 Hello, welcome to this week's legislative update. I'm Jim Baumgart. To my right is Nanette Ullebaus, co-host of the program. Thank you very much for joining us today because we have, I think, an excellent program because this is 2018 and elections are coming up and we want good elections and we want people coming out. And who else should we have but a lady who is in charge or the president of the League of Women Voters of Sheboyan County? Lauren Rose Hoffland. Hoffland, yep. Welcome to the program. Thank you. We used to have a League of Women Voters for many years and then it faded and now we're back. Now we're back. Because of you and Nanette and not because of me, although that was nice of you to say so, but no, you're right. We had one up until about 20 years ago and participation dwindled. And like so many, so many things, so many organizations that kind of reactivated or got a new life after the last presidential election, people decided that it was very, very important that we get involved. Could you give the viewer just a little background about yourself so they know who you are besides the name? Sure. So let's see. I grew up actually in Ohio but moved here about 30 years ago and moved to Manitowoc County and lived there for about 20 years. Got remarried and ended up in Grafton and my husband is the city administrator here in Sheboygan. So we moved here about three years ago. I was working for Kohler Company and recently started my own business but my first job is interim director of Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center which is the big barn that everybody sees on their way up to Manitowoc at County Road C. We'll have to get her here for that program. Yeah, I want to come back for that one. Yeah, that's another exciting project. But elections are important, right? Yes they are. Elections are very important. So tell us, so you are the president of the League of Women Voters of Sheboygan County. Tell us about the organization. What is its purpose? Some people may not be familiar with it. So I'm going to, you'll forgive me for reading but because I want to get it correct word for word but I'm going to read you the mission and then we can talk about what that all means. So the League of Women Voters is a non-partisan grassroots political organization established in 1920 that advocates for informed and active participation in government. And that's the official mission statement. So 1920, what happened in 1920? Women got the vote which is incredible to think that it isn't, it hasn't been a hundred years yet. No, no, that's why it's so hard for it. Yeah, and they worked so hard for it. So Carrie Chapman Kat, back in 1920, decided kind of the same sort of line of thinking that we participate in now which is that it's not enough just to get the vote or be a registered to vote but you have to be informed. You have to know what you're voting for. So, you know, as we all know democracy just depends on an informed electorate. It's, you know, you can't just go to the polls and look for names that maybe sound familiar or I remember that or I had a teacher by that last name, you have to know what you're voting for. So that is our, that is our main purpose, getting out the vote. Anybody who wants to vote should have easy access to be able to register and to get to the polls. But even more so that when you get to the polls, there's nothing on that ballot that looks unfamiliar and nothing that you don't feel prepared to make a personal political statement about. So nonpartisan means that we don't affiliate with any party. We welcome all parties and even people who are nonaffiliated to any party, but, but we are very political. We're nonpartisan, but we're political. Yes. And you don't have to be a woman. And you thank you. You do not have to be a woman. We have right now I think four or five men who are members, which is not a lot given that we have, I think we have 97 or 98 members last time I checked. Wow, that's huge. It's huge. We just started the year. We just started. And so it just, you know, there's a huge interest in this. We started last summer, right last summer, six, seven, so seven or eight months, seven or eight months. And of those, we have, as I said, these five or six men and that they are extremely active, two, two, especially extremely active. So and that's wonderful because as we were talking before the before the cameras went on, you know, it's so important that we have a diversity of members, not just not all women, not all women over the age of 50, not mostly Democrats, because otherwise, as I said to Jim, it's just my book club sitting around talking sometimes about the book, but mostly about politics. One of the one of the goals of League of Women Voters is that we can we can engage in respectful dialogue, civil discourse. And if everybody in the room looks the same, sounds the same, feels the same, there's really nothing to talk about other than to pat each other on the back for being so bright. But but if you have people who who have different perspectives, then you have the opportunity to learn. And that's that's pretty much at least my excuse me. I think I just padded my microphone. But but that's really been my goal is diversity in the league because we're not relevant otherwise. So what do you do you see you are one of your goals is to help voters become more informed so they know what they're getting into when they go into that ballot box. So what kind of things does the club do to help people be informed? Well, so the League of Women Voters is not just a local organization. We are part of of a Wisconsin State organization, which is part of a national organization. In fact, we are part of 90. I wrote this down because it surprised me and I'll find it on my notes here when