These are uncertain times, but they are also times of change and progress. Recent protests over police brutality and the countless Black and Brown lives that have been lost, have rekindled conversations about the silencing of diverse voices and what it means to live as a person of colour in North America. The demonstrations have been primarily peaceful and yet they’ve been very effective in triggering a number of changes at various levels. From banning the use of chokeholds to concrete discussions around defunding police forces, more severe charges for the officers responsible for George Floyd’s death, a number of officials stepping down from their posts. There was even an apology from the NFL commissioner — all were a result of people braving the virus to march in the streets and be counted.
These demonstrations seem to me as much a cry for help as a cry for hope. A belief that change is still possible. That we can come together through our differences and that democracy still exists even as we bring to light its inherent inequity and injustice.
But to curb systemic racism, we have to do more than change hearts and minds — though that’s an important first step. We also have to change laws and make illegal discrimination and segregation in all of this forms.
And we have to vote.
When I became aware of Vote Simple, I immediately reached out to one of its co-founders whose work and words resonated. Vote Simple is a Texas-based digital voter registration organization focused on registering young voters of colour and LGBTQ Texans. One of its three co-founders is Delilah Agho-Otoghile, an organizer and political strategist who previously served as state director for Beto for America and field director for Stacey Abrams for governor.
Intro / Can we just redesign the systems that don’t work? The people that I’m having the chance to converse with in different parts of the world are imagining new systems, new collaborations. They’re imagining a new world. Welcome to Design Influence. I’m Isabelle Swiderski.
Delilah / So the last, I guess, major campaign I worked, being that I work in campaigns for a living, was Beto for America. I was the state director here in Texas, and I’ve just been consulting since then since last November. So once Beto dropped out, I was consulting on a city council race, which was actually, it was a lot of fun, but we lost by 16 votes against an incumbent early this year. I was helping on a congressional race here in Fort bend County, Sri Cole Carney for Congress, and he avoided runoff. So one with over 50%, then in Harris County. So in Houston was working for a Christian Menifee for a Harris County attorney who also narrowly avoided a runoff with like 50.5%. Right after the Texas primary ended, I went to Chicago for like two and a half weeks. And I consulted on a campaign there for Denise Wingstone back, for state representative.
And she successfully defeated an incumbent as well. And that was right as quarantine was happening. But in quarantine I was consulting on a Senate race in Georgia and then the mayoral race in Baltimore. Brandon Scott for Baltimore mayor, which it took about a week to count those votes that came in from Baltimore, but he ended up winning as well.
Isabelle / How do you choose who you want to work with?
Delilah / That’s a good question. A lot of the candidates I worked for in Houston where candidates I came to know before they were candidates. So Christian, I knew when he was running a local club here, the Houston Black American Democrats, Shri actually ran in 2018 and this is a district I grew up in, I got involved in for the first time too. I interned for the same congressional seat when I was in high school.
But came to know Sri personally and, you know, he needed a lot of help, so I decided to help him, but all of the candidates, I mean, they’re all young, they’re all people of colour. I think they’re all arguably the most progressive, you know, candidate in their race.
Isabelle / Tell me a bit more about that. You stated that your work is “dedicated to ensuring our democracy truly reflects progressive values and the striking diversity of our country.” Tell me about progressive values.
Delilah / Well, I think for instance, with Christian Menifee running for Harris County attorney, we have a democratic County attorney and office in Harris County right now here’s County is Houston proper. But we have a lot of democratic officials in Houston who don’t necessarily push for, you know, what I think what I would define as progressive.
And I don’t, I don’t know if I honestly, Isabelle, have the definition for that right now, but I’m trying to, but like for instance, I could give you when I was working the city council race, we lost by 16 votes. When we, at the time of the election, before it was certified, we were down 12 votes. And we went to the County clerk’s office to ask for the name of provisional voters to see if, you know, somewhere we could find 13 votes to win that election. There were over 500 provisional ballots cast in Harris County. The County clerk looked to the County attorney about whether or not they could release those names. When we all know that, you know, voter data is it’s public information. So the same way that they release the names of the people who vote at the polls, they should release the names of the people who vote provisionally.
