Spread the Vote + Ragtag: A Match Made in Voter ID Heaven
Kat Calvin is a lawyer and social entrepreneur who founded Spread The Vote, a 501c3 that helps people get the required IDs they need in order to vote. She founded the nonprofit in 2016 after the November presidential election of Donald Trump.
Her organization may not have gotten very far without help from Ragtag, a volunteer group of “tech superheroes” who are dedicated to helping activists like Calvin — as well as organizers, nonprofits and political candidates — overcome the tech barriers that stand in the way of their goals. Anyone with work experience in the tech sphere, and especially anyone who is used to solving technological problems creatively, is welcome to join.
In the wake of the election, Calvin decided to launch a full-frontal assault on what she saw as THE major political problem in recent time — voter suppression. “Voter fraud is a myth. Voter suppression is real,” proclaims Spread The Vote’s website.
But because of the many intricacies and layers of red tape that surround voter ID laws, which vary widely from state to state, Calvin and her team were suddenly up against much more than complicated state legalese. They needed to figure out how to wrangle technology to meet their needs, quickly and on a budget.
“Over 30 states require some sort of identification in order to vote, and what that ID looks like is very different for each state,” Calvin explained. “There are a lot of questions we have to ask,” continued Calvin, “from basic name, address, etc, to finding out what kind of ID are we getting you, what kind of documents you have, and are you even eligible to vote…there’s a ton of questions.”
Even more complicated, every unique answer an individual voter could possibly give would lead to a different procedure based on the unique combination of that voter’s answers and personal details. Calvin made it clear that tracking all that information manually “would have been a bit much.”
Enter Ragtag, where Calvin serves on the advisory board.
To help Spread The Vote, engineers and developers, all part of the volunteer Ragtag team, started by listening to Calvin describe the problems her organization was facing. Then, they started innovating.
Ragtag created a simple digital form that Spread The Vote volunteers could fill out on their mobile devices as they asked questions and collected data from voters. The digitized form is responsive, built in many ways like a choose-your-own adventure story. As volunteers fill in answers from voters, the software determines the next procedural steps, allowing the form to populate in real time with new questions.
It took creativity and strategic thinking, but Ragtag figured out how to work with existing software — a mobile form builder, cloud services, and a commercially-available CRM — to develop a content system that Spread The Vote volunteers could use, even when working with voters in remote areas where cell phone and WiFi coverage was minimal.
“[The form Ragtag created] makes it much easier. Our volunteers don’t have to shuffle through papers, they don’t have to have processes memorized, they don’t have to do anything except answer the questions and follow the prompts,” said Calvin.
Once volunteers submit a completed form, a database is populated with all the necessary information for tracking and follow up appointments. The huge content system allows Spread The Vote ultimate organization, which simply would not have been possible without the Ragtag team thinking outside the box and designing software specifically built for Spread The Vote.
“[Ragtag is] allowing [Spread The Vote] to automate a process that without them, would have been… probably a Google spreadsheet and paper,” said Calvin.
In essence, it’s magic. Ragtag magic.
Calvin knows that without the professional, skilled volunteers at Ragtag, any sort of custom software similar to the one she works with now “would have cost tens of thousands of dollars,” but that’s the beauty of working with Ragtag. Now, more people will vote in the upcoming 2018 and 2020 elections, who may have otherwise been left out. It’s just one example of the Ragtag folks doing what they do best — using those tech superpowers efficiently and creatively in order to empower those who need the most help.
Learn more about supporting Spread The Vote as they expand to states like Florida and Texas in the coming months, and learn more about how you can support Ragtag, especially if you’re ready to contribute your time and skills to a larger cause.
— Jessica Caimi, a content strategist, writer, editor, and proud Ragtag volunteer
