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Hey everyone. Debra Cleaver here, founder of Vote.org. I am ready to answer all of your questions about voting in the US, as long as they are non-partisan. Pa

Hey everyone. Debra Cleaver here, founder of Vote.org. I am ready to answer all of your questions about voting in the US, as long as they are non-partisan. Partisan questions should be directed to your local political party. I'm especially keen to talk about ways we can use technology to modernize the election process. My current focus is how we can use electronic signatures to roll out online voter registration in states that don't have it, and for people who don't have driver's licenses.

sethbannon 10y ago
Hey Debra, Thanks for everything you're doing to increase participation in our democracy! I know it's a bit far-sighted, but would love to hear your thoughts on electronic voting. Is it feasible? Desirable? What do we need to get there?
- debracleaver 10y ago
  seth, it's feasible, but not with existing technology. i'm off-hand, somewhat flippant rule of thumb is that this isn't something we can realistically discuss until we can go a single week without a major security breach. right now breaches are so common that they barely merit a news mention. once we're there in terms of security, however, i am confident that we will see a radical increase in voter turnout.
  - ohitsdom 10y ago
    I get that security is a major, major concern but scanning headlines seems like a really poor metric for deciding when technology is "ready". There will always be bad/rushed/under-staffed developers and bad business decisions that lead to security breaches. That doesn't mean existing technology isn't capable of being secure.
    - debracleaver 10y ago
      we agree 100%. technology is capable of being secure, it just isn't secure yet. think of the stakes here. if a 16 year old hacker working out of his mother's basement in belarus could change the outcome of the US presidential election, we'd all be farked.
- Techbrunch 10y ago
  Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye opening for me. http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article
dak1 10y ago
Hi Debra, Is your organization focused only on general elections, or on primaries as well? I couldn't find any information about primary elections on your site, even though many of the most consequential decisions are made then, when voter turnout is at its lowest.
- mordocai 10y ago
  Not debra, but I would think that would fall under "partisan"
  - dak1 10y ago
    I can think of non-partisan objectives, like pushing for open primaries in all States, and allowing for same day registration.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    Not all primaries are partisan. As a non-Republican, non-Democrat, when I voted in the last primary, there was exactly one referendum on my ballot, and nothing else. I was also the only person on the nonpartisan register at that time of the morning. They had to crack open the shrink-wrap on the ballots just for me. I imagine that not many other people would bother to drag themselves in to the polling place for that one issue, were they not also choosing candidates for one party or the other.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    The fact that the parties have privileged access to the ballot is arguably not a partisan issue. In many places, the support of a recognized party dramatically lowers the requirements for getting on the ballot. In my state, by as much as a factor of 3: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_political_candidates_in_Michigan https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_polit...
xiphias 10y ago
Hey Debra, have you thought of open sourcing the voting backend so that cryptography and security experts can help to make sure that the votes are fair? Also technology is good enough to be able to prove cryptographically the number of voters and to prove that a signature was taken to account. There are many ways to do this, but a professional cryptographer is the best to help in designing a system like this, not me.
- debracleaver 10y ago
  hey xiphias: we help people register, not actually vote, so we're pretty confident in the security. we're always looking for hackers to try to break it however. want to help out?
labster 10y ago
Debra, how would you feel about an Australian-style fine for failure to vote here in the U.S.? I assume Vote.org work primarily on technological ways to promote voting, but will it also deal with social structural or institutional ways to increase voter turnout?
- debracleaver 10y ago
  labster, compulsory voting would be amazing in the US. i might be in the minority here, but i consider voting a duty, not a right per se.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    Amazing for who exactly?
    - notahacker 10y ago
      The people collecting the fines, and possibly the None of the Above Party
  - bobwaycott 10y ago
