Anyone from Ohio know about this group? How can we send money in support of their ballot initiative to place election supervision under true independent control?
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/11984307.htm'04 loss motivates local Democrats (6/25/05)
Kerry volunteers found nonprofit, campaign for election reforms
By Carl Chancellor
Beacon Journal staff writer
The results of the 2004 presidential election left a lot of Democrats in Summit County devastated, probably none more so than Ingrid Kunstel.
But rather than licking her wounds in seclusion, the Akron psychologist, who worked tirelessly on the Kerry campaign, decided the best recuperative therapy would be to get right back into the political fray by helping found the Summit County Progressive Democrats.
The new group is a nonprofit organization, Kunstel said, basically ``a bunch of bright, talented people'' who believe in working on the grass-roots level to expand participation in the political process.
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One of SCPD's first major pushes is a petition drive that aims to place three amendments to the Ohio Constitution on the November ballot, Kunstel said. The proposals would lower the campaign contribution limits, establish a nonpartisan commission to handle redistricting and create an independent board to oversee Ohio's elections.
Working with the Reform Ohio Now coalition, SCPD hopes to gather at least 8,000 valid signatures to be included in the 320,000 signatures needed by early August to get the initiatives on the fall ballot.
Pat Simons, an SCPD member, acknowledged it won't be an easy task.
``I know it is hard to get a constitutional amendment, but I have faith that people still want to be engaged with their government,'' said Simons, a registered nurse and housewife from Hudson.
Simons said that she believes there are tens of thousands of Ohioans who want ``grass-roots involvement in government, from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.''