Model and Strategy
American democracy needs a moonshot and TurboVote is the rocket. Our vision is a representative 80% of voters participating in our democracy by 2024. TurboVote increases voter turnout at scale and will more than double its impact by 2020, reaching over 12 million voters.
How it works: TurboVote helps Americans vote in every election--local, state, and national. TurboVote tracks every election and then sends users text and email reminders about how and when to vote. It helps voter get registered, apply for an absentee ballot, or simply receive information about when and where to vote on Election Day.
It took us five years to reach our first million voters on TurboVote, five months to reach our second million, and only two months to reach our third million. With 3.5 million users and counting, we are on track to engage five million voters by the 2018 midterms. We believe that we can reach seven million more by 2020, bringing our impact to 12 million voters.
Impact
Democracy is broken in the United States. We are facing a crisis of voter participation in local, midterm, and presidential elections. Turnout peaks near 60 percent in presidential elections, averages 40 percent for midterms, and often falls between 5 and 20 percent for primary and local elections. According to the U.S. census, 58 percent of those who didn't vote in the 2012 election stayed home because of process barriers. And in the last midterm, only 36 percent of eligible voters voted.
TurboVote is currently projected to sign up over 5 million voters by the end of 2018. We believe that we can reach 7 million more by 2020, bringing us to 12 million voters on our platform. This population of voters represents the largest opportunity for impact in the nonprofit voter engagement field. Specifically, approximately 138,885,000 voters participated in the 2016 presidential election. Increasing turnout by 5% would mean engaging 6,944,250 voters in the election that didn't participate in 2012. Although it’s impossible to predict with certainty, this is just shy of our projected impact over the next two years. Even if TurboVote only reaches half this amount we could single-handedly increase turnout nationwide by 1-3%.
Leadership
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Seth Flaxman
Co-Founder & CEO
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Kathryn Peters
Co-Founder & COO
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Esha Rakhit
Senior Product Manager