I work at Murfie.com, right on the capitol square in Madison. Politics in Madison, Wisconsin this spring, especially on the square, was energized to say the least. People across the political spectrum were active and the energy influenced me to get involved in the electoral process. At first, I wasn’t sure how, but then I had an idea.
I’m a member of several software related meetups in Madison. There is the very active Ruby group Mad-Railers, which meets most every month and Twilio-Madness, a slightly less active Twilio related group. My idea was based on mobile phone communication, so I sent this email to the Twilio-Madness group.
Hey Twilio people!
Considering all the energy in WI lately and the fact we have a statewide election April 5, I thought it would be cool to build a Twilio powered app that helps people participate in the most important democratic process.
The app I’d like to build will use data from the GAB to provide information and instructions to people interested in voting. An example of searching that data is here:
https://vpa.wi.gov/VoterSearchScreen.aspx?Language=en-usThe goal of the app would be to make WI a beacon in the country in regards to voter participation, especially young people who are most capable of using SMS, touchtone, web.
I’m starting this app tomorrow night at Horizon Coworking (Inside the Murfie offices) and would like any help from anyone who wishes to join either then, or over the next week.
- Philip
Several people responded they were interested in helping out and the group of people had a diverse skillset – community organizing types, a design capable entrepreneur, and a few programmers. It was go time.
In a few days of intense working, we banged out the app, came up with a name, connected with partner organizations, printed marketing posters, designed a logo, and launched VoteSimple in time for the spring election.
It was a cool process and I was proud of what the group accomplished in such a short time. We have long term plans to improve the app with an SMS based question answering system (think Stack Overflow) for people confused by the recent voter ID laws. We also are part way into developing a Facebook component to help active voters influence and educate their peers in Wisconsin – all with the goal to increase turnout. (We’re a non-partisan group and turnout is our goal.)
I’d like to thank the following people for helping in this effort.
- Philip Crawford
- Mark McEahern
- Matt Clark
- Preston Austin
- Steve Faulkner
- Lucas Dailey
- Matt Wheeler
- Erik Paulson
- Greg Tracy
- Maurice Cheeks
If you are a rubyist or an expert using Twilio and would like to help, let me know as we’re all quite busy and any extra help will help.
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