The County attorney’s office at the time said that we were not privy to that information, right. But County clerk also a Democrat in office at the same thing. And the election code here is written in ways where, you know, nothing really explicit. So they were leaning on the, and kept saying that, there was nothing that said they had to give us this data. And like our argument was that there’s nothing that prohibits them from giving us that data. And in my mind, if we’re thinking about progressive values, we want to make sure that people’s votes are counted, right? Voting is the basis of democracy. But in their minds, they’re like provisional ballots don’t really matter. And you know, in order to cure provisional ballot — it looks different in every state — but in Texas, you have, I think it’s five days after the election to come in and show whatever you couldn’t prove at the pool. So whether we have voter ID laws, so whether someone showed up to the polls and didn’t have an ID, they have to come into the clerk’s office, but then by days, um, and show their ID, the clerk’s office here does not do any sort of like education around that when they vote provisionally, they do not tell them to come back in and cure their ballots because they don’t think that the small number of people who vote provisionally actually matter, which in my mind is a real hindrance.
In my mind, if we’re thinking about progressive values, we want to make sure that people’s votes are counted, right? Voting is the basis of democracy.
Isabelle / So let’s, let’s dive a little deeper then in why you started Vote Simple because you started touching upon a lot of things that we’re going to talk about, which is around, you know, written and unwritten ways of suppressing votes or intimidating voters, or having an impact on whether or not someone can vote. So you started recently Vote Simple. Tell me about that.
Delilah / Most campaigns I’ve worked have, have spent time registering voters. So I worked for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Florida. And up until the renter, the voter registration deadline, most of our time was spent around registering voters, right. In order to expand the electorate. And hopefully when Florida, right after Florida, I worked for Equality Texas, but that was only for the legislative session, right after that was working with Battleground Texas, which is a statewide pack here in Texas, that registered voters, particularly young voters of colour. And I was with Battleground for about a year. Um, but I think that really opened my, my eyes to the landscape of voter reg and Texas, to give you, I guess, a little bit more context quickly in Texas, um, in order to register to vote, you either have to go to like a library or a County clerk office or any of their like satellite offices or print out a form online and mail it in yourself.
So a lot of people do not register that way. Right? A lot of people are just serve at in person voter registration drives. So whether those are groups that go into high schools to register like new 18 year olds, you know, who are just becoming eligible to vote. A lot of people hold drives at colleges. There’s some organizations that hold drives at grocery stores and dollar stores or events, you know, festivals. So a lot of people register in person. And there are a lot of groups here that do in person voter registration. But in my mind, last year I was thinking about ways that we could supplement this work just because there are always people we’re going to miss, right? Who aren’t on that college campus, or aren’t attending that festival, or, you know, don’t go to that grocery store.
And I realized that there weren’t any groups in Texas investing in paid digital advertisement. So last December met with two of my friends, Benjamin Hernandez and Ben Chow. Ben and I actually grew up together. We got involved in politics together interned together and Benjamin Hernandez and I met on the city council campaign. I mentioned earlier where we lost by 16 votes. But we met in this coffee shop, just trying to think about how, how we could carry this out. Right. We did a lot of research into what the other groups were doing. We did a lot of research into, you know, what we thought each registrant would cost online, different ways we could target them online,
Ben and I have a lot of political and campaign experience. Benjamin Hernandez works in a digital space, right? So it brings that experience of having of running it digital from right now. So he was going to create the content and manage the ads. So that December, we set up some initial meetings with the company we’re using to mail out the forms, to those who register through our form online civic tech. And it was a great conversation. And we said we would follow up and then, you know, Christmas and new year happened. Um, and we kind of got busy with the primary election. As you know, I was consulting on a bunch of races, Ben Chow was finishing grad school, also managing a race and Benjamin Hernandez had a number of clients as well, but after the Super Tuesday ended after the Illinois primary ended and COVID happened, we kind of regrouped and we’re very much like this is something we should be doing now.
