Solving election problems, upstream and down: Center for Civic Design in 2018

We’re all about ensuring that voters can vote the way they intend. But not all of that happens at the ballot.

Upstream of the ballot are thousands of election administration decisions that affect how easy it is for people to get and mark a ballot.

Downstream from the ballot, election administrators encounter issues during canvass, final counts, and audits.

In 2018, CCD worked on important points in election administration that ultimately made it easier for voters to mark and cast ballots, and that ensured more votes were counted. Here are some of the big wins:

California counties picked up the vote-by-mail designs that Whitney Quesenbery worked so tirelessly to get done, with buy-in from USPS and vendors. Almost half (49%) of all voters in California received beautiful, easy-to-use envelopes and inserts in the 2018 June primary and the November midterm elections.
Elections are becoming more uniform across the 133 localities in Virginia because of Dana Chisnell and Maggie Ollove’s great partnering with the state department of elections and general registrars to improve poll worker effectiveness and the voter experience, all the while increasing the design IQ of election officials across the Commonwealth. The package included beautiful new ballot standards, provisional voting materials, and crucial poll worker forms.
Modernization of voter registration systems at DMVs and in social services agencies is sweeping the country. We have been involved with almost every major implementation, helping test the forms and other information for voters. We’re proud to say that millions of new voters are registered in these systems since January 2018.
Our work touched voters in 28 states.Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. We had some nice deep dives through project-based training in Rhode Island, helping them overhaul their provisional ballot, and listening to voters in usability testing in Pennsylvania to answer voters’ questions better on their election website.
Had some really great exposure for our ideas and expertise.Articles in the Washington Post, NPR’s All Things Considered, Newsy, LA Times, ProPublica, The Commons, and electionline. All 29 links are on our press and media page. And, of course, that Diana Award from SIGDOC.

More work we’re proud of

Helped move the next version of the VVSG forward, working with the Human Factors Public Working Group readying it for adoption by a full EAC
Released evidence-based best practices for ranked choice voting
Developed guidance for testing data integrity and procedures in electronic transfers between state agencies
Continued our exploration of the election information ecosystem, analyzing state election department web sites
Printed the 4^th edition of the Field Guides To Ensuring Voter Intent
Kicked off two big new research projects
Spoke at 42 events in 5 countries (see our presentations on Slideshare)

What we are working on in 2019

Use design to make government work better. Too many would-be voters stumble on outdated voter registration requirements, and we’d like to change that so it doesn’t matter when someone makes the decision to be a voter. We are working nationally on implementing (and usability testing!) automated voter registration and other modernization efforts in DMVs and social services agencies where people receive Medicaid benefits.

“We used the consensus building exercise you taught us to identify our project standards and priorities for new and existing agency initiatives. The concept of ‘user-focused’ was in the top three priorities identified by staff! Thanks again for all of your help over the years and we look forward to working with you in the future.”
– An Election Official

Raise the design IQ of our partners by improving design skills and collaboration methods in elections offices. We are on a mission to help every elections office improve the design of all of their materials so voters, poll workers, and candidates have a better election experience. From training workshops to large projects, we are always excited about any opportunity to build skills and capabilities.

In Virginia, we continue to work with the state department of elections and general registrars to revise all of the election day forms and to develop new capacity for civic design.
In Pennsylvania, we are working with the state elections team on a new mobile, accessible voter registration application and understanding the accessibility features of new voting systems.
In Wisconsin, we will help the state election commission staff expand their practice of human centered design through project-based training.

I really can’t thank you enough! You and the team at the Center for Civic Design and all the research and case studies have been instrumental to provide guidance to the administration on how to redesign our guides and materials as well as the language that we need to use to communicate easily the voting process.
– Sue Bohorquez, Rhode Island Department of State

Do research to solve real world problems. Understanding the voter journey is part of everything we do, but two projects focus there, specifically. One is research to understand the barriers and triggers for new citizens to take part in civic life. The second updates our 2012 study of county election websites with a look at how well state elections websites support voters.

We continue to focus on language access, designing for low literacy, and accessibility for voters with disabilities in all of our projects, including them in design and usability testing.

We are also excited when our work can help educate the next general of civic designers. We continue to teach the Election Design course for the University of Maryland each spring semester, and Dana teaches a short module on design thinking for the Harvard Kennedy School. But we also do frequent guest talks for design classes and sometimes send Field Guides.

“The Center for Civic Design has been a little light that I’ve shone on so many political science teachers, volunteers, and high-schoolers who are preparing lectures and inventing their own civic engagement tools. I can’t express how eye-opening you’ve been for them.”
– Michele Musacchio, Voters Service co-chair, League of Women Voters of Orange Coast

Participating in open processes to make it easier to mark, verify, and cast a ballot. We have been working on the EAC Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) since the beginning, so it’s particularly exciting to be part of rethinking and redesigning the VVSG 2.0 so they strengthen our elections. Our work includes civic design research on new voting technologies, participating in a lively public working group, drafting usability and accessibility requirements, and working on plain language editing for the whole standard. We’re particularly excited about a new user-centered design reporting requirement that will encourage anyone developing a voting system to include users throughout the process.

We’re also excited about a new project testing end-to-end cryptography as a way of verifying that your ballot was counted as cast. In addition, this project gives us an opportunity to revisit the Anywhere Ballot and update the design and interaction.

Impact!

This year, more than 1 in 4 voters used something we worked on the design of (27%). That’s up from 1 in 5 (20%) in 2016.

It’s always hard to find a way to measure the impact of design work. We use three important data points:

The percentage of states using our work – either because we worked with them directly, or because they found our work in places like ElectionTools.org or simply borrowed one of our (freely available) templates from a colleague or our site.
The percentage of voters served, or likely served, through our work. This metric takes the states where we’ve had an influence and looks at how many voters they serve. (We base it on turnout in the last federal election.)
The number of states or jurisdictions where we’ve worked directly with the elections team on what we call project-based training. This approach combines solving a real problem through teaching new skills to a team. We get bonus impact points for deep engagements.

So far, we have had a direct relationship through a project or research, in 28 states—for 55% of the country. We also reached people in Canada through project-based training with Elections British Columbia and teaching our Election Design course at University of Minnesota. And we reached people from all over Africa through a workshop we conducted as part of a program put on by the U.S. International Center for Electoral Support.

Working with some large states helps push our estimates of voters served up, so our challenge for 2019 will be to fill in the gaps and find ways to work with smaller states and counties. That means general funding to support projects that can bring together (for example) several counties in a state to solve a problem—and then share it with all their colleagues.

Growing the organization

We have lots of organizational news

We are now a 5-1/2 person organization, with new civic designers Christopher Patten and Suzanne Chapman and business manager Wendell Pierre. We had to say a sad farewell to Colin MacArthur, who is now the Director of Research for the Canadian Digital Service.

We also assembled a new Board of Directors to help us guide the organization into the future: Douglas M. Chapin, Jr, Pari Sabety, Kathay Feng, Dana Chisnell, and Whitney Quesenbery.

Our Advisory Committee now includes Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Jennifer Morrell, Tammy Patrick, Ginny Redish, and Jennifer Sutton.

We like to return the favor and make connections between CCD and other organizations doing great work. Dana and Whitney proudly serve on formal and informal advisory groups for the Bridge Alliance Leadership Council, Los Angeles County Voting Systems for All People, Participatory Budgeting Project, Center for Technology and Civic Life, Vote @ Home, U.S. Vote Foundation, and Voting Works.

All of this work is made possible with support from Democracy Fund, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Center for Secure and Modern Elections, as well as funding for specific projects.