Does Your Vote Matter?

We web scraped a gov website to gather voting info for a local district election. The user will input if they're planning to vote, and if they're not, it would show if their vote would actually count.

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Inspiration

One of our teammates Jonathan was talking about voting in his RIT 365 class. They were exploring the common belief that "my vote doesn't count." However, if 10,000 people (or even 100 for local elections) don't vote, those unsubmitted votes might have actually changed the outcome of the election.

What it does

Our website compiles data from previous elections in a local area to predict the outcome of an upcoming election.

How we built it

We used python to code and replit.com to code in. Replit allowed us to collaborate on code at the same time. We developed a web scraper to take the data from the Excel document from the website and then we compiled that into a data frame, which we then turned into a JSON file. We were then able to put this JSON file into a webview in replit. From there in replit, we were able to access the JSON file on the website and convert it into more easily readable data.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a lot of challenges, majority revolved around actual syntax. We had trouble figuring out a way to scrape the data from an Excel document. Then we had the challenge of converting it into all the different forms we needed (i.e. the data frame and JSON file).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of working as a team and delegating tasks. We all listened to each other's ideas, and no one became a "dictator". We are proud of all that we have learned and our resilience in the face of challenges. We never gave up.

What we learned

We learned about what things are like API, HTTP Servers, JSON files, and so much more. We gained syntax knowledge about python and javascript. We also learned the importance of indentations and where you place certain things like imports.

What's next for Does Your Vote Count?

The next step for us is to program the website to take data from the user. The website will ask if the user is planning on voting. If yes, the website will ask if their vote is a "yes" or a "no" for the upcoming ballot propositions and that data will be added to help predict the outcome. If the user says "no, I won't be voting", the website will show how many other people also said no and how many votes the not-going-to-vote-people would need to cast to change the predicted outcome of the election. We want to show people that saying "my vote won't count" in large numbers actually harms democracy by making people think there is no point in voting.

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