Communications

The Communications Working Group will be a service resource to all other EDA Working Groups, and will work closely with Media and Publicity and Public Education on projects where the functions of all three groups intersect.

Each member of the Communications Group will participate in one or more specialty groups concentrating on different phases of message development and different media forms. These include National Website, National E-mail Network, Research, Writing, Graphics, and Audio-Visual. See detailed descriptions of each further below.

Acting Coordinator: Dan Ashby CA

Members:

Phill Harrison WA
Robert Lockwood Mills CT
Dale Axelrod CA
Richard Bozian OH
Joe Davis RI
Bev Donley TX
Betsy Farquhar OH
Mike Hicks OR
Ofer Inbar MA
Dennis Karius NY
Joan Kowal MI
Eileen Wilkinson NY
Ginny Ross OR
Mary Howe Kiraly MD
Roy Lipscomb IL

Communications Subcommittees


National Website:
The development of a shared, national election integrity website was approved October 3, 2005 by 38 participants in a national strategy session of the Portland Summit. A full-featured website for this national electoral integrity coalition is now live and under continuing development at http://www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org. The website will serve as a library and collaborative research, communications, and promotional tool for the movement.
We will develop an extensive, well-indexed and fully-retrievable library of news articles, research papers, and activity reports from regional Alliance affiliates, plus graphic, audio, and visual documents and instructional materials contributed by, and shared with, individuals and organizations across the nation. The website will be coordinated with a national e-mail network (described below). The website will host an articles archive and subscription management system for a national newsletter, and every newsletter and e-mail alert transmitted over the e-mail network will carry links referencing the website.
In addition to the publicly accessible features described above, the national website will also host a separate area that is private and secure, where expert elections investigators can share their findings and work collaboratively to develop methods for analyzing, detecting, and proving electronic vote fraud, and for deploying effective defenses against it.
National E-mail Network:
We propose linking existing e-mail lists of election integrity groups across the nation into a voluntary shared network for transmission of national e-mail alerts, announcements, and newsletters that will serve to coordinate efforts of regional groups on a nationally effective scale. An initial phase of voluntary cooperation among managers of separate lists would achieve rapid large-scale distribution capacity. A systematic subscription-building phase to follow would result in an opt-in mail list belonging wholly to the national coalition. A detailed proposal explaining the mail-list plan available here.
Research:
Responsible for monitoring the newsmedia, websites, and research institutes to collect, evaluate, and classify information on all aspects of the Alliance's election integrity campaign and to elaborate these findings with original research. Researchers will recommend content for adaptation into other media formats for most effective presentation, and will obtain permissions when necessary to copy, reuse, or link to material produced by other content providers. The research and website subcommittees will collaborate in designing and maintaining a website library archiving all the informational resources of the Alliance.
Writing:
In collaboration with the research subcommittee, writes fact sheets, articles, reports, manuals, scripts, and publicity materials, and provides writing and editing services to as requested to assist with all other projects and purposes of the Alliance.
Graphics:
Design and production of graphic information displays for print, web, photo, video, and banner presentations.
Audio/Visual:
Prepares film, video, and sound recordings and adapts content from other media for film, video, graphic animation, and radio presentations.