[ATTW-L] Center for Civic Design's field guide for mail-in ballots

[Dragga, Sam]

If you are looking to start the semester with a propitious (and potentially inspiring) example of technical communication in action, consider the Center for Civic Design’s newest field guide, Designing Vote at Home Envelopes and Materials, at https://civicdesign.org/fieldguides/104-designing-vote-at-home-envelopes/.
This illustrated guide for election officials covers the information design choices and practical decisions involved in creating mail-in ballots for the 2020 elections.
The Center for Civic Design offers a series of field guides at https://civicdesign.org/fieldguides/ that might be pertinent to your classes: for example, Designing Usable Ballots, Writing Instructions Voters Understand, and Testing Ballots for Usability.
This material could also be paired with readings from the 2018 special issue of Technical Communication (65.4) on election technologies, which was guest edited by Godwin Agboka and Isidore Dorpenyo.  In addition to the introduction by the guest editors, “Election Technologies, Technical Communication, and Civic Engagement” (pp. 349-353), this issue offers the following articles:

  *   Fernando Sánchez, “Racial Gerrymandering and Geographic Information Systems: Subverting the 2011 Texas District Map with Election Technologies” (pp. 354-370)
  *   Natasha N. Jones and Miriam F. Williams, “Technologies of Disenfranchisement: Literacy Tests and Black Voters in the US from 1890 to 1965” (pp. 371-386) [NOTE: Recipient of the 2020 CCCC Award for Best Article Reporting Historical Research or Textual Studies in Technical and Scientific Communication.]
  *   Jennifer Sano-Franchini, “Designing Outrage, Programming Discord: A Critical Interface Analysis of Facebook as a Campaign Technology” (pp. 387-410)
  *   Jim Nugent, “Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Ballots: Technical Communication and Trust in Electoral Systems” (pp. 411-422)
  *   Matthew Bridgewater, “Ethos in Electoral Technology Company Web Spaces” (pp. 422-431)

Sam

Sam Dragga
Professor Emeritus, Texas Tech University
Editor, Technical Communication
sam.dragga at ttu.edu
1-806-543-6099

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