When I began working with Palumba NYC, I didn’t expect how personal the experience would become. What started as a civic-tech project tied to the New York City mayoral election quickly turned into something much deeper: a lesson in collective action, accessible democracy, and what it means to design tools that transform political information into civic agency.
At its core, Palumba NYC sought to address a persistent challenge in local elections: the fragmentation, inaccessibility, and opacity of political information. Our aim was to mitigate misinformation, increase voter engagement, and centralize candidate and polling information in a format that was intuitive rather than intimidating—particularly for young and first-time voters. By adapting a swipe-based interface to a U.S. municipal context, we attempted to meet voters where they already are: on their phones, navigating information quickly, visually, and comparatively.
A crucial part of this effort was our collaboration with Who’s On The Ballot, founded in 2012 by Professor Fuchs. Long before Palumba.org existed, Professor Fuchs was doing exactly the work we aspired to do: increasing voter engagement and centralizing polling information in a way that was navigable and user-friendly. In many ways, Who’s On The Ballot represented an intellectual and practical precedent upon which our work was built. The partnership felt less like coordination between two projects and more like an intergenerational continuation of a shared civic mission that’s rooted in the belief that democratic participation depends fundamentally on informational clarity and public access.
Translating policy
I was part of the Content & Statements team, where our work focused on researching NYC mayoral candidates’ platforms and translating complex policy positions into concise, swipe-based statements used by Palumba’s voter-matching algorithm. This process required more than summarization; it demanded careful judgment about framing, neutrality, and clarity. The challenge was to preserve policy nuance while ensuring accessibility, particularly for users without prior familiarity with local governance or electoral politics. We constantly asked ourselves: Would this make sense to someone who’s never followed a local election before? Would this feel objective, fair, and easy to engage with?
Alongside this, we worked on a dedicated First-Time Voter Guide, designed to demystify the logistics of voting in New York City and address the procedural barriers that often discourage participation. From how to register, to what documents are required, to where and when to vote, the guide provided step-by-step information meant to reduce the intimidation many new voters feel.
While our workstreams were formally divided across three core teams—Product & Development, Media & Communications, and Content & Statements—those distinctions quickly blurred in practice. With a compressed timeline and ambitious goals, collaboration became less of a choice and more of a shared instinct. Team boundaries became fluid, and collective problem-solving emerged as our default mode of operation.
Saturday Sprints
Much of this collaboration took shape during our weekly Saturday sprints. Once a week, between four and twelve of us (depending on exams and availability) would meet from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., bringing together members from across all three teams in one space. These sprints were central to our workflow. We’d relay updates, troubleshoot bottlenecks, and ask for help across teams when more hands or brains were needed. They functioned not only as coordination mechanisms, but as creative incubators where design decisions, content strategy, technical constraints, and outreach goals converged.
They became some of my favorite moments of the entire experience. I distinctly remember our first Saturday sprint. There was a rare and electric energy in the room. We brainstormed how to make the app feel unmistakably New York—talking design, tone, memes, visuals, and language with the same intensity we brought to policy framing. The conversation moved seamlessly between substance and style: how to preserve policy accuracy while maintaining approachability; how humor, layout, and phrasing could shape engagement without diluting seriousness. Ideas were tested, refined, discarded, and rediscovered in real time. However, what stood out most was the intellectual openness of the space—an environment where contributions were welcomed regardless of role, and where collective momentum often carried us into a shared state of focus and creative flow. It was unlike any project I had worked on before. I came away valuing not only the app itself, but the collaborative spirit and trust that shaped its creation.
Visibility and public reach
As launch approached, visibility became everything. We made list after list of potential organizations, journalists, activists, and community figures to reach out to. At first, the possibilities felt endless and thrilling. But with the deadline looming, that sense of possibility narrowed, and the pressure intensified. For the app to succeed, it had to reach people. That visibility wasn’t a bonus; it was the point.
Through sustained effort, coordination, and persistence, we were featured on Fox 5 New York and Spectrum News, and covered by the Columbia Spectator and the Morningside Post. We also had several NYC-based influencers amplify the app. Seeing the app circulate beyond our immediate networks and finally reach the people it was meant for was incredibly rewarding. It underscored how much labor, coordination, and persistence are required to translate good ideas into public impact. And it made every long Saturday and late-night edit worth it.
Why this work matters to me
Coming from Sudan, I was struck by the very premise of Palumba: that political information could be centralized, continuously updated, and easily accessible. Growing up, political knowledge was neither readily available nor institutionally supported. There were no centralized, accessible platforms where you could learn about political actors, policies, or processes in real time. Being politically informed required significant effort, and often, personal risk. Formal mechanisms for civic participation were limited, and while many people sought to exercise political choice, the system itself did little to enable or encourage it.
This was compounded by the fact that we didn’t get to choose our president or political representatives. Sudan was ruled by a powerful, entrenched oligarchy, and for a long time, it was easy to feel helpless—to not even know where to begin engaging. The revolution remains one of my most cherished memories precisely because it fundamentally challenged that sense of political inevitability. It was driven by youth-led mobilization that transformed social media into an informal knowledge network, enabling information-sharing, political education, and collective action. For a brief but powerful moment, access to information became a tool of resistance and change.
That’s why Palumba NYC resonated with me so deeply. The platform represents more than voter matching; it embodies a philosophy of democratic participation rooted in access, agency, and inclusion. It affirms that engaging with politics, learning, voting, acting, is itself a form of authorship over history.
One day, I hope to bring something like this to Sudan—to a revived, democratic Sudan where access to information is no longer a privilege, but a right. Working on Palumba NYC reinforced a lesson I carry with me: democracy is not sustained by institutions alone, but by the technical, social, and informational infrastructures that enable people to see themselves as participants rather than spectators.
And sometimes, participation begins not with sweeping change, but with a single, informed swipe.
