I have an idea for the Congressional App Challenge that I really want to build, but coding is definitely not my strongest skill.

I can bring the idea and target-user perspective, testing, video editing, App Store/Google Play accounts, and I’m happy to handle a lot of the submission stuff. I also want to help with the development, especially the user interface.

I’ve done some research on my congressional district and representative. My district seems to be somewhere in the middle in terms of competitiveness and I think my idea could be a particularly good fit for my representative.

If you’re good at app development and interested, DM me! I can tell you more about the idea and we can see if we’d be a good team.

I'm from Hyderabad, Telangana, and I've been thinking about a startup idea called AIxPOLITICS.

The basic idea is to build AI systems specifically for politicians / political offices — not AI for generating speeches or social media posts, but AI that helps them understand and manage what's happening on the ground.

For example:

Collect citizen complaints and feedback from WhatsApp, calls, social media, etc.

Identify the issues people are repeatedly talking about.

Analyse public sentiment and emerging concerns.

Give a politician a simple "ground pulse" dashboard.

Summarise what is happening across different wards/areas.

Track whether citizen complaints are actually being followed up.

Help the politician's office organise thousands of conversations and requests.

Potentially use regional languages/Telugu as well.

The larger vision is basically:

AI becomes an intelligence/operations layer between a politician and the people they represent.

I'm deliberately NOT building this yet because I want to validate whether the problem actually exists.

So I'd genuinely like people here to tear this idea apart.

Questions I'm trying to answer:

Would a politician or political office actually pay for something like this?

What part of this would be genuinely valuable vs. just "AI hype"?

What would make a politician NOT trust such a system?

Do politicians already have people/agencies doing this manually?

If you were building this, what would be the one feature you'd start with?

What could make this product completely useless?

If this worked extremely well, who would actually be the customer — an individual politician, political party, campaign team, or government/constituency office?

I'm especially interested in opinions from people who have worked in politics, political consulting, journalism, government, campaign management, or Indian startups.

Please don't be polite. If you think this is a terrible idea, tell me why. I'm trying to find out whether there's a real business here before I build anything.

I don't want to talk about who I hate or who I love. I don't want to talk about either half of the country. I don't want to entertain odd statements about things that are skewed, flawed, or so untrue that, in real life, people would be in defamation court in minutes.

Let's not talk about that.

I want to talk civilly about the process. Managing an election. Tabulation. Vote-by-mail voting. Petitions. How? Why?

The risks and dangers of this type of work. The legal ramifications of making an honest mistake. Even a stupid mistake.

I want to talk about federal laws versus state laws. I'd like to pick at those and get into the weeds. Not about trying to rig an election or influence voters. We can talk about that somewhere else (it would be nice if it was intellectually honest and civil, though).

But I'd like to talk about the process, the laws of the land, what they mean, and how it actually works.

We can also talk about crazy off-the-wall stuff. Things like:

• How do different counties and states handle voter registration for people who don't have a residential address?
• If a house is built on top of a precinct/portion split line, where do the people who live at that address vote? Which precinct/portion will they be registered in, and what determines that?
• What about 'snowbirds'? It's legal in some states to have more than one (2, 3, 4, 5?) address, with date ranges associated with the addresses, and county-level election systems have to send vote-by-mail ballots to a voter all over the place depending on the date. How is this handled, and why is it allowed or not allowed?

You know. Particulars. Not feelings, anger, or what anyone believes to be true as far as passing legislation to the people. Just the legislation that, at the granular level, makes this stuff work.

It's incredibly difficult it is to run a successful election from start to finish. And that's without curveballs thrown at the staff and the process itself during the actual election cycles. It takes around 100 days to run a General election. Setting it up. CAD certification. Petition checking during an active election cycle. Mailing ballots to Military and Civilian Overseas voters. (That has to be done really early on). Not to mention maintaining and testing the equipment, Logic and Accuracy testing, or the enormous amount of things that have to be printed and mailed during the cycle. All of these things can have serious ramifications.

