Live demo · Launching in Alberta
It's time to make Our Say.
Verified, auditable civic participation — passkey-signed petitions and votes, district-aware filters, and a public record anyone can check. Try the working preview now; we're launching in Alberta next.
See how it works · Open source · Independently auditable · No political party, no agenda
The problem
Democracy has a gap between elections
Representative democracy was designed for a world without instant communication. Between elections, you have no verified, lasting, auditable way to make your views known. Polls can be commissioned for a conclusion. Online petitions can't confirm a single signature is real. Social media rewards the loudest voice, not the most representative one.
- $500 → $25,000
- to file a citizen-initiative petition in Alberta — up from $500 [1]
- $50–100 million
- estimated to run one province-wide referendum — plus 60,000–90,000 workers [8]
- ~2.9 million
- Albertans' voter details posted in a public, searchable database online [4]
- Struck down twice
- Alberta's separation petition was quashed in court — twice in six months [3]
These are recent Alberta examples, and they're not about one party — they show what happens when a 300-year-old system meets 21st-century problems. Raising the barrier to be heard, and handing copies of the voter list to organizations that privacy law doesn't even cover,[5] are symptoms of the same thing: the tools haven't kept up. OurSay is built to fix the tools — for whoever is in power.
How it works
From a quiet belief to an undeniable result
Four connected layers, each more formal than the last. A result can be traced all the way back to the grassroots beliefs that shaped it.
- 1
Beliefs
Anyone can post a statement. Others agree or disagree. It's the starting point for civic conversation — informal, but counted.
- 2
Petitions
A formal call to action addressed to a specific authority. Signatures are passkey-signed and collected — and when enough verified residents sign, the petition automatically graduates into a formal platform poll.
- 3
Public Votes
A formal yes/no or multiple-choice vote on a specific question. Choices are final once cast, and results are published openly.
- 4
Results
The permanent, auditable record of a closed public vote — broken down by area and verification tier, designed to be tamper-resistant.
Live demo
Try it now — the devs built more than they brag about
The demo at demo.oursay.ca is a working preview of Alberta launch — passkeys, signed badges, district filters, petition graduation, and the full civic ladder. No install. No waitlist required.
- Passkey signing
What you see is what you sign
Before a vote or signature lands on the record, you confirm a plain-language statement with your passkey — civic action treated like signing a document, not liking a post.
- Signed badges
Real signatures, not clicks
Every action carries a visible Signed strength — passkey, biometric-ready, or quick sign — so you can filter for the commitments that matter.
- Verified anonymity
Prove you're real. Stay anonymous.
Confirm your identity once and participate under a per-thread persona. Verified totals stay honest; your name stays off the public record unless you choose otherwise.
- Civic ladder
Petitions that graduate to polls
Grassroots energy has a path: Statement → Petition → Poll → Result. Hit the threshold and a petition graduates into a formal platform poll — the proposing citizen stays author.
- District-aware
Filter by riding, not by leaking addresses
See what verified residents in your district think — with residency and affected-area pills — without ever putting raw addresses on the wire.
- Honest counts
Sign now, verify later
Anyone can participate immediately. Verified totals only include people who meet the verification floor — and both numbers are labeled, never confused.
Behind the scenes: every significant action is designed for an append-only public record — anchored externally, verifiable offline, and open source. The demo shows the experience; the repo shows the proof.
Auditability & cryptography
Don't trust us — verify us
When 2.9 million Albertans' voter details ended up in a public database, the cause wasn't a hacker — it was the architecture.[4] Once the list is handed out as a copy, no one can control where it goes.[6]
OurSay is built the other way around. Modern cryptography lets you check the record yourself without us keeping a copyable list of personal details that can leak. You can verify it — and so can a journalist, a researcher, or a court.
-
Passkey-signed commitments
Votes and signatures aren't clicks — they're device-signed with a plain-language confirmation screen before anything hits the record. Strength is visible on every action.
-
Audit your own signature
Every action you take produces a private receipt only you hold. Check it against the public, tamper-resistant record and confirm your vote was counted exactly as you cast it.
-
Anonymous, but still verifiable
You can act anonymously and still be counted in the verified total. Verification never means your name appears on a public list.
-
Reproduce any result yourself
The whole platform is open source, and every build is fingerprinted and published. Recount any public vote with the tools in the repository — no need to trust our servers.
-
Keep your own copy
The record is public and every entry carries a digital fingerprint, so you can keep a copy and prove later whether anything was changed, redacted, or erased.
The public record
A public record you can keep
We call it a public record because it belongs to the public — not to us. Everything that goes on the record is published so anyone can keep their own copy and check it for themselves. We're one custodian of it, not its owner.
