Student Entrepreneur Believes in the Freedom Found in a Mobile App

If you’ve ever watched ABC’s Shark Tank, you know how many entrepreneurs are out there. You know that people come up with some really great ideas – ideas that they wholeheartedly believe in, and that they really, really want the judging panel to believe in, too.

Project Impact Finalists

That entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well here at the College of Charleston – with 61 students applying to pitch their ideas for Project IMPACT’s “A Wild Pitch for Social Change” last month. Although only eight students could be finalists, the sheer number of applications is encouraging.

ARTICLE: Read more about the Project IMPACT competitors and their pitches for social change.

“It shows how quickly entrepreneurship is spreading among our students, especially now with our new minor,” says David Wyman, professor and director of the Center for Entrepreneurship. “Our students are a great asset and see no boundaries to the growing entrepreneurial activity in the Charleston region.”

Information: Learn more about Enactus and the Center for Entrepreneurship at the College of Charleston.

But one student in particular went beyond the Charleston region. One student came up with something we all can believe in.

WEBSITE: Learn more about Project IMPACT.

With the conviction that the greatest American freedom is the right to vote, Jake Durham won the Project IMPACT competition with his concept to reenergize the American spirit on election day: a voting app and registration process that would give all voters (regardless of physical challenges or inability to travel) an easier, less time-consuming way to register and vote.

“Low voter turnout has been a problem that the United States has faced for many years, with the lowest voter turnout in over 72 years in this past midterm election,” says the senior studying business, entrepreneurship and political science. “My proposed antidote to this plague is a mobile app in which registered voters can both vote and gain more information about candidates.”

Instead of using a username and password platform to log in, voters would scan in their voter identification cards along with their driver’s licenses. From there, users could research candidates and cast their ballots.

WEBSITE: Learn more about the School of Business at the College of Charleston.

Durham’s idea – which he presented in the Shark Tank–like event hosted by the School of Business, the Honors College and Enactus as part of the College’s celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week – stood out to the judges of the Project IMPACT competition as focused, innovative and socially transformative.

WEBSITE: Learn more about the Honors College at the College of Charleston.

Encouraged by the judges’ support and his $1,000 prize, Durham plans to continue moving his concept forward by developing a working prototype with a programmer and presenting it to high-profile politicians, including U.S. Senator Tim Scott.

“I know many people in our government today and worldwide have one time or another thought that mobile voting would be ideal, but have written it off as either too risky or just not feasible,” he says. “But why not? In the technological day and age we are in, it’s within our grasps if someone has the ambition and determination to take that next step. Hopefully that person will be me.”

It’s certainly an idea worth believing in.