Start-ups Look to Jump Start Elections

Keeping along with yesterday’s political campaign theme, I came across this great article in techPresident discussing two San Francisco start-ups who are attempting to make voting more social.

Votizen and DemDash (short for Democracy Dashboard) use the power of social networking to make the process of supporting and endorsing a candidate or bill more transparent and sharable.

Both start-ups, which were founded in 2010, allow users to share their voting plans and are getting a test-run during the San Francisco mayoral election on Tuesday.

Votizen

Votizen is the more established and better known of the two start-ups, and is backed by the original investors in Facebook and Twitter.

The company was founded by Jason Putorti, lead designer of Mint.com, and David Binetti, co-founder of USA.gov, with the mission to create “a connected electorate, where real voters establish and build on direct relationships with those who seek and hold elected office,” according to the site.

The start-up took off last year from the success of a Votizen-powered Twitter campaign in support of the Startup Visa. Thousands of people tweeted their support for the bill, and Votizen hand delivered their messages to the appropriate people.

Since then, the function of the site has evolved from just delivering messages from constituents to candidates to a larger social function.

Currently Votizen allows the user to claim her voting record and publicize it, to endorse candidates in those races where she can vote, to inform her vote by learning what others have to say, or to write a letter to an official and invite others to sign on.

"We're focusing on things that allow people to take action individually that doesn't require them to be part of millions," Binetti said to Tech President.

Ultimately, Votizen aims to make money by charging organizations per message for printing and delivering letters from voters on their issue.

It also also plan to monetize by creating an "outsourced get-out-the-vote" operation where it charges campaigns to message those voters who have already publicly indicated who they are voting for and remind them of key issues and dates.

DemDash

Dan Ancona founded DemDash as a platform for civic engagement that connects campaigns, organizations and citizens using designed, socially curated political information.

“We’re making voting better and disrupting the political communications market by replacing stuff most voters dislike (those election time piles of mail and TV ads) with stuff they do like (beautifully presented, clear information from trusted friends and organizations),” said Ancona on a the Hub Ventures website.

Like Votizen, Dem Dash allows users to publish who they are voting for and look at who their friends are voting for. But it allows participation from groups, so that users can see what a group says about a candidate or issue.

This information is not only displayed on a newsfeed, but also it is neatly organized on a single page where the user can also see which of your connections have the most influence.

For people who have little knowledge of an issue on a ballot or who supports it, this page is a go-to guide for information. In general, when many of us don’t know whom to vote for we turn to friends or major organizations to tell us, DemDash just makes that process a social experience.

In addition, DemDash gets around the election law that prevents nonprofits from endorsing candidates, since if you can see how a group's members think about candidates you can, in effect, figure out if an organization might endorse a candidate.

Like Votizen, Ancona sees monetizing DemDash someday. Although his plans are a little less fleshed out, he sees making money by charging politicians to talk to voters through the site.

Looking at this functionality, I see DemDash as a slightly more valuable tool as it aggregates information in a way that is truly helpful for users trying to make their own voting decisions, whereas Votizen seems more of a platform to showcase a user’s involvement in civic matters.

Looking to 2012

With the 2012 presidential election fast approaching, many are continuing emphasize the importance that social media will play in the outcome of the election.

I would venture to say that is not only the candidate’s use of social media that will influence the outcome, but also how the medium is adapted and what platforms are developed to capitalize on these elections.

And to that effect, platforms like Votizen and DemDash may have a dramatic effect on how voters get involved with the presidential election and how candidates need to communicate with them.

As 65% of American adults are on social networking sites, and that number is increasing every day, social platforms could plan an important role in encouraging people to vote and making the general public more aware of certain issues.

From the perspective of the candidate, platforms like these give candidates an opportunity to not only engage with active and involved citizens, but also to get a hold of valuable personal data, which should allow them to figure out what the real issues are, finely tailor their messaging and better engage with their voters.

Whether Votizen and DemDash are the platforms that voters and candidates rely on in 2012, however, has yet to be determined. We should stay tuned to the SF mayoral race, happening on Tuesday, to try to answer that question.