CiviL SOCIETY
Making Official Outreach to Voters Clear and Easy
The Problem
Direct outreach from election officials is a vital way for voters to find reliable, impartial, and trustworthy information about elections. Yet most officials lack the time and resources to clearly and consistently provide this information. For almost a decade, ideas42 partnered with election officials to design and test new and better ways to communicate with voters that encouraged millions of people to take critical steps to register, vote, track their ballot, and serve as poll workers. But vast differences in election laws and procedures across states and jurisdictions made it challenging to scale those insights nationwide.
Our Solution
We created VoterCast, an online platform that incorporates the most up-to-date evidence about effective voter communications to generate off-the-shelf voter outreach materials for election officials, tailored to the specifics of their jurisdiction. In just a few clicks, election officials can access professionally designed and behaviorally informed outreach materials to reach voters via social media, radio, email, mail, and in-person locations throughout their community.
The Results
VoterCast launched in 2024 and showed significant promise as an effective communications tool for election officials. In its first year:
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175
elections officials used VoterCast to communicate with voters in their community
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35
of 50 states had election officials using VoterCast to communicate with voters
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21 Million+
voters received outreach material created using VoterCast
Here’s how we applied behavioral design to improve election communication and make it easier for elections officials to reach out to voters.
Using plain language increases trust and makes communications accessible, understandable and easy to navigate
Reinforcing the credibility of election officials with every communication is key to voter confidence
Focusing messages on the main event — voting — and highlighting key dates or deadlines spurs voter action
Informing voters about the steps they need to take to cast their ballot leads to better follow through
In December 2025, The Elections Group acquired VoterCast, bringing deep expertise in election administration to the platform’s management, strong relationships in the field, and on-the-ground credibility to continue scaling VoterCast nationwide. The tool is now run by Ready for Tuesday.
