The Democracy Conservation Corps

The US needs a Democracy Conservation Corps that focuses on helping people vote. There are lots of things we need right now, but the most important is for Americans who want to keep the US a democracy to organize in a deliberate way a massive and unprecedented voter turnout wave in every upcoming US election. We're not talking a thousand points of light here or just a big midterm push. It must be national, centralized, disciplined, and continuous. It should be non-partisan, focus on groups that have been historically disenfranchised, and local. It would be a community organizing project with people who apply, are trained, coached, guided, supported, and whose work is measured. The key is to be centralized in overall goal, method, and admin, and decentralized in everything else.

Some would say “but we don’t want the Republicans to vote!!!!” This attitude has consistently mired progressives and the Democratic Party in failure. There aren’t really “Democrats” and “Republicans”, there are people, human beings, some of whom usually vote one way, and some of whom usually vote another. Most just don’t get around to voting in most elections. That we only want OUR people to vote in this next election and will target them and yell at them just beforehand and forget them immediately after the election...this just takes people for granted. Let's please stop doing that.

The three biggest reasons to set this up right now are:

1. There are currently tons of uncoordinated efforts, all extremely reactive. This simply strengthens the administration’s communication strategy of spectacular mistakes, idiotic and dangerous ideas, massive layoffs throughout the federal government, using executive orders as divisive press releases, just endless previously unimaginable garbage. It is a steady firehose of shit that keeps us scurrying. That's the whole idea of it. The antidote is a big national plan that we implement.
2. There are already many progressive initiatives, efforts, and organizations. They are focused either on candidates or various issues upon which virtually all pro-democracy people agree. Each of them individually fund raise, recruit, strategizes, and duplicate independent of each other. There needs to be a unifying effort. That unifier is to simply help everybody to vote who wants to vote. Each of these organizations should be able to fit into this effort easily if they want to and it should clearly benefit them.
3. Most importantly, there are millions of people who understand that at this precise moment, the chances of the US no longer being a democracy are greater than they have ever been in our history. They are ready and desperate to put in time and effort and be a part of something that will solve the problem. There are millions of others who disagree that democracy is in peril, and millions of others who are unsure, others who are waiting for some endlessly receding hyper-clear proof, some who are paralyzed or overwhelmed, and those who don’t care.

But I am talking to and about millions who understand, who care, and who are willing to work. We often hear, “do something!” But do what exactly? The problem is that it is not clear what we each should do.

The Democratic Party and the endless number of progressive civic organizations do not have a clear plan beyond fundraising, and hoping to win various individual by-elections. Individuals I know in this group tend to spend their spare time reposting outrage, going to small demonstrations with signs and posting pictures of signs, and calling or emailing their congressional representatives about the latest terrible thing.

There is nothing wrong with all these things but together or separately they are not parts of a unified cohesive plan to save democracy or to take power away from the oligarchs.

The most similar thing to a Democracy Conservation Corps that has been done in recent memory is Obama's presidential campaigns. All this was the biggest single community organizing project ever conducted in the United States.

For those interested in the details of how it worked and the organizational model for the Democracy Conservation Corps, the most comprehensive and accurate chronicle is Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America by Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han. Obama himself is an incredible person, but what got him elected was not his incrediblness (necessary but insufficient), it was the campaign he built. The model he built it on is that of Marshall Ganz, wildly recognized as the world authority on how to organize people for change. Read People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal to see how it is done.

It's time we build the same thing, but not at the service of a campaign for one or another candidate but for democracy itself.

These types of national organizations have a long history in the US. An important part of Franklin Roosevelt's solution to the Great Depression in the 1930's was the Civilian Conservation Corps and other similar state sponsored organizations. Then in the sixties John Kennedy started the Peace Corps to work internationally and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) domestically. That was reorganized under George Bush Sr in the early 90's to AmeriCorps with thousands of volunteers of all ages throughout the US. These were all independent, but government funded entities. They are all being ended or harassed out of existence by the current administration, largely with the excuse of Diversity Equity and Inclusion.

The oligarchs in power have been extremely focused for many years on making it difficult for groups to vote who are statistically less likely to vote for them. These efforts are at the national, state and county levels. The newest national effort is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or SAVE Act that would require everybody who registers to vote to present an original birth certificate or valid passport in person. Same for those who move or change their name at marriage. The results are easy to imagine.

