I’ve successfully founded and grown two nonprofits from scratch, each reaching $1M+ budgets. These were The Center for Election Science (no longer recommending) and Male Contraceptive Initiative. I first learned about EA in 2016 and went to my first EA event in 2017. My formal education is in the social sciences and law. You can find my writing and resources at www.aaronhamlin.com.
aaronhamlin
Karma: 577
The funding to gather the signatures wasn’t there. The main thing is just money and that tends to be why Irv campaigns take off instead. Money. Happy to talk with folks about supporting specific campaigns. Feel free to reach out.
While I support approval voting and election reform, I unfortunately can no longer personally recommend funding for this organization.
Note that funding was not sufficient to be able to move forward for this campaign. Feel free to reach out to me for other statewide funding opportunities.
The implementation keeps the primaries throughout the state as-is.
Right now, Missouri’s primaries are “open” in the sense that you must vote within a party, but you can choose which party at any time. This would stay the same, but in both the primary and general, approval voting would be used. The campaign chose this system-wide change as the easiest option.
Additionally, approval voting would allow for independents to be viable candidates in the general.
Adding the link to CES was meant as a way of showing the need, but I don’t think it was taken that way. Removing to keep the focus on the poster’s idea and avoid my appearance of self promotion.
I consistently recommend Fidelity to others when talking about DAFs. Here’s an article I did on DAFs.
Why Fidelity Charitable?They’re the largest DAF in the world and have efficient internal processes. They approve pretty much everything and if it’s new or controversial to them, they get back to you quickly.
They make direct transfers to the charity’s bank account. You don’t want some check just flying around. Many banks send off paper checks. No need for that nonsense.
They also handle cryptocurrency, which is nice. There may be some extra paperwork, but it’s largely quite useful.
Their fees are low. If you quickly donate from your account anyway, there’s nothing to really get hit with. If you leave funds in there, minimal investments should cover any fee. Remember that the job of a DAF is not to have it sit around and make more money. You do that with investments before they go into the DAF.
They make it easy to transfer assets to the DAF from other banks. If you use Fidelity already, it’s even easier. They even have a tool that lets you see the most tax-efficient stocks to give (It looks at the most appreciated stocks you’ve held over a year).
Bonus tip:
Don’t forget to set a charitable beneficiary for your DAF, just as you can do for any other financial account.
If you like, I talk with lots of folks on technical aspects of giving, particularly as it also relates to balancing practical considerations like retirement. Feel free to message me.
You can also check out a number of essays I’ve written on this topic: https://www.aaronhamlin.com/articles/#philanthropy
I know our team isn’t super excited by this switch by Every.org. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
This is a big need for a lot of organizations, including ours at The Center for Election Science. We’re looking for especially well networked candidates, particularly those who could help with funding bottlenecks. We use committees to do internal board duties. See our board posting here: https://electionscience.org/join-our-board/
Hi Adam,
I think your response fairly addresses the concerns I initially raised, and I appreciate your effort there. Thank you for the delicate response.
“I am skeptical whether CES will be able to have much influence at the federal level . . .”
It’s worth mentioning that CES highlighted that approval voting was able to be used for US House, US Senate, Presidential general, and Presidential Primaries with state-wide ballot initiatives. This information seems to be missing in the write-up and instead states that it doesn’t influence Federal elections.
The write-up also seems to portray local-level reform is CES’ only goal. Again. we provided feedback on this issue. We also corrected the review on the cost efficiency, which is incorrect.
We hope that our feedback is more fully considered in future reviews and that this doesn’t dissuade others from supporting our critical work.
Job Title: Director of Operations & Outreach
Organization: The Center for Election Science
Location: Virtual (US Based)
Salary: $65,000 + great benefits
More info and application process in the link: https://electionscience.org/ces-updates/were-hiring-a-director-of-operations-and-outreach
Within a week would be best as the opening closes within a few weeks.
We’re hiring at the moment at The Center for Election Science for an operations director. We are open to EA and non EA applicants alike. We’d like to be able to pay more than $65K with a larger budget but we provide good benefits and are transparent. We are constantly trying to improve our process. If you have any feedback, feel free to share.
https://electionscience.org/ces-updates/were-hiring-a-director-of-operations-and-outreach/
I feel like this comment falls in this category:
”Q: I heard there was this thing about approval voting that wasn’t so good or that another voting method was better. Also, don’t forget about Arrow’s Theorem.A: All voting methods have quirks, but we maintain that the quirks of approval voting are comparatively mild compared to the alternatives. You can see this article where we go into all the details about approval voting critiques. Also, I talked with Kenneth Arrow personally for an hour, and he said that our choose-one voting method was bad. Really.”
I put together a detailed article where I compare different voting methods (including STAR). Some relevant details there are that STAR had its chance on the ballot in the city of Portland and failed. Note that voting methods poll much, much better in cities. So that it failed in Portland where STAR advocates are centered is a particularly discouraging sign. We also find that methods involving scoring (like STAR does) simply do not poll as well. This isn’t that big of a deal because they’re only slightly better in winner selection. And we have other methods that perform very nearly as well (approval voting, in the same cardinal family) that do poll well.Recall also that approval voting passed by over 60% in both cities it was on the ballot for. I would disagree with the claim that our forces in St. Louis and Fargo were so large that they would have passed any voting method. Our forces were so large in St. Louis and Fargo because it was approval voting. I know because they considered other options. STAR folks even reached out to our key person in Fargo, and they still decided on approval voting. IRV folks reached out to the same folks we partnered with in St. Louis and they still went with approval voting. I feel like to say that our forces were so strong that we could have passed anything misses the causality of why our forces were so strong to begin with.
