CEO Update: Our 2021-2022 Biannual Report is linked here, and it's fantastic.

Today is Election Day in 39 states. Election Day is kind of like Christmas, if Christmas was both exciting and incredibly nerve wracking.  If you're anything like me, you're going to need something to distract you for the next few hours while you wait for polls to close.  And I've got something for you: The VoteAmerica 2021-2022 Biannual report.   I'm sending this report today – as opposed to months ago when we finished it – because elections are on your mind today.  

At the beginning of 2021, the VoteAmerica team was awash with an unusual sensation: optimism. We’d just come through a brutal election cycle, one exacerbated by the stress of the pandemic and ramped up efforts at voter suppression. But thankfully, voters still turned out in large numbers — not just for the presidential election, but for the runoff elections that followed soon after.  I stayed up late on January 5th watching the returns come in, and then told the team that they should take the next day easy.  The race had already been called for Ossof, they were still counting ballots in Fulton County, and Warnock would have it by the time we woke up.  I was actually going to draft a sort of "we told you so" email reminding people that we'd called Georgia as the most competitive state in America, and GA-06 as the most competitive district, way back in March 2020, only to have people tell us we were insane.  It was going to be a great email. I was looking forward to sending it first thing in the morning.  I love being right.

Then January 6th happened.

I woke around 11am, stretched, looked at my phone, and found dozens of increasing frantic messages letting me know that a coup was happening.  Like a normal person who's always enjoyed life in a stable democracy, my first question was, "In which country?"  

January 6th marks a turning point in our country's history.  An outgoing president incited a f@ucking riot in an attempt to block the peaceful transition of power.  There are two versions of US democracy: before Jan 6th, and after.

Since January 2021, lawmakers in 43 states have quietly introduced hundreds of laws seeking to limit voting access, clamping down on voting by mail, in-person early voting, and even voters who show up to the polls on Election Day. State Legislatures across the country have introduced laws that target essential voter turnout efforts. Candidates for political office have proudly bragged about refusing to accept electoral losses, or even using their positions to void voters’ choices.

But as these coordinated attacks on democracy have ramped up, we’ve been fighting back. From the courts to college campuses, VoteAmerica has been a consistent pro-democracy force. And now we’re proud to unveil our 2021-2022 biannual report, which offers an inside look at everything we’ve done to help turn the tide against fascism.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ANNUAL REPORT

 This isn’t just a dry list of facts and figures, though. We don’t want to just tell you what we did, or how many dollars we spent on how many billboards. We did our absolute best to explain the why we do this work, and to place our work within the larger context of the global decline of democracy.  VoteAmerica isn't a a voter registration organization, or a mail organization, or a tech organization, or an SMS-spam organizations. Those are tactics, not goals, and no one in her right mind works a 100+ hour week because they really love helping people fill out forms.  But a 100+ hour week for democracy?  That's something we can, and do, get behind.

 If you only get one thing from this report, I hope it's this:

• VoteAmerica's goal is help ensure that democracy not only survives, but thrives. 
• The strategy we've chosen is voter mobilization.  We believe that people will vote more consistently, and in greater numbers, as voting becomes more accessible. We also believe that increasing voter turnout will strengthen our democracy by electing more accountable leaders.  
• Everything below the strategy is an implementation detail. We're goal oriented, and tactic agnostic. We test and adopt promising tactics, and we abandon them as soon as they stop working.  In the past we sent unsolicited SMS messages.  Now we rely on billboards, campus ads, and direct mail. Two years from now, who knows. If it turns out that carrier pigeons are the best way to increase turnout, we'll become experts on the care and maintenance of birds.  

And as you read through our report, please know that we couldn’t have done any of this without your support. VoteAmerica’s work is made possible by people like you. And if you’d like to help us continue that work, we’re eager to have you on board.  Next year is a presidential year, and we plan to go very big.  If you're able, please consider a tax-deductible investment in our work. We take cash, stocks, bonds, crypto, donations from your IRA, and we turn those dollars into votes.    

 We can't guarantee an outcome, but we can guarantee that we will make the smartest possible data-driven decisions we can make using the most recent data available. We have no emotional attachment whatsoever to any particular tactic, and we pivot on a dime.  And if you don't have the means to give right now, that's fine as well.  Read the report: it's fantastic. 

In solidarity,

Debra Cleaver