President's Corner

Not All heroes wear capes; many defend our democracy! 

Thank you to our Election Heroes!

Our poll workers, election staff, county/municipal clerks and directors, and our state election officials are all part of the incredible work, at every level that make our elections safe, secure, and accessible! Their job is sometimes quite tough and often thankless, they often face scrutiny, threats, and pressure just for doing their job, often from the people they work to serve but their dedication to the democratic process is crucial and admirable. Let us remember as we go through our daily lives that these folx are our friends and neighbors, working behind the scenes, putting in long hours to ensure that our democratic process is protected, supported, non-partisan, and running well. So, when you see your election heroes at the polls and beyond, please take a moment to say, “Thank you so much for what you do!”.

As we approach the election, I also want to acknowledge the hard work of our League volunteers and leaders who have been out in the community as our voter education and registration advocates. They have been working hard and long to share the most up-to-date and accurate information, to register and inform voters of their rights and options, to connect and support the work of our community partners in their outreach, and to meet our community wherever they are at. The work we do is a labor of love and passion for our democracy, and an act of dedication to our community.  

I want you all to remember that regardless of how these elections turn out, the work we put in together, at every level makes an impact, plants seeds, and brings us all into the arena to fight for what is right, and for one another. Our work speaks for us and inspires others to carry on engaging and to never give up the fight. We will stay in the arena, we will stand tall on the issues, we will not back down.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”  —Theodore Roosevelt (April 23, 1910)

Thank you for being a part of our work, and a part of our League!

If you would like to engage more, or get involved with our work, please reach out: lwvbccpresident@gmail.com

Yours In League,

S. Warner, President

lwvbccpresident@gmail.com

ELECTION INFORMATION

Campaign finance data is now available on VOTE411.org!

Every campaign runs on money, and looking at where that money comes from can give you more information about the candidates running for office.

Now on VOTE411, you can see how much federal and select state candidates have raised, how much they’ve spent, and where their contributions come from. Simply enter your address to get started.

Look at Your Candidate's Financial Disclosure

Information is updated daily, so be sure to check back for more information.

Campaign finance is one more piece to help you feel confident in making your candidate selections this election season. Happy voting!

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Join Us as an Observer for the Board of Canvassers!

Are you passionate about democracy and ensuring election integrity? We're looking for dedicated volunteers to serve as Observers for the Board of Canvassers after the upcoming election. This critical role helps uphold transparency and fairness during the canvassing process.

What You'll Do:

• Attend canvassing sessions to monitor the vote-counting process
• Ensure procedures are conducted accurately and without bias
• Provide an extra layer of accountability to support election integrity

Commitment:

Volunteers can sign up for 1-2 shifts of 2 hours each shift, based on your availability. Every shift you cover makes a significant difference.

Why It Matters:

Your involvement as an Observer strengthens public confidence in our electoral system. By volunteering, you play an essential part in safeguarding the democratic process.

Ready to Make an Impact?

Interested parties must first complete the LWVMI Board of Canvassers (BOC) Observation Program Interest Form - (CLICK HERE).

LWVMI will contact each applicant. Approved applicants will receive additional materials and training.

LWV members are automatically approved after their membership is confirmed.

For more information contact: 

Barbara Starke, Lead Observer for LWVBCC

lwvbccfundraising@gmail.com

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Voting Right Advocates Highlight Safeguards in Place to Protect Michigan Elections Before and After Ballots are Cast on November 3

During an October 22, 2026, press conference hosted by the nonpartisan Michigan Election Protection Program (EPP), voting rights advocates outlined measures designed to safeguard Michigan’s elections before and after ballots are cast on November 3. The speakers were Jessica Ayoub of the ACLU of Michigan; Christopher Thomas, former elections director for the State of Michigan; and Sarah Warner, project manager at the League of Women Voters of Michigan.

For more information on the press conference - CLICK HERE.

To view the press conference recording - CLICK HERE.

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Your Vote Is Your Power



Prepare to Vote

• Are you registered at your current address?
• Visit Michigan Voter Information Center at mi.gov/vote

Be An Informed Voter

A Nonpartisan Voter Guide is published by the LWV. It includes information about candidates and ballot measures. The print guide and the digital guide is available now at VOTE411.org.

