Mobile Election Notification/Electronic Election

Administration Tools

Brian D. NewbyElection Commissioner

Johnson County, Kansas

December 9, 2008

Johnson County Kansas

Choose Effective Over Hip

• Digital democracy—Twitter, Text Messaging, YouTube, Mash-ups, blogs, etc.—definitely has a role for election administrators.

• Johnson County has focused on the application first, technology second.

Benefits

• Target voters under 30.

• Provides a reason to have a conversation rather than just saying, “It’s important to vote.”

• Drives people to our website and allows us to engage with them more.

Mobile Election Notification

Current

• Podcasting

• Textcasting

• Polling Place Lookup by Address

Evaluating

• Twitter-Like Instant Day-of communication to election workers

• Inclement weather wake-up “robo” calls to election workers

Mobile Election Notification

• Part of a comprehensive plan to engage with people on their terms.

• Linked to a website refresh organized by visitor segments rather than topics.

• Segments include voters, election workers, media, future voters, and others.

• Drives users to the website (reduce phone calls).

Organized

By Visitors

Mobile

Sign-Up

What Is a Podcast?

• For our purposes, it is a series of messages sent out for each election– Regularly scheduled messages– Urgent messages with critical election information

• Each message will contain:– A recorded statement– A title (like an e-mail subject line)– A description (a short overview of the audio message

content)

Voters Can Subscribe Directly or Through ITunes

www.jocoelection.org

Podcasts Are Really Simple

• As in….Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

• With the new version of Microsoft Windows, RSS will become mainstreamed, much like the Internet was mainstreamed with Windows 95.

Podcast Subscribers….

• Go the website of an Aggregator and install their program– Attensa (uses Outlook)– Feedreader, RSS Bandit (“stand alones”)– iPod (iTunes)

• On a web page, click on the RSS Feed button and follow the prompts to begin subscribing to their podcasts– CNN (links to webpage for text, audio, video)– Wall Street Journal (text)– Jo Co Election Office (audio)

www.itunes.com

Voters Can Subscribe Directly or Through ITunes

www.itunes.com

Voters Can Subscribe Directly or Through ITunes

www.itunes.com

Voters Can Subscribe Directly or Through ITunes

Election Updates in ITunes

Podcast “Album” ImageITunes “Album” Page

Podcast Messages

• Recorded and scheduled• Updated for users when they charge

their IPODs• Headline is most important part of the

podcast• Can be video or audio• Can include attachments, like voter

registration and advance application forms

Text Messaging

• Short messages sent to cell phones or email.

• 160-character limit:

Advance Voting at the Multi-Service Center in Lenexa will not be open on 7-14 due to power outage. It will open at 8 am tmw.

Textcasting

Users sign up at www.jocoelection.org

Textcasting

Users sign up at www.jocoelection.org

Jo-Co Po-Lo

www.jocopolo.com

Johnson County Election Office

Jo-Co Po-Lo

www.jocopolo.com

Johnson County Election Office

Voter types VOTEKS and address to short code

Response Received Within 60 Seconds

Learnings

• Media interest is high.• Legal/public records issues arise.• Each medium is different; communicating

becomes an art.• Podcasts drive website visits.• More email users than cell phone users, but

cell phone users are gaining.• The services are pivot points for changes and

application improvements ahead (some of which we may not know).