Does My Vote Matter

Bringing transparency to gerrymandering: empowering voters with knowledge to drive informed participation and fair representation this election season.

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👋 Empowering Voters through Transparency

Does Your Vote Matter is a project designed to empower voters by providing an easy way to determine if their district has been gerrymandered. By allowing users to input their state and district, we run algorithms that measure compactness and efficiency gaps, generating clear conclusions to inform voters about the fairness of their electoral district.

🫳 What it Does

Input their state and district information. Analyze the district's compactness and efficiency gap using established algorithms. Receive a conclusion on whether the district is likely gerrymandered, along with explanations of the metrics used.

👊 How We Built It

We developed a web application using a robust backend with Python, Django, and SQLite, which sent data to our frontend built in HTML/CSS and Javascript.

Our Website Features: A user-friendly interface for inputting state and district information. Algorithms that calculate compactness (e.g., Polsby-Popper, Schwartzberg) and efficiency gaps to assess the fairness of district boundaries. Clear visualizations to present the findings to users effectively. Guide our voters to take initiative by contacting their district representative

🤞 What's Next for Does Your Vote Matter

Looking ahead, we have several exciting goals for Does Your Vote Matter:

-Using the Census API to fetch up to date information -Grow our databases on the Cloud to handle more statistical factors such as race, urban concentration, -and geographical boundaries (rivers, mountains, forests) -Using Databricks AI to provide detailed insight into gerrymandering data and provide data visualization -Generating with Gemini AI to provide human text insights on political data

💪 Challenges We Ran Into

Data Accuracy: Ensuring the accuracy and up-to-date nature of district maps and demographic data was a significant challenge. Algorithm Complexity: Implementing complex algorithms for measuring compactness and efficiency gaps required extensive testing and validation. User Interface Design: Balancing the technical complexity of the algorithms with an intuitive user experience posed design challenges.

🙌 Accomplishments We're Proud Of

Successfully implemented algorithms that provide reliable assessments of district fairness. Developed a clean, intuitive user interface that makes the tool accessible to all voters. Fostered teamwork and collaboration, allowing us to integrate feedback and improve our project continuously. Created a robust backend that efficiently processes user inputs and delivers results in real time.

🫶 What We Learned

-The importance of utilizing accurate and comprehensive data for meaningful analysis. -How to effectively communicate complex mathematical concepts in a user-friendly manner. -The value of user testing to refine our application's usability and effectiveness. -Techniques for optimizing algorithms for performance and scalability.

How to Run It

git clone https://github.com/wcia013twe/DoesMyVoteMatter-.git

With python installed on your system run

python manage.py runserver
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