This is an interesting project.
Can you elaborate? Drafts, mockups, specifications, raw bumpy roadmap?
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Are you using Bool in a sdl? If so, it should be Boolean.
@ryancwalsh
You may want to consider making the repo public, especially if it’s a time sensitive project. If it was, I would have sent a PR by now to fix what @dthyresson is pointing out.
Good luck with the app!
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@dthyresson. @noire.munich, @jeliasson Thanks for your interest!
I made it public at https://github.com/ryancwalsh/VoteQuickly/tree/main
Currently it only supports 2 counties (in GA) because those were the only ones I’ve found so far to scrape.
I have a https://github.com/ryancwalsh/VoteQuickly/tree/main#todo list of the more major parts of the project, such as allowing anyone at any polling location in the country to report their experience. I will flesh out my ideas for those tasks (probably as Issues) when I get a moment.
@ryancwalsh I’m asking around about data sources. I have some connections to people who work in politics and support Orgs focused on day-of voting support. TBD
Also wanted to make sure you know about this error affecting v0.19.3 deploys:
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Hi @ryancwalsh. I appreciate the intention, but I don’t think this is how voting works in the US. Each address is assigned to a precinct, and each precinct is assigned to a specific polling place. So if your polling place has a long line, you don’t have the option to go to a different one. An unfortunate situation.
Hi @qooqu welcome to the Forums! And definitely a great point.
I’m no expert on polling locations per precinct, but I wonder if it’s always a 1 to 1 across all states/counties/districts:
- in Oregon, I could have sworn I had multiple options for polling locations available for my precinct
- some states offer either polling or ballot drop off day of
If real-time data were available, and even if there’s no options to choose from, I’m curious how knowing the time would encourage or discourage people to go to polling location?
- likely encourage if perceived “short wait”
- discourage is also possible
- subscribe to alert when wait is “short” would be awesome
- even better, an indicator about “wait time” compared to closing time with an alert about the latest possible time to get in line
Lastly, if this data were saved and time stamped, this could make for possible analysis after voting is data. I could imagine journalists being very interested in reporting on “fair access to voting” across states based on this kind of data.
———
All of this is too much and not intended to add to the feature list. Offering to encourage thinking about the ways this could be of value. And welcome counter points as well. Both are needed to sharpen focus and goals.
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@qooqu Welcome, and thanks for your thoughts. What you’re saying is definitely true in some states. In other states (such as GA, where I live), voters can choose which poll they visit during the “Early Voting” period.
@thedavid Yes, I love ALL thoughts, thanks.
P.S. I bought votequickly.com, and it points to this project but the DNS apparently hasn’t propagated yet, which Ionos and Netlify say could take 48 hrs.
I didn’t realize there were options for early voting, but that makes sense. 
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DNS apparently hasn’t propagated yet, which Ionos and Netlify say could take 48 hrs.
It’s been propagated. You should also add DNS records for www.votequickly.com and redirect that to the apex domain (votequickly.com)
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Thanks. I’m obviously confused about something then.
Here is what I see:
Yet votequickly.com still doesn’t work.
You probabaly tried the domains before it was propagated, and your computer and upstream DNS servers cached that. Anyway, it’s propagated on the important resolvers, including the www.
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Thanks, it works for me now too!
Hi Ryan. Thank you for your interest in building technology to protect democracy. So much technology is designed for profit first, and not for societal benefit. It’s great to see more coders interested in civic engagement.
I have a lot of experience building these kinds of tools, and have worked on some of the largest voter registration systems in the US and internationally. It is hard work, and you are about to learn some of the tough lessons about data quality and unintended consequences of well-meaning actions.
First, the data problem. All voting is local in the US, so you’re just not going to find a national API for registration, wait times, or even polling places. Google Civic has some of that, but it’s coverage is spotty, and they are late to update because they wait for the individual counties to send in their data to the Voting Information Project. Sources like the DNC have better data, but it’s not publicly available, for partisan reasons. Outside groups like Alloy dot us have some as well, but that took a huge investment over the last year from big donors.
The second problem you’re going to face is unintended consequences. Even if you are able to get data about where the lines are long, since your goal is to INCREASE turnout you probably don’t want to discourage people. I’d suggest showing numbers in a simplified trafficlight (red/yellow/green) format, to avoid over-specification and inadvertently telling someone that they it will take them hours to vote.
