Every year, over 800,000 people become naturalized citizens in the United States — many are in battleground states. We believe the future of our democracy depends on finding, understanding, and effectively engaging them.
Find and Engage New Voters
Our goal is to advance democracy by effectively reaching immigrant voters
American voters are changing demographically. Our campaigns must recognize and reflect those changes.
According to the US census report published in 2021, the United States is not only browner, it is a country of immigrants who are naturalized citizens. On average 860,000 new citizens/eligible voters are sworn in every year in the United States.
Since 2000, the size of the immigrant electorate has nearly doubled to 23.2 million – exponential growth from just 6.2 percent in the 2000 presidential election.
Our mission is to provide tools and research to help campaigns and organizations effectively reach immigrant voters across the United States. We also aim to empower progressive organizers by creating a virtual hub for developing tools and gathering best practices.
We offer mapping tools and analysis to refine your messaging and field organizing
By combining 2020 US Census data with 2020 election data, the Vital Voters offers information and analysis that help clients refine their messaging and field organizing. We can help you reach first-time or irregular voters with language- and culturally-appropriate plans.
We are working on going further, to integrate data about individual voters based on where they live and how often they vote. We are also planning to include breakdowns by age, to better find younger voters.
We can then help campaigns and voter registration groups zero in on where irregular and newly registered voters are concentrated, as well as where voter engagement levels are lower or higher.
Armed with this information, campaigns can better target these voters with language- and culturally-appropriate materials and volunteers.
A New Era of Voter Engagement
We gather data and develop tools for campaigns and advocacy organizations to engage immigrant voters
The electorate is changing
Since 2000, the size of the immigrant electorate has nearly doubled to 23.2 million – exponential growth from just 6.2 percent in the 2000 presidential election.
We are changing outreach
We believe that most campaigns and advocacy groups are operating their campaigns as if it is 2000. The strategic focus must be on immigrant voters that are growing exponentially.
Making inroads in every state
Beyond Texas and Florida, all key battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio — have sizable eligible immigrant voters.
Providing tools to reach immigrant voters
Our mission is to provide tools to help campaigns and organizations effectively reach immigrant voters across the United States.
We help campaigns and organizations better understand and engage immigrant voters
We have developed a detailed interactive map of immigrant voters in battleground states. This tool will help campaigns and organizations better understand and engage immigrant voters.
We passionately believe in American democracy. We also recognize how quickly America is changing demographically. We have an opportunity to reach immigrant voters or new citizens, breaking traditional barriers as we go forward.
Interactive Map and Strategic Analysis
We create interactive maps layered with information about immigrant voters in a particular district or state. Along with the map, we offer an analysis of immigrant voters in a particular voting district to help campaigns and organizations develop a strategy.
Training
We support your staff with ongoing training on the tools that we create and plans that we develop with you.
Consulting
We work with campaigns and organizations to help develop field and outreach plans focused on immigrant voters.
Our team is comprised of genuinely gifted minds
Annabel is a documentary filmmaker, a political consultant, and an activist known for her innovative projects. Her passion is to promote democracy and social change through conversation and storytelling. To do this, she’s experimented with in-person gatherings, community organizing, and media projects.
She has made numerous TV and radio appearances and has been invited to speak throughout the U.S. and also in Europe and Asia. Her writings have been published by cnn.com and the Washington Post.
She’s co-directed and co-produced:
9500 Liberty, a critically acclaimed documentary project about the culture war over immigration:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/9500-liberty
www.youtube.com/9500liberty
www.9500liberty.com
Story of America, a documentary project exploring America’s division and documenting Rev William Barber’s Moral Monday movement in North Carolina:
www.youtube.com/storyofamerica
www.storyofamericafilm.com (in development as a feature film and a podcast)
In addition, she’s helped create hundreds of short educational and advocacy videos on social media about political issues. She helped launch act.tv’s live-streaming program.
She founded the Coffee Party, a grassroots organization promoting civil dialogue and democratic reforms, in response to the Tea Party in 2010. She also launched a number of popular online communities since then: The Talk on Main Street, Bridge the Divide, America Welcomes Refugees, Libyans and Americans United for Peace and Friendship, and Facing Humanity.
Although her personal and professional experiences have been various, she approaches all her projects as a tenacious problem-solver. Currently, she’s obsessed with trying to figure out how organizations and campaigns can improve voter outreach to naturalized citizens/immigrant voters. To that end, she’s leading a data-based consultancy, Immigrant Voter Project, focused on advancing that goal.
She was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to Houston, TX when she was nine years old with her family. She grew up working at a truck diner owned by her parents.
She began her career as a student of philosophy at Boston University; did graduate work in political theory at the University of Oxford; learned about business strategy and planning in New York, and produced and directed theater and developed indie films in Los Angeles.
Karsten has more than 20 years of expertise in GIS and project management. His background is in Geography and Soil Science and he holds a Diploma from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and a Master’s Degree from UC Berkeley. In 2007 he founded Terra GIS Ltd, a GIS consulting company based in Seattle, WA and also in Schriesheim (near Heidelberg), Germany. Karsten has been the principal GIS expert to support teams of researchers in Nine African countries for the Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP). He has extensive experience in teaching custom GIS workshops in multiple languages (English, German, French and Spanish) in a wide variety of cultural settings and proficiency levels.
Jack is a professional organizer and campaign manager, and has been since 2015. He began his career working on the Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign, beginning on the Ballot Access Team and ultimately earning the title of Regional Field Director. Since that time he has managed campaigns on every level- including Congressional, District Attorneys, City Council, House of Delegates, Judicial (both Civil Court and Surrogate Court), Public Advocate, State Representative, Board of Supervisors and more. The core principle that guides his work is the belief that effective, targeted direct voter contact and a structured field plan is the key to success in any campaign.
Marjorie Roswell is a freelance software developer with experience in a variety of web development frameworks. She specializes in mapping and interactive data visualization, including legislative scorecards, endorsement maps, and congressional vote maps. She received a degree from Connecticut College. She is cofounder of the Immigrant Voter Project.
Gabriel, a Chicago native, is an experienced grassroots Democratic campaign field organizer and native Spanish speaker. He is dedicated to building national Democratic coalitions and championing people-powered movement.
A proud Chicago native and Democrat campaign strategist, I am a grassroots organizer and trilingual speaker (Spanish, Portuguese) dedicated to building multilateral Democratic coalitions nationwide.
I champion a people-powered movement to strengthen community morale.