Democracy needs design thinking

A story in three parts

Photo by Elliott Stallion on Unsplash

1. Sylvia Harris and “Voting by Design”

What do you remember about the 2000 U.S. presidential election? You know, the “hanging chads” election … ?

Like many others, I was focused at the time on images of inspectors peering through magnifying glasses at ballots, trying to decipher voters’ intentions.

Later I learned that the 2000 election was a milestone in the evolution of the way the U.S. thinks about election design.

Before 2000, most national elections had large enough margins of victory to mask shortcomings of vote recording systems. But a close presidential election race, misaligned ballot cards that allowed for off-center punches, and a confusing butterfly ballot design in Palm Beach County stimulated public awareness and interest in the state of voting.

AIGA, the professional association for design, launched an initiative in 2000 to focus on election design and put out a call for designers to propose solutions. New York-based information designer and public interest design advocate Sylvia Harris (1953–2011) saw it as an opportunity to examine the end-to-end voting experience.

In her poster, “Voting by Design” (2003), Harris maps the voter’s journey from registration through exit polling.

“Voting by design” (2003) by Sylvia Harris. Image from walkerart.org

The purpose, Harris said, was to illustrate the process of voting to show how designers can be involved.

Harris issues a call to action, “… many voting problems are really design problems. That’s where you come in. Take a look at the voting experience map …and find all the ways you can put design to work for democracy.”

She lists the design problems that bubbled up during her research:

• Disappearing civics classes
• Forms that are barriers to participation
• Too much or too little information
• Getting to the booth on time
• User-unfriendly voting machines
• Future improvements lack voter input

“Voting by Design” is an invitation to get to work — whether your work is user experience design, customer experience design, service design, content design. … There’s a lot of work to do to improve U.S. elections.

Choose your own adventure.

Sylvia Harris (center) and her team getting to work at Citizen Research & Design

2. Putting Design to Work for Democracy

My adventure chose me when I ran for and was elected Democratic Committeeperson for my division in Philadelphia’s 2nd Ward (in South Philadelphia) in 2018.

In Philadelphia, committeepeople are like political block captains. We’re the hyperlocal representatives for our political party in our voting division — typically the five to six blocks around your house. Our primary responsibilities are to register voters and keep constituents (i.e., our neighbors) engaged and informed.

In the ten years I’d lived in my neighborhood, no committeeperson had ever knocked on my door or communicated with me in any way. More active committeepeople may have led to higher turnout in the 2016 presidential election, which could have made all the difference. I wanted to fill the information void.

The design problem

Even before I was elected, I started to think about how to solve the problem of “too little information.” How to go about designing voter communications that would grab the attention of voters?

The design solution

The Center for Civic Design’s field guide, “Choosing how to communicate with voters” serves as a brief for this challenge:

“Voters don’t have a strategy for how they will get information about elections. They hope that it will be available in their favorite format, from printed material to social media.

They want to know when, where, and how they will vote, from finding their polling place to being reminded of how the voting system works. And they want this information in language they understand.

Most of all, they want the right information in the right format at the right time.”

My tools include an email newsletter, print pieces sent via USPS or distributed via lit drops, and social media. These channels support my primary and most important communications with voters: one-on-one conversations that happen while canvassing or—and especially during the pandemic — by text and phone conversations.

The communications pieces I’ve created range widely in style and content, from informational design to memes:

ELECTION LITERATURE: A voting guide I designed to help voters navigate their voting options in Fall 2020.

POSTCARDS: A “success state” postcard I designed and sent to every Democrat in my precinct who voted in the November 2021 election (typically a low-turnout election) to applaud their civic engagement.

MEMES: I created the ‘Dress Your Ballot’ campaign (left) to remind voters to use both envelopes when submitting their mail ballots for the November 2020 election. The first one, pictured here, went viral on Facebook. And the “Dear Philly” campaign (right) spoofs Visit Philly’s popular “With love, Philadelphia” campaign. See more election-related memes at @nakedballot.

The outcome

Communication works. See the difference, below, in turnout in my division for PA gubernatorial elections in 2010, 2014, and 2018; and Philadelphia mayoral elections in 2011, 2015, and 2019. The fall 2018 election was my first as a committeeperson.

The 2018 General Election charted on the left (the Blue Wave election) was my first as a committeeperson. The 2019 General Election on the right was my 3rd.

In summer 2019, the city redrew divisional boundaries in our ward, resulting in my division getting smaller — but we still turned out more votes than in earlier, comparable elections.

The charts below show turnout in my division for the presidential elections in 2012, 2016, and 2020; and District Attorney elections in 2013, 2017, and 2021.

Although committeepeople have an impact in every election, their impact is larger in local elections. In federal elections, such as the presidential, voters are receiving information from many sources.

Turnout in my division in presidential elections (left) and in DA elections (right). Redrawing of divisional boundaries in 2019 resulted in a decrease of total number of voters, but we still turned out more votes than in previous, comparable elections.

