INDIVISIBLE Lambertville NJ / New Hope PA

Author: Indivisible Lambertville / New Hope

  • Beyond Poll Working: How to Assist the Mail-in Voting Process

    Contributed by Michelle Harris.

    Among other responsibilities related to the operation of district polling places on election day, the Board of Elections is responsible for the hiring, education and assignment of approximately 500 poll workers. Due to health safety concerns related to the ongoing pandemic, the number of polling stations open this year for in-person voting will be reduced. In turn, fewer traditional poll worker positions will need to be staffed. This reduction in election day staffing combined with the return of a robust number of experienced poll workers and high interest already expressed by new applicants, the Board of Elections stopped accepting Poll Worker applications as of September 1, 2020. 

    If you have already submitted an application but have not heard back yet, you may still as specific activity staffing is ongoing and late day substitutes are sometimes called on to backfill for people who have conflicts arise and need to bow out. Also be prepared for the possibility that Board staff may call indicating that traditional roles are filled and asking you to consider filling an alternate role. Keep an open mind as these roles are great ways to support voting operations and gain a unique view into the process from the inside. Two examples of these opportunities:

    • Ballot strippers are particularly in-demand during an election year with record numbers of mail-in ballots expected. Strippers are handed trays of ballots that have already been removed from the outer envelopes. Their sole task is to tear off the signed flap on the inner envelope, taking care to arrange the two newly separated parts in identical order. If you are an organizer, piler, tick-and-tier by nature, this role is for you. 
    • Runners hand carry trays of ballots from one step in the mail-in ballot processing queue to another including, for example, taking the “stripped” inner envelopes from the stripping room to another room where the inner envelopes are opened and the ballots are scanned. Especially in comparison to ballot strippers and other roles, runners are quite literally marathoners. And did I mention that stairs – many stairs – are involved? Supporting the election process and getting in a good workout… surely that is a win-win. 

    It also remains a possibility that additional hands may be required for opening outer envelopes and separating outer from inner envelopes prior to election day. Passage of New Jersey Senate bill S-2819 would allow New Jersey counties to start this mail-in ballots process up to five days before the election. This measure, one of several that lawmakers are considering to make sure that votes count, would help to count the large number of anticipated mail-in ballots in a timely manner.  

    Every Vote Matters, But Only If It Can Be Counted

    If working the polls is not your gig, or opportunities with the county are all filled for this election, you can support the election process by making sure that your mail-in vote counts: 

    1. Machine voting (remember that?) prevents a voter from selecting too many candidates for a particular office. For example, if two candidates are running against each other for office, the voting machine prevents the voter from selecting both candidates. If a mail-in voter chooses two candidates for a single office, neither vote can be counted. Read the instructions for each question carefully and select only the number of candidates allowed to be chosen for each office. 
    1. All mail-in ballot signatures are verified against those in records at the Board of Elections. Signatures on file may have come from a paper voter registration form, the NJ Motor Vehicles Commission, party change forms or other forms completed in the course of doing business with the County Clerk’s office. Signatures change over time. The signature on your ballot must reasonably match the one on file with the County. If you are not certain which signature is on file for you, you may contact the Board of Elections for guidance on how to confirm your signature.
    1. Remember to sign the inner ballot envelope. If a ballot arrives with no signature, or if the County Clerk identifies a concern or question about the signature that they have on file for you, the ballot will be set aside and the Board of Elections will mail the voter a Signature Cure Form in an attempt to obtain verifiable signature. If the completed Signature Cure Form is not received by the Board of Elections by the deadline identified by the county, the vote cannot be counted. 
    1. Do not use your mail-in ballot as a coffee coaster or in lieu of a post-it. Stains, tears or stray marks outside of the areas where you are instructed to complete or sign could disqualify it. Return your ballot in clean crisp condition to ensure that it can be counted. 
    1. If you make an error while completing your ballot, ask our local election officials what to do. Rather than have you fix the original ballot, they may advise you to start with a new ballot and help you to get one. 
    1. Finally, before mailing your ballot or dropping it off at one of twelve (12) vote-by-mail drop boxes located throughout Hunterdon County, check and double check that put your ballot in the inner envelope, then the inner envelope in the outer envelope. The Board of Elections staff can’t count votes that they don’t receive. 

