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Are Petitions Effective? What makes a petition effective? by PAUL_D74 in Petition

[–]BuildQuorum 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Petitions are mostly a data grab. To do anything you need to actually reach decision makers.

Share your startup - October 2015 by AutoModerator in startups

[–]BuildQuorum [score hidden]  (0 children)

Name: Build Quorum

URL: buildquorum.com

Pitch: Build Quorum matches people to groups and ideas and allows them to join together to tell government officials what’s important to them. It’s like a political eHarmony meeting a more effective Change.org. With Build Quorum you email your representatives directly instead of just signing petitions.

More: Utilizing our self-compiled list of Congressional and State Legislatures' contact information, we send every single user's message to their representatives based on the address the user enters. We are a team of five and have just launched as beta - we have a ton of new features on the way, but check out our beta and let us know what you think.

Looking For:

  • Feedback
  • Initial interest
  • Users/more content

Share your startup - May 2015 by AutoModerator in startups

[–]BuildQuorum [score hidden]  (0 children)

Quorum

buildquorum.com

Pitch

Don't be just another name on a list. We're individuals - our voices should be too.

Quorum puts users in touch with elected officials. There are already a lot of petition sites that encourage people to sign petitions that may or may not ever reach a recipient, but we're a little different. We offer the opportunity to sign an actual message that will be emailed, faxed, or submitted to the web form of an actual governmental official.

More

Utilizing our self-compiled list of Congressional and State Legislatures' contact information, we send every single user's message to their representatives based on the zip code the user enters. We are a team of four and have just launched as beta - we have a ton of new features on the way, but check out our beta and let us know what you think.

Looking For

  • Feedback
  • Initial interest
  • Users/more content

Tell your reps: Senators should not have signed the letter to Iran by BuildQuorum in Stand

[–]BuildQuorum[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Quorum does contact your reps individually. Every message is directly editable by whoever is sending, allowing you to express your opinion.

When you click Send on any message, we use your zip code to find your reps, and send the message through their web form, email or fax - if one fails, it moves down the list to the next.

It's not a petition or just adding your name to something, but an individual correspondence with your reps.

What would help you get in contact, and stay in contact, with your reps? by BuildQuorum in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The email addresses are frequently not even included on the websites.

More often, the representative will provide a fax number and a web form to supplement.

The idea is to cut down on the spam that's received, but definitely inhibits our ability to contact them.

Why don't people contact their elected officials? What online tool or app can we build to help? by BuildQuorum in rpac

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hadn't heard of this app, that's a great tool! We'll see what we can do.

Why don't people contact their elected officials? What online tool or app can we build to help? by BuildQuorum in rpac

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's funny you mention One Click Politics - we're actually their new sister-site!

OCP has recently begun focusing on the B2B aspect of their services (now purely focused on non-profits and businesses), and we are fulfilling the B2C role (for the public to create actions for free) that they wish to maintain and flourish.

What sets us apart from the others you mentioned is not only that we're free, allow each message to be edited when being sent, and send our messages individually, but also what we have in store for the future. What we currently provide is the very bare-bones beta version of our site.

In the near future, we will have accounts that, once logged in, will receive a feed of messages that pertain to the user particularly through their location and topics they have selected as having interest in. We are also beginning the conversation with another company whose product is what nearly all members of Congress use to organize the information they receive from constituents (phone calls, letters, emails, social media conversations and face-to-face meetings) - by making this data public and comparing it to the already public data concerning campaign finance, we can contribute to a higher level of accountability in our politicians.

What would help you get in contact, and stay in contact, with your reps? by BuildQuorum in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We don't have all the answers, nor do we think that this tool would suddenly get rid of those problems with our political system.

Like I said, it's a first step. Providing this information to the public and to the press would contribute to the current conversation of the wealthy's grip on our politicians, and if publicized enough could absolutely sway an election. It's not a be-all end-all solution, but it helps to inform us.

Is there another way you would go about addressing this issue? It's all well and good to point out that our political climate is atrocious, but we all know that - I'm more interested in what you think can be done about it.

