Inspiration

Throughout their upbringing, political events have deeply influenced every member of the Politilink team. From local government to the national stage, the actions of our country's politicians can profoundly impact the daily lives of its citizens. In our modern world, dominated by technology and social media, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and overshadowed by the countless voices on the internet. At times, advocating for one's beliefs may even seem futile.

We firmly believe that every voice holds significance. Regardless of geographical location, party affiliation, or the number of opposing voters, we maintain that a single voice has the power to bring about tangible change in the real world. Politilink goes beyond being a mere tool to connect people with Congress; it serves as a reminder that the voice of the voter is just as vital as any other. Sometimes, the greatest waves of transformation begin with small ripples.

Solution

Politilink is a user-friendly Google Chrome extension that examines the introduction of an article and provides the relevant contact information for Congress members associated with the topic. The extension presents a comprehensive list of email addresses, phone numbers, and Twitter handles in a simple and understandable format.

This innovative solution tackles a common challenge faced by American citizens who seek to engage with the political sphere. Extensively researching every issue to identify the politicians involved in matters affecting our daily lives can be arduous and time-consuming. Moreover, locating the precise means of contacting them can pose an additional hurdle. Politilink effectively addresses this problem by offering a convenient and efficient way for individuals to connect with their representatives and express their opinions.

Challenges

Javascript Front-End

When developing this application one of the biggest challenges that we faced involved working with the ChatGPT API in javascript. The majority of the team was unfamiliar with Javascript, which led to us struggling when trying to implement web scraping and api calls to ChatGPT. To overcome this, we utilized Flask to leverage our strengths in Python and integrate the front end with the backend.

ChatGPT Output

Another big issue we faced when working with ChatGPT was the output format. For some reason, the API returned different formats each time the API was called. To overcome this, we did some prompt-engineering to create a custom prompt that would specify the format in which the output should be as well as ensuring ChatGPT understood the input.

Demo