Usability of County Election Websites

How well do counties answer voters’ questions about upcoming elections? Other studies have reviewed state election department websites [1, 2], but voters vote at the county or town level. How do they get their questions answered? Assuming that one source of election information might be local —the website for the county clerk or registrar—we cataloged 147 county websites, and then conducted a large-scale, distributed usability test with 41 voters from across the U.S. using their own county’s website. We sought to learn about what local election jurisdictions were offering for content, what terminology they used to describe it, and how useful and usable that content was to voters —just in time for the 2012 U.S. Presidential election.