Learning Archives

How Will Technology Reshape the Way We Think about Elections and Campaign Finance?

Joe Goldman

February 19, 2015

Tomorrow, leading technologists from Silicon Valley, political consultants, commissioners from the FEC, and academics will come together at a conference sponsored by the Democracy Fund to discuss how emerging technology will impact campaign communication, mobilization, and fundraising in the future.

“The Campaign of the Future” has been organized by Stanford Professor Nate Persily and Ben Ginsberg, the former National Counsel to the Romney campaign. It will take place on February 20, from 9 AM to 4 PM, at the Bechtel Conference Center at Stanford.

The full conference agenda may be found here and will include discussions about such questions as:

How dominant will TV advertising, and other traditional media, be in the coming campaign and when, if ever, should we expect their relative demise?
How have big data innovations transformed the relevant players (both insiders and outsiders) in political campaigns?
How will technological advances alter the methods of campaign financing?
How do new technologies affect the nature and tone of campaign fundraising appeals?
Do new campaign technologies present different policy challenges than their predecessors?
Does the anonymous nature of internet communication present unique obstacles for disclosure?
How must a policy paradigm developed in the 1970s be altered to account for the nature of a Twenty-First Century campaign?

The conference will be audio streamed at the following link.

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How are We Doing? Lessons from our First Grantee Perception Survey

Joe Goldman

December 31, 2014

Measurement and evaluation play an important role in how we at Democracy Fund approach our work. We believe that we have a responsibility to be transparent about the progress we are making against our goals and that we must be open to new information that may point us in new directions. To this end, we use a variety of tools to measure our work and better understand whether and how we are making progress. We also often provide our grantees with evaluation resources to help them take a deeper look at how they can be more effective.

An important part of our approach to evaluation is the idea that accountability, by definition, requires feedback. Our board and advisors provide valuable feedback and direction throughout the year, but we also need to hear from our grantees and partners to gain a more complete picture of how we are doing. In order to ensure that this feedback is as honest and critical as possible, we recently hired the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to survey our grantees and produce a Grantee Perception Report that assesses Democracy Fund across a wide range of factors. CEP was able to gather anonymous feedback from 25 grantees – 83% of our portfolio at the time.

CEP’s report compared Democracy Fund to 300 foundations as well as to a custom cohort of 16 peer funders. As a relatively young foundation, with a little over three years of grant making under our belts, we were eager to see these first results. There is a lot of data, which we will be exploring periodically here on the blog, but the following three themes stood out.

Expertise and Impact: Grantees rated Democracy Fund staff highly for understanding grantees’ strategies (77th percentile) and the fields in which we work (82nd percentile). At the same time, we were ranked in the 40th percentile for having an impact on the field. Anonymous comments suggest our expertise is a strong foundation for future success but it’s too early to judge the effects of our work.
Selection and Evaluation Processes: Grantees find our selection process to be more valuable than most (97th percentile in strengthening their organizations), and the Democracy Fund is in the 84th percentile for grant dollars awarded per hour of application work. Concurrently, grantees feel high pressure to change organizational priorities to receive funding (98th percentile).
Relationships with Grantees: Overall, Democracy Fund grantees said that we are fair and highly responsive. They also indicated that we provide our grantees with more non-monetary assistance – from strategic planning advice to assistance in securing other funding – than most organizations. Yet, grantees showed they feel low levels of comfort in approaching us with problems during the life of a grant, compared to how grantees feel in approaching other foundations (29th percentile).

While many of the results indicate that Democracy Fund is on the path to the kind of foundation we hope to be, we asked CEP to lead confidential focus groups at our October grantee meeting to explore areas of concern. The focus groups addressed two questions. First, why do our grantees feel less comfortable approaching us with problems, compared to the grantees of other foundations? Second, how can we reduce any burdens associated with our grant selection process? Both focus groups were meant to help us better understand what was going on and hear solutions from our grantees.

The Democracy Fund team left the meeting for these focus groups, so that the conversations could be candid and fruitful conversations. One of the more revealing pieces of information uncovered by the CEP facilitators was the connection between Democracy Fund’s focus on metrics and our grantees’ discomfort in approaching us with problems. It revealed a need for more communication and expectation setting around how we approach, develop, and use metrics in evaluating grants. I’ll explore these findings more in a follow up post, but we are already experimenting with some ways to address this need. For example, we’re piloting a new metrics and reporting template with a few grantees, and we’re thinking about new ways to demonstrate our commitment to smart risk-taking and experimentation. On another front, we’re also sending out our first user survey on our new grants management software.

