2nd Vote draws on both political contributions and decisions by the company. App grades companies' political bent

Curious whether your preferred car company leans conservative or liberal? Or which restaurant chain most closely aligns with your views on abortion? You guessed it — there’s an app for that.

A new app called 2nd Vote is designed to allow conservative voters to see how companies score on five issues: gun rights, abortion, the environment, same-sex marriage and federal subsidies — though it’s even attracted some liberal fans. Giving each company a score from 1 to 10, the app rates everything from the airline industry to Internet businesses as actively liberal, passively liberal, passively conservative and actively conservative.


“The premise is the first vote is at the ballot box and the second vote is where you spend your money every day. And conservatives will be shocked to see where companies spend money, on Planned Parenthood and all these other groups, so we decided to build the app,” 2nd Vote Executive Director Chris Walker said.

Walker said he sees the app, which launched at this month’s Values Voter Summit, as a chance for conservatives to level the playing field as companies tend to lean left.

( PHOTOS: Politicians and their iToys)

“Companies like Chick-fil-A are more on the conservative side, so we scored them as such. As a conservative, it can be disheartening, because the scores are so liberal-leaning, but it’s partly because we haven’t been organized. So we can try to shift the scales now,” Walker said.

2nd Vote draws on both political contributions and decisions by the company in making its ratings. For example, Starbucks gets a five on Second Amendment issues because “Starbucks requests that gun owners not bring guns into their stores or outdoor seating areas. Starbucks, however, has not banned them completely.” It gets a two on abortion because it “funds Planned Parenthood” and it gets a one on marriage because it “gives spousal benefits to same-sex partners of its employees,” it supported pro-gay legislation and “it also signed a filing to the Supreme Court asking it to overturn California’s ban of same-sex marriage.”

While the app is designed by and for conservatives — a “high” score is more conservative — liberal voters can and do use the app, Walker said.

“We’re a 501(c)(3) so we obviously have a conservative tilt, but we don’t engage in politics with that,” Walker said. “All we want to do is provide information, so liberals can use the app as well.”

Walker said they’ve already seen liberal users through the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” feature within the app that lets users vote whether they’ll support a company or not; plenty of “thumbs up” votes have gone to low-scoring companies.

2nd Vote is not the only app on the market that attempts to empower consumers with information about their shopping. An app called Buycott that launched last spring allows users to scan a bar code and see what parent company manufactures the product they’re considering. Users can also create or join campaigns to support or avoid a specific cause. Another company, GoodGuide, has a website that lets users search companies for political donations based on information from 2004 to 2008, though their mobile app focuses on finding safe, healthy and ethical products.

In the long run, 2nd Vote plans to add more issues, more companies and add gamification features to the app that would encourage users to rack up high scores by shopping at conservative companies. They also are in the process of reaching out to the companies scored in the app to allow them to respond to the rankings.

Walker said he hopes the app gives voters a way to engage between Election Days.

“A lot of conservatives far too often feel like they go vote on Election Day and don’t really have any other ways to participate in the political process, because they’re not the protesters, they don’t go out there and raise a fuss,” Walker said. “We feel that 2nd Vote gives them a way to engage with that process and the values they believe in on a day-to-day basis in a way they weren’t able to before.”