User:Vanguard826/sandbox

Article Evaluation: California Report Card

• The article in question, California Report Card, contains a number of issues which would greatly improve the article if resolved: for example, the article frequently stresses the involvement of then Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom in the development of the CRC as an application. Specifically, the article cites how his book "Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government" served as the basis for inspiration for the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative developed by UC Berkeley and Prof. Ken Goldberg. However, the article does not clarify what input Newsom actually had on developing the CRC outside of simple reference. Though the article cites a long quotation (already a breech of Wikipedia's content guidelines) by Newsom on his plans for implementing the CRC, the article lacks clarification on his actual level of involvement in the CRC's development. Since his involvement is referenced in the section header, this point would need clarification.
• Though the article does a thorough job explaining how the CRC works on a macro level, that being how the application processes work and the use of sampling algorithms to demonstrate how the CRC incorporates new users, but lacks much explanation on how the application works on the user's name. This information is only inferred by references to how users might use the application to address new topics, but not how the voting and debate actually function. One possible route for development is this article is a proper explanation of how exactly users use the CRC, and if their input has made any tangible effect on the California government.
• A number of the links/citations provided are invalid, including:
  • Reference #3 [1] (as shown in article below) brings the reader to the Modern Luxury Media homepage, and not to the article in question. This is likely due to either the site removing the article, or an incorrect citation at its outset.
    1. Lucas, Scott. "Gavin Newsom and a Berkeley Professor Are Trying to Disrupt Public Opinion Polls". San Francisco Magazine. Modern Luxury. Retrieved 8 July 2014.
  • Reference #4 [2] (as shown in the article below) brings the reader to a 503 Service Unavailable page. It is likely that the service of Opinion Space (developed by UC Berkeley, coincidentally) is no longer hosted on a server.
    1. "Opinion Space". Opinion Space. Retrieved 23 June 2014.
  • Reference #5 [3] (as shown in the article below) brings the reader to an unrelated Shopify page. This is a clear violation of Wikipedia's content standards, as this reference is used twice in the article to back up statements regarding the operation of the CRC and its software applications.
    1.  "Old moscow mugs".Friday, 13 January 2017
• The article has one rating, and was only edited by one user in one sitting- in other words, the only time this article has been changed was from 2014, meaning there exists 7 years of development for the CRC that remains unreported as of now.

Link to Talk Page: Talk:California Report Card

Possible articles to work on

Article 1: Resistbot

Article Evaluation:

• As referenced in the article’s talk section by user: Brooke.baker873, the article would be enhanced through extending information on Resistbot’s founder, Eric Ries and Jason Putorti, as to the actual creation of Resistbot. In other words, the article solely references the basis for why Resistbot was created, but does not elaborate on how this process came about. Also, though an article exists already exploring Eric Ries, no information on this article or his own reference his involvement other than by name
• Though this article stresses how Resistbot is non-partisan, all examples listed and sources reference the use of Resistbot by left-wing movements. If right-wing movements have used Resistbot, this would be a good addition as to back up the non-partisan claims
• Unrelated article, classified as start-class

Article 2: Vote.org

Article Evaluation:

• At the outset, Wikipedia notifies that the major contributor to the article has close connections with its subject matter, compromising Wikipedia’s content policies on neutrality
• Article is rated as Stub-Class
• Room for improvement can include: elaborating on the use of Vote.org in the 2020 election cycle. Specifically, the article references how Vote.org contributed to the record-breaking number of voters in the cycle, and what processes the site aided in creating this record- “ included a combination of digital and offline tools, including: a "Print and Mail" program sending voter forms to people without printers, terrestrial radio ads, digital partnerships with influencers, informational billboards, texts combatting disinformation, Spanish translation of existing voter mobilization tools, a WhatsApp bot, and deployment of food trucks to encourage voters to stay in line as they waited to vote”- however, this reference lacks detail as to what and where these contributions came from. Along with this, the article cites Vote.org’s website as proof of this impact, however this compromises Wikipedia’s policies on content neutrality. If such a claim is to be made, then other sources must back it up

Article 3: California Report Card

Article Evaluation:

• This article is unrated, and has only been edited once by the original author.