In 2015, we will review our overall grant making process and while we don’t expect significant changes, it will be a moment to think further about our relationships with grantees and about how we can improve our partnerships while maintaining the practices and values that rank Democracy Fund so highly in other areas.

We would like to thank all our grantees that participated in the survey and offer our thanks to CEP for the thoughtful report. We’re looking forward to continuing the discussion about these results and to having a baseline for future surveys.

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Guest Post: Creating Community Solutions, part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health

Carolyn Lukensmeyer

August 9, 2013

On June 3rd 2013, President Barack Obama hosted a National Conference on Mental Health at the White House as part of the Administration’s efforts to launch a national conversation to increase understanding and awareness about mental health. At the event, President Obama directed Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Arne Duncan of the U.S. Department of Education to launch a National Dialogue on Mental Health.

An important component of the national dialogue is Creating Community Solutions, which is a series of events around the country that will allow people to engage in dialogue and action on mental health issues. The effort is being led by the National Institute for Civil Discourse and several other deliberative democracy groups. The National Institute for Civil Discourse has joined in this initiative because we believe mental health is one of the most pressing issues facing our country, yet is one of the most difficult issues for Americans to talk about. We hope to engage thousands of Americans in a range of setting: small-group discussions, large forums, online conversations and large-scale events. The dialogues are supported by an array of local officials, nonprofit organizations, professional associations, foundations, and health care providers. In over 50 communities, planning has begun for the community conversations on mental health. The community conversations page at www.mentalhealth.gov describes the basic parameters of these events and the online map at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org shows the full range of places and organizations involved. Two large-scale events of several hundred people each have already been convened this summer in Sacramento, CA and Albuquerque, NM. In Sacramento, local and state officials and community leaders were extremely supportive, including Mayor Kevin Johnson who attended the event along with members of his staff. Congresswoman Doris Matsui attended and talked about the State of Mental Health Matters. Sacramento aggressively used social media to recruit young people and it paid off. Thirty percent of the 350 people in the room were between the ages of 19-24. Local television and print media provided good coverage, including a segment on the local NBC affiliate KCRA. A diverse group of three hundred people attended the forum in Albuquerque. Former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici addressed the crowd, along with Mayor Richard Barry who joined people in the discussions and committed to act on some of the suggestions that emerged from the day. Albuquerque also received local television and print media coverage of the event, including a segment on KRQE. Now that the events are completed, each city will have a Community Action page under the Outcomes section on our website, www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org. Information about next steps, the outcomes of the event, relevant documents and media articles will be housed there. Both cities have robust action planning committees composed of local organizations and leaders committed to incorporating the strategies expressed by the participants into Community Action Plans that will guide their cities’ responses to mental health going forward. Some of those strategies included: strengthening existing resources, improving preventive services and continuity of care, teaching mental health services in schools, and communicating information about mental health services to young people using more extensive social media. Dr. Carolyn Lukensmeyer is the Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse.

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Of Post-Election Audits and Plaudits

Adam Ambrogi

June 21, 2013

Provisional ballots allow the parties a chance to continue the Election Day fight well into November and December—they’re ballots that can only be counted later in the election process, after the identity or qualifications of a voter have been confirmed. It’s clear that in many elections—especially local elections, the race can come down to provisional ballots—so they’re important. That said, their frequent use—or overuse—can slow down the process, result in longer lines, and result in incomplete preliminary count outcomes. A recent audit by Philadelphia City Controller’s office sheds some light on how provisional ballots are being used and where problems can arise from their improper use. The audit was prompted by the fact that provisional ballots cast in Philadelphia in 2012 more than doubled from the last similarly situated election in 2008. Little had changed with the City’s election procedures and population, so officials wanted to understand what was going on.

According to the audit report, there were multiple causes for the high number of provisional ballots issued:

Pollworker error. The Controller estimates that 4,899 voters cast provisional ballots due to pollworker error. These were voters who were registered in the right precinct and were properly listed in the poll books. According to the Report: “Poll workers should have located the names in the books, which would have permitted these voters to cast their ballots using a voting machine, rather than casting a provisional ballot. This error should be the easiest to fix—and to the extent that jurisdictions have the ability to move to electronic poll books, the enhanced search capability should mostly eliminate this problem. Better training or review protocols might also have made a difference.

