Examples of How EDA Works
Thank you for your interest in how EDA is designed to function in important areas of election integrity work. We present a few specific examples below:
In the area of legislative initiatives, if a local group has developed a strong and/or successful piece of legislation, they will share it with the Legislation working group of EDA, which will turn it into a useable template and disseminate it to all affiliated election reform groups throughout the country. Along with the legislation itself (which each group can adapt to its specific locale and needs), the EDA Legislation group will also prepare a “handbook” of all the necessary components for introducing and getting legislation passed, including such steps as how to recruit and organize volunteers to obtain petition signatures; what a petition should look like; how to get it approved prior to launching the signature campaign; how to run a concentrated effort to mobilize citizens to contact their elected officials; and the appropriate methods for introducing legislation in each state. Such collaboration will help to save labor, avoid pitfalls, and shorten timeframes.
The cooperative process would work somewhat differently in the area of education. Each group may submit to the Public Education working group of EDA the points they feel are most important to include in any public education effort. Groups that have already run successful public information campaigns will also share their methodologies, materials, and the steps taken to create and present their programs. The EDA Public Education group will integrate the various lessons, and create a comprehensive set of several models and sets of materials for public education. These will be made available to any group for local use. At the same time, when EDA raises sufficient funds, it will undertake an education campaign on a national level and will have the best materials already available. EDA will always remain open to input and updates, and will disseminate updated information to every group.
As a final example, in the area of election monitoring it is apparent that local monitoring projects, such as exit polling and parallel elections, will have only very limited impact unless they are part of a broad-based network of similar activities undertaken statewide and nationwide. By providing methodological standards, training, procedural guidance, coordinated data analysis, and major media access, EDA will help ensure that the impact and credibility of the whole greatly exceed the sum of its parts.
The above examples are just a few of the ways that EDA expects to facilitate and amplify the work of election integrity activists at this critical juncture in our battle. Please join us and help bring about the victories on which the future of our country will depend: http://www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org/join