    In the coming weeks, the Hunterdon County Clerk is sending postcards to better engage and inform those who may not be click-savvy, engaged in social media, or have access to online information regarding the election and voting process. If you are confident that you are informed and well-prepared to cast your own ballot, you can support the county’s efforts to spread the word and help ensure that an even wider circle successfully engages in the voting process. Make your know-how available to others. Support the vote, get out the vote, and vote (once ;-))!

  • Labor Day Look Ahead: Considerations for the Securing the New Workplace

    Contributed by Cindi Sternfeld.

    Each year, our nation honors the Labor Movement in the United States on Labor Day. The pandemic has put a new spin on our Labor Day tradition as many are still home, waiting for jobs and schools to be able to open safely. This year, in addition to looking back and recognizing hard won labor rights, perhaps the way we can honor the Labor Movement of the 20th Century is to look ahead and see how we can prepare, serve and protect our 21st century American workforce today, tomorrow and for the long term.  

    In some ways, our culture has been preparing for these changes for decades. Many of us still remember when the first computers arrived at our workplaces. Big and clunky, computers offered an easier way to organize, manage and share our information. Fax machines let us send documents around the world in seconds and pagers enabled bosses to reach us even when we were not at our desks. Email and online messaging let us communicate with colleagues faster and more efficiently. The workplace transformation began carrying over into our personal lives. Technology, like a slowly rising tide, brought us new ways to do our old tasks at work and at home.   

    Covid turned that slowly rising tide of technology into a tsunami. The ease of any person’s transition to this brave new digital world is in some part determined by access to fairly new computers, a workspace, privacy and high speed internet.  In addition, how effectively people were able to adapt to working and living in a digital world is somewhat dependent on our ability to meet the personal social and emotional needs that emerged as we sheltered in place for quarantine.  

    If we had our basic technology needs met, in short order we learned Zoom and other new communication and record keeping platforms. In just a few weeks, many of us were working from home as our kids were learning from home.  We had doctor appointments, did our taxes, purchased groceries, planned virtual happy hours and even went on blind dates – all from the comfort of our homes.  

    Here’s the thing: the workforce was impacted in different ways by different variables, and while a supervisor can anticipate certain physical or resource needs, they never needed to understand what kind of technology and skills were available at home and away from the workplace. 

    The impact of Covid-19 on the workforce cannot be understated. While nearly every workplace in the world had to change aspects of how work was accomplished, what is probably most remarkable is how quickly the changes were implemented.  After a brief work pause, professionals from all disciplines quickly changed to online, digital platforms. 

    As we enter the seventh month of the Covid-19 pandemic we are just beginning to assess the long and short term impacts it has had, and will continue to have on our country and our world. We marshalled individual and collective resources to learn new technologies, new ways of connecting and supporting each other. We quickly discovered that people who had less before the pandemic suffered much greater losses than people who had more,  and we can only imagine what those losses will look like in months and years from now. It is important to note here that just as the health consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic have disproportionately affected Black, brown and indigenous people, these communities have also sustained the greatest losses in employment.  

    There’s profound irony in that even as we celebrate the rich history of our country’s Labor Movement, we are bearing witness to record unemployment. Further, many of the jobs that fueled our economy and provided opportunities to build new American dreams – many of those jobs are not coming back and others will never be the same again.  The reasons for these new realities are varied.  

    There are basic changes and challenges that the pandemic has obviated, including  re-configured work places that enable people to keep working and still maintain safe social distance. For some jobs, this means enabling employees with longer-term work from home technology, skills and support. But, for others, a different solution is necessary.

    Those who can only work at brick and mortar workspaces require employer-provided personal protective equipment (PPE) and the ability to maintain safe, social distance. Their physical workspace must have better and more frequent cleaning protocols, temperature screenings and testing/tracing programs. These changes also require employers to reconsider the layout of their physical locations, additional workshifts, and new ways of meeting and supervising work. All of this adds training and workplace policy changes to the list of changes to be made, plus the cost of implementing and sustaining necessary changes.  

