Collecting Customer Data via Recorded Webinars or Calls

[staceyrebekahscott]

Overview

Search for organizations that have recorded webinars, calls, meetings or summits that we can watch/listen to and pull insights from.

For general notes: Ballot Nav Customer Development Activity Log
For keeping track of contacts and responses: Voter Mobilization Research Feedback

[staceyrebekahscott]

@jonlam27 I have assigned this issue to you, to start exploring the potential of gathering data from websites that have recordings of their meetings, etc.

Tasks for this week:
Choose from the list below and document your findings.

• National Low Income Housing Coalition: Our Homes Our Votes: There are 4 recordings of recent meetings, each about an hour long with a slide deck to download. If the webinar yields insights you deem valuable, download the slides and add them to the Market Fit Research folder.
• When We All Vote Democracy Summit: 2 day summit has about 8-10 hours of video for each day. Not all will be relevant but it is a lot of video, so don't feel obligated to watch it all.
• All In Campus Democracy Challenge: See previous recordings section, each one is about an hour.

Please let me know what you choose, so I can assign the others to someone else. We need to ramp up our data collection efforts so please take on as much as you can.

[jonlam27]

hey @staceyrebekahscott sure thing, I can start by taking National Low Income Housing Coalition

[staceyrebekahscott]

@jonlam27 How is your research going so far? Any insights from the Housing Coalition videos?

[jonlam27]

Hey @staceyrebekahscott, yup got some insights. Wanted to summarize my findings before the meeting today but had some personal issues that took up majority of the time. Will have this done hopefully after the meeting though

[jonlam27]

Summary of Findings - 4 NLIHC Webinars

• The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) played an important role in getting policymakers to start talking about homelessness and affordable housing.
• Focus should be on getting constituents to talk and demand to see policy change – we need to elect the right people to office.
• There’s currently resistance from housing councillors as they are severely underfunded and struggle to find time to incorporate their efforts into their busy schedules
• Research conducted on the effects of eviction vs voter turnout:
  • 1% increase in residential eviction rate predicts a 0.46% drop in the voter turnout rate (even after accounting for factors like poverty, racial makeup, the % of renter households etc.)
  • The effects are stronger in states with new voting requirements, uncompetitive states, and states with exposure to eviction
  • The effects are weaker in communities that are in states of same day or election day registration and battleground states
  • Eviction enhances material hardship and social isolation
    • Material hardship – individual prioritize urgent human needs like shelter. Effects may spill over if neighbours extend resources like housing and shelter, money, or caregiving support, as doing so would strain their own resources
    • Social isolation – disrupts local network, which is a problem as strong communities ties can support political participation
• Recommended that policymakers invest in housing and voter policies that promote stability and inclusion (invest in interventions that reduce evictions and expand access to rental assistance)
• Our Homes, Our Votes Act – facilitates voter registration for renters and tenants in affordable housing who are shut out of the political system. These potential voters are disenfranchised despite having a verified identify and a local address.
• Low-income voters engaged by non-profit organizations saw a 7% boost in turnover over comparable low-income voters.
• Voter suppression trends that impact those in affordable housing:
  • Reduction of early voting hours
  • Limiting absentee voting
  • Making it harder to vote by mail – States lifted restrictions in 2020 that made it easier for mail-in voting but this might no longer be the case (i.e. in Virginia and Texas)
  • Changes to polling place locations/exacerbation of long lines to vote
  • Limiting number of poll workers – More than 80% poll workers felt threatened in doing their work and were considering leaving their jobs because of personal threats and political attacks
  • Voter ID / Proof of citizenship – women voters, communities of colours, those without valid photo ID with their current address listed are all impacted
  • Restrictions on voter registration organizations
• Some states (i.e. Kansas) have made it harder to get help with your ballot if you’re a voter with a disability and have made it harder for organizations like League of Women voters to help these voters in need of accessibility assistance

Some webinars were less relevant i.e. the third webinar goes into legal considerations for non-profit organizations (how to maintain non-partisan in issue advocacy and voter registration efforts), but were still insightful nonetheless.

Our_Homes_Our_Votes_Webinar_040422.pdf
Our_Homes_Our_Votes_Webinar_051622.pdf
Our_Homes_Our_Votes_Webinar_050222.pdf
Our_Homes_Our_Votes_Webinar_041822.pdf

[staceyrebekahscott]

@jonlam27 Great work on the Housing coalition videos. This is great insight.

Do you have time to take a look at another organization's videos, either the When We All Vote summit, or the All In Campus Democracy Challenge?

