Group members: Sathya Seelam, Avni Gandhi, Amisha Kandi, Mihir Bhagatwala
VoteSmart is an AI-powered platform that simplifies complex political information into clear, personalized insights for voters. It helps users understand propositions, compare candidates, and make confident decisions at the ballot box. This idea originated after the 2024 election when I realized that, like me, many first-time voters found it difficult to navigate the legal jargon and dense language in official voting materials. With VoteSmart, we hope to increase civic engagement and reduce barriers to political participation—especially for first-time voters and underrepresented communities.
On the tech side, VoteSmart is built using React and Vite for the frontend, FastAPI and Python for the backend, and MongoDB for the database. We integrated Google Gemini's generative AI to simplify propositions and candidate policies, and used custom web scraping tools to pull information directly from trusted sources like .gov websites and official campaign platforms.