Vote.org 2016 Impact Report Highlights Voter Engagement Experiments

3 Letter from Our CEO
3 6 Financials
3 9 2016 by the Numbers
4 2 Board of Directors
4 4 Thanks & Acknowledgements
4 7 What’s Next
4 The Challenge
8 The Mission
1 0 Joining Y Combinator
1 3 Experiments
1 4 — SMS Voter Registration
1 9 — Sign, Stamp, and Send via Smartphone
2 2 — Email and SMS GOTV to Opted-in Recipients
2 8 Election Day
2 5 — One-to-One SMS GOTV to Strangers
3 0 Partnerships
What you’ll
find inside

Friends,
We started writing this 2016 Vote.org impact report in March 2017
and we finished this report last week. Along the way we learned a
few important things:
1. It is far easier to report on your activities than the impact of
your activities.
2. If you decide to run four multi-million voter controlled experiments
in 40+ states, you will wait at least six months to get the final
voter files back from the states. At this point, it will be June 2017.
3. You’ll then spend another 2-3 months crunching the data in
those 40+ state voter files in order to get accurate results for your
experiments. At this point it will be September 2017.
4. Your determination to write the annual report in October 2017
will be completely undermined by last minute plans to run massive
GOTV experiments in Virginia and Alabama.
So to summarize: impact reports are challenging, but worth the wait.
I hope you enjoy reading this report as much as we enjoyed working
to increase voter turnout in 2016.
Sincerely,
Debra Cleaver
CEO, Vote.org

Voter turnout is down,
frustration is up.
U.S. voter turnout has been under 65% for over 40 years,
with the midterm election turnout near 40%. In 2013,
the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of
1965, leading to a spate of restrictive voting laws. These
laws disproportionately affect young voters, low-income
voters, and voters of color.
In fact, 2016 was the first presidential election in 50 years
without key voting protections in place.
Vote.org Impact Report 2016 4

We started out as LongDistanceVoter.org –
a volunteer-led effort – and ended as Vote.org,
a professional organization that reached more
voters per dollar spent than any group in America.
Along the way we were accepted in Y Combinator,
launched 4 massive controlled experiments, hired
3 full-time people, and ran the country’s largest
Election Day GOTV campaign.
If you’re curious exactly how all of this happened,
keep reading. Here is the month-by-month story
of Vote.org in 2016.
2016 was a wild year.

Debra Cleaver has been working at the intersection of technology and
democracy since 2004, first with Swing the State, then Long Distance
Voter, and now as the Founder and CEO of Vote.org.
Debra started Long Distance Voter in January 2008 with the goal
of increasing voter turnout by making it easier to vote by mail. Long
Distance Voter launched with $5,000 and no staff, but reached over
500,000 voters in its first six months of operation. In 2012, Long
Distance Voter registered over 100,000 voters on just under $5,300
dollars. In 2014, Long Distance Voter was the official data provider for
Google’s ‘How to Vote’ project that was viewed over 30 million times.
In 2015, Long Distance Voter won the Knight Foundation’s Election
Challenge, thereby securing funding to hire full-time staff.
Debra is a DRK Fellow, a Y Combinator Alum, a member of the YBCA
100 list of top innovators, and a relentless advocate for voting rights.
Debra Cleaver becomes
the first full-time
employee at Vote.org.
Vote.org Impact Report 2016
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 6
6

We began to build
the Vote.org website.
We launched on April 1,
2016 (not a joke). Neither is
proceeding to interact with
4.6% of the entire American
Voting Eligible Population
(VEP).
We released Vote.org’s
voter registration tool,
bringing our toolset up
to three (verify, register,
absentee).
With an excellent
domain name and
a single staffer,
Vote.org goes live.
F E B R U A R Y - M A R C H A P R I L F O O L ’ S D A Y M A Y

Vote.org uses technology to
simplify political engagement,
increase voter turnout, and
strengthen American democracy.
T H E M I S S I O N

