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Call for beta-testers for the EA Pen Pals Project!
excel4y1
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The sign up link appears to be broken. Is this project still active?

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Call for beta-testers for the EA Pen Pals Project!
excel4y1
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The sign up link appears to be broken

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Financial Planning Advice for Charitable Giving
excel4y1
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Even though you may not get a full federal deduction for charitable contributions due to the higher standard deduction, you should pay less state tax. I ran a simple Turbotax calc for 2019 for a joint return with 150K$ income and 10K$ in mortgage interest. Base fed/ca tax was $19976/$7312. With 14K$ of donations, the state dropped to $5973. Bumping up donations by another 14K$ yields taxes of $16687/$4579. So the first 14K$ donation saves ~$1339 and an additional 14K$ saves an additional ~$4572. As you donate more, your tax savings will also start to reduce due to being in a lower tax bracket.

Caveat: don't trust these numbers - run your own analysis. These $$ are for USA/CA.

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excel4y1
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Aaron, thanks much for the update. Did the poll include non-democratic primary voters - e.g. registered republicans, etc.? A broader view of citizen views might offer additional insights.

I agree that more research and evaluation is desirable. In fact, I think that robust evidence is critical for concepts like approval voting to gain traction and support. Could CES organize volunteers to do exit interviews at polling locations during primary and general elections? Capturing plurality, approval, and even other voting preferences during real elections could o... (read more)

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aaronhamlin
4y
The poll included only those who intended to vote in the Democratic Primary. It's very difficult to manage volunteers in this way, particularly given our small staff size. We tend to contract polling out. That said, it takes some expertise to sort through the data. Having staff for research would help us dramatically in both evaluating voting methods and measuring progress within cities that we've won in.
excel4y1
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Has CES done any analysis of Causus voting? I did not see any reference to it on the CES website.

With the primaries coming up, this might be interesting to explore. A recent On Point podcast interviewed Iowa voters and the process sounded somewhat similar, in that people need to compromise and come to a consensus. I am not suggesting caucus voting as a reform, but I wonder if some analysis could flesh out how it overlaps or differs with other systems like approval voting. If similar, that might provide some comfort to voters that approval voting is not so... (read more)

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aaronhamlin
4y
Caucus voting still has vote splitting as voters aren't able to support multiple candidates simultaneously. With approval voting, you can support multiple candidates simultaneously. We haven't analyzed caucus voting. We did do this poll, however, on the democratic primaries: https://www.electionscience.org/press-releases/new-poll-74-of-democratic-primary-voters-would-support-warren-for-president/ I'd like to see us do much more research and evaluation, but we currently don't have it in our budget to hire a Director of Research and support staff.