What specific experience motivated you to start Crayon Politics?
I started competing in congressional debates in middle school. While competing, one thing I often noticed from researching current events was that social welfare cases that were highly desired by the public were often still shot down in Congress. So, in a way, I have always been aware of a disconnect between politicians’ policy and what constituents want.
Where did the name come from?
The name Crayon Politics stemmed from our site’s goal of portraying political information in a simple, digestible way. When thinking about simplicity, my mind went to elementary school. From there, I started thinking about the different elements of elementary school until I started thinking about crayons. Crayons worked perfectly because they symbolized simplicity while also being multicolored. Politics isn’t just red and blue.
Why did you decide to initially focus on the Israel-Hamas war, climate change, and reproductive rights?
In politics, there are millions of issues. Since the goal of the site is to make politics more digestible, we aimed to unpack three key issues that voters care about. We went about this by interviewing over 200 Penn students on what key issues they thought mattered the most this election and showcased the results on our site.
We plan to expand the scope by continuously changing the topics showcased on the site based on data from our users on what they believe are the biggest issues in our current political climate. We also have a newsletter that will unpack current events and topics across all topics.
How do you avoid oversimplifying complex topics and misinformation?
The goal of our site isn’t to be the final destination for acquiring political information but rather the first step in the right direction. To engage most people in taking that first step, our information has to be simple and digestible. Our goal is to teach people to become data- and fact-driven voters rather than defaulting to their voting biases (for example, race, gender, political affiliation). To assist voters to be more research-driven, we link out debates and governmental resources towards the bottom of our website that users can explore.
We limit bias and misinformation by focusing on candidates’ past actions and current stances through direct quotes. Data that is shown on our site is confirmed information of what a candidate has either said and/or voted on for a particular issue.
How has your time at Penn contributed to your ability to create a product like this?
My time at Penn has opened my eyes to the power I have as an individual. I’ve taken a couple of entrepreneurship courses like Social Entrepreneurship that emphasizes creating with social benefit. That culture and drive to innovate while assisting people is what I brought to this. By going to Penn and taking entrepreneurship courses, exploring Venture Lab, and meeting entrepreneurially minded people, I’ve learned that startups/businesses have the power to make a difference in critical issues.
What are your long-term goals for Crayon Politics?
Our long-term goal is to push people to become more informed voters. By having more informed voters that leads to more informed voting decisions which ultimately puts better people in positions of power, creating better policy. We think young people especially have the power to lead this change, so we are focusing on Gen Z voters.
As we expand, we want to include more Penn writers and students interested in politics. We are considering expanding it as a club where students can volunteer. We’re hoping to onboard writers from other schools by recruiting them from their school newspapers.
—Alex Zhou, W’25, C’25
Posted: October 31, 2024
