Join Climate Action Now
Statewide Ballot Initiative: Training & phone banking
June 8th from 7:15 to 8:30pm
Training for ballot initiative effort, followed by practice making calls.
Please register using this LINK
If you cannot join us on June 8, but would like to take part in the phone banking effort, you can sign up for a training at https://maclimatedemocracy.org/vol/
What We Can Do
Several organizations have been developing two nonbinding ballot initiatives for the Nov. 2020 election in order to put public pressure on the legislature to prioritize climate and operate more openly. The questions have been vetted (and suitably revised) in accordance with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office and the Secretary of State’s office.
One ballot initiative is about 100% renewable energy and the other focuses on rules reform in the legislature (making votes of individual committee members public) to allow greater accountability. See the bottom of this message for actual text of the ballot initiatives.
Currently the sponsoring organizations include Climate Action Now, Act on Mass, Progressive Mass, Sunrise, some Democratic Town committees and 350MA. (Other organizations are currently considering whether to take part).
The ballot initiative project has prioritized 20 House districts and 200 signatures are required by July 8 for each initiative in each district in order to get the questions on the ballot in November 2020. Unfortunately, in-person signature gathering cannot occur this year, so the effort will be conducted by phone. Though none of the selected districts are in our area, we can participate in phone banking to contact voters in the prioritized districts to ask them to sign forms necessary for a ballot initiative to be approved.
The Ballot Initiative Questions:
[Climate:] Shall the representative for this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation that would require Massachusetts to achieve 100% renewable energy use within the next two decades, starting immediately and making significant progress within the first five years while protecting impacted workers and businesses? [Democracy:] Shall the representative for this district be instructed to vote in favor of changes to the Legislature’s rules that would make the results of all votes in Legislative committees publicly available on the Legislature’s website?