History, Financials, Statistics of Blueprint Kansas Inc. dba KSVotes.org
History, Financials, Statistics of Blueprint Kansas Inc. dba KSVotes.org
Loud Light's Davis Hammet and Democratic Secretary of State Candidate Brian McClendon started KSVotes.org
This is the second of a three-part series on Blueprint Kansas Inc. doing business as KSVotes.org. This article explores the history of the Blueprint Kansas, its receipts and expenditures, and some statistics about its KSVotes.org site.
Part 1: Blueprint Kansas Inc. doing business as KSVotes.org to register voters
There is a progressive “nonprofit in the middle” between a growing number of voters and election offices in KansasPart 3: Technical notes about Blueprint Kansas Inc. dba KSVotes.org
GitHub gives many technical details about the "non-profit-in-the-middle," the Kansas online voter registration site between voters and election offices
Remove the “non-profit-in-the-middle” and avoid KSVotes.org by using an Official State of Kansas government website to register to vote. Look for "An official State of Kansas government website” when you register to vote.
History
Loud Light’s Davis Hammet
KSVotes.org was the brainchild of Brian “BAM” McClendon after his discussions with Loud Light’s Davis Hammet, who wrote about its creation in a Nov. 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post.
I decided to leave LGBTQ activism to create a nonprofit, Loud Light, and devote myself to voter registration and turnout. . . .
I met all kinds of people who wanted things to change. One was Brian “BAM” McClendon, who created what became Google Earth. We talked about voter registration obstacles. Immediately, he created ksvotes.org, a digital federal form that bypasses the obstacles and makes registration easy.
Brian “BAM” McClendon
Founding Board Member of KSVotes.org
Loaned $75K to Blueprint Kansas in 2017 for “startup funds."
2018 Democratic Candidate for Kansas Secretary of State against Republican Scott Schwab
BAM gave $439K to his 2018 Secretary of State campaign ($150K 1/22/2018, $150K 9/18, $100K 11/1, $39K 11/20). He loaned himself $200K on 10/11; refunded $2K on 11/20, and forgave $198K loan balance on 12/31.
BAM’s campaign spent $563K with The Far Shore, Lawrence, for consulting by Joyce Allegrucci (former Gov. Sebelius chief-of-staff) and son, Scott Allegrucci (former Kansas Director of Tourism).
BAM’s campaign spent $210K with GPS Impact, Lawrence, for consulting/advertising. GPS is Jake Lowen’s employer (see below).
BAM filed a handwritten Statement of Substantial Interest (SSI) on paper for his Secretary of State bid, which was not searchable online and cannot be OCR’d. This SSI had to be specially requested from the Secretary of State’s office since it’s not online.
Kansas Voting Data/ Jake Lowen / GPS Impact
KSVotes.org went online six days before the registration deadline in 2017 according to Kate Davis in an Oct. 2019 interview on the Kansas Voting Data blog.
This month, we sat down with Kate Davis of BluePrint Kansas to learn more about KsVotes.org, their innovative online voter registration project. …
When we started to build a non-profit in 2017 to address voter registration, participation, and fair representation, we wanted to determine what technical or data solutions may exist for the problems that were being experienced by the dedicated people who have been working on this for a long time.
We partnered with Jake Lowen and Joshua Mitchell of GPS Impact, with help and input from Loud Light and the League of Women Voters, to build KSVotes.org — a simple, mobile-friendly, easy-to-use way to register to vote completely online. We got the site up 6 days before the registration deadline in 2017 and processed 234 registrations before the deadline.
Through the work of some terrific partners, word of the site spread, and by the registration deadline in October of 2018, we had processed over 23,500 registrations. In September of 2018 we launched KSVotes version 2, which added Spanish-language support, advance ballot applications (online for the first time in state history), and other improvements.
According to his X/Twitter bio Jake Lowen is the “Director of the Wichita / Hutchinson Labor Federation and Director of Data, Analytics, and Digital Infrastructure at GPS Impact.” Lowen is a leading expert in Kansas grassroots organizing for progressive campaigns.
