Volunteer mobile app

The app is a native iOS and Android build that runs against the same database and the same row-level security as the dashboard, so a volunteer sees exactly the walks, stops, and voters they are entitled to and nothing else. A volunteer's tab bar has Dashboard, Walks, Events, Signs, Board (the leaderboard), and More. Staff and managers get Voters and Admin tabs in place of Events and More.

During the public beta, iPhone users install through TestFlight and Android users through a direct install link. Both links are in the volunteer invite email and on the Team page, and neither changes when a new build ships. Fixes ship over the air and apply the next time the app is fully closed and reopened.

A manager, or a precinct chair for their own precinct, invites a volunteer by email or by share link. Both lead to a link of the form theculpernetwork.com/invite/code; on a phone with the app installed, that link opens the app directly. A signed-out volunteer creates an account or signs in with email and password, and the invite redeems itself. Someone handed a code in person taps Join a campaign and types it.

When a manager assigns a walk, the walker's phone gets a push notification; tapping it deep-links to that walk. The Walks tab is split into Today, Assigned to you, and Open walks, with Drafts and Archived added for managers. Open walks is the claimable pool: any Ready walk a manager set to Open to all, plus walks the volunteer was specifically invited to. Tapping Join claims it and drops them into the route. Sign-drop routes assigned to the volunteer appear on the same screen, and a search box filters everything by name.

Opening a walk shows the map with a pin per stop: gold for not visited, green with a check for visited, and rose with a pulsing ring for the next stop. Tap Start Walk and the app follows the walk's route order from the first stop, or from any stop the walker taps and chooses Start here. The Next Stop card shows the address, the distance counting down in feet as they approach, an arrow toward the door, and a road-following line drawn from where they stand to the next house. The card says Knock & Talk or Door Hanger Only before it says the address.

Open in Maps hands the stop's exact coordinates to the phone's map app rather than a street name that might resolve to the wrong block. A quick Not Home button on the map marks the stop without opening it. While a walk is active the app sends a location ping every 30 seconds or 50 meters so the manager's Live map shows where walkers are; tracking is foreground-only and stops the moment the walk ends or the walker taps End walk. A help button sends the manager an alert with the walker's name and last known location.

GPS verification is a per-walk switch a manager turns on. When it is on, the walker's coordinates are stored with each mark and the walk page shows how many marks landed within about 100 meters of the door. When it is off, no per-stop location is stored. Either way, marking a stop never waits on a GPS fix.

Each stop opens as a household card: every registered voter at the address with party and age band, their top issue interests where the file has them, and the walk's script with the walker's name and the voter's details filled in. The walker taps Home or Not Home. Home leads to Engaged (the survey) or a reason they did not engage: refused, wrong address, moved away, language barrier. Not Home offers a follow-up for each voter (text, email, or a door hanger) only on channels where that voter has consent on file, queued for the campaign to send with the message bodies set under Walks, then Messaging.

The survey sheet asks first who the walker spoke with, the whole household or one person, then shows the campaign's questions: yes/no, 1 to 5 rating, single choice, multiple choice, short and long text, and number. Answers save per voter. A Do Not Contact tap puts every voter at the address on the global suppression list; a data-quality flag tells staff the record was wrong. Save & Next moves to the following stop in route order. On a Door Hanger Only walk none of this appears: the stop shows a Door Hanger Only banner and a single Drop hanger action, and survey writes for those stops are refused at the database. On a joint walk with several candidates, the walker checks which candidates' literature they left.

When the last stop is marked, the app fires a success haptic and moves to a completion screen with homes visited and a link to the leaderboard, and the server closes the walk and writes the results onto the voter records.

Walkers spend a lot of time in dead zones: apartment stairwells, rural roads, garages. Every mark, survey answer, Do Not Contact, data-quality flag, and literature drop goes through one path: try the server; if the network fails, write the payload to an on-device SQLite outbox and tell the walker Saved offline, we'll sync when you have signal. The outbox drains automatically whenever the phone comes back online or the app returns to the foreground, and the map overlays not-yet-synced marks so a house the walker just finished never pops back as unvisited.

