023: Tiffany & Maria
In this episode, we’re joined by Maria Yuan, Founder of IssueVoter, to discuss how to be more civically engaged and holding our elected officials accountable. With a new Congress being sworn in on January 3rd, 2021, this is a great time to talk about civic engagement, staying informed about what Congress is doing, and how to keep your representatives accountable.
We discussed:
How Maria became passionate about civic engagement
Asian American voter turnout
Why she started IssueVoter to increase trust in the system
IssueVoter’s impact
What issues Maria thinks are important for 2021
How to become more civically engaged in 30 seconds
IssueVoter’s future plans
Show notes:
https://edlabor.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2021-01-26%20Raise%20the%20Wage%20Act%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
CNN Heroes: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=424216815416405
About Maria Yuan
Maria Yuan is the Founder of IssueVoter, a non-partisan platform that offers everyone a voice in our democracy by making civic engagement accessible, impactful, & efficient. IssueVoter is the only site that offers a 100% personalized representative scorecard.
Maria’s political experience includes introducing and passing a bill as a constituent, working in a State Representative’s office, and managing and winning one of the most targeted races in Iowa – an open seat in a swing district.
Maria earned degrees from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania and The University of Texas at Austin. Maria’s writing has appeared in Real Clear Politics, Huffington Post, and The Hill, and she has spoken at conferences, including SXSW and The Social Innovation Summit, companies, and universities across the U.S.
Follow IssueVoter
Website: https://issuevoter.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/issuevoter/
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Transcript
Tiffany Yu: Hi everyone. And you're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu, the podcast. This is your host, Tiffany Yu. If you are new to the Tiffany & Yu podcast, this is a podcast where I'm chatting with friends who are using their voices and platforms to cultivate creativity, change and compassion. Today I have with me, Maria Yuan. Hi, Maria!
Maria Yuan: Hi, thanks for having me.
Tiffany Yu: Maria is the founder of IssueVoter. And before we get there, I always like to talk about how I know my guests. We met through an incredible community for women called Dreamers & Doers, but I can't remember the year.
Maria Yuan: I think we met in 2017 in San Francisco when I was in town because I was participating in an accelerator program there for tech nonprofits, and we met up at a restaurant and I can't remember what restaurant it was, but I think it was one you actually chose with some other people from the group. And then after that, I think it was maybe later that week, you and some of those people attended one of our first big pitches.
Tiffany Yu: I remember, and I still have my IssueVoter swag. I'm going to have Maria talk a little bit more about what IssueVoter is, but for season two, I ended up having a form where I had potential guests fill in, why is it so important to be talking about this topic? I just wanted to read what she wrote. She wrote, "with a new Congress being sworn in on January 3rd, 2021 is a great time to talk about civic engagement, staying informed about what Congress is doing, and how to keep your representatives accountable." Now, with the transition in leadership, I'm excited to have this conversation and better understand how can we hold this new administration accountable. Let's rewind a little bit. I'd love to hear about what your origin story was about becoming interested in politics and civic engagement in the first place.
Maria Yuan: Yeah, definitely. And this is one of those things that I have definitely become more aware of in hindsight, they say 20-20 hindsight. So I grew up with parents who always voted. My dad fled communist China. And even from a young age, I had a realization that there are people living in countries where they don't even have the right to vote. And I still remember mock voting in second grade. And so that was my experience at seven years old feeling included and involved and powerful, and it was fun. And so those really early experiences definitely helped instill this value of civic duty in my habits. But then fast forward a bit and I was in college and I was part of a student government group that actually got to introduce and pass a bill. And so seeing that everyday constituents can actually make a difference was another piece of that puzzle. The next piece was I interned for a rep where I saw that every constituent contact is tracked, but so few people actually reach out. So I still remember one of the busiest days in the office. We got 19 phone calls on a specific bill. And out of a district representing thousands and thousands of people, 19 is nothing. And so that was really striking to me. And then, fast forward a little more, and I was working in Iowa on a state Senate campaign right before one of the presidential elections. And, people know that Iowa gets a lot of attention during election season. And I realized that in Iowa, just like everywhere else, people are super engaged during election season, but we don't necessarily know what's happening between elections when the real work that's affecting our lives is getting done. And the analogy, which I'm sure you've probably heard me say before, is that you would never pay and promote an employee without seeing any of their work. Yet we continue to reelect our reps without truly knowing if they're representing us and seeing their work between elections.
