Accolades 2020

First off, thank you Kee Evans and Mary Lou Ridinger for the concept to do this
ZOOM celebration. Most would prefer an in-person event, but this will do
perfectly in these times of the pandemic, and today’s robust participation attests to
the brilliance of the idea. If not this event, there would be nothing.

Second, thank you Kee, for putting today’s program together. The activities and
presentations look to be engaging and entertaining, and an appropriate mix of
tributes to the celebration of Election Victory 2020. In addition to seeking out and
organizing today’s activities, Kee also handled the promotion of the event by email
including the responses so that we would all receive the log in information and
coordinates. Very well done. Thank you for effort.

Next, we must thank Vincent D’Agati for making his Zoom license available to us
and organizing with Kee the log in information. The now very popular Zoom
platform makes this event both accessible and easy to use for most people, and the
visuals are more attractive than on other platforms. That this is possible for us is
much appreciated by everyone participating today.

2020 started off as a hopeful year, one we at Democrats Abroad Guatemala felt
would offer many opportunities for in-person voter registration events and get-out-
the-vote activities enabling us to both grow our membership and more importantly,
increase the overseas absentee voter turnout from Guatemala. Covid-19 put a stop
to all those ambitious in-person plans. But despite the disruption, DAGT still
accomplished a lot, thanks to all who pitched in. We turned to email and to
Facebook, and word of mouth, WhatsApp and phone calls.And it worked. During
the year, notwithstanding the pandemic and its shut down, we were able to guide
308 voters to use VoteFromAbroad.Org, our online voter registration and ballot
request tool. That’s about 55% of our current up to date membership of 560.

The full Executive Committee deserves a thank you for all it did during this
tumultuous year. By name, expressions of thanks are deserved by:

Mary Lou: for making phone calls and helping voters complete their
ballots.
Kee: as our GOTV and voter registration chair, was able to hold one in-
person voter registration event early in the year, and was able to help
organize our very successful in-person global primary March 3rd, but when
covid hit in mid-March, the shut down stopped all in-person events. But
despite the interruption, Kee helped voters by phone and email during the
closing months of our GOTV effort.

Traci Styner: for guiding many at the Lake in requesting, voting and
returning their ballots, and offering ideas to improve our GOTV efficiency
going forward.

Rachael Shenyo: for helping voters by phone and in person request and vote
their ballots and get them delivered to the US Embassy for mailing via DPO
to LEOs.

Vincent D’Agati: for stepping up to become our Treasurer, and the other
skills and experience he brings to DAGT, in addition to making Zoom
possible.

Juan Pablo Aris: for coordinating a discount with DHL for ballot return,
and using his office fax service for return of ballots by fax.

Phyllis MacCartney: for stepping up to become our Secretary.

Karl Holzwarth: for not only stepping up to be a Member at Large, but for
two other important contributions to the Victory 2020: (1) contacting the US
Embassy through his Congressman’s office to encourage the US Embassy in
Guatemala to allow voters to send their ballots via local courier to the DPO
using either Cargo Expreso or Guatex, and (2) assisting DAGT with
Facebook ads financed by the DA globally. Also, lending his fax service for
return of ballots.

Blaine Stokes: for stepping up to become a Member at Large, and make

himself available for more engagement in future DAGT activities.

Carla Perez: for stepping up to become our new Media Contact and
Communications Standing Committee Chair. Special appreciation for
 Carla’s language skills in helping populate the DA Latino Facebook page
with ads.

Johnny Figueroa-Month: for stepping forward to become our first MeetUp

Group chair for Huehuetenango.

Special mention to Alison Schwarz, who provided service in helping voters

in Guatemala City deliver their ballots to the US Embassy.

Finally, and most importantly, to all DAGT members who requested a

ballot and voted and returned their ballots.

DA International also made history and some numbers are worth noting:

- Votefromabroad.org had more than 766,000 unique visitors in 2020, and

more than 1million visits to the site, which is three times the traffic of
2016.
- Users of VoteFromAbroad.Org logged in from 221 different countries
- 2020 saw approximately 1,800,000 overseas voters received ballots with
more than half that number actually returning their ballots, compared to
about 600,000 having returned ballots in 2016.
- DA’s increased numbers in 2020 were the result of innovations and
increased volunteers:
o 1500 volunteers made 600,000 CallHub phone calls with overseas
voters.
o DA’s online help desk assisted 80,000 voters.
o The creation of Drop In Sunday (by Kendra Borgen of DA
Netherlands) using Zoom to provide one on one voter assistance
helped 5,000 voters.
o All of this was financed by DA’s membership donors, 4000 of
them, donating a total of $650,000.
- Earned media for Democrats Abroad in 2020 (stories in press not paid
for) earned more than 215 mentions in places like; The Atlantic, BBC,
NPR, the Washington Post, LA Times,VOX, the New York Times,
Deutsche Welle, NBCNews, among others.
- DA partnered with Ambassadors for Biden - an innovative outreach
program led by Ambassador Bruce Heyman and Vicki Heyman and
 which worked with the Biden for President campaign. Together, DA and
they leveraged the networks of a large, bipartisan group of former US
Ambassadors to amplify and enhance DA’s own get out the vote and
fundraising efforts, as well as expand our outreach to Americans abroad.

Let me close on a somber note by remembering and celebrating two members of

DAGT we lost during 2020: Dave Evans, who left us on July 3, 2020, and Thomas
James McCullough who departed this campaign on November 1, 2020. Dave
Evans was one of original founding members of DAGT back in 2006-7, and was
very active with DAGT throughout all those years. Tom was 92 years old and lived
a very full life up until the up to the last few months. Tom joined DA in 2012.