The LWVD Newsletter
May 2023 | In-Person!
Saturday, May 13, 8:45 - 11:30 a.m.
Montview Blvd. Presbyterian Church
New Speaker: Alison George, Housing Director
Colorado Department of Local Affairs
We've had a change in speaker, but continue with the theme of housing!
 Alison George is Colorado’s director of housing serving the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), Division of Housing (DOH), where she directs five housing offices: Office of Housing Finance, Office of Homeless Initiatives, Office of Rental Assistance, Office of Housing Recovery and the Office of Regulatory Oversight. Alison is a dedicated affordable housing expert with extensive experience successfully managing staff and programs responding to the diverse housing needs of Coloradans from creative solutions for people faced with homelessness to homeownership programs aimed at growing generational wealth.
Alison brings more than 25 years of experience in affordable housing finance and development. Before joining DOH, Alison served Mercy Housing Colorado as its Regional Vice President of Multifamily Housing and the Michaels Development Company as its Vice President of Development overseeing housing development in Colorado, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
We've asked Alison for insights drawn from her background and the work of the Housing Division, particularly in its role in addressing the housing crisis in Denver and the Metro area. As the legislative session ends days before Annual Meeting, we hope she will be able to share insights on the outcome for housing and the Governor’s initiatives.
The business part of the meeting will follow our speaker, including approval of the 2023-24 budget and approval of the new slate of officers (see the nomination report below).
A copy of the Annual Meeting Booklet will be emailed to all members before the meeting.
We also celebrate fellow Leaguers with the Marty Sloven Mother Lode award for a member who has made a major contribution this year and the Shirley Weaver Suffragist Lifetime Achievement Award for a member who has served Denver League well over many years.
We're in person for the first time since 2019! Come meet your fellow Leaguers. We'll also have a free Continental Breakfast courtesy of Marge Fisch!
Please register for the meeting by Wednesday, May 10.
Register Here
Barbara Allen Ford, Co-Director Program
| Nominating Committee Report
Nominating Committee: Frank Bennett, Chair; Bobbie Heisterkamp, Sally Augden, Carla Bennett.
The Nominating Committee had a challenging task this year with numerous positions to fill and a continuing struggle to find a capable candidate to fill the Director of Organization position. We were not successful in finding candidates for all the positions, but we believe that the new members of the Board will be valuable additions to the Board. We welcome any additional nominations at the Annual Meeting. Please contact Frank Bennett at 303-757-2930 or FrankBennett65@gmail.com, if you plan to make such a nomination.
Positions to be filled:
Director of Organization: Still Vacant
Co-Director of Program: Still Vacant
Co-Director of Communications: Pearlanne Zelarney
Secretary: Marty Sloven
Co-Chairs of Voter Service: Lisa Haddox; one position vacant
Chair of Membership: Cassandra Bishop
Chair of Development: Vacant
Voter Editor: Pearlanne Zelarney
Member at Large: Holley Murphy
Continuing Board Members:
Co-Director of Program: Sue Stark
Co-Director of Communications: Frank Bennett
Treasurer: Bobbie Heisterkamp
Terry Cookro, Unit Organization: Terry Cookro
Technology Coordinator: Andrea Mitchell
Member-at-Large: Chris Humphries
Gratitude to the following people who have completed their terms and are leaving the Board:
Co-Director of Program: Barbara Allen Ford
Co-Director of Communications: Elsie Haley
Co-Chair of Voter Service: Jeanette Scotland
Anne Duncan, Co-Chair of Voter Service: Anne Duncan
Member-at-Large: Marge Fisch
|
LWV DENVER’S 2023 FLOWER BULB SALE
NOW THROUGH JUNE 23, 2023!
This is LWV Denver’s premiere fundraiser. Success depends on each of us!
Let your neighbors, friends and relatives know about the Bulb Sale!
- Email or text the link below to your friends and contacts. Using the link, they’ll see color photos of all the beautiful flower products available. It’s easy to place a direct online order, but they can also print the order form, complete it manually and send it with a check to the LWV Denver office.
