We have also created a learner guide for today's session.

This is a research for you to extend your learning on the topic.

If you would like to explore these actions with others on your team, you can bring the guide as a resource for discussion and action steps to take together.

It's a customizable document, so feel free to make it your own if you have specific steps that you would like to take as a team.

This is a resource for you to use and take action with.

Today's session, promoting voter engagement at your library is presented by folks who come to us from every coast.

We have Kian Flynn, the geography and global studies librarian at the University of Washington.

He also chairs ALA's Government Document Round Table or GODORT.

And we also have joining us Lynda Reynolds and Lauren Clossey who come to us from the State Library of North Carolina.

And Anna Snyder works at the Wayne County Public Library in North Carolina.

And they're here to share all of their great experience and expertise helping you get your community more engaged with voting.

Welcome, Kian.

>> KIAN: As mentioned I'm Kian Flynn, the geography and global studies librarian at the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle.

And the current chair of ALA's Government Documents Round Table.

Thank you all for joining us today on this webinar on promoting voter and civic engagement in your library which will hopefully serve as a helpful lead in to national voter registration day and spark ideas for celebrating that day and other ways to promote civic engagement in your library communities.

And thank you for putting this program on and inviting me to speak on the panel.

I'll start by saying I'm an academic librarian and will be speaking today from my experience as one.

But I have tried to highlight aspects of this topic and my experiences that will be relevant to all types of librarians.

So I hope this webinar will be helpful to you, no matter what type of organization you are representing today.

I'm representing two different organizations today.

The University of Washington where we've started the democracy dogs initiative to try to encourage students on campus to get more civically engaged and GODORT where we've put a concerted effort in the last few years into creating resources and putting on events that we hope will be helpful to librarians looking to engage their communities in various civic activities.

We'll talk more about these issues later, but I want to talk about framing the problem that has motivated these different efforts.

And put simply, that problem is that many of the people in our library communities who are eligible to vote choose for a variety of reasons not to vote.

A disheartening percentage of the voting-eligible population in the U.S. does not vote in each election.

And certain demographic groups have a higher likelihood of voting or not voting.

We'll start with these top line numbers for the most recent 2020 general election and midterm election.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that general elections or ones that include a presidential race see higher turnout than midterm elections as they generally receive more media attention and general interest from the population.

And these top line numbers are actually some of the strongest voter turnouts we've seen in recent elections.

That 52.2% in 2022, was the highest turnout in a midterm election in four decades, except for the immediately following 2018 midterms.

And 66.8% was the highest turnout in a general election since the 1900 election.

Still these numbers mean even in two strong voter turnout elections that nearly half of the voting eligible population does not vote in midterm elections and a third of the voting eligible population does not vote in general elections which are facts that still shock me.

And these are the type of facts that motivate days like national voter registration day and some of the work that I've been involved in as part of ALA's GODORT and at UW in promoting civic engagement in our library communities.

It's important to understand that there's a lot of motivation underneath the surface of these top line numbers.

As we probably all know, not all demographic groups vote at the same rates.

We know that historically age is a big determinant in voting rates with younger voters being less likely to vote which is especially true in midterm elections.

Less than 28% of voters between the ages of 18 to 24 voted in the 2022 midterm election which is actually a pretty big improvement from 2018 which less than 20% of voters age 18-29 voted.

But older voters still vote at much higher rates than younger voters as we can see from these stats from the 2022 midterm elections.

A note on all of these figures I'll be showing, I'm pulling this data from the U.S. census bureau's voting and registration page which is linked to from today's learners guide which features state by state and national data on voting trends across demographic groups.

State and county election pages are also good sources of voter turnout data and can help you build the case for greater investment in civic and voter engagement programming in your communities.

I don't have a slide for this, but looking at voter turnout data from the Washington State Secretary of State page for example, I can show that while overall turnout rates in Washington State for last year's primary election were around 40%, some counties have turnout rates as high as 58%.

And other counties had turnout rates as low as 31%.

So at 27 percentage point range from the highest voting counties to the lowest voting counties.

Not surprisingly, income level influences how likely one is to vote as well.

People with higher incomes are more likely to vote than those with lower income levels as we can see from this data on this slide.

I don't have a slide for this, but education level also sees a similar disparity.

With voters with higher educational attainment voting at higher rates than those with lower educational attainment.

The census bureau data also covers how people most frequently register to vote.

And what reasons people most frequently give for not voting.

