It is truly a pleasure Lucy we talk often enough and it’s just really wonderful to actually have a face-to-face conversation and and for you to then join this amazing amazing group uh you know the number of people who pohe hearted I was about 50 50,000 people across the country who work on
The postcard and and Andrea is going to correct me and it’s probably more than that of postcard phone banking texting so it’s an extraordinary group nationally all right so Lucy so for people who don’t know congresswoman mcbath the most important title and what’s Driven Lucy for a very long time
Is the role of Mom Lucy is the mother of Jordan Davis uh and being Jordan’s mom was the most is was and is the most important role that Lucy’s ever had in 2012 Jordan was senselessly shot and killed at a gas station in Jacksonville Florida by a man who objected to the
Music that he was playing in his car Lucy left a 30-y yearlong career at Delta Airlines for her second career focused on reform to make our communities safer for every single American demanding that the clergy our politicians and other elected leaders do more to stop the senseless gun violence
In America eventually Lucy decided that if our leaders wouldn’t stand up to the NRA gun lobby and change our laws she’d run for office herself Lucy ran and won against an NRA backed incumbent and won by one and a half points Point her work in Congress has been focused on working
Across the aisle and passing laws to help our children and families I’m a proud supporter and proud to have you and Lucy is proud to have worked on a number of numerous pieces of legislation that have been passed through the house including Universal background checks for all gun sales and
Red flag laws to limit access to firearms for those who are potentially dangerous Lucy’s also sponsored legislation to protect our veterans that was signed into LA and I could go on forever singing your Praises but I’m just going to let you take it away thank you again for joining us it’s a real
Pleasure in well thank you so much Carol and thank you so much Andrea and thank you so much to the Center for common ground for uh spending some time with me this evening I really really appreciate you and I’m absolutely floored by the 18 million voters that you are going to be
Trying to to Really spend time with and encourag to make sure that they’re getting out to exercise their sacred right to vote thank you thank you thank you thank you that is a a huge undertaking but I I’m pretty sure that you can handle the job and thank you so
Much for keeping your mind on Georgia y’all I really really appreciate that because we’re really going to need the support but I am uh congresswoman Lucy mcbath I currently represent Georgia’s seventh congressional district as I say you know if you hang around long enough I’ll be representing you too no matter
Where you are across the country because I seem to keep getting Jerry Mander but anyway um I’ll just tell you a little bit about my background I was actually born and raised in Chicago Illinois I was raised uh by two uh Health Care Professionals I say by day they were
Health Care Professionals my mom was a registered nurse taught nursing my father was um my cities or the suburbs of Chicago the only black dentists and but at night though they were civil rights leaders and workers my father was Illinois Branch President of the NAACP served on this executive board for over
20 25 years so I grew up in the Civil Rights era I grew up in the marches and the rallies I at the three at three years of age I was a child at the original March on Washington I was in the stroller as my dad was pushing me in
The stroller so uh fighting for civil and human rights uh the work that I’m doing today in Washington I think is just really within my DNA um but I went on to college went to Virginia State University did major in political science um I clerked for who was then
The state senator uh African-American state senator in the state of Virginia uh Douglas Wilder who became the first African-American governor of Virginia so that is also in my roots as well um I went off to college majored in political science became a flood attendant for Delta Airlines uh thought that I was
Going to be flying off into the sunset uh retiring uh but often times God has different plans for us and um I just always believe that whatever God has for me I just need to say Yes um I wanted to be a mom being a mom was the most
Important job I thought I would ever have I wanted to be the kind of mother that my mother was she was an amazing mother truly loving giving uh every child in the neighborhood was at my house all the time and my mom was always feeding them and paring them to the pool
And you know just uh taking them everywhere that we were able to go and I wanted to I wanted to have a child and I wanted to be the same kind of mother that my mom was um I was raising my son Jordan um as I said I thought that was
The most wonderful job it’s the hardest job you’ll ever love raising children but I was really dedicated to being a mother uh in 2002 I was diagnosed with breast cancer and so uh at that time Jordan was too small to understand um because I was a single mom by then he
Was too small to understand that mom was sick um but in 2020 I was rediagnosis single mom I began to see that Jordan was really feeling very anxious and very upset um con very concerned about my health and what was going to happen to him as he would say mom what happens to
Me if if I die well I had done all the formal raising of my son um and my my you know my husband my ex-husband at the time was really involved in Jordan’s life but because IID done all the formal raising um we kind of determined that it
