Policy | Politics. Pick one.

Politicians always disappoint, as Seth Godin taught us in 2013:

The last day of the campaign is the going-out-of-business sale and no one really pays any attention to what’s going to happen five days later because if you lose, it doesn’t matter and if you win it doesn’t matter and all the resources get burned, because it doesn’t matter.

The ad-selling industry has convinced us that winning elections is everything and that we’re helpless between elections, so we act helpless.

Letting go of learned hopelessness.

Voter lobbying Is a lot easier than winning elections.

Last time, I wrote a guide to passing a bill in the Maryland State Assembly. It’s an easy lift to abstract those specifics to develop a universally applicable 7-step guide to getting a bill passed in any committee of any legislature.

The general example starts by verifying constituents’ addresses to prove to their representatives the broad level of support

One of many ways is to verify addresses from a state Voter File.

U.S. states have 192,000,000+ Non-standardized voter records. This Minnesota example lists 6 jurisdictions for each.

Legend: 🤔 1-time manual step | 🖥: Scripted, repetitive (fast) step

1️⃣ 🤔 Get the Voter File for the state(s) involved.
2️⃣ 🖥 Assign a unique GEOvoter ID to each address record.
3️⃣ 🖥 GEOvoter API’s 61 lines of code adds any missing jurisdictions.
4️⃣ 🤔 Identify the legislative committee(s) you want to impact.
5️⃣ 🖥 List each committee member’s legislative district.
6️⃣ 🖥 Prioritize voters, based on their Rep’s Influence on the committee.
7️⃣ 🤔 + 🖥 The fun part of the workflow: Unleash the messaging wizards.

The rest is details: Leverage social media, P2P outreach etc., like:

7️⃣a. 🤔 Create messaging templates.
7️⃣b. 🖥 Twitter API template example: Activate Influential voters.

Netflx likes it when you verify & activate Communications Committee constituents.

7️⃣c. 🖥 P2P texting & Mailto scripting template example:

In 2018, campaigns went Person-to-Person (P2P) and entered the texting era with services like Voter Circle, Rumble Up, Hustle, etc. These services connect voters to their friends based on friends’ political jurisdiction, to urge them to take action based on the value of their influence: votes count more in some jurisdictions than others.

For elections, P2P outreach matters on one day out of 730. To move bills through committees, P2P matters every day of every year.

A simple Friend-to-Friend “mailto:” script can easily create influence in specific committee hearings:

“Please click-to-send this personal email to your friend Joan Blow, who has a lot of influence over Net Neutrality because her congressman is on the Comcast Monopoly Support Committee.”

Hi Joan,

Did you know you’re part of just 4% of Americans with real power over Net Neutrality? It’s because your congressman, Bob Bellhead, is on the Comcast Monopoly Support Committee! (Sure, they call themselves the House Communications and Technology subcommittee–whatever).

Here’s the thing: You‘ve got power I wish I did, so you’re a big deal for the cause that John Oliver proved is one of our most important.

In fact, you have more power over Net Neutrality than all of the 174,000 employees of Google + Apple + Netflix. We know those huge companies support Net Neutrality, but they don’t have your political clout!*

Please reply to say you’ll help! Your actions matter more than 96% of the rest of us!

Your friend,