Some of which like registration problems or even lack of interest could potentially be addressed by civic engagement and awareness efforts at libraries.

One of my favorite statistical finds from these releases is that people somehow tend to be busier in midterm elections than during general elections.

We can see that while only about one in eight people list being too busy as an excuse for not voting in a general election, over one in four people who don't vote in midterms claim that their busyness  prevents them from voting.

So either twice as many people seem to be busy during midterm elections, or perhaps people prioritize midterm elections less than they do general elections which is perhaps an opportunity for libraries to increase our educational and civic engagement programming around midterm elections as well as local elections which see even lower voter participation and show our communities the importance that their votes have in these elections.

As well as general elections.

That is all just a lead in to get you to buy into why these efforts around voter registration and civic engagement still matter and why there's work to be done.

Now of course one of the most notorious groups for low voter engagement and turnout each election cycle that we hear so much about in the media are young voters.

As I mentioned earlier, less than 20% of voters between the ages of 18-29 voted in the 2014 midterm elections.

Fortunately that number has creeped up in the most recent midterm elections.

But those types of statistics were one of the findings that a group of my colleagues at the University of Washington, those staff members and students identified a need for a unified campus effort to promote civic engagement at UW.

So we joined forces to form the group Democracy Dawgs that put on civic engagement programming in the lead up to the 2020 programming and we've continued to meet quarterly since then and continue to host events on campus.

One of the most exciting things about this collaboration is going into it, each of us knew that lots of folks on campus were excited about this work and that it aligned with our University's mission and values to educate a student body to become responsible and informed citizens.

But we were all concerned before creating the group about duplicating efforts elsewhere on campus, and how we would be able to create partnerships on campus to work together in a coordinated, non-siloed way.

At UW, our Democracy Dawgs featured collaboration from the libraries, our ethnic cultural center, our community engagement and leadership center, King County Elections, our student group, and the nonpartisan and nonprofit Washington Bus whose mission is to engage young people in civic life.

Going into this collaboration, we all had our own individual plans for election-related programming.

But by collaborating, we were able to all play off each other's strengths and reach a wider audience on campus in a more thoughtful and coordinated way.

We ended up hosting presidential and vice presidential debate watch parties in 2020 which were better attended than when we had hosted them in the previous election cycle without collaborations from campus partners.

And for each election we now helped coordinate and advise on a King County's election sponsored hub on campus where students can register and vote on election day.

We coordinated with the athletics department and the Greek life community to encourage members of their communities to register and vote.

And we have a coordinated social media campaign complete with Democracy Dawgs graphics which you can see on this slide and complete with campus emails that go out to UW leadership that point to some of the resources we have created.

The library has maintained a guide with resources targeted to the UW student community.

The long-term goals of the group going forward include making voter engagement efforts institutionalized throughout campus, increasing voter registration, voting rates each year until they are at 95% and 90% respectively which is a lofty goal.

Establishing our Democracy Dawgs group as a well known coalition across campus that serves as a hub of voter and democratic engagement efforts and encouraging students to engage in civics in other ways besides just through voting, such as writing letters to representatives and other ways to be civically engaged.

As a group we have a lot of documentation on our work to date and our action plans going forward.

So if anyone is interested in taking a look at those, you're welcome to reach out to me via email and I can share some of our documentation and materials with you.

I also wanted to take some time today to talk about the efforts GODORT has made these past few years to create resources to support librarians looking to provide their communities with voting and elections information.

As librarians, one avenue that we often take when engaging with our communities is through our lib guides, and it was that that led us to create our voting and election toolkits in the lead up to the 2020 and 2022 elections.

The toolkits feature both national level voting resources and state by state information on elections and voting including state-specific information on voter ID and voter registration requirements.

One benefit of creating these toolkits in lib guides is that other librarians are able to reuse the content on their own research guides which we had about a dozen libraries take advantage of during the last election cycle using the lib guides community feature.

If you have any questions about how to do that, let me know and I would be happy to point you in the right direction for utilizing that feature.

In all the toolkits received over 20,000 views during the 2020 election cycle which was great to see that level of use.

If you're new to the toolkits, we encourage you to check them out and use content from them as needed.

We know that there are other great organizations that are focused on increasing voter registration and participation in demographic groups that have low voter participation.

And we are open to featuring these organizations and their efforts on our voting and election toolkits.

So if you see any organizations that are doing this work missing from our list, feel free to shout them out in the chat today or send me an email directly and we can see if we can include them in our toolkits.