Joey Espinosa is a highly skilled, full-stack software engineer.
Joey has extensive experience designing and building everything
from backend infrastructures to databases to user interfaces.
Over the past decade, he has built an impressive portfolio, having
worked with a number of respected organizations and companies,
including iCitizen, Knowledge in Practice, Thermopylae Sciences +
Technology, and the Tribune Company.
Joey works as tirelessly to provide every American with the right
to vote as he did protecting the country as an Intelligence Analyst
in the United States Air Force. He’s a member of American Mensa,
a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, a husband and father, a Christian, a
lover of all things open source.
Joey Espinosa becomes
the second full-time
J U N E

Vote.org is accepted into Y Combinator’s
2016 Summer Cohort.
Notable alums of this prestigious tech accelerator
include Reddit, AirBnB, and Dropbox. Vote.org is
one of only three nonprofits accepted into this batch.
J U N E

The best part of being in YC was demo day.
Debra got to pitch a room of carefully selected
investors and journalists.
Debra used her two minutes on stage to
explain that a presidential candidate spends
about 15 million dollars a week, which is
considered reasonable. But for only $13.2
million, Vote.org could text every single
unregistered voter in America and permanently
increase voter turnout.
WATCH THE FULL PITCH: www.vote.org/yc-demo-day
A U G U S T

Vote.org pitched the YC
community exactly 78 days
before Election Day.
The YC community donated just
over $1.2 million dollars over the
next four weeks.
A U G U S T

Experiments
SMS Voter Registration1
Sign, Stamp, and Send via Smartphone2
Email and SMS GOTV3
One-to-One SMS GOTV4
LEARN MORE: www.vote.org/research

Experiment 1:
SMS Voter Registration
Vote.org wants to reach as many voters as we
can, for as few dollars as possible, and we want
to reach them yesterday.
We wanted to find a faster, cheaper, and more
efficient way to register voters than site-based
registration.
We decided to try text messaging.
S E P T E M B E R - O C T O B E R

Vote.org ran the country’s first legal voter
registration drive done via text message. We
purchased the cell phone numbers of over one
million unregistered voters, and hired humans
to text them one at a time using the Hustle one-
to-one SMS platform.
We choose SMS over more traditional voter
registration methods (such as door to door)
because SMS is fast, cheap, easy to scale.
Moreover 90% of text messages are read
within three minutes, whereas 80% of door
knocks go unanswered.
Experiment 1: SMS Voter Registration

Texts sent by Vote.org
to unregistered potential
voters in 2016
1.6M People contacted
850k Registered people at cost
of $10 per registration form
26k
LEARN MORE:
www.vote.org/research
Experiment 1: SMS Voter Registration

Text messages not only work,
they are more cost-effective
than site-based registration.
Experiment 1 Results: SMS Voter Registration

“ Take 2 min to register to
vote or take 2 min to help
someone else register.”
Jack Dorsey
Co-founder, Twitter
J U N E

O C T O B E R
Experiment 2:
Sign, Stamp, and Send
via Smartphone
We wanted to find out if Vote.org could use
electronic signature technology to allow people
to complete, sign, and send their absentee
ballot applications directly from
their smartphones.
Who would choose this option instead of
printing and mailing? And would they go on
to vote at higher rates?

First, Vote.org built technology that let people
sign their absentee ballot applications by taking
a picture of their signatures, the same way you
can deposit a check. For the voter, this means
they can skip the conventional option of printing
a form.
We then faxed the form to the Local Election
Official for the voter. With no need to go to
the post office, the process becomes “online.”
Many Local Election Officials found this process
preferable, as the forms were actually legible,
and properly completed.
The experiment went live in 7 states:
Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska,
North Carolina, Kansas, and Idaho.
Cost breakdown:
O C T O B E R
Experiment 2: Sign, Stamp, and Send via Smartphone
$249k
Cost for 1 state
to build one online voter
registration system
$325k
Cost for Vote.org
to build online absentee
systems in 7 states

We weren’t surprised that young voters
choose to sign and submit their forms
electronically more often than older voters.
We were shocked, however, to find that
the young voters then turned out at higher
rates than older voters.
Experiment 2 Results: Sign, Stamp, and Send via Smartphone
We call this election alchemy: Turning low-propensity voters into
high-propensity voters.

