Making Democracy Work at Campaign Speed: the NYC DSA's Decision-Making System
- Run binding votes with thousands of members
- Protect member privacy with anonymous voting
- Keep a clear record of every decision
- Self-host to control costs and own your data
When Zohran Mamdani made history winning New York City's Democratic mayoral primary in late 2025, the infrastructure behind his grassroots campaign looked nothing like traditional politics. The Democratic Socialists of America - New York City chapter (NYC DSA), a political party focused on city affordability and workers' rights, played a significant role in the campaigns, endorsing him for his Assembly seat and mayoral run. They also provided essential early support like volunteers for canvassing and fundraising.
What you may not know is that the NYC-DSA had a vital tool working as a decision-making platform for the coordination of 13,000 members. These members used Loomio to make rapid campaign decisions while maintaining genuine democratic participation across the boroughs.
"Being able to make decisions quickly and collaboratively has been really important," shares Darren Goldner, who served as NYC DSA's Tech & Tools Coordinator during their meteoric growth. "The people executing the campaign were all doing it as volunteers. The same with all our other work we're doing at the same time."
The challenge was daunting. With only two staff supporting (they had zero staff for 18 months during this period), the NYC DSA needed technology that could support their democratic values without breaking their member-dues budget or requiring a full-time tech team.
From Chaos to Coordination
When Darren stepped into the Tools Coordinator role for the chapter, the NYC DSA was a confederation of groups using an array of voting tools: Google Forms, various polling software, scattered processes with no consistent records. "We had many different ways of voting in the chapter," Darren explains. "Some of them were highly manual, some of them harder to integrate."
The organization's democratic structure meant leadership turned over frequently, at least annually for most bodies. This created both a challenge and an opportunity. Darren used the ongoing leadership transitions as moments to introduce change. During the onboarding of each new leader, Darren was able to train and educate them on standard tools and practices rather than having to inherit the prior ad-hoc systems.
The choice to self-host Loomio's open-source platform was initially driven by necessity. "When we were shrinking, I was in major cost-cutting mode but also enablement mode at the same time," Darren recalls. "I really wanted to be able to scale out our tools, and the open source nature of Loomio allowed that."
Democracy at Scale
The numbers tell an incredible story of growth for an organization that is "walking the talk." The NYC DSA has conducted votes with thousands participating. They're now preparing for their largest vote yet: a 13,000-member endorsement decision for upcoming congressional races.
This is, as far as anyone knows, the largest deployment of Loomio in existence.
Scale alone wasn't the goal. The organization needed to move at campaign speed while maintaining democratic legitimacy. "We try not to vote in chat mechanisms because there's no trail," Darren notes. "We want to be able to go back and understand decision-making over time." Leadership bodies can discuss rapidly in their constant communication channels, then quickly launch a Loomio decision with a link in chat. "We have pretty good patterns for using Loomio on short turnarounds."
Security Meets Transparency
Operating in an increasingly polarised political environment added another layer of complexity. With members regularly targeted for doxxing and Darren himself profiled by right-wing watchdog groups, the organization had to balance transparency with privacy.
Their solution: using Loomio's private groups for standing bodies, and anonymous voting for large-scale member decisions. "We're subject to political attacks fairly frequently," Darren explains. "We're pretty concerned about inviting members into spaces where names are easily available."
The ability to maintain democratic accountability while protecting member privacy became essential infrastructure for organizing at this scale.
What's Next
With new campaigns demonstrating what's possible when democratic movements have the right infrastructure, the NYC DSA continues to evolve their use of Loomio. The organization is exploring how to extend these practices to their distributed leadership bodies and looking toward rolling out more features to their group. For example, they are working directly with Loomio to implement STV (single transferable vote), and improving on the existing ranked choice voting system.
As Darren reflects on the journey: "All of us were literally doing this for free on our volunteer time. Being able to make decisions quickly and collaboratively in Loomio has been really important for that."
When democracy needs to move at the speed of campaigns (with thousands of people, zero budget, and the future on the line), the right tools become essential infrastructure for change.
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