“Voting is not just an event. It’s a complex communications process that goes well beyond the casting of a vote.” — Sylvia Harris

3. Solving a Voter Experience Problem

I chair the Election Day Committee chair for our ward, coordinating with the City regarding polling place locations and poll workers and supporting the ward’s committeepeople on Election Day.

Anything that makes voting more confusing, more inconvenient, or more difficult is voter suppression.

It was my Election Day Committee work that gave me the opportunity to solve the design problem of anticipated chaos and crowds at the polls on Election Day in November 2020.

The design problem

How could I “put design to work for democracy,” as Harris wrote, to smooth the Election Day experience for voters? Or, to put it another way, to clear the sludge from voters’ paths?

Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, long lines were expected at polling places across the city on Election Day in November 2020.

It was shaping up to be a day filled with frustration and plenty of confusion about the process of spoiling ballots and about options for using satellite voting sites and drop boxes.

Every presidential election brings out first-time or infrequent voters who might be at the wrong polling place or may not have brought the correct materials to allow them to vote.

While doing research about line management, I read about “poll greeters” used in some states to fill a kind of customer service role outside of polling places — to make sure people are in the right place and have the right materials before they enter the polling place, and to answer voter questions.

An experience map that shows the voter’s movements through a polling place. I was focused on the “Polling Place Orientation” step. From an AIGA case study.

The design solution

While committeepeople generally greet voters at the polls on Election Day, the need would be greater in November 2020 than what we could provide.

We needed help, and happily our ward had many willing volunteers.

I launched an effort to create a nonpartisan “poll greeter” volunteer role to help at the polls on Election Day.

The design process

To shape the role, I began by talking with the Election Day Committee about pain points. We thought about every possible voter question or confusion that could come up from the voter’s point of view.

While phone-banking to get out the vote, I asked questions about voters’ Election Day plans, what they were uncertain about, and what they were expecting at the polls.

I sorted input from the workshop and interviews into categories that could be addressed by a poll greeter, creating a separate category for scenarios that would be better solved by other roles expected to be at the polls or on-call that day.

I prioritized the categories and started writing a double-sided guide that would act as a quick cheat sheet for poll greeters, who wouldn’t have time to get up to speed on all the administrative sludge that voters would be facing.

I was solving for the following user need: “As a poll greeter, I want to guide voters who show up at the polls, so that I can help create an enjoyable, successful voting experience.”

While the timeline for this project didn’t allow for usability testing, I was able to put a prototype designed with a Canva template into the hands of a few volunteer participants for some quick testing.

This led to updates that improved the usability of the guide, including changing wording to better echo users’ language, and laminating the guides to make them easy to wipe down between volunteers.

The poll greeter guides, laminated and ready to be distributed to polling places for Election Day.

The outcome

I made the printed guides available to all committeepeople, and the ward distributed them to every polling place.

I also shared the guide on a Facebook group for poll workers and ended up designing a generic version that could be printed in black and white and adapted by volunteers at polling places in any part of the city.

The generic version of the poll greeters’ guide.

The night before the election, I gave a virtual training over Zoom to about fifty “poll greeter” volunteers. The session included walking them through the guide; talking about how to groom lines and talk to voters; letting them know the rules about volunteering at polling places; and giving examples of what voter intimidation looks like and what to do if they see it.

The polling locations that used the guide and “poll greeter” role provided positive feedback about how the role and guide helped facilitate a smooth Election Day, despite the crowds and the complexity of voting that day.

Poll Greeter volunteers outside a polling place in Philadelphia, during a moment of calm after the morning rush.

This project was a fun exercise in research and content design, and in writing in plain language. After having learned more about content design, there are process points I would’ve added, such as going through the exercise of writing user stories with acceptance criteria and creating a user needs bank.

I may redo the project—and beg a user researcher and visual designer’s help—when we inevitably bring the poll greeter role back for the 2024 presidential election.

What Adventure Will You Choose?

In her “Voting by Design” poster, Harris writes, “All kinds of designers can participate in voter reform … “

Here’s some who have:

• A group of designers from Stanford University’s design institute supported an effort started by two Philadelphia poll workers to help design a visual guide for poll workers to fill in training gaps. It was provided to all poll workers working in Philadelphia’s November 2020 election.
• Better Civics was founded to focus on “clearly explaining complex information around voting, nonpartisan politics, and government in an easy-to-understand and engaging way, to activate real change.” They create easy-to-understand voter toolkits for such complex topics as judicial elections.
• Pennsylvania Youth Vote offers resources to help citizens aged 18–24 become civic leaders and voting experts in their communities, including clever voter information campaigns on social media.
• The Center for Civic Design created 14 Field Guides To Ensuring Voter Intent, based on research and best practices, to encourage election officials to engage with the design process as civic designers.

Taking my cue from Sylvia Harris, I’ll leave you with information that might inspire your entry point, should you choose to accept this challenge.

In June 2020 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences issued a report, “Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century,” based on two years of field research across the U.S.

Besides being a fascinating read, it spells out six strategies and 31 recommendations “to help the nation emerge as a more resilient democracy by 2026.” The strategies and recommendations are opportunities for designers or the design-minded who want to put design to work for democracy.

Which adventure will you choose? Let me know what you decide.