GVI Weekly Actions & Events

September 1, 2026

Run Through the Tape

That was the phrase at Thursday’s meeting, and it stuck with a lot of us. Runners lose races by easing up a stride before the line, and there are 63 days between this email and November 3rd. Almost none of what needs doing in that stretch is dramatic. It’s a table at a festival, a stack of cards in your bag, a phone call, a knock on a door, repeated by enough people to add up.

One thing is worth knowing before anything else: in New York the last day to register is also the first day of early voting, and that’s Saturday, October 24. Someone who isn’t registered can walk into the Government Center that morning, register, and vote in the same visit. So if you know somebody who figures they’ve missed their chance, they haven’t, and they should hear it from you.

While you’re at it, check that you’re still registered yourself. Not because you’ve done anything wrong, but because rolls get purged and addresses go stale, and the worst morning to find out is November 3rd. The state’s lookup takes about as long as reading this paragraph.

Four dates worth writing down

• Saturday, October 24 — last day to register, first day of early voting, and the deadline to request a mail ballot online or by mail
• Saturday, October 24 through Sunday, November 1 — early voting
• Monday, November 2 — last day to request a mail ballot in person at the county Board of Elections
• Tuesday, November 3 — Election Day, polls open 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM

If you’re voting by mail, the ballot has to be postmarked by November 3 and reach the county Board of Elections by November 10, so it’s worth sending well ahead of the deadline or simply dropping it off in person.

We need poll workers and poll watchers

This is a genuine gap, and it’s one of the few jobs where showing up is most of the contribution. You sign up through your County Board of Elections. It’s only fair to say up front that it’s a long day start to finish, which is exactly why these slots are hard to fill.

Something else came up Thursday that’s worth saying out loud, which is that several people are worried about attempts to intimidate voters at the polls this year, here and elsewhere. Worrying about it privately doesn’t accomplish much, but having our own trained people in the room who know the rules does. Indivisible’s Hands Off Our Vote toolkit is short and practical, and they post their fall trainings at indivisible.org/our-vote.

And the campaign itself

Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 2, 6:00 PM, Alissa Ellman’s campaign is holding a training at the Government Center in Geneseo, room 205. Last week’s was on Zoom, so if you’d rather learn this sort of thing in a room with other people, here’s your chance.

Beyond that, the campaign’s volunteer form and contribute page are both at ellmanforcongress.com. Play to whatever you’re actually good at, whether that’s knocking on doors, phone calls, postcards, managing lists, or coordinating people locally. They’re a small operation with the staff to match, so if you sign up and don’t hear back for a few days, that’s a funding problem rather than a lack of interest.

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Your Polling Place May Have Moved

The Board of Elections has consolidated polling locations for November 3, which means several districts are voting somewhere new this year, with a few of them in Geneseo moved to the National Guard Armory.

You should be getting a yellow card in the mail about it. The trouble is that it looks a great deal like the one that went out before the June primary, so plenty of people will glance at it, assume they’ve already seen it, and throw it away. Read yours properly, then look yourself up in the state’s voter lookup, which gives you your polling place and your registration status on the same screen.

Then ask a few other people whether they know where they vote, because hardly anybody thinks to check on their own. Turning up at the wrong building on Election Day is an avoidable way to lose a vote, and it’s the sort of thing neighbors can sort out for each other in about a minute.

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Democracy Drop Cards

Democracy needs a checkup — that’s what it says on the front, under a stethoscope, with a QR code and our website on the back. All four styles are on our homepage now if you want to see them before Thursday.

Thanks to Jim’s haggling and a private donation, we printed 600 of them in four styles instead of the 300 we planned, and leadership has approved another 300. Each style’s code opens a different page: register and check your registration, the deadlines that matter, making your voting plan, and getting involved.

The distribution plan is deliberately low-key: leave a card somewhere a stranger will notice it and pick it up, like a ledge at a restaurant, a public bulletin board, or a clean table on your way out the door. You don’t have to talk to anyone or argue with anybody.

Take a pack at Thursday’s meeting. Start with one or two — up to 20 cards — and sign the sheet at the back with your name, a way to reach you, and roughly where you plan to drop them. That last part matters more than it sounds, because all 600 landing in Geneseo would waste a good card. We can see which pages get scanned, so before long we’ll know what’s working.

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E Pluribus Music

Jeremy Grace came to Thursday’s meeting to invite us all to E Pluribus Music — a free, one-day music and arts festival — runs Saturday, September 12, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM at Geneseo Village Park, and GVI has been asked to host a voter registration table.

The lineup runs from the Campbell Brothers playing gospel to Cinnamon Jones on soul, a Zydeco band coming in from Ohio, a jazz band out of Buffalo, and the Geneseo String Band.

Out of many, one, and the festival means it — the premise is that American music is what a country of every background sounds like when it plays together, whether that’s folk, blues, jazz, rock, hip-hop, Latin or country. Registering voters at something like that is about as easy as this work gets, because nobody needs persuading of anything. People are already out and in a good mood, a few of them aren’t registered, and all we have to do is stand there with a clipboard.

Visit geneseojamfund.org/e-pluribus-music for more information.