And if you are interested in volunteering to help us keep the toolkits up to date each election cycle, we could always use volunteer support as keeping these toolkits updated has been one of the challenges of the project with all of the changes to how elections are conducted each cycle.

GODORT also sponsored an emerging leaders project that will be presented at this year's annual conference called libraries communities vote.

If you happen to be at the ALA conference in Chicago later this month, I encourage you to check out the emerging leader poster session on Friday and learn more about this effort.

There will also be information about the project on the GODORT website after the conference and next steps for how your library can utilize these templates in your outreach efforts.

Since I started with some somewhat sobering statistics on voter participation, I want to end my section of today's webinar on a more optimistic note that underscores the importance of these civic engagement efforts.

I know I referenced the low percentage of young voters who cast their ballots in elections.

But there is also a lot of positive turnout news from the most recent elections to celebrate as well.

This Washington Post article highlights not just the increase in young voter participation in the most recent general midterm elections, but also suggests that get out the vote efforts on college campuses could perhaps be behind this surge of participation.

As the article points out, when these underrepresented voting demographics head to the polls, their elected leaders tend to pay closer attention to the issues that are important to their demographic groups.

So I hope that that puts some wind in your sails as you begin to think about how you can engage with your communities this year to celebrate National Voter Registration Day.

And I hope some of the examples and resources that I've highlighted today will be helpful to you in your planning as well.

I'd be happy to take any questions.

And if you have ideas you'd like to follow up on or anymore in depth questions that you have, I encourage you to reach out to me as I'd love to chat more.

Thank you very much.

>> Fantastic.

Thank you so much, Kian.

There was one question that came through that's kind of a big one so I want to just mention it now and know that we can touch on it with our other presenters possibly.

But this might be a good thing for the GODORT team to think about too.

So there was a question about the statistics about voter participation are focused on eligibility not so much ease of access.

I don't know how much folks are talking about issues around voter registration doesn't give paid time off or reopen closed polling stations, issues around absentee ballots, all of the things that happen.

But I think the question around making it easy for those who registered but can't always vote to disabilities or work challenges.

There was a question on whether or not there is data around this issue, around most successful voting states which make it harder to vote or have limitations on absentee ballot voting.

In your guides, like you said there's a lot of information on state by state requirements.

But in terms of accessibility, it would be interesting to know if there's any research being done on that or ways to address it in the promotion that libraries do.

>> KIAN: Yeah, I don't have anything on my fingertips right now to cite.

But from the U.S. Census Bureau's voting and registration page that I mentioned earlier, I think it may have been linked in the chat.

If it wasn't, I can drop a link directly into the census bureau's page.

You could go through and state by state kind of take a look and see and compare states with lower barriers to voting to states with higher barriers to voting and see if that has an impact on those numbers.

The census bureau tracks both percent of the voting age population that is registered and the percentage of the voting age population that actually votes.

So there's some comparisons you could do at both the registration level and the voter turnout level.

You could kind of look into that and then kind of do a comparison.

I would be surprised if there hasn't been some research out there that's been done as well.

So I can take a look for that sort of research and follow up with an article that perhaps has looked at that.

>> Excellent.

That's really helpful.

And everyone please continue to share your questions.

Like I said, if you post them into chat, we'll be sure and circle around.

But let's go ahead and shift over and hear from our North Carolina State folks.

Welcome to Lynda and Lauren again.

>> LYNDA: Hello from North Carolina.

I'm Lynda Reynolds.

Together with my colleague Lauren Clossey we serve on the state library development team at North Carolina.

We're thrilled to share information about our statewide initiative to participate in National Voter Registration Day.

At the State Library of North Carolina we understand the important role that universities use in community and civic engagement.

We decided to help support libraries to become National Registration Day partners.

Many of our libraries are already serving as polling places for their communities, so it made sense to encourage libraries to participate in National Voter Registration Day.

We began our initiative in 2020 with the creation of a National Voter Registration Day toolkit that in addition to the great resources provided by the NVRD website, our toolkit has information tailored specifically to North Carolina libraries.

In addition to our toolkit, Lauren created a short promotional video encouraging libraries to become NVRD partners using a free resource that helps you create educational videos using stock cartoons, pictures, and videoclips.

Once our toolkit and promotional video was ready, we sent out invitations to all of our libraries through our social media outlets and listservs.

We learned that ALA was a partner providing a link for libraries to register to become an NVRD.

We encouraged our libraries to register.

