VOTE Maximizer- new from Electoral Innovation Lab

If YOU could figure out a way to have the most impact with your vote, your volunteering efforts, and your small dollar political donations, you would want to do so, right? Here's a new tool to do that very thing. 

The Electoral Innovation Lab, headed up by Princeton Professor Sam Wang, has done research on various topics related to maximizing voter impact, including regarding redistricting. Now, we can get DATA on where our energy and resources (i.e. time, effort and small dollar contributions) can have impact.

Vote Maximizer

Vote Maximizer is a web app designed to bring attention to competitive races and topics to repair our democracy in 2024. Because American voters want a government that adequately represents its people, this project is designed for democratic needs. We combine ballot information and campaigning efforts, including donations, to create data-driven pivot points in key elections and ballot questions. Our main feature involves a built-in voter power metric. Across election races, voter power can tell you where your vote, your campaign volunteering, and your political donations will have the most impact. It does this by measuring critical elections, regardless of party preference, that can swing the balance of legislatures.

You can begin accessing Vote Maximizer's data to maximize the POWER of YOUR VOTE by entering your Zip Code.

From Sam Wang's latest email:

At the core of Vote Maximizer is a rigorous mathematical concept: calculating per-voter power. As described here, we quantify how much one voter can shift the probability of a desired outcome. Vote Maximizer uses this concept to show how voters are powerful all over the nation, in nearly every state. This same concept applies to volunteerism and to donations.

The voter-power concept centers on the voter, not the campaign. Our non-partisan tool gives voters guidance in a way that has never been done before, and sets us apart from media coverage.

Our probabilistic calculations quantify per-vote power in Congressional, legislative, and Presidential races.

You will see that voters in Montana and Nebraska have outsized influence over control of the U.S. Senate due to close races and small state populations. For donors, Nebraska is an underrecognized major bargain: $100,000 would be 10% of the total amount raised by either candidate, compared with 0.16% of a national Presidential campaign. This is a 600-fold larger impact - in a state with less than 1% of the nation’s population.

For state legislatures, we highlight potential for party control shifts and showcase the impact of anti-gerrymandering efforts in places like Wisconsin and New York. In single legislative districts, $100,000 can sometimes run an entire campaign

High-interest issues such as reproductive rights, which are on the ballot in ten states. [including Arizona]

The Electoral Innovation Lab

Our mission is to to build a science of data-driven democracy reform using math, law, and practical strategies for change. The goal of this work is to help voters gain and maintain the power to choose their elected officials instead of politicians suppressing voters' rights to fair and meaningful representation.