The zoom where it happens
by Harpreet Singh, DNC Engineering intern
Harpreet Singh is a student at Harvard University; he is from Mississippi. He has been an intern on the DNC Tech Team this summer 2021, working on our software engineering team. We spoke briefly about the work he’s done this summer and why it matters so much.
What have you been working on here at your internship? Give us a little bit of an overview of the technical work you’ve done here.
Over the course of my internship, one of the primary projects that I have worked on was the creation of audit pages for IWillVote.com. We take our responsibility of providing accurate voter information very seriously, and the audit pages help with that. They help our internal teams, like software engineers and product managers and voter protection lawyers, to review and verify the voting information available for states. This work provides a quick way to look at the consolidated information available for each state. Before this work, it was much harder to review. Furthermore, audit pages for specific jurisdictions (states, territories) are subject to further changes in the future as other features and information may be added.
What have you had to learn (or practice!) to do this work? Tell us about something you’ve learned as part of working on this project.
I believe that there are two major areas of growth that have occurred this summer, the first of which is learning a brand new programming framework: React. While React is a combination of javascript and HTML, React itself has a bit of a learning curve as there are framework specific features that I had to learn. The second area of growth came from the fact that I have not had any industry-based, software engineering experience. However, through working with the Voting Services part of the DNC Tech team as a software engineering intern, I truly believe I got an experience that was similar to working in industry, which is very beneficial as it provided exposure to practical conventions in the programming world.
Are there any ways that your work this summer has connected to work you’ve done in school or personally? How so?
At school, I study Computer Science and Government, however, there are limited opportunities to learn about the intersection of these two fields. Thus, working at the DNC has provided me with an opportunity to explore one such intersection of my two fields of study. I came to see very early on that the DNC tech department is a prime example of where being in tech meets with politics. In the case of the DNC Tech team, especially the Voting Services part of the team I’ve worked on, tech meets politics through developing voting accessibility and voting literacy applications, such as IWillVote.com.
I know you’ve spoken with people across the DNC during your internship here and learned a lot about work throughout the DNC. What was something that surprised or interested you?
I’m sure that everyone has an initial image in their minds about what working or having a job looks like. That said, my image of working as a software engineering intern was definitely far off the mark from what I experienced in terms of work culture. I was completely blown away by the warm and welcoming work culture of the DNC Tech Department, where meetings are often full of playful and funny banter in the Zoom chat and every Thursday brings with it another Coffee Time chat with coworkers!
You’ve been working on the Engineering team here — tell us a bit about how the work your team does has impact outside the DNC? Why does this stuff matter?
It was an honor to work with the Voting Services group on the Engineering team! As I mentioned earlier, this internship deals with the intersection of Computer Science and politics, and at the DNC, I believe that our work is truly mission driven. The team creates applications that aid in voter accessibility to elections information and helps increase voter literacy. Especially in a time where voter suppression legislation is being passed everywhere, the work that this team does helps to counter such suppression.
And in honor of President Biden, what’s your favorite ice cream flavor (if you like ice cream)?
This was probably the most difficult question to answer, and it took a while to figure out but here it is: My favorite flavor has got to be strawberry cheesecake!
