Thread by @beyond_process

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the 1st day the @NotPoliticians Prop 2 petition volunteers collected signatures to end gerrymandering in Michigan. A thread:

@KTeaFahey was the first Michigander to sign, right after we received "as to form" approval from the state.
1/12

That 1st day, just our Holland team collected over 1,000 signatures in 7 hours. 464 was the daily goal for all Kent, Ottawa, Muskegon & Allegan counties. West Michigan used to be famously conservative, and the ballot initiative was wildly popular there. (attn:@RepHuizenga)
2/12

Petition circulation program planning really started in May. I used voter data & a lifetime of experience as a campaign nerd (hi, #electiontwitter) in my home state to produce regional goals. I built a dashboard & spec'ed out a database Jack Jennings, an Ann Arborite, coded.
3/12

The database was instrumental for four reasons: informed decision-making at the top, motivating volunteers at all levels with contests & games, developing demonstrable best practices, and showcasing proof of concept to funders & media prior to getting on the ballot.
4/12

Around my birthday (6/13) that year, I traveled with Katie in the Upper Peninsula for some town halls to show her how to make money pitches to crowds. Jack could meet with me in Ann Arbor for only 1 day. So I took this motorcycle ride & made it in 7¾ hours (don't do this).
5/12

I remember going to bed early so I could take off early. Katie & a couple of other friends & I were all staying in a cabin. I would learn about the time we handed in our signatures in December that Katie had left a note in my workbook while I was sleeping. Spoiler: I lived.
6/12

While I do have some experience as an IT project manager and working on campaign data, Jack Jennings is an intuitive coding god, and after one meeting, he produced a deployable, working product that we barely ever tweaked.
7/12

Side note: Jack's partner Jessica Letaw is an awesome housing activist in Ann Arbor. If you're around there, be sure to join her Facebook group (facebook.com/groups/a2yimby).

If you're not, follow the #a2council tag for fun housing takes from Twitter users who mostly are.
8/12

Anyway, this is the same image as the 2nd tweet in this thread. It shows, essentially, our average circulators. Between their meticulousness and Jack's amazing product, our database compliance was >99.9%. If a signature was on paper, it was in the database, and vice versa.
9/12

Look at their faces, look at those fat stacks of paper. That is unadulterated civic pride. It is Goddamn glorious. That is democracy. That is a record getting set, and it happened in the hometown of Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince.
10/12

I put up giant post-it notes in Katie's house. They're my favorite Easter egg in the background of the documentary @slaythedragon. Here's a close-up of the 1 with petiton circulation facts. These facts & Katie are why the Prop 2 campaign was the best funded in MI in 2018.
11/12

When you mention these stats about a generic petition, it could be one declaring that puppies are cute, to a professional who understands them, they won't believe you without proof. They're numbers you literally cannot buy with any amount of money. That campaign was magic.
12/12