Time2Vote | Devpost

Expert Page
Organizer Page
Voter Page

Inspiration

The inspiration came from the fact that modern democracy is flawed. Unfortunately, government lobbying, voter discrimination, misdirection, and undelivered promises are commonplace in democracies worldwide. This led to declining voter trust and less participation by the public during key moments that can seriously affect the power of the people over time.

What it does

Our online web application allows the people's vote to matter once again. It is a platform used for voting on different subjects where the choices are carefully analyzed by experts before being sent to the voters. When an organizer creates a poll, the options are sent to specific experts who are not only experts in the field of that poll's subject but are also of a diverse group to minimize biases. Then, the experts will have the opportunity to commend the organizer's options, stating each choice's pros and cons. After the analysis, the poll will be sent to a representative pool of people that will rank the options using the comment of the experts. This will allow the average voter to understand the different stakes at play better and make a more intelligent decision. The organizer can then check the votes and see the winning side.

How we built it

In the front end, we mostly used React-Bootstrap for the UI. We created multiple pages for the organizers, experts, and voters. In the back end, we used firebase to store the vote data and the experts' advice. It is also connected to a web scrapper that searches for the most relevant experts and voters. That web scrapper uses the Twilio API to text people to make commenting/voting more user-friendly and intuitive.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a lot of UI issues using React-Bootstrap, especially when it came to connecting the front end with the database. We had to deal with multiple cases where the UI wouldn't load because of a single error between the UI and firebase.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The web scrapper connected to the Twilio API is one of the accomplishments we are the proudest of. It runs fast and has excellent interconnections with the Twilio API, allowing it to send dozens of participants within seconds.

What we learned

We learned that being a perfectionist can be a hindrance during a hackathon. As we work increasingly on the front end, some of us debated the look of our web application. Although the discussion refined our UI, it also wasted valuable time that could have been used to implement more functionalities.