Was best for Jordan to go live with his father in Jacksonville Florida while I continue my treatments and that his father would make a man out of him Jordan would finish high school and then come back to Georgia but Jordan never made it back um the day after
Thanksgiving November 23rd 2012 my son and his friend friends they were simply going shopping Black Friday One Mall to the next and 3 and a half minutes they stopped in a convenience store gas station to get some chewing gum because my son Jordan said we’re going to pick
Up girls at the mall you know we got to have fresh breath in at three and a half minutes a man named Michael Dunn pulls up next to them parks next to them starts a verbal altercation with the boys calling them gang bangers and thugs telling them turn down your thug music I
Can’t hear myself think now mind you just months before and you know Trayvon Martin had been murdered in Florida and so this man was claiming stand your ground he took his 9ml Glock out of his glove box took a shooter stance and shot 10 Rounds into their
Car and then he and his girlfriend simply drove away uh went back to their hotel uh as my son laid dying um he was hit by three of those 10 bullets Lay Dying in the back seat of his friend’s car Michael D his girlfriend drove back
To their hotel they parked the car in behind the hotel so that no one would see the license plate they walked their puppy Charlie they had a couple of stiff drinks and then they simply went to bed it was the next day when they found out
Um that a black male young male had been killed at the convenience store gas station they got in their car they drove drove back 1 70 miles back to Satellite Beach Florida and it took us 2 and a half years in court to get convictions but now Michael dun sits in prison for
Life for the first-degree murder of my son Jordan plus an additional 90 years 30 years for each of the attempted murders on the other boys in the car uh and people would have said people said to us you know you should be happy you should be excited that Jordan and the
Boys that Vindication but I was very very angry and very hurt because I felt like these murders were happening all over the country and I felt like my son didn’t deserve to die and so many young black males and so many people across the country were still dying no one knew
Their names their cases were not National cases no one knew them outside of their communities and something had to stop and so I decided to run for Congress uh I was a upset really really upset after parking those children were the same age as Jordan um when those
Children were murdered I kept waiting for our federal legislators do something they did nothing and I was mad at the clergy I was mad at our community leaders I was mad at our federal legislators because I felt like why are you letting this happen we don’t deserve
To live this way we should be free to live in our communities and this country without the fear of being gunned down I ran for congress in the seat that was once held by n grid uh I was the first African-American in the history of Georgia to run for
This seat the first Democrat since 1979 to run for this seat and I was told everything that you know it’s unprecedented it’s never happened before you can’t do it you don’t know anything about running for office and the biggest one was don’t do it because you’re a
Black woman and I kept saying well I’ve been black all my life of course you know you’re not telling me anything new but this has got to stop and we need to challenge the NRA because we deserve to to to live freely in our country I won
By one percentage Point as uh Andrea said earlier then in the second election I expanded that by nine points uh and so of course this is some of the reason why I am probably being jury maner to date I have passed 10 laws in Congress in these
Six years my staff and I work worked very very hard I a lot of the work in the bipartisan uh safer communities law that was signed into law last summer by President Biden a lot of that work was mine with red flag laws across the states and also Community violence
Intervention funding I have passed um legislation to fund the CDC to study the effects of gun violence I passed laws for veterans Health Care education uh funding for modernizing our data systems for health care and a number of other pieces of legislation and this is the reason why I believe I
Am a threat and I have been Jerry Mander two times now and so now I’m running for Georgia’s new sixth congressional district and I do have two primary Challengers W thank you for that congresswoman every time I hear that story about your son um and I didn’t
Know him it as a mother it just breaks my heart because I have a son as well um there there there is no greater tragedy that a mother will face than the loss of a child and it is it must be maddening when it is so senseless and
Just ridiculous violence I put a note in the chat and said gun violence is a plague in America it is just horrible and I thank you so very much for all the work that you have done number one to get yourself elected and apparently now follow your District all around the
State of Georgia and all the incredible w that you would work to draft and then um as a former lobbyist I understand the phenomenal amount of work it takes to get legislation passed especially in these recent congresses so thank you so very much for all your work and you already
Answered one of our questions um um you know talking about your experience running for office in Georgia and again Georgia I live in Virginia but Georgia is the deepest out so not only were you running for congress as how dare you a woman you’re running as a black woman so I imagine
There were a number of people whose heads were literally exploding at that thought yes absolutely because mind you now now we’re talking about the state of Georgia and the love for guns and love for hunting and skate shooting and you know and you know collecting guns and
