Stakes Is High
This past Thursday, September 13, 2018 was the New York State primary elections. Although all three of the Progressive nominees I voted for (Cynthia Nixon for Governor, Jumanne Williams for Lt Governor and Zephyr Teachout for Attorney General) lost, a dubious hat trick of sorts, it is one of the first primaries I remember even voting for, much less care about.
According to recent Pew Research analysis: “Americans appear to be more engaged with this year’s midterm elections than they typically are. Not only do about half of registered voters report being more enthusiastic than usual about voting, up from 40% in 2014, but turnout has surged in the 31 states that already have held their congressional primaries — particularly among Democrats.”
This is good news but it is not surprising. In the most recent mid-terms, it felt like the nation (not excluding myself) fell into complacency. We had elected a Black President! Everything else would fall into place! But this is falling right into the G.O.P. playbook. Let them elect their amazing charismatic president while we stealthily gain real control over the nation. And gain control they have. By gaining the majority of the House, they ultimately have final say in the Supreme Court nominees, whom can affect laws that affect us all for GENERATIONS. Well played, G.O.P., well played. Usually things have to get really bad for people to want to take action. The never ending crawl of brazen anti-human policies coming out of this current administration (only 2 years old!), has at the very least fostered an anti-establishment movement all over the nation. More and more people seem galvanized to vote the current party out. Better late than never. Come November we will see if Democrats can win back the House and then fight tooth and nail for the big kahuna in 2020. It seems a long ways away but little by little if we can chip away and get previously disinterested voters to come to the polls, the better hope we have in sanity being restored to the highest office of the land.
Shortly before the primaries, a few friends of mine, including my wife, whom became naturalized earlier this year partly in her desire to vote after nearly 20 years living in the states, asked me whom they should vote for. I myself didn’t really know what exactly distinguished Nixon, Williams & Teachout from the incumbents. Even though I try to keep up with the news, it is still complex and confusing to know whom is who in American politics. New potentially game-changing players are obscure to most ordinary citizens. It was only when I started getting sent some Progressive ’cheat sheets’ and then started looking into the candidate’s bios and platforms, that I started feeling confident about my choices. Disappointed as I am that the aforementioned progressives did not win their elections, I have hope for the nation. Following the mid-terms, The Washington Post wrote that diversity was a big winner: “Women, black and LGBT candidates matched or broke records this primary season at all levels of government. A number of these candidates are poised to make history in November, too, says Kelly Dittmar of the Center for American Women and Politics: A number of states could elect their first woman of color to Congress, first Native American woman, first Muslim woman, and first female governor or senator.”
2016 was horrifying and a full-on taser of a wake up call. My fear is that history always repeats itself. Hopefully we get the current administration out of office but will we become complacent again? How do we energize our base, keep people informed, make people confident in their choices, as well as bring out hopeful new truly progressive political leaders (Hello Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!)
My thesis will be politics based and the intention is to create a product that initially could be as simple as providing a cheat sheet that aligns potential voters with their ideal candidates so that come election day, they are super prepared. Most likely the product will be in the form of an app because it is the easiest way for people, especially new young voters to access information. I thought originally about something that I find totally analogous to politics in some ways. That something is fantasy football. Just over a week ago I was at a good friend’s house for an impromptu birthday celebration. He was telling me all about his upcoming fantasy draft that evening and apologizing beforehand for needing to duck out of the dinner party early to sequester himself off into his office/man-cave and draft his team along with his partner, his dad. (I am officially retired from fantasy football this year in order to focus on my thesis. I reserve the right to un-retire much like Michael Jordan and Jay Z did in varying degrees of success) So my good friend, who actually is very passionate about fighting the good fight politically, was leaving a dinner party thrown in his honor to draft players for a pretend league of football fanatics whom can win upwards of $750 in prize money and the all important bragging rights. I thought to myself how this scenario is playing out in thousands if not millions of homes across our nation. Let’s put it this way. In 2016, an estimated 126 million people voted which means 55% of voting age citizens cast ballots. That measure of turnout is the lowest in a presidential election since 1996, when 53.5% of voting-age citizens turned out. Contrast that with this stat: In 2017, 59.3 million people played fantasy sports in the USA and Canada. That number ideally would have a much wider gulf since real policy decisions probably should be regarded as more worthy of our time than pretend football. So I started thinking why this is happening. Of course, we know that sports is a way for people to decompress and forget about their worries even for a few hours while politics is boring. Fun is always better than boring. But I think that fantasy sports has done a great (not to mention lucrative) job of distilling stats and info and news down to easily digestible morsels. We need the choosing and electing of political candidates to be just as easy, if not as fun, as picking your starting WR1 in Week 12.
And so my journey begins. I am excitedly apprehensive. I feel passionate about the subject of politics, but I can’t begin to make heads or tails of it sometimes. It is complex and speaks a different language. At times it seems intentionally confusing. I will need to understand data and interview passionate voters, non-plussed non-voters and everyone in between. I will need to understand what the obstacles are to voters’ willingness to invest time into doing something that is so important as a citizen. I will need to speak to people who may not have time for me but I will need to persist. In the summer I worked as a product design intern and what I learned from talking with different designers is that great design doesn’t always need to be high concept and completely new. In fact, nothing is really ‘new’. Great design simply works well, is intuitively easy to navigate and produces results that keep users coming back. I will keep this in mind as I continue my journey. All I do know is that I am not treating this subject lightly. The stakes are far too high.
