Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. Really excited to be here. I am the founding executive director of a nonpartisan nonprofit called Issue Voter, and our mission is to give everyone a voice in our democracy year round.

I think that the story about why civic participation and the health of our democracy is so important to me started at a young age. I still remember mock voting in second grade, and my dad fled communist China where democracy does not exist. And I grew up in The US with parents who always voted. And in second grade, it was just such a simple activity, but it stayed with me until this day. I remember writing down on a small slip of paper who I wanted to vote for, folding it up, placing it into a homemade secret ballot box that the teacher had. The teacher took out all of our slips of paper and read the votes, and she showed us this big map of The United States with different states filled in that were red and blue. And it was all really exciting, and it made me feel included. Plus, it was fun. I think it was it was really great to have one of my first interactions with democracy and voting be a fun experience. And then fifteen years later, I went to manage a campaign in Iowa, a state, as you know, is known for its voter engagement. And I've always told people if you want to meet a famous politician, go to Iowa. Don't necessarily go to DC. It's really true. But that experience actually taught me that I didn't want to work in politics. And so for a couple of reasons. One is I think like most of us, I didn't agree with either party a 100% of the time. And two, I realized that politics and campaigns really overshadow what I think is important, which is policy. So the politics side is overshadowing overshadowing the policy side. But it's hard to be engaged. And so, you know, this the the fact that it was so hard to even answer a simple question or what should be a simple question, is my rep actually representing me, really was upsetting and frustrating to me, and that's what led me to creating IssueVoter.

Sure. So I was at a fundraiser. I was there working for a candidate. I was at a fundraiser. And usually, I don't share this because Issue Voter is nonpartisan, and I very much believe in nonpartisan ideals. But I'm happy to share it for the podcast just as a as a snippet and in some a little bit of insight. I was at this fundraiser, and there weren't very many people there. It wasn't one of these things that was crowded and where there was a big speaker. It was just at this woman's house. And I was standing I didn't know anyone. So I was just standing, like, at the cheese table trying to, you know, occupy my time, I guess, and do something before going up to a stranger and talking to them. So I was getting cheese, and then I turned to my right, and there was Nancy Pelosi. So that is an example of how you just run into people and meet people in Iowa. And I think I think, you know and we had we had a quick conversation there. I mean, I don't think that I would expect her to remember me, but, I felt like I had a longer conversation with Nancy Pelosi in Iowa than I probably would if I was trying to track her down in DC.

platform? Yeah. Well, we take what would be typically twenty hours of your own research and turn it into thirty seconds. That's how I could sum sum up, I think, a lot of what we do. The way that IssueVoter works is individuals choose the issues that they care about and then we select, bills that are about to be voted on and send alerts to users before that happens. And so it's hard to be engaged because congress introduces over 10,000 bills each session. Nearly a thousand are voted on, and we really only hear about a handful in the news. So issue voter is, first of all, one way to understand what is happening between elections when the real work that affects our lives is getting done. In addition to that, we summarize bills into layman's terms with points from both sides, and each individual can then send their opinion directly to their member of congress's office. This includes both senate and house. And then the what I think is the most power one of the most unique and powerful things about Issue Voters, we have a scorecard that shows you the percentage of time your rep is voting, how you would want him or her to vote. So in other words, I can look at my scorecard at any time throughout the year, and it's it can tell me that my rep is representing me 36% of the time or 82 of the time or whatever that very specific number is, and that really doesn't exist anywhere else. There are a lot of calls to action to contact reps, to sign petitions, to do all of these other things that don't ever really give you feedback about what actually happened. And so before elections, issue voter is a way to become a more informed voter. And after the election, we answer this question of, you just voted now what? I mean, we have an election coming up very soon, but I also like to remind people that it's really important not to forget that after the election, there will be a whole new brand new session of congress, and it's still very important for people to, you know, stay involved, stay informed on the issues that they care about.