All of those things uh so it was unprecedented one to even run on a gun safety policy as my number one agenda politically and two for me to be an African-American woman running on that agenda as well but I think the thing is that I I just kept telling my story to
People I anybody that would listen to me I told my story because I I don’t want anybody to be me I don’t want anybody to be me no one deserves to be me and I know that there were a lot of women and and mothers and and families in Suburban
Georgia and outside of the Atlanta Metropolitan area where I live and what I and where I represent and and they’re afraid they’re afraid of sending their children to school or to playgrounds or to the movie theater or you know to their synagogues and to their churches they’re
Just as afraid because gun violence is everywhere no one is immune to it it happens you know you’ve got domestic violence we have children having access to unsecured Firearms we have you know suicide the rates of Si suicide is are going up and then people who should not have access
To guns who are in crisis uh emotionally psychologically so there are a lot of different ways that gun violence has to be uh tackled and nobody wants to be me and nobody wants to be in these situations but when we have such a love for guns and a watering down of our
Existing uh legislation and when we don’t add Common Sense measures in our existing gun laws someone very well can be me and so it was very unprecedented for someone like me to run um but the fact that we have won time and time again is the reason
Why I am being targeted because we’ve been effective and there are more people moving into the Atlanta Metropolitan Area um that believe the same as as I do and they just want to live peacefully they want to live freely they want their Comm their families to live freely and
They don’t want to have to be afraid of gun violence yes that is so true I was in a conversation this afternoon and people were talking about the reverse migration how um you and I are from shakago so Chicago is home but I know in Chicago
There were so many people that I knew who were originally from Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi and we are now as my generation has retired seeing people go back to the original family land yes yes now you don’t see me going back to Chicago because I don’t want to
Deal with those cold Winters I’m saying right here I have family there my two younger sisters are still there and I have family in Juliet but it’s a little cold I only go back when it’s warm right yes summer you know but but again in Chicago summer can be
Unbearably hot so the perfect time to be in Chicago May early May and late October perfect time to be in Chicago not too hot and it’s not cold yet and Stephen Spitz is sitting there going you have blasphemed you have spoken against the great City of
Chicago all right all right um oh e has a question all righty um what can we do to get our leaders to understand oh that we need financial assistance to help get the black vote out in the southeast um when we look at in 2024 the um Target States Wisconsin Ohio Michigan
Pennsylvania there’s some organizations that put Georgia in the mix nobody’s got Virginia in the mix or Alabama or South Carolina so for states that have not yet had the Electoral success I call it we need to plow the road we need to get set up and build in those States but when
There’s no investment um he he is one of our Alabama democracy Center leaders his question is what do we have to do that’s an excellent question um and you know a lot of the state part parties have really got raise a lot of money state parties really have a really heavy
Lift now uh especially the state parties I would say in particular in the South but also too you know it it is a lot of Grassroots organizations having to find their own funding and that’s hard to do we one of them right I know and it’s very very hard to do because oftentimes
You know you’re underfunded you’re underst staffed um and like even with gun violence that’s the reason why I work so hard to get that kind of funding because I recognize you know all the people that are on the ground doing all the work don’t have the financial resources you
Know to get it done so it it is a lot of trying to find funding it is a lot of trying to get the state parties to help execute ways that you can be successful it is a lot of um just a lot of your own Sweat Equity trying to raise the funds
And people volunteering and people giving up their own time and talent and resources that’s a lot of you know what happens all the time um I wish there were more like I wish there were federal grants that you could apply for you know I wish you could do
That um but of course you know until we do things such as like HR hr1 you know where we’re actually to be able to change the way campaigns are run the way we’re able to change financing of campaigns and work on the ground until we’re able to change that this is what
We’re faced with and so we’ll continue when we are in the majority we’ll continue to work as hard as we can to break down those barriers so that you know um our politics is a little more balanced and that organizations will have the ability to be able to really
Spend a lot more time in effort uh using resources instead of finding resources to do the really good work that you do on the ground because honestly to tell you the truth all the all the work that have been done on the ground in Georgia by organizations like yours people like
You I wouldn’t be in office Senator warno wouldn’t be in office Senator oof wouldn’t be an office we wouldn’t be there we wouldn’t be there without your help and all the organizing only thing I would say is I would I would really hope that all of the organizations like
