As some of you might know, I have gotten more involved in trying to improve our governance system: specifically increasing voting turnouts.

Through discussion of the issue of low turnout rates with community members we found that one of the main reasons why people are not voting is that they simply don't know about referenda going on. I built (yes, you guessed it) a telegram bot that can be added to any group and sends out an alert whenever a new referendum is up for vote.

The alert bot can also be used through private chats of course. The attentive ones among us will have noticed that a link to the Bot was also included in the description of the [NFTs](https://singular.rmrk.app/collections/3208723ec6f65df810-GPR1?page=1&distinct=true) automatically sent out to voters of the two ending referenda today. Along with motivating new voters to participate in governance, it is also very important to retain todays voters for tomorrow. This bot is thus an important accessory to my other projects aiming to drive up voting participance ([NFT Rewarder](https://app.subsocial.network/6214/incentivising-referendum-votes-31299)) as well.

As usual [code](https://github.com/gabrieljaegerde/referendumAlert_telegram) is open source and address can be verified in the repo.

This is the alert (link to the relevant PA post, and a convenient direct link to vote on polkadotjs):
![](https://i.ibb.co/44xkQkj/Screenshot-2022-02-22-at-19-52-09.png)

Add the bot to your groups: @referendumAlertKusamaBot 

then send a message with the following text in that group: /newReferendumBroadcastOn

To avoid spam and abuse, only admins of the group can run /newReferendumBroadcastOn and /newReferendumBroadcastOff


0x466f722050617261636861696e205265706f7274202850726f6772616d61203129202f2f204d6f6f6e7269766572206e6f20736567756e646f20536c6f742c2053686964656e2065204b68616c6120646973707574616e646f20636f7261c3a7c3b56573212068747470733a2f2f796f7574752e62652f327446484449675f586b63

- **Problem Statement:** Low voter turnout in governance systems due to lack of awareness about ongoing referenda.
- **Significance:** Increasing voting participation and retention of voters for future referenda.
- **Proposed Solution:** Development of a telegram bot that sends alerts about new referenda to increase awareness.
- **Expected Outcomes:** Improved voting participation, increased awareness about ongoing referenda, and enhanced governance system engagement.

Bot to help drive up voting participance