Abstract
Voting Buddy (votingbuddy.com) was launched during the 2022 election cycle to help voters with their decision-making. The tool asks users five “Myers Briggs” style questions related to political ideology. The five questions include an overview question, and more detailed questions regarding sentiments towards non-Americans (domestically and abroad), social welfare and fiscal policy, social policy, and industrialization and corporate policy. The tool then provides textual and graphical assessments of each user and matches each user with like-minded politicians/candidates. The tool can match users with politicians/candidates nationwide or within Congressional voting districts based upon user provided zip codes. Prior to the 2022 election, Voting Buddy was preloaded with assessments of all U.S. Senators and Representatives and all of their opponents (including third party and non-affiliated candidates). Because Voting Buddy’s core team includes political scientists, educators, and engineers, Voting Buddy’s algorithms, assessments, and comparisons were all found to be impartial by Voting Buddy users (voters and news media). The proposed paper will discuss Voting Buddy’s role to date in helping to foster an informed and engaged voting public. Examples include Voting Buddy’s use at voter registration events to engage voters, engaging first-time voters (high school/college students) with Voting Buddy, etc. In addition, the paper will discuss ways that Voting Buddy can be used in the future to inform and engage the voting public. This discussion will also project the election-related implications (related to turnout, voters more confidently participating in the election process, etc.) if Voting Buddy is successful.