Flower Bulb Sale
- Contact Marty Sloven (msloven25@aol.com, 303.333.3148) for an actual Bulb Sale Packet to circulate to your neighbors, your book club, your choir, your gardening group, etc. The Packet contains beautiful pictures of tulips, daffodils, crocus and indoor forcing bulbs plus an order form for each buyer and a form for you to record sales. Orders are due in the LWV Denver Office or back to Marty by June 23. You may also pick up at packet at Annual Meeting.
- Give the gift of bulbs! Leaguer Sally Augden especially suggests giving indoor forcing bulbs – narcissus and amaryllis – to friends living in apartments and condos. Sally notes that she then gets photos of her friends’ beautiful blooms!
Why are Roger and I part of this sale? Because LWV Denver must have funding to continue its work! We know the League of Women Voters is a critical part of maintaining and strengthening Democracy. The League is valued for its ongoing non-partisan work, public information and education, and highly effective action and advocacy. The League is a grassroots nonprofit whose support comes from members and the community. If we want our League to be strong, we need to be strong supporters. Fundraising and sales (even though we Leaguers aren’t salespeople at heart) are part of that support.
We’ll place our bulb order online. We’ll also email the link above to our Denver area contacts. And we’ll get a Bulb Sale Packet from Marty Sloven and circulate it to our neighbors and groups we’re part of. Packets are also available in the office. Every effort we all make will result in a successful bulb sale and generate funding for LWV Denver.
PLEASE JOIN US in this important work and support the League that we all value.
Barb and Roger Mattison, LWV Denver 2023 Bulb Sale Committee | Calling All Delegates
The LWV Colorado Annual Meeting is Friday, May 19 (4:00 - 8:00 p.m.) and Saturday, May 20th (9:00 a.m. -12:00 p.m.) via Zoom. The Denver League is allowed to send ten voting delegates to this meeting, and we hope you will consider volunteering to attend and learn about all of the activities the state League is sponsoring. The LWV Denver will pay your $5 delegate fee, if you wish.
Please email Bobbie Heisterkamp if you would like to represent our local League: bdheistkmp@aol.com | Board Member Highlight
Anne Duncan
Voter Service Co-Chair
Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of articles highlighting Board members. We thought you’d like to know a little more about their backgrounds and what League means to them. We’ve also asked them for recommendations on books, movies, or activities.
 I’m fairly new to the League; I joined in 2016 after moving to Denver – and after participation in a caucus convinced me that I needed to learn about local issues and candidates. While I had never been a member, my grandmother was active for many years, so I was familiar with the organization and its approach. I had a feeling that I would find a congenial group of people as well as information; I was right.
Voter Service has taken a lot of my time for the last several years, but I always have at least one book going. I love mysteries and historical fiction. I’ve recently enjoyed two series of books about lawyers in Tudor England by authors who know the history: C.J. Sansom and A. D. Swanston are the authors. I’m in an online film group with friends from Chicago who are now scattered across the country. We watch movies that will never make it to the multiplex but which inspire great conversations, and of course we catch up on what’s going on. As a former history major, I still enjoy learning about the past, whether by listening to Heather Cox Richardson’s online talks or by visiting historic sites. I travel whenever I get the opportunity. I enjoy watching the birds that are attracted to my feeders. And of course I follow politics and public policy.
