Vote Wave

Inspiration

As the firstborn in an immigrant family, I often found myself guiding my family through unfamiliar systems—whether it was at the grocery store, the DMV, or registering to vote. I was the translator, the explainer, and the bridge to understanding. When I came across this hackathon, it struck a personal chord. I thought about what would have made things easier for me growing up—simple, clear tools to explain tasks to my family. Even something as basic as knowing whether a process could be done entirely online or required an in-person visit often took hours to figure out. Drawing from my own experiences, I set out to create an easy-to-use site that goes straight to the point—because let’s be honest, no government website makes things easy.

What it does

This site addresses low youth voter registration in underserved communities by:

Visualizing the importance of voting and emphasizing the voter age gap.
Using interactive features like emojis and celebratory confetti to make engagement fun.
Offering content in six languages for inclusivity. The site is available in English, Spanish, Filipino, Chinese, Arabic, and Farsi
Clearly outlining necessary steps, whether online, hybrid, or in-person registration is required.
Link directly to the exact place where voter registration begins on the government site.
The site is also fully responsive to mobile

The site opens with a dynamic chart showcasing the voter gap: how 18–24-year-olds represent a significant portion of the population but a small percentage of voters. Users can then explore a state-specific timeline of voter registration events by selecting their state from the top-right menu.

A pre-registration checklist adds a gamified touch—clicking on items triggers confetti, and completing it redirects users to the "Register to Vote" page. On this page, we highlight whether registration can be completed entirely online, partially by mail, or requires in-person steps, using clear visuals and colors.

By clicking "Register," users are sent directly to their state’s registration page. For those needing assistance, they can fill out their details on our site first. A summary of their information is generated to help streamline their registration process, making it easy to copy and paste into their state’s system.

How we built it

I built this site using typescript as the main language, React (and a lot of hooks) as the framework, Vite and Netlify to run the app and deploy it. I also leverage chatGPT and other AI tools to help with building the chart and other visualizations as I am not a very good frontend engineer.

Challenges we ran into

The main non-technical challenge here was around gathering the correct data. Unfortunately there was not a single source of truth and I had to spent a lot of time to find the correct links in each of the states featured in the application. Additionally I had to read a lot to learn whether each state allowed for full digital registration or they required the user to main something in or show up in-person all together.

My main technical challenge was to get the chart to work properly withe the data to show case the voter age gap.

What's next for Vote Wave

The first next thing I would have loved to add for Vote Wave is to be able to signup for a newsletter type of thing that sends out reminders for the registration timeline. An individual has to go to the government directly to register to vote. I would love to be able to collaborate with state officials to make their sites easier to use and understand. Eventually the best experience would be to go to a centralized location, submit your information and have that site send your application to the respective state.