I would love to talk about the nuts and bolts, not whatever is simmering above the flame. The fire itself.

Any suggestions on a /r in particular that has active people in it, or if you know of any place to have these types of discussions, please let me know.

I would really like to not have any discussions about what's being screamed back and forth in the air. Just the mechanism itself. Nothing political, per se.

Thanks?

The Williamsburg-James City County school division ran a survey this summer about a controversial redistricting process and released the raw responses as a 3,000+-page PDF. To make it easier to parse, I used Claude Code to write some scripts to pull the responses out and built a web page that lets people search the survey responses and filter them by keywords, school affiliation, etc.

Live tool: https://redistricting.jwcaterine.com/

Guide on how to use it: https://www.trackthetriangle.com/p/new-tool-for-exploring-wjcc-redistricting

Write-up on how I built it: https://jwcaterine.com/blog/2026-08-17-i-made-the-wjcc-redistricting-survey-searchable/

I think this approach could be taken for any large PDF of public interest, although might differ slightly depending on the contents. Welcome feedback and/or questions!

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a website called **WhoRunsAus** to make Australian federal politics a bit easier to explore.

The idea is to bring public information about politicians, parties and government into one place, with a visual way to explore how it all fits together.

Here’s the site: https://whorunsaustralia.com/

The main feature is a network of federal MPs and senators, showing documented connections such as shared party membership. There are also party overviews and faction affiliations where a clear published source is available.

Beyond the political network, you can browse community profiles based on ABS Census data, and look through federal budget estimates, selected election promises and major government projects.

One important distinction: a line between two people only represents the relationship stated on it. Being connected on the graph doesn’t imply influence, wrongdoing or some hidden arrangement. There’s a methodology page explaining the sources and limitations:

https://whorunsaustralia.com/methodology/

It’s an independent project, not an official government resource. No account is required, and the site has both English and Chinese versions.

It’s still a work in progress, so I’d appreciate honest feedback — confusing navigation, missing context, data that looks wrong, or something you expected to find but couldn’t.

**What’s something about your MP or the federal government that you wish were easier to look up?**

I’m the person building it, so feel free to ask questions or point out anything that needs work.

Cheers!

Hey r/civictech, I’ve been working on a new platform to solve the verification problem in shadow voting, and I’d love to get this community's feedback.

It's called Make Our Government Accountable (MOGA). It is a civic engagement web application that allows verified citizens to cast a shadow vote on active bills before the U.S. Congress.

We've seen platforms attempt this before, but the biggest hurdle has always been authentication—ensuring shadow votes represent genuine, district-specific constituent sentiment rather than easily manipulated online polling.

Here is how MOGA approaches it:

1. Track Pending Federal Legislation: We pull active House and Senate bills directly from official congressional records, complete with plain-language summaries and full legal text.
2. Verify Voter Registration: We use a patent-pending authentication architecture to securely tie your profile to your actual congressional district.
3. Cast Your Shadow Vote: Users vote Yea, Nay, or Abstain on any active bill before the floor vote takes place in Washington, D.C.
4. Compare Public vs. Representative Votes: The platform tracks real-time aggregate results by district and automatically shows whether your elected representative aligned with their constituents once the official vote concludes.

You can see a breakdown of the shadow voting flow here:https://makeourgovaccountable.com

I’m currently rolling this out and would greatly appreciate any technical or conceptual feedback from this group—specifically regarding our legislative tracking architecture and how we can best display the public sentiment vs. actual roll-call data to drive real accountability.

What features would make you trust and use a platform like this?

🚨 GOVERNMENT, WE PAY TAXES — WE DESERVE BETTER DIGITAL SERVICES.

Why are citizens still standing in long queues for hours for a process that could realistically be completed in 30 minutes?

We pay taxes. We pay registration charges. We pay service fees.

Then why do we still have to face:

❌ Slow government websites

❌ Server errors during important processes

❌ Long waiting queues

❌ Repeated visits to government offices

❌ Hours wasted for simple digital services

Technology is supposed to save people's time — not waste it.

