2024 Election: What To Do

Posted on: 2024-09-03 - Fixed link

The most important and direct thing you can do is vote.

Encouraging and helping friends, family, and colleagues to vote (and even vote early) is crucial in this year's super tight elections.

EVERY. SINGLE. VOTE. COUNTS.

Your vote could make all the difference.

WHY IT MATTERS AND WHAT TO DO

The most important thing is for Trump and the Republicans to lose.
- This is a fight for a functioning democracy; nothing else matters if we don't have that.
- The Supreme Court "immunity" ruling raises the stakes exponentially.
- This means supporting the Democrats up and down the ballot.
Remember, the effort is not forever - now is the time to dig deep.
It is most important to target swing states - those races can make or break this election cycle.
- Virginia wins may limit some of the more direct damage.
Folks, we can't get caught up in the media horse race.
- The polls are all over the map.
- There's no benefit to being fatalistic or nihilistic - we must fight to win. Remember, every vote counts.
- All the media is a distraction from the key issue: one candidate is obviously, demonstrably and clearly unfit.
Doing something sooner is more impactful than later, especially if you are thinking of donating money.
Donation - how do I justify the cost?
- It's an investment in Democracy, America, and the Rule of Law.
- It's an investment in your sanity. How much is it worth to you to avoid four more years of chaos, stupidity and harm from an emboldened and empowered Trump revenge tour?
- It's an investment in a functioning and robust economy.
- It's an investment in support of our allies (such as Ukraine and Taiwan) and America's place as a force for good in the world.
- We will continue to pay taxes whatever the outcome. Do you want your taxes to be squandered on corruption, waste and pointless posturing projects, or on actually helping Americans and solving real problems?

So what to do? People are busy and have different priorities. Above voting, any action will likely benefit the overall situation. The following sections are in a rough order of lowest effort/highest impact.

(Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions. There may be better things to do - if so please let me know. I can't vouch for any particular organization or candidate directly. This is largely based on what I've researched, and linked to here.)

Quick Links

Donate To Swing State Efforts
Donate To Democrats
Donate Directly To Competitive Races
Letter Writing
Sharing Content
Volunteering
Links

More detailed information about

Donate To Swing State Efforts

There are organizations who are actively targeting the swing states and critical candidates. By donating to such organizations, they will contribute to candidates and pivotal groups to try and win in those key areas.

Pros:

It's a one stop shop - you donate and they do the work.
They probably have more up to date information and are on the ground.
They may have an oversized effect because they empower grass roots efforts.

Cons:

It's a bit of a black box.

Conclusion:

This is a good option - it should have high impact and is low effort. Granted, it does take money. The Swing Left donation option seems preferable because it just takes you to an ActBlue page and tells you where the money goes - which are the candidates/organizations they promote.

NOTE! When donating through ActBlue, it will ask you when you make your donation how much you want to give to ActBlue themselves. While ActBlue is an admirable fundraiser (it's in effect a safe credit card platform for democratic efforts), your funds are best spent going directly to your candidate so setting ActBlue's contribution to low or zero makes the most sense.

Donate To Democrats

Pros:

It goes directly to Democrat effort.
It removes an intermediate organization which may slow things down or have different agendas.

Links:

Donate To Competitive Races

Pros:

It goes directly to the candidates that need it.
You have more control and can pick and choose.
It removes a level of financial ambiguity.

Cons:

It's more effort.
It's not 100% clear who is the best to donate to.

NOTE! You may want to just "Donate To Swing State Efforts" if you want a faster/simpler/perhaps more effective outcome.

I researched, aggregated, and produced data spreadsheets to cross check the most significant races (links to data, polls, sites et al. at end of post). From there a score was produced using simple maths. You can find the spreadsheet and more details here.

For the house:

(NOTE! the spreadsheet has many more candidates listed, this is the top 7)

Candidate	District	Score	Link
Susan Altman	NJ-07	5	link
Mondaire Jones	NY-17	4.5	link
Jannelle Bynum	OR-05	4.5	link
Amish Shah	AZ-01	4	link
Rudy Salas	CA-22	4	link
Will Rollins	CA-41	4	link
John Mannion	NY-22	4	link

For senate:

Candidate	State	Score	Link
Jon Tester	MT	3.5	link
Sherrod Brown	OH	3.25	link
Elissa Slotkin	MI	3	link
Bob Casey	PA	2.75	link
Ruben Gallego	AZ	2.75	link
Jacky Rosen	NV	2.75	link
Tammy Baldwin	WI	2	link

Scores are not comparable across categories. Example, Susan Altman being a '5' doesn't mean she is more important than Jon Tester '3.5' as one is for the house and the other for the senate.

There is a section on presidential and others in the spreadsheet, but those results are less clear.

I did this research around a month ago, and things may have moved a little. For example a recent Salon article claims the Trump campaign is mainly focusing on Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Letter Writing

The focus is to write letters to undecided or democrat-leaning voters in swing states. These letters are meant to encourage registered voters to take action by voting rather than endorsing specific parties and/or candidates. This produces a modest but measurable effect. Having a small effect may very well have an outsized result given how tight the races will be in this election cycle. To participate, you sign up for a 'campaign' and this gives you a number of addresses that you hand write a sentence or two and send. Generally the more people vote, the more outcomes skew democratic.

If you don't want to write letters yourself you can donate to Charlottesville Dems money for stamps and materials who will do it.

Pros:

It is fairly low effort without a significant financial buy-in.
It directly targets people in swing states who can make a difference.
It encourages people to vote rather than voting for a party.
It can be done piecemeal when you have time.

Cons:

It requires time and effort to write out your letters.
It has a "message in a bottle" element to it.
You do have to pay for stamps and paper.

Links to Organizations:

Democrats suggest sharing content

This means social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.
It also means utilizing other public forums such as reddit/slack
You could also put information on a blog, or ask people you know to put information on blog(s)

Sharing positive information from reputable sources might help persuade people who are on the fence, or aren't really engaged with what's going on; on the other hand, shouting into the void and responding to trolls might be damaging to your sanity. When posting on public forums, make a policy to reply only once and look at responses only once. This way, you will not get sucked into a frustrating, time consuming vortex. Social media can be damaging to your health - be safe out there.

If you have a blog, you control whats on it and so it isn't such an issue, but then how many people will actually see it? When posting on my blog, I generally collect quotes/facts from reputable sources such as

Does any of this work and/or help? I don't know, but it does mean I've got readily available and verified sources if I do get into a discussion.

Volunteer

The most obvious place to volunteer is with CVille Democrats. They have a variety of efforts, and typical activities include

Canvassing has the biggest impact - ie. knocking on peoples doors and speaking with them.
Phone Banks
- You can do this from the comfort of your home or from campaign offices.
Poll Observer
- This is important to protect the integrity of voting; it's going to be very important this election.
- If you want to know more feel free to reach out - we did do training for this.
Volunteer to staff the Democrat stand for early voting.
Deliver signs/other materials as needed.

Pros:

It's empowering to do things together!
It really only costs time.
It's a chance to meet new, like-minded people.
It allows you to be directly involved in the push.

Cons:

It takes time, effort, and perhaps is outside your comfort zone.

Links

Democrats

Organizations

Poll information

Other

2024 Election: What To Do

Donate To Swing State Efforts

Donate To Democrats

Donate To Competitive Races

Letter Writing

Sharing Content

Volunteer

Links