If the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus) threatens to impact your plans for voting centers, it's very important to communicate this fully, both internally and externally.
- Consult chair@democratsabroad.org, gpp@democratsabroad.org and comms@democratsabroad.org, as well as your RVC if you believe city-wide quarantines or other actions may force your voting center to be canceled.
- The team will discuss options with you, considering the following factors (among other things): local and national ordinances, international recommendations (WHO, CDC), venue and volunteer availability, local context.
- If it is determined that any voting center must be canceled, we MUST get a waiver from the DNC and immediately notify campaigns, the State Department, and members.
- The Global Chair will immediately request the waiver from the DNC, plus notify the campaigns, and state department.
- You should email all members with your voting center information.
- You should email all media to provide an update to them as well.
*For both media and members, the priority message is: While in-person voting may not be possible, Americans in (location) can still vote remotely from anywhere! + link to democratsabroad.org/primary.
Ex: We're closing our voting center location on Tuesday for the safety of our members and the community, but the good news is that Democrats Abroad in China can still vote in the global presidential primary, by downloading their ballot at democratsabroad.org/primary and they can even return it via email. - Cancel your events on social media and the website, and post a statement explaining the situation. Example here.
Do NOT just delete your events, but explicitly write Canceled due to public health guidance or similar at the top. People may go looking for an event posting and be confused when they can't find it. - You should update your social media feeds with this information, and share these links with comms@democratsabroad.org.
- If the locations location is still going to be open, please leave flyers there, encouraging people to vote remotely.
*If the location where you were going to have voting centers are still going to be open, you could consider printing out unless you or another volunteer is unable to get to the location, out a flyer about voting remotely that can be left at that location. If the locations are going to be closed, if it's possible to tape up a sign in the window, that would be good too. - IF possible run social or other ads with the redirect to remote voting.