Over the past several decades, there has been a democracy recession. Across numerous democracy indexes, democratic institutions have weakened with little reprieve. Rise in the number of conflicts as a result of electoral outcome disputes, coup attempts in burgeoning democracies, and contestation of elections and voter eligibility are clear evidence of this trend.
Even in well-established democracies, voters have expressed post-election regrets about who they elected into the most important office of their state. An investigation into why they voted for that candidate reveals that they have little understanding about their candidate’s policies. Through what was supposed to inform voters, social media has prioritised a candidate’s ability to entertain. It has become less about policy and more about augmented personalities energised through viral contents on social media. We believe that a vote is more valuable than that.
Increased cost of living, inflation, and wage stagnation has resulted in time poor voters. Researching the latest policy shifts, new parties and emerging coalitions, and keeping up to date with news contexts become an impossible task when you have families, friends, and work to balance. This decay in civic education and political awareness results in apolitical voters that are either uninformed or misinformed due to imperfect information. We believe that voters deserve better than that.
In many liberal democracies, the role that political donations and dark money plays has eroded the value of a vote. Once election campaigns begin, social media platforms and digital advertisers are fed unimaginable amounts of money to endlessly bombard voters with political ads and debate clips. Even candidates that share this vision against dark money admit that this is how the game is played. The reality is, the more funds you raise and the more money you spend, the higher chances of winning. Our solution against dark money in politics is this: If voters stick with the values and policies of a candidate, political spending would become less effective and the demand for dark money would simply not exist once voters do not respond to political ad campaigns. We want to help strengthen that idea of informed democracy and create a world with less dark money.
We believe that elections are too important of a democratic exercise to be undermined, deprioritised, or bought.
Our sole mission is to inform voters in the most efficient and effective way.
Our philosophy of political neutrality is embedded in our culture. We follow the exact same principles of any apolitical electoral commissions.
We are a team of multidisciplinary academics, graduates, and students from leading universities in Australia. You can be assured that we approach electoral integrity with great academic rigor and stewardship. Our team has no motive or incentive to skew or create bias in Pinky. Our goal with Pinky is simple: inform voters.