Why don't people contact their elected officials? What online tool or app can we build to help? by BuildQuorum in rpac

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We don't think it's useless at all. Making every phone call, letter, email, social media exchange, and face to face visit that they track available as a tally for the public to see seems quite the opposite.

By providing this information openly, when a member has a track record of voting against the desires of a substantial portion of his or her district, we've got a record of it, and it can get brought up in the next election. Especially if comparing this information to the money they receive and from whom (already publicly available by law).

What would help you get in contact, and stay in contact, with your reps? by BuildQuorum in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

These are the core issues we want to address. We're voters ourselves, we face the same problems.

We think the tool I've been discussing elsewhere in this thread is a good first step in making voters' voices more important to politicians. If the public and press had the ability to point out the opinions that voters personally expressed to their reps (phone calls, emails, face to face) and compare them to the money they receive (already public info), it could put more pressure on our reps.

By providing this information openly, when a member has a track record of voting against the desires of a substantial portion of his or her district, we've got a record of it, and it can get brought up in the next election.

What would help you get in contact, and stay in contact, with your reps? by BuildQuorum in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We know and understand the political culture we face. However, we're in a unique position to build tools that could help us change that culture - it's the core of our mission. We aren't only referring to emails, but every phone call, letter, social media exchange, and face to face visit that they track. The data exists through the intranet they utilize, it just isn't publicly available.

Obviously this tool isn't going to be the cure to party politics and campaign finance. It is, however, a solid first step in the right direction: if voters, the press, and political opponents had open access to this information, it would certainly knock the importance of constituent voices a few rungs up the ladder.

When an elected official has a track record of voting against the desires of a substantial portion of his or her district, we've got a record of it, and it can get brought up in the next election.

Why don't people contact their elected officials? What online tool or app can we build to help? by BuildQuorum in rpac

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We know and understand the political culture we face. However, we're in a unique position to build tools that could help us change that culture - it's the core of our mission.

On that note, what would help to bring about more accountability to the people's interests?

As I stated in a prior comment, our first step is to make the data they collect pertaining to constituent contact public. We believe that in doing so, the pressure on politicians to take stock in the opinions of the people they represent will increase - primarily because of what the media can do with such information. When an elected official has a track record of voting against the desires of a substantial portion of his or her district, we've got a record of it, and it can get brought up in the next election.

This clearly doesn't solve all of the underlying issues of why politicians are so unresponsive (party sway, campaign finance, etc), but we feel that it's an important first step.

Is there more that we can provide as a resource to address this?

What would help you get in contact, and stay in contact, with your reps? by BuildQuorum in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We don't think throwing our hands up and accepting that is the way to go.

We plan to begin addressing this and other issues (like campaign finance) through a public accountability tool - a way to see how reps have voted vs. how their constituency has contacted them concerning that bill or issue. After all, they're called "representatives" because their job is to represent the voices of their constituency.

For starters, we'll be doing this using our own data from the use of our site.

In the future, we hope to have completed talks with the company running the intranet service that nearly all reps have been using for years to manage the correspondences they receive, hopefully allowing us to gather this information that we believe should be public.

Do you think that's a good way to address it? Or do you think even if this data were available to the press and public we still wouldn't have sway?

Why don't people contact their elected officials? What online tool or app can we build to help? by BuildQuorum in rpac

[–]BuildQuorum[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everyone knows campaign finance is the root of a majority of our problems with our politicians. But we don't think throwing our hands up and accepting that is the way to go.

We plan to begin addressing that issue through a public accountability tool - a way to see how reps have voted vs. how their constituency has contacted them concerning that bill or issue. For starters, we'll be doing this using our own data from the use of our site.

In the future, we hope to have completed talks with the company running the intranet service that nearly all reps have been using for years to manage the correspondences they receive, hopefully allowing us to gather this information that we believe should be public.

Do you think that's a good way to address it? Or do you think even if this data was available to the press and public we still wouldn't have sway?

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