Mark your calendars for our upcoming Advocacy Week, February 8 — 14. In other years, we would gather in person in Augusta for lobbying, celebrating, and tea at the Blaine House. Instead, we've got a whole week's worth of online activities to make up for not being together in person at the Capitol. Submit an entry to our raffle each day, and you could win a prize at the end of the week! Updates will be posted at www.lwvme.org/AdvocacyWeek. 

IT'S TIME TO TESTIFY:

Bills, bills, bills: You can check out the full list of bill titles for the 130th Legislature here. The Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee (VLA) is the committee of jurisdiction for most election bills. They begin public hearings on their first bills today, February 1, at 9:00 a.m., with another public hearing on Wednesday, February 3. You can see which bills are up for public hearing and find a link for the live audio here. There is also a YouTube channel at that link where you can view live video of the hearings and see audio recordings of past sessions.

Where we come in: The League of Women Voters of Maine plans to testify on dozens of bills in the coming weeks. Our testimony will be archived here on lwvme.org. This week, we plan to testify on several key bills, with the most crucial being our support for these five:

• LD 102 — An Act To Extend the Time Frame for Processing Absentee Ballots
• LD 112 — An Act To Facilitate the Timely and Accurate Counting of Absentee Ballots By Extending the Processing Period
• LD 32 — An Act Regarding Remote Participation in Public Proceedings 
• LD 2 — An Act To Require the Inclusion of Racial Impact Statements in the Legislative Process

A special note about LD 2: LWVME is proud to support LD 2, An Act To Require the Inclusion of  Racial Impact Statements in the Legislative Process, with our partners in the Coalition on Racial Equity (CORE). LD 2 creates a process for legislation to be reviewed to see how it would impact historically disadvantaged populations. It allows legislative committees to ask for and receive relevant data about a bill’s impact on racial and ethnic minorities, and it sets up a process to pilot racial impact statements in the short legislative session in 2022. It also instructs legislative leadership to assess this pilot to determine how to use racial impact statements in the future.

LD 2 will be heard in the State and Local Government (SLG) Committee at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, February 3. You can find the live audio and video links here. The League believes this is an important step in reducing racial disparities and improving the legislative process, and we will testify in support of this legislation.

Where you come in: We are so lucky in Maine that members of the public are invited to testify in writing or in person on every bill before the Legislature. The State House remains closed to the public, so all public hearings are being conducted on Zoom. Each committee is providing live audio and a video stream of their proceedings.  

If you are moved to testify at the public hearing, please send an email to Committee Clerk at least 30 minutes before the start of the hearing in the form VLA@legislature.maine.gov. Or SLG@legislature.maine.gov. Make sure that you provide:

• Your name
• Your town of residence (or the organization you represent)
• The date of the public hearing
• The LD number & title for which you want to provide testimony
• Whether you will: 1) testify for, 2) testify against, or 3) testify neither for nor against the bill

The Committee Clerk will make sure you receive the Zoom link to participate in the hearing. Use this link to submit written testimony in addition to or instead of appearing in person.