EnCiv and Ballotpedia are proud to announce their partnership to develop and distribute Candidate Conversations, a new video portal that fosters personal connection and understanding between candidates and voters. The video portal, EnCiv’s first internally developed product, gives candidates a simple, effective way to engage online so that voters can learn about them while making it very easy for voters to access great information about candidates at their convenience.  You can see how it works by clicking here

EnCiv developed the portal as a way for candidates to engage voters online simply and effectively. Voters can use the portal to quickly and easily learn more about their candidate’s backgrounds, issues, and campaigns.

The portal enables candidates for any office to record short video messages. Voters can then select the race they are interested in and review the videos their candidates recorded to get to know all their candidates on a more personal level. Candidate Conversations is meant to overcome the logistical issues associated with a traditional debates by allowing both candidates and voters to record and access the recordings at their convenience. Additionally, these conversations intend to overcome the criticisms of bias associated with debates by providing the same questions and platform to each candidate. The entire service is provided free to both candidates and voters.

Ballotpedia is field testing the portal in the 2019 general elections. The feedback they gather from candidates and voters alike will be used to refine the portal in time for the 2020 primary elections. Partners realistically hope to have 500 candidates using the platform by November 2020.

Adolf Gundersen

Adolf Gundersen

Gundersen currently works as Research Director for Interactivity Foundation, an EnCiv partner. Before that he taught courses on democracy as an Associate Professor at Texas A & M University.