The best you’re going to be able to do at this point is probably crowdsourcing. I did a project like this in 2008 and 2012 called VideoTheVote, and we were able to show anecdotal issues with documentary evidence, but it’s a journalistic problem to get that distributed, not a technical one. And again, the challenge of gathering data is huge. Check out related projects like the Police Brutality Archive on Github (2020pb) and see what it took to get thousands of videos together over the summer.
There are also lots of existing efforts that need help with only 19 days to go. Volunteer with the Election Protection Coalition answering phones at protectthevote dot net, or with your local area to understand the real-world challenges here. Or you can answer questions from voters via Slack with VoteAmerica dot com slash volunteer (can’t put links in my first post…)
I’m also happy to discuss this idea further online in these forums, or offline by email. I don’t mean to be discouraging, and again I’m really glad that you’re interested in applying your tech skills to helping save democracy.
- Josh
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If you really want to code on JAMStack, I have a few open issues on my project Crush2020.org that connects activists with campaigns to donate to and volunteer with (https://github.com/spacedogXYZ/crush2020). It’s Gatsby not Redwood, but still uses Netlify functions and Fauna as a backend.
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Hi Josh, thanks so much for your thoughtful post. And welcome to Redwood.
I think you are right; I’ve been having no success getting data, and I realize that the even harder part would be getting the site noticed. So I’m feeling like I had the idea too late.
The good news is that while I was volunteering at the polls this morning the lines were short rather than many hours long. So maybe there isn’t the serious problem that I feared.
P.S. I’m impressed by what I’ve seen of Crush2020!
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@jlev I’m always thinking about these kinds of things. And I’m very aware how hard it is to anticipate these things on the frontend — they require observation and analysis.
In this case, might you have any links to research or case studies about voting/polling in particulare? Understood if not.
And thanks again for taking the time to add to this conversation!
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@ryancwalsh I was out for a long weekend with the family and just now getting plugged back in. Curious about where you’re at with this project? I (always) have ideas, especially when it comes to optimizing for learning outcomes. No pressure either way.
@jlev do you happen to know of any research/information about the primary reasons, related to logistics, as to why people don’t vote? I’d be very curious to better understand the mechanics and circumstances that deter people.
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Glad you had a much-deserved rest. And thanks for your questions.
I’ve slowed down my efforts and enthusiasm about VoteQuickly because:
-
I think my fears of the “problem” may have been overblown (I’m not seeing the headlines about extremely long wait times anymore, such as the 8-hr waits that GA started out with)
-
From my experience at the polls on 3 separate days: I’ve seen some odd behavior that makes me think that (some) people actually choose and enjoy the long waits (which I’m guessing is because maybe they think waiting longer makes the experience more meaningful and more of a story)
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I’ve gotten practically 0 traction when trying to promote it, and time is running out.
BUT, I’ve still been spending time trying to improve it just because (like you were saying) it’s a helpful way to learn (Redwood, GraphQL, TypeScript, etc).
I posted 3 questions to Thinking about patterns for services, GraphQL, Apollo, cells, etc and with David T’s help have solved #1 and #3 but not the question about how to use GraphQL queries/mutations from the front-end outside of a component.
So that’s what I’ll be focusing on next.
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Thanks for the update! Please do keep 'em coming as you have time.
- I think my fears of the “problem” may have been overblown
^^ Clearly there’s a lot of complexity here. And it’s going to keep changing over time. So TBD
- From my experience at the polls on 3 separate days: I’ve seen some odd behavior that makes me think that (some) people actually choose and enjoy the long waits
^^ Reminds me of some Behavioral Economics research I read. Who knows, maybe no lines or short lines actually make people feel like no one else is voting so it must not be important… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
- I’ve gotten practically 0 traction when trying to promote it, and time is running out.
^^ Be careful how you interpret this. Clearly it’s a signal about your potential ROI, but remember it’s also a factor of:
- your personal network and potential for marketing (given current media noise about voting right now)
- the difference between what you perceive as the problem and what your potential users perceive as a problem. Long lines are clearly an indicator of poor infrastructure that reduces accessibility across all categories of people. But maybe, for voters, that’s not actually a problem they think about when it comes to going to a polling place to vote. I don’t have any answers here, but this is the thinking behind my questions to Josh in an earlier post.
Lastly, I wasn’t referring to learning specifically in the technical sense (although that’s very rewarding). I was also referring to learning about politics, voting, and social behavior around an election. Based on this discussion, it seems there’s a tremendous amount to be learned and no central place with either the data or the answers.
fwiw…
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I love how you’re thinking! Thanks!
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