Voices for Democracy
Twilio is committed to powering millions of connections between people and their representatives through our Voices for Democracy initiative. We’re over 200 million and counting.
Twilio is committed to powering millions of connections between people and their representatives through our Voices for Democracy initiative. We’re over 200 million and counting.
—Jeff Lawson, Twilio CEO
Democracy isn’t something that happens every four years. We build a healthy democracy when elected officials and the people they represent communicate with each other. When people share their perspectives, decision-makers can more effectively create laws that represent their constituents’ views. In fact, it is widely reported that a phone call has more influence on our lawmakers than any other channel.
But roadblocks prevent people from sharing their views with lawmakers. People either don’t know whom to call, get a busy signal, or never learn what happens after the call is completed. We believe there’s a better way.
Interested in volunteering or learning more?
Get In TouchThe Voices for Democracy initiative unites organizations and software developers to advance the discourse between people and elected officials. Through the power of the Twilio platform, Voices for Democracy projects put 21st-century communications technology in the hands of organizations and representatives to unlock communications on the issues that matter most.
Innovative technology partners like Mobile Commons, Phone2Action, and Call Power are already using our platform to build a more representative democracy. With your help, we can do more. To date, we have powered over 200 million connections between people and their representatives.
Read about some of our initial projects below. Interested in volunteering as a designer or developer? Already working on something? We’d love to hear from you.
Here are just a few Voices for Democracy projects we envision and are helping get off the ground.
Sample project 1: Help people see the impact of their calls
Build a visualization showing which representatives are receiving calls and when, including hours that call volume is spiking. The visualization will track which calls are tied to specific campaigns or issues, demonstrating that individual calls can make a difference when part of a larger movement.
Sample project 2: Help people raise their voices and motivate officials to act
Build apps that make it easy for people to reach their elected officials. People simply call the app’s number, and our interactive voice response technology will route the call to the appropriate representative. Even if the representative’s number is busy, the phone call will be logged through Twilio, providing data on the number of calls generated around specific campaigns and causes. This will help organizations keep representatives accountable to the voices of their constituents.
Sample project 3: Help representatives hear their constituents’ voices
Work with representatives’ offices to build a call tool to absorb overflow when call volume is high. When the representative’s line is busy, the caller will be forwarded to a voicemail, which the app transcribes and provides to the representative’s office. This prevents people’s voices from being drowned out when there’s a big spike in interest on a specific issue.