I also find it a bit hard to take seriously the idea of putting energy behind Condorcet methods. Condorcet methods are a class of ranking methods that elect a “beat-all” or Condorcet winner. The math involved to select the winner when there is no Condorcet winner is quite complex (more so than STAR or IRV). That alone seems like a large barrier. Even I have to look up the algorithms to remember how they’re computed. And there’s no doing these by hand.
I feel like those two rationales help to explain why we continue to get behind approval rather than splitting our focus.
It’s also worth noting that CES explored the possibility of approval voting in Denver and to a lesser extent in Broomfield. We did this by talking with the Denver city council who invited us and talking with advocates in Colorado. We did not support signature gathering in Denver, and we did not submit it to be on the ballot (though there was an individual who did it on their own and abandoned it). We did not think that we had an adequate team of people who physically lived in Denver during the window that we were focused on. And so we decided to look at other opportunities. We’re data-oriented and cautious about how we spend limited resources. These are hard decisions, but saying no to Denver also meant that we got to say yes to our partners in Seattle. Seattle is polling at 70% and we have great partners who live there.Also, the question is not whether approval voting will outcompete IRV—though with proper funding it very well may. The bar is actually lower. Perhaps a better rephrasing of the question is whether approval voting can thrive as a candidate and be implemented so that it may be tested alongside IRV. And to that question, I’m confident that it can. We’ve evidenced that. And we will surely get more cities with proper funding. And we are currently exploring our plans with states. I can’t say exactly where we’re targeting and when just yet (we have to keep some aspects of our strategy confidential). But we will target states as our strategic opportunities align with our operational capacity—which is determined by funding.
Consider also that there are only two states that use IRV. Both won by slim margins. One of those states (Alaska) failed the first time it tried. IRV also failed by 10 points in Massachusetts. And it’s been repealed by voters multiple times in cities across the US. This is not a runaway for IRV. And it took them multiple decades to get this far. There’s enough reason for concern that it’s worth supporting approval voting as a viable alternative—particularly given that approval voting does substantially better at its job as a voting method.
Plus our team at CES that is pushing approval voting is amazing. I feel very lucky to work with such talented staff. Each of them went through a very challenging blind hiring process, and now they get to continually flex their muscles at work. We’re really just starting to show what we’re capable of.
Thanks for all you’ve done for the forum, Aaron! It was a challenging assignment to say the least. And a personal thank you for your feedback on some of my not-so-short essays! Best of luck on your new path. I’ll be cheering you on.
Nice find, and thank you for sharing! I can verify that it worked quickly.
Useful for: Anyone who is required to show COVID Day 2 testing verification for their flight to the UK from the US (or other “non-red” countries).
Getting my ticket through British Airways automatically sent me through a confirmation process for a “Health Passenger Locator Form.” Part of this requirement is for booking a COVID test prior to arrival in London (but actually done in London). The form actually doesn’t let you proceed until 48 hours prior to your arrival in London, so this information may be helpful for those approaching that window.
There is a walk-in testing site right by Heathrow Airport. You can do that right after you land to get it out of the way. They have the DAY 2 LATERAL FLOW TEST. Here is where you can book it: https://ldn.randox.com/You’ll get a reference number after you pay, which you’ll be required to add to a form later. As long as you sent it to a reliable email, you can reference it with no problem. As far as I know, this is all you need if you’re staying in London for fewer than 10 days.
You can take transit right there after you land. I added a bit of a buffer, but Google Maps says you can get there from Arrivals within 15 minutes. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Heathrow+Airport,+Longford+TW6,+United+Kingdom/Radisson+Blu+Edwardian+Heathrow+Hotel+%26+Conference+Centre,+London,+140+Bath+Rd,+Harlington,+Hayes+UB3+5AW,+United+Kingdom/@51.4724018,-0.4627096,14.38z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x48767234cdc56de9:0x8fe7535543f64167!2m2!1d-0.4542955!2d51.4700223!1m5!1m1!1s0x48767248b4db8263:0x13eaaf45e2a032b0!2m2!1d-0.4410154!2d51.4814337!3e3
I hope this helps! I apologize if I’ve made any errors because this was a bit confusing. If I have, we’ll suffer together. :)
Congrats, Ben! In terms of targets for any donation, I’d be happy to talk with you about The Center for Election Science, where I’m the executive director.
In terms of strategies relating to tax efficiency and giving, I’d be happy to talk with you and your financial advisor. I think a lot about this topic and have written about it quite a bit. I actually just finished my sixth essay on giving and taxes. Aside from working in the nonprofit sector for going on ten years, I’m also a licensed attorney. Feel free to email me and we can set up a call.
Ethical Implications of AI in Military Operations: A Look at Project Nimbus
Recently, ‘Democracy Now’ highlighted Google’s involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion initiative to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli government, including military applications. Google employees have raised concerns about the use of AI in creating ‘kill lists’ with minimal human oversight, as well as the usage of Google Photos to identify and detain individuals. This raises ethical questions about the role of AI in warfare and surveillance.
Despite a sit-in and retaliation against those speaking against the project, there has been little visible impact on the continuation of the contract. The most recent protesters faced arrest. What does this suggest about the power of AI in the hands of governments and the efficacy of public dissent in influencing such high-stakes deployments of AI use?