    It's pretty sad to see your statement downvoted. I, too, consider voting to be both a duty and right of citizenship, and wish more people felt the same.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      One may consider it an ethical duty without agreeing that it should involve coercion. And in the end, you can force people to put a piece of paper in a box every few years, but you can't force them to care about what they're doing.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > i consider voting a duty, not a right per se. Could you clarify? It's somewhat shocking to hear the Vote.org representative say voting is not a right in the U.S.
strommen 10y ago
Do you know of studies or other hard data that tracks _why_ people don't vote? The article claims it is the difficulty of the process, but I would have guessed the top reason is voter apathy (which isn't really a technology issue). Here's one thing technology could help with: identify which polling places are facing long delays on Election Day, so additional resources can be allocated to speed them up. Without being "partisan", I've noticed that areas with lots of college students and minorities tend to have much longer delays than affluent mainly-white areas (I wonder why that is...)
- debracleaver 10y ago
  oh sure. there are a wealth of studies out there. it's hard to say why any particular person doesn't vote, but there are some trends that show when voting is easier, more people vote. Colorado, Washington and Oregon all moved toward vote-by-mail systems, in which a ballot is automatically mailed to a voter's house, and saw an immediate increase in voter turnout. Honestly, I'm waited to see the outcome of Oregon's automatic voter registration efforts on turnout. My guess is that Oregon will continue to lead the way with high turnout. I could be wrong, of course, but there's nothing that suggests that making voting easier would decrease turnout.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    The UK increased postal voting, and found greatly increased fraud: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26520836 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26520836 I'd be concerned that some of the increased turnout aren't real voters...
    - tehwebguy 10y ago
      That article is just the opinion of Richard Mawrey QC. Here is the Electoral Fraud Review report from the Electoral Commission in 2014. Mawrey seems to strongly disagree with the findings of the report. http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/164609/Electoral-fraud-review-final-report.pdf http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file...
nickff 10y ago
Hi Debra, Why do you want to increase turnout? Have you read some of the work on voter ignorance, which shows that voters have very little political knowledge, and are deeply influenced by various biases? This work shows that non-voters are have even worse prejudices and are less knowledgable than voters; how would getting these people to the polls help?[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  Why should their prejudices/biases not be represented? I mean, I personally probably disagree with them, but disagreement is sort of the reason for having voting.
  - nickff 10y ago
    The evidence shows that these uninformed and biased non-voters would take different views on a variety of important issues if they were less biased and more informed. Essentially, the voters represent the 'enlightened' views of the citizenry.
    - whamlastxmas 10y ago
      >more informed by who, and in what way? Arguably the issue is people are informed, just by misleading information. Whether it be CNN, Fox News, reddit, or the Drudge Deport - they all have their own bias. By asking people be more informed, you're really just adding to their own bias and prejudices with the biases of a larger group of people. People tend to gravitate towards information sources that reaffirm their existing beliefs.
      - nickff 10y ago
        There is a great deal of statistical work that compares what people think and believe. Some of these works try to 'correct' for wealth and education, then measure the gap between the views of certain groups and what their view would be if they were more well educated. Other studies compare what people say in response to survey questions to objective truths, i.e. what are the branches of the US Government, who is the president, who is the chief justice of the supreme court. If you would like more information on how voters and non-voters differ, I suggest that you read some of the work on the subject; I cannot brief you on the subject in a few Hacker News posts, as there is simply too much information. Citizens (, especially non-voters,) are ill-informed, biased, and lack any incentive to scrutinize their views, as the only change that could come about would be a painful realization that they have been wrong (which nobody wants). If you want to read a very revealing and well-written exposition on this subject, I recommend "The God that Failed" (edited by Crossman).[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed
ruthienachmany 10y ago
What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote? I have a few I generally go with, but curious what you tend to use.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Also the reverse, where you believe the candidate you want will lose and there's nothing you can do about it.
- Lukeas14 10y ago