Over 2 million people opted in to email election
reminders from Vote.org in 2016, and another
1.1 million people opted in to SMS reminders.
We were curious if these reminders would have
any effect on turnout.
N O V E M B E R
Experiment 3:
Email and SMS GOTV

Our experiment group included 325,000
potential voters who received aggressive SMS
reminders, and 510,000 who received a series
of email reminders.
We partnered with Civic Nation on the SMS
experiment. Some of the SMS recipients
received almost 30 messages, so we’re not
kidding when we say “aggressive.” We’ll scale
that back in 2018.
The email recipients received a series of
messages, including early voting information,
voter ID information, and polling place location.
N O V E M B E R
Experiment 3: Email and SMS GOTV

The email reminders seemed to slightly
decrease turnout, but the result wasn’t
statistically significant. Voters who received
SMS reminders, however, were .65% more
likely to vote than those who did not.
This effect was three times as large as the effect of sending unsolicited SMS
election reminders to registered voters (see below), although both tactics have
a statistically significant positive effect on turnout. A cold contact program,
moreover, is easier and cheaper to scale given the low acquisition costs
associated with purchasing phone numbers compared to building an opted-in list.
Experiment 3 Results: Email and SMS GOTV
N O V E M B E R

Immediately after running the SMS voter
registration drive, we turned our attention to
GOTV. We wanted to see if we could use SMS to
increase turnout with potential voters who did not
have a pre-existing relationship with Vote.org
We purchased the cell phone numbers for 3
million low-propensity voters in 40 different
states, and hired humans to text them one at a
time using the Hustle one-to-one SMS platform.
N O V E M B E R
Experiment 4:
One-to-One SMS GOTV

Our paid team of texters sent a total of 3.8
million text messages to 2.8 million low-
propensity voters. This included nearly 1 million
texts on Election Day alone.
We tested the effects of both “plan making
texts” – in which you attempt to help the
voter make a plan – and “informational texts”,
during which we simply provided polling place
information.
Cost per net-new-vote
$77
N O V E M B E R
Experiment 4: One-to-One SMS GOTV

For every $1,000 we spent on one-to-one
GOTV text messaging, 13 people voted
who would have otherwise stayed home.
The experiment showed that texts providing polling locations increased voter
turnout by 0.2 percentage points while plan-making texts were ultimately
ineffective. Polling location text messages sent cold to young voters targeted
from the voter file are an effective turnout tool, generating an effect on par
with that observed in an academic meta-analysis of conventional nonpartisan
GOTV mail programs.
Experiment 4 Results: One-to-One SMS Get Out the Vote
N O V E M B E R

Vote.org ran the country’s largest
Election Day GOTV drive.
We proactively provided polling place information to just under 1 million potential voters.
N O V E M B E R , E L E C T I O N D A Y

Raven spent a decade leading the growth of Netroots Nation from a
volunteer-run effort to the country’s premier progressive gathering.
One of his lasting accomplishments was implementing a requirement
that no panel be all male, or all white. Many complained this would kill
the event, but progressive gatherings and allied organizations now
consider this choice to be the standard.
Raven has extensive experience with fundraising, financial
management, and building and scaling organizations. Prior to working
at Netroots Nation, Raven was a technology-focused management
consultant, who advised both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies.
Raven Brooks becomes
the third full-time
D E C E M B E R

Along the way, Vote.org built out the first of many
partnerships with bold organizations in technology,
sports, social media, travel, and academia.
Partnerships

Ask Siri, ‘How do I register
to vote?’ and she’ll suggest
that you visit Vote.org.
We worked with Apple to incorporate our tools into Siri’s voting
workflow, for almost any related question. Try it for yourself. We’ll wait.
P A R T N E R S H I P S , T E C H N O L O G Y

What do Lebron James,
Chris Paul, and Carmelo
Anthony have in common?
Okay, a lot. But we’re hooked on how these NBA players came
together to film a PSA that encouraged fans to vote & visit Vote.org.
WATCH THE VIDEO: www.vote.org/lebron-james
P A R T N E R S H I P S , S P O R T S