Yourselves all across this country everything that you’re doing collaborate with all the other organizations sometimes what I see what I hear is that there’s a lot of good work going you know going on but everybody’s operating in silos we can’t win that way we don’t do that in George uh in
Georgia we are a part of Georgia team unity so that Center for common ground communities United for justice Georgia for the people’s agenda black voters matter um a number of NCP branches and other groups all coming together and working together so that we don’t duplicate eff thir and I love what
Ray McLendon said um oh and the divine nine so that we are not all um in different corners of the same Walmart parking lot trying to register voters so we figure out who’s going to be doing where uh who’s going to be where doing what we have a number of different
Activities that we do we are a tech house so we are loaded with technology so we bring that technology and we love to train local folks if they’re interested in how to use it for canvas in we have webbased phone banking so we do all those different things so your
Powerhouse very important to us you you helped us win in Georgia thank you take the credit take the credit you helped us I will I will oh I’ve got a question in the chat is the new six District majority minority well the decision that was made
By the court and I not sure how much you know there was over 500 plus page decision by the by the judge that they warranted enough there were enough minority voters within the Atlanta Metropolitan suburbs that it warranted creating an additional um majority minority African American District now that was his
Decision the GOP legislature in Georgia went to work they did not create an additional sixth Democratic District they just cracked and packed the existing districts that we had pulled those minority voters out of those districts and put them already in the existing sixth district so there are five Democratic
Seats that we have a federal seats in Georgia we still have just five even though the judge’s decision was like you need to create a six but when it came down to it he didn’t even support his own decision right so at the at at at
This moment right now the new six is 71% Democratic and Democratic voters and 51% African-American but it’s just still there’s still five Democratic districts right that’s just say all of the democratic members in Georgia are all African-American ah yes so now so now there it is right so now you there are
No more any there aren’t anymore any competitive races right competitive districts right five Democrats they’re they’re just strictly Democrat and African-American or diverse and then the other Republic districts 85% of those voters are Republican in those other districts so that’s where we are all right and then I know one of the
Challenges that voters are facing right now um I have not checked this week but I know as of last week um if you went to the my voter page on the Georgia Secretary State website and you put in your address there was a very high probability that if you were at PR in
America you were part of that let’s Shuffle everybody around into different districts as you said they didn’t create an additional District they just created different districts exactly well on as of last week if you went to the my voter page put in your address it probably was
Still showing you in your old district and so we are watching that very very carefully because as this primary gets closer and closer on May 21st and early voting is looming closer people are wanting to sayy okay what district am I in all right who are my candidates and
We’re really really concerned that a lot of people people will have a very big surprise when they go to the polls that the people they thought they were going to be voting for those those are not people on your ballot at all and then I have another question here well the saying question
Specific challenges to voting rights and I’ll talk about that when I’m doing my section A little bit uh more too we do know that in Georgia you have and I’m going to call them Vigilantes there’s no other way to put it that are literally going around to County Boards of
Elections and they are challenging people’s voter registrations and they are managing to get voter registrations thrown out so in effect they disenfranchise people Georgia does not have same day voter registration so one of the things that we will be doing in a lot of our messaging or basically all of our
Messaging is we are urging people to be vigilant and constantly verify that your voter registration is still active because when they are getting people thrown up in voter roles most of the time there is no notification hey we disenfranchised you is that okay you are just going to get a
Very rude surprise when you vote congresswoman it has been fabulous it is now time for me to show people where we’re going to be working what we’re going to be doing and I’m really going to give them a chance to see the success that we’ve had in North Carolina
And Texas two states where we’re going back where we saw something of a major change when we didn’t work there in 2022 and it sort of went the wrong way so we’re going back well thank you and I understand and I heard you know just through the grape vine there’s going to
Be a lot of financial investment in North Carolina yes that’s what I’ve heard which is and there was in 2022 but they gave it to small local groups who didn’t have experience running Statewide campaigns so their Outreach well-intentioned wasn’t big enough we’re used to Big campaigns where we’re going all right
We’re targeting 18 million voters this is what it’s going to look like right well I just can’t thank you enough I really really cannot thank you enough because what you said is absolutely the truth I’ve talked to so many people who are so confused about what district they now