Lowen was a key contributor to a Kansas Voting Data site about “civic health.” Their Data Dashboard provided interesting insights on Kansas election data for several years to Kansas Health Foundation nonprofit grantees of its Integrated Voter Engagement project.
A link to their old dashboard was to a “Shiny” app with insights about Kansas elections from 2012-2016. The video tutorial from the old dashboard was narrated by Jake Lowen.
Kansas Health Foundation
Kansas Health Foundation gave a $50K grant to KSVotes.org to increase “civic participation” in the 2022 elections, but some KHF grantees likely had been using KSVotes.org from the beginning.
The Kansas Health Foundation gave 11 grants totaling $2.5 million to nonprofits across Kansas for its Integrated Voter Engagement project with a focus on increasing voter registration and turnout, including ACLU Kansas, Climate + Energy Project, El Centro, Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, Kansas Rural Center, Kearny County Hospital, Mainstream Education Foundation (renamed The Voter Network), Seed House-La Casa De Semilla, and Liberal Area Coalition for Families.
Each organization will be tasked with increasing voter registration and turnout in local, state and national elections, and encourage greater civic engagement between election cycles.
KSVotes.org Officers
IRS 990s and the Kansas Secretary of State’s business records show three officers:
Brian McClendon, Chairperson, Former Google executive. Democrat.
Patrick Miller, Vice-Chair. Former KU political science professor, now at Kent State University in Ohio. Republican (but a Democrat before 2014). [In an email on Thursday Miller said he was “still in my role with KSVotes, yes.”
Jameson Shew, Secretary/Treasurer. County Clerk of Douglas County. Democrat.
The 2017 and 2018 IRS 990s showed Katherine Davis as Executive Director. The 2019 990 showed her as a contractor.
Prof. Miller was a panelist at the Dole Institute 2022 Kansas Post-Election Conference on Dec. 6, 2022.
Is being an officer of KSVotes.org a government-nonprofit conflict-of-interest for Douglas County Clerk, Jamie Shew?
Financials
IRS 990 summaries
IRS records from 2017 through 2021 show revenues and expenses of about $700K for Blueprint Kansas.
Known Donors to KSVotes.org
A search of IRS 990s reveals these donors to Blueprint Kansas dba KSVotes.org:
The Kansas Health Foundation’s two $50K grants provided their Integrated Voter Engagement grantees with a direct connection to KSVotes.org.
Given the huge self-funding of McClendon’s Secretary of State campaign in 2018, is it fair to question the connection between the Schwab Charitable Fund contributions to KSVotes.org and McClendon’s Schwab accounts?
Is if fair to ask whether McClendon’s voter registration efforts through Blueprint Kansas had anything to do with his campaign for Secretary of State in 2018?
Expenditures
Most of KSVotes.org expenditures from 2017 through 2021 are captured in this summary:
Grassroots Voter Contact include:
$19,080 grant to Loud Light in 2017.
$1,000 grant to League of Women Voters Wichita Metro in 2017.
$114,000 grant to Loud light in 2018.
Expenses for online voter registration (KSVotes.org) were $19,062 in 2018 and $15,510 in 2020, and much lower in odd years: $1070 in 2017 and $1306 in 2019. No figure was found for 2021.
The site seems to be mostly on automatic pilot in odd-numbered years.
Kate Davis was paid a salary or contract pay from 2017-2019 that totaled $94,483. Other contractors were paid $23,960 in 2020 and $662 in 2021.
KSVotes.org Registration/Advance Ballot Statistics
From the About KSVotes.org page, look for the “click here” link, which will take you to a Google Docs page and several worksheets.
Top Lines
The current “Top Lines” worksheet shows some old stats and current stats for the 2023-2024 election cycle.
Other links are present for past election cycles, but currently the “2022 Version” link requires some sort of access permission.
The 2023 numbers shown below are not yet included in the “Overall Numbers” (based on a snapshot of this page from Jan. 2023).
