To highlight the wide diversity of journalism innovation projects proposed by our 100% Journalism finalists, we’re running short Q & As with our ten finalists.
A presidential election year is a prime time for public interest in politics, but after the votes are in Congress is supposed to get to work, offering, debating, approving, and killing potential laws. And there are a lot of potential laws (cue School House Rock music).
David Kraljic, a cofounder of the organization Votetocracy, aims to poll the general population about how they’d vote on every bill presented to U.S. Congress. By reading, simplifying, and covering the arguments for and against every bill, Kraljic hopes to gather the opinion of the voting public in a way that might affect how the real voting goes in the Capitol.
The following is an excerpt from Ebyline’s interview with Kraljic, edited lightly for clarity.
Tell me about Votetocracy and the project proposal that you submitted.
The end goal of the project is two-fold. One is to get to a day where we have ten million votes on any bill and congress votes differently than what the public votes. We think that when there’s enough scale and a disagreement happens, then at that point we’ll get the attention of the right people and have an impact on the outcomes. Ultimately that’s the big picture goal.
We know based on the conversations we’ve had with users that education on not only how congress works, but also on all the bills is really going to be key to keeping people involved. We have a lot of interest from members but they get to the point where the bills are so hard to understand that they get discouraged. That’s part of the reason that we proposed using freelance journalists to make sense of these things.
What prompted you to start Votetocracy?
It started midway through 2009, and it was a side project for a long time. It’s founded by myself and our cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Richard Livolsi.
I would never consider myself a person who is into politics. But when you get a little bit older, or at least for me this is how it happened, I matured and my wife and I had children and something about maturity made me start paying attention more. So I went about getting more educated and found that [lawmaking] is incredibly complex, that even when I tried to understand I couldn’t. And the worst part was, even if I did understand, I couldn’t do anything about it. So that’s how this was born.
How many participants do you have on Votetocracy so far?
It gets about 3,500 visits per month, and has about 10,000 to 12,000 users. That is purely achieved with no marketing dollars. We did a little bit of testing with ads, but very, very small scale stuff. Personally I’m pleased with the numbers based on the fact that we haven’t spent any money on it.
What about those who aren’t engaged in policy or politics at all?
I think there’s a huge hope for getting them motivated or involved. That’s at the core of why we’re doing this. It goes back to the way I was. I voted, but I didn’t care. Many times I went to vote because I should, but I didn’t feel like I was doing it because I was going to affect the outcome.
I think that if people felt they could directly impact the outcome on an issue, then they’ll pay attention and do something about it.
