Posted by Aimee Cozza on July 28th, 2020Keeping in line with our mission statement, we are committed to a fair and equal world where everyone can and will vote in the upcoming election. We were happy to work with the NH chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to help create an unbiased voter information funnel site to allow people easy, responsive access to necessary information for registering to vote, registering to vote absentee, and voting itself.
The ACLU of NH approached us with a specific ask: they wanted to create a website that could accurately convey the necessary voting information, sans political bias, to get people registered to vote during these uncertain times. Many people don’t know what the 2020 election will look like given COVID-19 concerns, and others have been unable to register to vote in person. Plenty of people are unaware that they can register to vote by mail, and can even cast their vote by mail as well. The ACLU of NH had one of their employees create a base website for us to work with, which had some of the pages laid out, and delivered to us a wishlist of items they wanted to be installed on the website to help for ease of use.
We were able to assist with fleshing out the website, and ultimately ended up more or less “gutting” the website to install a theme that runs faster and more as expected. We began tackling the information in a way that would funnel people down in a linear fashion, using a step-by-step methodology and easy-to-understand color delineations as well as iconography to help guide users to the steps needed to register to vote, or how to request an absentee ballot. We even supplied a “what you will need” list at the top of most pages to prepare people for the things they will need to complete their registration. We reformatted the website so people can find what they need quickly and easily at first glance.
We thought it was incredibly important to supply the information and forms within the context of the site itself wherever possible, so people didn’t need to leave to find information applicable to them. With the ACLU of NH’s help, we imported the town clerk information for New Hampshire and installed it in an easy-to-use, intuitive interface that loads same-page town clerk and polling place information to keep people on-site. We tried to reduce the necessity of accessing the Secretary of State website due to the lack of responsive web design and difficult-to-use interface as much as we could, while retaining the up-to-date information with regular and timely imports.
On top of all this, we also used some new web standards to make sharing the link and finding the website easier than ever. We loaded the website with meta title and description data, rich marked FAQ questions and answers regarding NH voting, as well as Open Graph data to ensure when items are shared on social media, they look polished and complete. Favicons are present for bookmarking purposes (and making it easier to get back to!) as well. We’ve begun the steps necessary for Google to find the website and index it, and are confident that even though this short-timeline project had to be quickly put together (and information was changing rapidly over such a short timeframe!), it will have a great return and will help others in NH to register to vote for the politician of their choice.
There are still more items to be created on this website, but we’re excited to show off the project and urge all of our readers to ensure they are registered to vote, and if not, to please register to vote. Maybe this new project can even help you!
