This November, Democrats across the country saw major success at the voting booth. Although this victory serves as an encouraging reminder that public opinion is largely against authoritarianism and its supporters, there is still work to be done.
This is why Jason Berlin, Executive Director of Field Team 6, is working hard with his team of over 35,000 volunteers across the country to register Democrats to vote. He joins Jen to explain how the organization works, the success of the operation, and all the work leading up to the 2026 midterms.
Jason Berlin is the Executive Director of Field Team 6, an organization with the singular goal of registering Democrats to vote. Previously, he worked with the California Democratic Party as Regional Organizer for L.A. County.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
This is Jen Rubin, editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. Well, 2025 turned out to be a good electoral year for Democrats, and there’s a fellow who wants to make 2026 just as good, and his name is Jason Berlin. He joins us. Thank you, Jason, nice to see you.
Jason Berlin
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.
Jen Rubin
You had a group called Field Team 6. Where did you get the name, and what do you do?
Jason Berlin
Yes, so Field Team 6 is a play on SEAL Team 6, because we are the crack elite voter registration team that goes behind enemy lines in these purple states and districts, and gets the job done. In this case, electing Democrats. That’s the job. Our mission is register Democrats, save the world. That’s been our mission since we started in early 2019.
Jen Rubin
And you operate with volunteers, as I understand it. This is a massive… volunteer network. How many people do you have, that are working on this project?
Jason Berlin
Right now, we’re up to almost 38,000 volunteers across the country. They’re in every state. It started with just a handful. Now, now we’re in every state, truly national. We have only 3 people on payroll, including myself. We have a volunteer staff of incredibly talented people from all walks of life. We have a nuclear physicist, you know, super, super talented people, on the volunteer staff that is about 75 people.
Jen Rubin
And your goal is to register new voters, is that right?
Jason Berlin
Yes, by the truckloads. We want to register hordes of new Democrats and progressive independents, specifically in the swing states and districts where just a few can swing the balance of power.
Jen Rubin
How do you figure out who to go after, or where to operate in? Tell us a little bit about your operation.
Jason Berlin
Yes, so, to figure out which are the swing states and which are the swing districts, we look at a whole number of things. The general criterion we use is whether In the last election, a Democrat won or lost by 8 points or less. So we can, you know, determine swingability that way. But we also take into account… the momentum we have in the current moment. And, you know, every election is a huge data point. And we have seen, since last November. when Trump won, almost every single election since then has swung to the left between 8 and 25 points. And so we had all these little dots, and then we just had a huge dot With the 2025 elections, as you know, where we won in landslides, it was a validation of that, you know, when you connect those dots, you form a line, and it was a total validation of that trajectory, where we won like crazy in Virginia, New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania. And others.
Jen Rubin
So, do you tend to focus on an age group, like college-age kids, or one demographic group? How do you figure out, you know, your best fishing grounds, if you will, to find the new voters?
Jason Berlin
That is a great question. So, we register voters in every nonviolent way possible, you know? And so we do it analog and digital. We’re doing a massive scaling up right now. this cycle of our in-person voter drive efforts, and we’re also continuing to register people on the digital side. To that end, we have a unique, first-of-its-kind database that currently contains about 29 million unregistered likely Democrats. They’re unregistered people, we have gathered them from a wide array of sources, political data vendors, commercial data vendors, and we’ve scored them Using our own modeling, our genius volunteers, that nuclear physicist I mentioned, among them on our volunteer analytics team, were able to put together a model that has better predictive ability for whether someone’s going to register as a Democrat than anything out there.
Jen Rubin
Wow.
Jason Berlin
So that is what we use. It looks at a wide array of markers, uses machine learning, and figures out, you know, if someone, eats a lot of kale, has a lot of, artisanal products, you know, maybe owns a few tote bags, more likely to be a Democrat. And.
Jen Rubin
Very good. Now, can you… do you know how many of the people that you have registered in the past voted on November 4th? Do you have a sense of what that was?
