Online Voter Registration in TX

In TX, you can register to vote through the DMV or fill out a form provided by the Secretary of State. By giving proof of concept to TX legislators, there's an opportunity for voting to be accessible.

Comment

Inspiration

One of our members, Aadith, is in a non-partisan, non-profit student organization at Texas A&M that emphasizes on civic engagement, especially in local and state affairs, along with registering students to vote. They found it difficult to have to register students using a paper form all the time and suggested creating a proof-of-concept that Texas legislators could look at to see some proof of there being a potential future of online voting.

What it does

The application is a website that can have the user check their registration status and submit a voter registration form.

How we built it

The front-end consisted mainly of HTML, along with CSS and a little bit of JavaScript. The back-end was entirely in Python and implemented Python's Flask framework.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into the issue of having difficulties with working with the verboseness of HTML and the features of CSS. There was also quite a bit of a learning curve when it came to implementing our back-end through Python's Flask framework. Front-end and back-end integration proved difficult at times as timelines between the groups wouldn't always be in sync.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

None of the members were familiar with any aspect of web development and we came out of the Hackathon much more comfortable with full-stack development overall. The back-end and front-end developers would often switch roles to ensure there would be no issues with merges of software. As four first-time hackers, we felt extremely happy about our experience and what we learned!

What we learned

We learned how to implement the Flask framework in Python, HTML, CSS, and implementing GitHub.

What's next for Online Voter Registration in TX

We plan to improve the overall UI and UX, to make it look less like a government website and more of a friendly and accessible website that someone would want to use! This would be implemented through Bootstrap, of course. We would also implement some smart contract algorithm through Rust, to ensure there is a more secure and decentralized database, which would also further help convince Texas legislators to pursue an online option for registering to vote!

Share this project:

Updates