Dems Release Voter Registration Apps, Including Open Source Version
While voting for the president via a browser may never happen, it’s now easier to register to vote online, thanks to the Obama campaign and the Democratic party, which debuted two flavors of online voter registration widgets just days before their nomination convention.
Late Friday night, the Democratic National Committee released open source software that allows any site — whether it leans Republican, Democratic, Libertarian or Occupyist — to embed an unbranded app that helps citizens register to vote. The open source code uses the cool kids’ Ruby on Rails framework and was posted on GitHub, the go-to spot for coders to collaborate on open software. (Here’s a demo of the app running on Heroku.)
Would-be voters simply fill out a form, and the app creates a PDF unique to their state that they can print out. Citizens of states that allow online registration are taken directly to the proper online form. The code is released under a custom license from the DNC that allows wide re-use of the code, so long as laws aren’t broken.