Hello! As many of you dedicated Hive members know, the Buzz has been working on expanding exclusive offerings to paying Hive members while keeping daily reporting (and most everything else) free to all.

The Buzz is excited to announce that the the next step in this process will be the opportunity to engage in a pilot partnership intended to increase both civic engagement and information sharing between elected officials and the residents they represent.

This fall, Burlington Buzz will be collaborating with VoteLight, a new civic platform, to introduce an innovative new feature for our subscribers called “Burlington TownVote.”

As you know, the Buzz’s mission is to raise awareness about local government and encourage engagement and connection among residents and between citizens and their representatives. The Buzz covers issues impacting all of Burlington, and the public is always invited to open meetings, but often the vocal minority speaks most loudly and it’s difficult to discern public opinion on an issue. Burlington TownVote is intended to provide an online voting platform for you to share your choices about prevalent issues in town. This information will be accessible by fellow residents and our local government officials, and the more people participate, the more well-rounded and reliable information we will all have about the general sentiments around important issues.

VoteLight’s mission is to make civic and political engagement easier and more accessible for citizens in our country; our hope is that your participation and feedback will help create an easier, better way for all citizens to make their voice heard, both in Burlington and beyond.

Information from VoteLight

VoteLight is building a non-partisan civic platform to make it easier for all citizens to learn about issues important to them and share their choices with elected officials and others. The way it works is that people do a simple signup, based on where they live, and they are matched to their city, county, state, and the United States. VoteLight users can find or create Issues based on where they live, and every Issue includes a question to vote on. The vote totals provide a transparent snapshot for elected officials and the public while maintaining voter privacy.

VoteLight is excited to partner with Burlington Buzz to pilot its platform, since local news is an important and valuable resource for helping communities find out about issues. Not many people are aware that, since 2005, over 25% of daily newspapers have 'disappeared' and 20% of Americans have no local news or at high risk of losing their local news organization(s).

Burlington Buzz, by partnering with VoteLight, is at the forefront of news innovation by promoting 'actionable' news through online voting. Instead of  traditional one-way publishing, digitally native organizations like Burlington Buzz can experiment with new technology to add more useful engagement to its online news content.

Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

QUESTION: Can you tell me more about VoteLight?

ANSWER: VoteLight is creating a civic platform to connect citizens and government with each other at all levels—city, county, state, and our nation. If you think about a platform like Facebook, it connects you with friends and family based on posts. On VoteLight, users create Issues, similar to posts, which are connected to the governments and voters they impact, based on geography.

For example, if you are a citizen/voter on VoteLight, you will see Issues going on in your town, county, state, and, of course, the United States. It is simple to vote your choice, with an optional opinion, as a basic step to make your voice heard.

What makes VoteLight even more interesting is that people who voted can get updates on Issues from the Issue creator so you can learn how things are changing over time. Voters can also follow Groups and get notifications about new Issues created by a Group.

Elected officials have their own account with a dashboard, and local governments can also create their own account. If a local government or elected official creates an Issue, all of the citizens in their town or political district will see the Issue. There is no 'algorithm' deciding what and when a citizen/voter can see a particular Issue.

QUESTION: How does 'signing up' work, and why should I do it?

ANSWER: Under the 'New User Signup' on https://www.votelight.com, you choose the VOTER option to personally sign up as a voter. It is simple to use your email to sign up, or a Facebook or Google Gmail account.

Anyone can see Issues without signing up—there is a SEARCH option to find Issues—but in order to vote on an Issue, the site needs to connect you to your political districts based on where you live. Once signed up, you will see all Issues relevant to you. For example, Burlington citizens won't see Woburn or Bedford Issues, but people in all three cities will see Massachusetts' state Issues.

Anther benefit of signing up is that you will be automatically matched to future Issues after the one-time signup.

QUESTION: I get tired of giving my information to dozens of websites. What do you do with my information? How do you handle privacy?

ANSWER: VoteLight minimizes personal information we gather from you, and we never share any emails or other information with other people or organizations. In fact, when you sign up, we temporarily may need your address/zip code  to match you to a state legislator or your US Representative, but we do not save your address/zip code once we match you to your political districts.

Another thing we do for a "Privacy First" approach is that your actual name is not used. For opinions, which can be public if you choose, only a voter number is shown. Academic research shows that a majority of people demand privacy when it comes to voting. Also, some people may prefer to keep their choices private, which you can't do in a public town meeting, because it might hurt their relationships with public officials, neighbors, or friends. Our current, full privacy policy is at this link: https://votelight.com/privacy

QUESTION: A lot of social media has personal attacks, 'trolling', or other harmful messages. What does VoteLight do to minimize this?

ANSWER: Although no platform can eliminate these problems, VoteLight has its own unique approach. First, because we want to encourage open, respectful dialogue without censorship, we politely ask that people be respectful in their opinions and Issues, no matter what sides(s) they may take. Second, we have two main ways to minimize potential harmful behavior.

The design of VoteLight is that every citizen can signup and vote for free, and every voter can leave a public or private opinion. Private opinions are only seen by the Issue Creator. For Public opinions, any user can "report" an opinion which is then checked by VoteLight for conforming to the community standards in our Terms of Use - Code of Conduct. If an opinion is judged as a violation, we will replace the opinion text and you can redo your opinion in a more socially appropriate way.

The other way that we minimize harmful conduct is that VoteLight does not have replies and continuing conversations, which other social media web sites provide and often results in a few people ruining a conversation for a lot of people.

QUESTION: Are you affiliated with my local government?

ANSWER: No, our company is non-partisan and committed to partnering with all elected officials and engaging governments at all levels. We provide a platform on which citizens, elected officials, and governments can engage with one another based on issues connected to the people and places impacted.

Questions? Comments? Anything at All?

This is a pilot program that we are inviting Hive members to take part in, and if it goes well we will expand the offering to all Buzz readers. Of course, anyone technically could sign up, but the Buzz and VoteLight will be actively seeking and implementing feedback from you as ultra-engaged Hive members.

To that end, please direct your questions, comments, or concerns about this pilot to the comment section or to Nicci at hello@burlington.buzz. If you have issues with the VoteLight site itself (bugs to report, etc.), you can email them at help@votelight.com.

Here is the first issue I’ve created as a media outlet.

I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Nicci