John,

Can you believe it’s already August? The year has flown by for us at Issue One. Each month has been filled with critical work to help build a better democracy, and August was no exception.

Here are some highlights from August:

Election Protection

• In new episodes of our “Democracy Fix” podcast, we sat down with Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, as well as the Director of King County, WA Elections Julie Wise. Listen, rate, and subscribe to “Democracy Fix” on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• We’ve been featuring election workers from across the country to highlight the work they do on behalf of our democracy. This month we highlighted two election workers in our Meet the Faces of Democracy Q&A series! Our first conversation was with Nedra Cooper, a poll worker and trainer in Nevada. Our second interview was with New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver.
• We created an Election Integrity toolkit to help explain how the election process works, and to increase confidence in the integrity and fairness of our elections. The toolkit offers messaging, clear information, and shareable content to promote Americans’ freedom to vote. Check out the resources on our How Elections Work website.
• We launched VoteWise, our chatbot on WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook/Instagram. VoteWise is a simple and free way for users to fact check information about elections in the United States and learn more about how they’re run. Test it out! Send us content you’d like fact checked or learn more by asking VoteWise questions.
• In response to a Senate Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee markup, which allocated $75 million in federal funding for critical election infrastructure, members of Issue One’s Faces of Democracy campaign issued a statement that commended the allocation, but called for consistent federal funding for elections.

Holding Big Tech Accountable

• We launched the “Big Tech’s Broken Promises” tracker – a database that catalogs the history of empty proclamations and covert policy changes by the world’s largest technology companies. Explore the tracker and read our press release!
• Bonus: Read more about our “Big Tech’s Broken Promises” tracker, why it was developed, and the need for tech accountability.
• We joined with key partners and 181 other civil society organizations to push back on Meta’s closure of CrowdTangle, a critical tool used by academic and civil society researchers to study activity on Instagram and Facebook. Since Meta (then-Facebook) purchased CrowdTangle in 2016, researchers and fact-checkers have used it to study critical user activity on the platform, shedding light on topics such as foreign interference, misinformation, and disinformation.

New on The Reform Compass – Issue One’s Substack

• Issue One Legislative Associate Joshua Manuel Bonet wrote a piece about mis- and disinformation and how when it’s directed at or targets underserved communities, such as Spanish speakers in the U.S., it impedes their ability to participate fairly in democratic processes.
• Issue One Director of Election Protection Dr. Carah Ong Whaley also wrote a post for our Substack about how Congress has a responsibility to give election officials adequate and reliable federal funding to help them continue to run fair and secure elections.
• Technology Reform Campaigns Manager Liana Keesing wrote two pieces about AI, elections, and the complex politics and procedures of rulemaking within federal regulatory agencies this week that were published on our Substack.
• Council for Responsible Social Media Co-chairs Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) and Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey (R-MA) wrote about the risks of unregulated AI and what Congress can do about it.

To stay in the loop all month long, make sure you listen and subscribe to Democracy Fix on Apple or Spotify, check out IssueOne.org and follow us on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook!

Thanks for your support,

The Issue One Team