If you don’t know what Snapchat is don’t worry. It is a fairly new smartphone app that lets users send messages and images to one another. The unique part is that the message gets deleted after being viewed.

One feature that has been added to Snapchat is called “stories”. You can choose to send a message to one friend or you can opt to make the message your story. This means all of your friends will be able to view this message for the next 24 hours.

Recently, Snapchat has been producing stories of their own called “Our Stories”.  These are essentially a culmination of pictures and videos from all the people at one event. Users of the app submit their picture or video to the event story. The event could be a holiday, concert or even a snowstorm. The Snowmageddon snow storm of 2015 story reportedly got 27 million views on the app.

We were extremely exited to see a Snapchat election story for the UK election. Hundreds of people had submitted photos and videos of their voting experiences. Young voters got to share their first voting experience with the world, while others simply encouraged people to get out and vote. Either way this was an awesome use of technology to support democracy.

We also really liked the fact that the app stayed non-partisan. There was only one story topic and the submitted media was from voters. There were no advertisements or stories dedicated to a certain party. Below is one of the pictures we managed to snag from the Snapchat election story.

The post Snapchat Election Story In The UK appeared first on Follow My Vote.

To make matters worse, all of the commotion occurring in Washington D.C. seems to have created a lot of confusion among Americans with respect to what raising the debt ceiling actually means.

To be clear, raising the debt ceiling in the United States would only allow the federal government to pay its outstanding bills, for things like military pay and Social Security. However, it does NOT give the government authority to increasing spending.

The harsh reality is that if an agreement can’t be reached in Washington D.C. by October 17^th, the United States debt ceiling will expire, our nation will default on our outstanding loans, our credit rating will be lowered, and our currency will be devalued.

Being that such an event would have catastrophic effects on the United States economy and the global economy at large, Congress has raised the debt ceiling a total of 94 times since 1940 without much of a fuss. But, for one reason or another, this time is different.

Since the shutdown began, talks between President Obama and top GOP officials in the House of Representatives went virtually nowhere. As the deadline grows near, however, “We the People” are actively exercising our right to speak freely.

Yesterday, crowds gathered in Washington D.C. to speak out against the federal government’s inability to work together to reach a resolution. Both liberal and conservative demonstrators held protests at many of Washington D.C.’s landmarks, voicing their frustrations with the current situation. Tea Party enthusiasts were even seen toppling barricades and stacking them right in front of the White House lawn. Generally, it seems the consensus among citizens of the United States is that the federal government is broken and something must be done in order to fix it.

At this point, it seems that our best chance to reach a resolution lies in the hands of the United States Senate, with talks between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled to resume today. Although Harry Reid was recently quoted as saying “I’m optimistic about the prospects of a positive conclusion,” senators seem to be squarely divided over how much federal spending should be permitted in a budget extension that would reopen the federal government and how long any new borrowing limit should last. The thing is that. even if the Senate reaches an agreement in the next few days, there’s no telling how the House of Representatives will respond.

With the debt ceiling deadline swiftly approaching, one thing is clear: “We the People” are running out of patience.

Some Americans have even taken matters into their own hands and have chosen to pick up where the government left off. John and Laura Arnold, for instance, have donated $10M to Head Start, where their doors have been reopened and children are now getting the education they need.

We at Follow My Vote believe that “We the People” should be able to take all governmental matters into our hands at all times, especially to prevent situations like this from occurring in the future.

We envision our mobile app, which is currently in development, as being the only viable long-term solution for true accountability in Washington D.C.

Our journey through the long and winding road to true freedom will not be easy and will likely be a costly endeavor.

On that note, we recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the continued development of our mobile application beyond the initial version, in order to support much more functionality and an improved user experience based on customer feedback.

If you’d like this to be the last shutdown “We the People” in the United States are forced to go through, please contribute to our crowdfunding campaign today!

The post Shutdown Showdown appeared first on Follow My Vote.

We registered a ton of users for our mobile app that should hit the major app markets this December! Those who registered were given a free Follow My Vote Ping Pong Ball and were offered a chance to win other Follow My Vote swag by playing the ping pong toss game at our Gobblerfest booth.

CONGRATS to all those that WON BIG and took home some cool Follow My Vote swag!!

We also held a raffle and gave out a bunch of prizes, including a Virginia Tech Cornhole game with custom made Virginia Tech Cornhole Bean Bags and even a much sought after leather futon.

Be sure to check out all of the best pictures we took at the event, in our Gobblerfest 2013 slideshow and image gallery below:

NOTE: If you’d like to check out all the photos we took at the event, be sure to find us on Facebook, like our Facebook page, and view our Gobblerfest 2013 photo album.

Last but not least, we’d like to thank all those who took part in the festivities, especially those who showed interest in Follow My Vote and came to visit our booth! We’d also like to extend a BIG THANKS to all the Gobblerfest volunteers and Gobblerfest sponsors who helped make Gobblerfest 2013 at Virginia Tech such a fantastic experience!

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeffrey Mitchell Bierie

The post Gobblerfest 2013… A Great Success! appeared first on Follow My Vote.