Stake your political will.
See what your neighbors actually care about.
A nonpartisan, Swiss-protected platform where verified humans privately rank their priorities, express which direction they lean, and discover what their communities really care about — free from bots, billionaires, and surveillance.
We don’t know what we think.
The tools we use to understand public opinion are broken. And most people already sense it.
of Americans believe elected officials don’t care what they think — up 30 points since 2000. (Pew, 2024)
of respondents in a major research survey were AI bots. The researchers discovered legitimate human responses were nearly nonexistent. (Nature, 2026)
of Americans self-censor their political views — afraid that speaking honestly will damage their careers or relationships. (Cato, 2020)
“Everyone’s thought is forensic. Everyone is simply putting forward a ‘case’ with deliberate suppression of his opponent’s point of view, and what is more, with complete insensibility to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends.”— George Orwell, diary entry, 1942 · expanded in “Notes on Nationalism” (1945)
Orwell identified the mechanism eighty years ago: when shared reality dissolves, thinking becomes purely adversarial — advocacy masquerading as analysis. Modern research confirms the consequence: political parties have grown more polarized since World War II, while the average voter remains just as moderate on key issues as they always have been.
The gap isn’t between left and right. It’s between what people actually think and what gets measured. Moderates hide their views through self-censoring and preference falsification — making the public square appear more extreme than it actually is. The moderate majority doesn’t disappear. It goes silent.
This is a measurement crisis. Special interests and political influencers thrive on public ambiguity — they fill the space where authentic political will should be. Staked Voice is designed to give that silent majority a private, verifiable way back into the conversation.
Measured, protected, yours.
Three structural commitments make Staked Voice different from anything that exists:
Count and forget — structurally
Most platforms store your data and promise not to look. We destroy individual records the moment they’re counted. When you express a directional lean, it increments a community counter and is immediately discarded. There is no record to subpoena, leak, or sell. This is a legal protection, not a feature.
Swiss law protects the infrastructure
All political data processing happens in Switzerland, where Article 271 of the Swiss Criminal Code makes complying with foreign surveillance demands a criminal offense — up to three years imprisonment. This isn’t a corporate privacy policy. It’s federal statute.
You own your data — contractually
Our Terms of Service invert the standard relationship: you are the licensor, we are the licensee. Your data license expires in 7 days unless you choose to renew it. You can revoke it anytime. Built to align with IEEE 7012-2025 (MyTerms), the global standard for machine-readable personal privacy terms.
Five minutes. Every few weeks. Private by design.
Verify you’re human
Swiss-hosted verification confirms you have a real phone number. We store only an irreversible cryptographic hash — the original number is immediately discarded. No Google or Apple login. One human, one voice.
Rank what matters to you
Drag and drop your top 12 priorities from a nonpartisan issue library built on the Comparative Agendas Project — the same academic taxonomy used by political scientists in 30+ countries. We never store what you individually ranked.
Express which direction you lean
Your answer is counted and immediately forgotten. No record ever connects you to your direction. Directional options draw from the Manifesto Project methodology used across 50+ countries.
See what your community actually thinks
Results appear only after enough verified humans contribute in your area to prevent any individual voice from being identified. Equal weight — a billionaire’s voice counts the same as a teacher’s.
Stay in control
Your voice counts for a limited window, then fades unless you renew. Political will should be living and revisable, not locked in at first expression. One tap to renew. Export or delete anytime. You own your political will — always.
Three paths in. Find yours.
Your voice, privately expressed and community-mapped. Rank what matters. See what your neighbors actually care about — free from bots, billionaires, and surveillance. Nonpartisan. Free. Two minutes every few weeks.
Learn more →Finally know what your members actually believe. Any-party local organizers get verified constituent priorities and coordination infrastructure protected by Swiss criminal law — something US-hosted platforms cannot replicate.
Explore Caucus Catalyst →Ethical political data governed by the people who generate it. Privacy-preserving aggregate data from a Swiss Cooperative vision — not surveillance-extracted polling.
Read the governance model →Honest about what exists — and what doesn’t yet.
