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State Election Web Sites – Can I find it? Can I use it? Does it help?
by W. David Patton, CPPA Director
The 2008 General Election has demonstrated the power of the
Internet as a tool for political campaigns as well as election information and
portends increased use of the Internet in future elections. Individuals are turning to the Web to find
information on candidates, political positions, and policy choices. They are also looking to the Internet for
information about the election that would traditionally be found in newspapers
or through a call to the County Clerk’s office. States that provide election information in a clear, usable
format do a great service to their citizens and may also be saving a lot of
taxpayer dollars.
The Pew Research Center and American Life Project recently issued
a report, Being
Online is Not Enough, on how well state election websites are doing
to provide needed information for citizens looking for election information. The assessment specifically looked at ease
of access to election information, content, and usability of that
information. From information gleaned
from past elections, most citizen calls for election information pertained to
voting location (42% of questions) and registration concerns (33%). Citizens can also find unbiased answers to
questions about candidates and propositions on the ballot through state websites. When states provide easily accessible
information about these two major voting concerns, they can ease voter
confusion about whether they are registered to vote and where their polling
place is located. States can also
eliminate thousands of telephone calls costing an estimated $10 or more per
call when citizens can find their information online.
The Pew report ranked the states based on seven criteria
evaluating the usability of state elections websites. These criteria included the following:
- Web presence: How easily can users find the official state
elections website?
- Navigation and Information Architecture: Is it easy to
navigate to key topics?
- Content: Is the content understandable to users?
- Homepage: Is the homepage organized and understandable?
- Accessibility: Can users with disabilities utilize the site
effectively?
- Search: Is there an open search field available on each page
of the site?
- Site tools: Are tools for looking up registration, finding a
poll location, etc. intuitive and efficient?
Given these criteria, the report noted that most state sites
did pretty well with Web presence and content, but fared poorly on homepage
design, accessibility, and site tools.
The specific rankings showed the top three election sites to be Iowa
(77/100), Texas (75/100) and Utah (72/100).
The three lowest state sites were New Hampshire (33/100), Mississippi
(35/100) and Illinois (36/100).
Given Utah’s high ranking, I thought I would test the system
by searching for the State’s election website by searching on Google for “Utah
voter registration.” The first hit was
the State of Utah Elections Office that has six simple questions as links on
the homepage. Selecting “Am I
registered to vote?” I was asked to select the county where I live, then sent
to the County Clerk’s home page where navigation became a little more
difficult. After finding “verify your
voter registration” link, I was sent back to the State of Utah Elections Office
to complete a brief form that included name, birth date, and a brief address
identifier. Submitting this form online
produced a verification of voter registration, my precinct, poll location and a
sample ballot – all very useful information, but the navigation could have been
more direct by not going to the County Clerk website.
The Pew report suggested two main areas that states could
focus on to improve their election websites.
First, improve the homepage designs to be clearer – removing historical
information and highlight tasks important to voters (this was well done on the
Utah site). Second, improve the site
tools such as interfacing basic tools like polling place locators and ballot
generators in readily accessible ways.
The intermediate link to the County Clerk Web site acted as a barrier to
finding this information on the Utah election site.
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
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