Voter guide pages: Ways to vote
Summarize the options to vote to help voters choose
Lessons from the research
If the cover is the “bite,” this page is the “snack” with the details of when and where to vote, but not all of the detail of the pages that follow.
Experienced voters appreciated seeing all the information about places, dates, and times on one page.
New voters and infrequent voters don’t know that there is more than one way to vote. Showing the options on one page, with clear wording, helped them see that they have choices.
We revised the names for different ways to vote several times until they were clear. For example, some thought that they were vote-by-mail voters because they got their guide in the mail. In the end, we decided on the titles:
- Vote by mail
- Vote early in person
- Vote in person at the polls
About the template
The Ways to Vote page is a quick summary of voting options, with enough information to help a voter who just needs dates and locations.
This is the first page of a section of the guide with information about when, where, and how to vote. The different look of the page, with no grey banner at the top and the large text helps signal that this page begins a section.
This page should be page 3, after the table of contents and the Voter Bill of Rights. Making it an odd-numbered page makes it easy to find when flipping through the pages.
- Title of the page. Change the number to match the options in your county. Don’t count Saturday voting as a separate way to vote, but highlight it in the section on voting early in person.
- Details. For each way to vote, show the dates, addresses, hours, and where to find more information in the guide.
- Images. The images help illustrate the different ways to vote, showing that they are distinct. The same images are in the page banners for the details pages.
- Separator lines. Like the images, the lines help separate the sections.
Word tips
Use bold text to highlight dates and location names. It makes the information stand out on the page.
The templates use a table to separate the different sections of the page because this really is a table of options. Make the alternative text for the image act as a title for the row.