The Center for Civic Design boldly proclaims that “Democracy is a design problem.” In practice, the Center for Civic Design works to make engaging with the government easy, working to make elections easier to run, support innovation, and invite participation in elections.
Whitney Quesenbery, Executive Director at the Center for Civic Design told us design matters because “implementation of policy is where the rubber meets the road, where policy becomes real. The work states, counties, and cities do to turn legislation or regulation into reality is the ‘last mile,’ and design is a critical element of that.”
“We want to help election officials solve the challenge of communicating, of helping people understand the voting system in their city or county,” Quesenbery continued.
Among the many projects they tackle, the Center of Civic Design team found themselves supporting election administrators in different jurisdictions tasked with implementing one of the least familiar voting methods: Ranked-choice voting (RCV).
When a state or county implements an RCV system, it requires careful planning and implementation of every step of running an election. Cities or counties must ensure election officials are educated, implement the right voting systems, and put the appropriate regulations and rules governing the RCV system in place. There is also a massive voter education challenge.
The Center for Civic Design is working to support election officials throughout RCV implementation. While not traditionally a convener, the Center For Civic Design’s best path to gather knowledge is to partner with a blend of election officials across jurisdictions where 1) RCV is being considered by the local legislature, 2) RCV has been passed but has not yet been implemented for an election, and 3) RCV has been used for several election cycles.
By working with a diverse group of election officials, the Center for Civic Design can gather information on what’s working, what’s not, what questions officials have, and what resources officials need, ultimately providing best practices and research materials to fill the gap between RCV policy and implementation.
“Civic Roundtable helps us reach election officials at every stage of the RCV journey. These officials are hundreds or thousands of miles away from one another — having everyone in one digital platform helps us distill challenges and make the best possible design and implementation recommendations,” Quesenbery said.
Simultaneously, Roundtable has become a space for election officials to collaborate with one another easily, when they’d otherwise have few avenues to do so. A user from Seattle asked a question about tabulation systems and got answers from officials in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Minnesota in mere hours. “Traditional methods of interagency collaboration pale in comparison,” said Quesenbery.
“Information distribution with Roundtable’s government operations platform is so much easier than email or messaging or other, traditional tools,” Isabelle Yisak, a design researcher at the Center for Civic Design, and one of the organization’s RCV leaders, agreed. “Today, the Center for Civic Design uses Roundtable to share samples of election administration plans, ballot designs, voter education materials and new research that offers insights into how to communicate with voters.”
“We’re building best practices,” Yisak continued. “Once we share something, it’s housed in Roundtable’s resource library so any user can access it at any time. It’s fantastic.”
“These are all people trying to solve the same problem — effectively implementing RCV and helping voters understand the new system. Without Roundtable, they might never know each other, or ask each other for help, or share information so easily,” Quesenbery said. “By bringing everyone together in Roundtable, by sharing resources and best practices, we’re raising the floor for everyone so that every voter gets all the information they need to cast their vote.”