Because you know, the in-person voter registration might still be happening—I know there was some groups who’ve actually been doing it at the protests—at some of the actions, you know, around police brutality and racial justice, which is great. But I don’t think that the rate at which they they do in person events is the same, right? as if we weren’t in a pandemic. So we really just wanted to build this as soon as possible so that we could supplement any of that work happening and have an impact on the election this fall.
Isabelle / So your stated mission is to register all eligible, unregistered citizens of colour, and LGBTQ identified individuals in Texas by 2024. So what do you see then as long-term outcomes to this when you’re successful with this mission?
Delilah / Yeah, I think, for our target audience of young people of colour for LGBTQ plus Texans is to really create a strong voting block within, you know, both communities, but also to give both communities more, throughout the state, obviously, right? We want, we want everyone to register and, but like not stop at registering, so long-term to want to get them registered and also get them to vote to get them engaged in the electoral process and to continue voting, you know—voting is habitual. And while this is a big election year, there’s a lot on the ballot in 2021 and some municipal races. There’s a lot on the ballot in 2022, ufor our next midterm election. So we really just want to keep them engaged and show up to vote. So while we run ads right now, before the deadline in October, again, to have them fill out the form and register to vote, we want to do the same around, Get Out The Vote ad.
So GOTV ads. So that month before election day we’ll, we’ll run a series of ads, just informing them about the election, about what they need, if they’re going to vote in person, um, namely an ID, um, where they can go vote, um, you know, the dates for early voting and the hours for early voting, things of that sort, because, you know, studies show that people who register for the first time, um, well, not actually go vote unless they know when to vote and how to vote. So we plan on, you know, providing that information through our ads as well. And once they’re registered, they’ll, they’ll stay in our digital audience so that we can continue engaging with them.
Isabelle / That’s really interesting to me because you’ve dedicated your career basically to, and I quote you again to “effectively mobilizing communities of colour and youth voters”, what I want to make sure I get it right. Um, but so in your experience and you’ve listed so many different campaigns that you, you were also on, on Stacey Abrams gubernatorial race. I can’t say that word. I don’t know why. What to you are keys to, effectively mobilizing those communities specifically? Because we can see that there’s a ton of barriers that are put in place. It’s been documented in so many different ways. And certainly the Supreme Court’s vote in 2013, that really weakened the Voting Rights Act. How do you mobilize those folks? You’re using digital ads currently. In your experience, has that evolved? How did you decide on that?
Delilah / Great question. I think that, um, so I’ll tell a story quickly, I guess, about Stacy’s campaign, which is an amazing campaign, but a campaign that was like all our targets and that campaign that we were mobilizing through our organizing program were what most people call low propensity voters of color, right? So these are voters who have, have been registered, maybe they’re newly registered, but they don’t always show up to vote. And we don’t know if they’re going to show up to vote and it’s gubernatorial election because it’s not, you know, this like high profile presidential election. Um, and honestly, in some ways, Stacy Abrams in 2018 was a very unconventional candidate and not regarded the way that she is now. We trusted in, if we, if we met these voters where they were, if we talked to them, whether it be on the phone, on the doors, you know, through texts that we could push them to actually go, cause they’ve been sitting on the voter rolls, but they haven’t voted.
And, um, more, more voters voted than we thought would vote for Stacey. Right. So our, I guess our premise, you know, proved true, but I think that a lot of people, when they look at ways to win elections, they never, um, sort of invest in or yeah, they never really invest in low propensity voters, right? Like we always want to go after the strong Democrats that we know will show up every time maybe we want to have a target audience of persuasive voters, uh, persuasive targets that are moderates or former Republicans or, um, independence that we want to persuade to vote for our candidate. And then it becomes a trade off, right? Because we can’t go after all buckets of voters. So we never really go after those low propensity voters because we think it’s a waste of money and we won’t target them. We being, again, just a lot of operatives, more people are voting for the first time, this year in the cycle than they ever have before.