Problems in printing the ‘supplemental poll books.’ About 4,827 voters were forced to cast provisional ballots because their names were not printed in the poll books or supplemental poll books. This is the perhaps the most challenging of the problem to fix on election day, since there’s no knowable proof at the polling place that the voter is properly registered.The key finding from the audit is that the flood of last minute registrations caused a number of legitimate voter registrations to be bumped from the PA Department of State’s approved poll book. These voters should have been included in supplemental poll books, but were not. Unfortunately, the audit could not determine who was to blame for these errors because the auditors could not recreate the problem. Apparently, the City and state did not save the parameters that were used for making the books. For the purposes of audits and identifying errors, maintaining the parameters used would seem to be a necessary step in election integrity. Since this particular problem may be more challenging to fix at the poll location, it’s important to provide accountability for the system by making the parameters available, and retain those parameters for a reasonable time after the election to attempt to determine flaws in the system.

Registered voters at the wrong polling place. The third reason for provisional ballots being issued was that about nine thousand voters tried to vote at an incorrect polling location. These were properly registered voters who, due to misinformation, or other error, went to the wrong polling place. It is unclear whether Philadelphia properly notified those voters of their correct polling place.

There were some smaller problems identified by the audit that also pose unique election administration problems:

Teenage wasteland. Many groups, including Fair Vote have promoted pre-registration, which allows individuals under 18 to pre-register—who will automatically be qualified when they turn 18. It seems to be a useful policy development—so all potential voters can get registered in high school. However, that benefit was limited when the City failed to run a critical “Update Underage Voters Utility” program prior to printing its poll books.

It’s all in the family. In other cases, provisional ballot were voided improperly. For example, in one case, a pollworker voided a provisional ballot because he or she believed that the voter had already voted on a machine. On closer inspection, the auditors realized that the provisional ballot was actually cast by the daughter, and “personnel from the City Commissioners Office wrongly identified the voter’s signature in the poll book. Had they checked the dates of birth, they would have realized the signature was that of the voter’s mother, who had voted on a machine.” Obviously, it’s more than possible that a family would vote in the same polling place—this is an error that should be caught in the canvass period for provisional ballots.

In short, while a formal review of an election process can take a significant amount of time (and be a touch arduous), the results and recommendation for the reform are incredibly useful in planning future elections in the locality, and for reforming local pollworker training and requirements. There has been a push for serious post-election audits of voting systems in the last few years, and that seems to be a positive step. What this thoughtful, well-organized examination from the Philadelphia Controller’s office indicates is that officials should not stop at the voting systems themselves. Regular, independent reviews of the provisional ballot and the regular ballot systems can lead to positive lessons learned, and a chance to correct errors prior to the next election. It seems that the independence of this review is also important—no one loves an external critique, but governments and businesses of all sizes are subject to periodic, external audits—it’s time to consider that elections follow suit. It strikes me that using the Philadelphia model might be a good start.

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Guest Post: Learning from the Democracy Fund’s Early Grants

Peter Levine

June 5, 2013

Last year, the Democracy Fund made a series of inaugural grants during the 2012 election that experimented with different approaches to informing voters, exposing them to alternative points of view, and reducing the influence of deceptive political communications. CIRCLE (the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts University), was asked to evaluate these projects in order to learn more about their reach and influence. The evaluations were conducted by myself and the rest of the CIRCLE team. Two experiments involved disseminating videos online in order to change viewers’ responses to misleading or divisive political rhetoric:

Flackcheck.org produced video parodies of deceptive campaign ads in order to immunize the public from the deceptions.

Bloggingheads.tv produced videos featuring civil disagreement with the goal of increasing viewers’ respect for people with different points of view.

Two experiments involved convening selected citizens for some kind of discussion or interaction with peers:

“Face the Facts” experimented with a variety of different methods for educating and engaging people about key facts, ranging from info-graphics to Google Hangouts. (This experiment was evaluated by Prof. John Gastil and Dave Brinker of Penn State University, on a subcontract from CIRCLE)

The Healthy Democracy Fund’s “Citizens Initiative Reviews” asked small groups of citizens to make recommendations about pending ballot initiatives in Oregon and disseminated their recommendations to voters through the state’s official voter guide. (evaluated by John Gastil)

Three experiments involved helping or influencing professional journalists or media outlets to produce news that would serve the public better:

Flackcheck’s “Stand by Your Ad” campaign urged broadcasters to reject deceptive campaign ads and encouraged local stations to run “ad watches”.

The Columbia Journalism Review’s “Swing States Project” attempted to improve the quality of local media coverage of the election by commissioning local media critics to critique coverage.

The Center for Public Integrity’s “Consider the Source” provided in-depth reporting on campaign finance issues.