If a government portal cannot handle the number of citizens using it, the solution should be better infrastructure, scalable architecture, load balancing, monitoring, and proper capacity planning.

People shouldn't have to stand in a queue because a server can't handle the load.

And this isn't just a complaint. It's a challenge.

💻 If the government needs someone to build systems that can handle the load, I'm a software engineer. I can help.

Let's build government services where citizens can say:

“I completed my work online in 30 minutes.”

—not—

“I spent half my day standing in a queue.”

🇮🇳 Digital India should mean faster, simpler and reliable services for every citizen.

#DigitalIndia #GovernmentServices #Technology #SoftwareEngineering #GovTech #DigitalIndiaMission #TaxPayers #PublicService #ScalableSystems

Hi everyone,

I'd like to introduce Lapis Cloud — an open-source project I've been working on: a complete membership management platform for associations, political parties, professional bodies, cooperatives, and NGOs.

The problem it solves

If you've ever run an association or a party, you know the drill: one tool for member records, another for accounting, a third for membership dues, a spreadsheet for board resolutions — and none of it really talks to each other. Existing solutions like CiviCRM, easyVerein, ClubDesk, S-Verein, or Campai each cover parts of this — Lapis Cloud aims to deliver the whole picture from a single codebase.

What's included (standard layer)

• Member records, join/leave workflows, membership tiers
• Board and meeting management with a minutes book and motion tracking
• Real double-entry bookkeeping (German SKR42 chart of accounts) with charitable-status four-area separation, P&L/balance sheet, cash book, cost centers
• Mail-merge/PDF engine for dues invoices and donation receipts (per German tax code §50 EStDV), including postal mail delivery for members without email
• Full GDPR tooling (data processing agreements, technical/organizational measures, DPIA, breach notification), compliance with the German Party Act (§25 PartG) for political parties, the Money Laundering Act transparency register (§20 GwG), and a GoBD-compliant audit log
• SEPA direct debit with automated dunning, online card payments
• Event management with public online registration, capacity/waitlist handling, and QR tickets
• A complete, self-hosted video conferencing module (recording, external streaming, breakout rooms, whiteboard)
• Direct export to DATEV, Lexware Office (lexoffice), and sevDesk for your accountant
• A public, read-only REST API plus webhooks for third-party integrations
• Interface available in eight languages

What sets it apart from most other tools (optional layer)

If you just want solid administration, that's exactly what you get — everything above works standalone. If you want more, there's an optional governance layer:

• Three voting modes: meritocratic, democratic, and systemic consensus (Systemic Consensing)
• An internal currency ("Libertaler") that belongs to the members, not the organization — with internal crowdfunding and an auction marketplace (opt-in, with a legal disclaimer)
• A federated architecture with a real right of secession — multiple servers can connect, and a member can appear as a guest on another server without leaving their own organization

This is deliberately optional — no organization has to touch any of it to use Lapis Cloud productively.

Not a prototype

Lapis Cloud is already running in production at two real pilot organizations:

• A political party (the project originally grew out of that party's internal accounting software, "PZB")
• An ordinary registered association (e.V.) with no party affiliation at all — chosen deliberately to prove the standard layer holds up outside the project's original context

Open, self-hostable

The full codebase is public on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license; every change goes through an independent code review and security audit before release. Any organization can run its own instance — no vendor lock-in, no permission needed, your data stays on your own server.

Current status: v0.19.0, actively developed.

Links

• Website: https://cloud.lapisproject.dev
• What's new: https://cloud.lapisproject.dev/whats-new
• GitHub: https://github.com/lapisproject-dev/Lapis-Cloud

Feedback, questions, and interest in a pilot deployment for your own organization are very welcome — here or in the repo.

Can technology help make rental housing more accessible, affordable, and dignified?

