Platformative Information

Bias. Misinformation. Attack ads. Debates that devolve into shouting matches. Politics has become so divided and negative, especially on the internet. For people trying to decide who to vote for in an upcoming election, it’s difficult to make an informed decision without being disillusioned by the negativity in today’s political landscape. With so much partisanship and misinformation online, I thought it was important for candidates to be able to get their message out in a direct and easy-to-digest way. I also wanted to show voters what each candidate believes in and plans to do if elected - directly from each candidate themselves - and let voters compare them all side-by-side. In this way, I hope we can cut through the negativity and misinformation and allow voters to judge candidates on what matters - their platform. We invite each candidate registered to run in an election to share a modified version of their platform on their election page. Each election has 8 topics for candidates to speak to. These topics are open-ended and relate to the issues that voters have in mind. Candidates have 280 characters to describe their plans and beliefs relating to each topic. (Think of it like 8 tweets about their platform, making it easy to quickly get a sense of their positions.) Then we display each candidate side-by-side in a randomized order so you can compare the candidates without any getting preferential placement.