• The article would be significantly improved by an expansion on how Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom exactly influenced and developed the CRC as an application, given how limited the article's elaboration on what impacts Newsom and his team had on the actual process of making the CRC. This would be a relatively simple fix, as the CIRTIS program and Prof. Ken Goldberg are still employed at UC Berkeley and directly developed the CRC themselves. Though a primary source, his insight could elaborate on certain subjective areas of the article in terms of being biased towards Newsom.
• A number of the links and citations provided in the article are invalid: Reference #3, linked to https://modernluxurymedia.com/ no longer directs the reader to the article, but the homepage of Modern Luxury Media. Reference #4, linked to http://opinion.berkeley.edu/, brings the reader to a 503 Service Unavailable page. Reference #5, linked to https://oldmoscowmugs.com/, brings the reader to an unrelated Shopify page. These links need to be updated to comply with Wikipedia citation standards.

Vote.org Article Selection

In terms of looking for where the Vote.org article can be improved, I intend to greatly expand on the information provided as to Vote.org's CEO change in April 2020. As it stands currently, the article references this change in a single sentence, citing a Vox article on this subject. I plan to expand this section's information on why Debra Cleaver was removed, as the article leaves out much of referenced information on why this switch occurred. I also plan to expand the information provided on the current CEO, Andrea Hailey, in terms of her background with the organization and what work she has done since becoming CEO. Particularly, I want to focus on elaborating a few key pieces of information left out of the current article: why exactly Debra Cleaver was removed by the board, how this affected the donors and benefactors of Vote.org as well as their response in the 2020 election, and why Andrea Hailey was chosen to replace her and her respective background in civic technology. Listed here are a number of sources which elaborate on this information.

Linked here is my contribution to the article's talk page: Talk:Vote.org.

Draft Contributions to Vote.org Article

Beginning in the summer of 2019, an internal battle took place between the Vote.org board and then CEO and founder Debra Cleaver, after a cited “difference in opinion” based in the targeting of low-propensity voters and research versus already-likely voters. Cleaver, who founded the company in 2008 as Long-Distance Voter, had a reported “cult of personality” among Silicon Valley executives- the main brunt of Vote.org’s donors- based on her previous work in receiving a funding grant from the Knight Foundation. As reported by Vox, her harsh style of leadership and mismanagement of resources led to her termination and subsequent replacement with now-CEO Andrea Hailey. Hailey, an Indianapolis native who founded the Civic Engagement Fund and the Town Hall Project as well as a Pollie Award recipient, began her work with Vote.org in 2010. Her status as CEO of the board was decided based on her previous experience in developing online media and fundraising campaigns with the Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial in 2007.

The subsequent fallout of the CEO change had detrimental effects to the ability for Vote.org to operate in the 2020 election cycle. A lack of transparency from the board on why Cleaver was removed as well as her personal campaigning among her Silicon Valley allies caused a group of donors claiming 60% of Vote.org’s funding to threaten withdrawal. This contentious mishap resulted in a reported $4 million loss in funding between 2019 and 2020, mainly due to the loss of partnerships with ViacomCBS, the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, and the Voter Participation Center. The lack of support of Vote.org by Silicon Valley donors and instances of mismanagement regarding advertisement in 2020 caused another subsequent lost of $1 million in Vote.org’s total revenue, however this situation has been lightened by Hailey’s securement of partnerships with the NAACP Youth and College Division, the Transformative Justice Coalition, the Black Church Action Fund, GLSEN, and wikiHow- Cleaver has now since founded VoteAmerica, a vote mobilization project which created an online portal for unlikely voters to register absentee and mail-in ballots. In 2021, VoteAmerica filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia over voter ID laws.

