In a cycle where campaigns are fighting for votes by the 10s and hundreds, many are tapping all possible channels to communicate with potential supporters.
Think social media influencers, random podcast interviews or slicing programmatic digital audiences into the narrowest possible segments.
All of this outreach is being powered by a record-smashing fundraising haul for many candidates. Still, there remains some un-turned-over rocks in the ecosystem. Yes, some of those are the biographies candidates lazily forget to submit to their secretary of state’s office for inclusion in the printed voter guide. But another is civic tech.
Some startup platforms that offer candidates and campaigns free audiences — albeit small ones — say they’re still being ignored.
MOXY, a non-partisan Android app “designed to inform and engage voters,” offers candidates and officeholders the chance to communicate with its audience free of charge.
Since launching last year, César Melgoza, CEO of MOXY’s parent company Epluribus LLC, said the app has “dozens” of officeholders and candidates who have signed on to reach its subscriber base that pays an introductory rate of $1.99 a month.
“I think that we needed more of a critical mass to get more people on the platform,” Melgoza told C&E. “Then that’s going to be sort of a next growth phase. If you’re an elected official, you’re serving the public, we want you to communicate with your constituents.”
MOXY allows advertising on a case-by-case basis, but its newsfeed is what could appeal to campaigns as it allows users to be notified if a local candidate makes a post or is going live.
Voters, meanwhile, get access to information about their local candidates and elected officials pulled from Ballotpedia.
“We’re looking forward to getting into the six digits of subscribers, but those are all turbocharged people — people who are extremely politically engaged,” he said. “We want to get into the millions and the tens of millions, [but] it’s just going to take a little time.”
