Everything is at stake on November 6. Here’s how you can still help.
Summary: The November 6 election is hugely important to the future of freedom in the United States. The main remaining way to help is to donate to Democrats in very close races. My most specific advice is:
- Sign up with ActBlue Express, a kind of PayPal-for-Democrats that makes every particular donation extremely easy.
- Donate to one of both of two organizations focused on winnable state-legislature races, Forward Majority (startup-y, data-driven) and/or the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (more establishment-oriented).
- Donate to specific House candidates in races that are very close and not already overloaded with money, such as:
- Leslie Cockburn, a highly accomplished investigative journalist running in the 5th District of Virginia.
- Dan McCready, a marine, Harvard MBA and solar energy entrepreneur in a super-close race in the 9th District of North Carolina.
- Kathleen Williams, who is running for the at-large seat in Montana, a state that also has a close Senate race.
Further ideas are below.
It is common, and usually hyperbolic, to say that everything hinges on the next election. But this time, in the United States, less than two weeks from now, (almost) everything really does. Republicans are doing everything they can to seize and keep power, including:
- Destroying any norms of honest political dealing.
- Directly rigging elections via, for example, striking large numbers of non-white adults from the voter rolls.
If they aren’t stopped soon, our democracy may be destroyed beyond repair.
More precisely, everything hinges on the series of three election years: 2016, 2018, and 2020. If we haven’t stopped them by then, Republicans will have nearly full control of the courts and of the voting rules, and will be able to dictate election outcomes for a very long time to come.
At this late stage, all the practical ways of influencing the 2018 election revolve around voter turnout, including:
- Voting ourselves (duh).
- Influencing others to vote.
- Donating to campaigns who will surely use that money to try to drive turnout and, where necessary, to oppose Republicans’ various tricks for voter suppression.
What I’ve already done, and suggest you emulate with all the money you can afford, is:
1. Sign up with ActBlue, a kind of PayPal-for-Democrats. Signing up has two easy stages:
- Create an ActBlue account via the usual email/password/confirmation process. (No captcha! Yay!).
- Sign up specifically for ActBlue Express, which is done via a simple name/address/etc. form.
Once you’re registered with and logged into ActBlue, any donation to a specific Democratic candidate or organization is super-easy.
2. Donate to two organizations that are focusing on influencing stage legislature races, with the intent of averting Republican election-rigging and gerrymandering:
- The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee seems more “establishment”. They have a one-click ActBlue donation page.
- Forward Majority seems more startup-y and data driven. I gave twice as much to them as to the DLCC. They have an ActBlue donation page too.
3. Donate to selected House races across the country that are:
- Exceptionally close at this time, according to polls.
- Not already flooded with money.
The best resources I found for assessing races were:
- A House race map from the FiveThirtyEight folks. It links to several other good sources if you drill down on individual races.
- The Senate race map from the same source.
- The results of web searches involving the phrase “ad spending”, for example a September article surveying Senate advertising spending in Ad Age.
- General web searches to check out the candidates themselves.
The official Federal Election Commission site, however, is disappointing; its interface is clunky and its data is way out of date.
The specific House candidates I’ve picked so far are:
- Leslie Cockburn, running in the 5th District of Virginia.
- The race is very close – 0.4% apart – per the polls cited on its FiveThirtyEight page.
- She has a highly impressive background in investigative reporting. (I can hardly think of a more valuable orientation and skill set for a new Congressperson to have.)
- She has a super-easy ActBlue donation page.
- Dan McCready, running in the 9th District of North Carolina.
- The race is super-close – 0.1% apart! – per the polls cited on the race’s FiveThirtyEight page.
- He built a decent-sized solar power business.
- His resume has cool highlights such as Harvard Business School, McKinsey & Company, and the Marines.
- He seems young enough to run for higher office someday in what is currently a rather “purple” state.
- He has a super-easy ActBlue-enabled donation page.
- Xochitl Torres Small, running in the 2nd District of New Mexico.
- The race is very close – 0.6% apart – per the polls cited on its FiveThirtyEight page.
- There doesn’t seem to be a lot of money in the race yet.
- She has a cool name. 🙂
- She has a super-easy ActBlue-enabled donation page.
- Kristen Carlson, running in the 15th District of Florida.
- The race is quite close – 1.0% apart – per the polls cited on its FiveThirtyEight page.
- Oddly for Florida, there doesn’t seem to be much money in the race so far.
- Florida has very close statewide races for both senator and governor, so any money spent turning out Democratic votes for Carlson could do triple duty.
- She has a super-easy ActBlue-enabled donation page.
- Kathleen Williams, running for the “at large” House seat in Montana.
- The race is reasonably close, per the polls the race’s FiveThirtyEight page cites, although the Republican does have a couple points of lead.
- She seems like an appealing candidate, with a nice background in nature conservation and state politics.
- This race could also influence the Senate in two ways:
- Montana also has a close Senate race, so I’m guessing that dollars spent driving statewide turn-out will be leveraged in a very important way.
- Representatives from single-House-seat states commonly have advantages when they later run for the Senate.
- She has a super-easy ActBlue-enabled donation page.
Finally, not every donation has to be optimized. Despite my skepticism about the efficiency of donating in gubernatorial races, I can’t resist helping out Stacey Abrams in Georgia.
- She’s one of the country’s greatest and most effective advocates for voting rights …
- … running against one of the country’s greatest vote suppressors.
- She’s a policy wonk with a strong moderate/bipartisan flair. I identify with that.
- She was a gifted child. I identify with that too. 😉
- She’s even a romance novelist as a side career; I have a side career of editing romance fiction. 🙂
I’ll close with something I posted recently on social media. It isn’t hyperbolic. I mean every word of it, and am living it myself as best I can.
Thomas Schelling, the late Nobel Laureate economist, once told me that World War 2 – when he worked in the war effort in Washington – was the best period in his life. Why? Because what he did really MATTERED.
Well, never in our lives has ordinary political conflict mattered as much as it does today. Embrace that. Do what you can. Sacrifice what you can afford to sacrifice. When you look back on your life, there will be few things you’re prouder of than what you do to save the freedoms you thought would never be at such grave risk.
Related links
- In the unlikely case that you aren’t aware of Republicans’ efforts in voter suppression:
- The Atlantic notes that they’ve already gotten millions of voters off the rolls, disproportionately minority.
- Indeed, Georgia alone is well over the 1 million mark, and the guy in charge of doing that is also their current Republican candidate for governor.
- North Dakota – where Heidi Heitkamp was elected to the Senate in 2012 by a 2900 vote margin – has a huge number of Native Americans being disenfranchised.
- Some voting rights advocates add examples in Indiana, Ohio and Missouri.
- Kris Kobach’s shenanigans are legendary, …
- … but I don’t know whether he is involved specifically in the trouble in Dodge City.
- What I outlined in February, 2017 about historical parallels for Donald Trump has held up distressingly well.
- I hope my ongoing series of posts about strategic political persuasion will help in 2020 and beyond.
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Remember that we need to combat voter suppression — give to https://democraticredistricting.com/