EngagedCitizens

• 

  Landing Page

• 

  Subscription form

• 

  List of bills based on the subscription

Inspiration

The politicians keep passing bills after bills since oftentimes they have a majority in the house. More often than not, those bills benefit corporations, and the citizens are completely unaware of it. We wanted the voters to know about the current bills being debated at the local level and engage with it before it's too late.

What it does

You choose a few keywords, such as gun violence, mental health, and this app sends you emails every day (or every week--based on how frequently you want updates) a list of bills that match your interest criteria.

How I built it

I used Flask as a framework. MongoDB to power the backend. I'm pulling legislative data using OpenStates API

Challenges I ran into

Using a non-relational database. Figuring out the appropriate project structure for an app this size

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The backend is fully functional, including the database and text analysis

What I learned

Keep working on a problem and not giving up.

What's next for EngageCitizens

Have a fully functional and nice frontend. Fix the finnicky SMTP email client. Add some testing.

Built With

• flask
• mongodb