To connect with our libraries during the first year, we held virtual planning webinars and available office hours to give guidance to partner with libraries as they planned for their event.

In 2021, we hosted a virtual kick off webinar highlighting our toolkit and the NVRD resources.

We invited libraries who participated the first year to share their experiences.

This provided a great experience for library staff both new and experienced to connect with each other.

And in 2022, we expanded our outreach with a short presentation at the public library association conference and a recorded podcast for public libraries online encouraging libraries across the nation to participate in National Voter Registration Day.

To gauge our success, we sent follow-up surveys to participating libraries to ask how many voters were registered or updated their registration, the number of social media engagements, their success stories, their challenges, and their most beneficial resources.

Many libraries reported our toolkit as one of their most valuable resources used.

So we'll take a look at our toolkit.

The first tab that shares information about National Voter Registration Day including a link to their website.

We update this page each year to include the new date which will be September 19, 2023.

And our other tabs include how North Carolina libraries can participate including the registration link, the voter registration drive process in North Carolina, North Carolina voting engagement resources, other national and nonpartisan voting resources, and links to our NVRD events such as today's webinar.

After our first year, we added specific information to our toolkit on how to conduct a voter registration drive in North Carolina and how to properly submit forms.

We now stress the importance of reaching out to local election boards which can provide forms and sometimes officials to assist on the day of the event.

This page also provides a direct link to the NVRD field organizing resources and a resource for student-led voter registration drives provided by headcount.org.

We found it was also important to include in our toolkit, voter engagement resources specific for North Carolina including how to register online, election and voter registration deadlines, county-specific election information, and resources for disability voting rights and for persons in the criminal justice system.

And now I will turn it over to Lauren.

>> LAUREN: 104 libraries in North Carolina have registered as partners for National Voter Registration Day.

And many of these partners have participated multiple years.

So our partner libraries included public, university, and community college libraries which is great.

Of those libraries that reported back to us, over 250 voters either registered or they updated their voter registration status.

And many more were able to confirm their voter registration status or just pick up voter information.

So one small library reported that they reached 113 people during their event and the libraries were also active on social media reporting 357 engagements in 2021 --

>> LYNDA: Lauren, let me interrupt you for just one moment.

I don't think the slide is advancing.

>> LAUREN: How about now?

>> LYNDA: Yes.

>> LAUREN: In 2020, National Voter Registration Day their annual report listed North Carolina as web of the top five partners -- one of the top five partners we had.

And we like to think that our state-wide initiative had a little something to do with that.

Some of our best success stories that we heard from library events included many first-time voters.

So we had a mother who brought her teen son in to register since he was now eligible to vote.

And we had a 65-year-old woman register for the first time in her life to vote.

And we also had a 40-year-old man who had never voted before.

He decided to register because he was in the library and it was convenient.

So that is awesome that they saw the library as this place that they could go to to do things they'd never done before.

We were so impressed with the creativity of our libraries, especially during the pandemic when most of these events had to be held virtually.

So some creative success stories that were shared with us included libraries creating National Voter Registration Day displays and voter registration booths.

One library had a coffee truck outside their library to draw attention to the event.

One library had a patriotic story walk and a reminder about their event through mailing out information in utility bills.

And one library set up a booth at their local college campus, and they combined National Voter Registration Day events with library card sign up events.

Finally one library posted video messages from local politicians during their event, and one library posted a video called why I vote and why voting matters.

These a few of the creative ways that libraries chose to raise awareness of the National Voter Registration Day.

Many libraries reported on how much they enjoyed the opportunity they had to engage with their community members to share voting information, to share how to confirm their voter registration status.

And it offered a convenient way for them to register to vote.

So one librarian reported to us how much she enjoyed sharing her enthusiasm about the importance of participating in our democratic processes with the people that she interacted with.

Several libraries reported forging new partnerships with community colleges or their county board of elections or their league of women voters.

And another library reported that they use their volunteers from their local league of women voters to answer questions and to help verify people's registration.

So they partnered with people they had never partnered with before.

And another library reported that the personnel from their county board of elections were the most beneficial in helping them to be prepared for their event.

One of the best resources provided by National Voter Registration Day are the stickers and posters they give you.

So they give you a lot of really great swag to help you celebrate.

And we reminded our libraries to sign up early as a partner so that they could receive those items in time for those events.

We reminded them that they needed to register every year as a partner.

National Voter Registration Day also has great support for field organization, marketing, and recorded webinars to help you with that.

