An Ode to CivTech: Constituent Communication
If there's one thing every elected official needs, it's the ability to communicate with the people who voted for them.
This week we’re paying homage to CivTech - what I believe is an untamable beast by most of the tech world. I don’t really ever have any intention of investing in a CivTech company, and frankly I don’t really recommend others to do so as well, only because so few CivTech companies actually “get it.” To make sure everyone’s on the same page, here’s how I define all of these terms:
CivTech: Anything that focuses on increasing voter or constituent engagement in the political process.
GovTech: Anything that focuses on making government more efficient.
PoliticalTech: Anything that focuses on the world of professional politics.
Most founders start CivTech companies because they believe in an idealistic world in which elected officials make decisions based solely off their constituents desires and everyone wants to participate in the political process. Where most CivTech goes wrong is in these two assumptions. Don’t get me wrong - I have strongly stated that many elected officials do in fact listen to their constituents, but it’s only A factor and not THE determining factor when deciding how to vote in the end. Furthermore, most founders are college educated and actively engage in the political process on a pretty frequent basis. To be honest, most people do not. They pay attention during election season, and even then maybe every four years during a presidential election. Otherwise, most people tune politics out pretty frequently (although that might be changing post-2020, but whether the trend will continue or revert is a bet someone else will have to make).
However, just because constituent input isn’t THE determining factor that doesn’t mean constituent communication isn’t incredibly important. If every single elected official at every level needs to keep in contact with their constituents, that’s a very large market.
Incumbents
To be honest… there aren’t really any incumbents tackling this problem in the way you might think. For the most part, elected officials use email services like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and others to send out regular updates on their activities and calendar; otherwise, they rely heavily on email and traditional communication. Federal officials do have a good constituent management system, but at the lower levels, many rely on extremely old school ways (I’m not kidding when my boss asked me to print out every single email she received and she would go through it, mark it, and then tell me what to reply to and how).
Problem
This is really important to keep in mind if you want to pursue this path. Please, for the love of all that is holy, listen to me when I say this:
The problem you are solving is not that elected officials don’t listen to their constituents.
Let me repeat myself: The problem you are solving is not that elected officials don’t listen to their constituents.
I say this because if you believe that the only reason elected officials might vote in contrary to their constituents is because their lines of communication are packed, you are mistaken and you will fail.
In reality, the problem you are solving is not that elected officials don’t listen to their constituents, but they simply don’t have the capacity to take in every opinion, decipher its meaning, organize it, and then reply to it. Furthermore, it’s very difficult for local officials without much resources to track exactly who is for and against which issue. Many go on a “gut feel” about how their constituents will react to their vote.
Another caveat to this problem is the partisanship and how votes impact voters’ decisions in the following elections. What I mean is that even if a local official receives hundreds, if not thousands, of emails saying they should vote one way, it’s very likely they still won’t. Why? Because even if the official voted the way those constituents wanted, it wouldn’t be to their electoral advantage if those constituents won’t change their vote based on the decision.
A perfect example is the gun debate. Imagine you’re a Democrat who represents a district that’s a 60/40 Democrat split and a bill to restrict gun rights is up for a vote. Now imagine that you receive 1,000 emails from your constituents, but with a heavy 75/25 lean that says you should vote against restricting gun rights because of the Second Amendment. Would you vote against it? Probably not because those people probably won’t vote for you in the next election even if you voted against the bill.
On the other hand, if you’re in a 51/49 Democrat split, and you receive a heavy dosage of people who have indicated they voted for you last time, but won’t this time if you vote for the bill, that changes your calculations.
Solution
The problem you’re solving is that elected officials have a difficult time communicating with constituents who reach out, organizing the kinds of communication they receive, and keeping track of what their constituents want at any given moment. If I were going to start a company trying to tackle this problem, this is how I would start:
1) A very simple communication tool that creates a separate email account that can be used just for these purposes (think Stoop for newsletters). This way, elected officials can keep their professional correspondence separate from their constituent correspondence.
2) An intuitive management structure that allows the customer to organize their inbox that best suits them.
In my opinion, that’s all you really need for an MVP. If you just solve the problem of helping them separate professional correspondence (like with fellow legislators and their staff) from constituents, you’ve done them a great service. But there is an opportunity to build on top of it that makes it even more valuable.
Roadmap
After you’ve build this very beautifully designed communication tool, here’s where I would go next:
1) Form responses based on how the elected official categorizes the email (i.e. the constituent receives one response if they are for something and a different response if they are against it).
2) The ability to reply back to an email personally if it calls for it, or the ability to direct the email to their professional email account. A good use case would be if a constituent is asking for help or they’re a high profile community member with no prior relationship.
You don’t need much else in order to have a fairly robust product that solves a lot of problems. If you REALLY want to get fancy with it though, here’s where you can go:
A) An internal based equivalent to Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc. If you can provide some of those same tools along with everything else to centralize communication, that would be incredibly valuable.
B) An AI or Machine Learning based system that can analyze how important it is to listen to constituents on a particular issue based on a variety of factors. It could take into account how much of a “swing district” you are, how important this issue is to your constituents based on demographic data, how many outreaches you’re receiving from each side, and how likely a vote in opposition to the majority of outreaches could negatively impact your chance of reelection. There’s obviously a lot more that would go into it, but you get the idea.
Ultimately, if you are going to pursue this path, PLEASE make sure you are solving the right problem, otherwise you will be DOA. Have a great week and make sure to share and subscribe!