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Election Night is thrilling for election workers and voters alike. For election officials, it’s a high-energy continuation of a months-long process, as focus shifts from preparation to vote tallying and audits. For voters, it’s the moment where they can finally see (or at least begin to see) which candidates will come out on top. To make that process even more transparent for voters and streamlined for election officials, many jurisdictions have begun to update vote tallies in real time on their websites. Greene County, Missouri is one of them.

Located in southwestern Missouri, Greene County is home to about 200,000 voters and plenty of history. Its county seat, Springfield, is the birthplace of cashew chicken, Bass Pro Shops, and Route 66 (one of the last remaining original stretches of Route 66 can be found downtown).   

Former U.S. Senator and Missouri Secretary of State Roy Blunt got his start in politics as Greene County Clerk back in 1973. Since 2015, Shane Schoeller has served in that role, and is part of a small but nimble team of 15 full-time staff. We sat down to talk with Shane and Elections Coordinator Madison McFarland to learn a bit more about their office’s effort to bring voters into the process and make their local elections more accessible.

Deciding to Update the Election Website

Within Shane’s first year in office, one of his first accomplishments was updating Greene County’s election website. But the world of web design is constantly evolving, and a few years later, he knew it was time for another refresh. “Early on in website design, there was too much information there and you got lost,” says Shane. “We wanted to empower the voters to get information about what’s going to be on their ballot, where their polling location is, and all of the different things that a voter may be thinking about,” says Shane. “We wanted to make it easy and accessible for them to come to the website and get that information.”

One important feature that Shane and Madison wanted to offer voters was a live results tracker, so they could see vote tallies in real time on Election Night. Previously, the team had been uploading reports to the website, but they weren’t particularly user friendly, and they knew there was a lot of room for improvement. “We’ve got to be transparent,” says Madison. “We’ve got to show that elections are secure and that they’re safe. And the more you can get that information out on a platform, the better it is.”

Gathering Inspiration

As many of us know, elections aren’t always simple. There are many questions a local election website must be primed to answer, and keeping it user-friendly and up to date is vital to making sure today’s voters can easily find the info they need to cast their votes. So to kick off the process of updating their website after setting the budget for the project in 2020, Shane and Madison turned to other websites for inspiration. They looked at websites—both from other election offices, and from other non-elections related companies—that conveyed information clearly, used attractive visuals, and had more advanced features that they liked. They also reviewed CTCL’s Improving Your Election Website training for tips on applying plain language and design principles to their website.

Armed with this information and inspiration, Shane and Madison had a clear vision for the new website, and selected a local company in Greene County to support them with making the desired changes. The company had also worked with their Circuit Clerk in the past, so understood the challenges of funding a site like this for a public entity, and were able to work within their budget.

The company was able to help Madison and Shane take a step back and design the website from the perspective of someone without election experience. Shane says, “In any type of professional organization, you do kind of get lost in the weeds, and you don’t realize that what you know, the average person does not know.” Madison adds, “The website is truly built for voters by voters.” Over the course of the year in 2021, the elections team met with the developer on a regular basis to refine their vision and get the new prototype up and running.

Iterating and Seeking Feedback from Voters

In preparation for the public unveiling in April of 2022, Shane and Madison organized a focus group, where they invited specific members of the community to review the new website and provide feedback. (They had used a similar process when purchasing new election equipment, and wanted to implement it again for this website project). They reached out to folks in the disability community, their election judges, party chairs and other individuals in the community whose input they thought would be valuable. (Madison notes that having a good moderator for that focus group was key to keeping the conversation on track!) Ultimately, the feedback they received was helpful for determining which features were most valuable to voters, and which elements on the website should be most prominent.

Shane says that he’s proud of the way his election office was able to include and empower stakeholders from across the community to build a website that would better serve more of their citizens. “When you have more people that are part of the process,” he says, “you have a much better opportunity to deliver a product that people are going to be able to not only appreciate, but use in a functional way.”

Launching the New Results Tracker

In April of 2022, the Greene County elections team was ready to launch the new website and results tracker to the public for their school board and municipal election. To prepare for the launch, bipartisan election judge teams tested all of the equipment, and the team performed a logic and accuracy test on the results tracker tool.

Throughout Election Night, Madison was responsible for collecting reports that came from election authorities from about 80 polling locations, and securely uploading them to the website using the new tool. She was able to preview the results before making them public to ensure that the results were displaying properly. This new process required more steps than their previous process involved—simply uploading a PDF with a single total for all results to their website—but the ability for voters to see the results published in real time was worth the extra effort.

Shane says that voters have appreciated the results tracker, particularly those hosting watch parties. “Before, the PDF was harder to see, even on the bigger screens,” he says. “Whereas now, they can click on them and be able to show the audience what’s happening in those races.” Shane has made a habit of tweeting out to the media on Election Night to periodically give them updates from the results tracker, which he says they’ve appreciated as well.

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After:

Setting Up a Results Tracker in Your Election Office

If you’re interested in setting up a live results tracker on your website—or making any website updates, for that matter—Shane recommends having a clear vision for your project, and knowing how much you’re able to spend to execute that vision. “I think that helped us get to the end product quicker rather than later,” reflects Shane.

Madison recommends being open to receiving feedback from voters. “Sometimes it was hard to hear some negative comments, but everything’s constructive,” she reflects. Ultimately, she knows that voters’ feedback played a big role in creating the best possible tool.

Finally, it’s not a bad idea to develop relationships with your programming team, and have them on call on Election Night if you hit a technical snag and need additional support. Plus, Madison and Shane say that having ample training and documentation about how the results tracker works has been useful for their staff.

If you’d like to learn more about the Greene County election website and results tracker, you can reach out to Shane and Madison at [email protected].

And If you’re interested in working with the CTCL team to build a new election website for your community, we offer a free website template and training. You can learn more and start the process here.