Stan's Plan |
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The Beginning: All summer I had been watching the news, horrified by our President and the Republican Congress, asking myself: What can I do?
At first there didn't appear much I could do. In the past I've made contributions to Democrats in my districts, but living in California those candidates win anyway. This made me think about the problem: How can I donate effectively? |
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| My Objective: To gain Democratic control of the US House and Senate. |
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| The Plan: After rejecting many complicated ideas, my final plan seemed so simple: |
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Make equal contributions to every Democrat running for the US House of Representatives where the race is a Toss Up. There are 30 such races (including 14 female candidates). |
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Make equal contributions to every Democrat running for the US Senate where the race is a Toss Up or Leaning Republican or Likely Republican. 10 races (including 4 female candidates). |
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Fortunately there's a non-partisan group that analyzes elections: The Cook Political Report. I relied on their work to find the races categorized as a "Toss Up". You can see for yourself here: |
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Doing The Work: After much Googling, I compiled the list of Democrats with a 50-50 chance of winning. Fortunately they all use the same site for donations: www.ActBlue.com. I then made 40 individual contributions by following each candidate's Donate link.
Many of my friends liked my plan too, but were intimidated by all the work. Using the Act Blue site, I discovered how to link all these candidates together, making it easy to place one donation that's automatically divided the 40 ways. Here it is:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/stansplan
All funds are deposited directly to the individual candidate's accounts (except Act Blue retains 3.95% to pay the credit card fees). |
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| How Much to Give: This is a very personal question that everyone needs to answer themselves. I gave a total of $2200 ($55 to each candidate). Even donating just $40 lets you put your finger on the Democratic side of the scale for 40 races. |
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| $40 |
$1 per candidate |
| $200 |
$5 per candidate |
| $400 |
$10 per candidate |
| $1000 |
$25 per candidate |
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| Who is Stan: I am an engineer, an entrepreneur, a college lecturer, and a father concerned about the country my daughter will inherit. Other than voting and making small donations, I don't have a very political past. |
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