If you haven't already seen the news coverage, I'm proud to tell you that the Huffington Post, New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, and media throughout the country are reporting on research findings, published last week by Science, that prove the effectiveness of the Los Angeles LGBT Center's groundbreaking approach to reducing voter prejudice.
Our Leadership LAB team developed a method we call "deep canvassing" that the researchers tested while we worked with SAVE, a South Florida LGBT organization, to reduce transgender prejudice in conservative Miami neighborhoods. SAVE had asked for our help preparing for a ballot measure that could have threatened Miami's new trans-inclusive human rights ordinance.
Independent scientists from Stanford and U.C. Berkeley found that among the group of voters who we engaged in conversation, there was a reduction of prejudice against transgender people comparable to the decline of prejudice against gay and lesbian people that took place over more than a decade, between 1998 and 2012. More than that, one in ten voters had a very significant reduction in prejudice. The findings were so impressive that the prestigious journal Science published the results.
Considering the recent loss at the ballot box in Houston, new anti-LGBT legislation in North Carolina and Mississippi, and the threat of future anti-LGBT ballot measures and bills, this study has real practical importance. I've long believed that if LGBT people and our allies could meet and engage voters in heartfelt conversations, we could reduce their prejudice. Now there's proof that using the approach we've developed, we can.
If all of this sounds a bit familiar, it may be because a little more than a year ago, Science published research findings regarding our voter canvassing work to promote support for marriage equality. To our shock and dismay, data collection problems and irregularities related to the work of those researchers were discovered by the same scientists who have now studied our work in Miami. Science retracted that December 2014 article, but we never gave up because we remained convinced that our approach was working. Now we have the definitive proof that it does.
We plan to share the method we've developed with LGBT leaders and progressive allies throughout the country and it fills me with enormous pride that it was developed by the Los Angeles LGBT Center. I'm especially grateful to the hundreds of dedicated and courageous volunteers who have been knocking on doors with us, for many years, to promote LGBT equality while helping us develop and refine our approach.