Vote‽

Voter information application

Installation

Download the APK on an Android phone, or build it from the source.

Usage/Experience

Initial Screen

Hopefully there's a pretty splash screen idk.

Location

• Allow the user to input a location (API needed for parsing).
• (stretch goal) Have a button which retrieves the user's current location.
• Reject locations which are too general (i.e. Illinois).

Visual Layout

• Four panes (the swipey android screen things): Local, state, national level political information, then polling locations.
• Perhaps maintain the location input at the top above the pane selector.
• Cards similar to something like the transit app, or with a shadow, hopefully just make it pretty.

Information

The panes should go in order of local $\rightarrow$ national to emphasize the importance of local politics.

Local

• Voting locations, registration information
• Local politicians, judges, superintendent of schools, et cetera.
• Maybe pictures to make it pretty

State

• State legislators, governor, AG, et cetera.
• Maybe pictures again

National

• Congresspeople, important supreme court cases, congressional activities for the day, et cetera.

Polling Place

• Use Google Maps API to show location of polling place
• Have Get Directions button.

Development

• Continue ideation phase and transition into first prototype.
• Finish initial UI.
• Design data flow.
• Connect APIs to data pipeline.
• Optimize and make it pretty.
• Redesign the app to include more information
• Make seth supreme leader of the free world.

APIs

• Google Civic Information API

  • Elections
  • Voter information based on location

• Google Maps Geocoding API (The Google Civic Information API automatically geocodes given addresses and return a 400 error if the input address is unparsable.)

• Other political APIs?

• Google Maps Android API

  To use an API key:

  • Create .../vote/secrets.properties and in it place API_KEY=<the api key here>.
  • In the java file, retrieve the key with BuildConfig.API_KEY.