What Are Pledged Votes?
You earn Pledged Votes every time you pledge to vote in an election, whether it is for President, State Senate, or Dog Catcher. You can also earn points every time you convince a friend or co-worker to do the same. The more elections you and your friends commit to voting in, the more Pledged Votes you will collect.
What is the Impact Score?
Your Impact Score is the total number of Pledged Votes you earn, weighted by an algorithm based on the competitive nature of the race, as well as the relative impact a vote carries in that particular race.
How is the Impact Score Calculated?
For the purposes of our Impact SCORE we grouped races into four groups (Very High Impact, High Impact, Moderate Impact, Low Impact). These four groups are informed by a voter's voter power (where available) and the competitiveness (as measured by recent polls) of that race.
Princeton Professor Sam Wang's work on voter power with the Princeton Election Consortium, found at this website, plays a large role in our Impact SCORE. Voter power is based off a concept known as "jerseyvotes" developed in 2008. Professor Wang succinctly sums up the concept in this statement: "The power of a single vote can be quantified by asking: In a neck-and-neck race, how much does one vote affect your candidate’s win probability?"
Here is Professor Wang's full explanation of quantifying voter power.
We are very grateful for the work on Professor Wang on voter power, and we encourage our users to check out his team's groundbreaking work on gerrymandering as well at this site
