When we started thinking about and researching the decline in voting rates, we ran into some pretty interesting trends that could meaningfully motivate more people to participate in our democracy:
- First, people get super energized when events happen (like deportation events, mass shootings) that emotionally resonate with them. But that energy tends to fade over time. We wondered what would happen if that energy could somehow be stored and then released at the polls on Election Day;
- Next, we found a lot of evidence suggesting that consulting with friends and trusted connections drive how people make decisions. Yet, we didn’t find any good vehicles to help voters easily engage and convince their friends to participate with them. There are plenty of great voting apps, canvassing apps, and even amazing ballot and candidate discovery apps, but nothing that enabled someone to actively create a shared experience with their circle;
- And finally, our research showed that promising to do something, especially with friends, is very likely to lead to follow through. If people pledge to vote, they actually do it.
Based on all of these learnings, we created SaysWe. The concept is simple: SaysWe allows you to act NOW — in a moment of passion or conviction — by pledging to vote and inviting your friends to vote with you. You can highlight an issue that you care most about, see where and when to go vote, register to vote and even share your thoughts and celebrate your vote through SaysWe.
The SaysWe beta app is available today. You can download it for iPhone or Android devices at the links below. We’ll iterate quite a bit over the coming weeks to get it ready for primary season. Please check it out, its free, and we’d love your feedback. As always, thanks for the support!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sayswe/id1317229517?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.sayswe.sayswe
Great idea Russ. One question – how did you conclude that an app was the right vehicle for this? In that random moment of emotion that starts this cycle will I as a user remember to download or fire-up this app? I wonder if there’s another way to remind myself to do this in that moment. Not sure I have an answer but thought I’d float the question.
Good question — we have a reminder and alerts platform so once you’ve signed up and pledged to vote, we’ll keep you up to date on what you need to do. Hope is that high emotion events will be enough incentive for users to download and take the pledge, then we’ll help them follow through on promise. Thanks for checking it out!
Great idea! Have you connected with the March For Our Lives organizers? I know they are strongly pushing voter registration (this weekend and leading up to the election) as well as turnout come November.
Thanks Lydia! Working with a few great orgs like Rock the Vote and Brady Campaign that are focused on making M4OL a huge success (and a lasting one in terms of turnout).