On its surface, American politics has devolved into shouting matches on social media, or at best something we exercise on occasion at the polls…which can be disheartening to those looking to become more politically active. Luckily, former White House policy adviser Eric Liu has a very different view of what civic engagement can (and should) look like. Liu co-founded the Seattle-based nonprofit Citizen University, with initiatives geared toward “cultivating a culture of citizenship,” as he puts it. One such program, Civic Saturday, is modeled after a faith-based service, but the focus is on connecting and empowering people who might be disillusioned with the political status quo. NationSwell spoke with Liu about how to get young people excited about their civic duty, to help ensure America remains a robust democracy.
NationSwell: What exactly is Civic Saturday, and how does it fit within the larger nonprofit you co-founded, Citizen University?
Eric Liu: Citizen University’s mission is to spread the belief that democracy’s on us, that it’s possible to make change in civic life and that we’ve got the responsibility to try. It’s about cultivating the character and kind of civic ethics that can start changing the culture. We’ve got a portfolio of different programs that get at those goals in different ways.
One of those programs is Civic Saturday, which is basically a civic analog to a faith gathering. It’s not about religion in a traditional sense, but about what you might call American civic religion — a creed of ideas and ideals, and what it takes to actually live up to and to fulfill the promise of our democracy. [We] sing, there are readings of texts that you might consider civic scripture, whether they are famous like the preamble to the Constitution or lesser-known things like a Langston Hughes poem. There’s a civic sermon at the heart of [these gatherings] to help make sense of whatever may be going on in the moment morally, ethically and politically.
NationSwell: The goal of Citizen University is to empower individuals to become responsible, engaged citizens. So why use a religious framework for Civic Saturday, which features what you call sermons and scripture, but has nothing to do with actual houses of worship?
Liu: Whichever faith or tradition you’re from, organized religion has figured out a few things over the millennia about how to bring people together, about how to create a language of common purpose and about how to use text to spark people’s reckoning with their own shortcomings, weaknesses and aspirations. So when we started Civic Saturday, we looked around at different examples of people who have been successful at engaging folks this way.
NationSwell: Does that ever turn people off? Like they want to become more civically engaged, but the churchiness of it all gives them pause?
Liu: Right now, we are facing a crisis of spirit and purpose [in this country]. There are people in organized religion who address that through that channel, and more power to them. For someone who is a-religious and unchurched, once they walk in the door [at Civic Saturday], they realize that even though they are not religious, they’ve been hungering for a sense of purposeful shared community that elevates questions of moral challenge right now. Common ritual [can give] people shared purpose.
NationSwell: It does seem that with the advent of the internet and the erosion of the public sphere, community has become fractured and people are really craving personal connection. I’m assuming just getting people in the same room to talk and share ideas is a major goal of yours.
Liu: Exactly. Among the crises of our politics is this profound isolation, atomization and loneliness, and what Civic Saturday animates in people is this desire to be in the company of others where it’s OK to ask for help, and not be alone. Giving people permission to [do that] in a way that is constructive and not tapping into our worst demons is a good thing.
At every Civic Saturday, community partners come to register folks to vote, to get signatures for ballot measures. And at the end of every Civic Saturday, we have community announcements: People will talk about a film screening they’re doing, or a talking circle they’re organizing on local issues of homelessness or whatever it might be.
But the key here is we’re not organizing that. We’re creating the space and inviting people to exercise their own agency and power to do the sparking, the inviting, the organizing and so forth. It’s not our agenda to register voters, but it is our agenda to spread the belief that it’s possible to make change happen and then create the space for people to start doing that.
NationSwell: What are some other Citizen University programs that tie into your broader mission of sparking people into action?
Liu: We run something called the Civic Collaboratory, which is a network of civic innovators from all around the country that fosters new partnerships and collaborations among these very disparate kinds of civic innovators. We also have a youth program that activates young people in exercising their own power in political and civic life.
We’ve also launched a program called the Joy of Voting, which proceeds from the premise that there used to be an American civic life, this culture of raucous, joyful, participatory engagement around voting and elections during the 1800s [and] up to the early 20th century: Street theater, open-air debates, parades, dueling bands, concerts, toasting and bonfires. Television kind of killed that, but there’s no good reason why we can’t revive that culture, especially at the local level. Because after decades of living mediated political lives through our screens, our intuition was that people are hungry for an invitation to come out and treat voting not as “eat your vegetables, do your duty,” but “join the party,” right? The Knight Foundation agreed with that premise and [gave us funding]. So over the last few years, we’ve traveled to seven cities around the country, organizing musicians, artists, activists and neighbors to generate locally-rooted creative ideas. And then we give them modest grants to execute them.
