Bad Robot Productions helped over 3,000 voters to cast a ballot by hosting a polling place

The Civic Alliance is committed to a thriving democracy. Our more than 1,300 members, employing more than 5.8 million people in the United States, have plenty of experience on how best to engage in civic life.

This summer, our Civic Summer School series aims to capitalize on that knowledge and share lessons learned from civic engagement conducted by a diverse community of business leaders.

Our second participant is Bad Robot Productions, (sound familiar? Bad Robot is the production company behind films ranging from Star Wars to Star Trek and Mission Impossible) the TV, film, and gaming company that prides itself on its nonpartisan corporate civic engagement, including setting up a polling place to serve more than 3,000 voters. Alex Sewell , SVP and Head of Good Robot, chatted with Mills Forni , Director at the Civic Alliance , about the way BAD ROBOT PRODUCTIONS, INC Productions has energized its community around civic engagement.

Why does Bad Robot Productions prioritize nonpartisan civic engagement?

It’s quite simple for us: we understand our responsibility as American citizens, and also corporate citizens, to do our part to preserve our democracy. We also feel we have a unique opportunity to leverage our platform and resources to encourage and empower our colleagues, peers, and also our supporters to understand what's at stake locally, nationally, and even globally. We're all in this together.?

What’s one thing you’re really proud of when it comes to Bad Robot’s civic engagement?

We were humbled to host a polling place in partnership with the Los Angeles County Board of Elections. We converted our office's event space into an 11-day voting center in 2020, and then a four-day voting center in 2022 for the midterms. We served nearly 3,500 voters at our polling location, in addition to serving as a ballot drop-off location. It was such a privilege to have it come to life over that time, and to see voters filing in to cast their ballots on Election Day.

The Civic Alliance was a valuable connector in that: They offered the polling location opportunity in previous toolkits and now within the Civic Alliance 2023 Elections Toolkit.

In addition to hosting a polling place, are there other programs that you feel have had an impact on your employees?

Bad Robot’s office is headquartered in Santa Monica and of course, California ballots are some of the most complicated in the country with all of the propositions to consider. So in 2016, we hosted Lunch and Learns for our colleagues where we provided an overview of the California ballot – both primary and general elections – and we’ve continued to do them for every subsequent election. We've been really proud that as a team we can do the research to paint the picture of what's at stake in a nonpartisan way and offer our colleagues insight into what's on the ballot, so that they can make an informed decision.

We’ve also been proud to work with Rock the Vote and the Civic Alliance since 2018 on our postcard campaign where we’ve distributed thousands of postcards to inactive voters across battleground states.

For companies considering getting involved in nonpartisan civic engagement, it can feel like the challenge is so big and there are so many opportunities to get involved. How can an individual company choose what to prioritize? How did you do that?

It’s about different scales of engagement and how you can help your audience fulfill their civic duty. You can start as simple as providing your colleagues and employees time off to vote on Election Day, whether that’s a half day, a full day, or somewhere in between. For Bad Robot, we started offering time off to vote to colleagues back in 2016, and we continue to allow for flexibility for employees to fulfill their civic duty or even volunteer as poll workers.?

You can also start small depending on what’s available to you. We decided that we could use our office space to place physical reminders to engage. So in our lobby, we’ve placed a few QR codes that folks can scan to check their voter registration status and sign up to become a poll worker. The latter is an initiative through Civic Alliance and Power the Polls that helps recruit poll workers and has helped us to track how many employees have signed up to serve as poll workers. It’s a great metric to show impact, especially amidst a poll worker shortage.??

How did you operationalize hosting a polling place?

Our leadership cares deeply about democracy. Katie McGrath, Co-CEO and former Hill staffer, JJ Abrams, and Brian Weinstein, our President and COO, are both deeply committed to this important work as well, so getting buy-in to host a polling place was easy because it aligned with our mission and our brand. From there, we collaborated with different teams across the company to get it up and running. We worked with our operations team who partnered with the LA Board of Elections to facilitate the site visit and physical set-up. Overall, there may be a heavier lift at the beginning to confirm your building meets their technical and security specifications, but the Board of Elections handles all of the day-to-day polling place operations.?

What did employee engagement look like for this?

Since we started hosting a polling place in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, we had employees volunteer and pass out water and snacks to voters waiting in line.??

And during our postcard campaign, we rallied employee engagement by launching a friendly competition between departments on who could send the most postcards to inactive voters. It was a fun way to foster community among the different teams and get people excited to participate.??

What’s the one recommendation you would share with other companies?

Find people within your company who are interested in this work and who can partner with you to get leadership buy-in and to get your program off the ground.

I’d also recommend starting with communication and education, whether that’s internal or external outreach. Civic Alliance provides so many resources that give companies a starting point, like social media and messaging. So consider sharing a social post with your audience or writing a blog post announcing your company’s commitment to civic engagement — something to get people engaged and support your work.???

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What are your takeaways? Let us know in the comments below, and make sure to join us for our next Civic Summer School event on August 3, with BLK, Match Group’s dating app. RSVP here.

Interested in starting your civic journey? Join the Civic Alliance for access to nonpartisan resources, messaging, new employee engagement opportunities, and upcoming events.?

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