Executive Summary
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a non-profit political organization with over 200 chapters and over 100,000 members spread out all over the country. As an organization that is dedicated to democratic principles and practices, they need an election platform that supports their need for frequent, varied elections conducted online.
This is why the DSA and its chapters have used OpaVote almost exclusively for the past eight years. With OpaVote, they are able to operate their organization under the same democratic principles they fight for everywhere else.
Background
The DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States. The DSA’s more than 100,000 members and its local chapters, in every state in the union and the District of Columbia, fight for reforms that empower working people. They aspire to a democratic economy and society that meets human needs.
Ben Davis is on the nominating committee for DSA’s Los Angeles chapter (DSA-LA), a group chosen by DSA-LA to oversee internal elections. He spoke with us on DSA’s use of OpaVote.
The Challenge: Large Volume and Variety of Elections
As an organization dedicated to democratic principles and practices, the DSA wants to make decisions in a way that matches its ideals. Individual committees, chapters, and the DSA as a whole need to make decisions on issues like policies, governance, and endorsements. This requires conducting frequent elections, often at large scale, and using a variety of strategies.
Why OpaVote
Support for different types of elections
Broadly speaking, the DSA is moving more toward Scottish STV, but different types of decisions are best served by different types of voting systems.
For example, when choosing delegates for the national convention, it is vital that the results are proportional to the preferences of the members. For that, Scottish STV is the preferred choice. However, if a leadership group is trying to find consensus among a large number of options, using Borda count can more clearly identify the consensus. In addition, candidate endorsements are usually a simple yes, no, or abstain, with a two-thirds majority required to pass.
OpaVote supports these methods and more so the DSA can choose the strategy that best embodies their democratic principles for each decision.
Easy to use
OpaVote makes conducting elections and voting very easy. Members receive ballots via email, cast their votes on the OpaVote website, and OpaVote tabulates results automatically.
Inexpensive
As a nonprofit political organization, the DSA has limited financial resources. Funding comes almost exclusively from annual member dues of five to ten dollars per person. The national budget is approximately $5 million, very small for an organization with over 100,000 members. Every dollar spent on an election platform is a dollar that is not available to support their other activities.
These constraints, combined with the need to make as many decisions as possible democratically, make it extremely important for DSA and its chapters to conduct their elections inexpensively.
Conclusion
Thanks to OpaVote, the DSA and DSA chapters are able to conduct a large number and large variety of elections. They can make core decisions about leadership, policy, and action at the national, chapter, and branch level through the democratic means that match their ideals. OpaVote is an essential part of how the DSA fights for democratic rule in the US and how they govern themselves by the will of their members in the digital age.