Voter Education Online
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Voter Education Online
Voter education online goes beyond basic voting logistics to include enhanced non-partisan content that promoted informed voting in local elections and referendums.
Summary: Online voter education guides provide opportunities for governments to inform citizens about candidates and issues in ways that improve citizen participation in government. Unlike printed voter guides, online guides can be regularly updated with new content and interactive features, like question and answer forms, that can give voters input to the process of developing non-partisan content.
Rationale and Objectives:
What can you use this feature for?
1. Posting information for voters, including:
- Biographical information and photos of the candidates
- Information/procedures on how to file for office
- Job descriptions of elected officials
- Objective background information about local issues, for instance particular referendums on the ballot
- How to register to vote
- Polling place locations and other information about voting rules and procedures
- Election results
2. Providng links to additional resources for voters, including websites for political parties, campaign finance information, non-partisan organisations and the news media.
3. Providing interactive features that might include forms where voters can submit/rank public questions to the candidates that will be posted along with the responses from candidates.
4. Creating a place online where all candidates can connect. This will help citizens better navigate often impossible to find local election and candidate content online. Much of the information provided online in local elections emerges near the end of the election cycle and is not easy to find in search engines. By creating a single repository this problem will be reduced.
Why use it?
- Content can be updated frequently, so voters can periodically check for new information.
- Local elections often lack extensive amounts of media coverage.
- With interactive features, voters can participate in the generation content by submitting "voter guide" questions on issues of concern to them.
- As voters become accustomed to finding interesting voting information on your website, they may also take advantage of other online services and vice versa.
- Governments can provide an authoritative and balanced source of electronic formatted content that could be used by many groups, including the mass media to enhance any voter guides they produce, in additional materials.
Benefits
- Citizens: Get to know all of their current and future elected officials, and develop a better understanding of local issues. Useful for post-election follow-up of candidate positions and promises.
- Councillors: An opportunity to strengthen local voter awareness and potentially turn-out.
- Local Administration: Effectively informing voters reduces the staff time spent on frequently asked questions, allowing them to perform other duties.
Limitations and Cautions
- Establishing information as non-partisan and objective can be a challenge. Staff must continually seek ways to avoid presenting content in ways that seem to favour some candidates over others.
- If other units of government or community organisations provide similar information/resources, it's important to cooperate rather than compete. If another unit of government provides polling place information for example, it's better to provide a link to that information than to re-create it and risk errors.
- Promote your online guide vigourously - putting it on the web doesn't mean people will go looking for it unless you market it effectively.
- Any future e-voting experience must be surrounded by a rich array of government produced voter education information (as well as links to candidate, party, non-profit, and media election-related content) that go well beyond the simple mechanics of convenience.
Successes collected projects
Successful Implementations
- Example 1: Seattle and King County Voter Guide
- Link: http://www2.ci.seattle.wa.us/Media/default_SC.asp
- Describe usage and results: The City of Seattle and King County produce a video voters guide for television and on-line video streaming. For both primary and general elections, each candidate may make a two minute presentation taped in the Seattle Channel's studio - they get up to three takes and one half hour and can select the one they prefer. The voters guide is indexed on the web so that viewers can check out particular seats or candidates or view the entire guide. (Note that the 2005 guide will be produced in August); the 2003 guide is no longer posted but available upon request.
- Contact Information: - joane.o'brien@seattle.gov or rona.zevin@seattle.gov
- Example 2: National Election Commission, South Korea
- Link: http://vote2004.nec.go.kr - Young Voters
- Link: http://home.nec.go.kr - Main page, "epol" election 2004 candidate directory is now offline
- Background: http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@lists.umn.edu/msg00173.html
- Describe usage and results: South Korea leads the world in broadband usage and content. Their government-sponsored election information web sites produced for their April 2004 elections were the most comprehensive, interactive, and content rich of any government-based online voter education effort to date.
Further Information
Top Related "How to" Online Resources
- How to Make an Online Voter Guide - California Voter Foundation
- http://www.calvoter.org/issues/votereng/pub/quicktips.html
- Advice from non-profit voter education should be leveraged into any government-based efforts.
- Additional DoWire Links
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