About Podium

Every municipal election, I find it surprisingly hard to figure out where candidates actually stand on the things I care about. Not everyone can make it out on a given night to an all-candidates meeting, and not everyone is on social media, so I wanted a place that's open to anyone, any time: where a resident can ask a candidate a direct question, and the candidate can answer it properly, in their own words, on their own schedule — with the whole exchange staying public and citable, before the vote and after.

Why I built this

I'm not a candidate, I'm not working for one, and I'm not affiliated with the Town or any political party. This is an independent, volunteer project — I'm just a resident who thinks our local election deserves better tools than a Facebook comment section. You might recognize my name from around town; I've spent a fair bit of time volunteering here over the years, including leading a local service club and mentoring a competitive robotics team for high schoolers. None of that is political, and none of it is affiliated with Podium — I mention it only so you know this comes from someone who's actually invested in this community, not an outside operator.

How it stays fair

• Every candidate in a race gets the same kind of profile and the same tools to answer.
• I don't write or endorse anyone's answers — candidates answer in their own words, or not at all.
• If an edit is made it is generally only to correct formatting issues or increase legibility. Any questions that were edited, either by me or the candidate themselves, are marked as such and the full edit history, and who made the edits, is available for transparency.
• Questions go through light moderation before they're posted, purely to filter out spam and abuse, not to filter out hard questions.
• Nothing on this site is paid placement — there's no way to buy better visibility.

If you're a candidate, a resident, or a reporter and you want to know more about how this works — or you've spotted a bug in the software, or something that seems unfair — I'd genuinely like to hear from you. Reach me at [email protected].