“regs” above means “registrations”
“ABs” above means “Advance Ballots”
Overall Numbers
From 2017 through 2022 KSVotes.org registered over 85,000 voters and processed 105,000 advance ballot requests.
In presidential election year 2020 KSVotes.org registered over 50,000, which was roughly 20% of new Kansas registrations that year. They have the potential to be a major player in the 2024 presidential election in Kansas.
The nearly 75,000 advance ballot requests sent in 2020 is a fairly large number (but I don’t currently have comparison statistics).
In rough terms, the overall 85,721 registration + 105,022 advance ballot requests cost a total of about $700K.
That works out to about $3.67 for each electronic form processed by KSVotes.org.
By date (2023)
The “By date” worksheet shows plots of cumulate voter registration and advance ballot requests for the year.
The “by week” worksheet seems to only show old 2021 data at this time.
2022 Voter Registration Referrals
The current 2022 Referrals worksheet does not match the one saved from Jan. 2023, so data from the previously captured page is shown here. The data were saved to Excel and formatted below, with column totals added.
The KSVotes.org About page mentions a referral “ref” feature.
If you are interested in partnering with KSVotes and integrating voter registration on your website, see our ref feature documentation.
Blueprint Kansas does not provide a list of the “partner” organizations that use their “ref” feature, but some of the “ref” names below can be guessed, e.g., “LWV” likely means a local affiliate of the Kansas League of Women Voters.
See ref code section below for likely/possible meanings of the ref codes.
The “voteneightwebsite” referral is to Loud Light’s “Vote Neigh” campaign to defeat Value Them Both.
Note the large increases in voter registration requests in June and July of 2022 after the Dobb’s Supreme Court decision.
The “ref” feature seems to have low counts from many of the partners.
The 19,853 registrations are quite close to the 19,848 total reported as part of the Top Lines.
2022 Advance Ballot Referrals
The 35,936 advance ballot requests total exactly matches the value from the Top Lines.
Ref Codes
[Updated 2023-08-24]
An astute reader gave feedback about what the above ref codes might mean. Please give any feedback to update or complete this list:
Ref, Likely/Possible Name
2020m, 2020 March (to the Polls)
20220712ll, 2022-07-12 Loud Light
aaa, ?
bb_p2p, bb peer-to-peer?
bluestem-o, Bluestem Kansas
bluestem-p, Bluestem Kansas
gps_balreq_VBM, GPS Impact Ballot Request Vote by Mail
ksv_fb_reg_2022, Kansas Facebook Registration 2022?
ksvep, Kanas Voter Elections Project?
LC_RC,?
LC_WS,?
ll_website, Loud Light web site
LLKSU22, Loud Light K-State 2022
llpsu22, Loud Light Pittsburg State
LLWSU22, Loud Light Wichita State
LWVTSCweb, League of Women Voters Topeka-Shawnee County
MTTP_Law, March to the Polls Lawrence
MTTP_LV, March to the Polls Leavenworth
MTTP_LWVK, March to the Polls - League of Women Voters of Kansas
MTTP_MNHT, March to the Polls Manhattan
MTTP_Sal, March to the Polls Salina
MTTP_Topk, March to the Polls Topeka
MTTP_Wich, March to the Polls Wichita
voteneighwebsite, Vote Neigh website (Loud Light project) [anti Value Them Both]
votenokansas, Vote No Kansas [vote NO on Amendments]
Related
One of the KSVotes.org referral sources in 2022 was Vote Neigh. Their Instagram page shows this was a project of Loud Light Civic Action.
The Rural Democracy Initiative’s 2022 Impact Report, p. 11, shows Loud Light was a featured 2022 project with their “Vote Neigh” campaign to defeat Value Them Both in Kansas. The Rural Democracy Initiative is funded by Arabella Advisor’s “dark money” funds.
Privacy concerns shadow popular voter registration website. At Democrat-backed ksvotes.org, voters agree to let lease personal information in exchange for better platform. Kansas Reflector, Aug. 2, 2020.
That was amazing, I wish more people would see this.
Fabulous work. Thanks Earl