More people need to run for office

Why it’s never been more possible to get elected.

Our country is facing a historic leadership crisis. No one has to be convinced of this. Congress is broken and the 2016 presidential race is a national embarrassment. As citizens, we have a choice. We can throw our hands up in the air and complain about a hopelessly broken system, or we can see it as one of the greatest opportunities of all time. The opportunity for everyone to run for office and take over the government from the bottom up.

There are over 500,000 elected offices across the United States, but there is no database of all of them and almost no one knows what they are. Do you know what water commission district you live in? I didn’t either, and where I live in California, the drought is a big deal. Since few people realize that they can run for local offices, many seats at the state and local level go uncontested — by some measures, more than 40 percent of state legislatures. Thousands of seats have no candidate at all.

Not only is the information about what offices are available nearly impossible to find, the political establishment does everything they can to control who runs. The party will tap you on the shoulder if they think they can use you, or you have to wait in line for your turn. This has led to a steady deterioration in the quality and diversity of leadership in government, and we’ve ended up with an out-of-touch political class that does not reflect our country’s diversity of ideas.

If you think about this like a CEO, we have a pipeline problem in American government. We have to hire and develop the best talent, yet only two percent of Americans ever run for office. How could we possibly get the best leaders if so few people apply? Every community is filled with people who are passionate and able to lead. There are numerous opportunities to become a public servant, particularly at the local level where it’s possible to have a real impact and gain the experience necessary to aim for higher offices.

Dozens of nonprofit groups are recruiting diverse leaders and providing training programs for candidates. For example, VoteRunLead recruits and trains women to run, New American Leaders Project prepares first- and second-generation immigrants with a three day training program, and the Veteran’s Campaign recruits and trains our military members to serve in office. But it’s not enough. We need to dramatically scale the pipeline, and that’s where technology can help.

The internet has completely changed the way we find and hire employees, but for elected positions, we are still in the stone age. Every county clerk or elections division in America, and there are thousands of them, has its own system which doesn’t speak to any other system. How do we expect the best and brightest to run if we haven’t even posted all the job descriptions for the positions we’re hiring for? Sure, folks know they can run for Congress or Senate, but that’s like every American going to LinkedIn for a job search and only seeing CEO positions.

Last year, I met Jim Cupples, a man on a singular mission to fix this problem and create the first database of all the elected positions in the U.S. He didn’t have the resources or a background in tech, so the project was struggling to gain momentum. I asked him to join us at NationBuilder where we could scale it and create RunforOffice.org — a free service where you can find every office in your area by entering your address, an online course to learn how to run a campaign, and a database of all the voters in your district. A dozen nonprofit partners across the political spectrum have already joined with us. Now, we need you to run.

Winning an election is a lot of work, but it is not complicated. It’s not about big data, fancy algorithms, or high-priced consultants. It’s about people — talking to people, building relationships, and counting your votes up until election day. You don’t need permission from the political establishment anymore, and you don’t even need a lot of money. What is required is a whole lot of courage and hard work, which is exactly the kind of leadership we need.

This election, don’t just get mad, run for office and get elected.