VoteAmerica

VoteAmerica would use the Elevate Prize to help recent movers reregister to vote at their new address. Nearly 40 million people move a year, and our Movers Program reduces the burden of registering at a new address. We receive the data when a change of address request is submitted and send a voter registration form and postage-paid return envelope to the individual. In line with our mission to empower low-propensity communities, we only target individuals moving out of or into majority-minority resident ZIP codes. 

This program is unique because we reach voters through mediums that other organizations cannot — the data we receive is proprietary to VoteAmerica. We ran this same program in 2020 and tested the efficacy of our efforts. The results of our trial are still being analyzed, but our initial results appear promising, and with the Elevate Prize, our Movers program could ease the path to the ballot for at least 47,700 potential voters.

We are not the only democracy-focused organization, but on average it takes 7 different interactions to turn out a voter. The Elevate Prize would allow us to bolster the work of other organizations by adding to the number of interactions.

I’ve been working at the intersection of technology and democracy since 2004, and the intersection of VBM and technology since 2008.  In 2008, I founded Long Distance Voter (LDV) to increase turnout among registered voters who had some sort of roadblock that I could resolve using the internet. I ran LDV as a passion project for 8 full years, right up until I bought the Vote.org domain name. During that time, I proved that Americans were increasingly turning to the internet for help voting and that comprehensive information, presented by a trusted and nonpartisan source, could increase turnout. Then in 2020, I founded VoteAmerica to drive record turnout during one of the most consequential elections in American history.

Our mission is to provide trusted election information, open platform technology and education programs that support and empower the most vulnerable voters to navigate the path to casting their vote. My end goal is to create a United States electorate that accurately reflects the population it represents leading to leaders that are irrefutably elected and empowered by the people with a clear mandate to drive change.

Billions of dollars are spent on elections in an attempt to sway voters towards specific candidates; however, these campaigns repeatedly target affluent, older, less racially diverse voters with a strong track record of participating in elections. As a result, these voters are overrepresented within the voting population. Conversely, a large proportion of the eligible voting population is excluded from elections because partisan campaigns do not reach out to them.

In simple terms, VoteAmerica identifies barriers to voting, and we use technology to break them down and make voting more accessible. We specifically focus on driving voter turnout amongst low propensity voters (young voters between the ages of 18 and 29, voters of color and unmarried women). These voters account for close to 60% of the eligible voting population but barely made up half of the total electorate.

Our in-house team of technology experts builds online tools that allowed people to check their registration status, sign up for Vote-By-Mail, and check the status of their ballot directly from our website. Our tactics are well-researched, highly responsive, cost-effective, and scale with capital allowing us to reach larger numbers of voters and pivot easily in order to drive people to the polls.

As an independent, non-partisan voter turnout organization, we innovate by constantly creating new tactics that can work in tandem with traditional GOTV efforts. Traditional GOTV efforts are often part of partisan campaigns. They include actions such as door-knocking and other relational techniques, and they often stick to contacting voters who are already likely to vote. 

VoteAmerica was founded in the midst of a global pandemic that limited in-person interactions, and we are firm believers in the potential of technology to increase scale. We believe in using that technology in order to turn out voters. Traditional GOTV efforts such as door-knocking have a low successf rate with 90% of door-knocks going unanswered. However, 95% of Americans have a cell phone and 90% of text messages are read within the first three minutes of being received making text messaging a far more efficient method of information dissemination than door-knocking. We have the capacity and talent to code necessary workarounds that eliminate issues for all voters and have tested the success of non-partisan messaging.

America claims to be a representative democracy. As individuals, regardless of party affiliation, we vote for leaders who we believe will govern with our best interests at heart. Simultaneously, we live in a country with a historical track record of disenfranchising voters through both legal and extra-legal means. Our goal is to help American democracy reach its fullest potential by giving voters who have been historically excluded from the democratic process the ability to exercise their voting rights. 

While this goal sounds lofty, we believe that it's manageable. As previously stated, we begin by identifying existing roadblocks to voting such as outdated laws around turning registration forms in or having confusing terminology around ID requirements and registration dates. As a team, we formulate the best course of action to remove that roadblock using our combined knowledge of campaign strategy, GOTV experience and technological expertise. We then implement our strategy in the communities that need it the most using our own research to adjust and pivot as needed. These simple steps become effective because we have a vast wealth of knowledge to draw from, and we are not afraid of pivoting if our initial strategies do not have their intended effect.