NationSwell: I saw that Civic Saturday was just in Los Angeles. Have you franchised the model?
Liu: When we launched Civic Saturday four days after the [2016] presidential election, we realized we’d struck a nerve. We started doing them regularly in Seattle, and they started getting a little bit of attention. People throughout the country started asking, “Hey, can you bring Civic Saturday to our community?” So we’ve taken Civic Saturday to L.A., New York, Nashville, Des Moines, Atlanta, Portland, Maine, and other places. But of course that is not super-scalable. So we launched Civic Seminary, a program to train [people] how to run their own Civic Saturday. Not just [training on] how you run events, but more deeply, how do you talk about, think about and reckon with these ideas, while thinking about the gaps between our ideals, our actual institutions and our practices. We’ve now got a couple dozen people around the U.S. who are running their own Civic Saturday in different kinds of settings.
NationSwell: There are people who are, as you put it, hungry for this kind of connection and civic engagement, but there are many others who have been historically marginalized and who feel like they don’t have any civic power, they don’t have a voice. How do you reach people like that?
Liu: I think you put your finger on the core question of all civic engagement: How do you do this work in a way that’s not just cycling through the usual suspects? We’re trying to reach partners or colleagues who in turn can reach circles and communities where we don’t have direct ties. One of our other programs is called Citizens Fest, which we did in New Orleans, Dallas and Memphis. In each of those cities, we had a core anchor partner on the ground who had deep relationships in precisely where you’re talking about — in communities that aren’t always invited to participate, show up and be part of civic power gatherings. In all of those communities, the folks who showed up [represented] such a diverse group on both class and race dimensions.
As we’ve been getting applications for the 2019 cohorts [for Civic Seminary], it is kind of heartening to see the breadth of people from [different] socioeconomic backgrounds, rural versus urban. They run the gamut from a 23-year-old ex-gang member from the southside of Chicago, to a young mother in small-town Tennessee, to people who are educators and poets and artists in places like Indianapolis and Tucson. We brought them together and we have designed an arc of experience for them that is about understanding themselves, understanding our times and being able to speak a language of tapping into the emotional undercurrents that drive so much of politics right now.
You can think about politics as voting midterms and issues, but undergirding all of that are currents of fear, anxiety, hope, impatience. And so a big part of our time together is about equipping each other to break through cynicism that people have about American ideals, and to talk about how ideas of equal justice under law might play out in communities where there is unequal justice.
MORE: 9 Strategies for Talking Politics — Without Picking a Fight
Tag: Voting
What’s in a Celebrity Endorsement? When It Comes to Voting, a Lot
How much power do celebrities wield with their social media-mediated endorsements? When it comes to encouraging the apathetic to vote in the 2018 midterms, now less than three weeks away, probably more than you think.
At least one study, of how celebrity endorsements may have impacted the 2016 presidential election, supports this notion. According to study author Nives Zubcevic-Basic: “In a cluttered world where myriad messages fight for the attention of time-starved consumers, celebrity endorsers serve as arbiters of public opinion.” Much as brands rely on celebrity endorsements for their products, just seeing a beloved celebrity with an item can create positive psychological associations for fans. But for that endorsement to do well, the celebrity’s public image and the “message” of the item need to align.
In 2008, it’s estimated that Oprah’s endorsement of Barack Obama generated as many as a million votes for him. But there’s a theory that her endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016, along with hundreds of other celebrities, wasn’t enough to override the fact that President Trump was a celebrity endorsing himself.
For this year’s midterms, celebrity endorsements seem to be leaning left. Of the top 500 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit posts of the link to vote.gov, 53 percent were from people with “significant” cultural influence (this category includes more traditional celebrities like Sean Hannity and Debra Messing, but also verified social-media influencers like Twitch streamer Hutch). Of that 53 percent, it’s interesting to note that more than 86 percent of posts were by people with left-leaning views (such as Taylor Swift.)
A total of 43 posts were from politicians, with 79 percent of them identifying as Democrats, 12 percent as independent and 9 percent as Republicans. But it was the non-politicians, celebrities like Mark Hamill, Kathy Griffin and Sean Hannity, doing most of the legwork. More than 88 percent of non-politicians encouraging voter registration through the vote.gov link fell on the left of the aisle. In many cases, one person posted the link multiple times: Kathy Griffin, Padma Lakshmi and Billy Eichner led the pack in terms of frequency, with 23, 13 and 11 posts, respectively.
