Our weekly program Making Democracy Work is a collaboration between KSMU Radio and the League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri. It's hosted and produced by LWV volunteers, and it airs each Monday morning at 9:45 on KSMU.
In this episode of our local program Making Democracy Work, Leslie Carrier speaks with Emily Fessler, chair of the Informed Voter Coalition.
Carrier: Tell us about the Informed Voter Coalition and how it came to be.
Fessler: The Informed Voter Coalition started in 2019 with a pretty simple idea, which was, how do we bring organizations together to help people become more informed and engaged voters? And so, rather than each organization doing that work separately, what we realized is we can be much more powerful and amplify our impact by bringing together those organizations that are nonpartisan in our community already and have trusted relationships with different aspects of our community. Our goal isn't to tell anyone who to vote for or what to think, but it's, rather, to give people opportunities to hear directly from the candidates themselves, learn about the issues and ultimately have good information to make their own decisions.
Carrier: Who are the partners of the coalition? I know it's a robust group of organizations here in Springfield.
Fessler: We have a really diverse group of community partners, which include Be Civil Be Heard, Drury University's Meador Center for Politics and Citizenship, Ozarks Public Broadcasting, Leadership Springfield, Missouri State University NAACP, OTC's Social Sciences Department, Rosie, Show Me Christian County, the Springfield Business Journal, the Springfield-Greene County Library District and the Springfield News-Leader, all chaired by the League of Women Voters. And what's important isn't just the number of organizations that we have, but how different each of them are.
We have higher education, public media, journalism, business and community leadership, libraries, civil rights and civic engagement all sort of represented within the coalition. We all don't reach the same people. And that's really the strength of the Informed Voter Coalition is that working together allows each of us to have a much broader cross-section of our community than any one organization could have on its own.
Carrier: Coming up real soon, in fact, in the next couple of weeks, will be candidate interviews, hosted by the Informed Voter Coalition of those candidates, who will be on the November ballot. Explain this candidate interview process and the opportunity just to reach more listeners.
Fessler: The idea is really to let voters hear directly from candidates in their own words, outside of a campaign ad, a social media post or campaign literature. And this year we're being much more intentional about how we distribute that information. Some people listen to KSMU, some watch videos, some use primarily social media and others may visit the website of an organization that they're already familiar with and trust. And so, we're taking the same nonpartisan information and making it available across
multiple different platforms to try to meet voters where they already are rather than expecting them to come and find us.
Carrier: One of the great things about that is that that is available any hour of the day. Somebody can check in early in the morning, late at night, in the middle of the night to learn their information. Tell us about the interview process, how the questions are selected and how the candidates are interviewed.
Fessler: The process is intentionally designed to be consistent and nonpartisan, so coalition partners submit potential questions based on that particular race. The responsibilities of that office and issues that are relevant in our community right now. From there, the questions are then vetted by our nonpartisan media partners within the coalition to make sure they are neutral, nonpartisan and don't favor or disadvantage any of the candidates. I think it's a really important part of the process because we want to focus on giving voters useful information and not unintentionally steering them in a direction towards a particular conclusion. Candidates in the same race are then interviewed individually. They're asked the same questions, they're given the same amount of time to respond, and they do not receive those questions in advance. And the interview order is determined randomly by draw. And the goal isn't to create a debate or a gotcha moment for the candidates. Really, it's an opportunity to give each candidate a fair chance and platform to explain their priorities, their perspectives. And then from there, the voters can decide for themselves what matters to them.
Carrier: When will these interviews be available? I know you mentioned they'll be available on KSMU but also all the other platforms of the Informed Voter Coalition members.
Fessler: We will start rolling out the candidate interviews on October 19th, and we will continue rolling them out through October 24th. Since there are so many of them really trying to pace it throughout that week, so that's really the week we want people to be watching out for them. They will be available on KSMU and Ozarks Public Television, including online video. And then our coalition partners will be helping to distribute them through their websites and their social media platforms as well. That's a really big part of our approach this year is that we want people to see the interviews in multiple places throughout the community. From October 19th through the 24th, you'll see sort of a coordinated effort across all of those coalition partners to get these interviews in front of voters ahead of that November 3rd election.
Carrier: So aside from the candidate interviews, what is another way that voters can learn more about their candidates and the issues on their ballot this November?
Fessler: I think the bigger goal here is creating a stronger culture of civic engagement in our community. And so, the candidate interviews are definitely one piece of that. But we also want to create opportunities for people to hear different perspectives, ask questions and stay informed throughout the year. And part of that is connecting voters with trusted, nonpartisan resources like vote411.org, which is produced by the League of Women Voters. Voters can enter their address to see what's on their ballot, learn about candidates and ballot issues and read candidate responses. It's free, easy to use and available anytime. Ultimately, we want the Informed Voter Coalition to be a trusted community resource for staying informed and engaged, not something that people hear from right before an election.