Belong in who is going to be on their ballot Who currently you know is their representative they think that okay it’s changed overnight now and that you know the person who was a representative last week is not I mean there’s a lot of confusion so thank you for helping to
Just really um show people you know the the way basically to help them clarify what uh uh their their access to The Ballot Box means what it looks like and you know as a daughter of the civil rights leaders you know I was raised with the idea that no American should
Ever be denied or discouraged from exercising their their voice and so you are doing that for them and I can’t thank you enough because it is truly going to make matter here in Georgia all right thank you so very very much thank you for all that you have
Done are doing and will do thank you take care good night right bye bye bye bye all right let’s take a look at what we have done in the past and what we are going to need to do all right as I mentioned we will be heading back to the great state
Of North Carolina North Carolina has 1.5 million black voters that’s 21.16% of their population and this map that you’re seeing is showing you the dispersement of black voters so you and see Charlotte Durham Raleigh fville now one of the other things I worked on earlier this week was I
Compared turnout of black voters mecklinburg is the county of North Carolina with the largest number of black registered voters that population is 239,900 50 we worked in North Carolina only in 2020 we were not there before 2020 and we did not work there in 2022 our partner um Reverend T Anthony Spearman
Was assassinated and he was not there to work beside us and to guide us in 2020 when we did have Dr Spearman with us turnout was 163,000 black voters in mecklinburg County we postcard every black voter twice all 1.2 million was the population in 2020 with pled to vote and
Gov there was also phone Banking and there was tax banking in 2024 we intend to do the same thing because 67% of the black voters in that county showed up to vote when we look at 2016 the previous presidential year 53% showed up to vote I want to hit that
67% number and I would like to do better and the campaign that we’re starting down in mecklinburg right now we’re calling it after Dr spearman’s campaign pledged to vote and do more all right now Georgia with its 2.5 million black voters or 34% of the Georgia population yes um Luc mcb’s district is
Um part of Atlanta and as you can see Atlanta Augusta Savannah valasta Warner Robins Columbus all those Counties have very large black voter populations this is Fon County so fton county has 385,000 black voters now our partners the uh Ray McLendon when he was with the nacp fair fight Georgia there were
Already groups on the ground in Georgia doing really really good work we started working in Georgia in 2018 we were working with black voters matter and isn’t it interesting how in a midterm year the midterm turnout was higher than the presidential year in 2020 Georgia team unity had pretty much fully cemented how
They were going to work and what they were going to do so 196,000 black voters turned out or 51% of the registered black voters 2022 was again a midterm year but while it went down from 2020 we still exceeded the 2018 midterms which was always our goal we want to add
More and more voters we do primary elections so that we can help get voters into the habit of voting and what we learned is if we can get voters to vote in a primary 80% of them will come back or the general so that is why we do
Primaries um I’m going to show you this very very quickly so you can see where and why we’re going to modify our focus a little bit this year we win races and this is true in basically every state with the 35 to 55 5 year old voters so this is a federal
Election year our 55 plus Medicare Social Security the price of prescription drugs we know those three issues are going to be right there where we really want to see these numbers go up and there are colleges in fton county is we really want to see these numbers go up in the 18
To 35 range or especially the 18 to 24 and we believe one of their main issues is understanding of what their voting options are um when they are on a college campus and then we also remember from the uh movie that we saw in many instances even when students try to vote
Their votes aren’t counted in Georgia for a variety of reasons so we are going to be looking very hard at what we can do to reinf our students at the college level and the high school level now the great state of Texas Texas has nearly 15 million voters 1.3 million are black or
7.8% of their population and most of our voters are in Dallas Houston Austin and San Antonio so again when we look at turnout we only worked in Tex in 2020 and when you look at the numbers the difference is between when we were there with our postcard our phone
Banking and our texting versus when we weren’t there the difference is Stark and in every state it will be our goal to increase that that voter turnout over our 2020 number by at least 10% uh Virginia we’re always in Virginia I know Virginia only 865,000 black voters 15.13% Northern Virginia Fairfax County Richmond
Nor Virginia Beach is where the large large concentrations of black voters are in Virginia because we Prett consistently work in Virginia and Virginia has an election every darn Year all right in Virginia H REO county is our County with the largest africanamerican registered voting population um in 2019 that was State
Midterm um only 27,000 black voters showed up that was the year that we elected a woman of color senator in enrio County for the first time in 2021 while it didn’t go in our favor that was Statewide race governor lieutenant governor and attorney general and in 2022 again that was Congressional