Tiffany Yu: I love this story of intergenerationally, how it was instilled in you that voting was fun, even starting in second grade. As Asian-Americans, we have historically had the lowest voter turnout. And so I'm curious if you were following anything of what happened in this latest election. Why do you think it's such low voter turnout here in the U.S. And do you think that that's starting to change as we become a more powerful and fast-growing voting block?
Maria Yuan: I'll be honest. I haven't done the studies to really understand the why. I think anecdotally I've heard things about, when people are immigrants, they're not necessarily, solely focused on all of the acts of citizenship. They're really more focused on their own families or communities and jobs and really the day-to-day life of adjusting to a new country. I've heard, there's can be language barriers, that's one factor. There's another factor, which is, a little different from talking about representative government, which is reflective government. So not necessarily even seeing people that look like you in office. So I think there's a lot of different factors as to why, but I definitely see that it's growing, and more and more organizations are doing a better job at reaching out to Asian Americans. And I hope that as it becomes a generational thing, that it will be the younger generation also that is improved in their voter turnout.
Tiffany Yu: I live here in California as well. So in a way I almost know which way we're going to swing. I love the way that they have made getting that sticker popularized over social media. So in a way, our generation as digital natives are becoming more excited and especially in this past election. I'd love for you to chat about what exactly IssueVoter is and what inspired you to create it because there are so many different ways to become civically engaged.
Maria Yuan: Yup. Definitely. So the light bulb moment really was Iowa and it was also a realization that there is this separation between politics and policy. So politics is all the stuff that we see around elections, and candidates and parties, the Democrats, and the Republicans and the third parties. But policy is the sometimes slow, sometimes not so exciting work that happens that actually can create the sustainable systemic changes that we want to see in the world. That was a moment where I just realized that it was so inaccessible and it was so hard for everyday Americans to engage in the policy-making process. And some entrepreneurs are like this, but not many from what I can tell. I actually watched the civic tech space for almost 10 years before starting IssueVoter. And the other thing with entrepreneurship as you know is timing. So when I had the idea for IssueVoter, the data wasn't even there. It wouldn't have actually been doable in the way that I was envisioning a platform for people to be able to easily understand what's going on and easily understand what their reps are doing. So that was like the general concept. And then in terms of looking at the civic tech space, I saw a lot of things out there that take a Silicon Valley approach, which ultimately end up being polls to sell your data, and they don't really have any impact on actual policymaking. And then on the other side, I saw a lot of websites that were great resources but could be kind of dense, like not things that most people would want to engage with and not things that you could even engage with unless you already knew what you were looking for. That's what I saw in terms of the space. And so the gap and what I wanted to create was just something that was really easy and accessible. And so with IssueVoter, what happens is individuals, all they have to know is their address and what issues they care about. And I'll say to people, even if you don't think you're a political, or even if you've never voted, we all care about something. And whether we like it or not, politics does affect those things. And so people choose issues they care about and then get alerts before Congress is about to vote on a bill related to that issue. We translate the bill into layman's terms with points from both sides. And then that individual can send their opinion directly to the staffer in charge of constituent contact. And I would say that that distinction is also very important because there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of things out there about where you can make your voice heard. And I always like to stress, to make your voice heard in a very effective way when it comes to federal policymaking, it's really your reps, your rep's offices that need to hear that voice. So things like protesting, things like signing petitions, I wouldn't necessarily tell someone not to do those things, but I will say, those are not the things that are going to have as much impact in that context. And then we show people the percentage of time their reps are voting how they would want him or her to vote. And so I can look at my scorecard at any time and see my rep is representing me, 10% of the time or 80% of the time. And I think that that's really important also because a lot of the action that we see and maybe already taking can sometimes feel like it's going into this black hole. Like, you send your opinion and you don't necessarily hear what happens after. So I do think that feedback is important and that's really what helps with the accountability piece of what we're doing. And by increasing accountability, by increasing knowledge, and knowing who your rep is, I think we're also helping to increase trust in the system because I think that's recent. In recent weeks, what we've seen a lot is there's so many people out there that just don't have trust in government or don't trust the system. And part of that is because people don't necessarily understand it and part of it is because of misinformation.