  Every election is about much more than just the presidency. There's always state/local elections, propositions and ballot measures. And these will often have a much more direct affect on you than the President of the U.S. Most local ballot measures aren't unanimous and the results are usually much closer to 50/50, otherwise the city council would've passed it already. So even if you're a Republican in California your vote will absolutely still count for something.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715896
laxatives 10y ago
Maybe this is or isn't non-partisan, but here's a shot: I'm 25 years old. I've never voted and never will vote as long as there is a two party system. There has never been a situation where I can agree with either party or individual enough to support them in an election. How do you intend to get people like me to vote? Also, if you did you get everyone to vote, wouldn't every vote turn in to a popularity contest? In other words, why wouldn't every candidate attempt to win their elections by appealing to the lowest common denominator?
- sqeaky 10y ago
  People like you are quite rare. Most people will vote for the lesser of two evils once they hit some level of disgust. If you read their methodology, they are trying to reach a large group first. I seems someone as rare as you doesn't matter when thousands of easy votes are still out there. Even then they may fix something else on the way to voter turnout of 80% or 90% that may be appealing to you.
- Retric 10y ago
  Voting for 3rd party's often has a larger impact than voting for the top 2 party's. Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. But, if a 3rd party gains support one of the major party's will generally add those ideas to the platform. Most recently is probably Libertarian > Tea Party. Not that they really had much impact, but people paid lip-service to the ideas.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. I don't know that I agree. In practice, it's hardly happening (look at the Republicans and Democrats; at Trump and Clinton), and I don't see why it would happen.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Trump and Clinton are basically still at the primary stage where people have actual choices. You can expect a push to center fairly soon. They don't want to give voters issue whiplash so they generally transition though to more centrist message. Ideally candidates want to avoid alienating their base, but they also can't pick up more voters by pandering to them. So, everyone tries to appeal to independents and not energize their opponents base. The other strategy to to fight dirty which tends to suppress voter turnout, but that can easily backfire in a presidential election. This also often results in coded language. Which lets you target messages to people that care about an issue without generally annoying other people.
cloudjacker 10y ago
I read this article and I still don't see the "why". It says "because there are big problems people want changed", this doesn't answer why you want to increase voter turnout. For example, in America, the will of the people only influences change when it coincidentally is aligned with special interest will. Every other time special interests are more influential than the voting public. This would undermine a theory that voter turnout is even a solution.
- hnamazon123 10y ago
  The successes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump would seem to contradict your thesis.
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
    It doesn't contradict the thesis.
    - hnamazon123 10y ago
      I suppose the lizard people do in fact support Sanders and Trump.
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    It only changes WHO is elected, not what's going to happen. Which thus far only is fantasy and speculation. I remember the last time that happened - before Obama. How much "change" did we see? And please - it does not matter if one thinks "it's all the Republicans' fault", assigning blame does not change what the outcome was (is).
- burkaman 10y ago
  Is it at all possible that the will of the people could influence change more often if more people were involved?
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
cloudjacker 10y ago
As someone that is pretty content lobbying or going directly to a regulator to change a law, than through Congress or a local representative Why do you think voter turnout is even worth spending energy on. Lobbying is way more likely to get your way and only marginally less passive. When Google got the FAA to change a regulation regarding blimps and skydiving, they didn't wait for the next Senate vote to put in their politicians, to nominate a more amenable chairman. They simply said "lets do it this way" to the FAA. Its cute that people fought for the popular vote. But just cute.
funkyy 10y ago
Hi Debra, is there any information on who donated to your cause, what institutions and personas? Are you funded by some pro-democracy circles?
koolba 10y ago
How'd you get such an awesome domain?
- debracleaver 10y ago
  Ok, don't laugh: I did a whois search, got the owner's contact info and sent an email. We spent the better part of a year discussing the sale. Both political parties had tried to buy it from him in years past. Ultimately he sold it to me because we are fiercely nonpartisan.
