By Kiki Schirr, {grow} Contributing Columnist
I’m not exactly Ms. Political. Elections used to be one of those things I avoided talking about, like religion and bowel movements.
But then I moved to California, and things suddenly changed. Every shop here has posters of how to vote on propositions, and I realized: 13 years of sticking my head in the sand about politics had left me completely ignorant.
And even if I hadn’t been ignorant, a lot of the information being thrown at me was… wrong!
Every sign seemed to tell me to vote against the grocery tax. That seemed simple enough. Until I did a little research and realized they were taxing sugary sodas only—and that the giant corporations were fighting back with misleading slogans.
And once I started doing research, I realized I could devote a lifetime to it. There are so many important issues out there, and they come up for vote all the time.
How would I find a candidate whose opinions matched my own, how would I keep track to be sure she was keeping her election promises, and I could I convey to her when an issue was dire to me?
These questions were looming in the back of my mind when Maria Yuan reached out to me to hunt her new product IssueVoter on Product Hunt. It seemed like providence. IssueVoter solved all three questions for me.
IssueVoter is a bit like Tinder for politics. Once you specify topics that you care about, IssueVoter shows the pros and cons of related bills that will soon be voted upon.
When you specify which stance you’d like your congressperson to take, it automatically emails them your position! And you can also encourage your friends to take a stand as well via social media–though IssueVoter avoids friend feuds by anonymizing your stance.
So the next morning, I received a confirmation email that made me feel special:
Isn’t that nice? I thought. This armchair activism thing can actually have sway, if IssueVoter has anything to say about it.
Another feature of IssueVoter is their bill search, for those individuals who are really passionate about politics and don’t just want occasional updates via email:
Ultimately, what I appreciate about this service is the greater transparency it brings to a very complex, arguably closed system.
I feel like I have a greater voice because of IssueVoter. Now let’s just see how much I bug Nancy Pelosi!
Images are screen captures from real product use.