The Arts Vote & We Vote Arts!
Today, September 20, 2022, Americans will celebrate National Voter Registration Day with a massive cross-country effort to register voters ahead of the hotly contested midterm elections. Communities in all 50 states and D.C., are planning to use National Voter Registration Day to get registered and get #VoteReady. Founded in 2012, National Voter Registration Day is designed to create an annual moment when the entire nation focuses on registering Americans to exercise their most basic right – the right to vote.
TODAY: Be sure you register to vote, verify you are registered to vote, or update your voter registration before October 14, 2022.
Each year Arts NC celebrates National Voter Registration Day by recommitting to our election and voter engagement efforts and making sure that the North Carolina creative community has the tools and resources to appropriately engage voters and candidates between now and Election Day on November 8, 2022.
We Vote Arts Election Portal: Arts NC has created this portal as a single location where artists, arts lovers, and arts leaders of nonprofit arts organizations can find all of the resources they need to vote and to engage voters and candidates during the election season.
ArtsVote: Americans for the Arts Action fund created ArtsVote to engage the arts community to take three actions: 1) take the pledge to vote and encourage others to vote, 2) download the NC Voter Factsheet that has updated information about every way you can cast a ballot in North Carolina, and 3) share on social media using a NC specific toolkit about important voting deadlines and requirements in the coming weeks.
Vote 411: The League of Women Voters Education Fund has created an amazing tool called Vote 411 that can not only help to register to vote orverify your voter registration, but it can also tell you exactly who the candidates are on your ballot and provides candidate surveys they have completed about their position on several issues. This tool is incredibly useful whether this is the first time you’ve cast a ballot, or the fiftieth.
Serve as an Election Worker: By becoming an election official, you can be a hero for democracy. Election officials operate the polls during early voting and on Election Day by providing services such as setting up the voting equipment, checking in voters, processing ballots, assisting voters with special needs, and closing down/securing the voting site at the end of the day.
Toolkits for Arts Candidate Forums/Events and Arts Candidate Surveys: Arts NC has researched best practices and learned from success stories here in NC to create these easy to use step-by-step guides that will walk you through the process of hosting arts focused local candidate events, or creating, distributing, and sharing arts focused local candidate surveys. This is a fantastic way to elevate the arts as an issues in your community and build relationships with elected (or about to be elected) officials.
