Challenge

The County’s Clerk, Assessor, Recorder, and Elections Departments (CARE) are legally obligated to implement and monitor a countywide voter outreach program to target underrepresented communities in the county. CARE needed a quick and accurate visual representation of the disenfranchised Latino and Chinese-American communities in order to appropriately plan outreach activities. They needed to find out where to concentrate their efforts educating and motivating people through the use of trained personnel and resources like language-appropriate printed materials. Policymakers needed more time and faster, more accurate information with which to plan their resources. 

Solution

Farallon integrated precinct information from the exisitng enterprise GIS with Census information to visually identify communities that had high ethnic concentrations with low voter registration.

• Better informed decisions equal less time spent on guesswork. With data designating registration statistics within certain communities, personnel and officials can direct efforts on specific neighborhoods that have higher levels of the targeted demographic. Where this once took several employees several days sorting through census numbers, charts, and maps of streets and neighborhood jurisdictions, it now takes only a few minutes to recognize outreach communities.
• Underrepresented communities can be provided with the resources they need, such as pamphlets written in their first language, so they can access essential information about the voting process, poll locations, and candidate platforms. Higher voter turnout can lead to more community involvement and personal empowerment.

Categories: Web Applications, Voter Registration

Selected screenshots from the project

Click on any thumbnail to view a high-res image

Voter Registration Analysis