We received several questions from libraries on North Carolina voter registration rules.

So we went in and added resources from our state board of elections to our webpage and reminded our partners to check in with their local election boards and to get them involved in the event.

It's best to start with having a clear understanding of your local election rules and laws and know appropriate and credible resources that you can point patrons to if they have questions about voter registration or the voting process.

And your local board of elections will be the best resource for that.

I'll talk about the different types of voters you might encounter, such as first-time voters.

It's great to have a curated list of resources on your library's website or have them bookmarked on a computer for a patron to use so when they have questions, you can easily point them to those resources.

Print resources like pamphlets and flyers are also helpful and they can be picked up when patrons pick up books.

Also received feedback from some of our libraries that it is difficult to celebrate both National Voter Registration Day and other library events in September such as National library free sign up month or Hispanic Heritage Month, those are a few of them happening in September.

It's particularly hard for libraries that have really small staff.

So we encouraged our libraries to try and combine their events and find ways that they could celebrate these events simultaneously to maximize the impact without overloading their staff.

Libraries reported it was also hard for 1 or 2 staff, only having 1 or 2 people to manage their event.

So that was why we really encouraged our libraries to reach out to our local board of elections and league of women voters and friends of the library, or any other local groups that are involved in the election process and strategize ways that they could work together to participate in National Voter Registration Day in a way that wasn't too overwhelming for them.

It's important to make potential partners aware of what the library already does to encourage voter participation, how libraries provide factual, nonpartisan information that keeps citizens informed.

Libraries can provide reliable information about the voting process, they can serve as polling places, they can host candidate forums and debates, or they can provide programming focused on civic literacy topics.

So those are just a few ways that the library can support in addition to the National Voter Registration Day or to celebrate, these are just a few other ways that the libraries could encourage people to participate.

So at our state library, we believe that National Voter Registration Day has positively impacted our libraries in our state and the communities that they serve.

And the best part of National Voter Registration Day is that no celebration is too small.

So we encourage each library to celebrate in their own way, in the way that works best for them, and in their community.

So even if a library just posts about National Voter Registration Day on their social media, any way that they choose to celebrate is great.

So the goal is just to increase awareness of the voting process, help unregistered voters learn how they can get registered, and how they can become better informed about the process.

So the impact of National Voter Registration Day lasts more than just one day as libraries continue to share voting resources and promote the importance of voting year round.

The State of North Carolina will continue to promote this initiative statewide and we look forward to celebrating with our libraries here on September 19th.

So we're ending with this quote from the late John Lewis who is one that we found most powerful when we were first planning our outreach initiative in 2020.

And we have used this quote to guide our work each year as we plan for our National Voter Registration Day events.

Now, if there are any questions, then I can try to answer them.

>> Fantastic.

Thank you so much both of you.

There was a question earlier around the issue that we find many of the library users are already registered.

So any ideas on outreach to the larger community and those non-library patrons that aren't registered?

Is that more around the partnership, you emphasized the partnership piece?

>> LAUREN: And in a way I think it goes back to knowing your community.

Do you know that there are groups that are not -- you don't necessarily have to focus on a large swath of people, but you could maybe focus on one neighborhood.

If there's a place where you feel these people are not generally coming into the library or whatever, you could try to find a way to have a presence with different communities and in different groups in order to be sure that you are reaching beyond just the people who come into the library.

So I think partnerships are a huge part of that, at least finding out talking with people who work with different communities to see is that a need.

And if it is, then the library can meet it.

So I know that is a problem for a lot of people because a lot of people are registered to vote.

But there are also a lot who aren't.

So there are ways I think that you can find out who is and who isn't.

>> LYNDA: You could also start focusing on the 16 and 17-year-olds who you're trying to get ready to register to vote.

So you could have an event focused on that, maybe work with your schools.

I know some of our libraries worked with their community colleges to get more of the students registered to vote.

So as Lauren said, there are pockets that you could maybe work on for your community to work on voter registration.

>> Excellent.

There are a couple of questions, we talked about this as something that would maybe come up.

There are folks who have managers or directors who are nervous about it being too political to host National Voter Registration Day events.

Someone is even concerned around liability.

Have there been any libraries that have been held liable by a patron who wasn't registered correctly or had issues around voting?

Do you know anything in those areas?

And we know a big part of this is advocating to be able to do it for your libraries, so let's hear maybe some of the ways in which you've supported libraries to be able to make the case.

