With the Iowa Caucases quickly approaching, candidate for the Democratic party nomination Bernie Sanders has released a new app built by volunteers to track his campaign.
A play on the words of his campaign slogan, ‘Field the Bern,’ is an official app that tracks both the activity of Sanders’ tireless canvassers and his supporters, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Created by Daniela Perdomo, the woman behind FeeltheBern.org — a site devoted to Sanders’ ideology on a range of issues — the app was built by eight volunteer developers over the course of 800 hours.
The result is an app that tracks the activity of canvassers and awards them points for inputting supporter data, information that is then used as part of Sanders’ campaign. Volunteers can input information including a would-be supporter’s name, address, email, phone number, and their stance on Sanders. If asked any questions about the candidate, they can consult the app (which contains much of the information found on Perdormo’s site) to discuss Sanders’ views on immigration, the economy, and healthcare. App users earn points for gathering information and can compete with friends.
“If you knock on a door in Iowa and you find out that Jane Doe is a strong Bernie supporter, that data will be provided to the Bernie Sanders campaign,” Perdomo told the Wall Street Journal.
‘Field the Bern’ follows in the footsteps of similar points-based apps from other candidates on the Republican side, including Ben Carson and Sen. Ted Cruz. The mixture of competitive participation and data gathering works for both the politicians and the volunteers. Whether or not it will result in more official apps and maybe even games from candidates remains to be seen. We’d love to see a poker app from Donald Trump (likely built upon the premise that only Trump can win), a brain training app from retired neurosurgeon Carson, and perhaps a GIF keyboard from Hillary Clinton.
‘Field the Bern’ is available now on the iOS App Store and will be released for Android in the coming weeks.
