MyVote Project

We started MyVote one year ago. In the past year, we have grown our volunteer base exponentially, reaching 255 high school and college student volunteers, as well as educating thousands of voters through our website, events, and social media pages. However, we are at a crossroads in which we need funding to continue to organize and sustain our volunteers, as well as the project. I work on MyVote 40 hours a week, while being a full-time student. My partner, Gita Stulberg, also puts in the same hours and is volunteer-based. We lead meetings and work with our volunteers to execute candidate forums, policy discussions, and conduct research. In the past year, we have hosted 20 events and researched nearly 10,000 candidates. After operating on a shoe-string budget for the first year, we realize the need for resources to stay sustainable, empower our volunteers, and educate voters. We are also currently redesigning our website, and we want to add features, such as in-depth candidate policy positions to hold politicians accountable. We also are working on ways to have our website reach more voters. We believe that with resources, MyVote will become the go-to voter website every voter uses before elections. 

 I am a freshman at Yale University. But, when I was a sophomore in high school, I survived the shooting at my school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Since that day, I promised myself I will work as hard as possible to create positive change to ensure my friends, classmates, and teachers did not die in vain. Following the shooting, I did work in the Gun Violence Prevention advocacy space and helped plan the Parkland March For Our Lives. While I was registering thousands of voters at the March, I realized that most voters did not even know who was on their ballot. I noticed a recurring cycle: lack of voter education causes voters to choose unqualified candidates or not vote, which causes politicians not to be held accountable, leading to preventable situations, like the shooting. Therefore, I decided to start MyVote Project, where people could easily learn about their candidates in a nonpartisan fashion, from their city comptroller to the President. I realized that if voters knew who they were electing and had an accessible resource, like our website, then politicians, at every government level, could be held to a higher standard and be accountable to their constituency.

The lauded U.S voter turnout for the 2020 election was 65%, twenty-five points behind standard voter turnout rates in other nations such as Japan, Australia, and South Korea. The NYTimes found that only 27% of eligible voters vote in local elections. And an even worst issue is that 30% of people do not finish their ballots, citing reasons that people do not think “races below the presidency matter”. Also, many voters vote based on cues, such as gender, age, or religion, instead of the candidate’s merits. Low voter education and turnout lead to a weak democracy and low accountability at local levels of government. Improving voter education and voter turnout, especially among young people, must be a priority in order to keep our democracy strong. MyVote Project, which is a national, nonpartisan organization with the goal of revolutionizing the way people vote and think about politics, with an emphasis on promoting civic engagement and voter participation among young people, addresses these issues. Powered by a network of 255 student volunteers, the organization combines old school community outreach with digital-themed voter engagement techniques using social media, virtual candidate forums, policy discussions, and an interactive website designed to inform, not influence, voters.

We are making voter education fun, young, and engaging. With 255 high student volunteers helping to research candidates, policies and organize events, young voters are realizing the importance of understanding who is on their ballots. Organizations are still using paper voter guides and sending them through the mail. But, generation Z and millennials rely primarily on their phones to receive information. Therefore, by creating an innovative digital and interactive voter guide, we are targeting young people and meeting them where they want to be met. On our website, a voter simply has to type in their zip code to learn about their candidates and different policies in a nonpartisan way. Moreover, our events, including candidate forums, policy discussions, and Zoom parties, are all led and moderated by high school and college students. We have seen that millennials and Gen Zers are more willing to participate in these events when they are led by their fellow classmates. For example, we recently hosted a candidate forum at University of Florida. We have also been disruptive in our work by creating a "Give a F**k" campaign before the 2020 election, which brought 10,000 users to our site and an influx of volunteers. 

MyVote has a large impact on humanity because we provide an accessible resource for voters to understand who they are voting into office, leading to a more accountable and educated democracy. More specifically, MyVote is leaving a lasting impact on our volunteers. Many of our volunteers are low-income first generation college students in Los Angeles. We have heard from many of them that they are grateful to learn more about civics and the voting process, as well as, leadership and management skills from MyVote mentors, such as Rob Wolfe, founder of CrowdRise. Some of our volunteers explain how we have changed their life by providing an opportunity for them to volunteer at MyVote, and give them a sense of purpose, especially during the pandemic. We are also taking steps to research more candidates, cover 50+ elections, do 20+ virtual events before 2022 to leave a greater impact on voters. Thus far, we have researched 7,500 candidates and are working to research more than 20,000 candidates before 2022. We are also taking steps to partner with Yale to research more local policy issues. Additionally, we are working on advertising and getting MyVote into more areas, so people can use our resource.