[jonlam27]

hey @staceyrebekahscott, yup. I actually experienced a major internet outage on Friday that lasted all weekend. Managed to still squeeze in some time for part 1 of the summit hosted by When We All Vote though. I've left notes below on my findings (some similar with what we already have, some newer insights):

The Culture of Democracy Summit: Friday, June 10

Summary of Findings – Culture of Democracy Summit Part 1

• Voters disproportionately harmed by voter suppression laws:

  • Black and brown communities
  • Disabled voters (when drop boxes are eliminated; removed from outside polling places)
  • Students
  • Rural voters
  • Elderly (when you limit absentee voting)

• Fight for democracy has intensified over the last 7 years and new tactics used for voter suppression are directly targeting the integrity of the process itself

• Georgia

  • SB 202

    • significantly reduce number of drop boxes across the state
    • made it increasingly difficult for people to request and vote by absentee ballot
    • shortened time for early voting
    • made it a crime for people to provide water and snacks to voters and election volunteers (Georgia has some of the longest voting lines and this law made it harder to provide comfort to people to encourage them to stay in line and be engaged)
    • The 5% that are hardest to reach include low-income, under-resourced, under-represented communities – usually youth or the formerly incarcerated who have done their parole, paid their fines, and served probation
    • The formerly incarcerated are typically unaware of the process to be re-enfranchised and to access their right to vote
    • If your name or address has changed, you have to re-register to vote
    • Issue experienced that caused a 40% drop in registered voters:
      • At the Department of Driver Services, you can opt out of registering to vote - voting registration is otherwise automatic
      • 40% drop happened when this was changed and voters had to intentionally opt-in to ensure they were registered to vote
      • This caused voter confusion as folks are accustomed to being registered to vote by default

  • HB 441

    • Involvement of federal agency to conduct investigation into alleged election fraud or election crimes
    • Concerned this might intimidate voters from participating in the process

• Texas

  • Already have restrictive voting rights
  • No drive-through voting, difficult to vote by mail, no drop boxes
  • Densest concentration of black folks and Latinos
  • Keeps ex-offenders from re-enfranchising themselves when they are eligible

• Native Vote

  • While native people are numerically/statistically insignificant, the 2020 elections proved that they are politically significant
  • Among these 19 states, many native people have large populations that live on their own self-governed land. The mobilization of the vote is a serious crisis on tribal lands because of distance
  • Lack of support for rural voters is a common barrier
    • illegal to help by collecting ballots and taking them to the polling place or to be mailed
    • need enough gas money to drive 100 miles to register to vote and enough gas money to go and vote in primary/general election
  • North Dakota passed a law that restricted people from using IDs that don’t have a street address. Most reservations don’t have street addresses and native people have been voting for decades using post office boxes
    • This law restricts native political power and the ability to speak out on policies
    • Tribal sovereign acts – been able to work with tribes to ensure that tribes issue IDs with street addresses – reservation can develop addresses just like any city. It was a complicated process but still needed to be addressed

[jonlam27]

The Culture of Democracy Summit: Monday, June 13

Summary of Findings – Culture of Democracy Summit Part 2

• All laws since 1865 are race-neutral, doesn't mean they weren't voter suppression laws though
• ever since the 15th amendment, you couldn't pass laws that specifically targeted people by race. However, we would still see:
  • grandfather law - you can only vote if your grandfather voted. 95% of black people's grandfathers were enslaved and couldn't vote
  • literacy exams - majority of black Americans were illiterate since it was illegal for them to learn how to read until the end of slavery
  • more recently:
    • you have to have state ID from the department of motor vehicles to vote. Except the department of motor vehicles was closed in areas with a lot of black folks and latinos (Texas)

• these aren't race-specific laws but they were enforced in a race-specific way
• voting rights since 1865 did not give black people new rights, it simply enforced the same rights they have had for 100 years but have not been enforced

Research conducted

• general cynicism and sense of disillusionment about voting and government

• prevalent in focus groups with people who were eligible to vote but didn't participate in the 2020 election

  • lack of trust in government and in elections
  • want to see more transparency in elections and from elected officials
  • stressed they wanted more accountability from elected officials

• barely 1/3 of Americans believe the government tries to act in the best interest of American people

• 3/4 of Americans agree that politicians make false promises to get elected

• only about 1/4 of Americans believe they can trust their elected officials to follow through on promises

• less than 20% of Americans think the government makes decisions in a way that is transparent

• there seems to be a lack of trust in traditional sources of information and a sense of information uncertainty among voters and non-voters alike

• Voters may be discouraged from participating when they don't feel equipped to make an informed decision or when they are exposed to misinformation

• research has demonstrated the importance of improving civic education and media literacy

  • particularly the case as most Americans now get their news from social media sources and other internet news sources (including many known for promotion misinformation)

• People want information that's:

  • objective and unbiased
  • not paid for by special interest groups
  • easy to understand.

