Most election officials are in this situation. For the following reasons, it’s well worth creating a new website specifically to host election information:

Election information is special. With website vendors, you get a one-size-fits-all approach to providing government information. But your website design should be made to fit election information — and not the other way around. Our website template is based upon years of research about how voters look for election information online, and it’s built to meet their needs. Research from the Center for Civic Design is at the heart of the template.

You get control. Do you feel in control of your election website? Many of the election officials that we meet say they don’t. The template makes publishing vital civic information as easy as writing an email — there’s no coding and no IT expertise required.

You learn. Along with the election website comes training that’s intended to help you and your staff learn about publishing civic information online. This means you will be able to publish and update your site yourself instead of asking somebody else to do it for you. In our digital age, having the knowhow and confidence to maintain your web presence is vitally important.

The website template and the training are free of cost. CTCL does not charge maintenance fees, but WordPress hosting costs $300 annually. Your domain will cost an additional $10-$20 per year.

For the template’s best performance you should use Google Chrome as your web browser. Google Chrome is a free web browser that you can download to your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. You must have an operating system that supports Google Chrome. For full Google Chrome support on your PC, it needs Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10 or later. For full Google Chrome support on your Mac, it needs OS X 10.10 or higher.

Yes, custom URLs or domain names can be purchased by your office for $10-$20 per year through WordPress. We can work with you to choose a custom URL and redirect your new election website to the URL of your choice, including your current one.

You can add images but we recommend that you avoid adding unnecessary decoration to your website. The template is designed so that voters can easily find the information they need. Decorative images and graphics can be distracting, may slow down the load time of your website, and can negatively impact how your website appears on mobile devices.

It’s easy to integrate Google Translate into your finished website. Google Translate makes your election website instantly available in over 90 languages. Learn more about Google Translate.

When you work with us, setting up your site will normally take about 1-2 weeks. We’re happy to accommodate your schedule.

After your website launches, CTCL can provide up to 10 hours of remote support. We will answer your questions and provide guidance for new goals or challenges that you encounter with your website. We also maintain an archive of courses, webinars, and tech tools that you may access at any time.

WordPress is one of the most widely used web publishing platforms. It’s easy to use, regularly maintained, and comes with strong security features.

Login credentials, including an email address and password, are required to make any changes to your election website. You create your own login credentials, and we’ll help you set up 2-step verification to protect your account. In addition, your website will be equipped with HTTPS, the new standard for website security. Finally, we encourage election departments to use a .gov domain, although this is not a requirement.

Any website, regardless of domain or platform, may see lowered performance when it experiences a spike in traffic. But WordPress has servers worldwide and is recognized for being robust and reliable. Additionally, our template is designed to be “lightweight,” which requires relatively little bandwidth to load. To date, none of the jurisdictions that use our template have reported website traffic or reliability problems.

Whether you’re building a new election website or just want to improve your current one, we can provide you with a free website assessment to get started. We assess the extent to which your site uses principles of plain design and plain language, answers voters’ most common questions, and is usable on mobile devices. Email [email protected] for more information about our website assessment process and schedule yours today!

In addition, our Improving Your Election Website course can help you prepare to make revisions to your existing website. The course includes an audit of your website that identifies areas where you’re doing well as well as areas for improvement.