By James Feichtner
Twitter and Facebook have become an increasingly popular form of communication utilized by political candidates in recent elections, but these social mediums aren’t devoted purely to politics.
During his time working with Indiana political candidates, Carmel resident Adam Berry said he realized the lack of such a website that could allow candidates and voters alike to better communicate during political campaigns.
“It struck me in the fall of 2014 when I was working with a candidate, and it was really difficult walking through the laundry list of things he needed to do,” Adam Berry said. “I thought, why am I not sending him to a single place online that makes it super simple for him to basically launch his campaign?”
This idea led Berry, a Republican, and Frank Short, a Democrat, to develop PoliticalBank, a bi-partisan, one-stop shop website for candidates at all levels to launch, monitor and engage voters in their campaign.
“We consider ourselves the most cost-effective way for candidates to launch their campaign online,” Berry said. “In less than 10 minutes candidates can post pictures, post information about themselves, convey their positions on issues, start recruiting volunteers, announce upcoming campaign events and start raising and accepting campaign donations.”
PoliticalBank is for voters, too. For those wanting to learn more about a specific candidate, the website allows registered users to search the website for information, including political issues.
“What is really unique about it is it allows for voters to find candidates on the platform that they may not even be looking for,” Berry said. “So you’re a voter, and you want to find out who’s running for office in Hamilton County, you can search by location, name, demographic or by choosing an issue.”
Berry and Short’s goal with PoliticalBank isn’t aiming to replace the role of social media or even a political campaign website, but simply use it to unite all these tools in one place.
“This allows them to share their PoliticalBank page to Facebook and Twitter and vice versa,” Barry said.
Berry said that PoliticalBank will come in especially handy for smaller scale candidates that don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on complex campaign websites.
“We want to offer this to candidates regardless of what level they are running for to have the ability to have a sophisticated, sleek website,” Berry said. “Some presidential campaign websites are $100,000 websites, but if you’re a candidate who just needs a way to connect with voters, accept donations online, put up photos and tell folks about you, we’re your place.”
To learn more, visit www.politicalbank.com