In June of 2020, Vote.org worked to file a lawsuit against the state of Maine with the Alliance of Retired Americans and American Civil Liberties Union of Maine in order to flag their out-of-date voting system. Specifically, the suit cooperated with two other citizens to advocate for an extension of the mail-in ballot deadlines, the end of the practice of mail-in ballot rejections for “technical defects”, to prepay the postage of these ballots for all voters, and develop online voting systems for constituents. Specifically, Hailey has been commented by PopSugar as supporting this Maine lawsuit for the state’s lowering voter turnout- in 2020, Main had the largest drop-off of voter registration since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In September of 2020, Superior Court judge William Stokes rejected the lawsuit, citing that the suit took place too close to the actual election and any changes to ballot deadlines would be to the detriment of the state’s electoral process and cause disruptions to results. The Alliance of Retired Americans now seek to file an appeal to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court.

Despite conflicts over their change in CEO and loss of donor support, Vote.org's development of numerous new digital and offline tools in 2020 yielded a number of important milestones for their organization. This included registering 34 million new voters, partnering with over 1,000 companies to allow time off work on Election Day, and feeding 40,500 voters by supplying food trucks to long voter lines. Vote.org’s newest partnerships with tech companies like Propel, developer of the Fresh EBT app, allowed for 60,000 low-income participants of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to register to vote before the 2020 election.  This program expanded Vote.org’s donor-base and cooperation with “Schusterman Family Foundation, Blue Meridian Partners, Flourish Ventures, Google.org, Flu Lab, Wend Collective, Blue Haven Initiative and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Other backers included a roster of celebrities and political figures, like Stacey Abrams, Andrew Yang, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ariana Grande and Camilla Luddington.”

In 2021, Vote.org advocated for passing the For the People Act, a U.S. bill which expands automatic and same-day voter registration, voter access mail-in and online ballot infrastructure, and new limits on campaign spending. Specifically, Vote.org cooperated with Stacy Abrams and Michelle Obama's Fair Fight Action and When We All Vote campaigns targeting Georgia voter ID laws. Vote.org helped manage the drafting of a letter to Congress with the Declaration for American Democracy and 90 other corporations urging the passing of the For the People Act and the removal of Georgia ID laws. On March 3rd, 2021, the United States House of Representatives approved HR-1 with a 220-210 vote- however, on June 22, the Senate voted 50-50 to continue debate on the bill, lacking the simple majority for HR-1 to proceed to a vote.

Response to Peer Review

In response to the peer review by Amarjb, I commend the user on their insight in regards to the Vote.org article and in what ways it can be improved. A number of their critiques to the overall article are specifically addressed in my draft revision, giving validation to what inputs I plan to include. One example of this comes from how the user requested I provide more elaboration on how the CEO change for Vote.org impacted their business. I noticed this same weakness upon my first reading on the article, and as such my draft provides extensive context to what caused the CEO switch. However, Amarjb pointed out how my draft lacks clarity on this point, specifically in terms of of how the total levels of funding changed for Vote.org versus mentioning specific investors who dropped the organization. Unfortunately, I have not found enough valid sources with concrete numbers on Vote.org's profit losses, but I do plan to continue my research for these details. Another one of Amarjb's critiques comments on the use of skewed/bias news networks as sources for the article. When I originally found the Vote.org page, many citations went against Wikipedia's guidelines, not just for being biased but by using the Vote.org website itself as a source. However, objective information on Vote.org is hard to come by, so some snippets of bias sources have been left in order to pull specific details on the organization (versus amplifying the skewed perspective of the source). In response to Maddydowling27's peer review, I once again thank the user for taking the time to read the article and provide me with insight as to how I can improve my writing. One specific point the user brings up is how the article lacks much information on Vote.org's involvement with the For the People Act and in resisting voter ID laws in Georgia. In my draft contributions, I address this exact issue and wrote about how Vote.org sponsored cooperation between celebrities and other organizations invested in the bill. However, I can further elaborate on this topic by including more of the current work of Vote.org in terms of its lobbying wing.