Three problems we keep running into as voters ourselves. They're big, and we're a small team of volunteers (plus our stick-figure mascots, for moral support), so read each “What we're trying” as an attempt, not a promise.
Figuring out who represents you, where they stand, and what your local budget does shouldn't take a weekend of research. If you've skipped it because you had a life to get on with, fair enough. The research is the part we want to fix, not you.
Put representatives, votes, budgets, and meetings in one place a voter can use. We're not there yet. Essentials and Treasury Tracker are the first pieces. The plan for the rest got too big for a list, so now it's a mind map.
Party, name, network — we react to those before we read what someone said. Everyone does it, and yes, that includes the people building a site about not doing it. It makes an idea hard to judge on its merits.
Build tools that show you the idea before the name attached to it. Compass asks where you stand before it shows you where anyone else does, so you make up your mind before the team jerseys come out.
If getting elected requires wealth, then governing mostly serves the wealthy. Money affects who runs, who wins, and who gets heard.
We run no ads and sell no data. Any candidate should be able to reach voters on the strength of their solutions, whatever the size of their war chest. (Ours would fit in a coin purse, so we take this one personally.)
Empowered Vote is a small team of volunteers. Here's what that means for what you'll find, and what we'd like you to know before you find it.
Things will break, and some places have more coverage than others so far. We review our data and keep improving how we check it. Your local election office has the final word on ballots and deadlines.
If you spot something off, flag it. We get oddly excited about bug reports.
A small team of volunteers builds this, with help from many more people along the way, and most of us aren't developers by training. That's why some features are further along than others. For now we're choosing breadth over polish. We'd rather ship something useful and improve it than spend years polishing something nobody asked for.
AI tools let a small team of mostly non-developers build working software, and we're grateful. AI gets things wrong sometimes, and confidently, which is its least charming habit. People make mistakes too.
So we cite our sources, review what goes on the site, and keep improving how we check it. Spot something off? Flag it and we'll fix it.
We're adding cities and states as we go. About once a month, we send a short email: what we shipped, what broke, and where we're headed next. Reply to any of them and a person on the team reads it, probably more than once. You can also sign up on the newsletter page.
Our funding and spending are public at financials.empowered.vote, so you can see where our money comes from and what we spend it on. Volunteers have gotten us surprisingly far. Our hosting company, sadly, doesn't accept volunteer hours. If you'd like to chip in, $2 a month is our suggested start, and every tool stays free either way. Donate
Four talks on what we're trying to build and why.
On building infrastructure that doesn't pick a side.
Talk 02How we think about civic friction, and where to cut it.
Talk 03The principle that anchors every product decision we make.
Talk 04Three sacrifices that show what we are not, and who we aim to be.