Voting Options

Voter Early in person between Oct 24 and Nov 1. Find times and locations

• Berrien County - https://www.berriencounty.org/1926/Early-Voting
• Cass County - https://my.lwv.org/michigan/berrien-cass-counties/article/cass-county-early-voting-information-november-3-2026-general-election

Vote In Person on Election Day, Nov 3, at your designated Polling Place. Polls will be open from 7 am to 8 pm

Vote Absentee - Return your completed ballot as soon as possible. You may use a Dropbox.

Ballots must reach the clerk by 8pm on Nov 3.

Your Vote is your Voice

Annual Holiday Party & Fundraiser

Celebrate with LWVBCC and support our work in the community

Join Us

Our Annual Holiday Party is our only fundraiser of the year. Members, partners, friends, and community supporters are invited to enjoy great food and wine, connect with one another, and participate in the silent auction.

Wednesday, December 9, 2026 | 5–8 p.m.

Lake Michigan Vintners at the Welch Center for Wine & Viticulture

2774 E Empire Ave, Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Tickets: $50 per person

Includes a buffet of small plates by CK Catering, a wine flight or glass of wine, and access to the silent auction.

Reserve Your Spot

Ticket sales close December 2, 2026. Purchase your ticket by CLICKING HERE or scanning the following QR code.

Donate to the Silent Auction

We welcome donated items and gift cards, including:

• Gift cards: Restaurants, stores, services, or experiences
• Art and crafts: Handmade items, holiday baskets, or themed gifts
• Services: A 30- or 60-minute session, such as massage or another healing practice
• New items: Unopened merchandise

Every contribution helps sustain our programs, events, and community connections.

Donation Deadline

Submit donations by December 2, 2026 by CLICKING HERE or scanning the following QR code and completing the Silent Auction Donation Form.

Questions?

Contact Fundraising Chair, Barbara Starke at lwvbccfundraising@gmail.com.

Thank you for supporting LWVBCC. We look forward to celebrating with you!

Warm holiday wishes,

S. Warner, President

lwvbccpresident@gmail.com

Board Notes

Thank you to everyone who came to our general membership meeting !



We heard a lot of feedback from you on some important issues, thanks for sharing your voice!

Membership

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged a family member or friend to join us at the Voter Information series and our General Membership meeting in the last month. It is so nice to see familiar faces introducing us to new ideas and insight to move LWVBCC forward. 

Speaking of insight, many league chapters throughout Michigan have discovered involvement in Local and State League Observation Corps have expanded their membership in diversity of ages, gender, and interest in civic engagement. I can hear your thoughts now, “Oh I need a break after the election”! But this is a perfect time to shift your engagement to learning and sharing what the newly elected in your local community have planned for their upcoming term. 

What are the priorities of the school board? What is the cost of the infrastructure for a housing development? Are my tax dollars truly benefitting me and my neighbors? Is the library fully funded and staffed. An infinite number of issues we should stay on top of. Individually we cannot address all things all the time. 

An Observer Corps member can address one of the areas, from attending city, village, township or county meetings, school board meetings. Keep abreast of state legislation through www.legislature.mi.gov and get clarification from your State Senators and Representatives. 

LWVBCC has created a page on our website: Contact Your Elected Officials with links. Local civic entities also have websites with meeting times and places.

As an Observer you simply attend a meeting, take notes of votes and action items. You don’t even have to speak. Some chapters have discussion groups on what each person learned and how best to share with the rest of the membership. (I can smell coffee and cake in these groups!). 

Maybe it’s the mention of cake, but now that I have your interest, here is how you can let the LWVBCC Board know you want in.

Start with our website;

lwvbcc.orgg>log in>scroll to Get Involved with Our League Chapter>scroll to CLICK HERE for the form to complete your volunteer interests - you may select more than one. 

Our Board will help put you in touch with other like-minded members so you can plan to meet and share what you have learned.

Val Schnable, Membership Chair

lwvbccmembership@gmail.com

Democracy Matters!

The November 3 General Election is only days away. The time has come for you to engage and vote. This month Democracy Matters! helps you to improve media literacy and become a more informed and confident voter before going to the polls. Never forget that your voice and your vote matter! 

Elections Are Different Nowadays

Long gone are the days when voters learned about candidates by listening to their stump speeches in the town square. Our forebears campaigned by word of mouth, in books, or in newspapers, but that analog world is a vanishing relic. In today’s digital environment, information moves at lightning speed with the potential to affect millions of voters in an instant. Although our cell phones literally hold nearly all the world’s wisdom in the palm of our hand as long as we have a strong enough wi-fi signal to capture it, we often may not know how to parse out good information from misleading disinformation as we prepare to vote. 