While both the GOP and the DNC have created their own sites to encourage voter registration, the vote.gov website is a nonpartisan website sponsored by the U.S. government.
Will celebrity involvement in the midterms have a different effect at local levels? Or are we seeing a new era in endorsement of candidates? We’ll find out on Nov. 6. Until then, double check your voter registration status, register if you still have time and take a look below to see if your favorite celebrity is working to get their fans involved with this election:
https://twitter.com/patsajak/status/1050102795703992320
https://www.facebook.com/rihanna/photos/a.10152251658271676/10155888351851676/?type=3&theater
https://www.instagram.com/p/BokGXZ3FSQK/?taken-by=amyschumer
https://www.facebook.com/SeanHannity/posts/10161400368605389
https://www.instagram.com/p/BopoXpYnCes/?taken-by=taylorswift
4 Low-Lift Ways You Can Help Fight Gun Violence
In the first six months of 2018, there were 150 mass shootings in America. And though the number of dead continues to climb — over 7,210 people have been killed by firearms this year, a figure that is rapidly rising — gun law reform hasn’t had much traction on Capitol Hill.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to get involved in shaping U.S. gun laws and regulations. From joining advocacy groups to buying lipstick (really), here are four ways you can take action on gun reform to help push it onto the congressional agenda.
ARM YOURSELF WITH KNOWLEDGE
Lobbyists and reporters are often at odds in how they can influence policy. Reporters expose, while lobbyists harangue and cajole. But despite their differences, both are effective in their own right — and they could use your help.
First, know your stuff: Read daily news from a source like The Trace, a nonprofit news organization that covers gun violence across the U.S. and is primarily financed through the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety.
Everytown, which is funded by $50 million of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s money, actively fights against the NRA’s lobbying with a coalition of their own — comprised of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, as well as survivors of gun violence — to help raise awareness and change legislation in the U.S.
Everytown recently had success in pushing gun reform in New Jersey, which just passed a “red flag” bill that allows law enforcement to temporarily confiscate guns from people they determine a risk to society or themselves. According to Axios, the group convened 10 times with state leaders and had a day of advocacy in support for the bill in order to help pass it.
Other organizations to learn about and support: The Brady Campaign, The Violence Policy Center and The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
INFLUENCE POLICY FROM YOUR LAPTOP
Have an opinion on gun reform? Outside of voting, social media is the easiest way to send a message to your congressional leaders.
Not only does Facebook’s Town Hall Project make it simple to find out who your local representatives are and to message them directly, websites like Countable help you navigate all the bills currently being considered in D.C., and to take action by letting representatives know what you think of the bills.
SideReel founders Peter Arzhintar and Bart Myers launched Countable in 2014, when there were few ways to engage politicians on the internet. “We were talking about what to do next, and we’re both passionate about politics,” Myers told Wired. “We were interested in what happened with campaign finance reform and [the Stop Online Piracy Act], but we were disappointed with the tools that were out there to drive advocacy and let the average voter to get involved.”
Countable now has news and a social component that allows users to interact with others’ opinions, and vote on them too.
STAY FLY
If you’re fired up about the lack of gun regulation in this country, buy some lipstick.
No, really. The Lipstick Lobby is a social movement e-commerce beauty website that is dedicating 100 percent of net profits from their “Fired Up” lipstick color — a fiery orange-red — to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The Brady Center aims to cut gun deaths in half by 2025.
If you’re feeling especially generous — or just need to stock up on cosmetics — you can also support Planned Parenthood or the American Civil Liberties Union by buying other products from The Lipstick Lobby that contribute to those organizations’ campaigns.
For those with extra deep pockets, supporting high-end brands that align with gun reform is another way to maintain your activism-glam game. As one example, Gucci donated $500,000 to the March for Our Lives rally this year. And if you’re a jet-setter, flying Delta and staying at a Wyndham hotel is yet another way to stick it to the NRA. Those are just a few of the brands that have cut ties with the gun lobby.
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD, EVEN IF YOU’RE UNDERAGE
With the website WeCan.Vote, you can see how your state representatives rank with the NRA’s scorecard (A+ being the most friendly toward the gun lobby and F the least). If you’re not yet voting age, you can sign up on the website and then cast your vote to keep those members in or out of office. The vote is purely ceremonial and doesn’t actually influence election results, but it does send a message to leaders that the next wave of voters is coming.
Another way to make a difference? Join or form your own activist group, much like students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did when 17 students and staff members were shot and killed this past February. If you need some inspiration, here are just a few examples of young activists demanding change.
The Forces Fighting for Fairer Elections
This year’s political buzzword? Gerrymandering.
