EnCiv’s purpose is to integrate and further develop the best of civic tech. Team members have been at work since the beginning on a civic platform. But partner members haven’t waited until the platform is up and running to collaborate on stand-alone projects. Last year founding members Ballotpedia and Interactivity Foundation (IF) partnered in a pilot project in Des Moines, Iowa, aimed at enhancing voter information. Now they are close to finishing a more sophisticated and greatly expanded version of that effort for Chicago’s February 2019 municipal elections.
Photo by vagueonthehow 
Recruiting for the project, begun in August of this year with the support of the McCormick Foundation, was done through on-the-ground, online and other channels. As in the Des Moines pilot, IF conducted numerous online and in-person discussions, this time involving 144 diverse participants. The discussion sessions generated hundreds of questions, which were then culled to eliminate duplicate and unsuitable questions. The resulting list of 100 questions were then ranked by project participants in importance with the aid of software deployed by the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement. IF has now handed the ranked list of questions over to Ballotpedia, which is reworking them into a candidate survey.
Candidates’ answers will be posted on Ballotpedia.org as they are received for voters to see. Ballotpedia is also planning outreach effort to publicize the project and the availability of its results, including a newly launched newsletter called “Deep Dish”.
Given past voter turnout rates and Ballotpedia’s popularity, the project’s results are certain to be viewed by tens of thousands of Chicagoans–thus ranking it among the largest “infogagement” efforts ever completed. The ultimate winners will be voters all across Chicago, who will enjoy easy access to reliable and useful electoral information. We at EnCiv are gratified to have helped bring the project partners together and add our thanks to theirs to the McCormick Foundation for supporting this worthwhile endeavor.