Tiffany Yu: I love what you talked about in terms of the difference between policy and politics. And if you really want to enact systemic change, it does need to be at the policy level. And in my work specifically, I've been thinking a lot about how ableism is systemic. And how so much of policies and procedures that were put in place decades ago are actually holding us back from becoming more economically empowered. We're going to take a quick break here, but when we come back, we'll continue talking with Maria about civic engagement and IssueVoter.
Maria Yuan: Thanks.
[break]
Tiffany Yu: And we're back from the break here. We're chatting with Maria Yuan, who is the founder of IssueVoter. Before the break, we were chatting about her journey into civic engagement and what led her to start IssueVoter. I would love to hear about IssueVoter's impact to date.
Maria Yuan: Definitely. So we are a small nonprofit and almost purely through word of mouth. We do now have individuals using IssueVoter and benefiting from it in all 435 congressional districts. And we have sent now over 3 million alerts to individuals and opinions back to Congress, which is really exciting. And so those in the nonprofit sector really are what we would call indicators or outputs. When we think about our true impact, we really want to think about how are we actually changing people's habits. Are we doing things like motivating people to vote in the first place, helping people learn about new things? So what we can tell so far is that when we survey our people using IssueVoter, we have found that 94% have said they've learned about new issues, 59% said IssueVoter is what motivated them to register to vote or attend a town hall meeting or volunteer for an issue they care about, 47% have been exposed to new viewpoints. So I've had people tell me, before IssueVoter, I didn't even know that there could be another side to this issue. So that's really exciting, especially in the context of politics becoming more and more polarized. And 30% of people said that IssueVoter is what motivated them to vote in the first place. So in other words, they wouldn't have voted without it. So taking all of that data, that's how we like to think about impact. And the ultimate vision and impact is to have a more representative Congress. And so we can measure that over time and start to see if Congress is becoming more representative of people using IssueVoter based on the scorecards that we're providing. And I think that something that is exciting but also challenging about IssueVoter is, it is definitely something that's the long game. It is almost this analogy of the tortoise and the hare. And, we're like the tortoise, we're there in the race and we're going to be there all the time, every year, because legislation is happening all the time and it happens at this very steady pace. The hare is things like these spikey moments that get a lot of attention, which there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I think what we want to do is we want to create an easy way for people to sustain that energy when that moment feels like it's died down and people move on to the next thing.
Tiffany Yu: I love the tortoise. Legislation is always going to be there. Just thinking ahead to what 2021 is going to look like with this new Congress, what are some issues that you think are going to be really hot button items that people should be more aware of?
