cat ~/projects/sawt.md

Sawt

Automating an election, from voting to results.

An app that digitises the election process end to end: voter registration, identity-verified access, casting a vote and announcing results. Built for transparency at every stage.

Role
Solo: mobile and backend
Year
2025
Status
Shipped
type
Mobile
Built with
React NativeTypeScriptOTP verificationFirebaseZustandReact QueryReanimatedRestyleZod
Where to find it
apps/sawt-1.png2400×1350
Interface of Sawt

head -n 40 overview

What it is

Voting is the least forgiving thing to build. A bug in a normal app annoys someone; a bug here invalidates a result and the trust that goes with it.

Sawt covers the whole cycle: voters register and access their account through verified identity, cast a ballot, and results are announced through the same system. The engineering priority throughout was that every stage be verifiable rather than merely fast.

diff before after

Challenges

A line taken out, a line put in. The problem first, then what actually replaced it.

  1. One person, one vote, on a device you do not control

    Anyone can install the app twice, on two phones, with two numbers. Device-based identity is not identity, and client-side checks are trivially bypassed.

    Eligibility is bound to a verified identity checked server-side via OTP, and the ballot record itself enforces uniqueness per voter per election. The device is treated as untrusted throughout.

  2. Everyone votes in the last hour

    Election traffic is not steady. It is nothing for days and then everything at once, right before closing. A system that works in testing can fold exactly when it matters.

    Writes are kept small and idempotent so a retried submission cannot double-count, and reads for results are served from aggregates rather than recomputed per request.

tail outcomes

Results

  • Published on Google Play.
  • Identity-verified, one-vote-per-voter enforcement on the server.

open ./shots/*

The screens themselves

Keep readingتابع القراءة

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