Our League in Tuscaloosa built recently on the LWV’s long history of moderating non-partisan forums for election candidates. Some of you may be old enough to remember when the LWVUS moderated nationally-televised presidential debates until that role was taken away from us by the national party organizations. Local Leagues have a proud history of organizing and moderating forums for candidates for local elections, and until the pandemic we did that in person. Typically, they would be held in the evening in an accessible location. Our question committee would gather ideas and formulate questions for the Tuscaloosa delegation. Audience members would also have an opportunity to write questions for collection and consideration. A League member would act as moderator with the question committee feeding questions to the moderator, and a timekeeper would enforce talking time. We always attracted an audience, but of course it was limited to those who were able to attend. We received coverage in the Tuscaloosa News and local television of these events, reaching a wider audience.
With the pandemic, however, we realized that we had to adapt to the virtual world of Zoom. New possibilities opened up, such as offering the legislators the option of a lunch-time event. We also realized that we could offer a livestream of the event on our Facebook page. And why stop there? With Zoom we could record the event and also create a YouTube channel and put it there.
We got favorable feedback from the legislators about the “Lunch with your Legislators” event (on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021 from noon to 1:30 p.m.), so we zoomed again for our mayoral and city council elections this spring. A local television station reached out to us about the mayoral forum, with the result that it was held at the station and not via Zoom. It was shown to their audience live on Thursday, Feb. 18, from 7-8:00 p.m., and then repeated on Friday (2/19/2021) at 7:00 p. m., and on Sunday (2/21/2021) at 9:00 p. m. The TV station live-streamed it on their Facebook page and then made it available for reviewing. The recording was also added to our Facebook page and YouTube channel.And finally, this spring (on Thursday, Feb. 25, from 6-7 p.m.), we zoomed a forum with 17 candidates for 6 of the 7 Tuscaloosa city council districts. The incumbent candidate for one district was unopposed. Because of the number of candidates, we divided the program into two sessions, focusing on three city council districts each. We used a 15-minute break to show a PowerPoint presentation on voter service information, including the location of polling places and guidelines for restoring voting rights. With patriotic music in the background, we were able to show the PowerPoint twice. We designed the questions so that they framed the responses for the candidates to (1) acknowledge what government was doing well in their districts and how they would build on that success, and (2) identify what was not working and what their plans were to improve the situation. We were hoping to rhetorically force the candidates to show that they understood their districts and had intelligent plans. Again, we live-streamed this on our YouTube channel and then made a recording available there and on our Facebook page.
We were thrilled to see the stats on views on our LWV Greater Tuscaloosa Facebook page and LWV Tuscaloosa YouTube channel. The City Council forum, which we live-streamed on YouTube on February 25th, has now had 554 views. The Mayoral Candidate forum has had 709 views through the WVUA channel since February 20th, and 47 additional views through our channel. The Meet Your Legislators for Lunch event has received 193 views through our Facebook page and 11 views through YouTube. The videos are also archived on our LWVTuscaloosa website for easy access. Adapting our usual public service activities to the pandemic situation, with the new possibilities of Zoom, allowed us to reach a much wider audience than we would have typically reached in person (including people with limited mobility under non-pandemic circumstances). They could watch it live or later on at their convenience. They could re-watch it as they pondered their choices among the candidates. We noticed that there was an increase in views after the election results indicated that two run-off elections would be necessary, as citizens pondered their choices again. This was especially impressive, given that the city council zoom recording was an hour long.
We are proud to note that this effort was a collaborative effort within our Greater Tuscaloosa League. We have a social media team that managed all of this: Kim Bailey did the heavy lifting of moderating and interacting with the candidates while also wrestling with Zoom and YouTube; Darlene Freemon (who manages our Facebook page) monitored the Facebook livestream including comments, and interactions, connected the YouTube livestream to Facebook and the website, monitored the BlueSky Timer, acted as troubleshooter for the PowerPoint presentation, and added the music after converting it to an mp4; Kathy Byrd created the PowerPoint presentation, organized the selection of questions to be asked, and served as a source of League wisdom. As with all League events, we all worked together by contributing our strengths and talents to achieve success. The fact that we also had members post about and share the events on their own social media pages helped tremendously in increasing the traffic.
As we were putting the final touches on this piece we learned that the LWVGT has been selected as a recipient of The University of Alabama’s Council on Community-Based Partnerships community engagement award this year for our work on voter education ahead of the national election in November 2020, as well as the March 2021 mayoral and city council elections that played a critical role in overcoming voting challenges amid the global pandemic. Our work will be recognized as an Outstanding Community Partner-Initiated Engagement Effort for 2021 and includes funding support of $2,000.
In the tradition of our foremothers, we turn adversity and obstacles into opportunities. The League may be a hundred years old, but we are moving with the times!
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