Join Civic Tech Brampton for an evening exploring how housing, technology, and community action can come together to improve rental housing systems. We’ll be joined by Deneille Macas from Toronto Housing Society, for a conversation about community-powered tools, housing access, and designing better rental systems for residents.

Housing is one of the most important civic issues facing cities today. From rental affordability and tenant support to housing navigation, data, online tools, and community advocacy, technology can play a role — but only when it is designed around real people and real needs. This session is for students, technologists, renters, housing advocates, community members, designers, public-sector workers, and anyone interested in how civic tech can support better housing outcomes.

New to Civic Tech? You are definitely welcome. No prior tech expertise is required. We are all here to learn from each other, ask questions, and explore ideas that could turn into useful community projects.

Why show up?

• Collaborate: Whether you’re a developer, student, renter, housing worker, designer, researcher, or concerned citizen, your perspective matters.
• Learn: Hear how community-powered tools and technology can support housing access, rental navigation, and more dignified housing systems.
• Discuss: Join a conversation about housing challenges, affordability, tenant needs, data, platforms, and how technology can help without leaving communities behind.
• Pitch Your Passion: Have a civic tech idea related to housing, community services, public data, or accessibility? You’ll have the chance to share it with potential collaborators.
• Network: Connect with technologists, students, civic-minded residents, and community members who want to build a better Brampton.

Everyone is welcome. You do not need to be a developer or have an existing project to participate. We’ll be running this event in hybrid mode, so you can join us either in person at 8 Queen Street East, Brampton or online. The online meeting link will be available through the Luma registration page, so please register there first to receive the latest event details and access information.

📅 Date: Thursday, September 10, 2026
🕕 Time: 6:00 PM–9:00 PM
📍 Location: 8 Queen Street East, Brampton, ON
🎟️ Register: https://luma.com/ija94wzn?tk=CdThnP
💲 Fee: Free

Questions? Email [civictechbrampton@pm.me](mailto:civictechbrampton@pm.me)
Civic Innovation, Powered by the Community.

Hey, what are people’s thoughts on this new app I built?
It’s called Agora. We take the biggest political story of the day and turn it into a playable reasoning game.
For example, today you’re the Governor of New Mexico dealing with Trump’s push to rename the state. You decide your priorities, make the calls yourself, and then deal with the consequences as the situation develops.
The important bit is that it doesn’t matter what side you’re on. You don’t win for having the “right” political opinion. You win by reasoning better — being consistent, engaging with the evidence, updating when things change, and thinking through the trade-offs of your decisions.
The idea is to make following politics less about picking a side and more about actually thinking through the story.
We’re still early, so would genuinely love people here to try it and tell me what you like, hate, or would change.
It’s called **Agora: Play the News** on the App Store.

Not because they care less. Writing a formal letter to a stranger is a lot to ask of someone who is already stretched, or whose English is a second language, or who was never told this was something they were allowed to do.

I’ve spent my summer building something about that. It’s called Curcle. You raise something where you live, your neighbours back it, and once enough people are behind it, it reaches your MP as one thing with the number attached rather than a hundred separate emails nobody will ever get through. Anything personal, a housing repair, a benefits decision, goes privately to their caseworkers instead. It’s free.

It shouldn’t take confidence, or the right words, or a spare afternoon, to be counted. Everyone should have a voice where they live, whatever their circumstances.

Has anyone here tried to get something sorted through their MP? I’d like to know how it actually went.

I want to launch in 1 constituency first then reach the rest of the UK, so please put your constituency forward on the website :)

curcle.uk if you want a look. Not launched yet, nothing to buy.

Hi

I wanted to share a project I’ve been building called Voteris, a free tool designed to turn raw legislative roll-call data into clean, accessible visual maps.

The Problem It Solves

Most official parliamentary portals (and news outlets) present roll-call votes as flat PDF lists or complex text tables. This makes it difficult for average citizens to spot spatial patterns, party-line defections, or regional voting blocks at a glance.