In a series of blog posts over the coming weeks, we will share some of the findings that emerged from these evaluations. We will not focus on which particular interventions were effective, but rather on broad themes that are relevant for anyone who seeks to improve the quality of public engagement during a political campaign. The topics of our blog posts will be: 1. Educating Voters in a Time of Political Polarization 2. Supporting a Beleaguered News Industry 3. How to Reach a Large Scale with High-Quality Messages 4. Tell it Straight? The Advantages and Dangers of Parody 5. Educating the Public When People Don’t Trust Each Other 6. The Oregon Citizens Initiative Review Stay tuned for the first of these six posts which will be coming soon. Peter Levine is the Executive Director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.

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What We’re Reading

Justin Anderson

March 7, 2013

At the Democracy Fund, we’re constantly reading the latest research, reports, and analyses to learn about the challenges facing our democracy and what we can do about them. Over the coming months, I’ll use this space to share links to some of these publications. (If you are interested in news and updates from our grantees, please visit the News Page.)

Participatory Budgeting in Year Two: Reinvigorating Local Democracy in NYC (Huffington Post) Melissa Mark-Viverito, NYC Council Member, 8th District, discusses the second year of Participatory Budgeting in New York City while highlighting the process and successes from Year One. Related stories: Vallejo Participatory Budgeting Video (Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership) – CA Forward has produced a short video on the participatory budgeting process currently underway in Vallejo, CA. The City of Vallejo is the first US city to undertake a city-wide participatory budgeting process. The Spread of Participatory Budgeting Across the Globe: Adoption, Adaptation, and Impacts (Journal of Public Deliberation, Vol. 8, Issue 2) This special issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation brings together leading scholars and practitioners of PB in order to expand our understanding about why PB programs are being adopted, how governments are adapting the rules and principles to meet different policy and political goals, and the impact of PB on civil society, state reform, and social well-being.
2012 American Values Survey (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press) The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has released a new report examining partisan polarization surges from 1987-2012. Overall, there has been much more stability than change across the 48 political values measures that the Pew Research Center has tracked since 1987. But the average partisan gap has nearly doubled over this 25-year period – from 10 percentage points in 1987 to 18 percentage points in the new study.
Most Believe at Least One Political Conspiracy Theory (Political Wire) A new study from Fairleigh Dickinson University finds that 63% of registered voters buy into at least one political conspiracy theory, with 36% who think that President Obama is hiding information about his background and early life, 25% who think that the government knew about 9/11 in advance, and 19% who think the 2012 Presidential election was stolen.
Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans (PLoS ONE) A recent study of young adults suggests that liberals and conservatives have significantly different brain structure. As shown in the study, although the risk-taking behavior of Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) did not differ, their brain activity did. Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, while Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala. In fact, a two parameter model of partisanship based on amygdala and insula activations yields a better fitting model of partisanship than a well-established model based on parental socialization of party identification long thought to be one of the core findings of political science.
The Exaggeration of Political Polarization in America (The Monkey Cage) Andrew Gelman of the Monkey Cage responds to a new paper from Jacob Westfall, et. al. addressing the Americans’ perceptions of polarization between Democrats and Republicans. The study uses data collected in the American National Election Studies between 1970 and 2004 to examine Americans’ perceptions of polarization between Democrats and Republicans. Respondents reported their own attitudes on partisan issues, such as whether the government should increase spending and provide more services, and they estimated the attitudes of Democrats and Republicans.
This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For (WhiteHouse.gov) Citing cost (an estimated $850,000,000,000,000,000), lack of interest blowing up planets, and a largely ignored security flaw in design, the White House has chosen not to pursue a proposal to construct a Death Star for the United States. Instead, we should focus on increasing careers in math and science, and support of exploratory programs for NASA.
Is civics in crisis? Or just changing its shape? (Ethan Zuckerman – My Heart’s in Accra) Ethan Zuckerman responds to criticism of a spoof of “Jaywalking,” where students at Olympia High School in Olympia, Washington made a video called “Lunch Scholars,” in Jan, 2012. The video has been largely citied as an example how unprepared American youth are to compete in the global economy as well as underscoring the lack of civic knowledge in US schools.
Journalism for Democracy (Nieman Journalism Lab) Herb Gans, on journalism, 86 years old and losing none of his insight “Because the popular news media limit themselves to covering top-down politics, they often pay little if any attention to the political processes that swirl under and around the bulwark. Only rarely do they report directly on the problems of and dangers to American democracy.”