Empowered Vote is a non-partisan nonprofit trying to build tools that help people with civic engagement. Our tools aim to help you see who's running, where they stand, where the money goes, and learn more about our governments in the process. We're early, and we don't have all the answers yet. People before parties. No ads. No selling your data.
Three problems we keep running into as voters ourselves. They're definitely not small problems, but we think we've got solid swings at each.
Figuring out who represents you, where they stand, and what your local budget actually does shouldn't take a weekend of research. Most people don't have that time, so they don't bother — and we don't blame them.
Pull the scattered pieces — representatives, votes, budgets, meetings — into one place a voter can actually use. We're not there yet.
Party, name, network — we react to those before we read what was actually said. That's human, but it makes it almost impossible to evaluate ideas on their merits.
Build tools (like Read & Rank and Compass) that show you the idea before the name attached to it, so you can make up your own mind first.
If getting elected requires wealth, then governing primarily serves the wealthy. Money doesn't just influence politics — it shapes who runs, who wins, and who gets heard.
No ads. No selling data. We make it easier for any candidate to get in front of voters based on the strength of their solutions — not their capacity to fundraise.
Four tools, live now. They're alpha — real and useful, but still being built and occasionally incomplete. Use what you find here as a starting point, and cross-check anything important with official sources.
While anyone can freely explore the tools, they were designed for our three Alpha Communities — those in Monroe County, IN, Los Angeles County, CA, and Collin County, TX.
Enter your address and see who actually represents you, where their campaign contributions come from, and other information.
Discover →Rank where you stand on key issues, then compare your compass to politicians on the same scale.
Calibrate →Explore municipal budgets line by line. See what your city actually spends and how it compares year over year.
Understand →Test what you know about civics in a friendly, competitive trivia format.
Play →Empowered Vote is a tiny part-time team. We'd rather be transparent about the tradeoffs than pretend we're further along than we are.
Things will break. Data will be incomplete or wrong in places. Don't make a final voting decision based only on what you see here — cross-check with official sources, candidate sites, and your local election office.
Found a bug or a wrong fact? Flag it for us — that's the most useful thing you can do during alpha.
A handful of people — mostly non-developers — build this in evenings and weekends. That's why progress is uneven and some features are further along than others. We're prioritizing breadth over polish on purpose right now: better to ship something useful and iterate than wait years for perfect.
AI tools have made it possible for our non-developer core team to ship real software, and we're grateful for that. But AI gets things wrong, and we know not everyone is comfortable with its use in civic work.
We do our best to vet what AI helps produce, but a small team working late nights doesn't catch everything. If you spot something off, flag it and we'll fix it.
We try to keep finances open. See our current funding and spend at financials.empowered.vote.
Three short talks on what we're trying to build and why. They're a few months old — some details have moved, the thinking hasn't.
