Specific Focus on Procedures Required
Conducting an information campaign specifically addressing voting station procedures will assist in ensuring that voters are prepared for voting when they arrive at the voting station.
While much of this information is more a long-term voter education issue, there are some specific messages that will need reinforcement if voter service and voter traffic flow is to be effective., Voting procedures information is not something that voters can be expected to fully retain from election to election, even if procedures remain unchanged and they need to be reminded about it for each election.
Targets and Issues
It is helpful to consider the following questions when assessing what should be included in voter information (apart from education), campaigns on voting procedures, cost-effectiveness, and potential information overload effects:
• What procedural information is vital for voters to understand before they arrive at the voting station, i.e., which issues might seriously prejudice the exercise of the right to vote or voter service if not fully understood?
• How much intensive information can voters absorb in a short period before voting day?
• What procedural information can be more cost-effectively reinforced in the voting station than by media or other information campaigns before voting day?
Vital pre-election knowledge of voting procedures would include issues such as:
• any identity or other documents that voters must bring with them to the voting station;
• entitlements and procedures for assisted voting;
• how to mark and cast a vote correctly
• voting station locations and voting hours, and in certain circumstances, transport
• provided to voting stations
• voting secrecy
• eligibility to vote in general or to use special voting facilities
Documents to Be Shown by Voters
Voters may be required to bring specific documents to the voting station to establish their identity or eligibility to vote, such as national identity cards or voter identification cards. If they arrive without these, they may not be able to collect these in time to return to vote. Excluding these voters from the voting station may cause altercations that can severely disrupt the election process. Intensive information prior to voting day on the specified documents voters that voters need to bring with them will minimize these occurrences.
It is a simple message that can be closely linked with or form part of information messages on voting days and hours and voting locations. Both mass coverage and targeting of particular voter groups who may not have access to normal mass communications will be needed.
Assisted Voting
Information on assisted voting may be more specifically targeted to particular geographic areas or through institutions and community groups dealing with physical impairment and lower literacy.
Information Content
There are advantages in producing communications media, public display or direct delivery information materials on voting procedures that can be broadly outlined in a message which emphasizes these steps.
This is particularly advantageous where voting procedures have changed or there are significant numbers of registered voters with no or little experience in voting. These materials create the background message from which other more specific parts of the information campaign are developed.
The key consideration is to keep these materials simple, since this is information and not formal education, and to leave more detailed information to personal contact methods and polling official advice. Visual and aural media messages should be based on a series of simple statements that explain:
• date of voting day;
• hours voting stations are open;
• voting station locations;
• registration requirements;
• identity documents required to vote;
• eligibility verification procedures;
• voting procedures;
• voting secrecy.
This style of information message is useful as a general reinforcement that can assist in tying together information in the voters' minds. Effective information communication will generally require specific separate messages on the vital issues, such as voting locations and correct marking or casting of ballots.
Information Methods
Print media is generally more effective for this broader information format. Care must be taken to ensure that posters or print advertisements produced accommodate the literacy levels of the society.
A high pictorial content can generally be more effective in explaining more complex procedures.
Television can also be used effectively. E.g. A simple video script used against a visual background of a voting station in operation.
The number of different steps in voting procedures messages being delivered may make radio use less than ideal.
Community meetings, simulations, and displays are also an effective means of delivering this more complex message. Text messages on cellular telephones can be used to provide voting information.
Voters Guides
The publication of a voters guide delivered to voters' registered address or available from public locations can provide full information on all voting procedures to an assured target audience.
Consider personal addressing of such guides, rather than household drops as this may, assist in ensuring that all voters have access to the information, although they are more expensive. This may be particularly relevant in reaching groups such as women in households where they have been traditionally excluded from decision-making processes. Support for this by media advertising advising voters that they should have received this information, and giving a contact number to arrange re-supply if necessary, is useful to raise readership of the guide and to correct delivery errors.
On Voting Day
Voters continue to need information even on voting day. Suggestions as to how best this can be achieved include:
Requirements for prescribed documents - The requirement of bringing the prescribed identity documents to the voting station is a message that needs to be reinforced, This can be done through the media on voting day itself and can be combined with messages reinforcing that it is voting day and the hours of operation of voting stations.
Voting processes information - It is preferable on voting day to provide information on the steps in voting processes to voting station officials, or personal contact through information centers, rather than complicating the media message. Information services offices and any telephone inquiry services should also be operating at least throughout the hours of voting.
Procedural queries - Specific voting operations officials can usefully be assigned to answering procedural queries from voters in voting stations, supported by visual materials in key areas of the voting station, particularly around areas where voters queue to vote. Subject matter can address both what is expected of voters and the services provided in the voting station.
Special Voting Facilities
For a discussion of voter information programs on procedures for special voting faciliites, see Information on How to ensure a Vote is Valid and Information on Voting Eligibility and Methods.