Midterms so presidential year absolutely huge gubernatorial Year big year slight drop in 2022 so we are going for this one we are going for the big one where we got 71% of the voters out maybe I’m being greedy maybe I’m just going to need to be happy with
60% but we’re going to be working on it so that was just a quick overview on what we are going to be doing in 2020 and why we are doing it um let’s see sorry to interrupt I know there was one question that was asked um I think about voter registration language being
Added to postcards I don’t know if it’s maybe just if we’re going to add like be sure to check your registration status um that kind of thing if that’s something that we would might be putting into our postcards as well for the general or is it something just for the
Uh texting and phone banking it’s texting and phone banking it makes the post cards too long um actually that theoretically could be something we add to the label it’s too long for the writers to have to try to add that message but it could be possible since
Our post cards we do require they have a label we do give the registar information and we do put a website there um and I believe the website that uh we normally use the County website we could do the voter registration I’ll have to go through that with the
Postcard team I am not on the postcard team that is uh something that we will work out together um I see a question in the chat about uh who is on Georgia team unity um communities United for justice Ray Mendon and Richard Rose formerly of the Georgia uh SL Atlanta
Nacp uh the divine nine the divine nine are the black fraternities and the black sororities black voters matter Georgia for the people’s agenda if you know your uh Georgia history you know that that was uh Joe Lowry Joseph Low’s group Joseph flowy was another civil rights icon um there are still some
NP chapters that are part of Georgia team unity so that is who is in immunity we would love to be able to create the equivalent of team unity um in North Carolina and also in literally all of our states and in Virginia we didn’t call it team unity
But what we built was modeled very closely on team unity so yes um other questions that you’re seeing everybody is busy loving congresswoman mcbath wonderful yes yes yes yes Andrea we do have a question of do we know whether Georgia polls will have folks deployed to help voters who are turned away will
There be pole workers there who assist in that um I have no idea I can’t answer that question um I um I can talk to Ray and Richard there are always pole workers in Georgia the question is will they be in the black Precinct now there is going to
Be another interesting challenge if it goes through the Georgia legislature and it probably will they are working on a bill that would limit the number of um machines in each polling location and so some people are saying oh that won’t cause a problem The Log Jam is in people trying to check in
Regardless if you are checking in four people at a time and you only have two machines that is going to create a large amp so I’m watching that bill it’s going to be very very interesting to see what happens with that yeah yeah uh whether Georgia Poes will have fols deployed to
Help voters uh who are turned away uh that’s something that we are going to have to work on um I don’t know that they’ve done that before that’s a very very very good idea normally voters don’t know that their ballot has not been counted until um a day or two after the election
Yeah all right yes there s are there a few folks asking questions about the bill numbers I have two and uh that I haven’t read through them yet and I will make sure that in the follow-up email that you all will get I clarify which of
The bills it is but I will put the article in the chat too that kind of goes a little bit more into the details of the bills it might even be both of them but they’re both really bad bills that we need to be watching and making
Sure that they don’t get to the governor’s desk okay all right great great um and then I see a note in the chat uh Tik Tock Instagram our new sources for 18 to 24 year olds um because we will be working on college campuses with 18 to 24 year olds who are
Probably on Tik Tok and Instagram and probably have 18 to 24 year old followers we are on Instagram but we do not have very many 18 to 24 year old followers but our students for justice interns do and I know they work on a lot of videos and various social media assets that
Periodically they get three to 500,000 media views of those things so yes yes but again we will be looking at having young people create the asset I’m 70 years old even though I know how to create the asset I don’t necessarily know how to say it so that someone who’s
18 to 24 year old is going to go oh my God I never thought about it that way let’s do this yes okay and okay there’s all kinds of notes Here uh all right uh there’s a note there that says there are are monitors in Georgia and they’re typically at every Precinct
Um uh could we put a pre-printed QR code um on the cards yeah we could yes um one of the issues we run into those older voters have no idea what Ur code is uh but yeah we certainly could look at putting them there that will take a significantly longer to deploy the
Addresses because we only have three people who work with upwards of uh half a million or more um postcard addresses and we would need a different QR code for every County Virginia has 133 counties Georgia has 159 so start to see the um huge impact trying to do
Something like that will have but we can always look at various things like that yes field team six is working with a totally different population than we work with so yes they can do that um yes and they only do voter registration we don’t really do voter registration we um
