Without our Technology Team, you would not be reading this blog post. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even get our newsletter. 

We focus on organizing at a personal level, humans telling other humans how great RCV is and why they should support it. Everything that comes after that first interaction requires online tools, data, spreadsheets (so many spreadsheets), and on and on. While our teams have varying degrees of proficiency, our Tech Lead, Paul Mulligan, is there to help us all. 

One large project that Paul and I co-led this spring was our first phone banking campaign. Our goal was to call all our supporters, and we did call everyone… at least twice. We appreciate all the donations we raised, new volunteers, and support everyone gave us! (Hundreds of you have signed up to support RCV since then, so I hope we get a chance to speak to you, too.) 

Paul made sure our phone banking technology and data were working as intended, joining me and other volunteers on every Saturday for three months. I asked him about his experience. 

“[Respondents] who knew about Ranked Choice Voting were very excited about it.” he said. “It was my first experience [phone banking] for anything. I’ve never been involved in a political campaign or a nonprofit… And it felt like I was really doing something to help the community.”

That commitment to the movement has gone beyond the Tech Team’s responsibilities. Paul joined canvassing efforts during Pride parades this year. “I haven’t been to Pride in several years, and the last one I went to was Seattle Pride, which is much more tame than Baltimore, so I missed [attending] Baltimore Pride.” he laughs. “It took me about 20 minutes to actually approach someone because my natural intuition is not to bother people if I don’t know them… It was a good crowd, it felt good.”

The journey Paul took to Ranked Choice Voting Maryland also was of interest to me. After hearing about the concept of RCV, Paul was trying to figure out a way to grow support for the idea. “My original plan was to start a nonprofit that would advocate for Ranked Choice Voting, but then I thought, ‘Well somebody must have already done this, no need to reinvent the wheel.’ So I just googled ‘ranked choice voting in Maryland’.” And, as we would hope, Paul found RCV MD’s website. “I went back to the website [sometime later]… and I emailed and that’s when I got in touch with you all.” 

I asked Paul why he was so motivated to support RCV that he considered starting a nonprofit to advocate for it. “There are some very clear issues with our political system, with how it's run. You know our Constitution was groundbreaking when it was written, but a lot of nations have improved on it… this seems like a fairly obvious way that we could do that. You know, once it’s described to people, they are onboard.” 

Research, not just political desire, guided Paul’s approach. He looked at how other popular movements in the U.S. became successful. He concluded that the key was for a “plurality of states” to adopt popular reforms. “So then I thought maybe the same thing could be done with Ranked Choice Voting. Then I found out that Alaska was already doing it, and Maine.”

And Paul is not alone in this thinking. I look across the U.S. and see people implementing RCV  where they can and at the local level. As an advocate for democracy, I am able to take comfort from the fact that American voters are beginning to realize the benefits of RCV and working together to make it happen. In my experience, if you’re feeling particularly anxious about the future of democracy, or another issue, the best way to face it is by getting involved. You may just find other like minded people already doing the work.