We’ve been helping Miami vote for three years. Here’s what we’ve learned.
When I sent that string of tweets, I had just spent my Sunday struggling to understand most of the 12 state amendments on Florida’s Nov. 6 ballot, and I was still stumped on a few of them. I had phoned a friend (many of them). I had read the guides. I had read the original text. And I was still confused AF.
Miami is a minority-majority city, with one of the nation’s greatest measures of inequality. So to have a ballot that complicated isn’t an oversight. It’s disenfranchisement. And it encourages greater distrust in the political process at a time when we definitely can’t afford that.
But don’t take my word for it. Take this reader’s:
When I led my first voter guide project at The New Tropic in 2016 (we did one in 2015, before I joined, as well), I was motivated by the realization that even I, a well-educated, well-informed citizen, didn’t fully understand my ballot — and that if I didn’t, then it was a safe guess that most local voters didn’t either.
The New Tropic’s voter guides are driven, above all, by utility. We’re not going to win Pulitzers for them, and they’re not fancy. There are no interactives or video explainers. But they’re one of the most straight-up useful things that we do, and utility is seriously underrated when it comes to media’s role in the political process.
One reader felt so empowered after reading the August primary guide that she hosted a “breaking down the ballot” gathering for her politically disengaged friends. Another, the U.S.-born daughter of immigrants who became citizens a few years ago, wrote in, “You are ensuring that my family votes because they actually feel they understand this and I’m so grateful for it.”
Here are a couple things we’ve learned about playing utility player the last couple years:
There is no such thing as a “too simple” question.
Mainstream election coverage assumes a lot of knowledge, like that you understand what the agricultural commissioner does or that you know what an amendment is.
We set out with the goal of making the political process feel accessible to everyone and assumed no prior knowledge.
It’s a little like the four sons of Passover. We weren’t worried about the wise child, who would be able to make sense of the horse-race coverage and the 1,500-word profiles and draw an opinion from that. (Although even the “wise children” wrote in with questions about things that had them stumped.)
We wanted to build a guide for the wicked child, the cynics who thought the whole process was screwed from the start and opted out; the simple child, the citizens who went to the polls feeling flustered and confused (or just skipped the polls entirely); and the child who was too young to ask, the locals who were completely disengaged, but had an inkling that maybe they should change that. (I guess something from Hebrew school stuck.)
In August, we searched for a relatable framing that would bring the whole thing down to earth. Our storytelling producer, Lance Dixon, pitched “Voting shouldn’t be as hard as building IKEA furniture.” Because millennials.
And then we provided examples of the kinds of questions people could ask. We said, very clearly, that this wasn’t a time to prove how much you know by submitting wonky comments disguised as questions. We wanted to make sure that those people who don’t vote didn’t feel intimidated about coming with much simpler questions.
You can see the 50+ questions that came in response to that August primary callout here.
When two people wrote in asking if they could vote as a permanent resident/green card holder, we knew we had succeeded. It is the most basic, essential question, one that we might have assumed everyone knew already. But those two people didn’t, and they probably represent many more in this city of immigrants and expats.
Perhaps the most valuable thing you can do is focus on the boring and esoteric races.
The most popular pages of our guides, every time, are judicial races and ballot initiatives. And the primary and local election guides have outperformed our general election guides.
Why? Because these things are boring and complex, and don’t get much coverage because they’re generally non-partisan and decidedly unsexy. When they do get coverage, it’s often “smart takes” diving deep into the back story.
Most voters don’t want to know the details of the eight-month process to write an amendment or about the politics of a subcommittee. They just want to understand who’s behind it and what it’s all about when the time comes to vote on it. Take a look at the questions that rolled in for our August guide.
Find the right entry points for your readers.
“Single-issue voters” often has a sneering connotation to it. But many voters are motivated to head to the polls over an issue that’s particularly urgent for them.
You can turn this into an opportunity to activate more on-the-fence voters. Last election and this one, we’ve shared quick takes on where candidates stand on particularly hot button issues on social media platforms and in our newsletter to keep a steady drumbeat of attention on the election.
Where to go from here
We understand that we have more flexibility to experiment than many outlets do when it comes to this kind of community-centered journalism work. We aren’t trying to be the local paper of record.
But here are a couple things that don’t require an excellent meme game or freedom from page view goals.
Reevaluate your assumptions about what people want to know
Ask people what they’re most concerned about. Ask people what they don’t get. Ask people if they know how to find their polling station. Ask people if they know that their state is a closed primary state. Ask. Ask. Ask.
We’re lucky to now have Hearken at The New Tropic, which makes the process of collecting questions from the community easy, but before we had Hearken we did this manually — in our newsletter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and in neighborhood Facebook groups across the city. It’s time-consuming, but worthwhile. Think of it as reverse vox pop. You will be surprised by what information people find most valuable.
Exclude election coverage from the paywall.
Great election coverage is as much a public service as coverage of a natural disaster. Newspapers often drop their paywalls during crises like hurricanes and mass shootings, which is admirable. Why not during elections? That coverage will have more of an impact on the future of their coverage area than any of the items above, but most have metered paywalls, and a voter is going to hit their monthly free article limit long before they can read up on everything that’s on their ballot.
This is critical, impartial information they can’t get anywhere else that shouldn’t only be accessible to those with a subscription. Paywalling local election coverage is unhealthy for the community.
That’s all for now.
Our voter guides will keep evolving, as will how we approach empowering locals the other 360-something days of the year there aren’t elections. How are we doing? What could we do better? We’d love to hear from you. Hit us up at ariel@thenewtropic.com and lance@thenewtropic.com.
Got your own suggestions for how we as journalists can empower the community with our election coverage? Want to hear what some others are doing? This rundown from Hearken about their newsrooms’ people-powered election coverage inspires us and we’re always down to talk to others in the space about how we can do better.
