Rep4Me

Rep4Me Main Screen

Inspiration

We've seen a lot of the same issues being repeated in the news, but there are a lot of other issues that also matter. To help this, we decided to create an app that allows people to see the issues that matter in their area so they can communicate with the elected official that supports it. If an issue that matters to them doesn't show up in their area, they can contact an elected official to let them know why it matters.

What it does

The app takes your zipcode and issues that you feel are important and shows you which (if any) of your Representatives are vocal about them.

How we built it

We used Android Studio and the APIs by Phone2Action and ProPublica to get information on legislators and the bills they have sponsored or cosponsored.

Challenges we ran into

For one thing, the Phone2Action API didn't allow us to access all of the necessary data. To solve this problem, we used another API, suggested by Phone2Action, called ProPublica, which gave us information on bill introduced, sponsored, and cosponsored by elected officials in the US Congress. Another issue that we faced was getting network functionality in our app without causing too much lag. Ultimately, we had to sacrifice some speed for functionality, but the app is still easily usable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of getting multiple APIs to work with each other efficiently. We are also proud of not giving up because of the network problems.

What we learned

We learned more about how to integrate different APIs into an Android app.

What's next for Rep4Me

We wish to make the interface a little more interactive and user friendly, and making the list of issues dynamic so that users can add issues that they care about.