Maria Yuan: I think one of the most important issues for our country to be aware of relates to election laws. But I don't know that it's going to be the issue that's getting the most news coverage. So on the news, right now we're already seeing a lot of talk about immigration policy, we're already seeing a lot of talk about things like COVID relief, and so those are what, at least what I've seen making the headlines. And so there's definitely going to be movement on policy related to those issue areas. And pretty much every kind of advocacy group or issue-oriented group is going to be using this session of Congress to really push their issue forward. But I think that one issue that's really important for the health of our democracy and system going forward is how our elections are run, how people can register to vote, the influence of money in politics, all of those issues. And so there is a bill and it's H.R.1. It's called the For the People Act that has been introduced and will be moving through Congress. So it will be interesting to see what happens in the Senate and will also be interesting to see what happens in the States because something that is really interesting about the U.S. is this debate between federal versus state law and who really has jurisdiction and where things should be decided. And in the U.S. our election laws are primarily state laws. So that's why every single state seems to have a different process for registering, different rules for voting, some states you need an ID, some states you don't need an ID, some states you can pre-register when you're 16 or 17, some states you can't do that. I mean, it's all over the place. Some do mail ballots, some don't do mail ballots. I mean, it's chaotic almost. And so H.R.1 is an attempt at the federal level to make voting a lot easier and make access to voting a lot easier. And I think that's a non-partisan issue. IssueVoter is a nonpartisan website and my view is there are just certain things in the world that are non-partisan. We shouldn't even be having this debate or feel afraid to say things because wanting everyone to have a voice and wanting everyone to vote is non-partisan. Although, sometimes it, unfortunately, feels like it's not.
Tiffany Yu: Well, one of the current hot button issues came from the federal level, but it's trickling down through the state and city level is all about vaccine prioritization right now. So I've been, I've been paying very close attention to that. It's so easy to have an opinion. And I think that's why we've seen our country become as politically polarized as it's become over the last couple of years. How do you ensure that as you are putting these bills into layman's terms that you're staying as non-partisan as possible?
Maria Yuan: So when we summarize the bill, we really aim to just summarize what it will do. So a lot of that does take the actual text from the bill and just breaks it down into something that is a summary. Then when we have the points from both sides, those are opinion statements. And so to make a distinction between pros and cons, the opinion supporting the bill doesn't necessarily mean it's a pro and the opinions opposing the bill doesn't necessarily mean it's a con because whether or not something's a pro or con, also depends on your view. You might read an opinion for a bill and you might think, Oh, actually I think that's a bad thing. So it just depends on where you stand as well. I think that one of the challenging things that we have run into just recently. It wasn't the case when IssueVoter launched, which was the day after the 2016 election. But recently we have seen that sometimes for certain bills, there's not even really well-stated or strong opinions on one of the sides. And I don't mean consistently Democrat or Republican side, I just mean like either way. And so that has actually been a more recent challenge that we've encountered and it has to do perhaps with just less people out there talking about the bill. I'm not sure why actually. I just feel like it's something that we've only encountered in the last six months or so. It could be because everyone focused on the election, so they weren't commenting on the bills as much.
Tiffany Yu: I remember you had a lot of Georgetown interns on your team. Is political leaning something that you are cognizant of as you continue to build your team, like making sure that you have people representing all different sides of the table?
Maria Yuan: That's a really good question. It's definitely something that I'm very cognizant of on my advisory board, but it's not a question in our interview process for interns or team members, or volunteers at all. And in fact, I had an experience one summer where we went through the whole summer with the three interns in New York. And this was when we were meeting in person. And at the end of the summer, at the end of their internship, I asked them, so what political parties are you? Because I actually didn't know. So to go through a whole summer with someone and not even know what party they are, I think kind of just shows that we really are nonpartisan. It didn't even come up. So I found out that out of those three interns, two were Republicans and one was a Democrat. And I didn't know that, and I wouldn't have been able to tell you that our guess that.
Tiffany Yu: I will say there is an act that I have been following, It's called The Raise the Wage Act. So The Raise the Wage Act, it would remove subminimum wage for disabled people. So right now, certain organizations who have filed something called the 14(c) are legally allowed to pay disabled people below minimum wage.
Maria Yuan: I didn't know that.
Tiffany Yu: And I think that's what's so interesting about both your work and my work is that a lot of people just don't know. Part of it is just getting that message out. So I've been thinking a lot about what power do I have as a constituent? And this will lead into my next question, which is, right now, I'm very focused on vaccine prioritization. But where I feel like I have the most influence is on the city level. So sending letters to the COVID Command Center here in San Francisco, but there's tons of work that's happening on the California level, and then I know there's work happening at the federal level as well. What made you decide that you wanted to start this at the federal level because there are so many different levers?