Pinterest was the hands-
down winner in terms of
social-media driven traffic,
even after Justin Bieber and
Jack Dorsey both tweeted
about Vote.org.
Pinterest embedded Vote.org’s power tools into their site, promoted them
to a nationwide audience, and ultimately helped tens of thousands of voters
check their status, get registered, and request absentee ballots.
READ THE ARTICLE: Turning Pinners into voters
P A R T N E R S H I P S , S O C I A L M E D I A

Delta Airlines operates
over 5,400 flights daily. In
October 2016, they offered
all passengers free WiFi
access to visit Vote.org and
register to vote, which we
think is the perfect way to
spend your time in the sky.
P A R T N E R S H I P S , T R A V E L

As as result of this work, 91% of students (including all undergraduate
and graduate students) were registered to vote in 2016, compared with
a 71% average across institutions. Incredibly, a full 64% of their students
cast ballots in 2016, compared to a 50% average across institutions,
earning Northwestern national recognition for their work.
READ THE ARTICLE: Innovative student voter model earns national recognition
In 2016, Professor Michael Peshkin
and Northwestern University used
the Vote.org voter registration tool
as part of a larger effort to register
students to vote while the students
were registering for classes.
P A R T N E R S H I P S , A C A D E M I A

95.4% Individual Contributions
3.6% Foundations
$2,107,081
Revenue
82.5% Program
12.9% Fundraising
4.6% Administrative
$1,146,482
Expenses
Our Financials

Exactly how cost-effective is Vote.org?
Vote.org spent
in 2016
$1 million
The presidential campaigns spent
per day in 2016
~$3.2 million
Vote.org spent in 2016 what a presidential
candidate spends every 8 hours.
F I N A N C I A L S

We want to see 100%
voter turnout, and we
believe technology like
Vote.org is the key to
making that happen.”
Tim Brady
Co-founder, Y Combinator
“

1.3 million
Checked their registration status using our tools
660,000
Registered to vote using our tools
2.1 million
Opted in to our email list
860,000
Ordered their absentee ballots using our tools
6.5 million
Visited the Vote.org website
1.1 million
Opted in to our SMS list
2016 site visitors

900,000
Unregistered citizens contacted
in first-ever SMS voter registration drive
981,000
SMS messages sent on Election Day alone
3.8 million
People received one-to-one SMS
messages from the Vote.org team
2016 SMS outreach
Our team sent
a total of
6,191,789
messages to
3,840,906
unique contacts2.9 million
Potential voters contacted
with GOTV messaging

We transitioned from Long Distance Voter to Vote.org.
We became a YC company.
We launched 4 massive controlled experiments.
We pioneered new tactics, like electronic signatures on absentee ballot applications,
and SMS voter registration.
We hired three full-time staff, and over 100 seasonal workers.
We ran the country’s largest Election Day GOTV drive.
We ran presidential-sized voter registration and GOTV campaigns on 0.083%
of a presidential budget.
We had a ton of fun. Literally.
2 0 1 6 B Y T H E N U M B E R S
2016 was an incredible year.

Ashley Spillane
Chair
Dan McSwain
Secretary
2016 Board of Directors
Ashley Spillane is youth voter engagement
strategist whose expertise bridges politics,
technology, and entertainment. As a
leader and entrepreneur, Ashley has over
a decade of experience turning trends into
action. She is the president of a strategic
consulting firm called Impactual.
Ben Wikler
Treasurer
Ben is the host of The Good Fight,
a top-rated political podcast, and the
Washington Director of MoveOn.org.
Previously, Wikler held the #2 jobs at
the world’s two biggest online advocacy
organizations, Change.org and Avaaz.org,
and worked closely with Al Franken on his
1.5-million-listener radio show and Al’s
two #1 New York Times bestselling books.
Ben graduated from Harvard and lives in
Washington, DC, with his wife and son.
Dan is the co-founder of the Democracy
is Good For Business partnership.
Previously, Dan was the President of
GEER, a boutique engagement strategy
firm based in New York City. Earlier in his
career, Dan held senior communications
positions in President Barack Obama’s
2008 campaign, transition team, and
administration. Dan holds a bachelor’s
degree from the University of Notre
Dame and a master’s degree from
Syracuse University.

