Three programs. Each one cheap, each one repeatable, each one feeding the next.
Monthly. Social. Free to attend.
A room, some chairs, some coffee, and every candidate on the ballot invited on identical terms. No debate format, no gotcha, no scoring. Voters ask what they want and hear the answers themselves.
Every event includes one five-minute standing segment: what filing week is, what it costs, and how you could be on this ballot. That segment is how Tier 1 feeds Tier 2.
How they workQuarterly. Free. Open to anyone, of any party or none.
The curriculum that turns a curious person into a filed candidate: what offices exist locally and what they actually do, how a declaration of candidacy works, what filing costs and how to pay less, what reporting a small campaign has to do, and how to knock two hundred doors without quitting.
Faculty are former local officeholders from different parties, on the same panel. That panel is itself a nonpartisanship exhibit.
See the curriculumEvery February through May.
In February we publish the Empty Ballot List: every local race in the chapter’s territory at risk of going unopposed, compiled from county elections offices. Pure public information — and exactly the kind of document local press picks up.
Then we spend three months making that list shorter. When filing closes, we publish the count.
See this year’s listIdentical neutral questions to every candidate in a covered race, on a broad range of local issues. Answers printed unedited and in full. Candidates who decline are listed as “no response” — no penalty, no commentary. No ratings, no comparisons to LCV positions, no editorializing.
This format has decades of precedent in nonpartisan voter services. It is safe, it is useful, and it is the single most-read thing most civic organizations produce.
Someone comes to a meet-and-greet because a neighbor invited them. They hear the five-minute segment. They come to a workshop out of curiosity. In February they see their own district on the Empty Ballot List. In May they file. In November their name is on a ballot that would have had one name on it. Everything else is logistics.