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Coming Up

Wed, Sep 2	Alissa Ellman Campaign Training 6:00 PM · Government Center, room 205, Geneseo · in person	Campaign site
Wed, Sep 2	Rochester Rapid Response Network: New Member Orientation 7:00 PM · Zoom · first Wednesday of every month	Sign up
Thu, Sep 3	GVI Community Meeting — pick up your Democracy Drop Cards 6:30 PM · St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Geneseo
Sat, Sep 5	Stand Up, Fight Back Saturdays — Leicester 12:00–1:00 PM · Leicester Village Park, 25 South Parkway · bring your best signs for Alissa Ellman!	Details
Mon, Sep 7	Labor Day Rally — Tax the Rich, ICE Out 1:00–3:00 PM · 102 Main St, Batavia · hosted by the GLOW Community Alliance · RSVP requested	RSVP
Sat, Sep 12	E Pluribus Music — GVI voter registration table 11:00 AM–7:00 PM · Geneseo Village Park · free · volunteers needed	Details
Sat, Sep 12	Upstate Bannering Project Times staggered so volunteers can hand off — email GVI for your slot	Email us

Further out, so you can plan: a pop-up rally in Warsaw for the Bills home opener Thursday, September 17; the Ewing Forum on election security in Canandaigua Sunday, September 20; and a candidate meet-and-greet in Geneseo on Thursday, September 24 at 7:00 PM with all three Democratic candidates. We should have the location for that one by next week.

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A Few Short Things

• Two hundred and fifty postcards, from Scotland. Indivisible Edinburgh — American citizens living abroad — found us on Instagram, printed 250 postcards at their own expense, and mailed them to Phil. People who can’t vote in this district cared enough to help us reach the ones who can. Photos are up on our social media, and we’re sending a proper thank-you.
• Rapid Response Training, September 16. The Rochester Rapid Response Network is running a full training online on Wednesday, September 16. We don’t have the details yet and will pass them along as soon as we do, so mark the date now.
• Lawn signs for Alissa: not yet. Most town codes around here bar candidate lawn signs until 30 days before the election, which is worth knowing before you put one out and have to bring it back in.
• September 15: the crypto vote. The Senate takes its procedural vote on the CLARITY Act at 2:15 PM the day it returns. It needs 60 votes, which means it needs Democrats, and our position hasn’t changed: oppose it. Senator Gillibrand is one of the Democrats negotiating the bill, and she’s said it shouldn’t move without a provision barring senior officials from profiting off crypto. Ask her to hold that line. Indivisible will connect you to your senators.

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Saturday: Banners Up, Pies Gone

We baked 22 pies. You bought every one of them in under an hour.

Five bakers went through 44 pounds of apples and 20 pounds of blueberries the day before, and the table at Saturday’s August Market was meant to stay open until four. It was empty before eleven. Thank you to Pam M., Suanne G. and the crew who baked, and to St. Michael’s for the use of their certified kitchen, without which none of this happens. Every dollar goes to GVI’s work.

Up the road, banners went up. Saturday was the Upstate Bannering Project: more than 40 groups, from Western New York to the Hudson Valley and from the North Country to the Southern Tier. The statewide debrief came in this week and puts the turnout at over 500 people, most of them from groups that had never worked with each other before this. GVI took a spot over 390, while Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace held Geneseo Gateway Park, where 30 people turned out.

The banners over the highway didn’t all say the same thing. One read NO 4EVER WAR — VOTE. Another borrowed the shape of a highway exit sign and read FOOD ↑ GAS ↑ VOTE, which is about as neatly as anyone has put the case for turning out this year. Different subjects, and every one of them ending on the same word.

The organizers put driver reaction at about 85 percent positive across ninety minutes, which is a better ratio than most of us would have guessed, and the reports from the rest of the state said much the same. Several crews singled out the blasts of support from truckers. A few drivers offered the usual middle finger and a shout out the window, but not many, and nothing came of any of it. As we said on Saturday, every honk shows us we’re not alone.

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Where Your Money Does the Most

This came up Thursday, so here’s a straight answer: if you’re giving political money this fall, the campaign itself is where it works hardest. That isn’t false modesty on our part. A campaign with enough staff gets back to its volunteers faster, and you saw what the shortage of it costs this week. Contribute to Alissa Ellman here.

What GVI money buys is everything around that: the 600 Democracy Drop Cards, the banners, the postcards, the literature, the table at the music festival. Twenty-two pies covered a piece of it on Saturday, which is exactly what they were for. There are sixty-three days left, and this is the stretch where none of it can wait.

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Same Time, Every Week

• Thursday meeting — 6:30 PM, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Geneseo (red door in back)
• Geneseo Visibles — Wed & Fri, 4:00 PM, Gateway Corner Park
• Hemlock Rising protest — Wed, 4:30 PM, Rt 15A & Rt 20A
• What’s the Plan? — Thu, 3:00 PM  Register

Full calendar & ongoing ways to plug in →

Postcards, every week. Email Phil at paj12147@gmail.com to get a batch to write at home, or write them at the Thursday meeting — the Artist’s Team keeps a postcard station going. Order by Wednesday for Thursday’s meeting. The suggested donation for a packet of 10 postcards with stamps and an address list is now $7.00.

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