Swingo, a tool for a political bingo night
After the 2016 presidential election, a group of friends started meeting to figure out what we could actually do. Living in New York meant our votes were going somewhere already decided. The places where a vote or a dollar could move something were competitive congressional districts in other swing states, and in 2018 there were real opportunities to flip seats if enough small efforts pointed in the same direction. Swingo was a political bingo night we built around that idea, held at a local bar in July 2018.
I built three things: a bingo board generator that randomized swing districts across each card, a dashboard for the MCs running the game that randomly selected the next district, and a presentation view pushed to screens around the bar. The dashboard was where most of the thought went. It tracked called districts, surfaced candidate details and context, and let the MCs move through the sequence or validate wins without losing the room. Simple controls, because they had other things to pay attention to. The presentation view was what the room saw: a candidate photo and a few context bullets for the district just called.
The event filled up, the energy was good, people left knowing more about congressional races than they had walking in and felt like they were moving the needle. There were ideas about making the tool reusable, expanding the model, but it ended up a one-off.
Swingo boards included randomized swing district names and an outline of the state indicating where the district is located.
Swingo had a separate dashboard view for the MCs and a presentation view for the audience.