by David Ball
Staff Writer
In the Spring of 2001, South Florida resident Jason Belanger returned home from work and flipped on the TV. Instead of the standard local news, he saw the results of an election he didn’t even know took place.
“Local elections I feel are very important since they deal with our local property taxes, school boards – things the president doesn’t do for us,” said Belanger. “I figured there were probably a lot of people like me, and I started to do some researching.”
Belanger, a software engineer and Web developer now living in Jacksonville, saw there were very few places online where voters could get easy-to-understand information on voting dates and times, ballot questions, candidates and campaign issues in their local area. So after experimenting with a few domain names, www.WhenToVote.com was born.
“You have to have a domain name that’s catchy, and I was happy to find whentovote.com was available,” said Belanger. “Then I spent some time doing the logo design, and after that I had to figure out what exactly I was going to do with the site.”
After six years of work in his spare time, 33-year-old Belanger launched a basic version of the site in August. However, Belanger wants to reach his ultimate goal of “redefining the way America votes,” as stated on the home page, with a fully functioning site by the 2008 General Election.
It currently offers limited, but useful, information, but Belanger hopes to grow the site into a sophisticated election database where users and political candidates can share information in a Myspace-like environment. He also hopes to bring in enough advertising revenue to quit his day job and manage the site full time.
“With all the Web sites out there, I may have a better chance at winning the lottery than this taking off,” he said. “But you never know. I think it’s a good idea because there’s nothing out there like it.”
Some people have agreed. In October, Belanger’s site was a finalist for a $10,000 prize as one of the best new ideas as voted by users of the Web site ideablob.com, owned by Advanta Corp.
Although Belanger didn’t win the cash, he said he received plenty of feedback, encouragement and criticisms from voters that will improve the finished product.
The WhenToVote.com home page lists news feeds from MSNBC.com and a place to register and sign in to the site. The registration process includes entering in little more than a name, screen name, e-mail address and city where you reside.
Once registered in Jacksonville, for instance, the site lists the upcoming primary and general elections in 2008, a link to register to vote and contact information to Florida and Duval County supervisor of elections offices. Political news feeds fill up the rest of the page.
At the top is a link to the site’s online forums, which currently number three and include the topics: if Hillary Clinton could become president; if site users voted at ideablob.com; and if President Bush should have visited the soldiers in Iraq.
Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland recently checked out WhenToVote.com and said that while the concept is very good, the site still needs some work before it receives his office’s endorsement.
“The home page seems a little biased between the two parties,” said Holland, “and there is a link where people can pay to register to vote, and that concerns me because registering to vote is free.”
Holland said a better alternative would be to link users to their local elections offices to register. Holland’s site, www.duvalelections.com, does have plenty of information on candidates and ballots, although he said the ability to include some analysis and opinion on things, such as complicated referendum language, could make WhenToVote.com a valuable tool for voters.
“I think the more information you can get to the voters about candidates and elections issues is a good thing,” he said.
Belanger said about 70 people so far have registered, including independent presidential candidate Brad Lord-Leutwyler. Belanger said eventually the site will merge with his other sites in development, www.CandidateSpace.com and www.HowToRun.com, to offer a complete network of election information.
“A lot of local candidates can’t afford their own Web site, so we’ll allow them to have their own personal page and profile to share their stance on issues,” said Belanger. “And people can find out how to run for office and what positions are open in their area to run for.”
Belanger, who minored in political science in college, said the site has made him more interested in all levels of politics. But he said the project needs to make some significant leaps forward in the coming year if he wants to keep going.
“We need revenue. We need to have a stronger membership base and need to have advertisers in all the states,” he said. “We’re shooting for the Fall 2008 elections. If we are not hitting our mark by then, I’ll seriously have to consider throwing in the towel.”