League of Women Voters Provides Valuable Nonpartisan Election Information to the Public as Primary Nears

Pasadena’s chapter of the League of Women Voters continues to conduct voter registration and voter information drives to encourage people to register as voters and to inform them about the candidates and the issues that are up in the coming elections.

Margie Nichols, President of the LWV Pasadena Area, says it is important that people take elections seriously and take part in them.

She says primary elections are where candidates are pushed up to the final elections, so people should consider these as critical.

“It becomes really important to vote in the primary because you want your candidate to be able to advance to the top two in the final elections,” Nichols said. “One of the things that we have in this area is an election that has happened for the first time in 34 years that we have candidates that include four county supervisors. There are eight candidates now, but only two of them will proceed to the general election in the fall.”

The LWV has also made it easier for non-voters, especially young people who have just reached voting age, to register. Pasadena Area’s website features a red button on its home page that registrants can just click, and it will take them to the California Online Voter Registration website.

The chapter has also been conducting voter registration drives in schools to encourage voting age students to register. It has even come up with a smartphone app for the purpose. In California, the registration deadline to be able to vote in the 2016 Presidential Preference Primary is on May 23. For the General Election on November 8, the registration deadline is October 24.

After the voter registration campaign, what the Pasadena Area LWV does is provide opportunities for voter to know more of the candidates.

“For the primary, we have done a couple of candidate forums where we provide opportunities for people to hear from the candidates, to compare all of the candidates,” said Nichols. “We are strictly nonpartisan, so we don’t favor any one particular party and we never recommend candidates. We make it possible for people to hear from the candidates on an equal footing.”

The organization also provides Pro-and-Con forms when propositions or issues are on the ballot during certain elections. Nichols said they also conduct presentations to groups where they present both sides of each issue or proposition, part of the group’s voter education campaign.

Pasadena Area also subscribes to an update California League of Women Voter’s website, www.votersedge.com, that now contains not only information about candidates and propositions, but also information about a candidate’s financial support base and the interests that are behind certain propositions.

“They have updated the website that they’ve used for years that provides information about candidates, and they’ve merged with another organization that has more financial information about the candidates,” Nichols said. “All these information is now available on Voters Edge. We want to know where a candidate or a proposition is coming from. We want to know who’s starting it.”

Nichols adds the chapter has Spanish-language Voter Guides that they give out to groups helping in voter education drives. The guides can be requested through the organization’s website or by calling the league office at (626) 798-0965. The office is open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily, Nichols says.

Aside from the city of Pasadena, the League of Women Voters Pasadena Area also serves the following areas in cities where their members are located – Alhambra, Altadena, La Canada Flintridge, Monrovia, Monterey Park, San Gabriel, San Marino, Sierra Madre and South Pasadena.

Its headquarters are located at 65 A. Grand Avenue, Suite 209 in Pasadena.

To learn more about the organization, visit www.lwv-pa.org.