I grew up in the West: Oklahoma, California, Texas. Because my father worked for an oil company we moved regularly until his death when I was fifteen. My mother moved us – my three younger brothers and me – back to Tulsa then to be close to her parents, so I was there for my last three years of high school before going off to Grinnell College. After graduation I landed in Chicago, where I did research in the history of social welfare policy for a professor in the University of Chicago social work school. I went back to school for a library science degree and worked in public libraries, then at a private PK-12 school. Along the way I was married, had a daughter, and divorced. I moved to Denver after I retired to be closer to family. My mother was then still living in Santa Fe, and my daughter and grandkids (and my very nice son-in-law) are in Denver. I’ve really enjoyed seeing them all more than a couple of times a year. | Recent Advocacy - RCV
At the 2020 Annual Meeting, our general membership voted to approve a Ranked-Choice Voting Resolution after a number of briefings on the topic:
Ranked-Choice Voting Resolution (RCV) – 2020
Whereas: The League of Women Voters of Colorado (LWVCO) and the League of Women Voters of the United States (LWVUS) have a position regarding voting methods, and this position supports authorizing and implementing alternatives to plurality voting that improve the election experience, encourage honest voting, and consider ease of implementation, and
Whereas: Ranked Choice Voting discourages strategic voting and encourages honest voting, and
Whereas: The use of mailed ballots with an extended window for voting should be encouraged and the most recent 2020 plurality voting system used in the primary election for president disenfranchised some early mail-in voters when their candidate dropped out, and Ranked-Choice Voting would not have disenfranchised those voters, and
Whereas: The current system of voting in Denver municipal elections, such as the election of mayor in 2019, resulted in an expensive run-off which could have been decided on election day if RCV had been in place, and
Whereas: Since participation in run-off elections is typically less than in the general election, a candidate selected using RCV will have a higher vote total than they would have had in a run-off, and
Whereas: The campaign for Making Democracy Work emphasizes improving elections, and RCV would ensure the voter that they would have more choice and more voice in the outcome, and
Whereas: The Office of Clerk and Recorder has confirmed that they have the necessary equipment that would ease the implementation of RCV, and
Therefore: May it Be Resolved That: The 2020 Annual Meeting of the League of Women Voters of Denver reaffirm the position that supports authorizing and implementing alternatives to plurality voting and urges the Denver City Council to take the necessary steps to implement RCV for use in all municipal elections.
As City Council subsequently did not act on voting alternatives and this spring's municipal election had perhaps the largest number of candidates ever resulting in multiple run-off elections, the LWV Denver Board of Directors voted to send this letter to the Denver Post and the City Council. You can find the letter in the Denver Post here and below.
To refresh our understanding of RCV, Denver's Program Committee is planning another briefing in the fall.
Letter to the Editor
We Could Have Chosen Our Mayor By Now
The League of Women Voters of Denver urges the Denver City Council to propose a change in the charter to allow for alternative voting methods – preferably ranked choice voting.
Our recent mayoral election offered voters a long and diverse list of candidates from which to select a mayor. As predicted, using our current voting system for mayor, which requires a majority vote for the winning candidate, the election necessitated a costly runoff election to select the mayor.
There are alternative voting methods that would improve Denver voters’ ability to identify and elect their preferred candidate. After in-depth study, the League of Women Voters of Denver developed a position in favor of offering alternative voting methods, including Ranked Choice Voting (also known as “instant runoff” voting), in appropriate situations. Ranked Choice Voting is an alternative voting method that has been implemented successfully in Alaska and Maine and a dozen municipalities, including New York City, to streamline the voting process, improve voter choice, and reduce costs.
In a Ranked Choice Voting system, the voter can rank all or some of the candidates on the ballot. The subsequent processing of the ballots determines the preferred candidate based on individual rankings of the candidates. The Ranked Choice system does not guarantee that the resulting winner receives a majority of the votes; however, it does assure that the individual who is elected is the preferred candidate.
Elsie Haley and Frank Bennett, Co-Directors of Communication League of Women Voters of Denver
| Alternative Voting Methods - Want to Learn More or Continue Advocating?
Did you know that LWVCO has an Alternative Voting Methods Task Force where we have been discussing RCV and other voting methods? The group has been meeting monthly. It’s a great forum to ask questions and learn about the options out there. As League members, our purpose is to encourage informed and active participation in government. No doubt other good voting methods, besides the two forms of RCV proposed for Denver, will come up in a discussion of election reform:
- Instant-Runoff Voting for the single-seat contests
- Proportional RCV (aka Single Transferable Vote) for the 2-winner council contest
If Denver is considering changing its elections, should it also consider having proportional representation (PR) for all of its council seats? PR leads to more diverse representation. For example, Denver is a Democratic-dominant city, but with enough seats elected using a proportional voting method, there could be a Republican voice on the Denver Council. Lots of good topics to discuss.
The Denver elections would be a great topic for the Alternative Voting Methods Task Force to explore at one or more of its monthly meetings. We would love to have more people from the Denver League join our Task Force.
The Alt VM Task Force webpage is at lwvcolorado.org > Advocacy > Alternative Voting Methods. We’ll be adding more information about our past and future meetings on the website in the near future.
You can register for the Alternative Voting Methods Task Force through the state league calendar. Next meeting is in May. Hope to see some of you there!
