Saving democracy via SMS + email election reminders

debracleaver commented 9 years ago

Short description People miss elections all the time because they literally forget to A) register to vote or B) sign up for an absentee ballot. Let's help them out by sending them SMS and email reminders that elections are coming.

Challenges:

pulling together a reliable list of upcoming elections nationally -- there are groups that keep this data online that likely have info we can download, although probably not via API
matching folks with relevant elections, likely based on zip code. (Not super hard, but something that needs to happen)
working backward from election dates so the messages are sent in time.
integrating with something like Twilio to send the SMS messages
integrating with something like Mandrill to send the election reminders
making sure we give folks a way to unsubscribe, so we don't get blocked as spammers
giving folks a way to update their zip codes, so we're not sending them reminders for elections they're no longer eligible for if they move.

About me: I run longdistancevoter.org, one of the most heavily trafficked election websites. We've got a decent sized database of email addresses and cell phone numbers, that grows by leaps and bounds. We also work closely with groups like Rock the Vote and HeadCount.org, and will happily share anything we build with other groups so that everyone benefits. Let's save democracy together.

Project Needs (dev/design/resources)

Developers. Very little design needed

Status (in progress, pie-in-the-sky)

Mostly in progress. We'll be getting free credits from Twilio, we're already set up over at Mandrill, we have a giant email list.

raphaelmerx commented 8 years ago

This seems like a very good idea. I would be interested in working on it. Has anyone started coding on this project?

gitsteph commented 8 years ago

I hope this is moving forward! Please keep us posted-- I'd be really interested in helping out if you need some devs. :)

debracleaver commented 8 years ago

@gitsteph : yes! @raphaelmerx and i spoke last week and he's interested in moving this forward as well. the more the merrier is my take on this. are you SF based? can we grab coffee and/or chat via google hangouts?

gitsteph commented 8 years ago

I AM indeed SF based!! This is super exciting. Yes for sure, let's grab coffee sometime soon. Would Friday AM work? Is there a way to private message you here? I'm going to look that up now, heh.

raphaelmerx commented 8 years ago

Hi @gitsteph, this is indeed moving forward. I started working on it this weekend: https://github.com/raphaelmerx/election-reminders. We should meet and talk about how we can work together on it. I'll email you.

debracleaver commented 8 years ago

@gitsteph : i'm debra @ long distance voter dot org. :)

gitsteph commented 8 years ago

Hi Debra! I was able to meet Raphael today-- he brought me up to speed on how far he's come already with the app and what's left to do. I'm def still interested in meeting up to talk with you at some point though and will send you an email off-forum soon at the email address you specified. :)

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Saving democracy via SMS + email election reminders #2