Maria Yuan: I think that what excited me about it was to do something on a large scale that from day one, everybody could use. We didn't have to have something on the website that said, we're not in your state yet, but leave your email here and we'll let you know, that kind of thing. So that was one factor is just wanting it to be from day one, something that anyone living anywhere could use. I think that the other aspect is certainly both are important. I mean, it is definitely one of our future goals to be able to create versions of IssueVoter for state and local legislation. And so that's something that more and more is a common question that we're asked is, when are you going to be local? Or when are you going to have this for our state? Or this is so great, I want this for my city. And if and when we are going to do that, frankly, will probably depend a lot on funding, on whether we have the resources to actually do that. And so it takes resources to not only build the tech, but also to watch the legislatures very closely, and to determine which laws we should be alerting people about. Because even at the federal level, we don't cover all 15,000 plus bills that are introduced to each session, nor would I argue that we ever should. It's important to help with making it easy for people to engage by already doing the work to narrow and narrow down when they should send their opinions.
Tiffany Yu: I know you had a huge win last year. You were named one of the CNN Heroes?
Maria Yuan: We were on the show, which was very exciting. So we were one of eight non-profits featured. It was amazing. It was a huge surprise. I'm definitely really, really grateful for that opportunity.
Tiffany Yu: Well, congratulations again. So tell me just how easy it actually is. So let's say I'm someone, I voted once in the presidential election. And I actually think there's no better time than now to be getting involved. So what exactly happens? How does it work? I put in my address and then what?
Maria Yuan: Yup. So all you do is, you basically just go to issuevoter.org. You can put in your address and choose the issues that you care about in less than 30 seconds. And then you will get an email when Congress is about to vote on an issue you care about. So it's not an app yet. It was a conscious decision also to be web first. And then from that email, it'll have the bill in a simple question. So whatever the bill is doing, it'll break it down into a question, and answering yes to the question is the same as supporting the bill, and answering no is the same as opposing it. All you have to do at the bare minimum is read the email. It'll have a summary of what the bill will do. You'll see both sides and then you can click support or oppose. If it's something where you want to learn a little more or dig a little deeper, you could then click into the actual bill, read the bill. On the website itself, there are links to related news articles. So you can always dig deeper and discover more. I kind of think of it, like almost like something like Wikipedia, this information is out there, but we're just bringing it all into one place. And similar to Wikipedia, you can always read a summary first and then dig deeper. And so the thing unlike Wikipedia, we actually do send your opinion. So there's a real call to action. So when you click support or oppose, that's all you have to do actually. So you just read your email and click a button. That's how easy it is. But what we're doing behind the scenes is we're sending my opinion to your rep. And then when Congress votes, you'll get another email that says, here's how your rep voted and here's whether or not the bill passed. If you're someone that doesn't like to get emails and your inbox is already overflowing, you can actually opt-out of all the emails and then you could do something like, just put a reminder. I actually have a friend that does this. She just has a weekly reminder in her phone that's like, check IssueVoter. And so she actually just goes to the website, logs in, spends a few minutes to see if there's anything new there that she's interested in. And if there is, she sends her opinion. And it's not the kind of activity that's meant to be time-consuming. And it's not meant to be something that you have to do all the time. Because sometimes people, especially in the startup world, they'll ask me like, Oh, do you track number of hours spent on the site, blah, blah, blah. And I always say, No, we would never want that to be a measure of success. We're trying to save people time. We don't want people to spend a lot of time on the site. But at any time, you can go to the site and see all the bills, even for issues that you haven't opted into and you can see your scorecard. And so, we're trying to make it as easy as possible for people. The other future goals that we have for this year include creating language translations for IssueVoter, to make it even more accessible and also to potentially have an app and text message alerts. And it's really just trying to be where people are already are. So if you're someone that doesn't like email, but you like apps or you're someone that doesn't like email or apps, but you check your text messages to try to just be in whatever channel is most convenient to you. So being accessible is part of our mission statement. And one of the ways we do that even offline is we partner with other organizations. So one of the organizations that we partner with, we actually send our legislative research and summaries in a physical newsletter that gets sent to over 400 prisons across the United States.
