Professional headshot as I spent the entire semester working virtually in Sweden

Author: Joseph Dumond | Major: Computer Science | Semester: Fall 2024

My name is Joseph Dumond. I am a Computer Science major in the College of Engineering. My mentors are Dr. Louis Hancox and Dean Jennie Popp of the Honors College. This research project began in Fall of 2023, but I have had the privilege to continue it into Spring of 2024 and see its completion in the Fall of 2024.

Spanning across three semesters, I had the joy of being the developer of Voting Hub—an application created to provide a central location for all things voting. From frequently asked questions about registration and absentee ballots to describing what your day at the polls might look like, the application sought to target what I feel is the biggest challenge facing many voters today: lack of information.

I’ve heard time and time again, especially on the college campus, “I would vote but…”. For example, “I would vote but I don’t know whether I’m eligible for an absentee ballot.” Or, “I would l vote, but I don’t know where to find the nearest polling location.” There are countless obstacles that can seemingly threaten a person’s right to democracy. However, the solutions to these challenges are available. They just aren’t the easiest to find.

In the Fall of 2023, I joined a group of students as part of an Honors Arkansas course centered around the history of voting rights and legislation within our state. Honors Arkansas courses are unique because the class itself is composed of not only the Fayetteville campus, but other University of Arkansas campuses around the state. The final project for this course was to create a medium through which to express or analyze some aspect of the voting process.

Myself and the University of Arkansas team elected to create an application to house information on all things voting. We felt that many voters, particular college students, simply didn’t know where to look to find answers to their questions. Thus, Voting Hub was born. As the single computer science student surrounded by political science majors, I took charge of the technical aspects of the project.

Voting Hub was originally created as a website hosted on the University of Arkansas SharePoint server. However, this meant that access was restricted to only those with a University of Arkansas email addresses. Therefore, for the past two semesters, I have been building a mobile app from the ground up.

Voting Hub mobile was originally intended to contain clear, concise information about voting information geared towards college students. However, in gathering all the information to conglomerate it into a single place, we realized that the problems faced by college students are not unique and decided to expand the scope of the app to including voting information for all 50 U.S. states.

This past Fall 2024 semester was particularly unique as I spent it studying abroad in Sweden. Juggling a seven-hour time difference and being an ocean away certainly provided me with a unique development experience. Thankfully, I was joined by another developer, so we were able to split the workload.

Voting Hub Mobile 1.0 has been successfully created and resides locally on my phone and laptop. Unfortunately, due to complications with acquiring an Apple developer’s license it must remain there for the time being. Though the mobile app is not publicly available, the newly updated SharePoint website can be found at: https://uark.sharepoint.com/teams/votinghub. I encourage anyone seeking voting information to give it a visit. Throughout its entire development process Voting Hub taught me so many things. I am grateful to have been a part of it and hope others will find it as useful as I have