Advanced Micro Targeting

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Advanced Micro Targeting is a company that offers signature gathering services to ballot initiative campaigns.

About

Advanced Micro Targeting was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. On its website, the company said, "Advanced Micro Targeting (AMT) is a direct democracy firm that sells big ideas. Big ideas like ending government corruption, giving voters the right to decide what's best for them, and electing leaders who actually listen to the voters. We go where the people are. Sometimes knocking on doors, approaching people in parking lots, libraries and other venues where people gather. ... Since 2008, and throughout the United States, our team delivered victories for our clients from major metropolitan areas such as Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, and New York City, to the suburbs of Washington D.C. and Kentucky's coal country. AMT's disciplined petitioners and voter contact specialists fought through blizzards in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Ohio, then beat the summer heat in Nevada and Texas to qualify ballot initiatives."

Since 2015, Advanced Micro Targeting received five Pollie Awards (awarded by the American Association of Political Consultants) for "the nation’s best ballot qualification effort and the nation’s best GOTV program" for AMT's work in Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, and Oregon. Advanced Micro Targeting received a 2020 Reed Award for Best Use of Paid Field Program for Ballot Initiative for their involvement with a Memphis ballot initiative concerning public safety.

Petition drives

The following ballot measures appeared on the ballot after the sponsoring campaign committee hired Advanced Micro Targeting to collect signatures. Since 2016, 13 ballot measures appeared on the ballot after the sponsoring committee(s) hired Advanced Micro Targeting to gather signatures. Of the eight measures that appeared on the ballot, 10 were approved and three were defeated. Sponsoring committees paid an average of $736,360.39 in total for Advanced Micro Targeting's signature gathering services per ballot measure.

Measures on the ballot (2016-2022)

Year	Measure	Measure description	Total cost	Signatures required	CPRS	Outcome
2016	Montana CI-116	Provides specific rights for crime victims	$462,000.00	48,349	$9.56	a
2016	North Dakota Measure 3	Provides specific rights for crime victims	$218,750	26,904	$8.13	a
2017	Ohio Issue 1	Provides specific rights for crime victims	$2,300,000.00	306,591	$7.50	a
2018	Alaska Measure 1	Creates salmon habitat protection standards and permit requirements	$196,101.31	32,127	$6.10	d
2018	North Dakota Measure 1	Establishes an ethics commission, bans foreign political contributions, and enacts provisions related to lobbying and conflicts of interest	$260,000.00	26,904	$9.66	a
2018	North Dakota Measure 3	Removes marijuana and other products from list of controlled substances and provides for automatic expungement of convictions from legalized controlled substances	$248,857.00	26,904	$9.25	d
2020	Alaska Measure 1	Increases taxes on certain oil production in the North Slope	$163,333.34	28,501	$5.73	d
2020	Alaska Measure 2	Changes Alaska's election policies, including establishing top-four primaries, ranked-choice voting, and campaign finance law changes	$236,250.00	28,501	$8.29	a
2022	Arizona Proposition 211	Requires that anyone making independent expenditures of more than $50,000 on a statewide campaign or $25,000 on a local campaign to disclose the names of the money's original sources	$1,220,000.00	237,645	$5.13	a
2022	Arkansas Issue 4	Legalizes marijuana	$2,253,440.30	89,151	$25.28	a
2022	Nebraska Initiative 433	Increases the minimum wage to $15 by 2026	$1,202,033.07	86,776	$13.85	a
2022	Nevada Question 3	Creates open top-five primaries and ranked-choice voting for general elections, which would apply to congressional, gubernatorial, state executive official, and state legislative elections.	$2,000,000.00	135,561	$14.75	a
2022	North Dakota Constitutional Measure 1	Limits the governor to serving two four-year terms and limiting state legislators to serving eight years in the state House and eight years in the state Senate.	$329,000.00	31,164	$10.56	a

This chart was last updated after statewide ballot measure elections in 2022.

Ballot initiative signature costs

See also: Laws governing the initiative process and Analysis of signature costs in past years

The cost of getting an initiative before voters varies widely by state and by initiative proposal. The requirements and restrictions imposed by state law form a major factor in the expense of an initiative signature petition effort.

Higher signature requirements are a straightforward example of a reason an initiative petition campaign might be more expensive in one state than in another. Other restrictions that can make a difference in the cost of a petition campaign include:

• Distribution requirements - It is easier and less expensive to collect a lot of signatures in one very populous area than a small number of signatures from lots of smaller, less-populated areas.
• Pay-per-signature bans - Paying signature gatherers by signature is one of the most cost-efficient ways to fund signature gathering efforts.
• Restrictions on circulators - Restricting who can collect signatures limits competition between petition companies and professional signature gatherers.
• Initiative petition circulation periods - If proponents have less time to collect signatures, the process can be more expensive.

Measuring the cost

See also: Analysis of signature costs in past years

Ballotpedia uses two ways to measure the cost of an initiative or veto referendum petition drive.

1. According to the total cost of gathering the required signatures to put the initiative or veto referendum on the ballot
2. According to the total cost divided by the number of signatures required to qualify the measure for the ballot or Cost Per Required Signature (CPRS)

Total cost: The total cost depends on all of the factors that can make a petition effort more or less expensive, including the population of the state and the state's signature requirements. This measurement does not necessarily indicate how difficult it is to run a signature petition campaign in a state relative to other states or how hard and expensive it is to collect a given valid signature. It takes into consideration the population and signature requirements for a state. For example, the average total cost of a successful initiative petition drive in California in 2016 was just over $2.9 million, while in Oklahoma the average total cost was about $870,000. Initiatives in California, however, require over four times as many signatures and affect 10 times as many people.

Cost Per Required Signature (CPRS): The cost per required signature cuts out the variable of a state's signature requirements and shows the cost for each signature needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. This second measurement is a better indication of how difficult it is to run a signature petition campaign in a given state relative to other states. For example, the average CPRS in California in 2016 was $6.20 while the average CPRS in Oklahoma was $9.59, but the average total petition cost was $2.9 million in California and about $870,000 in Oklahoma.

From the perspective of a national organization or proponents of a national agenda, this means that a lower CPRS generally means that a campaign could potentially affect more people and achieve more political influence per dollar spent, while the total petition cost might dictate in which states the campaign could actually afford to launch a successful petition drive.

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Advanced Micro Targeting. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

Advanced Micro Targeting - Google News

See also

• Ballot initiative
• Ballot measures cost per required signatures analysis
• Petition drive management companies
• Signature requirements for ballot measures
• Initiative petition signature validity rates
• Initiative petition circulation periods

External links

• Advanced Micro Targeting website
• Advanced Micro Targeting Facebook page
• Advanced Micro Targeting Twitter page