A Bold Call to Action Sparked by Data
Graphicacy helps Vote Run Lead reveal the vast underrepresentation of women in state legislatures
Across the country, the percentage of women holding state legislative seats is far less than their percentage of the state population. Take South Carolina, where women make up only 10.9% of state senators yet 52% of the population. Vote Run Lead, an organization that inspires more women to run for office, is calling attention to the disparities.
Vote Run Lead worked with the data visualization experts at Graphicacy to build the State of My Democracy data explorer — released in time for the 2022 midterm elections.
For State of My Democracy, Graphicacy created a robust tool that allows users to easily explore women’s representation in state legislatures, learn about issues of importance to them, and take action.
Visualizing the Disparities
The State of My Democracy explorer offers options for national and state views. In both views, users can see data for different racial and ethnic identity groups as well as for overall women of color. One of the demographic groups included is men, which illustrates the staggering contrast in representation. When there’s a major gap in representation, a preview card appears that users can share on Twitter with a single click.
On the National view, the Graphicacy team built in a “Tour This Page” feature, which sequentially leads users through each design element on the page. It calls out opportunities to sort the chart data by Representation, Size of Gap, or Abortion Access. Users can also view the data in a tile map format.
The state view, meanwhile, gives users a dedicated report card page for every state. Users see each state chamber’s representation gap for the various demographic groups along with helpful information such as state legislators’ salaries, current party control, and Vote Run Lead alumni. To promote VRL’s unique initiatives and encourage Women and Women of Color to run for the state legislature, Graphicacy devised a prominent Run for Office button that directly links to VRL’s Run51. It serves as a call to action for women to sign up to run for office or nominate a co-worker or friend, reaffirming the tools’ dual purpose for candidate recruitment.
“The dynamic, user-friendly State of My Democracy tool shows the sobering reality of the status of women and women of color in our state houses across America, and the data and strategy to do something about it,” said Erin Vilardi, Vote Run Lead Founder and CEO. “Government functions more effectively when women are at the table.”
To give users even more context, the Graphicacy team incorporated tools for exploring each state’s policy landscape for urgent issues such as gun safety, abortion access, and voting requirements. Links to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Voting Rights Lab let users dive in further.
“Part of what really makes this tool special is that we took a look at key policy issues, pulled in data from fantastic partners, and combined it all with a clear call to action,” said Erin.
Drawing on Expertise
Graphicacy had worked with the Vote Run Lead team previously to promote its RUN/51 initiative and related social media campaigns. This was the first opportunity to create a full data explorer.
“We always hope to build fully fledged data explorers with a holistic view, taking data already publicly available and making it tangible and explorable for people who might not have the desire to get into things like raw spreadsheets,” said Graphicacy Lead Data Visualization Designer Carni Klirs.
Vote Run Lead knew what Graphicacy could accomplish based on their history together and data explorers the firm created for other clients. But Erin Vilardi and her team first had to raise funding for the project. They pitched to funders using early Graphicacy designs, which landed the crucial commitment from Pivotal Ventures, a Melinda French Gates company.
Charting a Path Forward
Current events influenced the explorer’s design. For example, the initial version didn’t include abortion access data, but the Supreme Court ruling on Roe vs Wade changed priorities.
“The Supreme Court ruling sparked Vote Run Lead to include state abortion laws, and we worked to include a state-by-state breakdown in time for the midterms,” said Carni. “The explorer will always focus on getting more women to run, but the Vote Run Lead team can add in data and understanding that help users make timely correlations.”
Such changes show how the tool can evolve. While the original data reflects who’s in office right now — Vote Run Lead hopes to expand it over time with new policy developments and a module on each state for opinion polling.
Meanwhile, the new data explorer is impressing current state legislators — and hopefully inspiring some new ones.
“It’s really critical to humanize the realities,” said Mary González, state representative in the Texas House. “When you’re deciding to run for office there’s so many unknowns. This tool gives you a glimpse of what you might be walking into.”
“I just appreciate this tool so much because it highlights how much work we have to do, and we know that our democracy works best when we actually have a representative democracy,” added Colorado State Senator Faith Winter.
Graphicacy partners with clients to tell engaging stories with data. Graphicacy’s team combines storytelling, thoughtful human-centered design, and deep technical capabilities to build and deploy strategic, data-rich digital projects. Graphicacy has created data visualizations and infographics for top-tier organizations and companies, domestically and internationally, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the World Bank, the Center for American Progress, the Anti-Defamation League, and
