Could mobile notifications help boost turnout in local elections? That's the theory behind EveryElection, a new app from Chicago serial entrepreneur Genevieve Thiers.
Best known in the Chicago tech community for founding Sittercity, Thiers got together with former Democratic field organizer Ellie Bahrmasel to start a new political action committee the day after President Donald Trump’s election victory. That organization, NewFounders, aims to use technology to re-connect voters with the political system.
“When more than half the country isn’t voting, it’s because they’ve given up,” said Thiers.
She believes outdated approaches for reaching out to voters is part of why the electorate is disengaging. Having spoken with groups of non-voters about why they didn’t cast their ballots in the most recent election, Thiers said one of the main issues that came up is that they didn’t know when and where elections were held.
The solution her team came up with was EveryElection: a mobile app that notifies voters about upcoming elections. After installing the app, the user is prompted to input their address. Based on that input, the app sends notifications about elections the user can vote in, along with information on where and when ballots can be cast. It also provides information about who the candidates are.
The app pieces together information from several data sets, and contains information on nearly 300,000 elections nationwide.
Thiers said one of its key features is that it’s specifically designed to be set and forgotten, so that people can download the app today and simply be reminded when they need to start paying attention.
“The time to do something is now, which seems counterintuitive because there’s not an election looming over us right now,” she said. “We’ll make it easy for you, but you have to take the step of downloading that app and looking at the alerts.”
Thiers said EveryElection is just one of several projects NewFounders has in the works, but that all of them focus on using technology to solve issues around democracy. The organization currently has just under 100 donors, including Thiers, who has donated around $350,000.
“I’ve got a team, and we’re doing awesome stuff, but it is costly,” she said. “Thankfully we still have the ability to run for a while, but we have plans to begin to reach out to everyday donors — not just big political ones.”
EveryElection is currently only available for iOS devices, but web and Android versions are under development.
Image via NewFounders.
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