Some of our faith groups do voter registration our concentration is voters who are already ready registered and are not voting in many instances we are the fence that is keeping them from being thrown off the voting roles because many of them are out for three and in the
States where we work if you don’t vote in this upcoming election you will no longer be registered to vote they will dump you off the roles uh is there a goal for Prince William County and are there any initiatives no we do not have initiatives to register voters um I do
Vter registration training but as an organization that is not our focus and Virginia we are one of those very lucky States we have same day voter registration so that people they can um if they don’t check their registration and they go to the polls and it turns out they are not
Registered they will be able to register right then and there so um Bonita you and I can talk if there are people that you want to register then um we can make sure that you can do that but as an organization oh yes and thank you Ray
Mendon is here yes I left off the prince all Mason there are several faith-based organizations and a number of Grassroots organizations uh L volunteer yes um it is going to be very very important because we expect that we really are going to have problems at the polls this
Year to get lawyers the lawyers committee for civil rights under law the NAACP legal defense fund um and many other organizations it is going to be very critical to EMP lawyers especially at PR Kinks with a heavy population of bip voters we will again be running see something say something because phone
Lines are immediately overwhelmed by 10 calls and so um one of the things that everyone knows is when you are going to go to court it is very important to have proof so that you’re not just dealing with he head she said so that is why we
Like to use our program because if you have taken a picture of the problem you will have the ability to send that photograph along with with your report uh Josie what’s your question I was actually going to respond to some a comment about can someone hire security
For certain poll areas um I was I don’t think that is possible I’m not entirely sure but what I I was just in a in Washington DC uh for a conference talking about a lot of different things but a big part of it was the threats that election workers are facing and
What we can be doing about it and the a lot of federal programs are actually having to train election workers on various defense mechanisms they’re providing bulletproof glass for a lot of polling locations so that people are able to count their ballot safely um without their lives being put
At risk for doing their jobs so unfortunately there are going to be a lot more risks in 2024 for our elections and our poll workers or our election workers but Federal programs and State uh Boards of elections are working really hard with all the counties to make sure that they have them equipment
And the security that they need to be as as safe as they can within the the bounds of what they can do legally I hope that answers some questions right right yeah yeah that is really really true um we actually is Tina here Tina uh Tina
Is here um there are you can volunteer with us CER for common ground you can also volunteer with the lawyers committee we may actually do a big push and recruit attorneys we all trained to use see something say something um um there are going to be a lot of attorneys
Out at the polls that are watching so no matter how many we recruit normally um holds open 7 to7 we want to be able to have people there in ships so yes and democracy North Carolina yes they run voter protection again the problem with phone number is
You cannot give them a picture our information goes directly into a database where everything is categorized it is counted and we have the database for multiple years where we can compare what happened in one year to what happened in another they do not have that ability to do that when all they’re
Doing is they have people on uh answering the phone also the people that are answering the phone normally they’re uh lection background maybe two or three year weeks not years so we like to get photograph have the description and then put it on a map so
We can analyze are we seeing a certain type of problem in only one place is it everywhere what is going on it gives us that ability to immediately visualize what is happening in this election you cannot do that with a bunk call so wow this was fun this was fun
Yes they have attorneys on the phone um I’ve spoken to number of their attorneys on the phone I am not an attorney but I know the election laws of all states where I work I frequently had to correct their attorneys again they are not ele attorneys they do not live every moment
Of their life with what are the roles of voting in seven different states there is a difference um and you we could be very interested with student attorneys Yes yes again people who have a solid understanding of the law and who and when you see a problem and you are
Gathering evidence what to do so it has been wonderful spending time with you tonight I know I was deeply touched by how much congresswoman mcbath let us in through her personal story and hopefully people are getting to see how we are really working to make sure that the success we had in
2020 is even more in 2024 we ran a series in 2020 that we call voting in troubl times talk about trouble times now I am going to invite the people on this call to see our brand new donation platform I literally added it to the website um right before this meeting if
You want to donate great if you just want to look at it it is beautiful so thank you so very much for joining us tonight I know I had a good time I learned something I hope you did take care and have a wonderful wonderful evening
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