Answering voters’ questions: what’s on the ballot, and the mechanics of voting

Those of us who think about elections all the time think about them as a process. There are steps that are mostly date-driven, and it feels obvious to follow that process. But most voters don’t know a lot about how elections work.

In research that the team at the Center for Civic Design started in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election (and have built on in multiple studies since), we found that non-election geeks don’t start at the beginning of the expected process — that is, with registering or updating their voter registration. They start with the question, What’s on the ballot?

Turns out, there are 2 things that drive voters’ questions: whether there is anything on the ballot that they value enough to invest in the process, and the mechanics of getting a ballot and casting their votes. 

Read on. 

Answering voters’ questions

What’s on the ballot? Is there something that affects me? If there is, what are my options for voting? What are the deadlines and requirements for those options? Have I already missed those options? If I have to go to the polls on Election Day, how does that even work? How long will it take to vote after I get inside? How will I know where to go? Will there be a test? Will they be nice to me? 

We’ve heard all these questions come up in our interactions with voters over the years. There are a few areas to focus on for your jurisdiction that will help most voters pretty quickly.

Voters are ballot-centric

So, voters are ballot-driven, in a way that seems to be asking, *is there something so important, something that will affect me and people I’m close to, that it’s worth investing in taking part in this process?* People care about the act of voting. It’s important. But they also want to know the *value* of voting in *this* election.

Voters are constantly deciding whether to take the next step

The rest is behavioral economics. That is, people unconsciously weigh, with every step, the value of staying in the process or dropping out of the process. There’s a lot of emotion that goes with this: excitement, fear, shame. Because every step presents a tradeoff between an unknowable future and stresses and tensions that are happening in the Now.

Obstacle 1: Basic civic literacy

One of the major obstacles to people staying in an election, according to our research about voter guides with our partners, the League of Women Voters California Education Fund (funded by Future of California Elections), is basic civic literacy. For example, even people with advanced degrees don’t know the difference between their state representative and their representative to Congress. This issue plays out all the way down the ballot.

Obstacle 2: The voting system is invisible

When people don’t know what’s on the ballot, and what it’s like to mark and cast a ballot, those unknowns add up. What everyone hears about is how long the lines are at the polling place. What no one talks about is what happens inside the polling place.

When the size or scope of a task is unknown, people assume that it will be very large and very difficult. Overcoming these two major obstacles takes tenacity and persistence on the part of a highly motivated person.

Practice helps

We’ve learned that both hurdles can be addressed with a simple idea: an interactive practice ballot. When people get the chance to see what the ballot looks like, check out what contests and questions are on it (and have time to do the homework), and they get to actually practice marking the ballot on their own time, they’re more committed to voting. We think they’re more likely to vote the way they intend, as well.

Resources

This was originally published in our Civic Designing newsletter. Subscribe on Mailchimp to get election design tips delivered to your mailbox.