Projects for Local CPR Chapters

Here are a lot of projects that your chapter could adopt. You should pick two or three as special focus projects, and work on those pretty hard. To start off with, you might pick two short term and one medium term projects.

SHORT TERM

--  Get a P.O. Box. Agree on the phone number that you can use to represent your chapter.
--  Line up Buddies for your chapter
--  Get letters written to your local congressional reps to ask them to co-sponsor current bills of interest. Followup with phone calls.
--  Get PR-related books into the public libraries in the county. Get them in bookstores, too, if you can. (By the way, it is available via the web at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.)
--  Set up speaking engagements to introduce groups to PR. Once the engagment is set up, we'll help you see that it is done right.
--  Set up training programs for your leaders, members, and contacts. E.g., you could do a discussion group using Amy's book. We can provide speaker's training. We can provide training on how to administrate a choice voting election. We can provide training on how to make phone calls, how to petition, etc.
--  Do a mailing to 50-100 voters that you have phone numbers for. A few days after they have received the mailing, call them up to talk to them about PR. If they support PR, sign them up!

MEDIUM TERM

-- Strong lobbying on current bills of interest
--  What kind of voting equipment does the County use? Who is the vendor, and what is the name of the equipment? When do they plan to buy new equipment? Make sure that when the requirements for the new equipment are drawn up, it includes support for choice voting.
--  Send a questionairre on PR to every elected official in the city/county. This is good to do at election time, when people are candidates. Must be followed up with phone calls.
--  Put on a public event now and again. A speaker that will attract someone, a debate, or a topic broader than PR but that has PR on the agenda.
--  Talk about PR and IRV on college campuses and get them to use PR and IRV for their elections. Also, get campus groups (e.g. the Young Republicans or the Black Student Union) to endorse PR and IRV, and to use them if appropriate.
--  Talk about PR and IRV on high school campuses, to their civics and government classes. Also get the student governments to use PR and IRV for their elections.
--  Do outreach to Republicans, Libertarians, Reformers, and American Independent groups and individuals.
--  Do outreach to womens groups. Get group endorsements, individual endorsements, and new members.
--  Do outreach to people of color and groups of color.
--  Get local unions to endorse and use PR/IRV
--  Prepare a PR kit for media folk. Send the kits out to media folk, along with a request to meet with them. Meet with them to educate them on the importance and correctness of PR.

LONG TERM

--  Win IRV for single member elections, such as for Mayor
--  Win PR for your City Council (this is a multi-step project, of course) and or school boards
--  Find out which cities in your County are charter cities. For each city, how big is the council, school board? When are their elections? How many executive positions are elected? What are the term lengths? How big is the population? What is the breakdown by political parties? What is the ethnic breakdown? How many valid signatures would you need to get a charter ammendment on the ballot?
--  How about lobbying the city to form an official study group to study PR?
--  Collect PR pledge cards with space for people to endorse PR, and to promise how many signature they will collect for a PR petition drive, and how much money they would donate to such a campaign.

[5/25/98, Jim Lindsay]