>> LAUREN: So in North Carolina, I'm not aware of any libraries that have been held liable for anything that I know of.

But I think that's where, thinking about that, thinking about liability or what you are nervous, if you feel something is too political or you think this or that, that's where I think the beauty of National Voter Registration Day is that you can participate at a level that you're comfortable with.

So if you worry that signing people up at your library might cause friction and cause problems, talk about what you can offer that still makes you feel comfortable, but you're also providing access to information about the process.

So you could really just promote the information and find a way to maybe make a computer available to people if they want to do it.

But you as a library can determine what you're comfortable with doing.

In North Carolina, we had people who only posted on social media.

We had people who only put out pamphlets.

Like they determined what made them comfortable.

We for sure heard from some libraries who said that they had concerns about things being seen as they didn't want the library to look too political or whatever.

But they also knew that there were people in their libraries and in their communities that needed that information.

So we just kind of talked with them through this process and got them to a place where they felt like okay well we feel comfortable doing this but not that.

It's really just a conversation that your library needs to have about what you think is doable and where is the line?

Where do you feel comfortable?

>> I think just as a follow up on the liability, I too haven't heard of any library that's held liable.

But we're always encouraging our libraries to check with their local board of elections.

They're the ones that will tell you how to conduct your drive.

They may send someone to help you do your voter registration drive.

If you go to our protocol on the NC voter registration forms, it says all forms complete and incomplete have to be returned to the board of elections.

So they're going to take on some of that responsibility of checking those voter registration forms that you turn back in to them.

>> Excellent, that's really helpful.

I see that Kian also shared a link to the National Voter Registration Day, they have a resource on how to keep the events nonpartisan.

So that would be helpful with resistant folks.

Also, I feel like you just articulated that our role as libraries is to be an information source.

So even just working with your board of elections to make sure that the information you have at the library is correct.

So I like your emphasis on that it's a continuum.

You could do small things just to clarify the information that needs to be available for your patrons as well as hosting events as another option.

So yeah, I think that's a good reminder.

Can we just ask too, you were mentioning your counts of people who were registering in the library.

How do you collect those metrics?

>> LAUREN: Lynda and I just requested that the libraries keep their own metrics and submit them to us at the end so we could have an idea of what North Carolina did.

So that was where we got our numbers from.

>> That's great.

Well let's shift on to Anna's segment and we'll have a little bit of time for any final questions.

Welcome, Anna.

I also want to make sure that you are able to advance the slides with the little arrows at the top.

Perfect, excellent.

Welcome.

>> ANNA: Hi everybody, my name is Anna Snyder.

I'm the head of reference at the Wayne County Public Library in eastern South Carolina about an hour south of Lauren and Lynda who are in Raleigh.

I'm going to talk a little bit about our experience having National Voter Registration Day events at our library over the past couple of years.

Becoming involved in the statewide initiative, the kinds of outreach that we've done, lessons that we've learned, and kind of what we're thinking for the future.

In the beginning when this got started I think 2020 was the first year.

I was the children's librarian in our library.

But I had a really strong interest in civic engagement.

I think it's super important.

It's something I would always try to get families to know more about when they would come in during election season.

So I was thinking is there something that our library can do as part of our larger community conversations program series that we were having to kind of get people more involved in civic life in our community, what can we do.

So I had reached out to the board of elections to see if they would be fine with us hosting a candidates forum at our library.

But since we are a county department, they were like we really don't think that's a good idea.

It could be too partisan, depending on who shows up, it might not go the way you expect.

So we were planning on hosting an event with the board of elections, kind of a voter 101 type thing.

North Carolina voting rules are pretty confusing and so we thought it would be a good idea to kind of lay out when can you register, what are the deadlines, what are the rules about absentee voting, that kind of thing.

And then Covid happened, so that kind of got put on hold.

But when the state library was talking about National Voter Registration Day, I was like this is something we can do.

The library is a place for people to become involved in civic life, to the extent that they want to, whether they're just going to learn more about issues, to learn more about where to find good, non-biased sources of information or to go to a program or meet people or whatever.

The library is a connecter.

And so we thought this would be a good way for us to kind of dip our toe into this kind of thing.

And so we were super excited about it.

I was the most excited about it.

So I became kind of the point person for this for our library.

And yes, so Covid kind of complicated a lot of things.

Our events were really small that first year because we were operating under a modified schedule.

We weren't open all of our normal hours.

We couldn't have a ton of people, so we basically just had a table with information and forms for people to come fill out.

