New app using AI aims to expand civic engagement in Minnesota

Minnesota Programmer Creates AI App to Demystify State Legislature

For many Minnesotans, understanding the inner workings of their state legislature can feel like deciphering a foreign language. Bills written in dense legalese, complex legislative processes, and limited translation options create significant barriers between citizens and their government. One local software engineer is hoping to change that with a new mobile application.

Colin Lee, a Lakeville-area programmer, has developed CivicLoon, an artificial intelligence app designed to make legislative proceedings more accessible to everyday citizens. The app pulls bill text, news coverage, and committee schedules from the Minnesota Legislature and translates them into plain-language summaries that anyone can understand.

“As an ordinary person, it doesn’t feel like you really have a voice. Lobbyists are there every single day of every work week the session is open. As a normal person, you might go there once in 10 years,” said Lee, who built CivicLoon largely during weekends over approximately three weeks.

Lee’s inspiration for the app stems from his own political experiences. As a former DFL candidate who ran multiple unsuccessful campaigns against Republican incumbent Mary Liz Holberg for a state House seat representing parts of Dakota and Scott counties, he witnessed firsthand how little voters knew about candidates and policies.

“I would ask people about the race and they would be misgendering my opponent when they’re telling me who they’re going to vote for… you just knew they had no clue,” he recalled.

What sets CivicLoon apart from existing resources is its accessibility features. Currently supporting 30 languages, the app aims to serve Minnesota’s diverse communities, though Lee acknowledges that translation quality varies depending on the language. He specifically mentioned S’gaw Karen—spoken by many in St. Paul’s Karen community—as potentially challenging due to limited source material available online for AI training.

From a technical standpoint, the app features on-device AI processing rather than sending data to remote servers, a design choice Lee made to prioritize both privacy and reliability. “It has no cloud reliance,” he explained. “It only depends on itself.” This approach builds on Lee’s professional experience developing AI chatbots designed to keep sensitive data off third-party servers.

While the Minnesota Legislature’s website does offer some bill summaries, they tend to be brief, written in technical language, and only available in English—significant limitations that CivicLoon aims to overcome.

Experts in artificial intelligence see potential in this application. Daniel Schwarcz, a University of Minnesota law professor specializing in AI and legal systems, notes that while AI bias and “hallucination”—when models generate plausible but incorrect responses—are legitimate concerns in many contexts, summarization is actually where current AI technology excels.

“There’s a lot of research that one context in which AI is pretty darn good is in summarizing text that you give it,” Schwarcz said. He expressed “comparatively less worry” about bias in summarization compared to more problematic applications like recidivism-prediction algorithms used in courts.

Lee remains transparent about CivicLoon’s current limitations. A feature intended to predict a bill’s chances of passage remains in development, partly because legislative text often contains optimistic promotional language that can skew AI assessments. He’s actively working on improvements, including enhanced bill tracking capabilities, broader translation coverage, and analysis of legislators’ newsletters and public statements—refinements he hopes will eventually lead to more reliable predictions about which legislation has genuine momentum.

The initiative comes at a critical time, as the Minnesota legislative session enters its final month and lawmakers determine which bills have realistic chances of passage. Civic engagement groups see potential in tools like CivicLoon to improve public participation.

Amy Perla, executive director of the League of Women Voters Minnesota, expressed support for the concept, saying, “Any way we can increase civic engagement and civic education, we think is worth exploring.”

As state legislatures nationwide continue to address increasingly complex issues, innovative approaches like CivicLoon may represent an important step toward making government more transparent and accessible to the constituents it serves.