Democrats need all the help they can get in November. These techies are answering the call

There are 11 congressional districts considered to be toss-ups for Democrats this November, from Pennsylvania’s 7th district, occupying parts of old steel and coal country, to New Mexico’s 2nd, an agricultural region encompassing parts of the Rio Grande. But despite their apparent differences, there’s one thing these and other Democratic battlegrounds have in common: Nearly all of them are about to get a big technological boost from a group called DigiDems.



Launched in 2018, DigiDems finds tech talent from outside of the political world, trains them in the art of campaigning, then embeds them in races across the country for the six months leading to Election Day. The organization, which is an offshoot of a larger Democratic outfit called Zinc Collective, recruits people with a range of tech skills—from data science and engineering to cybersecurity and digital communications—then raises earmarked donations to help campaigns pay their salaries. The goal is to equip campaigns with the kind of technical expertise they couldn’t otherwise afford—in a way that they actually can. 



“We believe so strongly that this is a critical resource that campaigns need,” says Kane Miller, executive director of DigiDems. “We don’t just find the talent and place the talent with the campaigns. We actually take on the work of fundraising to cover the cost of that resource.”



To date, DigiDems has placed more than 200 staffers in dozens of House, Senate, gubernatorial, and coordinated campaigns, where they’ve helped manage candidates’ digital outreach and data operations, and bolstered their cybersecurity defenses. Over that time, they’ve racked up some significant electoral wins, including embedding DigiDems in the Georgia runoffs that clinched the Senate for Democrats. They’ve also diversified the party’s pool of campaign talent. In 2020, some 62% of these embedded staffers—who are also known as DigiDems—were people of color. And while DigiDems are only placed in a campaign for a single cycle, during the last presidential race, some 80% said they planned to work in politics again. 



Despite dismal polling for Democrats, the program’s popularity is only growing. When DigiDems opened its application process in the beginning of this year, it received three times as many queries as it had for past cohorts, Miller says. This year, DigiDems will be embedded in more than 40 House races, including nearly all of the Democratic toss ups, and 10 state parties’ coordinated campaigns, including in key swing states.



Miller attributes the mounting interest in the program to two things: The relative lack of competition from tech companies amid a slew of industry layoffs and growing anxiety among Democrats about the possibility of a second Trump term. “People are really tuning in to the fact that, yep, it’s real. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee…again. We have to beat him…again. It is an existential election…again,” says Miller, a veteran campaign professional who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 race and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign in 2020. “I think people, to an extent, wanted to believe that wasn’t going to be the case, as if it could be wished away. It can’t be.”



Indeed, if polls are to be believed, Democrats are going to need all the help they can get. Former President Trump holds a steady lead over President Biden in both national polls and five out of six swing states . Though Biden could still see a bump after Trump was found guilty last week of falsifying documents, polls aren’t Democrats’ only problem.



The fight to beat back election misinformation is only growing more complex in the age of generative AI . Not only that, but digital campaigns of all political stripes are operating in a significantly more fragmented social media environment than they were during the last presidential cycle. The evolution of Twitter to X, the rise of TikTok, and the launch of Threads , Truth Social , Mastodon , and other new platforms has made it more challenging for campaigns to track misinformation as it emerges. Miller says understanding “the current state of play” in AI—how it can be both harmful and useful—will be a major focus of this year’s DigiDems training session, which kicks off in Washington D.C. this week. 



In addition to helping campaigns address novel threats, DigiDems have given resource- and time-strapped campaigns the technical capacity they need to simply cover the basics. After the hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, cybersecurity was top of mind for campaigns during the 2018 midterms. “Initially, the big thing was just managing and securing our IT,” says Congressman Mike Levin, whose California campaign was among the first to work with DigiDems in 2018. 



That year, Shahin Motia, who is now DigiDems’ deputy director of security, joined the campaign and got to work implementing basic security precautions, from two-factor authentication on campaign accounts to securing the campaign office’s physical routers. “I remember looking at him, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing in the ceiling?’” Rep. Levin’s campaign manager Adam Berkowitz says. “Before DigiDems, we never even thought about this stuff.” The Levin campaign has taken on a DigiDem during every election cycle since and another is set to start this summer. 



As the risk profiles of elections have evolved, so have the skills campaigns are looking for. This cycle, DigiDems will focus on data operations, digital communications, and digital organizing. 



According to Rep. Levin, it’s not that campaigns haven’t wanted this help all along. It’s that they didn’t have the networks to find it. That was certainly Brigitte Bradford’s experience when she set out to try her hand at politics during the 2022 midterms. Having founded her own tech startup and worked at plenty of others, she was sure she’d have no problem finding a campaign interested in her skills building digital communities. But, she says, “It was harder than I thought to break in on my own.”



When she discovered DigiDems, it felt like a “bridge” into a previously unreachable world, giving her the training to get started and a network of mentors and other DigiDems she could collaborate with along the way. “DigiDems was speaking to me,” says Bradford, who wound up working on Illinois Congresswoman Lauren Underwood’s reelection campaign in 2022. “They were like: We want people who have tech experience, and we’re going to find the campaigns for you.” 



For Miller, DigiDems’ goal is not just to help campaigns in November, but also to give rank-and-file techies and recent graduates a way to have an impact that goes beyond chipping in $25 or phone banking on the weekends. “That stuff is wonderful and great,” he says. “But this is going to be a make or break election, and we need to win it.”