Partisan capture is terminal
Once a civic platform is seen to belong to one side, it is dead to the other, and neutrality cannot be retrofitted.
The pattern
A platform meant to serve all constituents acquires a partisan tilt, through its founders, funders, early user base, or rhetoric, and the other half of the electorate concludes it is not for them. Perceived neutrality, once lost, is almost impossible to recover.
How it shows up
Adoption that breaks cleanly along party lines; coverage that frames the tool as belonging to one movement; officials from the "wrong" side declining to engage on principle.
What Agora does about it
Agora holds a non-partisan, governmental-grade voice and takes no positions of its own. The wedge does the structural work: every conversation is anchored to the substance of an official's work rather than to a partisan stance, so the platform belongs to the office and the constituency instead of a side.