Road to 1,000,000 @Votap users - Day 99 | Current: 1611
I m changing the very first thing every new Votap user does. Instead of opening the app and immediately being asked for a phone number and information, your first button tap will be an actual vote.
Based on your country, Votap fetches one of the most voted politicians. You choose , or neutral and instantly see the score move, feel the haptic feedback and get the full voting experience. Only then do we ask you to register. Your vote stays pending and automatically activates once you become a real Votap user.
The idea is simple. I want people to understand Votap and actually experience something before I ask them for anything. Hopefully that first vote makes them think okay, I want in instead of why does this app want my phone number?
Want to cast yours? Download Votap from the App Store!
More tomorrow.
Hi Product Hunt 👋
I’m Alex, co-founder of Votap.
Votap started from a frustration my co-founder @zahoor_ali and I kept coming back to. Politics has a huge influence on our lives, yet most people have almost zero impact on politics day to day. We thought, if investors can react to companies in real-time on the stock market, why can’t ‘we the people’ do the same with politicians?
So we started building Votap:
It’s completely free to use
Vote on politicians anytime, not just during elections
Results update live as people vote
The aim is to hold politicians accountable between elections. Our belief is simple. When feedback is constant and transparent, behaviour improves. And when behaviour improves, society improves.
We’ll be here in the comments all day — we’d love your honest feedback! Ask anything, challenge the idea, or tell us why this is a good (or terrible) concept. We’re here for it 🙌
This caught my eye because I've long considered a similar idea. The idea being to propose real world questions based on real legal decisions/controversies or a suggestion being made and have people vote on it. For example, if insurance cost to you is the same or cheaper and you wouldn't have to change medical providers, would you be in favor of universal health care? Yes or No. Which i understand is just a poll, but if you have enough people leaning one way or another in a particular district, then your local politician could use that as information to guide them in a direction of how their constituents prefer they go. Of course this assumes you have enough participants. But then there could also be concerns of how reliable the data is if bots figure out a way to lean it in one direction or another... have you considered simple, topical questions?
Having said all that, I like the idea. A concern to me about voting on how a particular politician is doing, is someone may like certain things they are doing, but not others so it may not be as cut and dry. I think how they go on issues is what is important and easier for people to follow. Maybe combination of the idea above and your existing product: Trump wants to do X. I agree or don't agree on this particular issue. Then maybe have it aggregate up for an overall score.
@chad_hert Hey Chad thank you for your kind words! I am glad the idea resonates with you. Regarding your concern - the vote for the politician also has a duration (3 days, week etc.). The idea is that the vote is meant to be dynamic. Even a politician which you generally dislike might have done something which you really approve of so you might give them an upvote for a week and see if they deliver or not. The vote aims to be your current opinion based on their actions, not your overall approval or disapproval.
That said, we are exploring options for polling citizens on questions similar to the one you've suggested, so that will for sure be the subject of upcoming updates.
Truly love this concept, but do you think politicians are actually ready for a real-time performance review or should we expect some angry calls when their stock starts crashing? :D
@valeriia_kuna Haha, appreciate the love 😄
Honestly, probably a bit of both. Real-time feedback isn’t always comfortable, but that discomfort is kind of the point. CEOs deal with live market sentiment every day, and politics has a huge impact on people’s lives, yet feedback is slow and indirect.
We’re not expecting politicians to love it on day one, but over time we think normalising transparent public sentiment could lead to better accountability and better conversations.
Curious, would you actually use something like this to track politicians you care about, or would you mostly check it when big news breaks?
@zahoor_ali I can definitely see myself checking the app when a rating spikes just to find out what triggered it.
It’s a great tool for politicians to gauge public reaction to specific decisions, though as we know, not everyone deal with feedback well :D
My main concern would be how to keep it human – with PR machines and bot farms out there, how do you ensure the sentiment actually comes from real people and not just organized anti-campaigns?
Also, a feature where politicians could pitch a direction and let people vote on it before it's set in stone would be the dream... but maybe I'm being too optimistic about how much they actually want to listen! :D
@valeriia_kuna Love that take! You’ve basically described both the use case and the hard problems in one comment.
Totally agree, spike-driven curiosity is exactly the behaviour we’re seeing early on. The “why did this just move?” moment is powerful, and it creates a natural bridge between news and public reaction.
On keeping it human: you’re spot on about PR machines and bot farms. We’re building with that threat in mind from day one. Things like friction for mass actions, behavioural pattern detection, and gradually strengthening identity signals as the platform grows. It won’t ever be perfect, but the goal is to make coordinated manipulation expensive and obvious, rather than easy and invisible.
And honestly… that feature idea is 🔥
Letting politicians float a direction and see real-time public reaction before locking something in is exactly the kind of feedback loop we think politics is missing. Whether politicians are ready to listen is another question, but building the infrastructure to listen feels like the first step.
If that feature existed, would you see yourself actually engaging with it, or would you be more of a “watch the sentiment move” type of user?
@zahoor_ali If that feature existed, I’d definitely vote for the directions that resonate with me instead of just watching the sentiment move! 🙌
This is genuinely great haha! So is it just users signing up and voting at the moment or do you also take into consideration live news, trends of social media (X, Instagram etc) that also effect a politicians popularity / ranking within the app?
@mustassim Good question! Right now the rankings are driven purely by live user voting inside the app. We do show relevant news in the Media tab, and users can vote on articles there too, so you can see how sentiment shifts around real-world events. Longer term, we’ll also use news and trends as context around voting signals.
Do you think seeing sentiment change alongside news would make you check the app more often, or would you mostly dip in when there is breaking news in politics?
@zahoor_ali I do believe that viewing sentiment changing alongside news makes the results more interesting and it would make me check the app more often. I wonder if you also plan to expand the capabilities of the app to support forum like discussions or not
Hey Product Hunt 👋 I’m Zahoor, one of the founders of Votap.
Like most startups, Votap started pretty scrappy. A lot of late nights, second-guessing, building things that break, fixing them, and slowly figuring out what actually matters to users. This isn’t a polished “big company” launch. It’s very much a real product built by a small team trying to learn fast and build something useful.
We built Votap because politics affects almost every part of our lives: cost of living, housing, work, safety, opportunity. Yet for most of us, our actual influence feels close to zero outside of elections every few years. That disconnect never sat right with us.
Votap is our attempt to close that gap. It’s a simple way to express how you feel about politicians in real time and see how public sentiment shifts live through charts. No waiting years between elections. Just ongoing feedback.
Launching on Product Hunt matters a lot to us because early adopters here don’t just click and disappear. You ask tough questions. You spot flaws. You suggest features we didn’t think of. That feedback is genuinely how early products get better, and we’re here to learn.
If you try Votap, I’d love to hear:
What feels confusing?
What feels useful?
What would make you come back?
Thanks for checking it out, and appreciate any feedback (good or brutal). This is just the start for us 🙏
Interesting concept for political engagement! How do you handle verification to prevent manipulation? The global angle is ambitious - different countries have very different political contexts. Would love to understand the methodology.