Communications

Description:

The Communications Working Group is responsible for researching the best quality information on all aspects of EDA’s election integrity campaign, and adapting and conveying this information in various communications media for a variety of audiences and purposes, including (for example) introductory fact sheets on electronic voting for the general public, training materials for election integrity activists, press releases, event promotion, informational radio spots and web videos, print and internet advertising, briefings for elections officials and legislators, and technical presentations in support of legal initiatives.

The Communications Working Group will be a service resource to all other EDA Working Groups, and will work closely with Media and Publicity and Public Education on projects where the functions of all three groups intersect.

Each member of the Communications Group will participate in one or more specialty groups concentrating on different phases of message development and different media forms. These include National Website, National E-mail Network, Research, Writing, Graphics, and Audio-Visual. See detailed descriptions of each further below.

Coordinator: Dale Axelrod [1] CA

Members:

Phill Harrison WA

Robert Lockwood Mills CT

Dan Ashby CA

Richard Bozian OH
Bev Donley TX

Betsy Farquhar OH

Ofer Inbar MA

Dennis Karius NY
Eileen Wilkinson NY

Ginny Ross OR

Roy Lipscomb IL

Alan Frankel MA
Mark Hardin CA

Communications Subcommittees

National Website: The development of a shared, national election integrity website was approved October 3, 2005 by 38 participants in a national strategy session of the Portland Summit. A full-featured website for this national electoral integrity coalition is now live and under continuing development at http://www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org [2]. The website will serve as a library and collaborative research, communications, and promotional tool for the movement. We will develop an extensive, well-indexed and fully-retrievable library of news articles, research papers, and activity reports from regional Alliance affiliates, plus graphic, audio, and visual documents and instructional materials contributed by, and shared with, individuals and organizations across the nation. The website will be coordinated with a national e-mail network (described below). The website will host an articles archive and subscription management system for a national newsletter, and every newsletter and e-mail alert transmitted over the e-mail network will carry links referencing the website. In addition to the publicly accessible features described above, the national website will also host a separate area that is private and secure, where expert elections investigators can share their findings and work collaboratively to develop methods for analyzing, detecting, and proving electronic vote fraud, and for deploying effective defenses against it.
National E-mail Network: We propose linking existing e-mail lists of election integrity groups across the nation into a voluntary shared network for transmission of national e-mail alerts, announcements, and newsletters that will serve to coordinate efforts of regional groups on a nationally effective scale. An initial phase of voluntary cooperation among managers of separate lists would achieve rapid large-scale distribution capacity. A systematic subscription-building phase to follow would result in an opt-in mail list belonging wholly to the national coalition. A detailed proposal explaining the mail-list plan available here [3].
Research: Responsible for monitoring the newsmedia, websites, and research institutes to collect, evaluate, and classify information on all aspects of the Alliance's election integrity campaign and to elaborate these findings with original research. Researchers will recommend content for adaptation into other media formats for most effective presentation, and will obtain permissions when necessary to copy, reuse, or link to material produced by other content providers. The research and website subcommittees will collaborate in designing and maintaining a website library archiving all the informational resources of the Alliance.
Writing: In collaboration with the research subcommittee, writes fact sheets, articles, reports, manuals, scripts, and publicity materials, and provides writing and editing services to as requested to assist with all other projects and purposes of the Alliance.
Graphics: Design and production of graphic information displays for print, web, photo, video, and banner presentations.
Audio/Visual: Prepares film, video, and sound recordings and adapts content from other media for film, video, graphic animation, and radio presentations.

GO TO THE FORUM [4] (Forum access requires Working Group registration [5])

Drupal Skills Inventory for EDA Website Volunteers

The EDA website is built with the Drupal content management system.
We are looking for skilled volunteers and consultant contractors to help build and run this site.

If you have experience building and maintaining Drupal websites, and would like to help EDA, please fill in the Drupal skills inventory below.

As much as possible, we would like to manage the site with the help of Drupal volunteers who collaborate in the
Website speciality group, within the Communications Working Group.

But we are willing to contract with paid consultants as necessary to fulfill certain work objectives.

A clarification to the privacy statement below:
Your survey responses will remain confidential within EDA, but they will be shared among EDA website administrators and
website project managers.