Introducing BallotBot: Your Specialized Voting Research Assistant
At Stump, our mission is simple: to make it faster and easier for voters to learn about what’s on their ballot. Voters have diverse interests and questions, ranging from candidate experience and endorsements to specific positions on key issues. With the release of Stump’s BallotBot powered by chatGPT, we’re taking a big step toward simplifying this process for voters in Massachusetts.
Election Day is just three weeks away, and we know that voters are looking for reliable, personalized information. BallotBot is designed to meet that need by providing fast, detailed answers to the questions you have about the available options on your ballot.
A Foundation for the Future
BallotBot is still a work in progress. Here’s a sneak peek at what might be on the horizon:
Geolocation and Voting Districts: We’re working on eliminating the need for dropdown menus by automatically detecting your district and tailoring the BallotBot experience based on your location.
Custom Reports: Imagine being able to ask BallotBot who a candidate's top donors are, or an infographic of the endorsements made in a given race. The data is out there, and we hope to make it available to you with the press of a button.
Verified Campaign Content Submissions: Stump hopes to remove itself as an intermediary and allow campaigns to directly submit verified content, such as by linking social media profiles or sharing transcribable interviews. This will increase the universe of information that is easily available to voters.
Text Banking for Campaigns: From my own experience volunteering with text banking efforts, I’ve seen how challenging it can be to engage with voters when there’s little available information online about a candidate. A BallotBot and Twilio integration would give campaigns substantial leverage in their outreach efforts by reducing the number of required volunteers, increasing conversation velocity, and streamlining their messaging. It could also aid campaigns in systematically highlighting areas of their digital footprint that may benefit from being supplemented.
Building a Community: Currently, BallotBot submissions are private, but we see the potential to create a more conversation-based forum where users can share insights, discuss candidates, and engage with others. If all goes well with this initial launch, making submissions public could be the next step toward a more vibrant, voter-driven dialogue.
As we continue to innovate and refine BallotBot, we hope it becomes a valuable tool for you in the lead-up to Election Day. Stay tuned for more exciting updates as we work to make civic engagement more accessible and meaningful for all voters.
