In 2008, the Barack Obama campaign launched a mobile app, the first ever by a presidential candidate in the general election. The app's success and the Obama campaign's online savvy were credited as major reasons for Obama's victory, according to an article from The New York Times. Since then, both parties have looked to innovate and expand their online presence to reach voters.
The members of the Ohio University College Republicans and College Democrats are not at quite the same level — their membership counts are in the dozens, not the millions — but they've also turned to technology to strengthen their campaign efforts.
In the first few meetings of the year, OUCR President David Parkhill and other members of the club’s executive board have been pushing a new app for club members. The app includes the club’s constitution, links to the OUCR’s Facebook and Twitter pages, a suggestion box and the meeting minutes.
“It’s important that we’re in touch with our members,” Parkhill said. “The app makes it easier to do that.”
But the app's main functions are to update the group's calendar and allow members to sign up for events, Ryan Evans, the club's vice president and creator of the app, said.
“One of my main roles is to keep people in the loop,” Evans, a junior studying political science, said. “We had a Google calendar but not everyone could reach it. So we started with an app that had the calendar, and then we kept adding features.”
He said the idea came to him when he became the vice president last spring. Evans did not have much of a background in app design, so he used the assistance of a website to build the app. The app was finished back in April but Evans waited until the start of the school year to launch and put it in use.
“It’s a better way to stay connected,” Evans said. “We’re trying to incentivize people to use it as much as possible.”
Parkhill said that the app will use a system through which members can earn points, with the highest point earners receiving a prize.
“You get a point for each meeting you attend, for 150 phone calls, for an hour knocking on doors,” Parkhill said.
The members with the most points at the end of the semester will receive a free trip to the Conservative Political Action Conference, which will be held in February near Washington, D.C.
Parkhill also uses the app to record meeting attendance, similar to the way some professors use TopHat, an education app that can record class attendance electronically.
The College Democrats do not have an app, choosing to rely on the tools already available to them. The Democrats have started using the email service MailChimp to reach out to members for volunteer opportunities. The club’s communications director Andy Price said that social media is still the most important tool for the club’s executive board.
“Getting our message out, interacting with people on social media, I think that’s the best way to keep people involved,” said Price, a junior studying political science.
Price said that the club has no plans to make an app anytime soon.
