Quik Vote

Inspiration

In Florida, voting polls are open from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, which is limiting on a work day, and the situation is made worse by the fact that polling locations often have a wait. The average wait time we have is 39 minutes. Studies from the Election Law Journal and Election Assistance Commission estimate that hundreds of thousands tend to sit out elections because of long queues.
This problem becomes even more worrisome when taking into consideration that precinct wait times increase with minority count. Precincts with less than 10% of people of color had wait times of about 5 minutes, while those with more than 90% of people of color had wait times averaging more than 30 minutes.
This systematic disenfranchisement leads to members of minority communities forgoing more wages than the typical white voter. MIT Scientists estimate a billion dollars are lost in wages during presidential elections.

What it does

To combat the phenomenons mentioned above, we decided to develop a virtual queuing system. After all, if Disney can use FastPass for their theme parks, why can't we use it for our democracy?

Users can enter their address and what time they are most available to vote into a web portal, and the system checks if any fast passes are still available at the nearest voting precinct from the given inputs. If there are, the user can go to the polls at their chosen time and vote without the worry of long waits. And if there aren't, the system will notify users how long the line is expected to last, and if there's a better time to go vote.

How I built it

The precinct identifier was developed by calling the user inputs into an existing precinct identifier API.

The fast pass system was developed by creating a 16-character unique identifier in javascript and then transferring that string into a QR code made from the qrcode.js library.

The expected wait times of each precinct were developed by using a Bayesian estimation machine-learning model of user interaction at precincts within Florida. This model was also used to determine the number of fast passes at each time of the day.