IS YOUR MP A MP? (Massive Piece of...)

Categories of motions to filter by
Displaying the MP's distribution of votes
Searching MP up by postal code
Page displaying recent motions
mascot
MP Report Card Header
MP Expenses Breakdown
MP Conflicts of Interest

Inspiration

Do you know who your MP is? What about how they vote? Well, me neither. Most people can’t even name their MP, let alone know how they vote or what policies are currently on the Parliament floor. All this information is technically public but difficult to access among dense government websites. The basis of exercising our democratic rights and participating in shaping our country for the better is information! How can we be sure that we are electing an MP who best represents our needs when we lack even basic information about them? We aimed to make political literacy accessible, especially when young women are among the least informed voting demographics.

What it does

Our project shows recent motions and categorizes these motions into different categories including Women's Rights, Energy, Healthcare, Economy, Education, Immigration, Indigenous Rights, etc. for ease of navigation.

Enter a postal code and instantly see who represents you. Our app pulls motions from 2021 onward, shows your MP’s voting record and overall trends in how they voted. We also consider possible conflicts of interest in voting from the MP's individual stock portfolio, business, and background to ensure maximum transparency for voters. Each MP's report card includes additional data, such as how their attendance and budget spending compares to the average MP so voters are informed of how their tax dollars are being used. The end of each report also includes a section to directly contact an MP through email or phone call, making it less tedious for constituents to express their concerns directly to their representative!

How we built it

We used React/Tailwind CSS and Figma for the front end and Express/JavaScript for the backend, which we’re currently hosting locally. Data comes from the Represent Civic Information API and OpenParliament API.

Challenges we ran into

As a team new to backend development, getting the server to talk to the APIs correctly to merge front-end and back-end was our biggest hurdle.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re successfully delivering accurate, up-to-date parliamentary data in a way that’s easy to digest and taking a step forward in empowering civic rights. Hooray!

What we learned

React, JS, Figma and how to call APIs

What's next for IS YOUR MP A MP? (Massive Piece...)

Move our database to an external service like Supabase and roll out a fully functioning MP “Report Card” with conflicts of interest, donations, and other transparency metrics. Integrating AI analysis to bypass technical jargon that makes politics inaccessible to the average voter.