Voter guides show off best practices in California
California voters get a lot of love from their election officials.Not just one, but two booklets arrive in their mailbox before an election: one for statewide offices like governor and senator,and one for local elections from Congress to Mayor and county councils. Oh yes.. and the state propositions and county ballot measures.
Creating voter guides is an amazing undertaking for the counties. Each is customized so that every voter gets information about the things they will see on their ballot, translated to meet California and Voting Rights Act requirements. Primary elections throw in another level of complexity, because you have to get the right party ballot in the right guide for the right voter.
Two years ago, we began doing research to understand how to make a better voter guide — one that will really help voters learn about how, when, and where to vote.
After the California primary in June, we collected voter guides from all 58 counties.We know that making a change to something as important as a voter guide is no small thing, so what we saw made us cheer.
The images below will give you a taste of the changes, but to really see what some of the new work looks like, we have an online collection where you can see them all: 2016 California Primary Voter Guides