VoteSmart

This webapp will educate and align voters with thier values and opinions. It offers facts related to how thier politicians vote and how bills will affect them, their family or causes they care about.

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Vote Smart

Inspiration

In a world overwhelmed by political noise, misinformation, and bias, it’s easy for voters to feel disconnected or powerless. I created Vote Smart to bridge that gap—by aligning individuals with politicians and policies that reflect their personal values and priorities. Whether it’s protecting their family, advancing a cause, or defending their rights, we believe voters should have clarity, not confusion.

What it does

Vote Smart is an interactive web app that aligns users’ values and opinions with:

  • How elected officials have voted
  • What bills are currently being debated
  • How those bills might impact them, their loved ones, or causes they care about
  • Resources to contact their representatives and educate them on voting times/locations

Users take an intuitive quiz that maps their responses to real voting records and legislative outcomes—presented in clean, understandable terms. It’s like a political compass, but built on real data.

🛠️ How we--me and Bolt--built it

I built Vote Smart using Bolt.new which created the page using:

  • React + TypeScript for scalable, type-safe UI
  • Tailwind CSS for responsive, accessible design
  • Framer Motion for smooth, intuitive animations
  • React Router for seamless page transitions
  • Custom quiz engine with dynamic result mapping
  • Modular component structure for maintainability
  • Placeholder civic data mapped to values to prototype logic

The frontend is optimized for interactivity and learning. While this is a prototype, the foundation is built to support real legislative and voting record APIs in the future. I am not a developer so every bit of this code was written with AI.

Challenges I ran into

  • Troubleshooting code areas while being a total novice in code writing. My first biggest obstacle was just getting the log-in to work right. Creating a user in the database and associating all the data for the profile and all of the quizzes. I had to remove email authentication because I couldn't get it to work right.
  • Mapping values to real-world data in a meaningful, non-biased way. I don't know how to create an API connection to public data.
  • Designing quiz builder to give the ability to load more quizzes, design questions and tie outputs to meaningful data
  • Capturing all of the ongoing politics at a national, state, and local level and mapping it to user entered data
  • Keeping the interface user-friendly without oversimplifying complex policy
  • Time management—balancing UI polish with core functionality in a tight window on top of being completely ignorant on how to make any of this work.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

  • Delivered a functional prototype with smooth navigation and a working log-in
  • Created a foundation that could truly help people make smarter, value-based voting decisions
  • Designing the foundation for a quiz system that can match values of users to real data
  • Developed a clean, cohesive UI that makes heavy content approachable
  • Finally creating a protoype for an idea I have had in my head for years. This allowed my family and friends get as excited as I am about the possibilities of a future with a more educated voter population.

What we learned

  • Literally EVERTYHING. I didn't even have a GitHUb account until June 1, 2025. This was built with AI and grit.
  • I learned the limitations of AI and how to troubleshoot
  • I learned to fail fast. I had to delete my whole project 3 times before I got it to work.

What's next for Vote Smart

  • Integrate real-time data from public voting records, bill tracking APIs, and candidate positions
  • Integrate real-time data from public databases for zipcode demographics and voting
  • Expand quiz logic to personalize based on user demographics or cause preferences
  • Develop “cause profiles” to show how current legislation impacts specific communities or groups of people
  • Launch mobile-first optimizations and push to app stores
  • Collaborate with non-profits and civic tech orgs to deploy Vote Smart in real elections
  • Include community chats where you can organize with your neighbors or other affected members
  • Create alerts for when new bills are being introduced to the people who are affected by them and give them steps to contact their representatives to create meaningful action.
  • Polish - this is full of bugs and UI deadends. As a product manager this hurts me to show-off. It's not an MVP, but it is a working prototype that I built myself.

Vote Smart isn’t just about information—it’s about connection. With the right tools, we believe every voter can feel confident and empowered at the ballot box.

VoteSmart is bringing the power back to the people!

Built With

  • accessible-design-**framer-motion**-for-smooth
  • bolt
  • netlify
  • react
  • supabase
  • tailwind
  • type-safe-ui-**tailwind-css**-for-responsive
  • typescript
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