2016 Board of Directors
Julia Rhodes Davis is the Managing
Director at DataKind, a nonprofit bringing
the power of data science to the service
of humanity. Previously, Julia served as
the Chief Development Officer for Citizen
Engagement Laboratory, an incubator for
tech-fueled advocacy nonprofits. In 2008,
she founded Production Collective, a New
York-based consulting firm that provides
fundraising, organizational development,
and experiential marketing services to
prominent nonprofits.
Julia Rhodes Davis
Director
Carl Snodgrass
Director
Carl Gavin Tewksbury Snodgrass was
a Long Distance Voter co-founder and
led LDV’s research efforts for 7 years.
Prior to joining Long Distance Voter, Carl
investigated police misconduct for New
York City. Carl graduated summa cum
laude from Lewis & Clark College in 2006
with a BA in philosophy and Japanese,
and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa
honors society. Carl lives in Philadelphia,
PA and recently earned his JD from Penn
Law School.
Keegan Goudis
Director
Keegan Goudiss is a partner at Revolution
Messaging, and has lead the firm’s digital
advertising efforts since 2009. Previously,
Keegan worked for the National
Committee for an Effective Congress; for
the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee; and on numerous Democratic
campaigns across the country. Keegan
was recently named to Advertising Age’s
prestigious 2017 40 Under 40 list.

Thanks & Acknowledgements
Vote.org is endlessly grateful to so many people. Thanks to the original
Long Distance Voter team (Suzi, Tara, JP, Corinne, Elora, Tom, Jon),
with special thanks to Carl Snodgrass for seven years of tireless and
unpaid labor. Thank you to our Advisory Council for such solid advice,
with special thanks to Chris Mann for making sure our experiments
were rigorous and well-analyzed. Thank you Ashley, Dan, Julia, Ben,
Carl, and Keegan for being such a supporting board. Thank you Jim
and Justine from ShareProgress for the beautiful website, and thank
you Josh Levinger for the powerful voter registration tool. Thank you
to Eric Lukoff, Jake Yesbeck, and Lauren Garcia for writing so much
code back in 2014, and to John Kennedy, Jake Levine, and Joey
Espinosa for holding the code together during the presidential election
season. Thank you Tryn Conrad, Amanda Moreland and Mike
Higham for all the volunteer hours. Thank you Brad Schenck and the
entire 2016 Oakland Texting Team for working 7 days a week to
register voters and get them to the polls. Special shoutout to our OGs
and Supervisors: Daniela, Charlie, Kelly, Khalil, Felix, Kat, Bonita: you
handled 100+ staff with grace and good humor. Thank you Citizens
Engagement Lab, for giving us a home when we were little more than
a bold idea and a very small bank account, and then giving us a much
bigger home to house over 100+ texters. Jackie, JRD, Nina, Jen, Liza,
Jesse, Kia and Micha: apologies in retrospect for all the headaches.
Thank you New Media Ventures for being our earliest financial
backers. Thank you to the Knight Foundation, for supporting our
e-sign work and enabling us to hire full-time staff. None of this would
have been possible without NMV and Knight Foundation. Thank you
to the the entire Y Combinator team, with special thanks to Sam,
Amy, Kat, PB, Robby, Trevor, and Dominika. Y Combinator was a total
game changer for Vote.org, and we hope we’re doing you proud.
Thank you to Ilona from Wellspring Foundation and Adam from
Democracy Fund for backing our 2016 GOTV experiments. Thank you
Sage and Elise for supporting us year after year. Thank you Dan, Shu
and MJ for being such wonderful additions to the Vote.org family. And
thank you to all of the donors, large and small, who chipped in to make
2016 possible. There’s no way to thank all 2000+ of you, but we’d
like to acknowledge Swati Mylavarapu, Matt Nelson, Matt Cutts, Chris
Sacca, Ron Conway, Sandor Strauss, Bobby Goodlatte,