What is Media Literacy?

To be informed voters, we cannot indiscriminately consume whatever targeted message the internet offers us. We can be more informed voters by improving our media literacy. Media literacy helps voters to become engaged and to vote with confidence. It is a skill that urges voters to view information/news with a critical eye to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of the claims made. It is a tool to help voters distinguish fact from fiction.

How Do We Recognize Disinformation?

Disinformation is sometimes hard to recognize. We improve our media literacy by learning how to spot it. With a bit of thought, you can learn to identify when someone is attempting to mislead you with voting disinformation:

1.  Beware of significant changes in well-established voting practices.

For instance, claims that voting hours or polling locations have changed or that voters need new, specific types of identification should raise red flags. Do not ignore such claims. Polling locations or hours do, in fact, sometimes change. Consult a trusted source (town clerk, MI Secretary of State webpage (https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections), or VOTE411 (http://VOTE411.org) to obtain accurate and verifiable information.  

2.  Requests for Personal Information

Report suspicious phone calls, emails, texts, and social media posts that request your personal information or instruct you to click on a link to provide additional information. Contact your local clerk to report such activity or contact (866) OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) the Election Protection Hotline to report irregularities. 

3.  Beware Voter Intimidation Efforts

Election officials will not threaten you to prevent you from going to the polls or to vote for/against a particular candidate. Consult official state or local election sites for accurate information. If an individual threatens your participation as a voter or as an election official, report such conduct to your local clerk, law enforcement, or the Election Protection Hotline. Voter intimidation is a crime.

4.  Pause and Examine Online Content

Does the post make extraordinary claims? Does it appeal to fear, anger, outrage or offer other emotional content designed to divide us? Before reposting and sharing possible disinformation, read past the headlines. Consider the source of the information, whether it is current and not reposted/recycled from prior posts, whether other media outlets are publishing the story, and whether the source has the training, education, and/or expertise to back the story. Does the content derive from an official source?

Additionally, check the URL or the “About” tab on the webpage to look for odd addresses. Disinformation frequently appears as imitations of webpages from reputable online news sources.

5.  Looks May Be Deceiving

“Deepfakes” are online AI-generated false videos or images that impersonate candidates or public figures. Advances in artificial intelligence can now produce the likeness of a candidate speaking false and misleading statements. Much of this false content is indistinguishable from the actual candidate’s comments. Watch for odd facial movements and shadowing as well as verbal mistakes and uncharacteristic changes in tone. 

Deepfake videos may sometimes fail to synchronize the audio with the subject’s mouth movements. Before accepting the deepfake as a true representation, try to cross-check the information with other news outlets. If the content is as provocative, shocking, or momentous as the deepfake suggests, other journalists and commentators will likely vet the item before republishing it.  

6.  Consult Trusted Sources for Accurate and Verifiable Information

Official state sources provide verifiable information relating to your voting experience. The Michigan Secretary of State website (https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections) as well as the Michigan Voter Information Center (https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us) provide up to date voting and election information about voter registration, methods of voting, polling places, and much more. A nonpartisan organization with a history of pro-democracy voting rights advocacy like the League of Women Voters is also a trusted source for voting information. Consult VOTE411.org (https://VOTE411.org) for candidate and ballot information in addition to registration and voting information.



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By taking these steps to improve your media literacy, you will be a more informed voter as you wade through the final stretch of the midterm campaign season. Be sure to vote on or before November 3 with confidence!

Don Lenderman, Advocacy & Education Chair

lwvbccae@gmail.com

Voter Services

Thank you to all volunteers for the postcard campaign. All postcards should have been mailed by October 13th. 

Voter Services held a voter registration event on September 30th at St Joseph High School. The event was well received by the students and we interacted with over 20 students as it related to voter registration and pre-registration for students ages 16 to 17. 

Voter Services participated in a virtual presentation with Niles Neighbors on October 11 regarding voting rights and Proposals 1 and 2 with respect to the Michigan Constitution. The event was successful and generated a number of questions from attendees. 

Voter Services conducted a pop up office hours event on October 15th at the Bridgman library. Though lightly attended, LWVBCC was able to answer questions from two local voters.

