Frequently Asked Questions
- What is it?
- Why do we need Circle Voting?
- Is Circle Voting tied to a certain political agenda?
- Why is social networking going to change anything?
What is it?
Circle Voting is an online application that allows users to leverage their social networks to make more informed voting decisions. Our mission is to help people vote wisely with ease, by seeing what their friends and favorite sources say about the issues on their ballot. Users can pick the best arguments and vote accordingly. They also can join the conversation by adding new sources or sharing views with their social networks (and the Circle Voting community). We call this the “social ballot.”
Why do we need Circle Voting?
What with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling—which lifted limits on campaign donations by corporations—and the increasing use of moneyed campaigns to obfuscate the electoral process, we think American voters want and need a tool like Circle Voting.
Private sources have raised over $3.2 billion for November’s midterms. Campaigns use this money to pay for simplistic and manipulative big media advertising. We hope to build a movement to strengthen participatory democracy and shed greater light on our political and electoral processes.
With Circle Voting, we can create a large interconnected voting force that rises above the noise of these campaigns and makes smarter voting decisions, powered by the collective intelligence and opinions of their social networks and communities. The result, we hope, is that politicians will be more responsive to the needs of the people than their big donors.
Is Circle Voting tied to a certain political agenda?
No. The only agenda, so to speak, is to remove the influence of money in politics by providing a platform for connecting voters with the information and community they need to make more educated voting decisions on everything from the most obscure ballot proposition or candidate to highly-contested and publicized races.
In fact, Circle Voting is committed to being a non-partisan source of information for people across the political spectrum. After all, money in politics has been used to divide us, so if we pick one side we’re beating the same tired electoral drum. We have to get past that and allow the best decisions to bubble up.
Why is social networking going to change anything?
The social web has allowed for a new level of interconnectedness in all our lives. We can apply this to engagement in electoral politics, too. By sharing information with one another, voters can make smart decisions at the polls that are independent of political campaigns’ moneyed noise. By developing a social network around voting, Circle Voting users can access their communities’ most informed opinions and also engage people who might not care enough to inform themselves about certain ballot items or even vote.
The “social ballot” can be especially powerful in a midterm election such at this one coming up, because historically, there is low voter turnout and little voter awareness, so money is especially influential in such election cycles. Through Circle Voting, we have the opportunity to fuel a different kind of electoral force that does not respond to the manipulations of money and instead empowers voters to make informed decisions on their own and with each other.