Yeah. That's a great question. So what's what's really nice is that when I had this idea for IssueVoter, the technology actually wasn't there at all. But now that it is, we are able to automatically pull in information around, congress's schedule and and their votes. But all of the other work that we do is an actual human. So there is a person that is going in and translating the bill into layman's terms, looking at opinions from both sides, sharing related, links to news articles. And we have strict editorial guidelines that we follow, and we also try to be very careful about the language that we use. So for example, on Issue Voter, we don't call a category gun control or, gun rights. We basically just call it gun laws. So we try as much as possible to keep the language pretty neutral. But when we're summarizing the bill, we do use the language that's in the actual bill. So an example of that is if there's some of the immigration bills do use the words illegal alien. And I know that sometimes, nowadays, people don't use those terms anymore. But if it's used in the bill, sometimes we still will use the way that the bill has described what it will do as a legal term.

A lot of it, we've addressed as they arise. And so we didn't we do have some things that were kind of laid out in the very beginning. So, for example, we have a category that is energy and environment. It's not called climate control or climate change, which I think is also a commonly used term when talking about environmental issues. So some of that some of that in terms of the categories that we have on Issue Voter was, decided and talked about in the very beginning. But then in terms of specific bills that come up, I guess, it's really more on a case by case basis that we would have those conversations.

Sure. So we send opinions directly to the staffer in charge of constituent contact. I think it's important to also mention that it's not a poll to sell people's data, and it's not a petition to be ignored by congress. Petitions really are one of my pet peeves. And so petitions can be very effective for local issues and for petitioning companies, but they really don't work in term in the context of federal policy making. And so they are not the most effective way to make your voice heard. And, essentially, petitions are used for list building by organizations. And it's okay for organizations to build their lists, but I think the really, the really frustrating thing about petitions is that people signing them don't necessarily know that. They don't necessarily know that that's their primarily primary purpose and that they're primarily used in order to grow a list, not necessarily to enact a specific piece of policy change that even if that's what the petition is about. So I think it's much more powerful to be able to contact a rep, especially one where you already are their constituent. I think one of the problems with petitions a lot of times is I see just general petitions that, you know, anyone can sign. And so when they're delivered to a specific member of congress, that list of names may may or may not be people in their district. I also think it's, powerful to contact the rep about a specific bill that's already introduced and being debated rather than a general issue. You know, it's very different to contact a member of congress to say, you know, I am for I mean, let's just say, like, hypothetically, like, I'm for more funding for schools or something like that. That's very general. I mean, what does that really mean? There's so many nuances there. It's very different to contact a rep and say, I support HR eight four one two. I just made up a number. But and then and then be able to say specifically to that rep, are you cosponsoring it? Do you plan to vote for it? That makes it a lot more concrete. And then I think even better, what makes it even more concrete and more powerful is to also say, and I will be tracking how you vote. Not just do you support it or not, but also I am I do actually have a tool and resources and I I know how to check whether or not you did vote for this bill, or whether or not you did support the bill. So that's that's what, I hope more and more people realize in terms of wanting to make their voices heard in a way that's effective. And, honestly, I think from the I I wanted to I'll just add. I think from the rep side, it's also something that they appreciate. I think that, you know, many reps will say that they feel like they're hearing from the same people all the time or they they they definitely know they're not hearing from the majority of their constituents. I mean, most reps represent members of congress in the house represent approximately 700,000 people, And I think that's where also tech really comes in. So in your in your podcast about tech and civic tech and gov tech, it's really important to utilize technology for this because without technology, there will never be a situation where there's enough hours in the day or staffers to answer all the phone calls or to read all the mail, which are ours these archaic ways of making your voice heard to members of congress. I would say that if someone wants to write a letter, if someone wants to make a phone call, I would still encourage them to do that. I would not discourage someone from doing that. But in order for the majority of people's voices her to be heard, it really has to be done electronically through text.

