‘Tinder for Voting’ Hacks the Vote at RNC

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Hunter Scarborough is shaking hands behind the scenes at the Republican National Convention. But he’s not campaigning, lobbying, or selling merchandise. The 26-year-old Californian entrepreneur is talking up his mobile app, Voter, which he describes as “Tinder for politics,” and which allows voters to learn about issues, candidates, and each other.

Users enter information about their own views, and find candidates who match their profiles. “Find your perfect candidate, in every election,” the home screen promises.

After a short battery of yes/no questions — swipe right to vote yes, left for no — Voter has enough data to help you navigate election season without having to do the hard work of research, wading through endless news articles, policy papers, and suspicious fact-checking websites.

The app informs you of your party preference and your best candidate choices — not just in federal elections, but in state and local elections as well. Once you have discovered your own best choices, you can share them with friends.

You can also match with your friends by “opting in” to share your opinions. That feature is optional, Scarborough told Breitbart News, because doesn’t want to start arguments between random strangers, he says.

He has resisted offers for Voter’s data — which is rich with information about millennials’ political preferences, he says — but clearly understands the potential for his business to expand into data mining, management and analysis.

Voter is based in Santa Monica, where it is housed inside a tech accelerator, which is in turn inside a law firm. One challenge the app has yet to resolve, apparently, is California’s own system of elections, where the top two finishers in the “jungle primary” advance to the general election in November, regardless of party. That means that a Republican in Voter’s own district would need to know which of two Democrats is the least bad.

The Voter app — amazingly, Scarborough was able to pick up the simple name relatively cheaply, he says — has also partnered with MTV’s Rock the Vote and Tinder in a recent initiative called “Swipe the Vote.” What Voter brought to Rock the Vote, Scarborough says, was the idea that young voters should be informed — not just pushed to the polls for voting’s sake.

Scarborough is traveling to the Democratic National Committee next week. See his interview with Breitbart News below:

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, will be published by Regnery on July 25 and is available for pre-order through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.