I'm not looking for it. But but there are leagues all not all not only all over the country, there's actually a league in Hong Kong, a League of Women Voters. I'm not quite sure how what the history is there. But so we one of the things we do and you may have seen us places around the city and in Plymouth we sometimes even go door to door trying to register people to vote. That's one of the main things that we do. But the other main thing we do is education. And so we have had a lot of a lot of presentations in the short time that we've been around. We had one couple weeks ago on climate change. We showed the documentary before the flood. We've had a few other on environmental issues. We've had a few on health care reform so that people understand what that means. And on gerrymandering, we had one on gerrymandering right before the Supreme Court case, Gil versus Whitford. Supreme Court case coming up. But I imagine there's others that are going to be coming up because of the recent shooting. I'm sure gun control will be on the list of things that your group will probably want to talk about. It's so interesting you say that because immediately this weekend I started looking on the state league site and the national league site. And there hasn't been much talk about that. But there will be in our league because I send off an email this week into our executive committee and said this is something we need to look at. And so again the goal is always not just to make it. We don't come out and make a statement. We come out and we study the issue before making the statement. So really good model for us is Manitowoc County, which has done, their league is extremely active and they have done a series of extremely important valuable papers, white papers on issues of interest in the community. We'd like to be like Manitowoc in that regard. So with gun control, you're not going to hear us saying we believe this or we believe that until we've done a thorough study of what has been done, what's in the works and what's feasible. But I think we all feel strongly something needs to be done. I've been impressed as I've attended some of your meetings and gatherings how you really go out of your way to hear another voice. I did attend the before the flood on what we had a panel discussion afterwards with two climate change experts, scientists. But I believe someone asked in the room, are there people here who do not believe in global warming? Because you really wanted to hear them. I can't remember if there was. There wasn't. But I was so proud of that person. Right. Because we would have listened. We would have listened. We would have listened. So yeah, we make a point of that, that one of the main tenets of the League of Women Voters is to gain consensus. We don't normally vote on things. It's not half the room or 40% feels this way and 60% feels this way. And so we'll go with the 60%. We try to gain consensus. We try to find some kind of a meeting in the middle, which really is the democratic process. Nobody in the perfect democratic world. Nobody gets everything they want. And so that's, that's our model also. And I want to make sure we get in before the end of the show, because this show goes by so fast. If people, I believe you meet monthly at mid library, we now meet quarterly because we're having so many presentations every month, different things for people to attend. So we meet quarterly. So the next one is in April. I believe it's April 11th. I wrote it down here. And of course can't find it. If people want to find out more about you, where can they go? So we have a Facebook page. We do not have a website just yet. If you are the kind of person that puts together websites and would like to help us, I would like to speak with you because we're working on that. But we have a Facebook page and it's League of Women Voters of Sheboygan County. Also, we have we refer people often to a website. If you are not sure if you're registered to vote, or if you know you're registered to vote, but you're not sure who's on the ballot, there's an excellent website called my vote.wi.gov. You put in your address that will tell you if you're registered to vote your name and your address will tell you if you're registered if you're not and you have a Wisconsin photo ID or a driver's license, you can register right online. And it also tells you what's going to be on your ballot for the district that you are in. So I found out that in the primary on February 20th, because we have a primary, tomorrow. Yes, although by the time this airs, it will be passed. But that in my particular district, I just have one thing to vote for. So so that's that's good. It is good to know because you can be informed before you get into the polling place. So was the last 30 seconds before I have to close the program? When you have your special meetings, is it all that the same place or did it rotate? It's it's been at Meade Public Library every time. Sometimes we end up upstairs, but mostly in the in the Roka room and everybody is invited to come. You don't have to be a member. You find that on the Facebook. You find that on the Facebook. And no charge for it. No charge. Yes. Yep. Yep. And if people want to join, especially if they have skills and setting up a website, you would certainly gladly take them in. Gladly take them in. We do have we do have charges for memberships to help and that money goes to the state and the national organizations for the work they do. But locally, we do not charge. And with that, we are done with the program. I want to thank Lauren Rose Hoferlund for being not only the president of the League of Women Voters of Shibulton County, but for coming in and joining our viewers on this program. Until next week, this has been Legislative Update.