We trusted in, if we met these voters where they were, if we talked to them, whether it be on the phone, on the doors, you know, through texts, that we could push them to actually go, cause they’ve been sitting on the voter rolls, but they haven’t voted.
And whether or not that’s because of the work of like a specific candidate or campaign, there’s something driving them to vote. Right. I think we’re in a really special moment of what’s happening right now with a racial justice and police brutality, but that’s like new. Um, we had unprecedented turnout in 2018 across the country. We had unprecedented turnout and 2019 across the country and we’re continuing to see upward, you know, upward trend. Yeah. I just think it’s important to, you know, run culturally competent campaigns. And again, really just reach voters where they are. I could tell a story about, um, consulting for Shri Kulkarni here in Fort Benn and congressional district 22, it’s one of the most diverse congressional districts in the country. There’s a heavy immigrant population, a decent API, black, white, Latino population. It’s very diverse. I’m also very educated district. 60% of the district is important County again, where I grew up, but the district has never been represented by Democrat, uh, despite being as diverse as it is.
So, uh, Sheree’s campaign in 2018 made a point to campaign in 15 different languages. So whether they were having phone banks, um, or sending out texts or sending out mail, they made sure to, to collect data early on, um, that profile, different voters, uh, religion, race, ethnicity language. So then they segments at these groups of voters and did outreach, you know, and ways that, that, that really, I guess, Lee spoke to them. Honestly, I don’t think a lot of voters are used to having a rebel color, a piece of mail in their native language, right. Or the same. I mean, I believe Street’s campaign also had, had similar to what simple is doing and different languages. And I think that in CD 22 and 2018 API turnout increased 600%. I think a portion of this increased could probably be because of, uh, the candidate being API himself.
But also I think because of the ways that they actually carried out outreach and didn’t just, you know, apply this one size fits all. So I’m linking all that to vote. Simple will be translating the form that’s currently on our website in different languages, um, will be the mail that voters get. Once they register through the form, if they’ve registered through a multilingual forum, they’ll also get the mail and that language, and we’ll run some tests on different ads and different languages as well. So again, I think, I think it’s just about being culturally competent and also maybe not relying on, on traditional methods of organizing or campaigning because not everyone responds to that. And yeah, I just think that good programs that, that mobilize, uh, low propensity voters, they don’t like that word. I don’t think it’s the word opportunity, but you know, that mobilize voters that don’t always show up should, you know, entice them different ways, um, and meet them where they are in the, in that sense.
Isabelle / How do you think we can meet younger voters in this moment, meet them where they are.?
Delilah / Yeah, that’s honestly, I feel like that’s the million dollar question because I, I think that all candidates across all parties are trying to really reach young voters. I think that there are more campaigns using tech talk, right? As a, as a way to reach voters, more young people are on tech talk probably more than other social media platforms, whether or not, you know, they’re still on Snapchat or Instagram or anything like that. I just think that the social media presence, especially now, and COVID has to be stronger and more intentional than probably ever before. I also think that candidates just really need to, uh, talk about the issues that young people care about. You know, I think data shows that health care is the number one issue right now in America.
For most of the electorate, I’d be inclined to say that most young people for defining youngest like 18 to 30, although with folks simple, we define young as 18 to 40. Maybe healthcare is not their number one issue. Right. I think maybe in light of what’s happened with police brutality, a number of young people care about that. Maybe care about race relations, um, maybe care about immigration or LGBTQ issues. So a number of issues that a lot of candidates don’t necessarily spend the most time talking about. I think the economy is a hot issue right now, especially with unemployment and, you know, the, the ways in which the pandemic are effecting jobs in society. But I, I don’t know, right. How many young people care about that? As much as, as much as older people, I think a lot of young people care about education.