And we would pass people off to the board of elections because the board of elections was like there are some rules that are different this year because of Covid.

We don't feel comfortable with anybody except us explaining that.

So it was kind of important that we had that open communication with the board of elections especially that first year.

I really think that this was the best way for us to kind of start looking more into civic engagement at our library, getting our community more informed and more aware of ways that they could participate in this way in our local government and state and federal elections.

So we were really excited to be a part of it.

So how we went about publicizing and doing outreach for National Voter Registration Day, the first year was pretty awkward because we had a table.

But everybody at the table was sitting six feet apart wearing masks.

But we did paper registration forms there.

Our board of elections, I found my giant roll of stickers that I will never run out of that they gave us, your vote is your voice.

And then National Voter Registration Day folks, they were talking about swag earlier.

They send really great stickers and posters and all of that kind of thing.

So we had swag, we had banners outside the building, we had posters in like every window, on end caps, we used a lot of the National Voter Registration Day memes and countdown slides and all of that.

They have a really great publicity toolkit on their website that we use.

When everything was virtual, we relied very heavily on library social media to get the word out about this event and other events.

Local partnerships are super important.

Local partnerships are really important to the library generally so we can do our job and get the word out about what we have going on and what our community partners have going on.

We like to connect people to resources no matter what kind they are or who's providing them.

If you have the information that this patron needs I need to know about you and you need to know about me.

So we really relied on our local partnerships to share our social media posts and to talk about it in their networks to get the word out about this event.

Also I invited the League of Women Voters to come to our program.

They have come the past two years.

Something that's kind of cool is so the hometown of Gerturde Wheel, the library is the Gertrude Wheel Auditorium.

She died in the 1970s.

She was really active in civic life in the first half of the 20th Century.

But she was the president of the Equal Suffrage Association of North Carolina and one of the founders of the North Carolina League of Women Voters.

Me being the history buff I am, I thought it would be a really cool text for our hometown to have the league here.

In our building, we're sitting right outside our auditorium.

So I thought that would be cool so I invited the League of Women Voters to come to our event for two years.

I'll talk more about them in a minute.

But local partnerships for sure are critical.

And then just sharing information how you normally would at your library.

And like I said you can share whatever information you feel comfortable with.

This is a nonpartisan event.

So if you want to just link out to other places, that's fine.

There's plenty of toolkits around voter engagement and voter participation that are already made that you can just link to.

You don't have to come up with a ton of new original information yourself.

And your event can look however you want.

So let's see.

Here's some pictures from I think this is the first one that we had.

You can see we're kind of all sitting like pretty far apart.

There's me and our table.

We tried to make it all jazzy, so when people came into the library, they would see it and stop and ask what we were doing.

Like some of you, we found out that a lot of the people that were coming in were already registered, but a lot of them did not know where their polling place was.

The library is an early voting place.

So a lot of them knew about that, but the schedule and all of that, we were able to share that type of information.

So we haven't registered a ton of people at these events, but I feel like we have shared really valuable information.

So they still feel like a success to me.

So this work is critically important.

I mean National Voter Registration Day or not, sharing information about civic engagement, voting, all of these things is so important and aligns so strongly with the library's mission.

So we bring people together to explore, discover, and connect.

We want to connect people to the information that they need.

Everyone, no matter what political persuasion that they are, they have personal interests, they have things that are really important to them.

And they deserve to understand the processes that make those things possible and better.

And we can help with that.

So we may not be able to sway what politicians are doing, but we can help people understand how the government works, what the job is that they are electing people to do, and the issues that they need to be aware of.

And then what person is going to fight for the things that you think are important.

So we don't make any judgments on what think think is important, who they want to vote for quiz whatever.

We just have the information, and we especially over the past couple of years with all of this misinformation and conspiracy theories and everything on social media especially during the last couple of elections, especially during Covid, it's been really hard for a lot of people to kind of figure out the best place to get factual, non-biased information to find out what candidates really believe, what issues really are instead of just making judgments by things that they see posted on social media.

I think this is important.

It's important for people to know that they can come to the library and find people that can help them kind of figure out what's going on, what websites are good, like where do I go for information, how do I know about these things.

If you don't understand or you don't have really high digital literacy skills that I think is especially difficult to find good information.

So it's really important.

Civic engagement is the way that you advocate for yourself and what you think is important and how you think things can be improved in your community.

But you need to participate yourself.

