Voter suppression got a ton of attention in 2020, and combating it is critical for Democrats as we look ahead to upcoming elections. Litigation right around Election Day gets a lot of attention, but voter protection actually needs year-round activity and support. We were excited to chat with Kim Allen of Power The Vote, a new organization that’s focused on building voter protection infrastructure that persists through both election cycles and “off years” so Democrats are well-positioned to win in 2022 and beyond.
Please read on to learn why Power The Vote’s activities are so unique and important, and please support them via the handy ActBlue link below!
Kim’s conversation with Blue Ripple’s Frank David has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What is Power The Vote doing to help Democrats?
My co-founders and I ran voter protection at the Democratic Party of Georgia during the 2020 cycle, which was critical to securing Joe Biden’s victory and the blue Senate that we now enjoy. Georgia was the first state Democratic Party to have a permanent year-round voter protection program beginning in 2018. That meant that we had relationships with election supervisors, county Democrats, voters, and volunteers so we could address issues that arose year-round, not just in the months around the campaign.
But after the election, all but four state parties lost their voter protection programs entirely due to funding, and would have to rebuild them from scratch before the next cycle. That's historically been the typical model for voter protection programs, but we thought there had to be a better way.
Our goal at Power The Vote is to help keep these voter protection programs in place even after the campaigns end. We want to bring resources into state parties so they have support and expertise year-round to build relational organizing programs like what we had in Georgia.
We are focused initially on five states: North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Texas, and Florida. We picked those states because they have both a large population of rural voters of color and significant voter suppression. These are of course important battleground states in the near term, but we hope to expand beyond them as we scale up.
What does “voter protection” specifically involve, and why is it important?
Voter protection programs have two critical components: a year-round relational organizing piece and an election cycle build out.
The year-round component involves developing relationships with all of the stakeholders involved in voting, including volunteers, county Democrats, local and state election officials, and the voters themselves. The goal is to do everything possible to expand voter access outside of the election cycle. That includes responding to voter suppression bills and voter purges, coordinating on appointing election board members where we have that ability, advocating with election officials on issues like expanding access to voting locations and ballot drop boxes, and developing pipelines of volunteers to serve as poll watchers. We also hope that by developing relationships with election officials in the off-cycle, we’ll have a foundation in place so that when an issue needs to be resolved during the campaign, we’re not calling the elections office for the first time. They know us and we’ll work well with them, and hopefully they’ll listen when we say that there’s a problem that needs to get resolved.
Then, during the election cycle we build on the foundation from the year-round organizing. In Georgia we had a year-round hotline, but of course you need to scale that up before the election because there are many more calls. You also need to implement new programs for curing, monitoring, and adjudicating absentee ballots, and build and staff a poll-watching program. All of those programs leverage the relationships developed during the off cycle to recruit core volunteers and work with election officials to resolve problems.
How did your efforts in Georgia in 2020 show the importance of year-round voter protection efforts?
When the pandemic got into full swing in April of 2020, it became clear that voters in Georgia would be voting by mail at rates that they never had been before. Georgia’s Secretary of State, a Republican, was considering mailing absentee ballot applications to 7 million registered voters statewide, but from our year-round hotline, we knew that voters found the form confusing and difficult to use. So we reached out to the Secretary of State’s office, told them what we’d heard, and gave them an example of a more streamlined form that we’d drafted. The Secretary of State’s office looked at our proposal and said, “That’s a great form,” adopted it wholesale, and mailed it out that very same week. It’s hard to quantify exactly how many votes that impacted, but we know that we touched every single one of those 7 million voters through that improved absentee ballot application form. We couldn’t have done that if we hadn’t had pre-existing relationships in place. Huge-impact opportunities like that don't come very often, but when they do you need to be positioned to take advantage of them.
A more local example is from DeKalb County. We had a number of volunteers who did data analysis around equity and voting and had analyzed the average driving distance to early voting locations for Black versus White voters in the county. And they found that using the advance voting locations that were in place in 2016, Black voters typically had to travel 24% longer distances than White voters in DeKalb. We took that data to county officials and said that we need to address this inequity. Ultimately, we persuaded them to expand early voting and drop box locations to help ensure that Black voters wouldn’t be disadvantaged relative to White voters in terms of access to voting resources. Again, this is the kind of situation where if you’ve built the relationships, you can present officials with data, advocate, and get results.
Statewide in the Georgia general election, we cured 15,000 ballots, deployed 3,000 poll watchers, managed 1,000 ballot monitors and vote review panelists, took 130,000 calls on our hotline, and overall deployed over 10,000 volunteers across our programs. Those metrics are a good indication of a robust program that we think was deeply impactful and helped secure Democrats’ margin of victory.
How is Power The Vote different from other groups working on voting rights?
At the beginning of the voting life cycle, you have to register and engage voters. In elections, you’ve got to turn them out. Those are critical pieces where many nonprofits and the Democratic Party play important roles.
Power The Vote picks up where those organizations leave off, and helps ensure that every voter can vote, that every vote is counted, and that every election win is certified. Some voter protection work happens on the nonprofit side, but there are also some roles that the Democratic Party plays that no one else can play under state law, like appointing poll watchers, ballot board members who adjudicate ballots, and board of elections members. That’s why our goal is to ensure that the Democratic Party is well-positioned to ensure that the process is fair and equitable for all voters.
Finally, although we don’t expressly litigate, much of our work can be fodder for voter protection litigation or provide support for it. Primarily, our goal is to resolve problems by picking up the phone and advocating directly with elections offices instead of filing a lawsuit. That allows us to be much more nimble, and frees up resources for others to pursue litigation when that becomes necessary.
Why is Power The Vote focused on states with large numbers of rural voters of color?
One reason we focus on rural voters of color is that by the time a campaign is in full swing, there’s no time to focus statewide, so instead the party focuses on urban and suburban areas where the vast majority of Democratic voters live. But our goal is to go beyond that and fight for voters on a statewide basis wherever they reside. We have Democratic voters in every single one of these rural counties, and by being there year-round we can connect them with the Democratic party and build resilient networks of voters and volunteers.
One way I think about it is that when Joe Biden wins Georgia by just 12,000 votes, every single vote matters enormously. There are significant numbers of Black rural voters in middle and south Georgia, and in the Georgia Senate runoffs, Black rural voters turned out at or exceeding their turnout rates in the general election. At the same time, Republican voters in north Georgia fell off a cliff and didn’t turn out. So when you look at the numbers, Black rural voters in Georgia carried the Senate for Democrats, so we absolutely have to fight for these voters in swing Southern states.
Finally, our focus on rural voters of color is important for equity and diversity purposes. Voter suppression efforts mainly aim to dilute political power of voters of color. Voter protection exists to counter those efforts and to instill political power in historically marginalized groups. The barriers that impact voters of color are often systemic and difficult to overcome. That’s why you need a permanent full-time voter protection operation, because so much of the work to help these voters requires groundwork to be laid during the off cycle. These problems are quite difficult to solve and take a lot of time and resources.
How much is Power The Vote aiming to raise, and what will those dollars fund?
The funds we raise go to state Democratic Parties to hire and maintain voter protection staff. We have an agreement with the party in each state we support where they agree to use the money for that purpose. That way, we put boots on the ground so the party can do voter protection work year-round at scale.
Our goal right now is to raise $5 million, which would let us fund 28 positions across the five states for two years [2022 and 2023]. The number of people you need for year-round organizing is very small in comparison to the election cycle build-out – only about 4 to 8 people per state, depending on its size. These investments are incredibly efficient, and the Democratic Party can get a lot of bang for that buck.
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