Palumba’s Pigeon Wants You to Vote in NYC’s Mayoral Election: Can New Tech Increase Voter Engagement?

(Photo/Palumba)

By Emma Cregan

A small stuffed pigeon has been making itself known around Columbia’s campus, fluttering around orientation week and SIPAfest. The pigeon is the mascot of Palumba, an app designed to help voters make more informed choices in upcoming elections. 

The name Palumba is derived from the scientific name for the common pigeon, columba palumbus. The team chose the bird as the app’s mascot because “it’s a symbol of NYC and something everyone can see in their daily life: just as democracy should be,” explained Palumba founder Pol Villaverde,.

The platform is designed to be simple. When users open the app Palumba, they swipe “yes” or “no” to different policy issues, similar to swiping on Tinder. Each issue includes a brief description of the topic and links to additional sources for information, giving the user a superficial understanding of issues, from free buses for New Yorkers to taxing waiters’ tips. Then, Palumba matches users with political candidates aligned with their policy goals. The app also generates a mood board, similar to Spotify Wrapped, that visualizes the overlap of users’ most important policy concerns and candidates’ platforms. After matching with a candidate, users are directed to the “Who’s on the Ballot” website where they can find voting dates and polling locations.

The app frequently uses memes and jokes to make learning about political issues more casual and accessible– users can even receive a “rose” from political candidates. Light-hearted approaches like this could make political discourse less daunting to new voters.

Gamifying political research has become the modus operandi of voter engagement apps like Palumba. Making politics fun and exciting might increase voter enthusiasm and lead to better turnout at the polls. But boiling down complex topics to neatly fit into a smartphone game could leave users with only a cursory understanding of issues. Palumba is placing a great deal of faith in their users’ innate curiosity guiding them to become informed voters.

Palumba is not the first of its kind—voter engagement apps are far from new. In 2020, Columbia Business School alumnus Jordan Giallanzo created The Movement, an app that aimed to increase young voter turnout after the murder of George Floyd. Vienna Mott created Poliquicks as an educational tool to teach young people about civics and politics. Both Giallanzo and Mott aimed to increase accessibility of accurate information and raise awareness about the democratic process. Giallanzo expressly hoped that more young, engaged voters would support improvement to the American legal system, which disproportionately incarcerates people of color. Like Palumba, The Movement and Poliquicks provide information on voter registration and brief synopses about candidates and issues, presented in a game-like manner.

Calling himself a “freak” for tech and politics, Villaverde began working on Palumba during the European Parliament’s 2024 election cycle. After reaching almost 200,000 Palumba users in Europe, Villaverde wanted to see if the app could succeed in elections outside the region. Now, Villaverde hopes Palumba will be a useful tool for voters in New York City’s upcoming mayoral elections, especially in mobilizing young voters. 

Palumba, like the other voter engagement apps, prioritizes simple, straightforward language. Mott explained that Poliquick’s use of simple language ensures “that you read something and you understand it,” and “you’re not trying to go back and google what each of those words mean.” Palumba similarly presents information in a comprehensive, easily digestible way. Unlike Poliquicks, however, the creators of Palumba want their users to continue exploring a topic and think critically about political issues. Nevertheless, the current Palumba interface does not incentivize users to actually click the links to additional resources.

The Palumba team designed the app to mitigate concerns over misinformation, which has recently spread on social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok. Villaverde asserts that all Palumba’s content relies on reliable, evidence-based information that follows international fact-checking standards. The app uses sources that include The New York Times, ABC News, and the Economic Policy Institute.

Mott and Giallanzo both point to a dearth in civics education as one of the root causes of voter apathy. Perhaps the great deal of effort and money being put towards voter engagement apps could instead be channeled into creating a robust civics curriculum in American schools. The apps’ game-like approach to learning about politics would be more appropriate in a classroom setting, where a teacher can provide additional context to topics.

Now with a beta version currently available in the app store, New York City voters can put Palumba to the test.