Three programs. Each one cheap, each one repeatable, each one feeding the next.
Monthly. Social. Free to attend.
A room, some chairs, some coffee, and every candidate on the ballot invited on identical terms. No debate format, no gotcha, no scoring. Voters ask what they want and hear the answers themselves.
Every event includes one five-minute standing segment: what filing week is, what it costs, and how you could be on this ballot. That segment is how Tier 1 feeds Tier 2.
How they workQuarterly. Free. Open to anyone, of any party or none.
The curriculum that turns a curious person into a filed candidate: what offices exist locally and what they actually do, how a declaration of candidacy works, what filing costs and how to pay less, what reporting a small campaign has to do, and how to knock two hundred doors without quitting.
Faculty are former local officeholders from different parties, on the same panel. That panel is itself a nonpartisanship exhibit.
See the curriculumEvery February through May.
In February we publish the Empty Ballot List: every local race in the chapter’s territory at risk of going unopposed, compiled from county elections offices. Pure public information — and exactly the kind of document local press picks up.
Then we spend three months making that list shorter. When filing closes, we publish the count.
See this year’s listIdentical neutral questions to every candidate in a covered race, on a broad range of local issues. Answers printed unedited and in full. Candidates who decline are listed as “no response” — no penalty, no commentary. No ratings, no comparisons to LCV positions, no editorializing.
This format has decades of precedent in nonpartisan voter services. It is safe, it is useful, and it is the single most-read thing most civic organizations produce.
Dues start at $10 a year if you’re under 25 and $30 if you’re not, $45 for two voting members at one address, and one-time $100 Legacy or $500 Founding lifetime memberships for those who can carry more. Every tier is one vote — members elect the board and amend the bylaws.
A charter is a handful of neighbors, a meeting room, and a commitment to nonpartisanship. Charters run their own calendar and put on the meet-and-greets, the workshops and the voter guides described above — which is why everything on this page is only as real as the county it happens in.
Administration is capped at 5% of revenue, with a fixed $8,000 floor — everything else goes to the mission.
Someone comes to a meet-and-greet because a neighbor invited them. They hear the five-minute segment. They come to a workshop out of curiosity. In February they see their own district on the Empty Ballot List. In May they file. In November their name is on a ballot that would have had one name on it. Everything else is logistics.
Everything the League does belongs to one of four pillars. If a proposed activity fits none of them, it does not happen.
Three things, done every year, in public — and the reason the League exists.