Our Story

In 2007, a group of college friends; Andrew, Mick and Paddy, were struck by the fact that it was very difficult to find out about all of your candidates standing for election. The traditional options were complicated and time consuming. There was no one-stop-shop where you could find out about candidates and make easy comparisons. For example, what if you met a candidate or saw one on television, liked them, but couldn't remember their name? Where would you go? There was no impartial and non-partisan website with all of this information. And so MiCandidate was born.

In 2007, MiCandidate covered all the candidates standing in the Irish General Election, which was about 480 candidates. When the website launched, about six weeks before the Irish General Election, it listed about 80% of candidates and contained rich details on policies, experience and background for about 10% of candidates. By the day of the election, 100% of candidates were listed and there were rich details on over 90% of candidates. That was 2007.

In 2009, we are bringing this simple idea all across Europe because in 2007 in Ireland it proved so useful that candidates profiles were viewed nearly 4 million times by citizens. 4 million views for Ireland is a European equivalent of some 500 million views of candidate's profiles.

By June 4th 2009, we hope to have listed close to 100% of candidates standing for the European Parliament Elections and have rich details on as many candidates as possible. We carry out all our research at no cost to candidates and make that information freely available to anyone from anywhere. One major feature of MiCandidate, is the fact that we clone every profile on MiCandidate and share those profiles with dozens of the most popular news and citizen websites. That means people will find candidates everywhere.

In 2009, we are also going a step further by revolutionising the cost and effectiveness of campaigning online. We believe this is a very positive development that will have a broad democratizing effect. You can find out more about these developments here.