debracleaver

5 ms·

1.
Vote.org needs your help increasing voter turnout this year
31 points by debracleaver 8y ago|4 comments
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Vote.org (YC S16) is hiring software engineers(votedotorg.recruiterbox.com)
1 points by debracleaver 9y ago
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by debracleaver 10y ago
hey all. it's been great chatting with everyone. i have to go offline for a bit to eat dinner and talk to potential partners, but happy to pick this conversation back up later tonight.
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by debracleaver 10y ago
ok, let's keep this simple: until having a drivers license is a requirement to vote in this country, let's not rely on driver's licenses as a requirement for voting. the DMV was not built to administer elections. that'
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by debracleaver 10y ago
i would go for better over perfect.
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by debracleaver 10y ago
it's hard to draw conclusions cross-country. right now i would say that we are very much in a position of denying actual citizens the right to vote, and we need to address that stat. postal mail is one way we can do that. making vot
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by 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 th
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by debracleaver 10y ago
plus 1 to ballotpedia. also +1 to the need for an easy to read calendar. honestly, if someone builds something we can use, we'll put it up at vote.org and promote the heck out of it.
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by debracleaver 10y ago
i just laughed aloud at this. gold star for humor.
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by debracleaver 10y ago
oh, interesting. i guess i know doom and gloom people from both sides of the aisle, but more from the conservative side? at the same time, americans are overwhelming positive as a people, are we not? why get up every day if you don'
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by debracleaver 10y ago
I've worked with RTV for years and have nothing but great things to say about them. They, like Vote.org, are nonpartisan. I can speak to our motivations, however: we want to see 100% voter turnout and don't give a flying fig who
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by 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
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by debracleaver 10y ago
Jim, shenanigans is the word that comes to mind for me as well. I've yet to meet this mythical "apathetic American" that people talk about, but I've met tons of people who were prevented from voting by administrative inc
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by debracleaver 10y ago
how do i vote this up roughly 1,000,000 times? does that happen here or is that only a reddit thing (please excuse my ignorance -- i try to spend very little time in online comment threads and a lot of time working on vote.org)
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by debracleaver 10y ago
We need to go beyond Motor Voter IMHO. The DMV was not built to be the foundation on which democracy rests. Also, a surprising number of Americans don't have driver's licenses.
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by debracleaver 10y ago
vote-by-mail patters are changing, however, to be more representative of the electorate as a whole. i think it tended to skew more conservative in the past because the RNC invested considerable resources into VBM programs. the DNC has be
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by debracleaver 10y ago
i would say that our funding tends to come from more progressive donors. that being said, we are ready, willing and able to take funding from say the Koch brothers should they ever offer to financially support our efforts to increase voter
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by 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
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by 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.
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by 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 tow
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by 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?
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by debracleaver 10y ago
who decides if someone is informed enough? will their be a test? if so, we're treading dangerously into the jim crow era of american voting, and i don't think either one of us would be comfortable with that.
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by debracleaver 10y ago
i tend to think more in terms of progressives and conservatives than dems vs. republicans. given the demographic makeup of our country, the majority of citizens are progressive: they assume that the future is brighter than the past and lon
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by 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. r
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by debracleaver 10y ago
my general take on this is that we are ready to go with online voting when it is as secure as paper based voting. honestly, we're not there yet, but it is something i expect to see in the relatively near future.
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by debracleaver 10y ago
you can't vote on our website, but you can receive help registering to vote, checking your status, and getting your absentee ballot. we focus on the nuts and bolts of voting, but there are so many great orgs out there who work on vote
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by debracleaver 10y ago
very few non-voters are unmotivated to vote. voters are far more likely to not cast ballots because voting is too hard.
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by debracleaver 10y ago
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 espe
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by debracleaver 12y ago
REMOTE: We're looking for a Director of Engineering to serve as our first full-time engineering hire. We are SumOfUs.org, a global online-organizing platform with millions of users and a rapid growth trajectory. We use technology to ra