VoteAmerica wants to get every eligible voter registered

Editor's note: As part of the Bay Area Inno Awards, the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal are highlighting nine startups from nine categories across the innovation space. We chose these firms based on their ability to fundamentally change the game in their respective fields, grow quickly and durably and develop useful products to solve compelling problems. Here's the honoree in the nonprofit tech category.

VoteAmerica is building software to support this country’s most vital and core institution — democracy — and is on a mission to get millions of eligible voters registered at a fraction of its current cost.

Founder Debra Cleaver has been using technology to advance civic causes for almost two decades.

Her activism began after she came out as a member of the LGBTQ community in college and started campaigning for causes related to civil rights issues, marriage equality and police misconduct; she also spent some time as a union steward.

In the early 2000s, she helped lead Swing the State, which used online tools to recruit volunteers for voter mobilization campaigns in swing states.

By 2007, she was recruited to work as a senior product manager at MySpace, and in her spare time she launched an organization called Long Distance Voter, which helped people sign up for absentee ballots and, eventually, register to vote. By 2016 the organization changed its name to Vote.org.

She headed Vote.org as its CEO for more than a decade, but it was never a full-time job.

So in 2019, Cleaver left Vote.org to start a new nonprofit called VoteAmerica. The organization’s fundamental mission is removing as many barriers as possible to help people vote.

“Every issue that you are concerned about in the U.S. boils down to who gets elected to office,” Cleaver said.

VoteAmerica helps people register to vote, check their registration status and request a mail-in ballot. It also provides information like polling locations, election reminders and ballot tracking.

People can do all of this from VoteAmerica’s website, but Cleaver also wants to expand the organization’s reach while simultaneously reducing the overall cost of voter outreach efforts. A conventional voter registration campaign might spend anywhere between $50 and $120 per person, which the industry generally considers to be cost-effective, Cleaver said.

She wants to bring that down to $1 and envisions achieving this by partnering with other organizations that people already interact with.

Many state-run DMVs have voter registration programs, but what if you could register to vote while filing your taxes?

VoteAmerica could potentially partner with other tech companies in the future. But not everyone is tech savvy, and the goal is to engage with people wherever they go over the course of a typical day or week. They also want to hit up people whenever they are already filling out paperwork for other reasons to reduce barriers and build an efficient voter registration network.

The organization sued Kansas over its ability to help people get registered, which it settled, and it’s currently suing Georgia on similar grounds.

“Georgia has decided that it is unlawful for us to pre-fill applications using the information the voter has just given us so that we can fill out the application,” Cleaver said. “We exist to help people to navigate these somewhat complicated processes” related to voting.

Over the next few months, Vote America will start making its online tools embeddable on other websites and wants it to become ubiquitous by 2024. The organization follows up with print and mail campaigns to make sure all paperwork is signed and returned, and subsequently sends voters election information.

The organization has raised $17 million from an array of donors, Cleaver said.

In June, it was selected as one of 13 Classy Award winners, a recognition from GoFundMe’s nonprofit fundraising platform Classy, which recognizes organizations that provide “innovative solutions to the world’s toughest social and environmental issues,” according to a press release.

“There’s this rumor that low turnout is due to apathy. Turnout is low in the United States because it’s harder to cast a ballot than in any other nation with democratically elected leadership, and that’s by design,” Cleaver said. “Citizens will vote in higher numbers and more consistently as voting becomes more convenient and more accessible. And that’s what we do… We do not care who you vote for, we only care that you participate in elections.”

VoteAmerica