AppWatch
The midterms are less than a week away and whether you lean left or right, you need
to get out and make your vote count. While you’re at it, make sure your friends and family are doing the same. We’ve got an idea on how to make that easy. In fact, that’s the subject of this article.
It seems the drama sparked by political debate is at an all-time high. No matter what side you’re on, someone is going to have a pretty real problem with it, and that makes for some interesting exchanges where neither is ready to back down. But at the end of the day, it’s not about who can convince who, or who can come up with the wittiest quip. No, at the end of the day it’s about who’s voting. Put up or shut up, as they say.
It’s time to put the Facebook or Twitter feuds to rest and start encouraging your friends to vote.
The Vote.org app by Outvote is one of the best ways to accomplish that task. The app provides you with prepared messages that include all the information you friends need to know to check their registration status and find their polling place on election day. Then it provides an interface where you can contact them about upcoming elections.
The app was developed by Outvote Inc., an early-stage startup dedicated to building technology to encourage people to vote. The founder, Naseem Makiya, first started building Outvote after he saw the real need to modernize campaigning in the political sphere while knocking on doors for local campaigns in 2016. This led Makiya to the idea that you can scale the effectiveness of these 1-on-1 interactions by making it easy to have digital interactions with one’s own personal contact list. With some help from start-up incubator Y Combinator, the Outvote app was born.
Unlike the Vote.org app, Outvote’s own app is a partisan app for Democrats and progressive candidates and organizations only. The app is fast gaining traction through partnerships with top organizations like MoveOn, Flippable, Swing Left, and more. It’s simple to use. You agree to sync your contact list with public voting records to find out who is registered to vote as well as their voting history and whether or not they live in a critical swing district that Democrats need to take back Congress. Then you can message your friends right then and there with a reminder to vote and any other information they need to know about the elections.
In a few minutes, you can have the same effect as hours worth of canvassing. According to their website, a single text makes your friends 10% more likely to vote. So download Outvote and get your friends to the polls on November 6th!
Outvote is available on iOS and Android.
The Vote.org app by Outvote is available on iOS and Android.
