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The Vote Action Team

The Rhode Island Disability Vote Project believes in the power of voting. Voting and Civic Participation are crucial for the disability interest community to gain the respect that we deserve from policy-makers. Increasing voter turnout will result in better laws and better lives for people with disabilities.

Each member organizations of the Project assembles its own Vote Action Team, which is composed of people with disabilities, volunteers, staff, family members, organization members, and / or board members, (where appropriate). The Vote Action Team will work with the Project organizer to educate, register, and turn out to the polls everyone involved with the organization.

The Team should be no smaller than six people and no larger than twenty, depending on the size of the organization. Participating on the Team will be a significant time commitment, however, no one should feel that they can't do it if they want to because of time constraints. The Vote Action Team should include people from all aspects of the organization's community – in terms of type of disability and role within the organization.

Vote Action Teams participate in a series of three trainings led by the Project's organizer or a member of the Steering Committee. The trainings include: How Government Works; Building Relationships to Effect Change; and Discovering Shared Values. At the conclusion of these trainings, the Vote Action team will assemble, with support from the Project organizer, a plan of action for how to really engage with everyone involved with the organization, to help them understand how voting impacts them. On election day, the Vote Action Team will turn out everyone affiliated with the organization to vote. (Groups participating in List Enhancement will also be able to use the results from list enhancement in their Get-Out-The-Vote planning.)

Vote Action Teams from all the member organizations will also come together at least once, to learn about other groups and different strategies for communicating the importance of voting.