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Arizona Ranks Bottom Ten in Educated Voters

Sedona AZ (March 2, 2012) – The League of Women Voters Sedona-Verde Valley (LWVSVV) has been chosen as a Sector Partner for the O’Connor House Centennial Voter Engagement Project and its goal to move Arizona to the “top states” in informed voter participation.

The O’Connor House, founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, has as part of its mission “To create an Arizona where important policy decisions are made through a process of civil discussion, critical analysis of facts and informed participation of all citizens.”

The Arizona We Want and AZ Civic Health Index report that Arizona ranks in the “bottom 10” of every aspect of voter participation – being informed, registration and turnout – especially in primaries where many elections are decided. As a result of this data, Justice O’Connor proposed that the O’Connor House take the lead in convening organizations, government entities, and institutions around the state to collaborate in a non-partisan effort to move Arizona to a “Top 10” state.

The Board of the LWVSVV met with O’Connor House Project Chair Elva Coor in September 2011 and committed to the Centennial Voter Engagement Project state-wide campaign now kicking off. As a Sector Partner, the LWVSVV will launch an Informed Voter Participation Project for independent and nonpartisan voters with specific programs (focusing on the primaries) to get out the vote in the Verde Valley. Efforts will include candidate forums, voter information and registration stations, ballot issue forums, a new Voter Guide, an update of the League’s Political Directory, a mini-guide targeting Independent Voters, and other activities to reach the highest level of eligible voter participation possible for the Verde Valley.

According to Ellie Bauer, League president. “We are always concerned about voter participation and strive to do everything possible to expand citizen involvement in government. We are thrilled to be working with the O’Connor House on this state-wide project.”

For more information about the League or to participate, www.lwvsedona-verdevalley.org.

 

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8 Comments

  1. Skin Sense Consultants says:

    Skin Sense Consultants Likes! this story on Facebook.

  2. Marlene Rayner says:

    I sure agree with the assessment of Arizona voters! However Arizona is not alone. There are significant problems in every state.

    Somehow I think the dumbing down of the American public has happened deliberately over the past 40 years – even as issues have gotten more complicated and require voters to carefully examine them. An unquestioning easily manipulated voter is one which serves some cynical elected officials and powerful political/corporate interests – not the common good – whether local, state or national issues.

    How else did we get into the Iraq war or the many recent financial crises? Why else would we merrily continue down the path of fossil fuel development and use when we have had 35 years notice that we should be thinking differently? Why else would we keep taking money away from education whether local schools or universites? Do we not understand that a solid universal public education system is what made the US great?

    Instead some call the questioners “elitists’ and snobs. We collectively have allowed powerful interests to subvert our common good to their interests.

  3. Rick says:

    Elitists are never questioners. Elitists are the opposite culturally, socially, morally, spiritually, authentically. You are right that collectively powerful interests have subverted our common good. It was that way in 1776 and it’s that way in 2012.

  4. Sean Cannon, Maricopa says:

    Mike Huckaby is hosting a candidate forum on TV tonight. It should be watched by every voter. It’s being held in a town that’s proof of what went wrong under Clinton and Bush’s policies.

    AND send a donation to the American Red Cross this week. The tornadoes killed 38 so far and lots more are badly hurt. Go online and help.

  5. Marlene Rayner says:

    Hhhmmmm…that’s where you are wrong – you’ve been brainwashed over the past 30 years to think people who don’t question things are elitists. Sorry to disagree with you there. Actual thinking only requires an open mind and a willingness to change it – given the proper evidence. The possibility is open to everyone. My mother was an immigrant from eastern europe with a 4th grade education and she thought very clearly about everything.

    Right now it appears that we need to stop thinking selfishly and think of the common good. Those homeowners with lost jobs and have underwater mortgages or no health insurance were not necessarily bad or greedy people. It would behoove us to have the federal government help out – no matter what we think. After all home prices keep dropping due to foreclosures waiting and we all lose. We bailed out the banks so we didn’t go into a depression. It is high time to move on and stop punishing behavior that only hurts us all.

  6. Maj says:

    Taxpayers have been put on the hook for a total of $29.616 TRILLION dollars. That’s a T for Trillion. Taxpayers could have purchased EVERY underwater mortgage, rebuilt infrastructure, provided free health care, rebuilt every damaged home from earth changes, improved education, cleaned up the environment and fed every hungry child for what we have given to the “too big to fail” banks, auto industry, other countries, and other “needed” bailouts. Seems to be the only selfish people on this planet are the 1% who hold the keys to the chains that keep us slaves to this debt.

  7. J. Rick Normand says:

    Reply To Marlene Rayner’s comment:

    To quote, you say “We bailed out the banks so we didn’t go into a depression.” This statement would seem to imply that you believe you’re an accomplished economist. The following quote is from the very last sentence of the conclusion of an FDIC/FED Report on the causes of the Great Depression. Apparently, you know more than they.

    From the
    FDIC Center for Financial Research
    Working Paper
    No. 2009-06
    Bank Failures and the Cost of Systemic Risk

    Last sentence of Section VI. Concluding Remarks:

    “While government policies may help to mitigate the impact of bank failures on economic growth, some argue ourselves included) that these government policies also encourage moral hazard and additional bank risk-taking. The additional risk may create social costs by distorting resource allocation and partly offset the attenuating effect of government policies the on probability of banking sector distress. On balance, it remains unclear whether modern government banking sector policies should be expected to reduce the costs of systemic risk in the banking sector relative to those that prevailed in the early twentieth century.”

    Worse yet, the last time I checked, a Depression is caused by a quick and violent contraction of aggregate money supply withdrawn from circulation, which means it isn’t available for deposit to banks which causes a failure in spread banking. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we haven’t experienced a money supply contraction in the last four years, we’ve instead experienced the world’s most massive increase in money supply due to bank bailouts that the Fed admitted to.

    The implied scenario in your statement is backwards.

    Meanwhile and notwithstanding, The US Government Accounting Office had admitted that it had found that the US Federal Reserve NYC Branch secretly funded an additional $16 Trillion to foreign owned banks who have some ownership in the US Federal Reserve regional banks. This gargantuan amount of money has to be repatriated to the U.S. causing a guaranteed future massive hyper-inflation…the precise opposite of Keynesian Depression.

    The purpose of the bank bail-outs over which you swoon, and which was started by the Bush Administration, was to save JPMorgan, the Fed’s primary T-Bond Dealer, from the failing credit and interest rate swap counterparty risk inherent in the takeover of Bear-Sterns. An impending economic depression had nothing whatsoever to do with the great bank bailout fiasco.

    Yet, the subject of your article was the uniformed voter in this state. I think that I’ve just unequivocally shown that your comments have placed you in that group. May I suggest that you stop seeking economics advice from Angela LeFevre!

  8. Rayv says:

    I am from Minnesota, We have to many uninformed voters here, that is why this is a welfare state with some of the highest taxes in the country. It is also why I am moving to AZ, We have to many voters in Minnesota who don’t know what they are voting for and just follow the liberal line. The defination of uninformed is the person who votes on the other side. I should say I think the League of women voters are a bunch of liberals.

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