Latest / The Marketing Brief / Shu and Brian Discuss ElectionsSimplified.com and How to Make Voting Easier for Everyone (S3 E4)
Transcript
- Brian: Hello and welcome back to the Marketing Brief podcast. I am your host, Brian Aquan, and this is the podcast where we talk about marketing and then anything that intersects with marketing. And today we have a guest and a and a product that I guess could intersect with marketing, but it's certainly very topical. I'm joined today by Shu Yang. Shu, welcome to the program. Shu: Thank you so much, Brian. Thanks for having me on on your show. It's an honor to be here. Brian: Thank you. And you found me. So thank you for for reaching out. And you shared with me what you've been working on since March of this year, which is called Elections Simplified, correct? Shu: Yes, yeah. Elections simplify dot com the the website. Brian: Elections simplified.com, which I I encourage everyone to go on. I've been playing around with it. I'd love you to kind of talk about, you know, what it is, why why you started this and kind of who it's for and what it does. Shu: Yeah, I started this because I'm an IT professional and every time I get my ballot, actually I have my ballot here, that it's seven pages of names that for most of these names of these candidates, I don't know who they are. I might know the president. Well I will know the president, presidential Brian: Mm-hmm. Sure. Shu: like presidential candidates. I wouldn't I might know the governors and the city mayors, and that's it. So the rest of the names on these seven pages, I just have no idea who they are. And those few names I do know, I just know from the T V ads. No, the vote for me, I will fight for you or don't vote for this person. That person's bad somehow, right? Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Shu: But it doesn't really tell me anything. It's not like I'm gonna go through ads on T V and w f I just see one ad and I'm like, Yeah, that's the guy. Out of all thousands of guys, that's the Brian: Yeah. Shu: guy who's gonna fight for me. That's ridiculous, right? Brian: Yeah. And those are the candidates that have money to spend to run ads. Yeah. Shu: Exactly. Yeah, and they're not necessarily the best candidates either. So I thought to know someone, to know a person, is not to know that person by the words that person says. Especially if those words were designed to have me vote for that person. The best way to know a person is to especially a political candidate is by their actions. Who they act what did they actually voted for. what legislation they have done and who they took the money from, which pack or super pack they took the money from. And one day I was driving home I was just thinking to myself, that recently we have this revolutionary technology of AI. that came so quickly into our lives and so overwhelmingly, I was thinking, what can we do with it to do some good to our community, like to a society in general. What's the biggest positive impact we can use it? And as soon as I asked this question, all I did was ask this question. And it this idea came to me. I don't feel like I came up with it at all. Literally it is a very strange feeling that it it came from to me from the outside, delivered to me, and it was very clear. All these candidates have their public voting records and things like that. In governmental websites, it's all officially public. We just need to pull it out. So why don't we use AI to pull out each candidate's public record and fight financial record? Brian: Mm-hmm. Shu: This way we can look at our ballots and look at the description of each candidate with their real records and so we know who they are. So I talked to this idea with a few friends of mine from very different political ends, the very far right and very far left, and they all said the same thing. We have the same problem. Because Brian: Yeah. Shu: when they got their ballots, it's the same problem. Doesn't matter what. person believes. So we're thinking that let's try to see if it would actually work. Brian: Yeah. Shu: So we started building this and that's how this came about and it actually worked. We could actually pull out the real data from the candidates and it's Brian: Mm-hmm. Shu: very easy to see who they are just by looking at their actions. Brian: Yeah. And their and their public voting records. Yeah. I so I've Shu: Exactly. Brian: used it. I you know, elections simplified dot com. You put in you start by putting in your address, right? So it it localizes where you are. Shu: Yeah, it doesn't have to be your own address. It could be just a market or a Madonna near you. Brian: Mm-hmm. Gotcha. Shu: the reason that it needs a specific address is you can also just put in your city or zip code. It also works. But in one city, the election districts does not f they don't follow the city lines. So you can be in one city and it's carved up in different election districts. That's why it needs a bit more specific address. But you can also just put in your City and zip code and will give you what it can. Brian: Right. And then it's gonna list all the candidates, it's gonna list all the propositions, but it's going to give you very Shu: Yeah, all the elections. Brian: simple language, which I I believe did you pull it directly from the ballots, the language? Shu: Exactly. Brian: Yeah. Shu: So we use we we do two only do two things with the AI. The AI does not generate anything. The AI just goes on to the websites, official websites, or news audits, reputable news solids, to find these records. And what it does it it translates these legal dense documents into a way that every one can understand, into a plain Brian: Yeah. Shu: language essentially. Brian: Yeah. And I've read it. It's very plain language. It's very easy to understand. And then it tells you what, like on a proposition, what a yes vote means, what a no vote means. Cause also these things are sometimes written in a very tricky way where you're like, Does yes mean no in this case? But you have the very clear, like, here's what a yes vote means, here's what a no vote means, which I I thought was really easy to use as well. Shu: Yeah, that's the idea. Brian: That's the idea, right? Well, I think it's very impressive. You've also added in you can log in and you can save your, you know, kind of when you go through all of your propositions, all of your Shu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian: candidates, all your judges. My God, the judges for me are sometimes the hardest ones because it's like there's 12 judges. I've never heard of any of these names. Shu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian: but you can save as you've gone through and you've read it and you've done your research, you can Shu: Mm-hmm. Brian: save what you've picked and then you can have that as a reference, correct? Shu: Yeah, you after you pick who you like to vote for, you can see there's a ballot view, so basically a sample ballot. So you can have your phone next to you in your b ballot booth and you can just fill out whichever you chose from before. The idea is to make it easy, like for essentially for me, because I'm Brian: Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Shu: lazy, I don't wanna, you know, do all this stuff. I essentially just made it. So how would I like to have it? Brian: Yeah. And and you are in tech, we talked a little bit before we started recording about like biases, right? Cause to me it's really interesting. Like, how do you eliminate bias from everything? But you really took a middle of the road approach to this of just like I'm pulling out the text that's on the ballot. I'm pulling out voting records of actual candidates to try and make it easy for people to understand what does voting for this person mean? What is voting for this proposition mean? Correct. Shu: Yeah, exactly. Because Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Shu: each legislation someone votes, it's usually very specific. Brian: Mm-hmm. Shu: It just has exactly for example, this legislation gives a couple million dollars so we can build this bridge. Something just very specific. Even though it's five, six pages of legal dance language, it's actually just that thing, one thing. Same goes with ballots, proposition for these, things like that. you see pages of legal dance language, but at the end of the day it's just one or two very specific thing. And for me as an average user, I just care about that one thing. What's Brian: Yeah. Shu: the point of it? Yeah. Brian: Yeah. And trying to trying to get through the ballot. And your ballot looks like mine. You're voting in California, right? You're from Pasadena, right? Nice. Shu: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian: yeah, I'm definitely gonna use this. what do you want to happen as we go forward? You said like you've been working on this since March, and you have most of the cities, you have most of the major areas. There might be some suburban or rural areas that that aren't covered, but then people can kind of request them. Is that how it works? Shu: So if you we cover most of the major cities, of course all the states, the major counties. So if someone, let's say from a super rural area, they types in their address and we don't have that data by any chance, it automatically goes into a queue. So we'll know, okay, we're lacking data for this thing that someone somewhere requested it. So it goes into an automatic research afterwards. Brian: Okay. And is that a agentic? Shu: So hopefully y in Brian: You set up like an agent to kind of receive that and then go do the work? Shu: No, no, it's actually just when you it's not a genetic. It's just by software code. Brian: It's you. It's you. Shu: It's it's it's coded. It's automatically set up that way. Yeah, yeah. Brian: Yeah. Gotcha. That's very cool. And what do you want do you want this to live on for future elections? Like what is what's, you know, pie in the sky? What what would you want this to be? Shu: As much as we can because the reason that we we made this is because we're just we're not any kind of big corporations, we're just a few friends who are doing this in their spare time and outside work. Because we made this because this is something we wanna have. We have the trouble or challenge that we don't know who these candidates are. So we wanna solve these pro problems for ourselves. And the number one thing is we hope people can use it. Because there's a lot of misinformation out there during the elections. We know that. And misinformation is unfortunately, how should I say, intentionally put in front of us to design for us to vote a certain way that