Promote the Vote 2022 Petition signing available at Petition Drive Saturday, May 7, at Portage Lake District Library

HOUGHTON -- Promote the Vote 2022 (PTV 2022) is a non-partisan coalition seeking to enshrine our voting rights into Michigan’s Constitution. This action is necessary to protect voting rights from ongoing political and partisan threats. PTV 2022 volunteers are gathering 425,059 signatures from Michigan voters in order to put PTV 2022 on the November 2022 ballot. These signatures are needed by June 30, 2022.

The Petitions are here and signatures are needed now! Promote the Vote 2022 is one of four petitions that will be available for signing at a Petition Drive from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.. on Saturday, May 7, at the Portage Lake District Library in Houghton. Stop by for your opportunity to support Promote the Vote 2022 and/or these other petitions: Reproductive Freedom, Raise the Minimum Wage, and Allow Prisoners to Earn Time Off.

If you can't make it to the Petition Drive Saturday, how can you sign the Promote the Vote 2022 petition? Email one of the following circulators and they will make sure a circulator contacts you to get your signature. They will come to you! That includes book clubs, exercise groups, family reunions, house parties, etc. This includes events inside or outside. Also, did you know that churches are allowed to advocate nonpartisan petitions such as Promote the Vote? Ask your minister or priest if a PTV speaker can come to speak to your congregation or church meeting! Contact any of the following to arrange a petition signing:
    Keweenaw County and northern Houghton County: Elizabeth Benji:  erbhedgehog@yahoo.com
    Greater Houghton area: Valorie Troesch: vtroesch@gmail.com
    Baraga County and southern Houghton County: Liz Hakola: ehakola@up.net 
   Gogebic, Ontonagon and Iron counties: Corinne Duerkop: corinne.duerkop@gmail.com

Any circulator can take signatures from any place in Michigan. If you would like to be a circulator, let one of the above local circulators know. They need all hands on deck for this critical and urgent project and have only a few weeks to collect the necessary signatures.

According to Valorie Troesch of the local circulator team, "It's non-partisan, but we welcome opportunities to explain what Promote the Vote is about and to give people the opportunity to sign the petition. If the proposal passes in November the rights are enshrined in the Michigan Constitution and they're beyond the reach of partisan politics."

Promote The Vote 2022 will amend Michigan’s Constitution to permanently establish and secure the following voting rights for Michiganders:

• 9 days of early in-person voting
• Easy access to apply for absentee ballots with one permanent application (which allows the voter to receive an absentee ballot automatically for every election)
  
• Creates tracking system for absentee ballots and right to cure defects
• Easy return of absentee ballots with guaranteed drop boxes and pre-paid postage
• Vote without harassment, interference or intimidation
• Clerks get guaranteed access to donations and in-kind donations with public disclosure of charitable donors
• Right to prove identity for voting with a legal document verifying identity
• Count military/overseas ballots if postmarked by Election Day
• Election audits are made more secure and accountable
• Prevents politics from interfering into certification of elections.

For more information about Promote the Vote 2022 go to https://promotethevote2022.com/.

Click here for the full text of the PTV 2022 Petition.

Local NMU graduate joins fight against proposed Granot Loma rocket launch site

Caitlin Sternberg, new Director of Outreach and Communication for Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior, a group opposing the proposed industrial rocket launch site on Lake Superior, canoes on Millecoquins Lake while collecting water quality samples. (Photo courtesy Superior Watershed Partnership's Great Lakes Conservation Corps)

MARQUETTE -- Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior, (CSCLS), a Marquette County nonprofit, welcomes new staff member, Caitlin Sternberg, as Director of Outreach and Communication.

Cait, who graduated  Magna Cum Laude in 2021 from Northern Michigan University with an Environmental Science degree, "has the experience, talent, youthful energy and vision to help us raise awareness and unite our community to defeat the proposed heavy industrial rocket launch site near Lake Superior’s shoreline at Granot Loma," said CSCLS President Dennis Ferraro.*

View of Lake Superior not far from the proposed rocket launch site at Granot Loma. (File photo courtesy Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior)**

Cait previously worked as a Great Lakes Climate Corps crew leader with the Superior Watershed Partnership, partnering with diverse groups like the National Forest Service and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community on environmental projects. She also worked as a Land Steward with the Rocky Mountain Conservancy in Colorado. These are examples of her organizational and leadership skills, according to Ferraro.

After growing up in a Chicago neighborhood where jets from O’Hare airport boomed overhead, Cait says, "Living near Lake Superior has reframed my world views and values." In addition to the strong connection that she feels to the Lake and surrounding habitat, Cait notes she is "also impressed by the connection people in Marquette County have to each other, and to the environment."
 
Commenting on adverse impacts of the rocket launch plan, including launch site explosions scattering toxic debris, extreme noise, disruption of wildlife habitat, interference with nearby popular natural recreation areas, and overall degrading of our quality of life, Cait views this type of "needless industrialization of our Lake Shore as an environmental and community threat" that will need to be guarded against "even after the rocket launch plan is defeated."
 
In addition to engaging people at community events, developing ties with community members, and involving volunteers to help with the CSCLS mission, she hopes to also expand participation of local university and high school students, whom she sees as very environmentally oriented.

Ferraro noted, "You will also be seeing a lot of Cait not only here in Marquette, but also at events with people in Powell Township, who have been such good environmental stewards in maintaining the wonderful natural landscape that we all enjoy."

About Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior

The mission of Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior (CSCLS) is to protect and improve the precious environmental resource of the coastal habitat, shoreline and fresh water of Lake Superior and its watershed in Marquette County; to oppose individual, corporate or governmental action which may jeopardize that resource; and to encourage community action to preserve the quality of life provided by this Lake Superior Coastline environment for generations to come. Contact CSCLS at contactcscls@gmail.com or visit their Web site or the CSCLS Facebook page.

Notes:

* See the April 24, 2022, New Yorker article by David Rompf, "The Plan to Make Michigan the Next Space State."

** See also the April 1, 2021, Keweenaw Now article by Dennis Ferraro, "Proposed industrial rocket launch site at Granot Loma threatens pristine Lake Superior shoreline."