From the Community Innovation Project RFP

"Improving voter access and awareness during 2020 election: Burlington is a unique community – especially in its electoral districting. The City has eight wards, and residents vote at a polling station within their ward for every level of election (City, State, Federal). However, the State legislative districts do not correspond to the ward boundaries. A single ward could have several legislative districts cutting across it, so your neighbor may vote for the same City candidates but different State legislative candidates.

The City has an existing electoral map that is available at polling stations and online (as a shapefile, https://www2.burlingtonvt.gov/Clerk/Elections/Map/), and would like to improve voter access by making this information about what ward and legislative district a voter lives in available in an easy to use mobile app or webbased application. The idea would be to allow both voting residents as well as election workers assisting voters at the polls quickly and easily determine the correct ballot to give a citizen."

Submitted Proposal

Code for BTV submitted the following proposal: CIP Proposal for Voter Access

Project Proposal

We are proposing building a web-based application that will help people quickly determine who they should be voting for. We will keep the deliverable light and simple while focusing on important aspects of user experience such as multilingual accessability and offline functionality.

Audiences

This tool will be designed for two primary audiences:

Burlington Residents: The primary audience for this application are Burlington residents seeking voting information. Although there are several sources that offer to tell people who they will be voting for, none cover the entire ballot. This application intends to give people certainty of who will be on their ballot and, secondarily, to make it plain that they are registered and ready to vote.

Polling station workers: Polling station workers will also be able to use this application to quickly verify that residents are at the correct station and clarify questions relating to ballots, wards, and legislative districts. Easy, web-based access to this information has the potential to save time and misunderstanding for residents and polling workers alike.

Goals

1. Help users answer these questions as quickly and intuitively as possible:

   • Voter Ballot
     • Who will be on my ballot?
   • Voter Readiness
     • What ward & legislative district am I in, and where will I go to vote?
     • Am I on the checklist at my polling station?
     • Am I registered to vote, and if not, how can I register to vote?

2. Helps residents identify voting eligibility issues early (out-of-state students, non-registration, etc) and guides them towards appropriate resources.

3. Support all language speakers with multilingual capability and an emphasis on non-textual design elements.

4. Designed to draw from external data sources and APIs where possible, and redirecting to authoritative sources when necessary, to avoid becoming dated and irrelevant over time.

5. Uses low- or no-cost IT infrastructure to securely manage data exchanges. Designed for offline use to support polling stations with limited connectivity.

Source

The CiP Document that describes this project is here: https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/sites/default/files/Smart%20City%20Community%20Innovation%20Proposal%20%28Phase%201%29.pdf