Does this bring in money or votes? Newsletter 1
*Air horn*
Welcome to the first edition of “Does this bring in money or votes?”, the DNC Mobilization team’s official newsletter! I’m Meg DiMartino, our Digital Organizing Director, and I’m writing our first issue. We’ll rotate writers for every newsletter, but this time, you have yours truly! I am so excited to be kicking us off!
Here, you can expect to learn more about what’s going on with the team, anything relevant going on in the Democratic digital space, and any opportunities we have available to you or your organization. All to the tune of “does this bring in money or votes?”
Feature:
In 2019, the DNC focused on the sustainable and transferable things that we can provide the eventual nominee as part of a general election infrastructure. We have a responsibility to be ready to go whenever a nominee is selected so that we have the framework in place to defeat Donald Trump. One of the biggest things in this bucket is our platform, IWillVote.com, which has been a priority of the Digital Organizing team and our Tech team to build out and improve.
IWillVote is a resource that we truly see as an institution for voters and campaigns, and we hope to maintain that standing for years to come. Last cycle alone, the IWillVote program reached more than 60 million Americans in some way -- it’s a tried and true center for voter education, voter registration, and eventually mobilization on Election Day. As such, we are constantly working to make it better and more accessible for the next cycle.
One of the things that makes IWillVote so accessible is the polling place widget that came out of the 2018 cycle -- one of the best iterations of the tool yet!
The IWillVote widget has allowed campaigns, state parties, nonprofits, and other organizations to embed the polling lookup feature of IWillVote.com directly into their own websites using their own domains and cohesive branding. This makes IWillVote more accessible to everyone’s supporters and helps get voters the crucial information they need without needing to come to our website to get it.
Functionally, it includes an address field and search button, which will direct the voter to the IWillVote polling location landing page with respective locations listed in a given state.
Last cycle, we had campaigns up and down the ticket that used the widget, including Beto for Senate, Tim Kaine for Senate, Tina Smith for Senate, Amanda Koch for District 2 on the Will County Board, and Canek Aguirre for Alexandria City Council, just to name a few — as well as state parties like Nevada, Arizona, Maryland, Illinois, Tennessee, Iowa, and Kansas.
Here’s just one example from the Nevada Democrats’ website in 2018
We are spent the time to do this so that campaigns don’t have to build their own polling place lookup tool. This is just one of the critical ways that the Digital Organizing team at the DNC is working on general election infrastructure to help set the eventual nominee up for success. IWillVote has been through the trenches before and is battle-ready.
Job opportunities:
The Mobilization team is looking for two people to join our team in the Washington, DC Headquarters and is hiring digital organizing fellows in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Please apply below or share with someone you know looking for a job!
Digital Ads Strategist, Washington, DC (DNC HQ)
Digital Organizer, Washington, DC (DNC HQ)
Operation 2020 Digital Organizing Fellowship, Remote
🧵Thread we think you should read (and retweet) 🧵
Closing:
Thank you so much for reading! Stay tuned for the next edition, and in the meantime, forward this to any ~hip and cool~ Democratic digital friends who should be getting this newsletter.
Happy Three Days Until the Iowa Caucus,
Meg DiMartino