Nominee Information

Vote: Vote For Most Valuable Organizer | Vote For Most Valuable Campaign | Vote For Most Valuable Technology

Debra Cleaver

Nominee Org: Long Distance Voter
Nominee Org Website: longdistancevoter.org
Nominee Twitter Handle: @absenteeballots
Nominator First Name: Carl
Nominator Last Name: Snodgrass
Nominator’s Relationship To Nominee: Friend, co-worker
Exhibited Respect: Through tireless determination and hard work, Debra Cleaver single-handedly made Long Distance Voter (LDV) the leading resource on absentee voting. Since its creation in 2008, LDV has helped over 1 million voters register and request their absentee ballots. Thanks to Debra’s leadership and commitment to excellence, LVD has become a widely acknowledged and respected authority on general voting information. Its content is cited in several academic studies, and the organization is considered THE expert on absentee voting by groups like the Harvard Institute of Politics, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College, the Center for Civic Participation at Northwestern University, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts, the Federal Voter Assistance Program (FVAP), and official state website, including Delaware, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The respect LDV has garnered is all due to Debra’s insistence that its information be rigorously fact-checked and updated, not to mention her personal acumen as a director and an authority on voting matters.
Exhibited Innovation: Debra created Long Distance Voter because there was no site like it on the web — a one-stop shop for registering to vote, verifying your registration, and requesting an absentee ballot. Debra also knew that most voting sites are difficult to navigate and aren’t set up for the typical voter’s method of using a search engine to find information. So she mastered SEO, and now, in addition to supplying all the accurate and up-to-date information a voter needs, LDV is the top hit for google searches like “absentee ballot [state]” “verify voter registration.” When Debra discovered that 8 states didn’t provide their own official absentee voting applications, she had LDV create state-specific forms tailored to each of those state’s requirements, to make the process as simple for the voter as possible. Florida even wrote back to compliment LDV on their form!
Exhibited Courage: Describing Debra as courageous woefully understates her fearlessness. In New York City, she spent years as a union shop steward, winning multiple large grievances against a city agency’s union-hostile executive board. Debra created and runs Long Distance Voter all while working a totally separate full-time job. She nonetheless committed to being the Executive Director of a nationally-recognized nonprofit, for which she makes hte time to run every operation, from organizing projects, to networking like crazy, to ensuring the quality of LDV’s content, to developing the tech-side of the site, to fundraising, to attending and speaking at conferences. In short, the undertaking of LDV was itself a huge risk. The undertaking was huge — every state has its own laws and deadlines, and they are always changing — but that didn’t deter Debra. When LDV runs across a confusing or contradictory voting regulation, Debra is always the first one calling the secretary of state and/or a county elections official to get a straight answer. The success of the organization speaks for itself.
Exhibited Excellence: Debra embodies excellence and inspires it in those who work with her. Without sponsorship or funding, she built LDV from nothing into a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit and the leading resource on absentee voting. Her leadership, and her own hard work, is the reason that LDV is, among things, Rock the Vote’s top partner in registering voters. She does it all — she’s LDV’s idea person, as well as its head researcher and quality-assurer. She shows us all what can be accomplished when you put your mind to it and persevere.
Additional Comments: For my money, Debra is the Most Valuable Organizer of the past four years at least. Knowing that she does all the above (and more!) while working a full-time job, I can only imagine what she’d be able to do as the full-time head of Long Distance Voter. Without any outside help, she has created a service that makes absentee voting (as well as registering, verifying registration status, early voting, and so on) as easy as possible. Our country is steadily heading toward more and more confusing and Draconian voting laws that will make absentee voting simultaneously more difficult (with stricter voter ID laws) and more essential for large groups of Americans (for example, for college students who may be forced to vote absentee if they cannot register where they attend college). Never more than now, America needs Debra and Long Distance Voter.