An app for transparent crowd-sourced lobbying of our elected representatives. Share where you stand, understand the issues in your community, measure your impact on policy decisions, and evaluate how well your electeds represent you in real time.
Hi. We're super excited to launch the Every Voice app (ForThePeople). Headquartered in Brooklyn, NY, we've been developing this platform for a year now to give people living in the US a direct channel to lobby their representatives (local, state, and federal government levels) for changes that are important to them. Because democratic decision-making should be as transparent as possible, all content shared on the platform, while anonymous, is accessible to all. That means you get to see the raw numbers behind how much support your concerns have, what concerns are top of mind in your districts, how often your reps are giving feedback, if any, and where your reps stand on the topics important to you.
Our hope is that we can leverage our collective voices, regardless of party affiliation or socioeconomic status, to not only highlight causes that we have in common but advocate for community driven legislative change. Please give it try. Share, explore, and start lobbying your reps.
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@cevpdc just downloaded the app! congrats on the launch 🎉
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@cevpdc Congratulations on your launch. Upvoted. Would love your support on our launch as well here: (Tigbar)
Congrats on your launch, this is such important work! Would love to know, what inspired you to create Every Voice? Sad as it is the other day I had to lookup our representatives and had no idea who they were. Would have loved to have something like this to help me out 🙌🏼
Also, I understand points and rewards as incentives for user participation, but how do you get the representatives to be on the platform and take a look at the issues?
And in terms of strategy, are you starting with a particular city and expanding from there? Are there any current challenges you are working through? Thanks!
@pamsny thanks for the insightful questions. I started Every Voice because I was so frustrated with the lack of significant policy changes to improve healthcare, education, and infrastructure. These areas are really important to me because I grew up in a low-income neighborhood. I've seen people fall through the cracks, and have personally experienced the highs and lows that come with the allocation of public resources.
Through conversation, with people across a broad spectrum of political ideology, I found we agreed on many potential solutions to these areas. However, our political discourse always seemed to center on niche hot-button issues. Every Voice is aimed at making everyday people heard, providing a pulpit to amplify whatever each of us actually cares about, and highlighting causes we have in common across socioeconomic status.
@pamsny We've been conducting user research with representatives in NYC and NY for the last few months. 2 big pain points, especially at the local and state levels, are 1.) actually hearing from constituents, and 2.) being able to easily parse through communications.
To put that into perspective, we've been told by reps that if 100 people reach out via phone and email about a cause it can take weeks to months to tag and aggregate the data into a usable format. Once that is complete, that issue becomes a high priority for the rep to push in their respective legislative body. The caveat, these reps are representing 100-300k people. So a small percentage of voices are driving the needle on legislative decisions.
We have a few reps that are piloting the constituent app to see what's top of mind for their constituents. Eventually we will have a portal for representative to better engage with constituents and parse through data for decision-making
@pamsny, New York City and New York State are at the core of our strategy. We are engaging with representatives, constituents, and nonprofits in the area to help deliver our vision of Every Voice as a feedback loop to improve policy decisions. From there we have a phased plan to expand outreach across the US. That being said, the app is available to any constituents that live in any U.S. state or territory.
Our biggest challenge now is getting more constituents to join the platform and share the concerns they care about. Whether small (e.g. need funding for a crosswalk on Main St) or big (e.g. expanding access to affordable housing) the more concerns that are shared, the better chance to get buy-in from our representatives. So it's up to each of us to start advocating for the changes we want to see.
@alex_chumbley Thanks! 2024 is a critical year for democracy. We want to make sure people can exercise their voices effectively and not have to turn to more drastic measures
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