[1]Common Ground Newsletter April 2020

It Was a Perfect World

Dear Supporter:

I was eleven when I got two pet Guinea pigs. I named one Senator and the
other Governor (I was taken by politics at an early age).

I just hated that I only had a cage to lock them up in, so I built, what
was for them, at least in my child’s mind, a paradise.

I spent the day digging in the dirt in our back yard. I had become so
filthy when I was done that my mother made me take off all my clothes at
the back door, but I had built Guinea Pig Heaven: a monstrous hole, seven
feet wide and almost two feet deep, complete with caves, little tunnels and
old wooden shingle bridges.

I watched them for hours before going to bed, as they explored every
passageway and ramp to make sure they could not escape, and they couldn’t.
They couldn’t escape even in the middle of that night, when the neighbor’s
cat arrived.

Unintended consequences can be horrific.

I do not imagine that there were many votes in the last election that were
not well intentioned and hopeful that their results would make our world,
if not paradise, at least better. But almost to a person, everyone I know,
everyone I meet and talk to during my travels is upset.

It does not matter whether they be conservative or liberal: They all seem,
“Mad as Hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.”

Americans have always had differences of opinion about health care, a
balanced budget, the environment, guns, abortion, education, etc., but we
have rarely been so angrily ripped apart.

What has changed us so? Some point at the President, some the Congress, and
some the media. From where I stand the answer seems simple: It is the
facts, or rather the lack of them, the lack of a resource to which a
conservative or liberal can turn to, in confidence, for truth.

It is that which keeps me, and all of us at [2]VoteSmart.org so committed
to our goal of collecting the facts that reality is so dependent upon.

[3]Help us reach more people who believe FACTS MATTER

A free people that finds lies acceptable, will not remain free for long.

On behalf of myself, your staff, your interns and volunteers and the almost
10,000 of them that have given of their time over so many years to sustain
that

reality, thank you, a thousand times thank you for having our backs.

The millions who do not yet know what you have been building at Vote Smart
owe you a great debt.

My very best wishes to us all in this coming election.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart President

News Past and Present

Walter Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley, John Chancellor:

Remember being told the news and not how to think?

Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, Rush Limbaugh:

Now we know how to think!

Media Planning

Two dilemmas: For 25 years Vote Smart attracted supporters two ways:
through media coverage or mass mailings. Traditional media coverage has now
been replaced by opinionated news that little values the inflexibility of
facts, which is what Vote Smart provides. Mass mailings which once costs us
$0.19 per letter now costs $0.59, making it unaffordable. Thus, it is
difficult for us to get our message out that FACTS MATTER.

The only routes left for Vote Smart are “word of mouth” or social media. As
a result, Vote Smart has contracted with Justin Kistner, a social media
guru who, as you read this, is testing the videos we sent you to preview
(if we have your current email address), along with other messages sent to
specific types of viewers on [4]Facebook and [5]YouTube. Our hope is to
find the specific citizen characteristics that suggest they would
understand the enormous value of Vote Smart and then saturate audiences
with those characteristics with our message.

Click the button below to read the full spring newsletter:

[6]Read more on the Vote Smart blog here!

[7]Donate Now

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