2026 Cycle · Cycle 1
Citizens write the political pledges. Creators amplify them. Candidates respond on equal time. Voters decide who kept their word.
A nonpartisan civic project.
Gilens & Page (Princeton / Northwestern, 2014) tracked 1,779 federal policy proposals over twenty years. The relationship between what average citizens want and what passes is statistically indistinguishable from zero.
Average citizens
The line is essentially flat.
Whether 30%, 70%, or 90% of the public supports a policy, the odds it passes barely move.
Economic elites & organized interests
The line is steep.
Their preferences correlate strongly with what becomes law. It is the same study and the same policies, just a different group on the x-axis.
Why the second line is steep
Citizens United (2010) unlocked unlimited outside political spending. The numbers since then are not subtle.
2024 Senate cycle
$14,000
raised per day
What a competitive Senate candidate needed to raise every day, including weekends, to keep up.
2024 federal cycle
$4B+
in outside spending
Spending by groups legally separate from any campaign exceeded four billion dollars.
Three roles, four jobs, and one shared standard written by the public.
Verified voters in a race write the policy commitments they want every candidate to adopt. Plain language, with specific asks.
A creator with a local or national audience picks a citizen-written pledge that fits their work, then runs the format that puts it to candidates.
Every candidate who agrees gets the same fixed slot in the creator's channel, at the same length and placement. No money changes hands.
The audience sees every candidate's reply side by side. Some agree, some agree in part, some decline. The comparison is the product.
An illustrative example. The people are invented, the process is not.
Maria, a parent in Chandler, Arizona, posts a pledge for the AZ-04 race. Every public-school bus on routes longer than 8 miles gets seatbelts by 2028, paid for from the existing transportation block grant.
Seatbelts on every long school bus route by 2028
Every public-school bus on routes longer than 8 miles gets three-point belts, funded from the existing transportation block grant.
She shares it with the parents at her kids' school and on the district WhatsApp group. Two weeks later, 247 verified voters in AZ-04 have added their support. The pledge surfaces on the district's trending list.
247
verified backers in AZ-04
A YouTuber covering Arizona local politics (38,000 subscribers, mostly in metro Phoenix) sees the pledge in her trending feed and adopts it. She invites every AZ-04 candidate to record a 90-second response on equal time. No money changes hands.
Phoenix Civics Daily
38,000 subs · AZ local politics
All four AZ-04 candidates invited. 90 seconds, equal placement, no money exchanged.
Three of the four AZ-04 candidates record a response: one agrees in full, one in part, one declines. Same length, same placement, same questions. The compilation reaches 84,000 viewers in the district before Election Day.
Candidate responses
Compilation video: 84,000 district views
The candidate who agreed in full wins. Sixteen months later, the same creator publishes a follow-up. A matching bill sits in committee with the new representative as co-sponsor. The pledge does not expire on Election Day.
HR-3104 introduced. Rep. A is co-sponsor.
Sixteen months after the election, the same creator publishes a follow-up. The bill sits in committee, on track for the 2028 deadline.
The audience, including the citizens who proposed the pledge, sees every candidate's reply at the same length and in the same format. There is no spin slot and no bidding war.
The structure is the same one a newspaper editorial board or a League of Women Voters guide uses. An independent publisher sets the criteria, written here by the voting public, and every candidate who meets them is treated identically.
No money changes hands. No coordination with campaigns. No in-kind contribution.
Precedent
Newspaper editorial board
Precedent
League of Women Voters guide
2026
Pledge Your Platform
Not this
Endorsement / ad buy
A local creator with 10,000 engaged followers in a competitive district can plausibly reach more persuadable voters than a $50,000 local TV buy, and reach them with a face the audience already trusts.
Old Lane
$50,000 local TV buy
Broadcast spray. Trust score: low. Most viewers tune the ad out.
New Lane
10,000 engaged followers
Direct line. Trust score: built over years. The audience already chose to listen.
The pledge starts with you, not with a creator or a candidate. Verified registered voters in a race propose specific policy commitments they want every candidate held to. The strongest pledges, by voter signal, surface to creators in your district.
