Whenever it's election time, my voting process goes something like this: Watch my mailbox every day and sift through the endorsements provided by local organizations I trust. Bring a handful of them to the voting booth and hope that I make the right decision based on my limited perspective.
Change Politics, a new mobile web app debuted this week by Change.org, aims to simplify that process, making it a lot easier to find endorsements from both organizations and friends.
The app has two main features: a database of local and national candidate endorsements, and a platform for users to submit questions (which are "upvoted" by other site users) directly to candidates partnering with Change Politics.
"Our goal is to build a new network of influence on politics — of people and local communities who have the trust and respect of people around them but no way to communicate and share information," Change.org founder and CEO Ben Rattray tells Tech Insider.
Rattray hopes the app can build on Change.org's existing 130 million-person user base, many of whom have participated in the site's high-profile petitions for social change.
Most recently, a petition asking President Obama to pardon the imprisoned men profiled in the "Making a Murderer" documentary series gathered over 428,000 signatures. That petition was unsuccessful, but widely discussed.
Change Politics is launching with national election endorsements from trusted individuals and organizations in Iowa and New Hampshire, including the Des Moines Register and the Concord Monitor. When it gets close to election time, app users can create personalized ballots to bring to the voting booth.
The site already has partnerships with a number of presidential candidates who will answer questions directly from voters, including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, and Ben Carson. Change Politics is in discussions with others as well, according to Rattray.
While Change Politics is focusing on the U.S. national election to start, it will eventually expand to statewide and local elections. Rattray sees a particularly large opportunity in hyper-local elections — for the local school board, for example — where most people have no clue who to vote for. And ultimately, it will expand to other countries as well.
"This will transform low-information voters into high-information voters in near real time," says Rattray.