These efforts should be fought with all possible tools. Democratic states already have significantly higher turnout than Republican states for the simple reason that it is easier to vote in Democratic states. But as Republicans become less and less popular, they will simply make it more and more difficult to vote because more and more people would vote against them....if they are able to vote.

The Democratic Party now focuses on candidate campaigns and the fundraising around those campaigns. Individual campaigns are all it really talks or cares about. Not good. Particularly because what motivates the overwhelming majority of voters is not enthusiasm for individual candidates, almost nobody even knows who 95% of the candidates on any given ballot, what motivates people is much deeper and connected to their own personal story. But tied to motivation is how it is increasingly difficult to register and vote, particularly for new voters, for people with kids, or those with several jobs or long unpredictable hours.

Yea, great, I hear you say. That and a Metro Card will get you on the subway. So who is supposed to set this up?

Well it’s not going to be done by this ruling regime, that’s for sure. Too bad a more democracy friendly administration didn’t set it up when they could have. But we don’t have time to sit around wishing. The Democratic Party is so lost within itself that it can’t and wouldn’t. It would likely fight against it in order to preserve its fundraising centrality. If implemented at scale, the Democracy Conservation Corps would deploy millions of activists to create tens of millions of disciplined voters. Those tens of millions of disciplined regular voters would start voting in local elections, run-offs, by-elections, and most importantly primaries. There are those in the Democratic Party leadership who wouldn’t look forward to that.

Just as it took billionaires to elect oligarchs in 2016 (Bob and Bekah Mercer) and 2024 (Elon Musk and Peter Thiel), unfortunately it will likely take a billionaire or two to at least act as catalysts for this effort to save US democracy. If you look at the work and the worldview that work expresses, somebody like Laurene Powell Jobs, MacKenzie Scott, Melinda French Gates, Emma Bloomberg, the Pritzker sisters, or people in that group would likely need to get behind it to get it started.

The way the presidential election was won in 2016 and 2024 was by nationally organized digital targeting of likely Democratic individual voters, and discouraging them from voting. This is what Musk spent his 272 million dollars on. Paid digital contact, even if individually targeted, does not get people to vote, but it is very good at persuading at least a portion of those targeted not to vote. The messages are direct and private. Because the messages are individually targeted, they often directly contradict each other. It is an endless barrage that says some candidate is against the target’s self-identified in-group or that the candidate loves the group that the target fears. The only goal is to persuade the target not to vote. And for a certain percentage, it works. It worked for the ten million Democratic voters in 2024 that simply didn’t vote, that's why they were targeted. The Democrats don’t do any of this, they are too focused on candidate fundraising for most of the year, then eventually on public messaging for their candidates, advertisements, and finally on trying to turnout their own voters at the last minute via various stranger-to-stranger contact methods like phone banks, batch texting, and paid door knocking.

The Democracy Conservation Corps as its name implies should be organized from the ground up, from hyper local to national. It should recruit people to work within their own communities, train and coach them, give them access to relevant voter data, and give them opportunities to learn and rise within the organization. This must be a constant, permanent, and year-round effort, not something that is built, creates a hullabaloo in October of an even year, and then disappears the day after the election.

It should partner with all willing organizations. There can be quite a bit of jealousy among progressive organizations, they each have their own funding sources, methods, areas of focus, strengths, and idiosyncrasies. The best work on a shoestring and often have to hibernate between elections. How well these organizations can be helped and integrated will be a very important aspect of the effort's success.

Particularly important are labor unions. Because they are made up of and controlled by their members rather than being dependent on external funding, they have a very large number of loyal disciplined members of a community and they have an insight into organizing that many donor funded organizations lack. Unions know how to execute steady sustained organizing rather than simple temporary mobilizing and campaigns.

Organizational cooperation aside, interested individuals would apply and need to get recommendations from several supporters from within their community. They will then be trained on how to bring in more and those who are successful and want to, can move into paid positions. The entire focus will be to increase turnout. This will require contact goals of eligible voters, those who are already disciplined voters, those who are sporadic voters, as well as those who are not yet registered.

The pilot should start immediately in Pennsylvania, Virginia, or New Jersey all of which have state wide elections this year or Detroit, Atlanta, and Houston each of which have municipal elections also on Tuesday 4 November this year. Then go national the day after that election in preparation for the midterm elections on Tuesday 3 November 2026.

We have an unimaginable volume of spare capacity waiting to be deployed. The people who make up that capacity are frustrated that there is no serious national effort for them to join. Millions of these Americans want to be a part of a tsunami of activists saving democracy.

Let’s help them make it happen.

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