually died or had moved out of the state but the other 400 thousand a significant number of them just had not voted in four years so if you haven't you said well i'm registered but you haven't voted in four years you need to re-register but you can also register the same day that you vote as well you can there are efforts to change that in this state unfortunately and we've had that discussion on other programs here even yeah but you can right now you can just walk in and say i have i can vote it's my lunch hour and they will help you do it right with a photo id right yes um so related to that is that your voter registration does not follow you when you move so even if you you're in sheboygan county and you move from kohler to sheboygan the city of which i did i had to re-register to vote so it's based on your on your district not on your county um and then members of the u.s. military as well as spouses and dependents of u.s. military members are eligible to receive an absentee ballot online until five p.m. on election day which is something i never knew but i prepared for today right so i learned that and then the fifth one um which is that if you're a convicted felon but if this was a jim clarified this for me but this would not be a federal felony offense but a state felony offense but if you are a convicted felon once your sentence is complete including any extended yeah extended supervision or probation you can vote okay so a lot of people don't know that right and some people that are felons have gone through a system and they really feel they want to be part of the change right and so it's important for them to get back into the voting process so they can participate right why are you so passionate about this what what you know you asked me that before and i thought i should have a good answer and i don't think i do except that i i truly my parents were both pretty political people and so that probably was where it started i remember being seven or eight years old and putting putting leaflets on people's doors and with my mom um but i think you know the the older the older i get and you do a little bit of traveling and you see other how people live in other countries and you come back here and you realize um how important it is what what we have and you you read a little and you read a lot and you see a lot on tv and on the internet and you realize um you know there there is just um you know we have we are are blessed to be in this country and we were and i think still are dangerously close to letting a lot of those rights slip slip through our fingers and it's really really important for us to to understand what makes this country different from other countries and and to um you know to really embrace that and and do the hard work that it takes to be a good citizen well some people think everything's going well so why should they participate but that is really when they have to participate to make sure that it stays that way because there's no guarantee if you look at all the countries that were democratic and they've fallen on the sideline and ours has been one of the longest right they've become complacent and you're right ours is one of the longest i mean this is an experiment still you know we are you know we're we're not very old as a country you know what 200 and how many 240 70 all right i can't do the math in my head but um but this is still an experiment and and you know we need to keep working at it and so i i guess that's why i'm passionate about it and i think too you know as we get older we realize that there is some truth in every perspective and and i think it's important that we that we know how to listen to that listen for that bit of truth and try and find common ground try and find consensus because we see what happens in congress as an example of what happens when they can't listen right and um and you've probably experienced a bit of that absolutely but one of the one of the things that i think is important is that we do have organizations like the league women voters that if people want to get involved if you're with the like-minded group even though the diversity is there right you're not promoting any specific agenda we want to make sure that's right you just want people to be informed the people can can participate but we have to close yeah it is time i want to thank i want to thank one so fast orange rose offland for coming and thanking the league of women voters for starting up again and being part of the shiboyan county effort till next week this has been legislative update