Jason Stomps ‘10 came downstairs on the morning of the November 2010 elections to his dad reading an article in the newspaper comparing the views of each local candidate.
“I thought to myself, ‘This is no way to prepare to vote for those that will be representing you at the political level,’” Stomps said. “Not only were the candidates missing a lot of important information, but there tends to be a lot of bias in the media, especially when it’s just the candidates themselves providing the answers.”
That very same day, Stomps registered the website CompareMyCandidates.com. The site currently provides information about the upcoming presidential election for voters in Michigan. The web application that will compare voters’ local candidates side-by-side is on track to launch in June.
“The ultimate goal for CompareMyCandidates.com is to become the primary, non-partisan, unbiased source of information for voters across the country,” Stomps said. “We’ll be rolling out our platform to other states across the nation in the coming years.”
Stomps graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2010 with the first graphic design minor given by the college, and a major in marketing management.
“Upon graduation from Hillsdale I played the typical job-hunting game that many of us do –– and many of you will –– but after a handful of interviews, I realized that there just wasn’t anything available that I truly wanted to do at the time,” Stomps said.
Stomps already had his business Coldfire Promotions up and running — a business he started while still in school in 2009.
“I knew that continuing with that would provide me with a near-ideal situation,” he said.
Coldfire Promotions is an agency that works with businesses throughout Michigan and parts of the Midwest to help them with their marketing efforts. While this is Stomps’ primary job, he is also an assistant track and field coach at Notre Dame Preparatory School in Pontiac, Mich., and the president of his homeowner’s association.
“To be quite frank, I’m married to my work,” he said. “It’s been an insane amount of work, putting in countless 70-plus hour work-weeks between my two businesses and my other commitments, but I love every minute of it.”
Stomps brought on Kyle Carson ‘11, one of his Delta Sigma Phi fraternity brothers at Hillsdale, to help with CompareMyCandidates.com. Carson, a 2011 graduate, majored in biology at Hillsdale.
“It seems to be on the other end of the spectrum from politics, but I always enjoyed it,” Carson said. “I couldn’t get over how I felt this idea could help streamline the research process, as well as ease the data load for voters.”
While Stomps could not bring Carson on right away, he saw that Carson’s enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit would benefit the site.
Stomps and Carson are also working with three students in the marketing research course at Hillsdale this semester. The students are assigned a research project for the semester and will learn how to market the site and increase its user base.
Seniors Nikki Yancho, Will Wegert, and Jeff Scarpelli will design a survey that will give them information about the site’s customers, competitors, and perceptions of the market. From that, they will make recommendations to Stomps.
“After completing this class, I will be able to tell prospective employers about a useful skill set I know theoretically, but have also conducted for a real-world client,” Yancho said.
Stomps and Carson have been largely gathering this type of feedback as well as research to officially launch the application. Carson said along with the staggering amount of research they have been doing, funding has also been a challenge.
“Not initially having a huge financial backer proved to be the largest challenge to starting the site,” he said.
And the development of the application itself has proved to be an obstacle.
“While I’ve largely taught myself how to design, develop, and maintain a website, I have very little programming knowledge,” Stomps said. “We finally had a breakthrough in the spring of 2011, and our application was accepted by a team of students from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana to develop the website application.”
The group of students, who turned out to be a group of Delt Sigs, has been working with the site since the beginning of the school year.
“The hope for the future is to have a nationwide site broken down into states and possibly even further,” Carson said. “But as of right now, it’s baby steps.”
sleitner@hillsdale.edu