So finding the information that you need, figuring out who is the right person to fight for what you believe in, what kind of things can make your community better.

If you're registered to vote, wonderful.

I want everybody to be registered to vote.

But if you don't show up and vote, why?

Why are people not voting?

I don't know.

I really feel like living in America, living with this type of government that we have, we have a responsibility to each other to participate in civic life.

Kind of an example we give people sometimes is when we do the census.

The census is a huge undertaking.

There's so many people that we need to count and reach and find to get an accurate depiction of what the situation is in America.

How many people live in our county, what's their financial situation like?

And it's a huge job to do that, to put on the census.

And people will be missed and miscounted.

And you know that's kind of understandable.

But if so many people don't participate, don't say I'm here, this is what's going on with my family, your county may have an inaccurate census count, you may be not eligible for certain funding opportunities or grants or other things that could improve the life of your community.

I feel like it's our responsibility to each other to know what's going on and participate.

Voting is so important, I could talk about it all day every day when I feel like I do sometimes.

It's our responsibility to each other and to ourselves to kind of know what's going on and say this is my opinion, it may not be the same as yours, but I think it's important and I want to see these things happen in my community, and I'm going to vote so somebody can make it happen.

And so the library, I think this falls right in with what we do every day.

We want people to be informed, we want people to know where to go to find information.

We want people to have happy and successful lives with the information that they find.

And we want them to enjoy the things that they find and do things that are interesting to them.

So I feel like I'm rambling a little bit, but the library, this fits firmly in our mission.

We want to connect people to resources and the things they know to participate in society.

I especially within this information situation going on, our role in this is incredibly important.

So lessons learned, I'll try to wrap it up really quickly, so consider your local partners when you are planning a National Voter Registration Day event.

I have been kind of the main person at my library.

We have three libraries in our system, but I'm at the main location.

And so we have the most foot traffic so we would be the logical place for this event to take place.

I invited the League of Women Voters to our event.

I had never worked with them before, didn't really know anything about them other than Gertrude Wheel was the founder.

But I found out that our local league is made up of a really wonderful, it's a wonderful group of ladies in their 70s and 80s.

And so while they are wonderfully informed and very sweet, they haven't been very active over the past several years because of sickness or other obligations.

And so maybe going forward, there may be another local partner that we could bring in, especially if you're doing it kind of by yourself, you need to balance who do you want to have with you and who can you get mutual benefit from a little bit.

And then another lesson that we learned, I mentioned before is even if a lot of people are registered to vote already, they may not know where their polling location is, so you can help them look up their voter information online.

Another thing that we have considered is maybe doing an alternate location for our event.

Maybe somewhere with more foot traffic, I guess, than the library may have on certain days of the week.

So I've considered maybe working with a community partner like the housing authority or parks and rec or some place like that.

I think in the toolkit there's a list of other potential partners that you can consider.

And then I think something that would be really helpful would be doing some civics-related programming and displays leading up to the actual day just to get people ready other than seeing a whole bunch of memes on our social media.

It may be useful to go back to consider that voter 101 program that we were going to do at the board of elections just because the rules have changed a lot over the past couple of years due to Covid and other things.

North Carolina's rules I feel like are pretty confusing.

We have pretty well publicized gerrymandering things going on.

There's a lot of things in the news and things might be confusing to people.

So it's worth it to have good partners provide the best information that you can.

If you have any questions about anything, you want to share some cool voting memes with me, here is my email and happy to answer any questions y'all have.

>> Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

There weren't too many more questions.

Actually I didn't see anymore questions come in.

And we are at the top of the hour, but I want to remind folks that each of our presenters also provided contact information in the slides, so remember if you have specific questions for each of them, you can follow up there.

Thank you so much to all of you for your great work and obviously there's lots of folks interested in this and I encourage you all to explore the learner guide as a way to take next steps.

There's the first question in the guide really gets at how do you make the case for this work, so some of you are looking at ways to make the case and then others of you good luck with your programming.

We planned this for June so we know you have some time to lead up into September with so many examples from our presenters, hopefully you can get started and we'll see even more voter turnout this fall because of the work libraries are doing.

So thank you so much all of you, everyone have a great rest of your week, and I'll be in touch as soon as the recording is available.

And I'm also going to send you all to a short survey as you leave.

If you don't have time now, that link will also be in the email.

But we really appreciate your feedback on the presentation.

We'll share that with the presenters and it helps us guide our ongoing programming.

So thank you so much all of you and have a great rest of your week.