As campaigns begin preparing for 2026 and beyond, organizers are facing a hard truth: despite reaching more voters than ever before in 2024, actual engagement declined—especially among younger voters and key demographics we had previously mobilized effectively.
According to HGL’s 2024 Political Tech Landscape Report, Democratic campaigns reached about 70% of registered voters in battleground states and over half nationwide. But even with this reach, many programs failed to break through, often defaulting to scaled-up versions of outdated strategies. Engagement dropped most starkly among new and younger voters, highlighting a disconnect between our infrastructure and how people participate today.
That reality is pushing the movement toward a new phase, one grounded in impact, not just scale. We’re entering a time when we must do and try things differently, and one of the most immediate ways to act on that insight is by changing how and when we invest in technology.
Higher Ground Labs’ 2024 Election Tech Survey revealed that although tech remains essential to modern campaigns, most still dedicate only 1–10% of their budgets to it—a figure largely unchanged since 2018. Encouragingly, more campaigns are beginning to purchase technology earlier in the cycle, with a 15% increase since 2020. But the shift is not happening fast enough. Campaigns that delay tech adoption struggle to integrate tools, train teams, and run effective programs. Buying earlier and investing more intentionally is one way to build smarter, more responsive campaigns and organizing programs.
This shift is what led us to host the Voter Contact Technology Showcase: to explore the latest innovations in voter engagement and organizing strategy. The virtual event featured live demos and case studies from leading companies building the next generation of tools for voter contact, CRMs, and campaign operations. Each of these platforms approaches the challenges of voter engagement from a different angle—offering new ideas for how we organize, mobilize, and build power in the post-2024 landscape.
To access the webinar recording, email info@highergroundlabs.com.
Here’s a closer look at the platforms from the showcase:
Impactive is a comprehensive voter contact platform that consolidates multiple tools into a single interface, including peer-to-peer and broadcast texting, phone banking, relational organizing, canvassing, voter registration portals, and custom forms. Designed for ease of use across campaigns and organizations, it also offers robust CRM-like functionality, volunteer team management, leaderboards, and two-way VAN integration. Its features are built to serve electoral campaigns, advocacy groups, nonprofits, and labor, with responsive support and continuous product improvements shaped by user requests.
Contact: katy@impactive.io
OpenField is a mobile-first canvassing and phone bank platform built to simplify and speed up field operations. Admins can build lists, cut turf automatically using built-in geospatial machine learning, and launch distributed canvassing campaigns in under five minutes. It supports both dynamic and static list creation, includes real-time reporting and map-based analysis of contact progress, and generates open-ended notes analysis for qualitative field insights. Organizers can manage canvasser activity live, redirect efforts on the fly, and export full datasets or use OpenField’s API for deeper integrations.
Contact: sales@openfield.ai
DaisyChain is an organizing CRM that integrates with key progressive tools like ActBlue, Mobilize, and VAN to centralize supporter data and automate outreach. It allows organizers to build automated workflows—like assigning new volunteer signups to organizers, triggering follow-up messages, or inviting people to local events—all based on real-time data inputs. DaisyChain also includes email and broadcast and peer-to-peer texting, and a polling-place API integration for personalized GOTV messages. Their unique “charms” feature enables campaigns to send highly customized images with dynamic voter data like maps and polling info.
Contact: jon@daisychain.app
Rally by Relentless is a platform built specifically to support paid and unpaid relational organizing at scale. It enables organizers to build programs where participants sync their personal networks, match contacts to the voter file, and engage them through structured outreach assignments. Rally supports list-building, event integration, action tracking, and referral management—all with performance metrics and digital tools for managing distributed programs. It is designed to help campaigns move beyond cold outreach and focus on building trust-based voter contact through known relationships.
Contact: davis@relentless.vote
Civitech focuses on targeted voter registration, using modeling and national datasets to identify unregistered likely Democrats, particularly among younger voters and communities of color. The platform supports data-driven outreach strategies that prioritize rotating voters and voters who have dropped off since 2020. With a focus on long-term infrastructure and movement-wide impact, Civitech is working to address the massive registration drop-off and help rebuild the base through continuous, targeted engagement. BallotReady is a ballot information platform that offers comprehensive, personalized election information and civic engagement tools. Its Civic Center consolidates resources for voter registration, ballot research, voting logistics, contacting representatives, and more.
Contact: alex@civitech.io, kunal.goel@civitech.io
We invite you to explore these tools, test them in your programs, and share what you learn with us.