Deborah Sagner, Jake Chapman, Ben Godsill, Buck Farmer, Craig
Newmark, Mike Matthieu, Claiborne Deming, Maria Tchijov, Jordan
Buller, Jaffray Woodriff for giving until it hurt, and then contributing
some more.
Thank you Alex, Bryan and Matt from TargetSmart for answering
every “time sensitive” email with good humor and patience. Thank you
Hillary, Ysiad, Monica, Roddy and Perry from Hustle for everything.
We broke new ground together, and likely changed how voter
registration is done. Thank you Brian and Jason from ActionNetwork
for being such excellent partners over the years. Thank you Josh,
Miya, Leo, Lena, and Annie from Analyst Institute for all your hard
work on experiment design and analysis. Thank you Amelia and Evan
from Pantheon Analytics, for sharing your expertise with us, and for
keeping at least one experiment from going off the rails. Thank you
Diane and Molly from Megaphone Strategies for all the press.
Thank you to Laura Quinn from Catalyst for guidance over the years,
and to Page Gardner from Voter Participation Center for showing us
all what “large scale” experiments look like. Thank you to Kim Rogers
from Everybody Votes; Matt Singer from the Bus Federation; Matt
Davis from LCVEF; Chris Melody Fields from the Lawyers Committee;
Samala and Cayden from 18 Million Rising; Susan from Overseas
Vote Foundation; Andy and Laurie from Headcount; Jamiah from
NAACP, Jessica and Maria from Voto Latino; Erika and Fouad from
VotePlz; Katy and Seth from Turbovote; Jen and Carolyn from Rock
the Vote; Jake, Melinda, Scott and Tova from the Center for Secure
and Modern Elections; and all the other non-partisan turnout groups
who remain ego-less and dedicated year after year.
Thank you Michelle Le and Urvi Nagrani, for the beautiful photos. See
more of Michelle’s work at www.michellele.com. Thank you Ryan Co
and Hannah Orenstein for beautiful design work; thank you Semone
and Colette from Made to Matter for pulling together this report; and
thank you Toby and Mona for feedback on the first four drafts.

Finally, our most sincere thanks and gratitude
to Evan Ravitz, for being willing to part with
the Vote.org domain name after 20+ years of
stewardship. You had far more generous offers
than ours, and we still can’t quite believe you’ve
given us this gift.
And last but not least, thank you Liza Dichter,
for being an early believer in our mission and
leadership, and for being the person who is
most responsible for putting us on the path of
financial sustainability.

44 million people who voted in 2016 will not vote again in 2018
without outside intervention. These voters are overwhelmingly
progressive: they are the young voters, the low-income voters,
and the voters of color who are systematically ignored by
candidates on both sides of the political aisle. These voters
represent the diversity that makes America great.
As it stands right now, a full 65% of the voting-eligible population
is considered “low propensity” and unlikely to vote. This isn’t a
voter registration problem: it’s a voter turnout problem.
Fortunately, voter turnout is what Vote.org is best at. We’ve spent
over a decade increasing turnout among already registered voters,
first as Long Distance Voter, and now as Vote.org. Our 2016
program was an impressive pilot. Now we’re ready to scale.
What’s Next?
We’re optimists at Vote.org: we know that the American people
want to vote, and that they will vote in higher numbers, and
more consistently, as voting becomes more convenient. Partisan
neglect created the voter turnout crisis in America.
Only nonpartisan intervention can fix this mess.
If you’re excited about voter turnout, and hopeful for the future,
please reach out. We’re actively fundraising, and we’re also
looking for non-financial partners who are ready to test bold
ideas at massive scale.

Thank you to all of the
people that have used
Vote.org to strengthen
American democracy.
PHOTOS BY MICHELLE LE: www.michellele.com

Vote.org 2016 Impact Report Highlights Voter Engagement Experiments

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Vote.org 2016 Impact Report Highlights Voter Engagement Experiments