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Council Member Stevens criticizes CFB's voter education approach
3:31:52
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159 sec
Council Member Althea V. Stevens criticizes the Campaign Finance Board's (CFB) approach to voter education, particularly regarding ranked choice voting. She expresses frustration with the lack of consistent outreach over the past four years.
- Stevens argues that education should have been ongoing, not just in the weeks before an election
- She highlights the risk of further disengaging already disenfranchised communities
- CFB representatives attempt to explain their rationale for timing voter education efforts
- The discussion reveals tensions between avoiding voter confusion and providing consistent education
Althea V. Stevens
3:31:52
And I just and I just want to stop you just a little bit to because before you continue and I'll let you finish your thought, but I just want to say like yes we understand that like trying to have things at the top of people's mind is important, but that did not mean that we should not have used the last four years to be doing outreach so it can be more familiar.
3:32:08
And so it's one of those things where we know that this is new, it's still a nuance, and we also know that we had other elections that don't have ranked choice voting.
3:32:19
Yes.
3:32:19
So understand the confusion and so understand my frustration when you already have communities that already are disenfranchised with voting and already feel not a part of the system and we have not been consistently hammering them around this process, and so to me it feels and looks like we're continuously disengaging communities who already are struggling, And so if we have a high number of ballots being rejected, we should have used the last four years to do education and not just the last six weeks.
3:32:52
All these things could exist.
3:32:54
We could do the last six weeks, but we could have also been doing the last four years so people could have a better understanding of what this is.
3:34:11
So I have a couple more questions.
3:34:13
Do you have a list of the in person events that you've been hosting specifically in The Bronx?
3:34:17
I
3:34:23
And how continuously are they?
3:34:24
Do you have them like monthly?
3:34:25
Like what what I would would love more like details because it seems very high level.
Amanda Melillo
3:33:02
One thing I just will say at the top is I would never want to seem like we're disenfranchising any community, and I know our staff that do this work day in and day out would not, they also feel the same.
3:33:15
One thing we have found and I would love to talk further, probably not in this venue, about how to best balance voter education and avoiding voter confusion.
3:33:26
Because one thing that we have found is that when we're talking about ranked choice voting around elections that do not use ranked choice voting, it increases voter confusion.
3:33:35
So that's part of the reason why we try to cabinet to the election that's in front of us for when we will actually be using it.
3:33:44
Because we have heard from voters.
3:33:47
I went to the polls and it was maybe a state race and I thought we'd have ranked choice voting and we didn't.
3:33:52
What's going on?
3:33:53
So we're always trying to find some ways to ensure that we're giving voters the information they need at the time that they need it, without adding to the confusion or compounding the confusion because we use different systems all the time.
3:34:18
don't have that with me at this time, but we'll follow-up with you after this and get you that list.