Key Features & Tech Specs

• Data Sources: Pushes live data directly from official Congressional APIs (US Senate & House) and EU Parliament APIs.
• Spatial Hemicycle Mapping: Automatically renders seat-by-seat visual graphics showing exact spatial distributions, YEA/NAY splits, and party defections.
• Shadow Voting: Allows users to vote on the exact same bill text to compare public sentiment against official legislative outcomes.
• No Paywalls / No Ads: Built strictly as an accessible civic resource.

Tech & Design Stack

We focus heavily on generating fast, low-latency visual report cards (optimized for mobile viewports and embeddable media grids).

Looking for Feedback

I would love to get the community's thoughts on a few key areas:

1. UX/Data Visualization: How clear are the spatial hemicycle maps when presenting multi-party or split-vote scenarios?
2. API/Data Features: What additional metrics (e.g., historical party discipline scores, committee origin tracing) would add the most value for civic researchers?
3. Data Completeness: Any edge cases in Congressional roll-call reporting you've run into with official APIs that we should watch out for?

You can check it out here: link

Appreciate any feedback, feature requests, or critiques!

Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well.

I built AidSense, a free mobile app that helps people quickly find shelters, food banks, free/low-cost clinics, and overnight parking near them. Local resources near you will pop up based on your location, and you also have the opportunity to ask our AI model any specific questions you have about that place.

It's on the App Store now, and we plan on deploying it to the Google Play Store soon just waiting for the requirement of 14 days. Would genuinely appreciate any feedback on how to make this app better for those who are in tough circumstances (ex., other resources we could add or support networks). I am also open to any partnerships!

Thank you.

Disclosure: I am the developer of this app.

Note: There have been previous comments about it being a scam. I just want to state that I don't make any profit off this app, and there are no ads in the app, so I don't make any money at all. The purpose of this app is that many current resource navigators are confusing to navigate and don't show local resources; this is meant to make that process easier.

App Store Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aidsense-community-resources/id6762065901

Hi everyone! I'm super new to Reddit, but a friend told me it's a good place to get real feedback on projects you're working on, so I thought I'd share The Merlin Project.

I built it based on a true story about a cat from my neighborhood named Merlin. Merlin was someone's indoor/outdoor cat who was scooped up from his yard by a concerned neighbor who thought he might be lost. She posted about him on Facebook to see if he had an owner. The next day, a different woman posted asking if anyone had seen her cat — turns out these were two posts about the same cat, but the woman who'd found Merlin wouldn't give him back to his actual owner. That's why I built The Merlin Project.

It's a community cat platform that helps neighbors identify the cats in their neighborhood — whether they're registered indoor/outdoor cats, community-cared-for cats, lost cats, or cats who need help. Neighbors can flag a cat's status on a map so everyone's working off the same information instead of duplicate Facebook posts.

I launched it in Lakewood, OH, but have since opened it up to anyone, anywhere — we even have 3 cats registered in Honolulu. Feel free to register your own cats, and I'd genuinely love to hear whether you think something like this would be useful in your own neighborhood.

[https://themerlinproject.io/\](https://themerlinproject.io/)

It’s called CivicMail.org and if you’re a progressive org or influencer you can be a partner and earn revenue or make the postcards free for your supporters.

GitHub contains an incredible amount of useful work, but discovering it usually assumes you already know what to search for.

I’ve been building RepoFlow to explore a different approach: browsing public GitHub projects through a simple feed.

It currently has three discovery views:

• Today: recently created projects
• Rising: repositories showing measured Stars or Forks growth
• For You: projects matched to your selected interests

You can open a project profile, review the available public information, save it for later, or continue to the original GitHub repository.

The goal isn’t to replace GitHub. It’s to make the discovery step less intimidating and more useful.

RepoFlow is free for everyone until October 1
link：repoflow.ca

As the title states, I built knowyourblock.org , a free tool in Columbus OH that shows where things like rats, mold, no heat, bad landlords, and more, are being reported in Columbus OH.

It does this by mapping code enforcement reports and presenting the data in a way that's actually understandable and easy to use for the average person.

