Inspiration
Too many times has a political candidate made promises in hopes of getting your vote to be elected to office, only to fall short once given the opportunity. We wanted to look through their self-provided hype speech and make a decision based on their past actions- how they voted when they had the opportunity.
What it does
This web app, powered by Google App Engine, collects the voting history data for all members of the Senate and House of Representatives, and stores it in Google Firebase DB. Then, a user votes on the same bills and initiatives as the politicians, creating their political profile. Our app creates a similarity ranking to show you which candidates most closely match the way you feel via their actions, and are therefore the most deserving of your vote and the least likely to disappoint.
How we built it
We tapped the ProPublica Congress Api (https://projects.propublica.org/api-docs/congress-api/) to extract and collect the voting history and list of bills/initiatives. Again, we wrote this using Angular, powered by Google App Engine, and stored in Google Firebase DB.
Challenges we ran into
Most of our challenges stemmed from a limited knowledge of Angular. We had great difficulty properly deserializing the api JSON responses with Angular, as well as creating the exact UI layout we envisioned. Thus, there are more promising features we had in mind but just didn't have time for.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Working as team throughout the process. Everyone's ideas were heard and acknowledged, and even though not all skillsets were equal, each was used to their fullest. We are proud we created something we think could actually be used by real people, to help with a problem everyone has- data overload during election seasons.
What we learned
We learned to prioritize getting to a minimum viable product at each checkpoint, rather than aiming for the moon the entire way. This helped us lay solid foundations that were able to, and are still able to continually be built upon and improved. Some areas of opportunity in our individual skill sets were discovered, as well as some hidden strengths. Most importantly we learned and experienced how a diverse team can lead to a successful idea/project/outcome.
What's next for Bills over Promises
The data generated here could be used to assist voters during elections from local representatives all the way to presidential candidates. The app can be used by Americans to get truth about candidates and not be fooled by clever speech writers. We can use possible functions of Bills over Promises to reinforce our beliefs about some candidates, and revealing major surprises both good and bad about others.
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