Advocacy, Technology, and the Elections
Over the past few weeks, it has been amazing to watch how many organizations are using technology to advocate around the presidential elections, but a quick disclaimer before I start showing off examples: Techno.la doesn't care if you vote for Obama, McCain, Mickey Mouse, or Ben, Kate's beagle, who runs on the platform of "More Meat!" We just want to show off a few examples of how technology is being used. So, now that we're done with that, we can get on to the fun stuff.
- Voting Information. The Brennan Center for Justice is providing information about barriers to voting and your voting rights. In particular, they point to two reports: one that covers the practice of purging voters from registration lists and a second that speaks to misunderstandings about the rights of citizens with criminal convictions. (And I found out about all of this from the Center's great e-newsletter.) The ABA is even getting in gear for the election season. Not only do that they have materials about voting rights, but they've also made information available for judges who will be hearing cases involving election law.
- Registration. Registering college students and getting them to vote has gotten a lot of coverage. Kojo Nnamdi talked with Sujatha Jahagirdar of the Student Public Interest Research Group, New Voters Project about barriers that this population faces. A lot of projects have stepped up to help counter those barriers. Your Revolution put together a Facebook application that people can use to register to vote and remind their friends to register to vote. (For those of you not in the know, I think of Facebook applications as a new form of website advertising, except a little less tacky and occasionally a bit more fun.) And Rock the Vote created A Million Reasons to Vote in order to showcase personal stories and encourage more people to register.
- Candidate Research. Don't know who you are voting for yet? IDW Publishing has put together two comic books that profile the presidential candidates called Presidential Material. (This is a great strategy to make complicated materials easier to understand. The National Center for State Courts has already used it to help explain courts and the law.) Also, to accompany their website that allows you to research a candidate's background and voting record, Project Vote Smart recently released their 2008 Voter's Self-Defense Manual to help voters educate themselves.
- Issue Education. This has been the area with the most buzz, especially with the economic issues that Washington, D.C. has been addressing recently. The Sunlight Foundation and NPR both did simple, but amazing, videos to explain small areas of the financial crisis. The Sunlight Foundation focused on the growth in the political contributions of the financial industry, and NPR put together a graphic to show how big 700 billion is. (Hint: It's HUGE!)
- Process Education. The process of electing a president is not simple, and the details are easy to forget when they are only needed every four years, so there has been plenty of materials that have been produced to re-educate the public. CommonCraft put together an explanation of how a president is elected. And for those of you worried about another mess because of the electoral college, check out FiveThirtyEight.com, which does a great job of presenting the data associated with electoral college projections.
I know, I know. LSC-funded legal aid organizations are banned from any lobbying. But other non-profits aren't. In fact, Independent Sector has put together The Nonprofit Lobbying Guide to help non-profits figure out what they can and can't do.
And really, this post isn't about the elections and lobbying. It's about looking at how technology has been used to educate the public and move them to act. And don't even LSC-funded programs have to do that as a part of fundraising or community education or pro bono panel development? - K