Um, and again, I make it a lot of assumptions. This is, this is not backed by data, but I just think that, I mean, it’d be smart if campaigns can pull young people or run a focus group on young people, especially in their area, um, and campaign around those issues. But again, a lot of campaigns I think kind of fall back on, um, who they campaign to or how they campaign being a trade off with other groups of people. And, you know, young people don’t reliably show up as much as older people, but I think that they should take that gamble and make sure that they’re doing that outreach as well.
Isabelle / So do you think that with, with Vote Simple, you might start getting some of that feedback around what drives people to vote and in different age, age groups, so that you can scale your, your reach? It’s a leading question.
Delilah / Um, I mean, I think we’re treating the summer is really, uh, our experimentation phase. So we’re running different ads trying to see what ads, um, you know, yield the most return. Um, so whether or not our first ad for instance, was, um, a graphic that showed a group of protesters, you know, at a police brutality rally here in Houston. Um, and not many people clicked on that ad. Uh, but we want to test ads for instance, in June, want to test some ads with different like pride content. I think we’re going to test some ads this weekend with June teen content. Um, I just, yeah, I think that we’re, we will figure out depending on what we’ve run, you know, what yields the most clicks and what yields the most rate of conversion for those who actually click on the ad and then fill out the form and become registered to vote, um, and analyze that data too, to try and figure out what people care about.
I think we’ll probably learn more though about issues when we’re running geo TV ads, um, telling people different issues, telling people about different issues that they, and why they should vote because of that issue. For instance, the, the caption on our, our current ad right now mentions that we should hold them accountable and you know, them is kind of open-ended, um, who we’re holding accountable is open-ended, but yeah, it makes a, it makes the case for, you know, if you’re showing up in the streets to protest, if you care about what’s happening right now, then you should also make sure you’re registered to vote and then go boat. Cause a lot of people in office can change, um, you know, policy and legislation around what’s happening.
Isabelle / So what do you tell people who answer that: Yes, they voted or they want to vote, but the system is rigged anyway so why would they vote?
Delilah / That’s a good question. Some great questions today, Isabelle. Um, of, uh, my time of battleground Texas, actually, um, we ran a project called a student voter initiative where we would go into high schools and take over, uh, classes for the day, um, and kind of just run this plan that showed the impact of like one person’s vote. And then we would open up, we would register the students of course, and then have like a Q and a session in the class. A lot of students, the route he’s sending throughout the state when registering them to vote would always ask yeah. Um, whether or not their vote actually mattered. And so you have to go in depth at the lesson plan, we would allow the students to pick something that they wanted to change in their school. So maybe they didn’t want to wear uniforms. Maybe they wanted to go off campus for lunch.
Maybe they wanted to have different lunch options. Um, and then we would allow once a boat on that topic and we would remove, I think 40% of the winning boat, which usually cause the losing vote to win because here in Texas, right on average, like 40% of eligible voters don’t show up to vote. So while, you know, the students were usually engaged about whether or not they wanted to wear uniforms or want a different lunch options. We tried to illustrate the fact that, uh, if this was actually something they were voting on in school, a number of their classmates wouldn’t actually show up to the polls, right. Which happens every election across the state. So while they all don’t want to wear uniforms or they all think that we, uh, they should have different one job options in the cafeteria because they didn’t show up that wouldn’t actually happen.
Um, so we use this lesson plan to again, illustrate, uh, the power of a few boats. I would also always tell the story of a city council rates in Pasadena, um, a part of Houston where a candidate lost by seven votes. I also tell the story here. I mean, with the election, I’ve mentioned a few times where we lost by 16 votes and how, you know, that would, I mean, you can find seven votes in one person’s family. You can find 16 votes in like two families. Um, and just, yeah, I, I mean, it’s not like every, every election is lost by hundreds of thousands of votes that can never be made up. I think that there are also though conversations of students who, who always bring up, you know, Hillary winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college. But if we actually care about changing that right. And changing how the electoral college, um, Alexa, our next president, but that also starts with voting. Um, so I think it’s just a matter of, of one talking about, you know, these very real instances where elections have been decided by a handful of people and also just like having them think about things that they actually care about and then drawing the parallels between those issues to either elected officials or voting and how they can change.