I'm really, yeah, I'm really glad you asked that because I think that if we were a for profit, we would be really concerned with clicks and number of users and number of opinion set, and we still do track all of that. But what I think is really exciting in the way that we think about our impact is especially the impact that we've had with constituents and people using IssueVoter and how it affects their habits in their daily lives. And so right now, we have people using IssueVoter across all 435 congressional districts. And we've seen that 30% of our users said that IssueVoter is what motivated them to vote in the first place in the midterms. So in other words, they wouldn't have voted without it, which is which is really incredible. And 59% said that issue voter motivated them to take other forms of civic action, which we defined as registering to vote, attending a town hall meeting, or volunteering for a organization related to an issue that they care about. And 47% have said that issue voter expose them to new viewpoints. In other words, we've had people say that before issue voter, they didn't even know there could be another side to this issue, which I think is really interesting and important especially as we see politics in the media seem to become more and more polarized. And we also have seen that 94% of people using IssueVoter have learned about new issues and heard about them for the first time, which for us is not necessarily as surprising because we are the one we, you know, we know that congress is voting on new laws every week that we're not necessarily hearing about on the news. I mean, right this year, most people have heard about the CARES Act, for example, but there are over 900 coronavirus related bills in congress, and many of these are ones that people are not necessarily heard hearing about and don't even know exist. In terms of how we've impacted the members of congress's office and the feedback that we're getting from them, it's been really positive. In fact, we are really excited to be working with the staff modernization association and doing a survey of staffers and how they communicate with constituents and how Issue Voter can be helpful in that. The one caveat I will say and just caution people about because it's also a it's it's kind of a related question to your question that we get sometimes, which is have you had any impact on legislation? And I would say that I would never actually use that as a impact metric that we would want to solely tie ourselves to because there are a lot of factors that influence the outcome of legislation, and I don't think that it will ever be any single organization that can claim credit for that. I saw this happen in 2017 around the health care bill where there were many organizations with the you know, putting up this call to action to contact your reps about the health care bill. And when the health care bill you know, when the new health care bill didn't pass, these, organizations all individually claimed credit. Like, they basically sent all these follow-up emails that were like, it was because of us that this bill didn't class. And it was not just because of them. Right? It was because of, many different factors. Some not even related to, you know, not even necessarily related to advocacy groups at all. And so I just want to remind people that I don't think that any one organization can ever claim credit for the outcome of legislation.

I was I I will just add to that though. I think the really exciting and powerful thing and I think in terms of our longer term big picture vision, what's really exciting about IssueVoter is by making more people's voices heard, we can reduce the influence of money in politics. And so that is something that, when people are engaged, at the end of the day, everyone has one vote. And no matter how much money a candidate raises, if people don't vote for them, they're not going to win. And so there is definitely something to be said for making people's voices heard because right now, members of congress are primarily hearing from the most well organized groups or the most well funded groups. To give a concrete example, there is a member of congress, staff member who mentioned to me that one of the most, common issues they were hearing about at the beginning of the year was bird safe buildings, which is not necessarily something I'm against. I mean, I don't think people want birds to fly into buildings and die, but I also can almost guarantee that that is not, you know, an issue that is on the majority of Americans' minds.

There you you may also be familiar with the 2014 Princeton study that shows that it absolutely does not. So it that study basically that basically showed that study basically, I think the what was the punchline from that study? The punchline from that study was I can't remember exactly, but it was basically that, no matter what public opinion is, it doesn't necessarily really influence what, what policy change happens, which is really sad and really upsetting. And so that is literally why I think something like Issue Voter is needed. At the same time, I think it's a balance, meaning that what I'm not necessarily advocating for is a direct democracy. We have a representative democracy for a reason, and I am too busy nor am I an expert on every single issue to think that my opinion should be exactly what happens on every single thing out there. I mean, the like, I doubt I don't necessarily think we should have a situation where every single person has to vote on every single piece of legislation and bill, and then whatever they vote is how the rep votes. I do think there is something to be said for policy experts, for researchers, for the data that they have, for experience, from talking to experts. I mean, I do think that all of those things have a place because, but I but at the same time, there are so many common sense things that the majority of Americans do support that are not getting done and and that, that are nonpartisan issues that really are bipartisan. And, unfortunately, I think that when people are not speaking up, it actually can increase partisanship and the lack of ability for things to get done and for and for some of these, laws to pass that the majority of Americans actually do support.

