Register to Vote

Register to vote in 30 seconds by scanning your ID 🇺🇸

6 followers

Register to vote in 30 seconds by scanning your ID 🇺🇸

6 followers

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Register to Vote is making the voter registration process as easy as scanning a state ID, filling out a few fields, and hitting submit.

Launch tags:iOS•Politics•Tech

Launch Team

Viktor.comAn AI coworker that actually does the work

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Maker

Hey everyone, one of the makers here to help answer any questions you might have. Thank you again to Mark for hunting us. We really want to make sure Californians are registered before the May 22nd deadline, and if you've happened to miss your primary, don't fret! Register to Vote can still help you register for the general election. I know security is a big issue that comes to mind every time personal information like addresses, names, and email addresses are involved in an application. Rest assured, we do not store any information populated by your state-issued barcode, nor information that you input manually. Our application functions like autofill systems do in most modern browser, but using information from the barcode as well as user entered information. The security is handled through the state registrar's official certificate, and all submissions go directly through the state's already-existing website. If you want to stay up to date on new additions, or if you want to help us test new states (it's tricky for out of state people to test registration systems in other states due to local laws), we'll be adding a mailing list soon. We currently work in CA, MA, PA, AZ, CO, and MO. We are working hard to add the other 19 states that support online voter registration as soon as possible. Please let me know if I can clarify anything! Thanks again for checking us out, and we'll hopefully have an Android version in the near future. - Nathaniel

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10yr ago

Maker

@fivext 🇺🇸👍🏻 added NM + more states.. make sure to check our insta + twitter to stay up to date

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10yr ago

Product Hunt

@fivext Love the idea! If you need someone to beta test the Android version, feel free to ping me.

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10yr ago

Custom Prank Call

@fivext This is fantastic! I wish we had something similar for Canada and perhaps other countries. If this can be launched and marketed on a greater scale, I'm confident there would be many more that will be voting. Many people tend to not vote because they are just straight up lazy, don't know how to do it or could care less. Keep working hard, you guys are on a solid track!

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10yr ago

@fivext you guys should partner up with @huntajames aka Voter app! Fantastic work.

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10yr ago

I understand this is for voter registration and not actually voting (yet) but it still raises a concern: Nothing stops my wife from doing this for me. All the information being asked for (license, address, last 4 of social) can easily be gleamed by her while I'm sleeping or not paying attention to my wallet or etc... For any reason - maybe she feels very strongly about women's rights and i don't. Maybe she hates the candidate I would vote for and wants to sway the poll. It's never for the reasons you can think of; it's for the reasons you can't think of. In other words - until this process can be completed only by me - be it with a finger print scan or iris scan or whatever, there is still the possibility of defrauding the voting system. As it stands; nothing stops someone from sending in my voter registration card for me; but moving registration and eventually voting to a mobile device will raise some very big security concerns. At least with voting, for now, you have to be present to vote and so far, we haven't been able to duplicate humans i don't think. On top of all of this; I'm not seeing any affiliation with state or national government. Why should we trust this app / website? For an app that wants to take a picture of my license (regardless if you say you don't store the data) - a signed SSL key doesn't cut it.

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10yr ago

Maker

@mariogiambanco Hey Mario, first of all, we completely understand your concern about whether this make "registration fraud" easier for criminals. If you refer to this Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/n... You will find that Voter Fraud –and by extension, Voter Registration Fraud– is a largely non existent issue. A quote from Lorraine Minnite of Columbia University states: "a review of news stories over a recent two year period found that reports of voter fraud were most often limited to local races and individual acts and fell into three categories: unsubstantiated or false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error." The situation you mention above sounds like it would fall under an act of mischief in my mind. Our application does not allow anyone to register on behalf of a another person in any fashion that the already existing online registration systems allow. Unfortunately, if one did not trust his or her significant other enough (hypothetically) to leave information like an address, the last four # of a social, or driver license around, the onus is on that individual to make sure that his or her information is safe. This is is a situation that seems highly unlikely, and creating situations where other people know the last four numbers of a citizen's SSN is a personal decision that carries hypothetical and potential consequences such as the one you mentioned. In regards to technology that only allows you to vote, that's theoretically your SSN. If told to another person, a SSN can cause problems way beyond voter registration fraud. We would love to have a system where Touch ID could authenticate your identity, but alas, that does not exist at this time. About your final point concerning trust, we completely understand it, and we are working to increase transparency about our security practices in upcoming releases. Unfortunately, the deadline for the California primary snuck up sooner than expected, so we decided to release the app as soon as we could get proper approval (thank you Apple for being understanding). We do not take a picture of a user's driver license. We currently use an existing barcode scanning API to populate text fields that appear on a state's official website. Notice that if you leave a window within our application to return to a previous screen, all the information from the window you were currently in (SSN, Email, Political Party) disappear. This is because we do not keep this information anywhere besides your phone, and even then, that information no longer exists once it populates the forms on the official state website. Voter fraud, registration fraud, and tampering with voter registration are serious crimes, and we would never put ourselves in a position where we would illegally collect voter registration data. With situations like 191 voter registration records getting leaked (http://www.forbes.com/sites/thom...), it's completely reasonable and EXPECTED for potential registrants to be concerned about their privacy. I really appreciate you taking the time to outline your concerns with Register to Vote. These are exactly the kind of issues we thought about when developing this application, and you are one of many people who will likely raise questions about fraud and facilitating registration. Michael Head, the genius behind the code, will be around to answer more technical questions later today. Thank you again for your input.

