Title: COS Candidate Survey Program
Original CoS Document (slug): cos-candidate-survey-program
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Attached File: Instructions_for_Candidate_Survey_Program.pdf
This document gives instructions on how to use and manage the candidate survey progra
Created: 2020-03-31 16:06:41
Updated: 2021-05-27 13:16:42
Published: 2020-03-31 00:00:00
Converted: 2025-04-14T19:59:44.552171822
Convention of States Action Candidate Survey Program
Convention of States Action encourages state teams to survey all of your state legislative
candidates and find out where they stand on COS. The election season is a critical opportunity
for your state team to accomplish the following objectives:
● Secure written commitments of support from sitting and prospective legislators for the
COS Application.
● Build personal relationships with legislators and candidates.
● Educate legislators and candidates about COS before they begin to receive
misinformation from fear-mongering Article V opponents. (Once they commit to support
or oppose, changing their minds is difficult.)
● Identify, in candidates who don’t ultimately win, political activists who may be brought on
board as COS leaders after the election.
● Create a “buzz” about COS among state legislators when they learn that our team is
organized and politically engaged during election season.
In other words, this is an extremely important program! Please help us reach out to the
candidates in your area. As you do so, please bear in mind the following:
● You may NOT use your position with COS to support or oppose any candidate for
public office. COS does not tell people how to vote, but we always try to influence
legislators, including potential future legislators, to support the COS Application. You
may not use COS resources or channels of communication to promote or oppose any
candidate’s campaign for office.
● COS has put considerable time and effort into developing an online candidate survey
program to assess candidates’ positions on COS and encourage them to commit their
support to COS. Our legal team has developed a specific set of instructions for
implementing this survey program, and it is essential that you follow these instructions.
Process for Conducting Candidate Survey Program:
1. Identify a source for collecting the names and e-mail addresses of ALL candidates running
for the state legislature. Sources vary by state, but the information can also be found on
websites for the Secretary of State or Board of Elections.
2. Send EACH candidate the following e-mail:
Dear [Candidate Name],
On behalf of voters who are volunteers and supporters of Convention of States
Action, I am conducting a survey to determine which candidates for our state
legislature support our efforts to use Article V of the Constitution to impose fiscal
restraints on Washington, D.C., limit federal power and jurisdiction, and consider
term limits for federal officials. Please follow this link to complete the survey.
We will be informing our supporters and donors of the survey results.
3. Survey results will be posted and regularly updated at www.cossurveyed.com.
4. Please reach out to candidates who are on the fence or oppose COS and try to get them to
support our application.
Remember, this is an information-gathering and lobbying effort to get legislators on board when
they are most receptive to constituent input. As a result, it is critical that you abide by the
following restrictions in implementing this program:
● Your state team must give all candidates in all districts, regardless of party, an equal
opportunity to participate in the survey. This includes candidates who are running
unopposed or effectively unopposed in their district.
● If you want to communicate the survey results to COS supporters in your state, you must
use the email template we provide. This should be sent out only to known COS
supporters in CitizenBuilder. The goal is to get as many COS supporters as possible
contacting these candidates so they will support our application. Any changes to the
template or decisions to communicate the results of the survey through other media
must be run by the Convention of States Action Legal Department before they are
published (<legal@cosaction.com)>.
● Any communication of the survey results must include the full survey and any responses
without any embellishment or endorsement (just the facts). There can be absolutely
no content that expresses a preference for one candidate over another.