  - judah 10y ago
    FWIW, I appreciate the non-partisan stance.
mc32 10y ago
Could voting be "improved" if instead of higher turnout with the same outcome the focus was on informing voters on the issues better? In other words, rather than let's say getting 100 yeas to 80 nays versus 1000 yeas vs 800 nays, on an issue, might it not be better to get 95 nays vs 85 yays on a material issue?
sayhar 10y ago
Debra -- you're awesome. Thanks for doing this. (And congrats on getting into YC!?) Question for you -- you famously have run the predecessor organization to Vote.org on a shoestring budget. Do you have tips on how to interact with "software volunteers" who want to help on civic projects like this?
Animats 10y ago
Well, first you have to make your site work. Your site says that I'm not registered to vote in San Mateo County, California. But San Mateo County's site, "https://www.shapethefuture.org/MyElectionMaterials/default.asp" https://www.shapethefuture.org/MyElectionMaterials/default.a..., says that I am. Also, you collected my email address. That's mandatory before you do the registration check. Why? I don't want to be "onboarded", and if I was, I want to be "offboarded". I just wrote to "info@vote.com" about that. From your terms: We may use Personal Information: To send you informational communications that we believe may be of interest to you. To send you marketing communications that we believe may be of interest to you. ... We may use Flash LSOs and other technologies to, among other things, collect and store information about your use of the Services. So this is really about building a mailing list you can spam, while tracking users to collect their behavior patterns. FAIL
- debracleaver 10y ago
  if by spam you mean send election reminders, then yes, we are spammers. we're a 501c3 nonprofit. that means we don't profit off of our work unless helping to build a healthy democracy can be considered profit. also, we use a third-party database to power that tool. this probably won't shock you, but aggregating and normalizing voter roll data from 10,000+ election jurisdictions is messy and hard. there will always be the occasional false negative, which is why we encourage you to check again with your state if you think we're incorrect. as for the privacy policy: it's too heavy on the legalese. our law firm wrote it ages ago, and we haven't had time to update it. we're not spammers. we're election reformers
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > we're not spammers. we're election reformers I support what you do. However, that comment's blase-looking dismissal of privacy and spam concerns, rather than a serious attempt to address them, doesn't give me good feelings or confidence.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    I went and looked up the 990s for Long Distance Voter and you are manifestly not drawing a large salary, but it's quite possible for a 501c3 nonprofit to be a pretty swell deal for the people operating it, even if they have to pay income taxes on all the benefits they receive from the work. Which I apologize for not finding a more elegant way to phrase it, but the distinction between dividends, capital gains and ordinary income is not really that interesting, it's a detail of taxation.
joshdotsmith 10y ago
Hi Debra! Thanks for the hard work on Vote.org. Have you thought about efforts to open up access to a nationalized voter file? As it stands right now, a one-time snapshot of all 50 states would cost approximately $144,000. This makes it difficult for get out the vote efforts, and for efforts to identify registration irregularities. Also, have you thought about open sourcing your work at all? I know there are a large number of developers ready and willing to help efforts like this, particularly for a non-profit like yours.
davekinkead 10y ago
Hi Debra - (longish) question about the white labelling aspect of vote.org: It seems like the implied value of vote.org is that increasing voter turnout can make democracy 'better' by making it more representative. This can only happen however, if the increase in or delta from voter turnout is itself representative of the community at large. If the increase in turnout is only from the extreme of one end of the political spectrum, then that doesn't seem to help democracy. But if you are white labelling vote.org, then the organisations that use it will be far from partisan and therefore the delta from voter turnout wont be representative. So if vote.org is used primarily by one side of politics, how does this help democracy? (assuming you can't show that side of politics is objectively better) And if vote.org is used equally by all sides of politics, how does the increased voter turnout change anything?
csharpminor 10y ago
This is fantastic! Just wondering, how does Vote.org compare/contrast to TurboVote (https://turbovote.org/ https://turbovote.org/)?
beatpanda 10y ago
I think this is a great project, but I don't think it will work without a strong political analysis -- that is, the installation of roadblocks to voting is an intentional political act. How do you intend to get states that are intent on suppressing the vote from certain populations to adopt technology that would make it easier to vote?