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10yr ago

@fivext But again, prove your transparency; prove that your not actually taking a photo of the license and storing it somewhere. I'm going to assume the iOS app is closed source. And your target audience isn't going to fire up Wireshark or the like and try to see if any traffic is being leaked from the app to a server. Anyone can issue a a valid SSL certificate with https://letsencrypt.org/ in minutes. What exists on the site, as it stands, is not sufficient. The time frame for California primary registration is understandable but no reason to not make the risks clearer. And a SS# is no longer secure. Websites like https://haveibeenpwned.com/ make it very clear which major websites have been breached. Companies make the news every day, including ones that took in your SS# and Drivers License # (such as cellular companies) regarding security breaches. In a world where the simplest programmer mistake can result in millions of records being leaked; the risks right now for an app like this are just to high IMO. I wish you luck - I don't think this is a field of technology that NEEDS to be addressed, but it could use proper research and planning for a future where a system could be put into place to take care of this. I just don't think that time is now. It's hard enough for major american companies to keep their data secure, let alone to trust a small startup with data that is closest to me, regardless if you say your trust worthy or not. I'm trust worthy. Send me a photo of your license! I'll register you for voting.

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10yr ago

Urban Slack

@mariogiambanco It's time you have a serious talk with your wife ;)

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10yr ago

@matijaabicic eh - was just an example haha - imagine a parent registering their 18+ year old and doing the same.

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10yr ago

@fivext @mariogiambanco The Heritage Foundation keeps a list of examples.: http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.co...

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10yr ago

Hi @omaral and @fivext! Part of the debate with the Voter ID laws is that it restricts the rights of eligible voters who do not have IDs (read: minorities and poor people) in their ability to cast a vote. This product continues to seem to help people with money (they have smart phones!), but find the process of registering to vote difficult or annoying. It's a fair pain point and it helps get people registered. However, for those who want to vote but don't have the resources required to use this product, what happens to them? Does this company or product ever aim to help those without IDs or without smart phones? Is this company's goal to ever get us to near 100% voter turnout or is it to just solve a quick problem through an app? EDIT: Added the "hello" address to the makers to prompt a response to my question :)

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10yr ago

Maker

@bryanpostelnek! Totally agree with you here. to be 100% transparent this is why we are on iOS only at the moment: - we only know how to build for iOS effectively and efficiently - Cali residents have less than 30 days to register in order to vote in the primaries 6/7/2016 - i live in LA and needed to register 😎 - using a DL as verification was not our decision... it was the decision of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/work... start at sec 303... - i agree with you that using a DL as a requirement is not 100% fair, but if we wanted to use something else we would need 💸 and lobbyists to change legislation to use something other than a state issued driver license the goal in the future is to make registering to vote and voting as easy as possible. what that looks like i guess we will see! - omar

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10yr ago

@omaral Because you'll have all of these people who have registered to vote, what are your thoughts on helping with reminders and access to polling locations? As for your constraints -- totally understand -- we all have to work within some constraints, but I don't think that you should discount your ability to dream big and change the world to bring voting access to all. :)

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10yr ago

Maker

@bryanpostelnek its 100% on the roadmap 😉 voting should be fun, not boring and difficult... esp if you're a millennial ( like myself) who could care less about politics growing up but now wants to get involved at the most basic level = voting 🇺🇸

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10yr ago

VC Puzzle

I've gotten a lot more into politics this past year (and am finally able to vote this election #citizen 🇺🇸✌️) so I knew I wanted to vote, and that I needed to register, but never knew how. Always one too many Google Searches away... Until now. Thank you @mcuban for hunting this 😎

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10yr ago

A new media news bot

This is awesome! It's insane that in 2016 there are only 17 states where you can register to vote online... we need more tech like this! Do y'all plan to scale beyond Cali?

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10yr ago

Maker

@rebeccajharris 100% 🤓 We currently work in CA, MA, PA, AZ, CO, and MO. We are working hard to add the other 19 states that support online voter registration as soon as possible!

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10yr ago

Red Bull TV

Nice work! I recommend you having a share by SMS, Facebook messenger, etc. after submitting your application rather than only Twitter and Facebook. Also, include the app URL in your Twitter and Facebook post. I wanted to share to my friends and a few tweaks would work wonders for your app growth!

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10yr ago

Maker

@marksnyd 🙏🏼 cc @fivext @mikevhead

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10yr ago

Maker

@marksnyd Thanks Mark! We'll definitely include a "More" option in the next update to allow sharing by SMS, Messenger, etc., and we're going to improve the default Twitter / Facebook post.

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10yr ago

This is fantastic! shared a few times on twitter @mariemeplanet. Are you thinking about improving the UI a bit, and including some of the explanations you have here on product hunt to inspire more trust to voters. Since people will have to enter sensitive info such as SSN#, I think having a bit more background info would be plenty helpful. Also, have you thought about using Buffer to automate tweets about the app, and increase your exposure on twitter? Just some suggestions I had.

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10yr ago

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