The Knight News Challenge is a challenge that sought projects designed to better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections.
The prize was more than $3 million in funding to make the projects come to life and hopefully encourage greater participation in the process by a more informed public.
This week, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the 22 winning projects that will split $3.2 million. Ten of the winners will receive investments of $200,000 to $525,000 each while 12 early-stage ideas will receive $35,000 through the Knight Prototype Fund.
The Challenge is a collaboration between Knight, the Democracy Fund [which also funds electionline.org], the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation. The Democracy Fund and Hewlett Foundation each contributed $250,000 to the challenge and the Rita Allen Foundation contributed $150,000.
According to John Bracken, Knight Foundation vice president for media innovation, the challenge received just over 1,000 entries.
The winners range from the Associated Press with a project on providing less expensive and more accurate alternatives to exit polling to the Center for Technology and Civic Life’s civic engagement toolkit for local elections officials.
Here are the 10 investment winners:
Vote-by-Smartphone by Long Distance Voter |$325,000 |San Francisco: Making it easier to vote by mail by using mobile technology to allow voters to request absentee ballots with their smartphone.
The Next Generation Beyond Exit Polls by The Associated Press | $250,000 | Washington, D.C.: Providing less expensive, more accurate alternatives to exit polling by working with survey firms to develop new ways to gauge voter preferences in real time.
2016 Political Ad Tracker by Internet Archive | $200,000 | San Francisco: Bringing accountability to the voting process by creating a public library of TV news and political advertising from key 2016 primary election states, paired with nonpartisan fact-checking and additional analysis from PolitiFact, the University of Pennsylvania’s FactCheck.org, The Center for Public Integrity and others.
Campaign Hound by Reese News Lab, University of North Carolina | $150,000 | Chapel Hill, N.C.: Helping to hold politicians more accountable through a searchable archive of campaign speech transcripts that provides customized alerts to keep voters informed about candidates and allows journalists and others to monitor political speeches remotely.
Inside the 990 Treasure Trove by The Center for Responsive Politics | $525,000 | Washington, D.C.: Helping voters and journalists better understand who is funding campaigns by partnering with GuideStar to unearth more comprehensive data on the sources of so-called “dark money.”
Revive My Vote by the Marshall-Wythe Law Foundation | $230,000 | Richmond, Va.: Helping Virginians with prior felony convictions restore their voting rights by organizing local law students to help remotely process rights restoration applications and lessening wait times for those who have applied; an outreach platform will also be developed to motivate and inform prospective applicants.
Sharp Insight by the Youth Outreach Adolescent Community Awareness Program | $250,000 | Philadelphia: Engaging black men in elections by recruiting barbers in predominantly African-American communities to disseminate nonpartisan information and resources on voting.
Civic Data Coalition by Investigative Reporters and Editors | $250,000 | Los Angeles: Making it easier to track money in California politics with an open-source tool that will help journalists, academics and others mine campaign finance data.
Civic Engagement Toolkit for Local Election Officials by the Center for Technology and Civic Life | $400,000 | Chicago: Helping local governments more easily engage with communities by developing a civic engagement toolkit for election offices, including website templates, icons and illustrations that provide visual guides for information seekers, wait-time calculators and other tools.
Informed Voting from Start to Finish by E.thePeople | $200,000 | New York: Helping build a more informed electorate and making the voting process easier by combining the voter services of TurboVote, which helps people register to vote, request and absentee ballot and receive election reminders, with local guides and candidate information from E.thePeople.
CLICK HERE for the complete list of winners including the 12 early-stage ideas.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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