sethbannon 10y ago

Hey Debra, Thanks for everything you're doing to increase participation in our democracy! I know it's a bit far-sighted, but would love to hear your thoughts on electronic voting. Is it feasible? Desirable? What do we need to get there?

debracleaver 10y ago
seth, it's feasible, but not with existing technology. i'm off-hand, somewhat flippant rule of thumb is that this isn't something we can realistically discuss until we can go a single week without a major security breach. right now breaches are so common that they barely merit a news mention. once we're there in terms of security, however, i am confident that we will see a radical increase in voter turnout.
- ohitsdom 10y ago
  I get that security is a major, major concern but scanning headlines seems like a really poor metric for deciding when technology is "ready". There will always be bad/rushed/under-staffed developers and bad business decisions that lead to security breaches. That doesn't mean existing technology isn't capable of being secure.
  - debracleaver 10y ago
    we agree 100%. technology is capable of being secure, it just isn't secure yet. think of the stakes here. if a 16 year old hacker working out of his mother's basement in belarus could change the outcome of the US presidential election, we'd all be farked.
Techbrunch 10y ago
Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye opening for me. http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article

dak1 10y ago

Hi Debra, Is your organization focused only on general elections, or on primaries as well? I couldn't find any information about primary elections on your site, even though many of the most consequential decisions are made then, when voter turnout is at its lowest.

mordocai 10y ago
Not debra, but I would think that would fall under "partisan"
- dak1 10y ago
  I can think of non-partisan objectives, like pushing for open primaries in all States, and allowing for same day registration.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Not all primaries are partisan. As a non-Republican, non-Democrat, when I voted in the last primary, there was exactly one referendum on my ballot, and nothing else. I was also the only person on the nonpartisan register at that time of the morning. They had to crack open the shrink-wrap on the ballots just for me. I imagine that not many other people would bother to drag themselves in to the polling place for that one issue, were they not also choosing candidates for one party or the other.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The fact that the parties have privileged access to the ballot is arguably not a partisan issue. In many places, the support of a recognized party dramatically lowers the requirements for getting on the ballot. In my state, by as much as a factor of 3: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_political_candidates_in_Michigan https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_polit...

xiphias 10y ago

Hey Debra, have you thought of open sourcing the voting backend so that cryptography and security experts can help to make sure that the votes are fair? Also technology is good enough to be able to prove cryptographically the number of voters and to prove that a signature was taken to account. There are many ways to do this, but a professional cryptographer is the best to help in designing a system like this, not me.

debracleaver 10y ago
hey xiphias: we help people register, not actually vote, so we're pretty confident in the security. we're always looking for hackers to try to break it however. want to help out?

labster 10y ago

Debra, how would you feel about an Australian-style fine for failure to vote here in the U.S.? I assume Vote.org work primarily on technological ways to promote voting, but will it also deal with social structural or institutional ways to increase voter turnout?

debracleaver 10y ago
labster, compulsory voting would be amazing in the US. i might be in the minority here, but i consider voting a duty, not a right per se.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Amazing for who exactly?
  - notahacker 10y ago
    The people collecting the fines, and possibly the None of the Above Party
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  It's pretty sad to see your statement downvoted. I, too, consider voting to be both a duty and right of citizenship, and wish more people felt the same.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    One may consider it an ethical duty without agreeing that it should involve coercion. And in the end, you can force people to put a piece of paper in a box every few years, but you can't force them to care about what they're doing.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > i consider voting a duty, not a right per se. Could you clarify? It's somewhat shocking to hear the Vote.org representative say voting is not a right in the U.S.

