Can You Help Us Do More Science?

We’re just days away from the deadline for applicants to submit their resumes for our first Director of Campaigns and Advocacy. And that’s all thanks to you, our generous supporters, in addition to support from the Open Philanthropy Project. Your support is allowing us to hire an individual with the experience to successfully execute larger and more complex campaigns in cities around the country. Thank you for making this possible!

But there’s still lots more to be done if we want to empower the rest of the country with a better ballot.

As of April 2019, we’re secured approximately 63% of our budget for 2019, as our grant addresses a large part of our budget over the next three years. However, that means we still need to raise around $357,000 to launch all three of the campaigns we set out to run this year and into the next. We can’t yet share exactly where these cities are, but they have a combined total population of 387,456 people—meaning that every dollar you donate helps us improve one person’s life by providing them with a more responsive government.

But that’s not all we want to do.

You see, we believe that as The Center for Election Science, it’s critical that we verify that our campaigns to empower voters with a better voting method are actually improving these communities. But we can’t do that without collecting and analyzing lots of data. We also think it’s important that we study topics that would otherwise be ignored. For example, how is vote splitting likely to impact the results of the Democratic primary? Or how might the results of the 2020 presidential election be different if we used an alternative voting method?

But conducting this type of research—and hiring a qualified person to do it—isn’t cheap. And this year, we lack the funding to do so. We estimate that it would cost us $400,000 to secure this position for the next three years. This would enable us to collect and analyze public election data that would provide rigorously peer-reviewed insights into how alternative voting methods can improve our society in a way that hasn’t been done before. We would also write articles that are accessible to the general public to help raise awareness of the research.

So how can you join the CES team and help us bring a better ballot to more people?

—Invest in our work by making a monthly gift. Pro tip: Make that gift with your bank account instead of your credit card so 100% of your gift supports our work.

—Introduce us to people you know are passionate about reforming our elections. We can give presentations at your workplace, your place of worship, your social group, or even in your home.

—Share information about approval voting with those in your community by downloading our election toolkit.

—Sign up to lend your skills and expertise through volunteering with us.

—Reach out to learn how easy our planned giving program is

—Connect with us on how to secure your major gift.