Helping voters find, create, and share voter guides
Our mission is to build simple and transparent tools that democratize information access and enhance civic engagement.
Problem
Informed voting is cumbersome. Ballots are long and complex, leading many to skip important items, breaking the link of democratic accountability. Simultaneously, newspapers, political clubs, unions, civic groups, and engaged citizens regularly write in-depth guides to inform their communities about elections. However, these guides are hard to find and require creators to duplicate research and create independent distribution channels, limiting their reach and impact.
App
OpenBallot addresses these issues by creating a single place to find, create, and share voter guides. Guide creators can easily add endorsements to every item on the ballot, get shareable links for their full guides and individual endorsements, and see analytics about views, shares, and recommendations to quantify their influence. Voters can easily find guides and see what trusted institutions or community members think about every item on their ballot.
Key Features
By integrating voter ease, organizational engagement, and real-time polling, OpenBallot establishes a three-sided marketplace with strong viral dynamics, encouraging widespread participation and influence:
Simplified Voting
Our platform is built with the latest security protocols to ensure your data is safe from unauthorized access and we use the latest, most powerful algorithms to encrypt your users data.
Voter engagement
Organizations can build enduring connections with voters by adding their voting recommendations, see statistics.
Polling
Real-time voter decisions can help improve polling accuracy. Embeddable live results can drive traffic and engagement.
Enhancements
- Analytics: Users see the impact of their guides, boosting motivation to create and share.
- Content Sharing: Auto-generated, well-designed snippets for easy social media sharing.
- Efficiency: Streamlined guide creation reduces repetitive data entry, encouraging more participation.
Benefits
Making it easy to find, create, and share voter guides promotes a positive feedback loop: organizations are incentivized to share information to reach a broader set of voters. Voters can easily find the opinions of trusted entities on ballot items, making it much easier to vote according to their values. The result is increased data contribution, better-informed voting decisions, and higher voter engagement.
Societal Impact
OpenBallot shifts civic engagement from top-down party systems to thoughtful community-driven civic discourse. OpenBallot prioritizes voters and emphasizes transparency and simplicity. Our user-friendly platform transforms how political endorsements are shared and utilized, fostering a more engaged and informed electorate.