strommen 10y ago

Do you know of studies or other hard data that tracks _why_ people don't vote? The article claims it is the difficulty of the process, but I would have guessed the top reason is voter apathy (which isn't really a technology issue). Here's one thing technology could help with: identify which polling places are facing long delays on Election Day, so additional resources can be allocated to speed them up. Without being "partisan", I've noticed that areas with lots of college students and minorities tend to have much longer delays than affluent mainly-white areas (I wonder why that is...)

debracleaver 10y ago
oh sure. there are a wealth of studies out there. it's hard to say why any particular person doesn't vote, but there are some trends that show when voting is easier, more people vote. Colorado, Washington and Oregon all moved toward vote-by-mail systems, in which a ballot is automatically mailed to a voter's house, and saw an immediate increase in voter turnout. Honestly, I'm waited to see the outcome of Oregon's automatic voter registration efforts on turnout. My guess is that Oregon will continue to lead the way with high turnout. I could be wrong, of course, but there's nothing that suggests that making voting easier would decrease turnout.
- pjc50 10y ago
  The UK increased postal voting, and found greatly increased fraud: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26520836 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26520836 I'd be concerned that some of the increased turnout aren't real voters...
  - tehwebguy 10y ago
    That article is just the opinion of Richard Mawrey QC. Here is the Electoral Fraud Review report from the Electoral Commission in 2014. Mawrey seems to strongly disagree with the findings of the report. http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/164609/Electoral-fraud-review-final-report.pdf http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file...

nickff 10y ago

Hi Debra, Why do you want to increase turnout? Have you read some of the work on voter ignorance, which shows that voters have very little political knowledge, and are deeply influenced by various biases? This work shows that non-voters are have even worse prejudices and are less knowledgable than voters; how would getting these people to the polls help?[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter

whamlastxmas 10y ago
Why should their prejudices/biases not be represented? I mean, I personally probably disagree with them, but disagreement is sort of the reason for having voting.
- nickff 10y ago
  The evidence shows that these uninformed and biased non-voters would take different views on a variety of important issues if they were less biased and more informed. Essentially, the voters represent the 'enlightened' views of the citizenry.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    >more informed by who, and in what way? Arguably the issue is people are informed, just by misleading information. Whether it be CNN, Fox News, reddit, or the Drudge Deport - they all have their own bias. By asking people be more informed, you're really just adding to their own bias and prejudices with the biases of a larger group of people. People tend to gravitate towards information sources that reaffirm their existing beliefs.
    - nickff 10y ago
      There is a great deal of statistical work that compares what people think and believe. Some of these works try to 'correct' for wealth and education, then measure the gap between the views of certain groups and what their view would be if they were more well educated. Other studies compare what people say in response to survey questions to objective truths, i.e. what are the branches of the US Government, who is the president, who is the chief justice of the supreme court. If you would like more information on how voters and non-voters differ, I suggest that you read some of the work on the subject; I cannot brief you on the subject in a few Hacker News posts, as there is simply too much information. Citizens (, especially non-voters,) are ill-informed, biased, and lack any incentive to scrutinize their views, as the only change that could come about would be a painful realization that they have been wrong (which nobody wants). If you want to read a very revealing and well-written exposition on this subject, I recommend "The God that Failed" (edited by Crossman).[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed

ruthienachmany 10y ago

What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote? I have a few I generally go with, but curious what you tend to use.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
Also the reverse, where you believe the candidate you want will lose and there's nothing you can do about it.
Lukeas14 10y ago
Every election is about much more than just the presidency. There's always state/local elections, propositions and ballot measures. And these will often have a much more direct affect on you than the President of the U.S. Most local ballot measures aren't unanimous and the results are usually much closer to 50/50, otherwise the city council would've passed it already. So even if you're a Republican in California your vote will absolutely still count for something.
hackuser 10y ago
> What is your go to answer to people who say they don't vote because in the state they vote in, they believe the candidate they want to win will be elected without them making the effort of going to vote? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715896

laxatives 10y ago

Maybe this is or isn't non-partisan, but here's a shot: I'm 25 years old. I've never voted and never will vote as long as there is a two party system. There has never been a situation where I can agree with either party or individual enough to support them in an election. How do you intend to get people like me to vote? Also, if you did you get everyone to vote, wouldn't every vote turn in to a popularity contest? In other words, why wouldn't every candidate attempt to win their elections by appealing to the lowest common denominator?

