Visible Vote was a bipartisan mobile app that linked elected representatives in the United States to their constituents, and allowed campaign donations. It was later sold to a private company.
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Development
Visible Vote was a free mobile app that could be used on all mobile software platforms, which allowed political figures to connect directly with their constituents and potential voters. Founded by Paul Everton and Jason Pritzker, with help from Frank Robles and Steven Trac, the idea came to Everton when he could not reach his Congressman to voice his displeasure about the 2008 bank bailout. Initially the app, developed by Everton and released in early 2009, allowed users to text their views on political or lawmaking matters directly to their Congressmen. In March 2010 it was the first mobile app to allow users to donate to every national congressional campaign.
The app
By November 2010, the app had 200,000 downloads. In addition to communicating by text with constituents, politicians used the Visible Vote app to hold town hall meetings with their constituents, using visual teleconferencing. It also allowed users to look up upcoming bills before they come up for debate, in order to communicate their thoughts on them to their representatives. In addition, Visible Vote itself tallied the feedback on bills from the users collectively, in order to report the aggregate information to the congressmen, with a request they reply to the data. The app could send alerts for upcoming bills and votes to let users know about the work of their representative, and sent back the results of the floor votes on those bills once they are completed.
Users
App users have included Speaker of the House John Boehner; House Minority Whip Eric Cantor; congressmen including John Garamendi and Charles Rangel (Rangel was the app’s first user); and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Barbara Mikulski, and David Vitter. In late 2010, thirty congressmen in total were users of the app. House Republicans were some of its earliest adopters.