• Majority of Americans have little to no trust in news media and accountability has been a major theme. Trust will come after accountability.

Difference between Misinformation and Disinformation

• Misinformation - not meant to harm anyone
• Disinformation - based on political and monetary gain and is meant to disrupt and harm

Ballot Harvesting

• what most people don't know is the collection of ballots is legal in most states but by using the term "ballot harvesting", you're able to spread disinformation narratives about the voting process

Other examples of Disinformation

• Nefarious actors who seek to cause wedge issues within communities of colour - we look at this as racialized disinformation
  • digital blackface - people pretending to be black people online and causing harm
  • b/w latinx and black - bad actors seep in and drive a wedge into the communities so we don't participate in our democratic process
  • voter depression - just get out the message about political candidates in an effort to get folks not to vote

• To combat this, organizations work with folks on the ground so they can get and spread the correct information

Incarcerated

• 5 million citizens (browns, blacks, native Americans) in USA can't vote even though they should be able to vote
• sadly equating citizenship with whether you've made a mistake
• 21 states that say you still have a right to vote even if you're in prison but you can't get access to a ballot unless you're in Maine or Vermont
• "We are over-incarcerated in the first place because we are over-policed in the first place because we have a system that has decided that we deserve to be incarcerated."
• System starts with policing, criminalizing poverty, resulting in making decisions about who to prosecute, who to put there, how long to keep them, and whether or not they're deserving to have a voice in the system. We are failing to understand our power to change the problem and it is about race in America
• can't get housing, can't get job, can't get social services, can't vote when you come out of prison

[jonlam27]

Hey team, I went over the All In Campus Democracy Challenge seminars and wasn't able to find too much info that we can really use imo.

For context, ALL IN is a non-partisan initiative of the nonprofit organization Civic Nation. It supports campuses to increase nonpartisan democratic engagement through civic learning, political engagement, and student voting etc.

A lot of what has been mentioned are reiterations of their action plan and how they've established some form of a rubric or matrix that colleges/universities can use to ensure they're on the right track when it comes to engaging students.

Aside from one seminar that goes into relational organizing there weren't explicit mentions about voting challenges unlike When We All Vote and NLIHC. Happy to get a second opinion from another researcher though (as they might discover insights that I've missed)

Texting-Based Relational Organizing Release and Conversation

What is relational organizing?

• at a basic level: "friends talking to friends about doing stuff"
• use existing relationships to encourage others to engage in certain types of behaviours

Why focus on texting?

• volunteers from organizations can quickly send mobile messages to their own phone contacts instead of getting one mass impersonal text. Potential voters get vital information from an individual they already know
• generally speaking, mobilization works - if you ask people to participate, they are more likely to do it than if you didn't ask them
• personalized methods of contacts are more effective (i.e. a knock on the door is more effective than a phone call; personalized messages/emails are more effective than an impersonal one)
• what is the effect of receiving a relational text message on voter turnout?
  • receiving these messages make folks more likely to turn out to vote
  • in one study, it was even more effective, on average, than phone banking or door-to-door canvassing
  • there's still a lot to learn about this method of texting-based relational organizing
    • we know they work but why do they work?
      • is it about social pressure?
      • social status of the messenger?
      • methods are effective now but will they remain effective over time as people continue to implement them?
      • are there particular communities/contexts where this method is most effective

ALL IN developed 2 core models in virtual voter engagement centered around texting: Couch Parties and Campus Canvass

Couch Parties

• needed to create community and opportunity for students to take action
• focus on virtual non-partisan voter engagement
• in 2020, they were hosted on zoom. Centered on texting or direct messaging on social media platforms
• meant to be fun (feature speeches, musical performances, and celebrities)
• with the use of an app like outvote, you can easily sync contacts and send out pre-written messages and responses with the click of a few buttons
• prizes were given out (i.e. first top ten texters got a gift card)
• Pros
  • easy to implement
  • works for institutions of all sizes
• Cons
  • hard to promote and recruit (especially in the year of zoom fatigue)
  • no follow up for text recipients

Campus Canvass

• recruit large group of volunteers and ask volunteers to text their peers with personalized voting information 2-4 times leading up to an election
• Pros
  • unlike couch parties, they aren't one-off events
  • covers a wide swath of campus population and gives them valuable concrete information
  • can be virtual or in-person
• Cons
  • difficult to recruit volunteers
  • privacy concerns (people are afraid of having access to students' contact information). Though, only the names of the students are required, not contact information