sqeaky 10y ago
People like you are quite rare. Most people will vote for the lesser of two evils once they hit some level of disgust. If you read their methodology, they are trying to reach a large group first. I seems someone as rare as you doesn't matter when thousands of easy votes are still out there. Even then they may fix something else on the way to voter turnout of 80% or 90% that may be appealing to you.
Retric 10y ago
Voting for 3rd party's often has a larger impact than voting for the top 2 party's. Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. But, if a 3rd party gains support one of the major party's will generally add those ideas to the platform. Most recently is probably Libertarian > Tea Party. Not that they really had much impact, but people paid lip-service to the ideas.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. I don't know that I agree. In practice, it's hardly happening (look at the Republicans and Democrats; at Trump and Clinton), and I don't see why it would happen.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Trump and Clinton are basically still at the primary stage where people have actual choices. You can expect a push to center fairly soon. They don't want to give voters issue whiplash so they generally transition though to more centrist message. Ideally candidates want to avoid alienating their base, but they also can't pick up more voters by pandering to them. So, everyone tries to appeal to independents and not energize their opponents base. The other strategy to to fight dirty which tends to suppress voter turnout, but that can easily backfire in a presidential election. This also often results in coded language. Which lets you target messages to people that care about an issue without generally annoying other people.

cloudjacker 10y ago

I read this article and I still don't see the "why". It says "because there are big problems people want changed", this doesn't answer why you want to increase voter turnout. For example, in America, the will of the people only influences change when it coincidentally is aligned with special interest will. Every other time special interests are more influential than the voting public. This would undermine a theory that voter turnout is even a solution.

hnamazon123 10y ago
The successes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump would seem to contradict your thesis.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  It doesn't contradict the thesis.
  - hnamazon123 10y ago
    I suppose the lizard people do in fact support Sanders and Trump.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  It only changes WHO is elected, not what's going to happen. Which thus far only is fantasy and speculation. I remember the last time that happened - before Obama. How much "change" did we see? And please - it does not matter if one thinks "it's all the Republicans' fault", assigning blame does not change what the outcome was (is).
burkaman 10y ago
Is it at all possible that the will of the people could influence change more often if more people were involved?
- cloudjacker 10y ago

cloudjacker 10y ago

As someone that is pretty content lobbying or going directly to a regulator to change a law, than through Congress or a local representative Why do you think voter turnout is even worth spending energy on. Lobbying is way more likely to get your way and only marginally less passive. When Google got the FAA to change a regulation regarding blimps and skydiving, they didn't wait for the next Senate vote to put in their politicians, to nominate a more amenable chairman. They simply said "lets do it this way" to the FAA. Its cute that people fought for the popular vote. But just cute.

funkyy 10y ago

Hi Debra, is there any information on who donated to your cause, what institutions and personas? Are you funded by some pro-democracy circles?

koolba 10y ago

How'd you get such an awesome domain?

debracleaver 10y ago
Ok, don't laugh: I did a whois search, got the owner's contact info and sent an email. We spent the better part of a year discussing the sale. Both political parties had tried to buy it from him in years past. Ultimately he sold it to me because we are fiercely nonpartisan.
- judah 10y ago
  FWIW, I appreciate the non-partisan stance.

mc32 10y ago

Could voting be "improved" if instead of higher turnout with the same outcome the focus was on informing voters on the issues better? In other words, rather than let's say getting 100 yeas to 80 nays versus 1000 yeas vs 800 nays, on an issue, might it not be better to get 95 nays vs 85 yays on a material issue?

sayhar 10y ago

Debra -- you're awesome. Thanks for doing this. (And congrats on getting into YC!?) Question for you -- you famously have run the predecessor organization to Vote.org on a shoestring budget. Do you have tips on how to interact with "software volunteers" who want to help on civic projects like this?