Though the practice of redrawing voting districts to favor the party in power has been around for more than 200 years — and its merits debated for nearly as long — gerrymandering has recently become the cause du jour for Democrats. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Gill v. Whitford. At issue: whether Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature manipulated districts so severely that Wisconsinites have essentially been denied their full right to vote.
To be sure, extreme gerrymandering occurs on both sides of the aisle, though Republican victories in state legislatures during the past decade have put the GOP in charge of more maps. President Barack Obama highlighted the issue in his 2016 State of the Union address, saying, “We’ve got to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around.”
While the Gill case has the potential to reshape the way states, ahem, shape their districts, here’s a look at some of the innovative ways advocates are changing the debate on extreme gerrymandering.
1. THE MATHEMATICIANS
What if, instead of people drawing voting maps, we let simple math do the work for us? That proposition is what led Moon Duchin, a math professor at Tufts University, to launch the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG), which studies how to apply geometry and computing principles to create fair, compact voting districts. Through a series of regional workshops in 2017–18, Duchin and her team will train mathematicians and other academics to serve as expert witnesses in redistricting cases. The workshops, which kicked off with a five-day conference in Boston in August, will feature lectures by leading experts in mathematics, political science, law and civil rights, and will be partially open to the public as well as available online.
“We’ll be teaching them, but we’ll also be asking them questions,” Duchin said in an interview earlier this year. “At end of day, we want to produce something that leads to better standards.”
2. THE COMPUTER SCIENTISTS
Though a lower court ruled that computer algorithms were used in the Wisconsin case to give Republicans a disproportionate advantage, similar technology is also being employed elsewhere to do exactly the opposite.
Last month, data scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign published a paper touting the algorithm they developed, which can engineer a voting district according to whatever parameters are set by the user, while still ensuring certain geographic standards are met. Likewise, a different team from the university last year developed an algorithm that evaluates “extreme redistricting plans” created by lawmakers that can easily suss out how partisan they are.
3. THE CITIZEN CARTOGRAPHERS
If scientists and mathematicians fail, there’s always DIY redistricting. Open software like DistrictBuilder and The Public Mapping Project is available to the public, as is Dave’s Redistricting, created by a Seattle software engineer. Such transparent mapmaking resources allow local and state governments, advocates, and regular citizens to kick the tires of proposed districts, to see if they are as fair as possible.
4. THE STATES
In an effort to reduce the impact of partisanship, some states have charged independent panels with creating election maps. Arizona, for example, has seen some of the most competitive races in the country since implementing its panel in 2001, producing statistically lower margins of victory compared to the nation as a whole. California’s 14-person panel isn’t allowed to consider partisan data when drawing its maps; the result has similarly increased competitiveness, with the average margin of victory 30 percent lower in 2011 than it was in 10 years prior, before the creation of the commission.
And then there’s Iowa, which relies on an advisory board to draft voting districts. The state legislature then gets final approval; if they reject it three times, Iowa’s highest court will intervene.
5. THE VOTING-REFORM ACTIVISTS
Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, is used to pick Oscar winners, the Australian House of Representatives, and the presidents of Ireland and India. In this system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If there’s no winner on the first round, the candidate with the fewest votes is removed, and the votes are re-tabulated. The result is a winner with a higher chance of representing the majority of voters. Maine voters approved the method in a ballot initiative last November, and while the state’s court later called the measure unconstitutional, it is still in effect.
FairVote.org, a nonpartisan group advocating for election reform, also promotes ranked-choice voting, and a bill calling for it in Congressional representative elections has been introduced by Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat.
* * *
While none of these possibilities remove fallible, political humans entirely from the redistricting process, each would probably be better than the flawed system we have now, and, with the fate of the republic at stake, merits consideration.
“What’s really behind all of this?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked in court last Tuesday, before answering her own question: “The precious right to vote.”
Looking to Repair Democracy? There’s an App for That
Watching the bare-knuckle cage match that is our presidential election in 2016, it’s no wonder voters are tempted to just unplug the television and bolt the door until Election Day. But the team behind the networking site Brigade wants you to turn those frustrations into something productive. The website, funded in part by tech billionaire Sean Parker of Napster, Facebook and Spotify fame, was founded as a virtual forum for civic engagement and is now turning its attention to getting out the vote in November.
In the site’s earliest incarnation, political enthusiasts sparred over policy proposals, hoping to convince ideological opponents to switch sides or, at the very least, see another point of view. In the last few months, Brigade has shifted its emphasis to the election: Political allies in the same district declare which candidates they’ll be supporting in the voting booth, from the commander-in-chief all the way down to county coroner, with the goal of rallying like-minded folks to the cause.