Every verified voter gets 3 endorsement slots and 100 influence points. No money or following required.
What you'll do
Propose a pledge in your race. Specific commitments in plain language, like “Disclose lobbyist meetings within 30 days.”
Back the pledges your neighbors wrote with up to 3 endorsements. Your primary endorsement carries 3x weight.
Allocate 100 influence points across the issues you care about. Points shape which pledges surface to creators.
After Election Day, see whether elected officials kept the commitments their constituents wrote.
In the old system, money decides which issues get attention. Here, verified voters do.
We, voters in this race, ask every candidate to commit to:
Verify your district. Propose a pledge or back one your neighbors wrote. Free, with no following required.
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You don't have to be a political creator to hold politicians accountable. Whether you make cooking videos, fitness content, or comedy sketches, your audience votes in your district. You don't write the pledge. You decide which citizen-written pledge is worth amplifying, and run the equal-airtime format that puts it to candidates.
Same legal lane as newspaper editorial boards & LWV guides
What you'll do
Choose your race (local, state, or federal) and verify the district your audience lives in.
Browse citizen-written pledges in your race and pick the one you’ll stand behind. You’re the editor, not the author.
Publish the pledge with a fixed equal-airtime offer (for example, 30 seconds per agreeing candidate). We provide the format and the legal framework.
Produce one video covering who agreed, who agreed in part, and who declined.
4 Pledges in Your Race
Publish full schedule weekly
2,418 backing
Quarterly open-format town halls
1,902 backing
Disclose lobbyist meetings within 30 days
1,640 backing
Publish a written ethics policy
812 backing
We review every creator application to confirm audience and editorial independence. Tell us about your platform and we'll be in touch with next steps.
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We confirm every candidate signup with the relevant jurisdiction's filings before granting access. Submit your details and we'll be in touch.
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Verified voters in your district are setting the standard, and creators they trust are amplifying it. Meet the standard and you earn authentic airtime with engaged audiences, for free. No ad spend, no PAC money, just a commitment to the policies your constituents are asking for.
Equal-airtime guarantee
Every agreeing candidate gets the same length and placement. The clip is candidate-produced and is not edited by the creator. No money changes hands in either direction.
What you'll do
Browse citizen-written pledges from verified voters in your race.
Review the policy commitments and decide which align with your platform.
Agree to a pledge and submit your own short video clip.
Get equal airtime alongside every other candidate who agreed to the same pledge.
Traditional Ad Buy
$0
~100,000 viewers at <1% engagement
100 Creators
0 people
at 5-7% engagement, for free
Same race. One costs $50,000. The other costs nothing but a policy commitment.
Yes. A creator offering equal airtime to any candidate who meets a publicly announced policy standard is protected editorial speech. It is the same approach that newspaper editorial boards and organizations like the League of Women Voters have used for decades. We do not coordinate with campaigns, candidates produce their own clips independently, and no money changes hands. We have consulted with campaign finance attorneys to confirm the model.
No. Any creator can set any pledge based on any values: progressive, conservative, libertarian, or anything else. Every candidate who meets the standard gets equal airtime. We actively support creators across the political spectrum.
No. A creator with 500 engaged followers who vote in a local district can have more impact than a national influencer with millions of followers spread across the country. Local creators are the backbone of this movement.
That is where accountability kicks in. After the election, we track voting records against pledges. When an official votes against a commitment, we notify the creators who gave them airtime. The follow-up video is often more powerful than the original: "I gave you 30 seconds because you pledged X, and you just voted against it."
That is the point. The most powerful pledge videos often come from creators whose audiences do not expect political content. A cooking creator talking about school lunch funding or a fitness creator talking about healthcare access can cut through in a way political content from political creators rarely does.
It is a set of specific, measurable policy commitments that voters in a race want every candidate to adopt. Examples: "Refuse corporate PAC money," "Support a stock trading ban for members of Congress," "Hold monthly town halls." Pledges can be about any issue. Citizens decide what matters to them and their district.