Tiffany Yu: Wow.
Maria Yuan: And so for people who don't even have access to the internet can still read about legislation that affects things like sentencing laws or things like being able to vote after being incarcerated. And then they can send letters to their reps. And so really want to do as much as we can about accessibility. I mean, from you, I feel like I have a lot to learn too, where we could make the website more accessible and thinking about ways to increase accessibility that we probably haven't thought of yet.
Tiffany Yu: Yeah, I love that. Accessibility can mean so many different things. I also want to highlight, like you just laid it out that it is so easy. And one of the things that is a barrier for people who want to become more civically engaged is people will say, reach out to your reps. And then some people are like, well, I don't know who my reps are. And then even if I find out and I get their email addresses, like what do I send them? Maybe your KPI is how little time they're spending on the website, instead of being on there and reading everything. And this partnership sounds incredible to make sure that your research is reaching people who don't have access to the internet. So again, we started out with the zoom out and now we're going to end with the zoom out, which is, what do you think is the best thing and the most challenging thing about being a nonprofit founder?
Maria Yuan: Yeah. Well, I can talk about that in the context of my own personality. So the best thing for me being a nonprofit founder is I am very vision driven. And so having a vision and being able to just be very determined and marching towards it. I'm a very determined, results-oriented person. So that's the best thing for me is, I literally get to do that every day, and it kind of drives and feeds my personality. I think that one of the challenging things for anyone is always going to be funding. I mean, honestly, whether you're a for-profit or non-profit, you always want more resources, right. Because then you can do more. And so I think again, related to my personality, I think fundraising in certain contexts has been hard for me because it was something that I didn't have any experience in. And it's hard to sometimes prioritize building a relationship with a funder where they may not ever give you funding, or they may give you funding two years from now when you have very immediate things with these results that are driving your day to day. So I think that's been something that has been challenging for me in the past. Although this year I am really making a concerted effort to prioritize building relationships with some of the larger funders because that is not something that I had done in the past.
Tiffany Yu: One of the things I'm learning is that fundraising or access to funding really comes down to relationships. Because oftentimes people are like, why is this organization I never heard of before asking me for money or asking for my email and other things like that. Congratulations on all the successes that you had. I always like to close with asking our guests what they're grateful for. And so what are you grateful for, Maria?
Maria Yuan: I am grateful for a shift that I haven't measured, but can really feel, I feel like I can feel it, of people being more civically engaged. I do feel that awareness and level of wanting to be engaged has increased over time. I think I'm grateful for just people really starting to understand that it's policy change that can create many of the changes that we want to see in the world. And I think that awareness has grown. So I would say like big picture that's one of the things I'm grateful for in general.
Tiffany Yu: I love that. And that makes me really hopeful too. And I almost feel like, with the Americans with Disabilities Act, that was a policy, but we are still seeing a lot of rampant disability discrimination. So it's almost a combination of, you've got to have the policy in addition to the hearts and minds happening on the grassroots level. So if people want to support IssueVoter, if they want to make a donation, if they want to sign up and become more civically engaged or follow your work, where's the best place to do that?
Maria Yuan: So all of those can be done from our website issuevoter.org. And also people can follow us on any social media channel that you use at @issuevoter. We're on, I think pretty much all of them, including Medium, but we probably have the most content on Instagram. And then, we love hearing from people. So if people actually want to get in touch with me directly, feel free to reach out. You can email info@issuevoter.org. We check all of our emails and we have people that reach out and end up becoming advisors, volunteers. So there's ways to get even more involved if that's something that you're interested in.
Tiffany Yu: Perfect. Thank you for being on my podcast, Maria. And we'll talk soon.
Maria Yuan: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.