With the New York primary just days away, the 2016 presidential race has made its way to New York City in a big way. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton spoke to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network’s 25th convention and Bernie Sanders hosted a rally and concert in Washington Square Park.
As this year’s media-riddled and often bizarre presidential race continues at full force in our home city, the intertwining between tech and politics is palpable. The tech industry has historically had an uneasy relationship with politics, as Silicon Valley denizen, Mark Zuckerberg, showcased earlier this week. Social media as a concept has given more of a voice to the public through the veil of the Internet, and forever changed the way politicians and constituents communicate to the American people.
A number of New York startups are making strides in this arena, disrupting the tradition-steeped political process along the way.
Civic Hall, founded by the creators of Personal Democracy Media, is a New York-based coworking space interested in growing civic technology. The 18,500 square-foot community center houses startups at the forefront of social innovation and are working to make the world a better place through technology. Civic Hall membership packages range in levels; entrepreneurs can opt for the “community” membership, which includes access to members-only events, partners and mentors, or they can choose a “full-time” membership, which includes 24/7 access to the space and 12 hours of conference room time per month.
Votifi is a mobile polling and analytics platform that works to facilitate connections across political and social voices. The platform allows users to participate in daily polls, which are delivered to their web browser and mobile devices. The company then analyzes polling insights in order to create a nuanced profile of a user’s political position in order to engage elected officials and the public more fluidly.
Predata is a predictive analytics platform for geopolitical intelligence. The company monitors digital conversations across open-source social media and extracts metadata to analyze patterns in conversation activity surrounding past events. This data benefits political parties in that it can provide warning for periods of political volatility and civil unrest.
Advocate wants to reshape the way citizens interact with their government representatives. The company is working to leverage technology to build a platform that easily connects citizens with their elected officials in order to foster new habits around always-on citizenship. It is currently in beta.
PlaceAVote is a non-partisan forum that lets users read, debate and vote on every bill that is presented before congress. The company’s mission is centered around activating the public’s voice in politics using a blockchain-style voting platform. Ultimately, PlaceAVote wants to eliminate the “move vote doesn’t matter” conundrum by providing district voters with an easy way to connect with their representatives and share their thoughts throughout the legislative process. Simultaneously, this gives elected officials the ability to vote along with their constituencies.
ShiftSpark is a crowdfunding platform specifically designed to take on big money and turn small contributions into real political results. The platform works as a tool for citizen lobbying through results-based crowdfunding.
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