- One custodian, not the last word
- You never have to take our word that the record hasn't changed. Because it's public and anyone can keep a copy, the truth doesn't live only on our servers.
- When removal is required, we remove the least possible
- A court order, harmful content, or a person's right to be forgotten can mean a message must come down. When that happens we hide or delete that message — but its digital fingerprint stays on the record, so it still shows that something existed at that moment and was accounted for. We never quietly rewrite history.
- Keep us honest — hold your own copy
- We encourage auditors, journalists, and officials to keep their own copies of the public record. If we ever redact or erase something, anyone holding an earlier copy can see exactly what changed — and confirm everything else still adds up.
Who it's for
One platform, every side of the table
Whether you want to be heard, to listen, to report, or to organize — OurSay is built for people who value transparency and accountability, wherever they sit on the spectrum.
Constituents
Be heard between elections — not just once every four years
Your vote is one day a cycle. Your opinions are every day. OurSay gives you a structured, verifiable way to say what you actually think — and to see what people in other communities believe, so the conversation is bigger than your feed.
- Express beliefs, sign petitions, and vote on public questions — passkey-signed and publicly counted
- See how opinion breaks down by district and verification tier, not just your feed
- Participate anonymously if you choose — per-thread personas, verified totals still honest
Representatives
A clear signal from your constituents — not a fractured feed
Right now, constituent feedback is scattered across phone calls, town halls, and a dozen social platforms. OurSay gives you one structured, on-the-record channel to hear what verified residents in your area actually think — and to respond directly.
- See verified-resident sentiment on an issue, filtered to your area
- Respond on the record to petitions and public votes that name your office
- Share threads to any platform to bring constituents into the discussions that affect them
Commentators & media
Public opinion you can report — with receipts
No more "a poll of 1,200 respondents suggests." OurSay produces transparent, auditable opinion data that anyone can independently verify, broken down by area and verification tier. Report what people actually said, and hold representatives to it.
- Auditable results you can reproduce yourself — no need to take our word for it
- Compare a representative's record to what verified constituents in their own area said
- A read-only public API for independent dashboards and analysis (post-launch)
Activists & creators
A movement worth sharing
OurSay turns scattered outrage into a durable, verifiable record. Every belief, petition, and public vote is built to be shared — so the discussions that matter spread to the people they affect.
- Built-in sharing to bring your audience into real, structured discussions
- Permanent, auditable records that can't be quietly dismissed as unrepresentative
- Open source and free to spread — the tools of democracy should belong to everyone
The cost
Roughly $15k — not $50 million
A single province-wide referendum is a one-day event costing tens of millions and tens of thousands of workers. OurSay is continuous civic infrastructure — built once, open source, and reusable anywhere.
Bars shown on a linear scale to $100M. OurSay's bar is enlarged to stay visible — at true scale it would be a thin line.
OurSay is not a legal referendum and doesn't replace one — it's a verified, auditable, always-on record of public opinion that costs a fraction of a single government-run vote, and gets more secure and transparent the more people can check it. Figures for future events are estimates; see sources.
Built on values both sides of the aisle can share
OurSay carries no party and no agenda. It works for any system where the goal is to give power to the people — and it earns its place by being something anyone can inspect, question, and verify.
- Transparency
- Everything OurSay does is open source and out in the open — including the code that runs it.
- Accountability
- A permanent, auditable record of what people said, that representatives can be held to.
- Your Say
- The right to make your voice known — clearly, verifiably, and without asking permission.
Our honest footing
We'd rather earn your trust than ask for it
A platform about accountability has to hold itself to the same standard. Here's what we will and won't claim.
- We claim no endorsements
- OurSay is a private platform. We don't claim support, certification, or approval from any government body, electoral authority, or party. Where you see a claim, you'll see a source.
- Verification isn't a voter check
- Identity verification is done by a commercial provider. It confirms you're a real person at a real address — it is not a determination of electoral eligibility or voter registration.
- Open from day one
- Every line of code, every infrastructure choice, and every published result is public. If we get something wrong, anyone can see it — and tell us.
- Trust is earned, not assumed
- We're new. We'll earn support, certifications, and credibility from the ground up, with every step aligned to these values. We'd rather under-claim and over-deliver.
- We never silently rewrite the record
- If the law ever requires us to remove content, the record still shows that it existed. We remove the least possible — the proof stays even when the content has to go.
- The record is yours to keep
- We publish the public record so anyone can hold their own copy. We encourage auditors to keep one and check our removals against it — that's how you hold us accountable.
See it for yourself — then tell Alberta
The live demo is up at demo.oursay.ca: sign a petition with a passkey, filter by district, watch petitions graduate to polls. Join the waitlist for launch, or reach out if you're a representative or journalist.