Yes. I think the I think that we touched on it a little bit earlier, but I think the the biggest thing that they that people should know is that following up on after legislation can also be powerful. So said another way, I think that when I first started Issue Voter and I would tell people, did you know that every constituent contact is tracked? That that wasn't necessarily common knowledge, which was a little surprising to me as somebody who used to work for a rep, and that was literally a big part of the job was tracking all of the calls and everything. And so when I would tell people, oh, every constituent contact is tracked, sometimes people were surprised. I think that's less of a surprise to people these days. I think people kind of generally know that now. But what I don't think people are doing as much of now is actually following up and and understanding the feedback of the outcome of a bill and seeing how powerful that can be. So that would be the but but the but the really, the thing that I would say right now that's most important, which doesn't exactly answer your question because it's related to elections. It's not related to policy making. But I think it's the importance of primaries. I really think that, you know, that's something that we really need to urge more people to participate in is primary elections. There are districts where, for example, someone running for congress can win, like, 10 to 15,000 votes and be the be candidate to represent the party, whichever party that is, to then represent 700,000 people. I mean, the lack of participation in primaries is, in my opinion, really a problem. And so I think issue voter is especially powerful in primaries because someone may see that their current rep is not necessarily representing them as often as they think they might. They might just assume that their rep is representing them if they align with the same party. And sometimes that is not the case. And so that's where in the primary election, you really do have the opportunity to choose a different candidate where that person may not necessarily feel comfortable voting for someone of a different party in the general election. And the the turnout is so abysmal in primary elections that your vote really does matter and very, very much counts in those. So that would be one of the biggest things I would really urge people to do is vote in primaries. It it can be it's interesting and challenging because different states have different rules around the primary elections. So for some states, you have to register with the party quite a bit of time in advance of the primary election. And for some states, you don't have to be registered with the the party to vote in that primary. So it does depend on where you live.

