The nonpartisan Utah nonprofit organization Voterise is hosting a virtual women’s conference tomorrow.
The Zoom conference kicks off at 8am Saturday morning and will run until just after 2pm.
The schedule includes panel discussions and several breakout sessions made up of influential women on a variety of topics.
Voterise Executive Director Hope Zitting-Goeckeritz told KPCW that the event is meant to bridge the gap and connect Utah’s Women’s Voter Registration Day on February 14th and International Women’s Day on March 8th.
“The first woman to cast a vote under equal suffrage laws did so in Salt Lake City on February 14th, 1870,” Zitting-Goeckeritz said. “To really shine a light on that and then to kind of shine a light on where we are currently in terms of women’s electoral engagement, we’re not doing so well. We actually have about 300,000 women in the state of Utah who are eligible to vote, but not registered.”
Tickets to the event cost $20 and allow attendees to access the recordings of the panels and breakout sessions after the event ends in case they can’t catch the whole thing.
A link to register can be found here. Registration closes at 11:59pm tonight.
Voterise does not only focus on women’s issues, however, and Zitting-Goeckeritz says according to 2018 data from the US Census Bureau, there are about 500,000 individuals in Utah who are eligible to vote, but are not registered. Voterize also works to engage groups of individuals who have the highest number of unregistered voters, like 18-29-year-olds and minority groups throughout the state.
Zitting-Goeckeritz also says it’s important to stay engaged in the political process year-round, and not just during a federal election year. Local elections happen annually -- Park City has one this fall -- and she says, in many cases, those lawmakers actually have the most direct impact on your daily life.
“Election year is an annual thing,” she said. “This is what’s called an ‘off year,’ even though it’s not, there’s still elections going on, specifically municipal elections in Utah. It’s really important to be engaged during these city elections because these are individuals who make decisions very, very personal to you, very literally, close to home.”
For more information on Voterise, click here.
