I'm planning a limited, public beta test for my first app, Informed, for iOS in early 2025. Informed is a U.S. civic and political data app to help people find their representatives, browse upcoming elections, track campaign finance, and much more. Informed is also free and private—no account signup, no unnecessary requests for data, and no ads (ever).

I started learning iOS development in 2022 as a kind of pandemic hobby, and I've been working on Informed in my spare time for more than a year to make exploring civic data fun, easy, and intuitive.

During the beta, all core features below will be available. Users will be able to:

• browse upcoming federal elections and see related candidates and campaign finance data

• set election reminders with push notifications and integration with the Reminders and Calendar apps

• add your address or Congressional district to find your representatives and see personalized location-based data

• view race ratings, which categorize upcoming elections ranging from "safe Democrat" to "toss-up" to "safe Republican"

• explore top candidates and committees to see how much money they've raised, where it's coming from, and what they're spending it on

• browse civics guides with introductory information covering a range of topics, such as the structure of the federal government, elections and voting, and state and local government

• see past election results (currently only presidential election results from 2000-2020)

• browse and contact current members of Congress

• explore Baseline and Cook PVI, two metrics for measuring partisanship in a state or district

• explore interactive charts, different accent colors, and alternative app icons

Requires iOS 18+.

What is Informed?

Informed is an iOS app that helps people better understand and track civic and political data for elections, campaign finance, candidates, and members of Congress. Powered by a range of APIs, the app allows users to quickly discover upcoming elections, find and contact their representatives, browse the political action committees funding candidates, and so much more. Informed also includes educational guides to make learning civics easy and approachable, covering fundamental concepts like the structure of the federal government, elections and voting, and state and local government. My goal is for Informed to be a comprehensive, accurate, and non-partisan source of information for anyone interested in following civic data and learning more about how the U.S. government works, and the app's tagline ("Civic data for everyone") reflects my aim to make that information approachable, transparent, and easy to understand.

The app features a clean, intuitive, and easy-to-navigate user interface that is meant to feel right at home on iOS. The app relies on native SwiftUI components to prioritize the display of different kinds of data, such as campaign finance numbers, political parties, election results, and committee types. Making this data accessible and manageable is one of my main considerations when determining the layout of each view. The app’s UI is largely made up of list and card-like components, similar to the Wallet, Health, or Reminders apps. The use of bright colors and a medium font weight throughout ensure that these elements are easy to read and distinguish.

Informed has five main tabs—Home, Elections, Campaigns, Congress, and Guides—with the middle three focused on different aspects of civic and political data. The Home tab is the app’s starting point, where users can quickly access information on elections, race ratings, campaign finance, and civics guides as well as app settings and personalized location-based information.

Elections

Throughout the development process, showing upcoming elections—and helping users better understand the candidates and finances associated with them—has been a key function of Informed. Currently, the app uses the OpenFEC API to provide this information. Users can quickly see their upcoming elections (if they’ve added their location), set notifications, and add the election to their Calendar and Reminders apps. They can also learn about the candidates running for a particular seat and how much money they’ve raised.

The Elections tab also has ratings for races that indicate how competitive an election is and two metrics that indicate how partisan a state or district is. It also includes guides on elections and voting, gerrymandering and redistricting, the electoral college, and more. Though Informed does not have real-time election results, the app does include past presidential election results dating back to 2000, showing the national popular vote, Electoral College results, turnout percentage, and the results for each state and county, which can be sorted in different ways. Here, Apple’s Swift Charts framework is used extensively to provide a beautiful, clean layout.

Campaign finance

Campaign finance plays a large role in Informed, and my overarching goal is to draw attention to not only the influence of money in our political system but also show how that money flows between nonprofits, committees, and candidates. The data is already public and freely available (see the FEC site and OpenSecrets, for example), but it may not be immediately apparent or obvious to voters making a decision at the voting booth. Informed puts this data front and center in a navigable interface.

Informed’s use of the FEC’s campaign finance data is also a great opportunity to further leverage Swift Charts to visualize this information in an accessible, colorful way. This tab includes two charts that can be tapped on to show more detail: the first shows the total amount of money different committee types have raised in the current election cycle (which in 2024 totaled nearly $25 billion by Election Day), and the second shows how much money presidential, Senate, and House candidates have raised, broken down by party. Both illustrate the astounding scale of money that is spent each election cycle to influence voters and boost campaigns. This tab also features sections that show individual committees and candidates, sorted by the amount they’ve raised.

Congress and Guides

The last two tabs are for members of Congress and civics guides. The Congress tab shows current members, along with some biographical and contact information. At launch, this section will be limited, but with potential to include additional information with help from the Congress.gov API.

Civics guides have long been a part of my overall vision for Informed. In 2022, I came across the results of an annual civics survey that showed only 47% of respondents could name all three branches of government and 26% couldn’t name any of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Though I initially rejected the idea of creating an educational app with in-depth civics lessons, I figured providing some fundamental information alongside political data could be beneficial. My thinking is that data about elections is incomplete without an underlying understanding of how and why we vote (or don’t vote) or how our voting systems could be different. And knowing how much money candidates are raising without knowing about the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court case is only half the picture.

Wrap up

After a long development process that has involved a lot of learning, Informed is almost ready for a public launch. Informed 1.0 has, to me, the bare minimum of what a civic and political data tracker should provide: information on elections, campaign finance, and members of Congress, along with guides and educational resources to make this data accessible and understandable.

But there’s still so much I’d like to add. Follow development as I build in public, and let me know if you have any questions, feedback, or feature requests—or if you just want to chat about civic data and campaign finance. 😉

App: Threads and Bluesky | Personal account: Threads and Bluesky