Posted on June 20, 2012 by Dade

Pingup is designed to empower the User. You decide if and when you want to engage an organization, and they are then obliged to respond. No spam, no banner ads, no distractions from your expressed intentions. We believe that this is where the world is headed, and it is our task to support this shift toward The Intention Economy, a buyer-centric business approach that drives us here at Pingup. We believe that Politics should be no different.

When the founders of our country set up this Democracy, they knew that the former Colonies were very different from one another and they wanted the people of the different Colonies to have their diverse interests represented in a real way in the new Federal government. Their solution was to create a Representative Republic. Their idea was that each community would elect a person who was like them and who shared their values then put that person on a horse bound for the Capital where he would be their voice in Federal matters.

Of course, we all know that our current Congress looks little like that. Most of us are convinced that our Representatives today have little concern for what we think or what we care about and only concern themselves with what special interests want. It’s also become nearly impossible to actually communicate with candidates or elected officials, so we rely on their television commercials to figure out if they represent us or not. So, it struck us as odd, and very interesting, when a candidate for Congress told us that he wanted to use Pingup to make himself more accessible to voters in his district.

Jon Golnik is running for the US House Of Representatives to represent the Massachusetts Third District. Our CEO, Mark, Has known Jon for a while and has kept him up to date on what’s happening at Pingup. When we launched a couple of weeks ago, Jon was excited to be the first candidate for Federal office to put his campaign on Pingup.

We thought this was worthy of a press release, so we called Jon and asked if we could speak to him about it. Since most candidates will do anything not to have to answer real questions from real voters, we simply asked about his motivation for being on Pingup. Apparently, he’s a different sort of candidate.

Jon told us that he believes deeply in the idea that the founders had when they set the system up. He asked, “How can I represent people if I don’t know what they believe and what they want from their elected officials.” He went on to say that he knew that people communicate by text these days rather than by phone. Jon views Pingup as a way to make himself more accessible to the voters in the way that his voters were already communicating with others. Wait….seriously? He told us that he saw this as a “powerful new way for voters to speak to him.” He spoke of “near-time” communication with the people who mattered most…..the voters of his district. We loved every word of it.

We decided to put him to the test, so we asked our extremely bright and liberal intern, Sara, to Pingup the candidate. We told her to ask honest questions and to not be afraid to challenge the candidate. She fired up the Pingup web app and sent him a question. The candidate answered back personally and engaged her on the issues. Imagine that….a candidate and a voter having a direct dialogue on the issues. Sara gave him all she had and he responded in kind. After their chat we asked her what she thought and she said, “I don’t agree with some of it but he knows his stuff and it was a very cool experience.”

That’s what America is supposed to be about. We’re supposed to feel free to challenge people who seek to lead us and engage in civil discourse when we disagree with them. They’re supposed to represent us and to care about the things we care about. We will never all agree on politics, but whether you lean right or left, we can all agree that our leaders must be willing to listen to us. They are, after all, our voice in government. We’re now proud to tell you that there’s a guy running for Congress in the MA 3rd who welcomes the hard questions through a system that lets voters engage him their way (through text). That is Jon Golnik, standing by to take your questions via text on Pingup!

Pretty cool.

P.S. – We’re not trying to tell anyone who to vote for and we’re certainly not endorsing one side over another. As far as we’re concerned, they should all be on Pingup and you should have the ability to text any of them with your questions before making your choice on voting day.

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