Rep. Erin Koegel, Minnesota House of Representatives, District 37A- North metro area of the Twin Cities

Good afternoon folks. Drew Gattine, representing Westbrook in the Maine House of Representatives

Rep. Melissa Provenzano, Oklahoma House of Representatives, District 79 Tulsa area

Hi panelists and attendees! I'm Daniel Schuman, with Demand Progress, and my email is Daniel@demandprogress.org

I am NH State Rep. Timothy Horrigan (Durham & Madbury) — Durham is where UNH is.

Thanks everyone for having us. Great work with this presentation. Feel free to email me at Jacob.marx@mail.house.gov with any follow up.

Thanks so much for your help Jacob!

What if, as in the case of the NH House with 400 members, it takes forever to read all the names. hear the responses. & record the votes?

I was wondering that as well, is there a yes no button for some of these platforms where the role could be taken without calling the role

*roll

@Tom, fwiw, I've often fed legislators questions by email when they're on the dais....

Can we view that mock hearing anywhere? That would be awesome!

It's online! Let me find the video

https://medium.com/g21c/mock-remote-hearing-and-markup-tests-viability-of-a-virtual-congress-9971b0a13559

Marci - How can I reach you after this? katie@katiefryhester.com

Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvFxmi6e9ZY

Marci's email is marci@popvox.com

Here is guidance from Zoom on how to control your proceeding so that you can't be zoom bombed https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/03/20/keep-uninvited-guests-out-of-your-zoom-event/

Thanks!

How ADA Accessible are any of these tools? Have they been tested with folks who are hearing or sight impaired?

@Tom when I served in the Colorado Senate, we changed the rules to allow electronic communication devices (cell phones) to be allowed on the Senate floor, which we ultimately adopted. We had a similar debate about moderating activity (e.g. activity from lobbyists to sway votes), and relied on Senate decorum to hold each other accountable for violating rules.

happy to share takeaways from our mock hearing marci@popvox.com

ADA is a significant concern. Some tools like Zoom create automatic transcripts in near real time.

On one hand, it's easier to participate in proceedings for most people. And some services, like YouTube, also automatically create transcripts. And if you broadcast this on your local tv, there may be closed captioning opportunities as well

So the ADA is likely to be similar to current practices, which IMO are not always sufficient, but we're not lowering access through these techniques

The doc-sharing wd be useful even in conventional hearings… in the NH His, emails often don’t get seen, witnesses don’t bring enough copies or even format their docs to actually say at the top who wrote them & when & in reference to what.

*NH House

(individual members dont have staff in NH)

(FWIW, the European Parliament has moved to remote proceedings and is managing to simultaneously translate to half a dozen languages)

This is a link to the first mock hearing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvFxmi6e9ZY

The second one will be soon.

Here's a link to Marci's blogpost on the remote proceedings https://medium.com/g21c/mock-remote-hearing-and-markup-tests-viability-of-a-virtual-congress-9971b0a13559

One question I’ll be queuing up next from an NC Rep: I've heard that in my state (NC) some believe we would need a Constitutional Amendment in order to have a voting session without meeting in person in the chamber. Do you know if that's true in some cases, or if you are advocating to just interpret the definition of "present" differently?

Make sure they are PDF’s. Period.

In Maine we adjourned early on March 17, hoping that we will be able to come back as soon as we can to complete a bunch of unfinished work. We did enact an emergency bill to allow public meetings at the local level using remote participation. So far in my community the City Council and School Committee have now both met using Zoom for the first time. It seems to be successful, although I think the issues that Sunila raised about inclusion of all be taken into account tracked and addressed. We did require that all actions at such meetings be taken by a roll call. I am also very mindful that many people in Maine (low income people and people in rural areas) don’t have access to reliable internet, or any internet at all. Our bill is LD 2167.

Here's guidance from ZOOM on how to avoid Zoom bombing. https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/03/20/keep-uninvited-guests-out-of-your-zoom-event/

SiX resources on democracy and voting related to COVID-19 https://stateinnovation.org/coronavirus/#democracy

Hey Drew, we also adjourned early in Maryland, and are hoping to go back to special session — still sorting out if it can be remote or not.

Sign-on letters, drafting legislation, press attention

tyvm!

Thank you for joining -- stay safe, and good luck!