i3 - March/April 2021 - 32

Policy
T EC H H U B

The Cross-Section of
Tech and Politics

He joined Phone2Action in 2017
as part of its summer fellowship
program, which brings in high school
and college tech students to work on the
Phone2Action platform as well as experimental projects. Robert's initial project,
with Liam Rathke and Hugo Burbelo,
was a social media analytics suite.
As part of that suite, the three high
school students created a sentiment
analysis tool designed to track social
media reaction to political events, such
as the President's State of the Union
address, in real-time. Developed as a
summer intern project, Phone2Action
had the three share their program at
CES 2018. They were the youngest
exhibitors at CES that year and their
live demonstrations of the social media
response to Trump's tweets garnered
plenty of attention.

Fast Forward to 2020

The recent presidential election was the
largest turnout in over a century. Robert
and a small team of young Phone2Action
engineers wrote a Get Out the Vote program that let voters check their registration, get information on elected officials
and candidates, and, if you weren't registered, made it easy to register in whatever state was your residence. Altogether,
the program was used by over 1,700,000
people to register to vote. Millions of
others used it to check their registration,
learn more about their local candidates,
and find out about local rule changes in
response to the pandemic. According to
Robert, " We feel that voting is crucial in
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MARCH/APRIL 2021

i3_0321_32_Policy_TechHub.indd 32

any circumstance, but the
situation surrounding the
2020 election made us
feel our work was even
more important. We
wanted to make sure
voters were informed
beyond just the highprofile presidential race
and that they could get
the most specific and up
to date information
about the everchanging voting
conditions due to
influencers such as Ninja and
the pandemic. Our
David Dobrik created giveaways
work was helping
using the site. Dobrik offered a
people stay aware
chance to win one of five Teslas
and safe. "
for registering to vote or checking
However, havyour registration and signed up
ing a great prothan 120,000 people. Many
gram is only part
Our work was more
got involved, including Instacart,
of the challenge.
helping people Seventh Generation, HeadCount,
Creating awarestay aware and UnidosUS, GlobalCitizen,
ness about the
NextGen America, Human Rights
program was crusafe.
Campaign, and even CTA.
cial to its success.
- Robert West, Phone2Action
The site was
designed to be
What's Next?
white-labeled,
Robert, now a student at the
rebranded to fit whichever group or
College of William and Mary, said, " I
individual was willing to push the site.
want to do more to get people to underMany organizations and artists went out stand and impact the day-to-day actions
of their way to promote Get Out the
in the world of politics. For too many
Vote. Musical artists such as Ariana
people, politics and government only
Grande, Billie Eilish, Camila Cabello,
enter their mind in regard to the presiDavid Byrne, Dead and Co., and Lenny
dential election every four years. There's
Kravitz launched campaigns through
so much more to it than that, especially
their various platforms. Social media
at the state and local level. "

Courtesy of Phone2Action

olitical discourse has clearly been impacted
by technology. To address just a sliver of that
discussion, here is a quick look at the last few
years through the work of one young programmer,
Robert West who works for Phone2Action, a political
advocacy tech company located in Arlington Virginia.

I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

3/11/21 12:41 PM

https://phone2action.com/grassroots-advocacy-wins/?utm_campaign=&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_placement=&utm_creative=507836641669&utm_term=phone2action&utm_content=&gclid=CjwKCAjwxuuCBhATEiwAIIIz0XAToz0tZKE1dO-NOz9088koXfMXRWTvddAXVKt0v337Bud4bKlCSRoCo9kQAvD_BwE

i3 - March/April 2021

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