Jefferson Has My Vote

It's all about the Hamiltons baby

This has been an amazingly productive week. Less sleep, more dark chocolate, you know the drill. But I've also been propelled by all the Hamilton stuck in my head. Maybe you've heard of it? I hadn't when I was introduced to Kurt Crowley, Hamilton’s associate music director, conductor, and keyboardist on the set of our mutual friend's indie film last summer. "Never heard of it," I proclaimed. Glad to hear it's finally just starting to catch on now.

After first tackling registration and donation, then cause nominations, and most recently the discussion forum, I've finally now moved on to perhaps the site's most important component: voting! With "The Election of 1800" ringing in my ears, I embed democracy inside Charitocracy. No matter how much you donate, each donor gets one vote. You can, however, spread your 1 vote across up to 5 causes if you like, each getting a fraction which you can adjust. And then in addition to voting, you can also "like" as many causes as you want, giving them greater visibility to other donors. (Our founding fathers would have added a Like button, too, but they were still using paper ballots back then. How archaic!)

I hope to complete this last major component within a few weeks so I can open up the site to beta testers in time for a mock election at the end of June. If that goes well then I'll push to go live for real paying donors as early as July!

Rise up, time to take a shot: of espresso