If you stay up late watching TV in the United States, you might come across a short educational program packed with numbers.
The show’s host may be immediately recognizable to only a handful of people, but he’s currently the eighth-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“Hello, I’m Steve Ballmer. I spent 34 years growing Microsoft and owned the LA Clippers basketball team for 10 years. I love computers, data and facts, which is why I started USAFacts,” Ballmer said at the start of the show.
Leading up to Election Day in November, USAFacts is rolling out a series of fact-packed educational videos centered around the US. The videos will be available on YouTube and will air as late-night commercial breaks on select TV channels.
Depending on which show you tune in, you’ll see statistics and information about the federal budget, immigration, the environment and health care. Though Ballmer directs the shows, he says he’s not trying to change people’s minds.
“We’re trying to give the American people the information they need to do their civic duty,” Ballmer said. “We’re not going to choose sides.”
The idea for USAFacts came about when Ballmer began helping his wife’s family with their philanthropic work and was confronted with the scale and complexity of government data.
Ballmer believes the organization’s first project, announced in 2017, will be a version of the 10-K financial report that companies are required to prepare, showing the company’s financial health.
The report, now published annually, is called the “Government 10-K” after the annual financial report that companies must file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Each year, the organization travels to Washington, DC to host a session for lawmakers on the annual report and to make recommendations to lawmakers on data collection.
“This is simply how we look at our company and here are the numbers on how we’re doing. It has to be presented in context,” Ballmer said.
Ballmer said USAFacts is nonpartisan and only uses information released by local, state and federal governments to give people confidence in the data — it doesn’t include information from other sources, such as university studies or think tanks.
“Projections and estimates can be partisan, so avoid adjectives that can be partisan and stick to numbers,” he said.
It’s a radically different approach to politics than other wealthy tech executives, like Tesla’s Elon Musk or LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, who have chosen to engage politically through big donations to parties of their choice and big public statements.
“Either CEOs are paid by shareholders to take partisan positions or they’re not? I say no. Taking hyper-partisan positions from the top doesn’t seem right to me,” Ballmer said. “I have a lot of respect for tech executives. A lot of them have started great companies and run great businesses. To me, that doesn’t seem like the right path to take.”
Ballmer added that during his time as CEO, Microsoft had a political action committee (PAC) that supported the company’s interests, but that there is now “a lot more going on.”
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“There are a lot more people out there. It’s a different world than when I retired 10 years ago, and the political environment is very different.”
In an election year when both parties use fake news, or “pink slime,” websites to promote their policies, Russia and Iran have been accused of election interference, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has lied frequently, it can be hard to separate truth from fiction.
Through USAFacts, Ballmer hopes to cut through the noise and reach people through the organization’s weekly newsletter and social media, noting that many people who search online for government statistics end up on the USAFact website.
Ballmer sees the presidential election as a key opportunity to engage more people with data. During the 2020 election, USAFacts ran an ad campaign called Change the Story, encouraging viewers to “find the nonpartisan facts behind the real stories.” This year, the organization is turning to longer forms, putting Ballmer at the forefront to bring data directly to viewers.
“This comes from fond memories of the 1992 election when Ross Perot ran for president. He bought what was basically an infomercial. It was 30 minutes and he would hold up a poster board with numbers on it and explain what was going on in America and what he would do about it. It was very numbers-based,” Ballmer said.
USAFacts has released four videos in its “Just the Facts” series, which have garnered a combined 14 million views on YouTube so far, and the organization plans to release a total of six videos by Election Day.
“We’re definitely going to see a lot more visitors and users this year compared to the 2020 election, and I’m happy about that. We’re not yet at what I always wanted to achieve, which was to figure out how many people want the data and are willing to give the time,” Ballmer said. “It’s hard to predict.”
