Salem resident creates app to explain policy “in plain English”

Henry Dalton and his brother Makani were talking about legislative bills when they had the idea to build an app that makes policy more accessible to everyday people. It would be called Referendum.

“There are apps out there that are meant for lobbyists, there are apps out there that are meant for lawmakers, but nothing actually meant for the general public, in plain English,” Dalton said. 

Dalton, 22, graduated last year from Willamette University with a degree in data and computer science and a minor in philosophy. He lives in Salem. Makani lives in Washington state and has a physics degree from Columbia University. Along with four more team members, they have been developing Referendum for the past few months.

The app will summarize bills, executive orders and Supreme Court decisions using a ChatGPT artificial intelligence model based on publicly available data. It will also have a social component for users to engage in moderated discussion and participate in polls, and will offer information about individual legislators and their contact information.

Users will be able to easily navigate through legislation and read about it in simple terms, which is core to making government more accessible to the public, according to Dalton.

“We are a nonpartisan information-based app that just shows you what’s going on. We don’t want to tell you what to think. We don’t want to give you our version of what the bills mean,” Dalton said.

His education at Willamette helped Dalton get familiar with new coding languages and do the necessary research to design the app. 

“Being so close to the state Capitol, having so many peers that were interested in politics and interacting with professors that would keep us up to date in world events helped shape my interest in the political system,” he said.

The beta version of the app is available to the public, and users can download it on iOS or on Android. This version is meant to allow users to test the app and provide feedback to the developers prior to the official release, which is expected in the coming months. 

The beta version is divided into two sections. There is a feed, which shows recent activity such as user polls, comments and updates on legislation. And there is a catalogue, which includes an extensive list of bills and legislators and lets users do keyword searches and subscribe to specific bills. It has a user-friendly interface and a welcome message explaining how the app works.

The process of developing an app is not easy. “No matter how skilled or how much you have learned, you’re not going to know everything to build this kind of app,” Dalton said. 

It is very helpful, however, to count on the other team members’ expertise as software professionals, especially Makani.

“He is a very seasoned veteran in software design” and “very much in charge” of the app, Dalton said.

The developers post regular updates on Instagram and plan to be active in other platforms such as TikTok and LinkedIn. They are also working to integrate the app with the social media platform BlueSky and allow users to automatically post the same comments on both platforms.

“We’re hoping that word of mouth will also contribute. We really believe that for a lot of Americans this kind of app would be useful,” he said.

The base app will include federal bills and court decisions for free. It will also feature a subscription system for users to also track state legislation across all states, but the exact cost has not been decided yet. The subscription will also feature a chatbot that can answer specific questions about the user’s app content. 

Referendum will be ad-free to avoid the ethical concerns of partnering with outside organizations, Dalton said.

The app will keep anonymized user data to generate statistics. User data from Referendum has the potential to be very useful for researchers and poll experts, according to Dalton.

“We’re excited for the possibilities that it holds,” he said.

Contact reporter Alan Cohen: [email protected].

A MOMENT MORE, PLEASE– If you found this story useful, consider subscribing to Salem Reporter if you don’t already. Work such as this, done by local professionals, depends on community support from subscribers. Please take a moment and sign up now – easy and secure: SUBSCRIBE.