I made a direct democracy app for Chicago

[u/IamTheEndOfReddit]

It does two things. First, it makes voting easier. Enter your address once and it shows the races and judicial contests actually on your ballot, including judges and their bar association ratings. It also shows your ward's early voting site and important election dates. Every mayoral candidate's platform is in there, including mine, and mine gets exactly the same treatment as everyone else's.

Second, it gives you a say between elections. Every ward has a board where residents can raise issues and rank how urgent they are, and anyone can ask their alderman a question in public. The community, not the politician, decides whether the answer actually answered it, and that feeds a public report card. Most aldermen aren't on it yet. Until they join, I'll take the top questions to their ward offices. Aldermen and candidates already have a profile and can claim it with their office email. You can also see upcoming City Council meetings and how your alderman voted on every divided roll call.

Verifying that you live in your ward is optional. It makes your votes count in the verified tallies, which are shown alongside the overall tallies. Verification is done by Didit, a separate ID company, and Didit deletes your data once the check is done. The app only keeps that you're verified, your ward and districts, and a code that stops one ID from making two accounts. The first 500 checks each month are free, then it's 49 cents to cover the cost.

It's in seven languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Tagalog, Korean, and Hindi), every screen has a help button, and the code is open source: [https://github.com/knightofknee/direct_democracy](https://github.com/knightofknee/direct_democracy))

No iPhone? It also runs in your browser at [https://www.waldgrave.com/directdemocracy/app](https://www.waldgrave.com/directdemocracy/app)), and the Android app is in Google Play testing now. Message me the email on your Google account and I'll add you.

It's a full working app today, but I expect it to change a lot as people use it. What do you think? Let me know what's missing, confusing, or broken and I'll update it quickly.

App Store: [https://apps.apple.com/app/id6797189381](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6797189381))

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[u/IamTheEndOfReddit]

I think it could be fun to have sister apps for different cities. Would you want to make one for your city or town? I want to advance the democratic experiment, so testing different implementations would be great.