Three things make the queue trustworthy. Every write goes through an authenticated API route that returns a real error when zero rows were written, so a rejected mark stays queued instead of being mistaken for a success. Network failures never count against a queued item; only a genuine server rejection does, and after ten of those the item is parked, reported to the campaign, and retried again on the next launch. And a fresh session token is fetched at send time, so a mark that sat in the outbox overnight still authenticates.

If the server rejects a write outright, the walker sees Save was rejected, tell your campaign manager; the item is held on the phone and the rejection is logged where the manager can see it on the walks page. A mark that arrives after a newer mark for the same stop is preserved rather than overwriting it.

Not every volunteer will install an app. From any walk's detail page a manager can copy a walker link: a tokenized URL that opens the walk in a phone browser with no login. It shows the same map and next-stop card, the outcome buttons (Home answered, No answer, Wrong address, Resident moved, Mark hanger dropped), the survey, notes, and the not-home follow-up panel. Stop marks and notes queue offline in the browser too, with an Offline indicator while they wait; survey answers in the browser need a connection. Managers can open the same page by signing in.

Staff and managers see all the campaign's walks including drafts, can assign a walker from the phone, and get an Admin tab with a live walks map (each walker's trail in its own color), a push notification composer, and photo-op capture. The Signs tab, for every role including precinct chairs, places and updates yard signs, flags, and opposition signs at the walker's position, described on the yard signs page. The Voters tab is hidden from volunteers entirely.

Saturday canvass, eight volunteers. The manager assigns 16 walks on Friday night; eight phones buzz. Each walker taps Start Walk in the parking lot and follows the pulsing pin. Three lose signal in a townhome complex; their marks queue and sync at the street. The manager watches the Live map and sees the last walk auto-complete at 4:10 pm.

Precinct chair with three volunteers and no laptop. She assigns her precinct's walks from the web on her phone, then walks one herself in the app. Her volunteers claim the other two from Open walks. The survey asks two questions and a yard-sign ask; by Sunday every answer is on the voter records and the yard-sign yeses are a list.

Door-hanger blitz with high-school volunteers. No survey, no conversation, 60-stop routes, one tap per door. The completion screen shows each volunteer their count, and the Board tab shows where they rank.

The reason to canvass with software instead of a clipboard is not the map. It is that every conversation lands on the voter record the same day, so the next text, mailer, or turnout call is aimed at what the campaign actually learned. The door-knocking guide explains why the door is still the most persuasive contact a local campaign can make, and the app is what makes it repeatable with volunteers who have never canvassed: they follow the pin, read the script, tap the answers. The universe you should be knocking is sized on how many votes it takes to win.

The app is narrow on purpose. A volunteer should be able to learn it in the parking lot.

• It does not track walkers in the background or outside an active walk. Location is foreground-only and ends with the walk.
• It does not text or email voters from the phone. Follow-ups are queued for the campaign to send through its registered channels, and only where consent exists.
• It does not support paired walking: two walkers on one walk split the doors, and the newest mark on a stop wins.
• It does not show volunteers the voter database, other people's walks, or any campaign they are not a member of.
• Browser walker links queue marks offline but need a connection to save survey answers; use the app for surveys in weak-signal areas.
• During the beta, installs come from TestFlight and a direct Android link rather than store listings; the campaign sends both.
• It is designed for a phone in one hand, not a tablet layout.

The app is the field end of features configured on the web:

• Block walking: where walks are generated, split, assigned, and closed out.
• Scripts and surveys: the script text and questions the app shows at each door.
• Volunteer coordination: invites, share links, roles, and the leaderboard the Board tab reads.
• Yard signs and field assets: the Signs tab and photo-op capture.
• Events: the Events tab, sign-ups, and check-in.
• Compliance and data security: Do Not Contact, consent-gated follow-ups, and per-campaign isolation.