Lastly, along with our new LWVBCC intern, we are developing a survey for students at Lake Michigan College regarding voter registration and voter engagement. The survey is intended to provide LWVBCC with insights to increase voter registration and voter engagement amongst younger citizens.

Beverly Gray, Vice President & Voter Services

lwvbccvoterservice@gmail.com

Book Club

Theo of Golden elicited mixed reviews, most positive. The discussion centered on the themes of second chances for Theo and for the people he encountered who through his generosity and compassion made second chances possible. 

Theo went to Golden at the end of his life to look for a way to resolve his feelings of lost chances when at the beginning of his career he chose his art and success over love. He was looking for a way to reconnect with the woman he loved but gave up for his own ambition. Theo discovered his own second chance in giving some of the overlooked people of Golden a second chance, the resources to face the challenges life gave them. 

His project of learning about the lives of the people in the coffee shop portraits and helping them brought him into contact with the artist who drew the portraits and a discovery that gave him the second chance he was looking for, the chance to regain the love he lost so many years ago. Theo saw the people in the portraits as valuable and deserving. Through his kindness and compassion, he gives them presence in their town and in life. 

Theo of Golden is a first novel and became successful by word of mouth. Many book groups have read it and it has been on the NYT best seller list for 45 weeks. The mixed reviews in our discussion focused on the quality of the writing and the tendency of the story to skew sentimental. But because the story was compelling and showed that human beings while flawed can and want to be kind and compassionate. Most believe in second chances.

The next book club meeting is December 1 at the home of Faith Schoon in Bridgman email – fschoon@mac.com - if you can join the meeting. The book is Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig. 

This is Happiness by Niall Williams is the book for January 11 at the home of Jane Raymond – jraymond42@frontier.com. 

Faith Schoon, Publicity Chair

lwvbccpublicity@gmail.com

Environmental News

Last month I wrote about the piping plovers’ increase in population and rising hopes for its continued existence. I also listed actions taken by the current administration to defund and roll back environmental protections that are crucial to life on our planet. The need to become educated about the harmful effects of these actions has never been greater. 

The League is focused rightly so, on voting issues right now – registering voters, getting out the vote and protecting the integrity of elections. I think we can add to that list educating family, friends and neighbors about the importance of asking candidates about their stance on environmental issues. 

• Will they support measures to ensure that the US and other nations will work to prevent global warming,
• Will they support measures to ensure that all people will have clean air and water and that our environment remains healthy and beautiful? 

Here are two pieces of news that are especially important to become educated about and to use in talking with your friends and family. 

The first is a report in the NYT (Oct. 23, 2026) (CLICK HERE TO READ) focusing on the effect of the current administration’s policies on climate change. The article states that, “Scientists emphasize that every fraction of a degree of additional warming raises the likelihood of deadlier heat waves, more powerful storms and other extremes.” The United Nation’s annual report on climate warming reported that the world is not meeting the goals set in Paris in 2015 and a significant contributor to that failure is the US. 

The US abandoned its pledge to cut emissions. The article points out that, “… his (Donald Trump) administration has encouraged more production and use of fossil fuels, the burning of which releases the greenhouse gasses that are dangerously warming the planet.” Current US policies undermine sustainable energy development and the scientific research needed to protect the planet.

As reported in The Bridge (CLICK HERE TO READ) Interlochen Public Radio wrote about federal authorities reinterpreting two words in the Endangered Species Act so that developers no longer have to take into account the harmful effects their projects would have on the habitats of endangered species. They would just have to try and not directly kill any member of an endangered species. 

The change affects 26 federally protected species in Michigan including eastern massasauga rattlesnakes, the rare Michigan monkeyflower and piping plovers. Of course, numerous other living things (people?) are no longer protected either because they live in the same habitats as the endangered species.  

Maybe when you see a neighbor working in her garden or filling his bird feeder it might be a good idea to stop and chat and ask about what they think is important to protect the plants and birds that they love. The conversation could get around to the importance of knowing where the candidates stand on protecting the environment and if the people running for office in our state and federal government support policies that will ensure a healthy planet or the financial health of fossil fuels and chemical based industries. 

You may be called a “tree hugger” behind your back or maybe to your face but hopefully a seed will be planted that will grow into a realization that how we vote will determine the future health of our home. 

Faith Schoon, Publicity Chair

lwvbccpublicity@gmail.com