    Working from home requires equipment and high-speed, broadband internet.  It requires a space to work. For some jobs, that space must also afford quiet, uninterrupted time.  If we carry this to the logical conclusion, we have to wonder, how can a parent work and also support their child’s at-home learning? Is there sufficient bandwidth to have two or more people video-streaming at the same time? Does the home have work spaces for everyone to do the work? Can a parent help their child attend school and do their job at the same time?  If they cannot, will the employer allow the worker to do their work after the kids go to bed?  All of these are new questions that Covid has required us to answer.  

    Some jobs, such as those in the entertainment and hospitality industries have been put on pause and when they return, will likely look very different and will be newly imagined with increased reliance on digital platforms in order to reduce both health risk to employees and consumers and liability for businesses.  

    Looking forward, how will the workforce itself change? What new skills and tools will be needed to reopen the economy and get people back to work? What policy positions and budget changes will businesses and governments have to enact?  

    According to Andrew Stettner of the Century Foundation and Katie Spiker of the National Skills Coalition, “Companies that adopt new technology can empower more social distancing necessary to fight the spread of Covid-19 and will gain a competitive advantage that will be the foundation of how our workplaces change moving forward.”  Struggling companies will have to make investments in order to be attractive to workers who bring high level or specialized skills . 

    The shift of people moving from office spaces to home workspaces, will have a long term impact on real estate, building maintenance, retail and restaurant business, and all of the businesses that have evolved to support businesses that employ Americans. As these jobs have evaporated, as people have been sent home and the support needed to get them back into the workforce has been largely non-existent.  

    Workers will need retraining to become skillful in the use of new technologies to keep the jobs they’ve had and to find new work when they’ve become unemployed. Training costs money.  People who have lost jobs still have bills to pay and families to feed. The country will need a comprehensive re-employment plan and social safety net programs and policies that will support workers in transition.   

    The National Skills Coalition has outlined policy recommendations in their publication, “Digital Skills for An Equitable Recovery; Policy recommendations to address the digital skill needs of workers most vulnerable to displacement” by Molly Bashay (July, 2020)  These recommendations include building and funding systems that will assess and improve digital literacy, helping people to up-skill and to re-skill to prepare for increased workplace and consumer reliance on digital platforms.  The goal of digital upskilling will require universal access to broadband internet and access to personal devices with updated software.   

    Specific policy recommendations from the National Skills Coalition include:

    • Congress should invest in partnerships between industry and education providers to inform education providers of employer needs, scale employer-based upskilling best practices, and better address worker and employer labor market needs at the local and regional level
    • Congress should expand investment in the Higher Education Act and in Perkins V, including additional technical assistance as necessary, to expand access to blended learning opportunities and proven digital skills training models in community college settings. 
    • State policy makers should create or revise state strategic plans to include digital literacy goals that align with their governor’s post secondary credentialing campaign or other educational attainment taskforce strategies and metrics.

    As individuals, employers and activists prepare to emerge from the pandemic we will need to rethink both what we do and how we will do it.  In order to be ready for this moment, we must set our actions toward learning about the current needs and toward advocacy to put into place the resources that will support the economic recovery that the country needs. 

    Sources

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/covid-homeworking-symptom-of-changing-face-of-workforce-management/

    https://m.nationalskillscoalition.org/covid19

  • A Measure of Value: Labor Day,  Unions and Minimum Wage

    Contributed by Sarah Gold.

    It’s Labor Day! You may have seen the bumper stickers – Unions: The Folks Who Brought You the Weekend. Historically, unions have pushed for safer working conditions and better pay. This has had real life impacts: union workers have a $1.24 per hour wage premium compared to non-union workers. The wage premium is even higher for Black and Hispanic workers: $2.60 and $3.44, respectively. 

    Despite of the importance of unions, however, union membership has dropped significantly over the last several decades, from about 20% in the early 1980s to just over 10% today, in part due to states adopting “right to work” laws that permit workers to work in unionized workplaces without paying union dues, weakening union strength.

    Simultaneously, the real value of the minimum wage has decreased over time. In 1960, the minimum wage was worth 46% of the national median wage for full-time workers. Today, it’s worth about a third of the median wage. More concretely, in 1960, when the minimum wage was adopted, it was worth $8.65 in today’s dollars while today’s federal minimum wage is $7.25. 

