Find your polling places and times.
Registration deadlines, ballot deadlines, and the like
Anonymous crowdsourced info gives everyone early visibility to what voters like you are thinking
Blocked at the polling booth? Can't get time off work? Make an anonymous report. Problems can't be fixed if nobody knows.
Share the news that you voted (or that someone stopped you).
Encourage your friends to express their will too!
We built My Vote Counts to improve the transparency and integrity of the election. Many concerns have been expressed about this year's election and My Vote Counts is designed to address some of them. It does so by helping you throughout the voting process, and, if you choose, anonymously keeping track of successes and problems along the way.
My Vote Counts is designed to be your trusted companion throughout the voting process. Just like the navigation system in your car or phone tells you about upcoming turns, My Vote Counts can remind you of election events and deadlines that are important to you. You can opt to receive notifications or open the app to see the important events ahead.
My Vote Counts also lets you record issues with the election process when you have them.
For example, if you are prevented from voting, you can register this through the app (and, if you'd like, let people on social media know!).
When you fill out your ballot, you can anonymously upload its contents. The upload is not connected to you (or any other person) in any way. You will be able to view on our web site how the ballots are going. NOTE: these are not official counts of votes -- just a crowdsourced early signal of how voting is going.
It can provide some early signals as to how the vote is trending. If your candidate is not performing as you would wish, you can encourage your friends to vote. The information can also be used to look for problems
If you have trouble voting, such as your ballot is delayed in the mail, or you feel intimidated at the voting location, or you can't get time off work, we want to know! This information is also sumamrized an available immediately on our results page. If someone it able to follow up they can contact you (without knowing who you are until you respond).
No. Pollsters require a lot of demographic information in order to improve the accuracy of their estimates. We collect no demographic (or other information) about voters, while the info we collect is actual ballot data or actual reports of barriers to voting.
When you start you will be asked what state you'll be voting in and if you'd like to receive updates on upcoming deadlines (sending in a ballot, when you can first vote in person, etc).
If you are concerned about the integrity of the vote and feel that having more information improves its integrity you should do this. If you feel visibility into voting trend should encourage more voting, you should do this.
Yes. The phone will scan the details and upload them. We have no information about you beyond your state and that information is only uploaded to assist with scanning.
We upload the detail to our web site (felt intimidated, not given a ballot, prevented from registering, etc). If you volunteer to be contacted, we make note of that as well. And you can share this information on social media in order to let your friends know too!
Anybody can view our web site to see how many people are encountering what kind of problems in which states. To protect everyone's anonymity we only record and provide this information at the state level. However if you are willing to follow up, you can share more detailed info as to how and where you had the problem.
Researchers, voting officials, and the like will be able to contact us so that they can request follow ups.
No. We have no way of knowing which ballot is yours, so have no way of removing it. Sorry.
We only record, and on your phone, what state you would like information about. We record no other information about you anywhere. Our app talks to the internet to upload reports of problems or ballot information but that upload cannot be connected back to you or your phone. Since we don't ask for or collect any other information, we have no personal info that anyone could obtain from us, or that we could misuse even if we wanted to.
If you offer to be contacted about a problem you had during voting, our server in the Internet does know that there is a phone willing to be notified about a problem report. But we don't know anything about the owner of that phone.
You can check for yourself if you are a computer programmer, or you can ask someone you trust to do so for you.
All our software is what is called "Open Source Software", which means anyone can look at the source code, or "recipe" for the My Vote Counts app and back end. See the source here.
Our committment to privacy extends to this web site. Note that this very web site does not include the normal social media buttons. The normal ones track you just for visiting a site. Ours do not.
There is extensive information on this topic on the web, which you can find through a web search such as DuckDuckGo or Google. The important part to know is that we have legally committed that all the source code used to construct the MyVoteCounts app and the web services that provide the data is publically available.<\p>
Sure! Contributions can range from translation, bug fixes, and even new features. Please check the CONTRIBUTIONS file.
We are a group of software developers who feel that voting is very important civic infrastructure. We also feel that personal privacy is crucial, especially in voting. We are not trying to make any profit on our efforts.
We are doing other, longer term work which we hope will also support the idea of open civic architecture for voting. My Vote Counts is simply the first program we are releasing.
You can find out more about our efforts here.
Neither. Nothing about this app relates to any party, candidate, or other question or issue on a ballot. We do not accept donations or contributions from any party, political figure, PAC, or other politically-related entity. We care only that people are able to express their wishes through voting.