Dallas Votes!

Dallas County has never really had a coordinated voter registration and education effort. Groups such as the League of Women Voters have done drives, as have the political parties, MegaVoto, etc. What we have never really done is a consistent year in year out coordinated effort to identify groups to be registered and to get organizations to consistently work with those target voters to get them involved.

I have started up a web site for the Dallas Votes! coalition. I am actively recruiting organizations to join up to work with us and the Dallas County Elections department to register 30,000 voters here in Dallas.

http://www.dallas-votes.org

District Conventions and Democratic Primary Runoffs

District conventions will be held on March 29th. Locations are yet to be determined since our normal venues aren't big enough to hold the expected number of delegates this year. In addition, we will need a large number of volunteers to help hold the conventions.

As a reminder, even though the district conventions will be over on March 29th, the primaries are not complete until the runoff election is held on April 9th. We will need poll workers for this election. It will be a low turnout election, so this will be a good chance to train new clerks for the November general election.

As always, the most current information is available at the Dallas County Democratic Party's web site.

Candidate forum--Sunset HS, 2/27/08

The debate team at Sunset HS and the North Oak Cliff Democrats are organizing a candidate forum for the following Democratic primary races:

32nd Congressional District
Dallas County Sheriff
Dallas County Tax Assessor-Collector

The forum will be held at Sunset HS on Jefferson in Oak Cliff. It's 1 block east of Hampton Rd. in Dallas. It will run from 6-9PM and be held in the auditorium.

More details to follow.

Campaign organizer training in Dallas

Good news!

Democracy for America's training team is coming to Dallas to hold a weekend long training session on political organizing. It will be held March 15-16 9AM-6pm at Townview Magnet Center. Townview is located at 8th and IH-35 just south of downtown Dallas.

Topics include:
voter identification
campaign planning
campaign finance
canvassing
phone banking
media and messaging

To register and for more information: http://www.dfalink.com/event.php?id=26529

People Empowerment Project--Volunteers Wanted!

Government Belongs to Us!

A Civics Project to Encourage Youth Voting

The People Empowerment Project (PEP) is seeking volunteers to work with student council programs. PEP is working with Dallas County Elections, Dallas ISD, Lancaster ISD, and the Dallas CAN! Academy to teach kids civics through participation in their own school’s student council. We need volunteers to work with the kids in schools all over Dallas County.

Help us and the student council sponsors teach:

• Government structure
• How to run a campaign
• How to vote and conduct elections
• Public speaking
• Developing legislation
• Meeting with elected officials

Volunteers should expect to spend about 70-100 hours during the school year helping the student council program. Volunteers will be trained and assisted by the PEP staff.

• 3 hour Orientation training session
• Training session with students – average 2 hours in August/early September
• Election day - one full day at the school, possibly including picking up/returning materials to the Eelection Dept – mid-September
• Issue surveys – a full day at school in October
• Attending Student Council meetings (especially first three) – time frame varies at each school but duration of meeting is usually 2 hours – Sept/Oct
• End of year meetings/spring election – four to eight hours April/May

For more information, please contact Suzanne Hickman suzannezhickman@aol.com or call the office.

Location: People Empowerment Project

4301 Bryan Street, Suite 120

Dallas TX 75146

214-824-3107

Please, help us make a difference in a kid’s life. Call and volunteer.