For more than a year, a large number of Daily Kos members have devoted themselves to build a method that provides us a more direct impact on local, state, and federal elections nationwide. With the 2014 elections behind us, we’re eagerly looking to Louisiana.. and then the rest of the country.
The question is: what do we need to do in order to help elect those who will help us, whether it is city leadership, statehouse or federal.
This diary though is about introducing the culmination of some of those efforts. The start of a new, crowd-sourced, crowd-funded 50 state strategy.
The problem facing us is serious. Vox laid this point out post the early November election results:
But there are also thousands of critically important offices all the way down the ballot. And the vast majority — 70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state — are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress.
Rather than debate about it, we’re prepared to actually DO something about it. In Daily Kos regional workshops held in Kansas City & North Carolina, local community activists, social leaders and elected officials agreed on one thing: persistent early effort will be critical in growing the Democratic party again.
To this end, the Crowdsourcing the 50 State Strategy Group will be geared to help provide information that allows Daily Kos readers to make a big impact all over the country.
- We will highlight filing deadlines, rules and procedures in states as they come due.
- We will discuss elected officials from your precinct race to your US congressperson.
- Encouragement for those running races that are considered very difficult — to help grow the party where it isn't.
- Provide an outlet for candidates to speak to the Daily Kos community to raise support for their efforts.
- Offer support — from research and analysis.
It was 2004 when Markos took to the site in a comment and said: we have a role to play in finding and investing our time and efforts toward winning everywhere.
We’ve spent a year preparing, and I hope you’ll be willing to join us on this journey. How can you contribute to this effort? We need researchers by state, leaders for each of those states and down to each congressional district. We need readers to run for local office, can you run or do you know someone?
The administrators of this group are Chris Reeves, evcoren, Meteor Blades and navajo. If you’d like to join this group send navajo a kosmail and let her know how you want to help.
Diaries in this series:
