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<h3>Social Voter Engagement to Improve Voter Turnout</h3>\
Whitney Kilgore, Matt Crosslin, Patrick McLeod
The iElection App was a proposal for a combination of user-focused information retrieval and gamification to address the underlying issues of both voting information and voter participation. The text- and mobile-based information retrieval system is designed to deliver early voting location information and Election Day voting location information to users' mobile devices, regardless of whether or not they are voice and text devices or voice, text, and data devices.
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<td style="vertical-align:top;">Due to concerns with accessibility issues, as well as the fact that flip phones were still popular when we conceived of this app, we originally included options for how this system would work on non-smartphones. Basically, users would have to sign up on a website with their name and location, and then create settings for reminders. The text messaging system could also utilize Artificial Intelligence to respond to basic questions (See "Text Message on a Smart Phone" for more information on this possibility).
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<td><img src="iElection-Flip-Phone.jpg" height="600px" border="0" /></td>\
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<td style="vertical-align:top;">This screen shot mock-up shows what automatically generated text message reminders could look like on a smartphone. This would be generated based on individual user data to give them reminders when they want them.
Additionally, Artificial Intelligence could be utilized to respond to basic questions about the automatically-generated text messages.
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<td class="supportButton">[[See an Example|Response to Text]]</td>\
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</table><td><img src="iElection-text-short.jpg" height="600px" border="0" /></td>\
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<td style="vertical-align:top;">This screenshot mock-up shows how a user's screen could lead them to their polling location, as well as how they could interact with their friends. Obviously, this was designed before too much political polarization had set in, so the idea of interacting with friends over voting challenges was a different possibility back then.
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<td><img src="iElection-vote.jpg" height="600px" border="0" /></td>\
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<td style="vertical-align:top;">This screenshot mock-up shows the badges that users could earn based on various activities - including encouraging others to vote, answering questions on issues, and other options as needed. This was based on the Four Square model that was popular at the time that the app was conceived.
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<td><img src="iElection-badges.jpg" height="600px" border="0" /></td>\
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<td style="vertical-align:top;">This screenshot mock-up shows where users could rate their position on various issues. This would be a flexible screen connected to current issues in specific races that the user could vote in. Users would also rate issues based on the importance that they personally placed on each issue. This information could also be used to show voters which candidates for various races are the closest match to their views.
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<td><img src="iElection-issues.jpg" height="600px" border="0" /></td>\
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<td style="vertical-align:top;">Instead of just texting back "More," various forms of Artificial Intelligence could be utilized to answer basic but specific questions from users, as demonstrated in this screenshot mock-up.
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<td class="supportButton">[[Back|Text Message on a Smart Phone]]</td>\
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<td><img src="iElection-text.jpg" height="600px" border="0" /></td>\
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</table>Information on early voting locations and Election Day voting locations is public information provided either locality or by county governments in the United States. Voting location information is often some of the first information that localities or county governments examine for their potential to be transformed into open data.
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<td class="supportButton" width="50%">[[The Gamification Element]]</td>\
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</table>Projects such as MyTexasVotes push voting location information to participants, but did not involve a component to motivate participants to vote. The iElection framework incorporates gamification as a component to engage participants and motivate them to vote through the ability to earn badges for various electoral information seeking behavior.
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<td class="supportButton" width="50%">[[Screenshots and Examples]]</td>\
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</table>We created various mock-ups of screen shots for the ideas we had, based on the "Four Square" app that was popular at the time:
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<td class="supportButton" width="50%">[[Text Message on Flip Phone]]</td>\
<td class="supportButton" width="50%">[[Text Message on a Smart Phone]]</td>\
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<td class="supportButton">[[Voting Screen]]</td>\
<td class="supportButton">[[Voting Issues Rater]]</td>\
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<td class="supportButton">[[Badges for Voting Activities]]</td>\
<td class="supportButton"><a href="https://mattcrosslin.com/archives/games/ielection/iElectionApp.pdf">Proposal Paper</a></td>\
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