Staked Voice is pre-product. We have a working proof of concept, an assembling team with deep experience in digital identity and privacy-preserving technology, and a thesis validated by converging crises in democratic measurement, digital surveillance, and civic infrastructure.
What exists today
This website, live on Swiss infrastructure. A working POC architecture. An Inverted Terms of Service built to align with IEEE 7012-2025 (MyTerms). A pre-product data statement governing this waitlist. Partnerships in development with the KERI distributed identity community.
Founder is signatory #73 of the MyData Declaration — the constitutional charter of the global movement for human-centric personal data.
What doesn’t exist yet
The Swiss corporate entity, the cooperative, or the funded engineering team. We’re raising a pre-seed round to build the MVP, concentrate on the Minneapolis pilot, and form the Swiss entity structure.
We’re telling you this because the communities we serve deserve honesty, not vague promises about structures that haven’t been built yet. If you want to follow this from the beginning — or help shape it — join below.
Assembling the team
Russ Haywood
Initial FounderNew market category innovator and certified product manager with 13+ years in digital identity and privacy-preserving technology. Founding Steward of the Sovrin Network. Contributor to the Trust Over IP Foundation and Project Liberty data sovereignty initiatives. Signatory #73 of the MyData Declaration. Background in Philosophy (community & epistemology) and Political Theory. Based in Minneapolis, MN.
Courtney Kovacevich
CMOMarketing and communications strategist leading Staked Voice’s brand, GTM, positioning, and community growth. Responsible for translating complex privacy-preserving infrastructure into narratives that resonate with civic participants, researchers, and institutional partners alike.
Nicole Brennan
Sr. Product DesignerProduct designer with experience at the intersection of civic technology and user-centered design. Lead member of Harvard’s Applied Social Media Lab research initiatives; design work on USA.gov and vote.gov federal platforms to deliver accessible, multilingual experiences that increased civic engagement by 96% and reached 105M+ users annually.
Emerson Bantegui
Visual Design LeadVisual designer responsible for Staked Voice’s identity system, brand language, and interface aesthetics. Focused on creating a visual vocabulary that communicates trust and nonpartisan credibility.
Kent Bull
Technical AdvisorDistributed identity expert at GLEIF (Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation). KERI protocol developer and contributor to the WebOfTrust ecosystem. Kent’s prior work on caucus vote verification was a seed that grew into what became Staked Voice.
Advisors
Advisory board forming. Disciplines sought: constitutional law, Swiss corporate governance, political science methodology, cryptographic identity systems, cooperative economics. If you have relevant expertise, reach out.
Common questions
Can you see my individual rankings?
No. Your rankings combine with others before any community result displays. We cannot see what you specifically ranked — and neither can anyone else.
What about the direction I lean — is that private too?
Yes. Your answer is added to a community counter and immediately discarded — “count and forget.” The server never stores which direction you chose.
Why do rankings fade?
Your civic voice should reflect what you care about now. We remind you before your voice fades, and you can renew in one tap. Political will should be living and revisable.
Who runs this?
Staked Voice is operated by Quiet and Helpful, LLC (Minneapolis, MN). All data processing and hosting happens in Switzerland. Our US operations have no technical access to Swiss-hosted political data.
How is this different from a poll?
Polls ask questions. Staked Voice measures political will — what communities collectively care about and which direction they lean — using academic frameworks developed across 50+ countries. Every result requires verified humans. No individual is ever exposed.
What’s the long-term vision?
We’re building toward a Swiss Data Cooperative where users become member-owners. When your aggregated political will creates value for researchers and institutions, you share in it. Read more →
Be part of this from the beginning.
We’re building in public and we want the right people in the room early. Join the waitlist to get updates, early access to the MVP, and the chance to shape what gets built.
Your email is stored on Swiss infrastructure, never shared, never sold. No tracking pixels. No open-rate analytics. You can remove yourself anytime. Full data statement →
Staked Voice is operated by Quiet and Helpful, LLC (Minneapolis, MN). All waitlist data is processed and stored on Swiss-hosted infrastructure, governed by Swiss data protection law. We collect only what you provide: email address, optional name, and optional interest category. No tracking pixels. No open-rate analytics. No data shared with third parties. You may request deletion at any time. Read our full data statement →