On this episode of the Bourbon Friday Show, we had the opportunity to talk to Anatolij Gelimson, CTO of FastDemocracy.

FastDemocracy—Encouraging Political Engagement

For most people, it’s common to get to hear updates about bills and laws being passed in the news. And for many of us, that’s all we’ll hear about it.

But what if you want to get involved before that? What if you want to make your voice heard by legislators who are making those decisions?

Recent Arch Grants recipient FastDemocracy hopes to make that happen.

“FastDemocracy is a legislative analytics platform that you can use in order to not only know what’s going on in Congress, but in all 50 States,” says Gelimson. “You can also know when to take action—you’ll get an alert text to make sure that you know how the votes go down, what similar bills there are, and the different bill language that was there.”

This is not only useful for individuals who want to be politically active, but for lobbyists as well. In fact, Gelimson mentions that lobbyists are one of the most common groups that use FastDemocracy.

“We have customers from all over this legislative lobbying space… nonprofits of various kinds, classic lobbying firms, and trade associations.”

And though all the information on FastDemocracy’s platform is available on government websites, it’s often difficult to find, organize, and keep up with.

For example, in Missouri alone there are over 2,000 new bills introduced each year, all of them having developments from day to day.

Overall, FastDemocracy’s goal is this:

“We want to make sure that you have all the insights you need to be your most effective when making your voice heard.”

If you would like to sign up, you can go to https://fastdemocracy.com/ for more information.

Bourbon Innovation

As always, the Bourbon Friday team does their best to choose a fitting drink for the occasion.

The bottle this week was Devils River Bourbon. This year, the Devils River Distillery’s founder, Mike Cameron, played a big role in extending a tax break for craft distillers around the country. Also President of the Texas Distilled Spirits Association, Cameron and his organization helped get the bill passed in late December 2019, enabling craft distillers around America to save over 400% in excise taxes.