U.S. Vote Foundation’s Election Official Directory (EOD) is a crowd-sourced database with 7,825 extensive records. The “crowd” comprises Local Election Officials (LEOs) across the US who regularly update their jurisdiction contact data. In 2010, the foundation began tracking response rates to update requests that go to LEOs. In the last five years since, the response rate to the update requests doubled from 30 percent to 60 percent. This is a story of dedication in pursuit of an idea and its implementation. Standout states in 2015 were Rhode Island and Michigan. Rhode Island’s Deputy Directory of Elections, Rob Rock, contacted US Vote to ask how his state could reach a 100 percent participation rate for all 39 of its jurisdictions. They teamed on the timing and messaging to the LEOs and the goal was achieved.
Michigan has a dramatically larger number of jurisdictions – 1,601. Working with Tim Hanson of Michigan’s Department of State to contact the LEOs in multiple ways brought their response rate to a whopping 65 percent!
The EOD effort began 12 years ago with Overseas Vote Foundation, now Overseas Vote, an initiative of U.S. Vote Foundation (US Vote). Over time, the backend system for managing the data evolved considerably and the amount of data maintained in each record increased.
Full Article: electionlineWeekly.