does not benefit us. Brian: Sure. Yeah. Shu: So we thought to use this as a factual tool to give informational clarity and essentially just present the fact as they are. So voters just like you and I, we can make a vote that's our choice. Brian: Yeah. And educated. Right? Yeah. Shu: Yeah, yeah, it's my vote. As in like it because those are the values I have, that's why I chose that person. Because I know that person aligned with my values. So we hope as many people can use it as possible before for the midterm and that's our just the immediate goal, just for people to use it. And as long as we can financially keep on s supporting it, which we plan to, we'll keep it going as long as we can. Brian: Yeah. And you have a link for people to donate on your on your website as well. Shu: Yeah, yeah. If they first I really want people to use it because that's what's the design to be to be. Brian: Yeah, design to use. Shu: Yeah, yeah. It's too for you for you to use it. And then if you find it useful and you do have the extra funds you can pitch in a f few bucks. Yeah, sure. Really appreciate it, yeah. Thank you. Brian: That's great. We'll we'll we'll send that link out when we post it because I I think this is really amazing what what you built. And you have a day job in IT, right? Are you our programmer? Shu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian: Amazing. This is really cool, Shu. Thank you for sharing it with me. Shu: Thank you. Thank you so much, Brian. Brian: I I've been asking everyone in season three what they're hopeful about. Is there something you're hopeful about right now, either in the work that you do or in your personal life? Shu: Well I'm really hopeful of this website, electionsinfify.com. I think if someone does use it, such as yourself, you could see the clarity of the information. So this way when we vote, we can really feel like we can really feel that the vote is ours and we can have a certainty in our election that we didn't have before. Brian: Yeah. I think that's a great hope. I can tell you personally, like when I'm filling out my ballot and I don't know like information about a judge, I typically leave it blank, which I'm like, well, that's not great either, right? Because I have a voice here, I have a vote and I want to Shu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian: make it. So having that information at my fingertips that makes it really clear and I can make a decision at that time, I'm gonna be more likely to fill out my whole ballot. Shu: Yeah. Also personally how I use it is that when I register, which registering is free as well, Brian: Mm-hmm. Shu: why do we need to register? You don't have to, but when I register I get to select which issues are mo most important to me. For example, Brian: Gotcha. Shu: for some people can be healthcare, for some people can be cost of living, things like that. And I can rank them which one's most important to me. And I can because we already have all the candidates' records and their records are labeled. Brian: Yeah. Shu: We can just filter, not by AI, but actual filter based on my own issues. Does this candidate align with what I want? This way I don't I I per that's what I do. I don't encourage this, but I personally Brian: Right. Shu: don't even look at the judge races. I just use the filter. Does this person align with me? After Brian: Interesting. Yeah. Shu: filling out what's important to me. If it does, Brian: It's amazing. Shu: yes. If it doesn't Then I just put no. And yeah, go ahead. Brian: Well, it seem it seems like you might be gathering pretty important data. Is there a plan for using that data? Are you collecting data at all? Shu: user data? Brian: Yeah. Shu: We do we so if you sign up, the only thing we ask is an optional first name. Brian: Okay. Shu: So we don't ask your gender, your income, where you're from, things like that. You know, we're taking the opposite approach. Like Brian: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Shu: we're trying to get at least the least amount of data from people as possible. Brian: Gotcha. Shu: And Our privacy policy not only says and which is what people agree upon that we Brian: Mm-hmm. Shu: do not sell any of this information, also Brian: Yeah. Shu: our code is public. What that means is that you can literally go and see our source code and see that, you're not gathering this data, you're not selling data. Brian: Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, I read through all your disclaimers. You clearly are are doing this. I guess for the right reasons. Like you you really just want to make elections simplified, right? Shu: Yeah, and I don't want other people to collect my data. That's how I I like we made it essentially how we would like it to be. Brian: That's great. Well, thank you so much for being my guest today, Shu. It was Shu: Thank you, Brian. Brian: really nice to to get to know you. the website is electionssimplified.com. when we post it, we'll we'll post the the website and then also a link so that hopefully you can recoup some of the funds that you've put out to to build this great website. Shu: Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Brian: Shu, it was really great to have you as a guest. Shu: It's a pleasure. Brian: And to all the audience out there, all the listeners, stay curious.