Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME) Action
Amount: $250,000 in 2022
What is the Center for Secure and Modern Elections Action?
Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME) Action, a project funded by Sixteen Thirty Fund, works to make voting registration easier through pro-voter policy reform advocacy. They are a bipartisan organization dedicated to advancing pro-voter policies at the state level that modernize the voting process and ensure that every eligible voter can have their voice heard. CSME Action supports state-led efforts to defeat bad policies and rules, pivot to strong pro-voter policies, and change the conversation so that both parties engage in pro-voter activities.
Why do we think this project is important?
While the pro-voter sector has made massive strides in the past five years changing state-based policy, significant work remains. Voters still experience a two-step voting process, with arbitrary barriers put into civic engagement that deter many from voting. Inequities in rules, administration, and funding mean that lower-income voters, as well as Black, brown, and young voters, all face a disproportionate challenge to vote in America. CSME Action is set up to build, fund and execute pro-voter policy campaigns.
How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting CSME Action?
In 2022, Democracy Fund Voice approved a one-year grant of $250,000 to support the primary purpose activities of Center for Secure and Modern Elections Action.
Previously, a two-year grant of $1,000,000 was approved in 2019, and in 2021 the grant was amended to increase the amount to $1,250,000.