Top influencers and the online voting tool that reached thousands of South Aussies
A tool helping people plan their votes for Saturday’s election quadrupled its users in under a week and pulled big-name influencers to promote the product. The co-founder told InDaily how they pulled it off with “no money” and a start-up mindset.
About 15,000 South Australians used an online tool called Build a Ballot to plan their votes in Saturday’s election – with its creators pulling off the feat with no political funding or paid advertising and the help of high-profile influencers.
Co-founder Tegan Lerm said the tool – which she launched with Lizzie Hedding in 2025 – saw the most uptake in the 48 hours before polls closed and it was designed to be used while voters waited in line for the ballot box.
Ahead of Saturday, a well-known news influencer and CEO of Cheek Media Hannah Ferguson, posted about the tool to her 117,350 Instagram followers, but it was not a paid advertisement. Ferguson also promoted the tool ahead of the 2025 federal election. Cheek Media has 229,000 followers.
“There were a lot of people who came to us after the election last year, saying,’how did you get Hannah Ferguson to share? How did you get Abbie Chatfield to share?’ And I was like, ‘we haven’t paid any influences, we’re just friends with them’,” Lerm said.
“People just expected there to be some sort of ulterior motive but they were just people that we have become friends with over the years because of the industries that we work in, and they saw the value in what we were building.
“At the end of the day, we just want people to be informed when they head to the ballot box, like we’re not telling anyone to vote for, who to vote for and I think that’s what makes it such a powerful tool.”
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The duo’s charity is called Project Planet and creates tools and resources to help Australians understand the climate crisis, with Build a Ballot its main “non-partisan civic engagement” tool to help people vote by quizzing users on the topics that matter most to them, asking whether they support or oppose strategies related to climate, housing, cost of living, and more.
Based on the answers, it provides a “match score” that shows users how well their answers match the policies of different candidates in their electorate. Then, users click and drag the members into a ballot they can take to the booth to help fill out their vote.
South Australia’s Saturday election was the first state election the duo has run the tool, after launching it federally in 2025.
Lerm told InDaily on the Monday before the election, it had about 3500 voters using it – by Saturday night when polls closed, that had jumped to 15,000 users.
She said the charity “really doesn’t have a lot of money” and they did not put money into paid advertising for the South Australian election.
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The uptake relied on word of mouth, volunteers putting posters around the city, and social media posts featuring influencer endorsements – like Cheek Media CEO Hannah Ferguson – and partnership videos with sponsors like Heaps Normal non-alcoholic beer.
The duo say on their website that they are “not your typical charity” and target partnerships with brands like Heaps Normal, Gelato Messina, Future Super and footwear brand Twoobs.
“We’re actually a charity, but we have quite a start-up mentality,” Lerm said.
Lerm said the partnerships helped them expand their demographic from 25 to 35 year olds, to up to 45 year olds, and that younger users said they shared the tool with grandparents and older voters.
Lerm said a barrier in the South Australian market was that many voters saw the election as a “done deal” after polling ahead of the day correctly predicted a Labor landslide, with the returned Malinauskas Government increasing their number of seats in the state’s lower house.
“A lot of South Australians consider the outcome of the election a done deal, and we view these voters as low consideration, people don’t necessarily put a lot of effort or time into researching all of the different options available to them, because they see it as a low consideration decision,” she said.
“It’s almost like heading to the shops and buying a deodorant like ‘what’s the brand’s name that I recognise in the store, or that I’ve heard about or that my friend uses, or that my mom’s bought for me forever’ – voting decisions are very similar.
“I think when there is an overarching narrative that people’s votes might not necessarily be as valuable or useful because the election outcome is potentially already set it doesn’t necessarily send a message to voters that they should be engaging and doing their research into parties and candidates.”
But Lerm said they were confident launching in South Australia after 14,000 people living in the electorate of Adelaide alone used it in 2025.
“It was surprising to us that the federal electorate of Adelaide was our third-highest usage of any electorate in the country last year. But it just goes to show, like when a message is shared among the community, it can spread like crazy,” Lerm said.
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