Initiative Tracker

A semi-automated interactive tracker based on information from the Secretary of State and Attorney General.

The basics:

• Initiative title
• Summary
• LAO's fiscal impact statement
• Link to full text

Could also include:

• Deeper research, such as campaign finance
• Who's backing it/opposing it even before it's qualified for the ballot (MapLight's not even doing this)

Engagement and interactivity:

• ability to share individual initiatives with friends
• ability to "vote" up or down, a la Facebook's "Like" button
  • this gives us a rough gauge of popular sentiment...the more widely it's shared and used, the more accurate these numbers will reflect the views of our audience and possibly beyond
  • ability to comment/discuss, with comment threads attached to each initiative

Public service:

• potentially taking this a step further, some way to link the audience to the proponents if they want to sign

• you might not run into a signature gatherer, and if you do, it's probably a grocery store and you don't want to be bothered at that moment...allowing people to get involved on their own time is a useful public service

• Digital Explainers

  • web-based articles examining specific initiatives, but also explainers about the process.
    • how much does it cost to get 504,000 signatures, that is, to get an initiative on the ballot?
    • who writes our initiatives? It's actually an exclusive club of lawyers in California
    • what does it take to find 504,000 VALID signatures...one measure shows tens of thousands of invalid signatures...is that common? Are there alternatives to the grocery-store signature-gathering process?

• Radio spots

  • Two-ways or features promoting the tracker, explaining the initiative process in more detail, and examining specific measures
    • Off-season, these would be about initiatives that are in circulation, gathering signatures, making people more aware of what grassroots changes are afoot and what could appear on future ballots
    • On-season, these would focus more on qualified ballot measures to prepare for upcoming elections

• Tie-ins to our political coverage

  • Relevant stories can always link back to the tracker, and the tracker can curate relevant stories from our staff, including blog posts from Represent!

Further Notes:

• Could be billed as part of our stalled Project Citizen initiative, which could be rekindled and have a higher profile on the politics vertical?

• We did a version of this at KCET and it was the single-most successful digital campaign the site had ever run. This proposal would be an improvement on what we did there, taking it to another level.