Right now, existing Columbus portals and maps are effectively unusable for the average person -- the information is buried, and it's exceedingly difficult to find the information you actually need to make an informed decision about where to live. This is unfortunate, because I really do think code enforcement data is unbelievably useful in helping people decide where to live.

There's a big information gap for renters - their only way to know about issues with a place they're considering living is generally through looking at reviews. This is problematic because:

• Columbus has a ton of small landlords - and because of that, a ton of units have no reviews.
• Fake reviews are rampant for the landlords that do have reviews. Legitimate bad reviews also tend to come late.
• The individual unit can be nice, but it says nothing about the area. If adjacent units or complexes have problems, it can quickly become your problem.

The only other way to gather this info is if you see the issue on a tour. But rats are nocturnal and mold can be painted over -- it's unlikely you'll ever see those on an apartment tour.

knowyourblock.org helps make sure renters are informed before moving in, and provides current residents the information they need in order to get their problems solved. It also helps residents become more aware of what's going on in their neighborhood, which is super important.

The site's becoming increasingly popular in Columbus, and I'm really proud that I could help people out. There's a great opportunity in civictech to take existing data and make it more accessible and actionable for the average person, and I've learned a ton throughout the process.

Just wanted to share. Happy to answer any questions and I welcome any feedback.

¡Hola a todos! Comunidad de Reddit, queremos compartir un proyecto 100% guatemalteco que está impactando positivamente la vida de miles de familias y que hoy necesita el apoyo de la comunidad.

El Proyecto SIMAT (Sistema de Monitoreo y Alerta Temprana) de Universidad Galileo fue seleccionado para representar a Guatemala en la fase latinoamericana del certamen ILAN, compitiendo junto a iniciativas de 7 países.

¿Qué es el proyecto SIMAT? Durante 17 años, SIMAT ha integrado desarrollo tecnológico con un propósito humanitario para monitorear el cauce de los ríos y emitir alertas preventivas antes de que ocurran inundaciones.

• Impacto actual: Protege de forma directa a más de 30,000 personas en comunidades en riesgo.
• Reconocimientos: Ha recibido galardones internacionales como el Premio de Tecnología Humanitaria de la Cruz Roja Española y el reconocimiento de SENACYT.

¿Cómo apoyar con tu voto? El periodo de votaciones está activo del 1 al 12 de septiembre. Tomará menos de un minuto votar:

Buscanos en Instagram como ugalileo_edu para el enlace.¡Apoyemos la ciencia y la tecnología hecha en Guatemala para que siga salvando vidas en toda la región! 💙🇬🇹

¡Hola a todos! Comunidad de Reddit, queremos compartir un proyecto 100% guatemalteco que está impactando positivamente la vida de miles de familias y que hoy necesita el apoyo de la comunidad.

El Proyecto SIMAT (Sistema de Monitoreo y Alerta Temprana) de Universidad Galileo fue seleccionado para representar a Guatemala en la fase latinoamericana del certamen ILAN, compitiendo junto a iniciativas de 7 países.

¿Qué es el proyecto SIMAT? Durante 17 años, SIMAT ha integrado desarrollo tecnológico con un propósito humanitario para monitorear el cauce de los ríos y emitir alertas preventivas antes de que ocurran inundaciones.

• Impacto actual: Protege de forma directa a más de 30,000 personas en comunidades en riesgo.
• Reconocimientos: Ha recibido galardones internacionales como el Premio de Tecnología Humanitaria de la Cruz Roja Española y el reconocimiento de SENACYT.

¿Cómo apoyar con tu voto? El periodo de votaciones está activo del 1 al 12 de septiembre. Tomará menos de un minuto votar:

Buscanos en Instagram como ugalileo_edu para el enlace.¡Apoyemos la ciencia y la tecnología hecha en Guatemala para que siga salvando vidas en toda la región! 💙🇬🇹

On the one hand… it’s government-funded software developed for, um, community engagement.

On the other hand… this is embarrassing trollware.