Maud Naroll (she/they) | We're Voting Again!
Denver Decides Can Help
Municipal Runoff Election ballots begin to drop on May 15 and need to be returned by Tuesday, June 6. The ballot will contain races in which candidates did not receive more than 50 percent of the vote in the general election. Candidates who received the highest and second-highest number of votes in their respective races will appear on the ballot. This includes Mayor and Council Districts 7, 8, 9, and 10.
Nick Campion, one of the runoff election Candidates for Council District 7, has decided to drop out of the race. His name will still appear on the Runoff Ballot and any votes for him will be recorded as an under vote. Flor Alvidrez, the other runoff Candidate for CD-7, will not be declared the official winner of that race until the Runoff Ballot is certified in June.
With our partners Denver Channel 8 and Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation (INC), Denver Decides will be holding forums with a Lincoln-Douglas debate format on May 10 and May 15. It will also include questions from the League and INC. If you have questions that you would like to have answered by the candidates, forward them to the office at info@lwvdenver.org.
The Candidate Forums will be live face-to-face events moderated by Denver 7’s Russell Haythorn or Micah Smith. They will be available to the public via Denver8.TV, Denver’s municipal cable television station; Denver 7’s News On-Demand online service; online on the Denver Decides website (www.DenverDecides.org); Comcast Channel 880; and live on Facebook (CityandCountyofDenver).
| LWV Denver Units
A great place for meaningful conversations (and fun ones too!)
Units meet after each briefing in members’ homes or local public places to get to know one another personally and discuss in greater depth the most recent briefing topic. Geographic designations are not rigid; come when you can!
- Cheesman (Central) has a potluck scheduled for Friday, June 2 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Marge Fisch's Party room. All members and potential members are invited to this social gathering with a big outdoor patio. Just bring a main dish, side dish or dessert. Cheesman normally meet on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month at 9:30 a.m., but had their last regular meeting April 25. The leader is Bobbie Heisterkamp (303-333-6818, bdheistkmp@aol.com).
- Cherrington (Northeast) will hold their annual potluck on Thursday, May 18, 12:00 at the home of Marty Sloven. Guests are welcome. Contact Peg Oldham at 720-220-3988 for additional information. Regularly scheduled meetings will resume in September.The leader is Peg Oldham (720-220-3988, hamnpeg@msn.com).
- Highland/Woodbury (Northwest) will meet again in the fall on the 3rd Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. The leader is Sally Augden (303-455-5800, saugden2@comcast.net).
- Observatory (South-Central) plans to have a potluck in the summer and will resume meeting in the fall on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom. The Leader is Jeanette Scotland (303-479-4368, jscotland@gmail.com).
| Welcome New Members
Sharon Mahoney, zip code 80247, mahoney_sharon@comcast.net
Holley Murphy, zip code 80220, hmurphy@lwv.org
| Summer Office Hours
As usual, office hours will be limited this summer. Fran will be in the office two days a week. Look for more details on hours soon. | Please Renew Your Membership or
Become a Member
If you received this email and are not a member, please consider joining us. If it's time to renew your membership, consider doing it online.
Follow this link to join or renew at one of our membership levels and remember that it covers Denver, Colorado and National membership. Also, please consider renewing at the sustaining membership level. Membership dues are tax deductible.
| Regular Individual Membership |
$60 |
| Sustaining membership (includes an additional donation) |
$125 |
Two regular members at the same address
|
$90 |
| Two sustaining members at the same address (includes an additional donation) |
$150 |
Member needing assistance with paying dues
|
$5 |
| Part or full-time student |
$10 |
Members: Forward this VOTER and encourage your friends and neighbors to join! | Consider a Sustaining Membership
We appreciate all those who pay $60 to be a member. However, the LWV Denver can only keep $8 of that $60 and the rest goes to Per Member Payments to the LWVCO and LWVUS. For those who are able, think about paying a sustaining $125 membership that gives the LWV Denver $73 to use for our education activities, to support our office and to continue our voter service resources for the city of Denver. Thank you!
| | www.LWVDenver.org
info@LWVDenver.org | | 1980 Dahlia Street, Denver, CO 80220
303-321-7571 | | | |