Isabelle / So in this moment where we’re obviously we have a pandemic and we also have seemingly an awakening of a whole bunch of people who didn’t realize what was going on or what gives you hope.
Delilah / Mmm. Yeah. I honestly, I think all the people, all the people who show up, um, either to protest or to city council meetings or commissioner’s court meetings or, um, events that are, you know, about racial justice or police brutality, it’s what gives me hope. The fact that like, I mean, in Houston, our largest protest to date was the protest with George Floyd’s family. Um, two weeks after the incident happened, um, she sends a city of 6 million people to think that we haven’t had a protest of 60,000 people yet. And to see that many people band together about what some people would consider a controversial issue, I think is what gives me hope. I, I mean, I went to that protest. I went to the protest prior to that, I went to the protest for Brianna Taylor and I just, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know to see that many people again, um, fighting for the same cause gives me hope.
I was also recently part of, um, a training session. I started by two women. I worked with in Georgia. They started the blue Institute, a training program for young people of color throughout the South to get more involved in politics. Um, from the blue Institute, they started young, black and rising, uh, the frontline Academy of young, black, and rising to help organize and train the people on the ground and Brunswick, Georgia after a mod Arbery’s, um, murder. And so I helped facilitate two sessions of their training, but lasted for a month. Uh, once a week, one evening, a week for a month, um, over a hundred people got on every day, over a hundred people from all over the country. And some from different countries attended the training again to learn about how they could organize their own communities and really, you know, like meet the moment and build some power around what they were trying to change and their communities seeing.
So the last session was actually last night and hearing from people in Wyoming and Florida and Maryland and California talk about like what this training meant to them, or being able to hear from different people about how to, um, either have like these hard conversations with their family and friends or work with other organizers in their communities, or again, hold elected officials accountable. Um, it gives me hope as well. Cause I, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know. I think this moment just really presents Mmm. The opportunity to talk about things that people aren’t willing to talk about before. Right. Or take action on things that we weren’t willing to talk about before. If I don’t know if I, I would say that the conversation about defunding the police, you know, a year ago or two years ago, what it looked like it does right now.
Um, or even honestly a conversation about just like affirming the fact that Black Lives Matter, because I remember how, you know, how many people met that comment, you know, when Ferguson happened. So I think that the conversations about race and the policy that’s being pushed, uh, and the ways that communities are again, coming together to hold electeds or police officers accountable. It gives me hope right now.
Isabelle / What do you think the role of peaceful protest is in democracy?
Delilah / I think it’s necessary, honestly. I think that any action, I think a lot of people will choose to take actions in different ways. Right. I think that if people actually acknowledge what’s happening and believe in what’s happening, I’m happy for all of the different ways that people decide to take action. I don’t think that we would see for instance, policy changes happening without the peaceful protests that have happened.
Um, I don’t think that our elected officials, whether they’re sitting on city council or governing a city or commissioners of a city or County would respond to demands from organizers and organizations, if there were not 60,000 people on the street protesting around this issue. The people who organize these protests, who show up, who are helping advocate for what they believe in are what create change and democracy. Right. And I think that like the electeds and the legislation or the media that comes after these protests are the tools needed for that change. But it starts with the people, right? Advocating the protests or attending the protests and everything else is an impact of that.
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Delilah Agho-Otoghile is an organizer, political strategist and co-founder of Vote Simple, a Texas-based digital voter registration organization, focused on registering young voters of colour and LGBTQ+ Texans
This is Design Influence. I’m Isabelle Swiderski.