When visitors first log in, they are asked for their address and presented with dozens of issue-related survey questions. Then, their answers are compared to other users (including people in their area) who’ve pledged their votes to a specific candidate. This is particularly useful, CEO Matt Mahan points out, for down-ballot races: After the incessant media coverage of the presidential race, voters may know who they want to see in the Oval Office, but still have no idea who’s best suited to represent them on Capitol Hill, much less in City Hall.
Brigade joins the likes of Turbovote, which sends electronic reminders about key registration deadlines, and BallotReady, which can fill in any knowledge gaps in down-ballot races. NBCU and Vote Smart provide a comprehensive suite of tools to help with every step of the process, including a quiz that matches users with a candidate based on policy positions; a comprehensive FAQ page that covers eligibility, registration, polling places and more; and a tool that lets people check the voting requirements in their state. Users who were granted early access to Brigade’s new ballot tool have already pledged almost 300,000 votes for candidates from the top of the ticket to the important, but frequently overlooked, down-ballot races. And they invited almost 1 million friends to pledge votes as well.
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But what distinguishes Brigade from other voting tools is its permanence: Members can wonk out, regardless of how far away the next election is. Think of it as Facebook for the politically minded.
“We believe a voter network needs to exist in the world,” says Mahan. “We’re creating a way to make the political process more accessible, engaging and transparent for ordinary people. That’s our long-term vision for Brigade: to bring democracy online.”
Because Brigade tracks a user’s pledges, it’s easy for people to see their impact, like how many opinions they’ve changed through online discussions or how many people they’ve recruited to their candidate. Elizabeth McAlexander, of Knoxville, Tenn., for example, knows she’s swayed 110 other Brigade users to vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein, measurable data you can’t find anywhere else.
Donald P. Green, a political scientist at Columbia University whose research focuses on how to mobilize and persuade voters, will be studying the impact of Brigade’s pledges on turnout. While his job requires him to be a “determined skeptic,” he believes that Brigade’s social influence could boost participation. “Many people feel disconnected from the political process. In some ways, even though they are interested enough to register to vote and feel a sense of civic duty, it’s as though they were invited to a social event. Without that extra nudge of saying, ‘Hey, let’s go,’ they might just miss this one,” he explains. “Anything that brings people into contact with each other or reminds them of social norms tends to increase turnout.”
To be sure, the site still has its share of partisan strife — users who’d rather take personal swipes at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump rather than discuss those candidates’ positions — but Mahan believes those conflicts will subside once the election is over. He references the time a San Francisco county supervisor, Scott Weiner, logged in to debate affordable housing policies, a model for what he expects to see in the future as the site’s following pressures elected officials to make an account.
Once a new president is sworn in, Mahan sees Brigade as an important driver in guiding the issues that the new administration will focus on. Rather than imitate the mud-slinging candidates did in the run-up to the election, Mahan hopes users will be able to carry on high-minded political discussions and collaborate on solutions. “There’s a lack of faith today that our political process works,” says Mahan. “There’s a feeling that participation doesn’t matter and that the system is rigged.” And that may be the biggest reason of all for forums like Brigade to exist — to create a much-needed space for citizens to meaningfully carry out their civic duties.
This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
This User-Friendly Tool Gets You In The Know Before You Vote
With the presidential primary election looming, Chicago public school teacher Megan Augustiny introduced her high school civics students to BallotReady, an online guide to down-ballot races. (Think: state attorney, judgeships, city council — candidates that first-time voters in her class had never heard of, but would soon be electing to office). The nonpartisan site compiles essential information that voters need on little-known candidates — their job experience, positions on controversial issues and endorsements accrued — making it easy for students (and all voters) to “access information in the way they are used to,” she says, favoriting contenders as if their sample ballot were an Instagram feed.
Which is just what Alex Niemczewski and Aviva Rosman, two recent University of Chicago grads who co-founded BallotReady, had envisioned. Both are reserved, heads-down types who prefer to focus on their work, speaking softly about their high-minded ideals of involving more people at all stages of the democratic process. The two built the site in their spare time and spent just $180 on marketing to launch BallotReady. Within a few months, it irreversibly changed voter behavior across Illinois, where thousands of people logged on to the site. During this year’s bombastic election season, instead of skipping many of the contests, or worse, casting an uninformed vote, BallotReady users now have at their fingertips valuable information about local and regional candidates that are virtually unknown to most people.
