As a candidate for a state house of representative I had planned for many things throughout the course of the campaign, from what to say at debates and which informational briefings to attend, right down to what kind of pizza to provide for volunteers. One thing that I failed to plan for: losing. Yes, I lost the race, the dreaded thought, “What happens if I don’t get elected?” that I had pushed to the back of my mind became reality and I had to decide what to do next.
Two options became available: I could either assume the way I went about the campaign was correct and it was just a bad year or I could evaluate my methods and determine what went wrong. Initially, I choose the former: “Why of course I am a good candidate!” I told myself. As time went on, however, I realized I had, in fact, made many critical errors. The greatest was the inability to get my message to the voters, from mailings, to calling, to yard sign placement, data and how to use it ultimately sank the ship.
Trust me, there were other flaws; poor ship design, hyping something up to be something that it wasn’t, and a captain who refused to listen to reason. But in the end, my inability to communicate the right message and track data correctly was the iceberg that brought the ship down. So I decided to change that and discover how I could avoid this mistake in the future and help others in similar situations.
Organizing data of all kinds, allowing for easy understanding of large amounts of information, and the ability to quickly filter the data are now musts in 21st century politics, and for campaigns of all sizes. That’s why I’m excited about Voter Gravity. I’ve run for the state legislature, have seen what a campaign looks like in the real world, and In the following series of posts, I will outline some of the advantages of Voter Gravity, how to utilize the technology, and how that technology enables candidates to manage a successful campaign.