    While some states and municipalities have raised their minimum wages, there is currently no state in which a full-time minimum wage worker can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment; childcare costs are similarly daunting and cost nearly as much as in-state college tuition. The minimum wage is not a living wage (try this activity from the New York Times and see if you could live on the minimum wage).

    The federal minimum wage has not been increased in over a decade. Biden and Harris are committed to raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and encouraging and incentivizing unionization and collective bargaining. Beyond simply raising the minimum wage, the Biden-Harris Administration would also expand eligibility to include workers who are currently excluded from minimum wage laws (like farmworkers and domestic workers), addressing the systemic racism currently embedded in our minimum wage laws.

  • Conventions Underscore Divisions as Both Parties Reach for Our “Better Angels”

    Contributed by Amara Willey.

    I recently received an email from the Biden-Harris campaign that was purportedly from Yo Yo Ma. The email said a lot of what recent emails from the Democratic campaign typically contain, “We are in a battle for the soul of the nation. It’s a battle to uphold and honor the values that we hold dear, values like empathy and dignity, and respect for truth.” You may have received an email containing a similar message recently. 

    The campaign landscape in the last few months has been a tug-of-war over who might be better at keeping the country safe, former Vice President Joe Biden or President Donald Trump, culminating in the two parties’ conventions at the end of August. Biden has focused on the president’s handling of COVID-19, while Trump has blamed Biden and “liberals” for the violent protests around the country. 

    At the end of August during a rare in-person appearance in Pittsburgh, Biden turned from his usual focus on the “soul of the nation,” by saying that Trump has been a “toxic presence in this nation for four years” who was “poisoning the values this nation has always held dear, poisoning our very democracy.”

    Both Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have used the phrase “battle for the soul of the nation” repeatedly since Trump took office. Biden first used the phrase in 2017 and Harris in January of 2019.

    Spencer Critchley, who worked on former President Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, noted the use of the phrase by both Biden and Harris was “not a surprising coincidence, because I think whether people use that specific language or not, the exact same thought has occurred to so many of us across the country.”

    Critchley said in USA Today that Democratic candidates, such as Hillary Clinton, can often focus too much on analytical arguments and policy details. Speaking about the country’s soul is an effective way to speak to the “non-rational” part of voters’ minds. 

    “There is more to life than reason, and people are not motivated by data. They are motivated by matters of the heart and the soul,” Critchley said. 

    Democratic strategist and columnist Michael Gordon said the use of such similar language from the two candidates shows “they both see this election as about the fundamental values that Americans hold, and the fundamental values that our country lives by.”

    Gordon said framing the election as a fight for America’s soul can persuade independent voters who are wary of Trump and motivate progressive Democrats who may view Biden as too moderate. 

    “People are just looking for a reason to pull the lever for this ticket. Talking about the fundamental damage that Trump has done and repairing that – and actually bring us to a better place, perhaps because of it – I think will resonate and inspire,” Gordon said. “We need to appeal to those swing suburban voters, but we also need to inspire the base to come out, and so I think it’s a theme that works for both.” 

    What exactly is at stake here? Jacob Needleman, in his book, “The American Soul,” described the soul of the country this way: “The deeper hope of America is its vision of what humanity is and can become.”

    Ernest Renan, a 19th-century French philosopher, wrote, “A nation has a soul, a spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession of a rich legacy of memories; the other is the desire to live together and to value the common heritage.”

    “Joe Biden is right, this is a contest for the soul of the nation. And to me that contest is not between good Americans and evil Americans,” South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg said to the Associated Press. “It’s the struggle to call out what is good for every American.” 

    At the Democratic convention, Biden summed up his view of the campaign: “We choose a path of becoming angry, less hopeful and more divided, a path of shadow and suspicion, or we can choose a different path and together take this chance to heal.” 

    Biden’s call for unity comes as some strategists worry that Democrats cannot retake the White House simply by tearing Trump down, that Biden needs to give his sprawling coalition something to vote for. That’s easier said than done in a modern Democratic Party made up of disparate factions that span generation, race and ideology.