Animats 10y ago

Well, first you have to make your site work. Your site says that I'm not registered to vote in San Mateo County, California. But San Mateo County's site, "https://www.shapethefuture.org/MyElectionMaterials/default.asp" https://www.shapethefuture.org/MyElectionMaterials/default.a..., says that I am. Also, you collected my email address. That's mandatory before you do the registration check. Why? I don't want to be "onboarded", and if I was, I want to be "offboarded". I just wrote to "info@vote.com" about that. From your terms: We may use Personal Information: To send you informational communications that we believe may be of interest to you. To send you marketing communications that we believe may be of interest to you. ... We may use Flash LSOs and other technologies to, among other things, collect and store information about your use of the Services. So this is really about building a mailing list you can spam, while tracking users to collect their behavior patterns. FAIL

debracleaver 10y ago
if by spam you mean send election reminders, then yes, we are spammers. we're a 501c3 nonprofit. that means we don't profit off of our work unless helping to build a healthy democracy can be considered profit. also, we use a third-party database to power that tool. this probably won't shock you, but aggregating and normalizing voter roll data from 10,000+ election jurisdictions is messy and hard. there will always be the occasional false negative, which is why we encourage you to check again with your state if you think we're incorrect. as for the privacy policy: it's too heavy on the legalese. our law firm wrote it ages ago, and we haven't had time to update it. we're not spammers. we're election reformers
- hackuser 10y ago
  > we're not spammers. we're election reformers I support what you do. However, that comment's blase-looking dismissal of privacy and spam concerns, rather than a serious attempt to address them, doesn't give me good feelings or confidence.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I went and looked up the 990s for Long Distance Voter and you are manifestly not drawing a large salary, but it's quite possible for a 501c3 nonprofit to be a pretty swell deal for the people operating it, even if they have to pay income taxes on all the benefits they receive from the work. Which I apologize for not finding a more elegant way to phrase it, but the distinction between dividends, capital gains and ordinary income is not really that interesting, it's a detail of taxation.

joshdotsmith 10y ago

Hi Debra! Thanks for the hard work on Vote.org. Have you thought about efforts to open up access to a nationalized voter file? As it stands right now, a one-time snapshot of all 50 states would cost approximately $144,000. This makes it difficult for get out the vote efforts, and for efforts to identify registration irregularities. Also, have you thought about open sourcing your work at all? I know there are a large number of developers ready and willing to help efforts like this, particularly for a non-profit like yours.

davekinkead 10y ago

Hi Debra - (longish) question about the white labelling aspect of vote.org: It seems like the implied value of vote.org is that increasing voter turnout can make democracy 'better' by making it more representative. This can only happen however, if the increase in or delta from voter turnout is itself representative of the community at large. If the increase in turnout is only from the extreme of one end of the political spectrum, then that doesn't seem to help democracy. But if you are white labelling vote.org, then the organisations that use it will be far from partisan and therefore the delta from voter turnout wont be representative. So if vote.org is used primarily by one side of politics, how does this help democracy? (assuming you can't show that side of politics is objectively better) And if vote.org is used equally by all sides of politics, how does the increased voter turnout change anything?

csharpminor 10y ago

This is fantastic! Just wondering, how does Vote.org compare/contrast to TurboVote (https://turbovote.org/ https://turbovote.org/)?

beatpanda 10y ago

I think this is a great project, but I don't think it will work without a strong political analysis -- that is, the installation of roadblocks to voting is an intentional political act. How do you intend to get states that are intent on suppressing the vote from certain populations to adopt technology that would make it easier to vote?