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You know Match.com, and you’ve certainly heard of Tinder, but you may be surprised how many people have considered leaving these broad, popular platforms for niche dating. Are you a farmer? A redhead? Tall? There’s an app for that, and another new niche dating app has entered the scene.
“People tend to gravitate to people who are of like mind. Not everyone can be Mary Matalin and James Carville,” Michael Bellavia, CEO of CandiDate, said. “A lot of times people like to at least be with somebody who shares certain values and beliefs.”
CandiDate does just that — match other “like-minded” people with others in their area. When you sign up for the dating app you’ll be asked a series of questions from VoteSmart to not only help define your affiliation, but more importantly your beliefs and values.
You’ll select "Yay" or "Nay" on key issues including everything from abortion to gun control to health care to higher education. Then, based on those responses, you’ll be served 10 Congress members in the House of Representatives and Senate whose voting records are closest to your answers to those same questions — in other words, browse your political soulmates. Then, you can swipe right or left on each of them, regardless of their voting records.
Getting Started
Once your matches are ready, you’ll also have the option to register to vote via Rock the Vote's online voter registration system. While voter registration may not seem like the primary goal of the app, that's how it all began.
The idea for CandiDate was born at Brand New's Causathon. At the event, Bellavia was challenged with other attendees to identify, solve and present a solution for one social problem. His team chose Rock the Vote, something they were shocked to learn is such a huge problem in the United States among young people.
“Over 50 percent of young people ages 18-34 are not registered to vote, so they don’t vote. We thought that was crazy.”
The app, which was mapped out during the 24-hour session, was one of the finalists of the event, and something Bellavia wasn’t ready to let go. He now runs the app out of his Van Nuys-based company HelpsGood, a digital agency that helps nonprofits, government agencies and CSR teams with marketing and communication efforts.
The app launched on Nov. 4 (election day) of 2014, and has already gained 20,000 users.
“[Registering to vote] is the most broken part of [the voting process]," Bellavia said. "In today’s day in age, especially with young people, they have the expectation that is takes just a couple seconds to register for a date, so why does it take so long to register to vote?”
There are currently four people under the HelpsGood umbrella working on the product. In 2015 they hope to launch the app on iOS (it's currently only available on Android), add more features and continue to expand their user base. They will eventually move to a “freemium” model, with a nominal fee to access more app features.
Most importantly, they want to increase the mission of the app — to get out the vote.
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