    In his acceptance speech, Biden outlined the four major issues facing Americans right now – the pandemic, the economic downturn caused by it, racial unrest, and climate change. He also called on some less tangible ideas: love and hope and light.

    “If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst,” Biden said in his convention speech. “I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness.”

    The Democrats’ strategy to focus more on rhetoric and less on policy at this convention was mirrored the following week at the GOP convention. Trump has always had an uncanny knack for touching people’s emotions, and the Republicans were true to form. Politico characterized Trump’s message in the following way: “Trump is protecting all that was good — and the Democrats are on the verge of plunging America into darkness.”

    “The Trump folks seem to have leaned more on a base activation strategy than a ‘converting undecided voters’ strategy,” said Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, told Politico. “And they’re trying to get Republicans who are already Republican fired up about their ticket and make sure that they’re still enthusiastic and that they’re going to show up in November.”

    Donald Trump Jr. focused on making the election a referendum on “cancel culture.” He said at the convention, “If they get their way, it will no longer be the silent majority. It will be the silenced majority. This has to stop. Freedom of expression used to be a liberal value, at least before the radical left took over.”

    Trump Jr. entreated Republicans to believe the president can deliver everything they want — “the life you want to have,” “a perfect family,” “a world where the evils of communism and radical Islamic terrorism are not given a chance to spread.”

    The Republican message also calls on protecting “American heritage,” the status quo, and rugged individualism.

    “Your vote will decide whether we protect law abiding Americans, or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens,” President Trump warned in his convention speech. “And this election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.”

    A recent Brookings Institute report found that millions of white, working-class Americans without four-year college degrees — a demographic in which Trump has a 60 percent hold, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll — accounted for the vast majority of nonvoters in 2016. That finding is particularly strong in swing states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where roughly 62 to 67 percent of nonvoters who sat out 2016 were white voters without college degrees.

    “Trump’s entire convention, just like his entire presidency, is targeted toward that very specific group of voters,” said Dan Schnur, the national communications director for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, and now a political independent who teaches communications at the University of Southern California. “The more excited they are, and the greater numbers in which they turn out, the better his chances for reelection become.”

    As Trump put it, “Our country wasn’t built by cancel culture, speech codes, and soul-crushing conformity. We are not a nation of timid spirits. We are a nation of fierce, proud, and independent American patriots.”

    Over the coming months until the election, we will watch as the two main parties in the United States attempt to whip up the emotions of their constituents. Whether Americans believe that Biden or Trump is the self-proclaimed Light Bearer seems to be the strategy both parties are taking for winning the election. 

    Perhaps Boyd Mattheson, opinion editor at the Deseret News said it best. “America does have a soul and spiritual principle,” Mattheson wrote. “Remembering that such things belong to ‘we the people’ is paramount. Each of us living up to the better angels of our nature is the real test for the soul of America.”

    Whatever you may think about the Donald, he represents a portion of the American people who see his “values” as their own. It remains to be seen whether Biden can speak to the part of the American people who see the Democrats as “elite arrogant ivy-league types.”

    Sources: 

    https://apnews.com/7027ede0a6e3fbf8c1dfc6d4613cd6bd

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/13/biden-and-harris-both-see-election-fight-soul-nation/3355971001/

    https://fox8.com/news/battle-for-the-soul-of-the-nation-joe-biden-makes-his-case-as-he-accepts-the-democratic-nomination-for-president/

    https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2020/8/20/21377347/election-2020-is-not-for-the-heart-and-soul-of-america-adlai-stevenson

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/25/the-trump-maga-verse-consumes-the-rnc-401412

    https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53942272

    https://extranewsfeed.com/maga-versus-build-back-better-4fb1723ed99f

    https://apnews.com/d55cc54be76c680219cbff477deec40e

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/28/politics/republican-convention-analysis/index.html

  • Just the Facts

    Contributed by Olga Vanucci.

    • This election season so far we have sent or committed to send postcards to 33,000 voters.
    • We have logged 872 hours of GOTV volunteering so far, on a total goal for the season of 2,500 hours, with just under two months away from the election.

    Action: Be sure to log your GOTV hours here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u5p9Ypa8bJ5jC-oeTb5IOOJbiqlKbtejvFoRFM2LPoU/edit#gid=0