Jason Berlin
We do. That’s the teacher’s edition. We get the answers after every election. We’re able to select the voter rolls from across the country, compare them to the digital outreach we did, and see who registered and who voted. So what we know from last cycle is that in 24, We were able to contact 25 million unregistered likely Democrats across the country in swing states and districts, I believe that to be the biggest digital vote drive ever conducted. Out of those 25 million we contacted by text, mainly by text and email, but also by postcards, some by phone. Out of those 25 million, 6 million registered as Democrats or Republicans, and out of those 6 million, 4 million voted.
Jen Rubin
That is phenomenal. That is just phenomenal. And, do you know, for example, pick a race, Virginia, New Jersey, kind of, how many people you added to the potential Democratic or independent voter rolls in one of those big races?
Jason Berlin
With these… the races that just happened, it takes a little while, unfortunately. We will know in the coming months what we’re able to affect, but we… what I can say is that we did massive outreach to all of those this entire year, since the last election. We knew that these would be the battlegrounds, and I’m very proud of our targeting. Focus is power, as you know.
Jen Rubin
Wow.
Jason Berlin
So, so we’ve been concentrating our efforts on Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, and California, Prop 50, as soon as that was announced. And, oh my god, that may be the most existential thing that passed this year. Absolutely.
Jen Rubin
So, are you broadening your map now, given the fact that 2025 showed this big swing? Are you going and focusing now on states and districts that you might not have 3 or 4 months ago?
Jason Berlin
Absolutely. So I just completed our yearly reassessment of our map. We keep it, you know, up-to-date, and it also has to now take into account All the crazy redistricting efforts in this redistricting arms race that’s been unleashed.
So, some things don’t affect us. For example. Missouri just swallow the seats. They turned it from blue to bright red, so that’s not a swing. It’s, you know, unfortunately we can’t work there. Utah, the opposite happened, canceling that out. where the courts said, you actually need a Democratic district. And fortunately, that is safe blue, so we won’t have to work there either. We only look for the swings. But yes, we are going to be operating in 20 states. And we’ve targeted the… we know we have the wind at our backs, so we’re prioritizing the flips over the holds. In other words, we’ve got an offense. We want to get every new district that we can, flip the Republican out, and then we’ll work on the defense Knowing that… These, you know, we’re setting up for a true Huge blue wave. This fella.
Jen Rubin
Wow.
Jason Berlin
Midterm this year, in a so-called off-year. So, we know this midterm is gonna be huge.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. So, in those 20 states, can you tell us how many House seats and how many Senate seats you’re looking at?
Jason Berlin
Yes, we are looking at, at 6 Senate seats, and… 59 House seats.
Jen Rubin
Fabulous, wow. So, do you have to be a data genius to volunteer for your folks, or can you be someone who’s math-challenged like I am?
Jason Berlin
Oh, absolutely. Yes, you do not need any math skills to help out. There are a ton of ways to help. We are always looking for more people to send free… we have a free texting platform that one of our genius volunteers developed to send postcards, to lead voter drives. And also, you know, to social storm, social media storm is another huge way to help, and also to help out on the back end. Because we have this… this really massive volunteer staff. And we always need more help on the back end. So whether you know math or not, whether you’re an extrovert or a total introvert, maybe you hate dealing with people, we’ve got a job for you.
Jen Rubin
Got it. Well, and where do people go if they want to be part of this drive?
Jason Berlin
Great question. Thank you for not letting me forget to say that. FieldTeam6.org, the word field, the word team, the number 6.org, that’s… that’s us. Look up our volunteer ops, you’ll find plenty of great stuff to do.
Jen Rubin
Fabulous. Well, we will be sure to check back and see, how your progress is going, over the next year, and, 6 million people, that is a phenomenal, phenomenal effort. So, congratulations on your success, we wish you more, and we will look forward to having you back.
Jason Berlin
Thank you so much.
Jen Rubin
My pleasure. Take care.
