Michigan Voting Dashboard

In 2024, we worked with the elections and technology teams at the Michigan Department of State on the Michigan Voting Dashboard to make election data publicly available before the presidential election.

Watch the press announce from October 2024 introducing the dashboard.

Here’s what our Executive Director Whitney Quesenbery shared in the announcement:

Thank you, Secretary Benson, for inviting me to participate in today’s celebration. And thank you to everyone here for attending. My name is Whitney Quesenbery and I am the executive director at the Center for Civic Design, where we strive to make every interaction with government easy, effective, and pleasant. 

Using our practical experience and applied research, we work with elections offices to apply civic design best practices, support innovation, and invite participation in our democracy.

First, let me congratulate Secretary Benson and her team at the Michigan Department of State for this monumental achievement. 

At the Center of Civic Design, we say that “democracy is a design problem.” This motto means that we see every challenge a voter might experience as an opportunity to use design to build a stronger, more resilient democracy. 

We were thrilled to renew our partnership with Secretary Benson’s team because they also don’t back down from a challenge, but instead use it as an opportunity to improve services for all Michiganders.

As we work in jurisdictions across the country, one of the most common challenges we hear from voters is that information about elections is presented in an unnecessarily complicated way.

We also know that election administration and compliance are complex (and often thankless) work. People like Clerk [Michael] Siegrist have to do that work while communicating with voters through as many channels as possible.

New channels for transparency like the Michigan Voting Dashboard make existing data available to the public, help voters understand the election process, and help local election offices communicate, without adding to their enormous workload.

As Secretary Benson shared, the Michigan Voting Dashboard reflects her commitment to government transparency. 

Beyond transparency, the Dashboard presents early voting and absentee voting data in Michigan with cutting-edge design and technical best practices. 

It doesn’t just make the data available. The Michigan Voting Dashboard also makes it easily accessible and understandable, presents it beautifully, and encourages trust in Michigan’s election administration. 

It truly puts Michigan at the forefront of election data visualization and transparency in the country.  I am confident that people will find the Dashboard easy to navigate.

The Center for Civic Design is honored to once again partner with the Michigan Department of State. 

I am grateful to Secretary Benson for bringing in our team’s design expertise on a key strategic initiative. I also want to thank the technology partners across the Department of State, the Department of Technology, Management, and Budget, and clerks across Michigan for making this Dashboard possible.

This Michigan Voting Dashboard is just the beginning. We look forward to more opportunities to help create innovations that further trust and transparency in Michigan’s elections.