Democracy Dashboard is a new platform for citizens to engage with
their democracy, including following campaigns and political
organizations. We've got big plans, but the first problem we're solving
is making the process of voting a whole lot easier for average voters.
One way we are doing that is by giving campaigns and organizations, and
the activists that support them, easy tools to broadcast their hard-won
political smarts.
For Campaigns
The
case for why your campaign needs to be on DemDash is simple: some
number of people are going to use DemDash to vote in this election, and
you want your supporters on there saying nice things about you. Your
campaign is probably already using other social media tools, like
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube. Those tools are important and
helpful! But DemDash is important too, because it's the only site that
those voters are going to use when they go to vote.
If
you're still unsure, here are some details we uncovered while looking at
our traffic from last year's election. The bottom line is that the
number of visitors to our site in 2010 (most of whom came from San
Francisco) was MUCH larger than the margin of victory in several San
Francisco races! This chart compares the number of unique visitors to
DemDash around the November 2010 election to the margin of victory in a
few local races:
So
even last year, there were far more visitors to our site than the
margins. For this cycle, we've set a goal of getting 10% of the San
Francisco electorate, or 46,000 voters, to use Democracy Dashboard for
this November's election. This is what that would look like:
As
you can see, the number of users we'll get if we hit our goal -- or
even if we miss it by a mile -- could easily be much greater than the
margin of victory in any of the races, including for mayor.
We are also
working on lots of new features that will make it easier
for campaigns to get the word out to supporters and prospects about the
campaign -- and better yet, that won't require any more work for you,
since they'll leverage other new media strategies and sites you're
probably already using. Our first step towards this is Election Tweets,
or ElecTweets for short. For an example, check out out ElecTweets for the San Francisco 2011 Municipal Election. (or for this other little election coming up in 2012)
If you're convinced, join now, create a group for your campaign, grab some buttons
(and you can always find the link to the buttons on the bottom of each
page), and start emailing and tweeting links to your profile on DemDash.
If you're not convinced yet... well, at least we tried to warn you!
And For Organizations
There
are thousands of neighborhood groups, party clubs, chambers of
commerce, trade groups and single- and multi- issue groups doing all
kinds of great work engaging with our democracy, and that's in San
Francisco alone! And yet, far too few people know about the hard work
these groups do. At one of our first Hub Ventures
pitches, I asked how many people there had heard of one of my favorite
statewide groups that does very high quality independent analysis of
propositions. Only two of the 30 or 40 generally civic minded folks
assembled recognized the name, which I found heartbreaking. Even worse:
voters are often misled by those fake slate cards that unscrupulous
consultants sell endorsement spots on and then mail out in bulk.
If
your organization endorses candidates, propositions and referenda or
both, our hope is that DemDash will serve as a bullhorn (ok, a polite
bullhorn, if you can imagine that) for your organization. We've got to try and
build an audience for this kind of local information ourselves, and yet
the project is too large for any one group.
And soon,
we'll be working out a way to give organizations access to data about
their supporters. (including data matched to the voter file, where
possible) So sign up, create a group and a slate, and start sending your
supporters towards it. And if you have any issues please don't hesitate
to contact us at staff@demdash.us or by using the feedback tool that's
available once you log in. Thanks, and we're looking forward to seeing
your group on the site!
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