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IMPORTANT ISSUES! THESE ARE NOT SOLICITATIONS

No Morning Digest today

We’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow

David Nir Aug 24

As you know, we at The Downballot pride ourselves on cranking out the Morning Digest every weekday, 240 times a year. Except for federal holidays and a short break between Christmas and New Year’s, we never miss a day.

Unfortunately, two extenuating circumstances hit our small shop at the same time: Jeff Singer just moved to a new apartment (don’t worry, Boston—you haven’t gotten rid of him just yet!), and I’m recovering from reconstructive knee surgery a week ago, which has sharply curtailed the hours I can work. Even though we knew in advance that this convergence was approaching, it still meant we couldn’t prepare a Digest for today.

This is the single biggest difficulty we face as a two-man crew: We have zero slack. If one of us is out, the other must work twice as hard—and if both of us must be out, then no work can happen at all. We’ve always tried very hard to avoid the latter, but when your lease is up, and your orthopedist says you can’t put off surgery for your torn ACL, you’ve simply got to take the day off from publishing.

This is why my hope next year is to add a third person to our team. It would make The Downballot much more robust, and we’d be able to bring you even more of the elections coverage you love. And the good news is, we’re now very close to reaching the break-even point, which would allow us to consider what that third hire might look like.

But we’re also facing a problem that cropped up at this time last year: subscriber churn on the occasion of our anniversary. Roughly a third of our paid subscribers signed up right around the time we first launched two years ago. As a result, whenever that date comes around again, we invariably lose a sizable chunk of folks, including some who’ve gotten new credit cards but just haven’t updated their data.

You can see the recent spike (because readers wanted to upgrade before our rate increase earlier this month) and then the subsequent drop-off. It’s a real bummer because we gained 100 paid subscribers at the start of August, only to shed around 80 since our anniversary—with more falloff likely to come.

You’ve already shown us tremendous generosity in becoming a paid subscriber. Without you, The Downballot simply would not exist today. If you’d like to help us further, there are two things you might consider.

One, you could spread the good word by purchasing a gift subscription for a friend, relative, or colleague. Yes, it would mean giving yourself competition as the best-informed person on downballot elections in your circle, but hey, you already have a head start!

The other is that you could make a donation on our ActBlue page, either on a one-time or recurring basis. (And please note that we will never, ever share your information unless required by law.)

We look forward to the Morning Digest hitting your inboxes again tomorrow.

Thank you so much,

David

Thank you so much for being a paid subscriber to The Downballot! If you’d like to further support our work, you can donate on our ActBlue page.