For a glimpse of BallotReady’s reach, all one needs to do is log on to Twitter on Election Day.
Done. Whole-ballot voting, couldn’t have done it without @BallotReady pic.twitter.com/aLlZdGPTNk
— Tim McGovern (@herdingbats) March 15, 2016
Loved @ballotready! Never been more well informed going into an election. #illinoisprimary https://t.co/KQ8608ag8F
— Khalfani Myrick (@KhalfaniMyrick) March 15, 2016
.@BallotReady thx to you, for the first time ever, i feel informed about my vote for Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner 🙂
— Hassan S. Ali (@hassanisms) March 15, 2016
.@BallotReady Thanks for helping me be smart about this privilege. #vote #chicago #YourVoiceMatters pic.twitter.com/GrnmD3isG6
— Emily Drake (@EmKDee) March 15, 2016
In states where it’s active, BallotReady is so popular that politicians ask to add specifics to their profiles, offering new possibilities for local campaigns that are too small to attract media coverage or buy their own advertisements. If a school board member sees her opponent vows to support a charter school expansion, for instance, the incumbent may add more details to her education platform. “If a candidate says, ‘I support education,’ we don’t include that, because everybody does,” Niemczewski says. Although, “if a candidate didn’t support education, we would include that,” she adds.
BallotReady emerged from a collision of two pasts: Rosman’s as an enthusiastic electioneer and Niemczewski’s nonprofit work, as well as her knack for code. A self-avowed political junkie, Rosman started participating in the political process in middle school, driving with her dad from their native Massachusetts to New Hampshire and attempting to sway the state’s swing voters every election. In 2004, she nearly failed two high school classes when she used frequent flier miles to campaign for John Kerry in Florida. Four years later, while staffing a congressional race in Illinois, Rosman realized her knowledge was severely lacking. “I was trying to inform people about my candidate, and yet, I was unprepared to vote for all these other people on the ballot,” she remembers. Then in 2014, Rosman ran for a seat on the school council in Chicago. She asked Niemczewski, an old classmate then coaching Chicago’s unemployed into IT jobs, to vote for her. “I didn’t even know there was an election,” Niemczewski says, admitting to missing the vote. The two stayed in touch and a few months later, collaborated on the guide that developed into BallotReady.
More than 160,000 voters in Illinois, Virginia, Kentucky and Colorado have used BallotReady to inform their choices — a 10-fold growth from its launch last fall. The site is expanding its reach, developing profiles for candidates in Maryland, New Hampshire and Florida. Scaling hasn’t been easy: “It takes a lot of phone calls and relationship-building. That’s kind of daunting,” Niemczewski says, noting that 100 volunteer curators are needed to build candidate profiles, “but it’s also exciting, because it means we can really help.” By year’s end, BallotReady hopes to reach 1 million voters, and by 2020, to be in every state.
Since BallotReady is committed to educating every American citizen, it devotes resources to eliminating digital access issues that arise. Once, Niemczewski responded to a request from an elderly woman in an assisted living center. After the woman reported being unable to load BallotReady, Niemczewski troubleshot the problem by backdating the site’s functionality, so the senior citizens could use it on their outdated computers.
Ultimately, BallotReady’s founders work to make their innovative site as user-friendly as possible — to both the older electorate and young, first-time voters alike. That mission is just one of the reasons why teachers like Augustiny thinks that its online repository of candidate profiles is a great way to get Millennials more involved in elections. “The Internet is so pervasive at this point: it informs everything that we do, especially for younger people. Not having that information readily accessible online was a real disservice to young people,” she says.
As a teacher, Augustiny always wants her kids to develop in-depth research skills. But when it comes to voting — an activity that’s made so many Americans apathetic — she’s in favor of turning to BallotReady for a digital shortcut.
This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
MORE: Investing in the Future: This Visionary Program Gets Students Hooked on STEM
The Man That’s Bringing Voting Out of the 18th Century
Did you vote in the last national election?
If you’re like most Americans, the answer is no.
Even with control of the Senate hanging in the balance, the 2014 midterm elections saw the lowest voter turnout since World War II, only 36.3 percent — a national embarrassment. For some citizens, the shirking of democratic duty may have resulted from a lack of interest. But others may have missed registration deadlines, got stuck at work or been turned away at the polls for insufficient identification. Our electoral system, after all, doesn’t make it easy.
“There’s a tradition in the U.S. about why we vote on a Tuesday. We vote on a Tuesday because in the 1700s that was super convenient. Sunday was for church, Monday you’d go down to the capitol, Tuesday morning you’d vote for whomever you wanted to vote for and you’d be back home for market day on Wednesday,” says Seth Flaxman, co- founder and executive director of the nonprofit Democracy Works. The problem? “It’s still fitting the way we live to the 1700s, and that’s so complicated to stay engaged in.”
