Helping ensure all voters get their voices heard at the ballot box with Vote.org’s WhatsApp chat service

Numbers: a 2022 midterm election snapshot 

• More than 11 million users visited Vote.org’s website to register to vote, verify their registration, request absentee ballots, find their polling location or to receive trusted, accessible information about voting and the laws that affect voting in states around the country.
• Of the 11 million visitors to Vote.org, at least 1.16 million of those users were under the age of 35.
• Vote.org helped to register more than 650,000 voters.
• Vote.org engaged voters more than 200 million times, via texts, emails, radio impressions and more.
• Vote.org sent 31 million texts with crucial election information to voters across the country.
• For the 2022 Georgia runoff election, Vote.org reached voters more than 4.2 million times, reached nearly 340,000 students with a campus influencer programme, an SMS programme and through grassroots teams across 29 campuses. The organization reached voters over 18.2 million times in Georgia in the general election and the runoff combined, and made 7.8 million radio impressions on voters in Georgia.

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Using tech to reach individuals with trusted information …

Vote.org is driven by a belief that technology, when wielded strategically for good, can drastically expand access. Voting is no different - in fact, at least in the United States, voting systems are antiquated and different from state to state, so there is a lot of room for technology and innovation.

Vote.org is also driven by a belief that participation is essential to a healthy and thriving democracy - and that most Americans want to participate in their democracy, but are left out because they lack the trust, information and time to do so. The organization believes that when voters have accurate information surrounding the voting process, they are able to make their voices heard in every election.

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…. in a complex and often changing context

Unlike many other countries, the U.S. has a decentralized elections system, so each state is responsible for administering its own state and federal elections, in accordance with the constitution and with limited federal interference. For this reason, systems, dates, deadlines, processes, and rules differ from state to state. This makes national electoral organizing complicated. Throughout the country’s history, some states have made a point of making voting easier for their citizens, and some have imposed barriers. This context makes Vote.org’s offering as a centralized hub for voter information across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. a most valuable service. 

Seamless integration of Vote.org’s tools 

The interactive service allows users to seamlessly access Vote.org’s tools, check election information for their state, find answers to commonly asked questions around voter registration, rules and deadlines, and get critical information about their right to vote. An important feature of the WhatsApp experience is that users click out to Vote.org to use the latter’s tools: there is no in-app integration of the tools themselves. No voter information is gathered or provided directly on the platform. Instead the service refers voters over to Vote.org to actually complete the tool workflows.

‍Evolving the chatbot beyond 2020 and towards 2024

Vote.org’s mantra is that there are no off-election years. The organization’s chatbot content is focused on giving voters the information that they need to vote in any federal or statewide election. Moving beyond 2020 and towards 2024, however, has seen some evolutions:

• In the period after the 2020 Presidential Election, Vote.org revamped some of its chat cards to focus on more evergreen content so that the bot could serve upcoming elections seamlessly, without having to change too much annually. These changes were made in English and Spanish.
• Vote.org’s engineering team took the time between the 2020 cycle and the 2022 midterms to engage in deep analysis of the types of questions that the bot received that were not suited to a menu style chatbot. Importantly, this has programmatic implications beyond the chatbot, helping Vote.org formulate proactive messaging addressing common voter questions.

A strong focus on user acquisition and the role of multi-faceted public campaigns to drive traffic 

• In 2021, the organization ran a digital A/B test ad to see what it could learn about attracting new users to the chatbot and optimizing conversion rates. 
• This was against a background of lower usage on the Vote.org chatbot in 2021 - 2022 than 2020. Some of this is due to general and predictable dropoff in a midterm cycle compared to a Presidential election. However, the Power is in Your Hands campaign featuring Walter Mercado was a major driver of traffic to the chatbot in 2020, and without a major campaign, there was less enthusiasm on the chatbot than in 2020. 

Lessons on using a WhatsApp-based chatbot for organizations working in civic participation

“We know that technology, when wielded strategically for good, can drastically expand access. While accuracy and clarity should be the primary focus of everything you do related to a chatbot, remember that users (in our case voters) are the experts on what they need! We were surprised at some of the questions we received and were enthusiastic to meet voters where they were through the development and refinement of the chatbot. Turn.io makes it very easy to modify your chatbot to meet user needs." Alex Meadow, Vote.org

Turn.io product features used:

1. BigQuery for data analytics
2. List / structured messages