That is a great question and one that I think, someone an expert in, you know, design thinking or user experience might tell me that we did it wrong. But the the thing we did in the very beginning was we did ask a lot of questions, and we did talk to a lot of people. We did try to do a survey of people, a general survey of people across The US from, you know, all different political parties and opinions just and and we asked really general questions in that survey. We did not ask, like, like, things that about things that Issue Voter does. We kind of asked general questions like, you know, are you a voter? What are what are the words that come to mind when you think about politics? You know, just really more general things. What are the frustrations you have about politics? Things like that. So we started we tried to start, like, pretty broad in our questioning, and then we did get more narrow eventually. When we created the first version of IssueVoter, there wasn't any there weren't really any design elements to it, but we did show it to people. We sat people down, and we watched them use it. So we tried to do user testing in the way that wasn't asking leading questions. And we do an annual survey every year, and we also do an annual impact survey every year. And so we are constantly looking for feedback and trying to collect feedback from people, and that helps us. The annual user survey, I mean, it's really important because it does help direct our, priorities and goals over the next twelve months. And so, for example, when we launched, we launched with house only. We didn't cover senate. And for a while, one of the most requested features was adding senators. And so the really exciting thing was that in December, a supporter came forward with a matching donation that allowed us to do a fundraising campaign and raise enough money in order to add senators to issue voter and senate bills. So that's one example where we definitely wanted to, we really wanted to deliver that to users. But as a small organization, we don't always we aren't always able to do things as quickly as we would like to. But also with user support, we were able to do it, which was really exciting. Right now, one of our most requested features is an app. And so it was a conscious decision not to be app first, which, it was a conscious decision to be web first. Part of our mission statement is that we want civic engagement to be accessible, efficient, and impactful. And so on the accessible and efficient piece, in the very beginning, the thinking was that we didn't want to necessarily be a separate app to have to download and check and that we wanted to be where people already are. So in other words, in their email. So with IssueVoter, with the email alerts, people don't even have to log in to the website. So from that email alert, if you select support or oppose, that does send your opinion to your rep and it does save that opinion to your profile. And you don't necessarily have to log in to IssueVoter unless you want to check your scorecard or if you want to browse issues that you haven't opted in for. So you get the email alerts when you select an issue in the sign up process, but any issue is always available on the website at any time. And so we now though are definitely getting a lot of people really, really wanting an app, which is exciting. I see that as a good sign. I think it means that people want IssueVoter to be even more at their fingertips on their phone and even more usable in a daily basis, which is which is awesome. And so we're really working hard right now to try to figure out how we can raise enough money to build an app or look for volunteers who could help build an app. So, yeah. If any listeners are interested in helping with that, I am I would love to speak with you and, potentially work together and see how we can get something like that done.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. There's so many different things. So depending on someone's interests. So, the easiest way to reach out is I'm, you know, I'm more than happy to have people email info@issuevoter.org. I I check all of those emails myself, so it's not just going into, like, a general email box. But that's the easiest way for us to, you know, respond in a timely manner to everybody. So it's just info@issuevoter.org. So please reach out and send us an email. There are many ways that people can help. So one is we have a campaign going on this year to try to have 200 people giving monthly donations to Issuebitter, giving recurring donations in order to get to a point where we are, all of our tech expenses are sustainable by users. So that's that's our goal for 2020. Right now, She Voter has been primarily funded through grants, but grants can be unpredictable. Both timing, whether or not you can get them, you know, we're always looking for grants and opportunities to apply for, but it's not always guaranteed whether we're gonna get that funding. And so I really wanna make sure that Issue Voter is in a sustainable place where all of our monthly tech expenses are actually covered by, people the people using and benefiting from IssueVoter. So that's one thing. To the point on foundations though and donors, I think that is another area where people can help through introductions. You know, we're always looking to connect with, funders that we might not know about. There's this I I forget the exact number, but there's a stat out there that says that, you know, the majority of family foundations don't even have a website. So there are a lot of, you know, groups out there that might really care about the health of our democracy and about civic engagement and about policy change that we they may not know about us and we may not know about them. So any of those connections are always very helpful. We are about to launch a campus ambassador and representative program and a user ambassador program. And I wanna really caveat that this is not like a traditional ambassador program where all where you basically just get a bunch of swag for sharing. We're actually trying to create communities around these programs. And so for the student ambassador program, it should be an amazing opportunity for students to actually connect with other, individuals from different campuses and to network and to really build their skill sets around. So for students, there's actually two programs. There's one that that's called the ambassador program, and students will build their skill sets around marketing and design. And then there's a representative program where students who are really passionate about specific issues will build skill sets around advocacy and how to create change for the issues that they care about. Then for our user program, we are encouraging, people who are, you know, really excited to share Istg Voter with their friends and with their communities to join. We're going to be hosting webinars throughout the fall, for for that program that are hopefully really educational, insightful, ways for people to connect with each other, and we're going to be empowering users to host their own webinars as well that will talk about how national legislation and policy affects them locally. So for example, as an Issue Voter user, if I really care about agriculture, let's say, I could actually host my own webinar about the PRIME Act and how that affects my city. And we would provide them with connections to, people that could speak on the webinars. We can we'll provide them with a framework and a way to actually, understand and present that information to, to people in their community and that they that are in their networks. So I think that'll be really like a fun user ambassador program that's a lot more engaging than some other things that are out there. In terms of volunteers, we are very, very heavily volunteer run, and so that's also something where just feel free to reach out. In terms of what volunteers do, it really depends on an individual's time availability and skill set and interests. And so I almost guarantee that if you reach out, there will be something that you can volunteer and help us with. And it can be anything from the actual, product, you know, actually product development, tech, creating a new app, for example, can be anything from that to, like, things like marketing and PR, and external facing things, reaching out to other organizations to spread the word. There's just there's a lot of things that we need help with. So I'm glad that you asked that question, and I know this is probably the longest answer you've received to that question. Most people are probably like, oh, just sign up or, like, email me. But there's just so many different things that we have going on. There's actually one more I'll add. We are and you and it kind of it kinda relates to something you asked earlier about, academics. So we are actually looking to work with a researcher to study what types of actions between elections lead to voter turnout. Because a lot of the studies around voting and elections and advocacy are in the context of the actions and efforts lead right, like, close to the election, leading right leading up to the election. They don't necessarily look at engagement in policy and engagement of what happens between elections and how that can motivate voter turnout. I think there's a lot out there telling us how to vote, but not necessarily a lot out there telling us why vote in the first place. So any any kind of researchers that are sort of interested in just chatting with us about us about that and learning more, we're still in a very, very early stages. Like, we don't have a study designed or anything yet, but something we're looking to do soon.

So what I think I'll like to leave you today with is to imagine the future world that we and the impact that we can have when something like IssueWitter becomes a household name. I think as a nonpartisan nonprofit and and free public resource, we really do exist for you, for your families, your communities. And I really believe that together, we can create the world that we want to live in with a democracy that works for us. And all you need to do is check out Issue Voter, sign up, and make your voice heard. I think that giving people a voice is worth it, accountability and transparency are worth it, and, really, the health of our democracy is worth it. So thank you so much for listening and thank you for having me.