Flaxman’s project is updating American democracy for the smartphone era. Nonpartisan, the group’s central principle is that voting should fit the way we live today. That’s why Democracy Works debuted TurboVote, an online voter registration and notification tool, as its signature app in 2010. All it requires users to submit is a name, the locale where they want to cast a ballot and a way to stay in touch. Reminders, unique to each jurisdiction, warn users when Election Day is close, so a voter can update his or her registration or apply for an absentee ballot.
Before the 2012 presidential election, TurboVote helped 200,000 people register. The app’s reminders helped ensure 75 percent of users that were first-time registrants voted. (Eighty percent of users who re-registered to vote actually cast a ballot.)
“It doesn’t make any sense that we can rent a movie or connect with friends or go shopping — do all these things that are arguably much less important than voting — a lot easier than we can actually interact with our democracy,” Flaxman says. “The only way democracy actually works is because people vote. So the easiest way we can get more people to vote in the U.S. is to modernize voting for the way we live.”
While a graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, living on campus in Cambridge, Mass., Flaxman didn’t vote in several elections in his home state. “ I remember being angry when I realized how many elections I’d missed,” he says. Walking down the street one November, he noticed a sandwich board announcing that it was Election Day. “This is it?” he recalls thinking, noticing that the polls had already been closed an hour. “This is how I’m supposed to know how to vote?” So he reached out to fellow classmate Kathryn Peters and asked her if they could build a system to track election deadlines. “
That’s crazy that doesn’t already exist,” she said at the time.
Flaxman doesn’t see apathy or disengagement as reasons why voter turnout is low. “Consistently around 60 percent of voters say they didn’t vote for a collection of around a dozen different process issues,” Flaxman says. “If we can solve the process side of the equation first, that’s the easier way to increase participation, and it’s the way we can have a bigger impact immediately.”
This is particularly true for young voters, who spend a significant amount of their life online and find punching out chads in a paper ballot archaic.
Millennials, too, are “a generation that grew up seeing our politics not working,” Flaxman adds. For him, as for almost everyone, this failure was personal. Back in grad school, he couldn’t find a single national or statewide candidate who fully supported same-sex marriage that he could back. “At the time, my boyfriend — now husband — and I were driving up to Maine to help in the Prop. 1 vote, in favor of marriage equality. It lost and it opened up my eyes to there’s not always this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” Flaxman says. “My hope is that if we can make voting easier, it will actually wake up people in government to who they need to serve. For me, a democracy that works is ultimately issue number one. The more of us who vote, the more responsive and representative our government’s actually going to be.”
Ohio’s Redistricting Plan Makes Fair Elections Possible
Each time redistricting voter districts enters the national dialogue, along with it comes partisan politics and gerrymandering. But Ohio is taking steps to quell the dissent and find a more balanced and lasting way to map out voting districts.
Recently, the Ohio House gave final approval to a plan to draw voter maps using a bipartisan process with the goal of making elections more competitive.
Legislatures draw voting maps in 37 states, while 13 states use commissions — with some independent and others politically appointed — to define districts that are meant to be less partisan. In Ohio, the Apportionment Board is made up of three elected state officials including the governor, auditor and the secretary of state, as well as one member from each party chosen by the legislatures, according to the New York Times.
But the new proposal adds an additional member from each party, and if the minority party members don’t agree with the map, the revisions will only last four years instead of 10. With statewide elections every four years, partisan control could shift, which means it would make more sense to come up with a compromise that the minority party approves of as well.
The new plan is focused on state legislative districts but may have an effect on congressional districts since they are drawn by state lawmakers.
There’s no guarantee, however, that the plan will bring a more balance approach, as more Americans have begun living in communities where they’re politically and ideologically aligned, the New York Times points out. This divide also increasingly applies to the rural and urban divide as well.
“There’s no perfect map, no panacea,” says Morgan Cullen, a policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But Ohio’s move is the first in the last few years to remove partisanship from the process, Cullen adds.
Some state Republicans are praising the move, calling it a step toward ending polarization in the General Assembly, according to Ohio secretary of state Jon Husted. Democratic Senator Nina Turner, who ran unsuccessfully against Husted for secretary of state in November, agrees that the plan would create more balance.
“I always say Ohio is conservative by design and not by desire,” she says. “This really is a tremendous deal.”
