Alumnus Andrew Koehlinger ’12 graduated from Hillsdale less than three years ago, but was recently named project manager of VoteSpotter, an app used by 55,000 people to get updates on key votes occurring in Congress as well as state legislatures.
VoteSpotter, supported by the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, makes getting updates on state and federal legislation easy by providing curated updates on issues in which users indicate interest. Legislative analyses are then divided according to which of your legislators voted on them.
Users don’t even have to open the app to stay up to date—the app sends a notification every time an important vote occurs.
Legislative analyses are available for all congressional districts but currently include only state-level data in 13 states, though VoteSpotter plans to add more states in the future.
Since coming to the Mackinac Center in February, Koehlinger has increased the app’s reach by over 10 times, from 5,000 users across Android and iOS to over 55,000. The app has also grown from solely covering the Michigan legislature, to also covering twelve additional state legislatures as well as Congress.
Now as director of VoteSpotter, Koehlinger is trying to get other people, especially millennials, involved in public policy as well.
“The problem we were trying to solve when we designed this, especially with millennials, is that people aren’t engaged,” Koehlinger said. “That’s not how the political system is supposed to work and when it works best.”
Senior politics major Emily Runge loves how the VoteSpotter app takes information that is typically available on a website and makes it available through an app.
“I like how simple it is to use,” she said. “The summaries of bills are nice and concise.”
Runge said she plans to use the app in the future and hopes that in a future update to the app, each bill summary will include access to a more detailed amount of information like a bill’s full roll-call vote.
While at Hillsdale, Koehlinger majored in economics and was a member of the cross country team. His greatest influences were his economics courses on public choice and public policy as well as Career Services’ suggestion that he start in sales.
Gary Wolfram, chair of the economics department, remembers Koehlinger as a “great student” and said he could see Koehlinger’s interest in public policy while he was in college.
“I think Andrew will be the right person for this,” Wolfram said.
The app is beginning to gain a foothold within Michigan. Although the app isn’t partisan, Koehlinger recently promoted it in a booth during this year’s Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference.
“The who’s who of Republican leadership was on the island,” Koehlinger said. “So I was making the rounds.”
Koehlinger said the feedback he received from political activists and politicians on the island was positive.
The Mackinac Center has offered legislative analysis in Michigan through their website michiganvotes.org since 2001, and in 2014 they created the VoteSpotter app as another avenue to engage people with the Mackinac Center’s analysize.
