[ZINE] Analog Outreach

How MyVote Project used zines to share digital election resources

Nov 05, 2024

Great art is a great story. This week, we’re speaking with Madeline Haines, Acting Co-Director of MyVote Project. MyVote Project is dedicated to helping voters better understand local issues with simple online tools and no-frill breakdowns.

The group launched a zine campaign this year to educate voters with tangible, foldable information. Haines offered great insight into how MyVote Project coordinated zine distribution across three states, and how an organization like this is structured. Click on the images to visit the MyVote Project website, and make sure to VOTE TODAY! You’re allowed to vote on company time if you need to! - Ed

Who are you and what is the MyVote Project?

The MyVote project was founded by Gita Stulberg and Sari Kaufman following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting. Sari survived that as a sophomore in high school and got involved with March for Our Lives, which is where she met Gita. She mostly focused on voter registration and noticed a lot of gray spaces when it came to voter education, where people didn't know how to research their local candidates.

So Sari and Gita were talking about it, and they came up with this idea where you plug in your address and get basic information that helps you fill your ballot all the way down: news articles, the candidate's website, and social media.

I joined in 2020. The pandemic was happening and I was stuck at home. I lived in La Mesa, which became the epicenter of our BLM protests because we had an incident at the La Mesa Boulevard trolley station. I lived right by Downtown, but since I was 16 my parents wouldn’t let me go. I was frustrated, and trying to find a way to act even though I couldn’t vote and didn’t have the autonomy that an adult did.

I found MyVote on a random Slack channel for an organization I can't even remember now. My now-good friend, Mira, posted an interest form on the channel, and I filled it out.

I went into social media and graphic design, so I ran the socials for about three years. Then last year we had a fellowship program that Gita put me up for, where I hosted a community conversation around the rising cost of living in San Diego. Because, I don't know if you've heard, we’re now the most expensive city in the entire country. As of last year, we beat out San Francisco, New York, L.A., everything.

This year, Gita introduced the zine idea simply because she was seeing so many around her local libraries or bookstores. MyVote is all about the democratization of information, and that really ties in with zines. It's self-published. It's free or at an accessible price point.

We wanted to involve volunteers with the organizations that distribute those things. Bookstores, record shops, and local coffee shops, with a focus on engaging the community, and finding an easy way to distribute information about the things you care about.

What is the structure of the MyVote project and what does the day-to-day look like for the organization? Because looking online, it seems like a pretty expansive group.

It really is volunteer-based and focused on youth engagement. We have different teams based on communications, outreach, website design, and policy, and then volunteers go from there.

We also have special projects like the fellowship and the zine project and the podcast. But it always goes back to communications, outreach, digital, and field outreach. DOFO is the little acronym.

Today the structure looks a little different because Sari is off in law school. And Gita is currently working on the Harris campaign. She stepped away and handed the reins over to me and Katie [Barber, Acting Co-Director], because if you're working on a nonpartisan organization, you can't be working on a campaign.

Right now, I'm focusing on DOFO, social media, and the zine program. Katie is focusing on the communications side of things, including the podcast and website stuff.

Thank you for the insight because I know that, regardless of the coming election’s outcome, people are going to feel mobilized. And I think, no matter what happens, the social angst that permeates, I don't think that goes away.

Oh, God, no, it's a lot easier to get people activated during the election. But regardless of who wins, like my political beliefs are not that of MyVote project. And that goes for any of our, volunteers or staff members. But if Trump won, there's bound to be a shit ton of movement immediately.

If Harris wins, I'm not positive if we'll see that, but I definitely see a lot of movement on the left pushing her to be more progressive, especially with everything going on in Palestine at the moment.

Yeah. I mean that's certainly the biggest issue of contention on the left. But I think that, for a lot of people, myself included, January 6th is a pretty clear memory. I don't know if there's ever going to be an election where that happens again— that'd be the dream. But I don't know if I’ll ever live through another election and not think about it.

Now, I'd love to get into the zine element here. You mentioned that it started from a similar philosophy that information should be accessible when it comes to elections. What is the zine campaign in the MyVote Project?

Yeah, it started with Gita, just talking to her friends. Some of them were librarians who were starting up zine archives in their local branches, and she was thinking about accessibility and creation and, most importantly, on-the-ground work.

Before Covid, political campaigns were bad at doing on-the-ground outreach. And then after Covid, everybody forgot what little they knew. So for people my age (I'm 20) we've never had that experience. I started volunteering and organizing online when I was 16. I didn't have the option of being in person. We were specifically talking about wanting to expand that skill set among people my age, who were interested in politics and voter education. We decided to start the zine program from that discussion.

We've got three zines in different states. There's one in California, there's one in New York, and there’s one in Texas. We're focused on engaging volunteers with what they're interested in.

The New York zine is on climate change. The Texas zine is about how state supreme courts are partisan elections in Texas. And the California zine is on why propositions are worded so confusingly. We wanted to 1) engage volunteers with what they're interested in, 2) engage them with their communities and 3) engage them with their creativity.

You mentioned that you’ve produced three zines. How many copies have been printed?

I don't even have an accurate number necessarily, because, as far as California, it's been me and my friend Anna up in L.A. printing them out continuously. I've just been binge-watching Sex and the City, and folding them. I do not have a count for the California zine and the same goes for Texas and New York. We've got a bunch of different volunteers going to the coffee shops and folding and likely binge-watching some shows that came out when they were children.

When it comes to the design element, who is doing the actual designing, and is that a collaborative process?

Oh, yeah. Really it's the volunteers' choice on how it looks. I might make a few grammatical changes. But it's their project. The only requirement is that the information is correct and that the logo is on the back with the QR code. And that Incite, one of our funders, has their logo on there too.

Are they using Canva to make them?

Yeah, we made them all on Canva. That's where I made all the graphics when I ran socials. It’s the program that I'm most familiar with.

I made stencils for everybody, so we had a foldable version and a digital readable version. Folks just went from there and made whatever they wanted. I did encourage our volunteers to make the zines physically if they wanted to, but Canva turned out to be more feasible.

But really, it's about having our volunteers learn how to navigate these spaces and create their own media that they can share with the general public. And they've been doing a great job. And zines been around since the pamphlet has been around, essentially. They've been around in name since the 70s when a bunch of sci-fi geeks started sharing them. It’s really about trying to share information with as many people as possible while engaging with your communities. ⬤

Portions of this transcript have been edited for clarity.

Learn more about MyVote Project by visiting their website.

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