Ohio residents must vote to amend the State Constitution in a November 2015 referendum in order to implement the changes, which means they would not go into effect until the next redistricting in 2021.
MORE: The Simple Fix That May Change How We Vote Forever
The Website Helping Millennials Cast a Vote for the Earth
As the midterm election nears, political groups are ramping up efforts to get the vote out — specifically among the youth. Among them is a group of Stanford University students, artists, filmmakers and coders who are driving one simple message to voters born between 1981 and 1996: “You have power.”
Hack the Election, designed by the ad agency Odysseus Arms, the Environmental Defense Fund and a group of Stanford students, cross-references an IP address with candidates on a user’s local ballot to discern who is supporting clean energy. The site highlights President Barack Obama’s clean power plan, which will entail the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) imposing limits on how much carbon dioxide (CO2) companies may produce, which can include up to 44 percent of CO2 released in the United States.
“People say they don’t vote because they don’t know who to vote for? But you’ve got the name,” the site reads, after providing name(s) of candidates who are supporting environmental policy. In order to receive the correct information, a user must be in his or her home district.
Politicians are eager to turn out the millennial population for the midterm election, but a recent Harvard University public opinion poll indicated that the number of millennials planning to vote in this election has dropped, with less than 25 percent who said they would “definitely be voting.”
Still, millennials are incredibly supportive of environmental movement. Earlier this year, a Pew Research Center poll found that people under 30 are more inclined to back alternative energy sources, while another Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll found that 85 percent of millennials said they supported the clean power plan.
“We call this stuff that we do one-click activism,” says Franklin Tipton, co-developer for Hack the Election. “It’s not that people are lazy; it’s just how the world works.”
The site is just one of the many efforts to entice millennial voters through an environmental lens, which includes Patagonia’s “Vote the Environment” campaign, an initiative that encourages artists to design environmental posters and screenprints, raising money for both the artist and voting advocacy group HeadCount. The outfitter is also featuring voter information as well as candidates who support environmental polices on its site.
MORE: Watch: How Rock the Vote Is Reaching Millennials
How Los Angeles County is Rethinking Antiquated Voting Technology
With 4.8 million registered voters, 5,000 polling places and the need to provide voting material in 12 different languages across the country’s largest election jurisdiction, Los Angeles County has its hands full during election season.
Which is why local election administrators are looking beyond repairing old systems to design a new one that meets the unique needs of its voters, according to Governing. The project, helmed by registrar-recorder/count clerk Dean Logan, is aimed at creating a public-owned and operated, transparent and safe system that ensures voters their ballot is accurately cast and counted.
The current system, which was developed by the L.A. County government during the late 1960s, employs different contracts from various commercial vendors for components of the overall voting system, according to Logan. He contends there has yet to be a voting system on the market to meet L.A. County’s needs, and creating a modernized system rather than rebuilding a version of an existing model is the solution.
“We also have a very diverse electorate and we are economically diverse,” Logan said. “So we serve areas that are very affluent and conditioned to options with technology; we also serve areas that are dependent on public transportation. We have a homeless population that needs to be served in order to vote. It’s just really a unique jurisdiction in terms of the combination of all of those elements.”
Using a “sizable public investment,” Logan’s team is designing a system that’s geared toward optimizing the voter experience, one of two projects across the country pioneering a new frontier in voter technology. In Travis Country, Texas, local officials are implementing a similar project.
Rather than building customized hardware for the system, L.A. County plans to leverage technology already on the market and instead focus on creating secure software to load onto hardware. The reason why they’re not creating customized hardware? It would have to eventually be replaced, Logan argues. By focusing on software, the county can keep up with technology without starting all over with each new advance.
The new system will also separate the processes of marking the ballot from counting it, in contrast to the current system which combines both components.
“We want to build a ballot-marking process that has flexibility and is adaptable to the electorate we serve,” Logan said, “for those voters who vote by mail, for those voters who might want to go to a vote center, or vote early or at neighborhood polling places.”
The system would separate a paper-based, easy-to-read, tabulated ballot from the physical device where the ballot was cast, he adds — something that doesn’t exist in the current market of systems.
County administrators have not decided whether they plan to use private contractors, but will focus on developing specifications for the system before finding a manufacturer.
“So, instead of a vendor that will build the system, designing it around its business model and its ability to make a profit on it, we want to design it,” he explained. “We get the specifications and then we put it out to bid for a competitive process to determine who wants to build it, but according to the specifications that are already adopted.
While the system is not expected to be ready for the 2016 Presidential Election, local election administrators around the country will be watching to see whether the taking the plunge is worth the investment.