Civic Exchange: Elections 2020
Civic Exchange is a learning community and co-working space comprised of 8 startups working at the intersection of news & information, data, and technology.
In 2020, many of these companies have a special focus on elections - from how to make them more safe and secure, to helping voters understand the issues at stake and the candidates competing for votes.
In early January 2020, we gathered to share our plans, identify possibilities for collaboration, and understand how we could best support one another’s efforts.
Below is a brief synopsis of what each company that presented is working on as it relates to 2020 U.S. elections, and how you can benefit or get involved.
But first, some quick eyebrow-raising insights we learned through the course of our gathering:
When women and people of color run for elected office, they win at the same or higher rates than white male candidates
The level of enthusiasm for participating in the upcoming US elections is already higher than what’s typical in the month leading up to the election
In short, we’re living in pretty wild times, making the stakes all the higher to achieve America’s promise of free and fair elections in 2020.
Hearken
What Hearken does: https://www.wearehearken.com/
Helps organizations create responsive feedback loops with stakeholders to create more relevant content and services.
What Hearken is trying to solve for elections and how: Working with newsrooms to involve the public in the elections coverage they receive. Hearken’s methodology is applied to elections coverage in a variety of ways, including a new initiative called The Citizens Agenda.
Asks: What Hearken needs / is looking for:
Funders who are interested in supporting engaged elections training (Hearken is planning a variety of workshops teaching human-centered approaches to coverage around the country, but most newsrooms are cash-strapped so need to subsidize this)
Ideas or introductions to organizations around the country who might be interested in hosting a training
Inspiring examples of elections coverage you’ve seen that we can share out with the journalism networks, or potentially write a case study on
People to spread the word! Share with the newsrooms / reporters in your network that we’re doing this: www.thecitizensagenda.org
Offers: What Hearken can offer others:
Platforms for spotlighting your elections work
We can connect you to like-minded newsrooms facing the same challenges
If we do a Citizens Agenda workshop in Chicago - come to our workshop!
How to get in touch:
Twitter: @wearehearken
Center for Tech and Civic Life
What CTCL does: https://www.techandciviclife.org/
CTCL us an infrastructure organization that supports partners with useful elections data and election departments with professional development training.
What CTCL is trying to solve for re: elections and how:
Civic data - ballot information - they publish every ballot and referendum, and are able to see what would appear on everyone’s ballots. CTCL makes data available for every election - primaries, midterms, general etc. Their partners build their own tools on top of this data to use. E.g., Rock The Vote powers state-wide voter guides, videos, etc. Google and Facebook also build tools on top of it for their users. They make their data available and FREE to any non-profit.
They’ll be maintaining a site and dataset for what elected officials are supposed to be doing - their core responsibilities. This is to help with ballot dropoff about localized offices as people may not know what their roles are.
CTCL puts out annual datasets of race and gender of candidates and elected officials, and does analysis to see the people running to represent: (See example here)
Government services: provide professional development training. E.g., elections security training for cyber security, post-elections audits. CTCL also provide implementation support to elections departments who are developing pro-voter policies. Modernreg.org
CTCL will be doing a lot of focused work in Pennsylvania and Michigan
CTCL will be developing webinars to do best practices for vote by mail policies
CTCL will pilot work for the best ways to support election departments in providing language access support to voters (non-English materials)
Asks: What CTCL needs / is looking for:
More partners using data / tools powered by it (frontend or backend) - sharing feedback
If working with elections departments - connect people w/ CTCL resources
Offers: What CTCL can offer others:
Lots of data - race/gender data at https://wholeads.us/
Free, practical resources for election officials: https://electiontools.org/
Partnership - CTCL doesn’t build any voter-facing tools, we are an infrastructure organization and want to support others
They can help think through the types of tools you might want to develop around this data
API available to access
Bourbon :)
How to get in touch:
Email: hello@techandciviclife.org
Twitter: @HelloCTCL
Chalkbeat
What they do: https://chalkbeat.org/
Education-focused journalism with a lens on low-income students and students of color. The nonprofit news organization has a Chicago-focused bureau and a national desk that is covering the 2020 elections.
What Chalkbeat is trying to solve for re: elections and how:
To pull out and contextualize for readers what candidates are proposing to do for education. Here’s an example of a cheat sheet about education policies for Democratic candidates (The Washington Post and Education Week also have similar tools).
Asks: What Chalkbeat needs / is looking for:
Looking for campaign finance data coming out: Is anyone doing innovative work on that? Also looking for big donors who have funded education, and who they’re supporting. There hasn’t been coalescing of funding around one candidate yet.
The following sites were shared in conversation around finance data:
IL Board of Elections made all their raw data (updated daily) publicly available: https://www.elections.il.gov/CampaignDisclosureDataFiles/
Ways to figure out how to group issues in a way that readers care about and span multiple candidates. Looking to see what each thinks about charter schools and compare, and do a deep dive in specific states.
Offers: What Chalkbeat can offer others:
If you have questions about education, or ideas about how to cover it
National newsletter comes out every Wednesday (sign up link!)
Chicago newsletter comes out every Friday (sign up link!)
Tracker for candidates
How to get in touch:
Email: kbelsha@chalkbeat.org (national) and cburke@chalkbeat.org (Chicago)
Twitter: @Chalkbeat and @chalkbeatCHI
mRelief
What they do: https://www.mrelief.com/about_us
They restore dignity by transforming access to social services, including SNAP benefits.
What mRelief is trying to solve for re: elections and how:
Considering adding voter registration to their process in helping people complete their food stamp applications in Illinois, California and other states.
Asks: What mRelief needs / is looking for:
They added a feature enabling users to request mRelief in their state. More than 2,000 people have filled out the request form in 400+ geographies, sharing their experience with SNAP with their local SNAP directors. Request mRelief feature is going to SNAP directors, who else should it go to or how might it expand?
Offers: What mRelief can offer others:
If mRelief can be helpful, let us know!
How to get in touch:
Email: support@mrelief.com
Twitter: @mrelief_form
Ballot Ready
What they do: https://www.ballotready.org/
Create user-friendly guides on every candidate and every referendum to help people be informed and ready for the voter booth.
What BallotReady is trying to solve for re: elections and how:
They collect ballot data across the country, and got their start in Illinois / Chicago
People can enter their address and see what’s on their ballot, including bios, issues and endorsements, and gives people the opportunity to share their ballot with others.
Most local offices have limited information for voters - they don’t even have websites. So voters don’t know who they’re voting for and what the office does.
Last year they piloted shareable ballots. This means people can save their choices, annotate their ballot and then share a static link to it.
Their feature to make a plan to vote includes a calendar of dates for early voting, map of close voting locations, calendar appointments, etc.
They also create tools for media groups with their own information and voter guides
They also have a lot of shapefile data about district boundaries
Asks: What BallotReady needs / is looking for:
Looking for people in the community to create shareable ballots
Share ballotready.org with your networks
Introduce BallotReady to media and advocacy groups who would like to make their own guides: civicengine.com
Offers: What BallotReady can offer others:
Make a voter plan guide - will show you when, where, how you can vote
We create tools for media, advocacy groups they can customize with own questionnaires and turnout
How to get in touch:
Email: aviva@ballotready.org
Twitter: @ballotready
