IN Tech for Progress expands voting wait-time app
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
By Marilyn Odendahl for The Indiana Citizen.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Indiana Citizen-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.
Not sure you have time to vote?
IN Tech for Progress, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Indianapolis, has updated its app - Indianavotetimes.org - to help you find the shortest wait time to cast your ballot so you can still do whatever else you need to do that day. The app, currently listing information for only Marion, Boone and Vigo counties, shows each voting center in those counties and then gives the estimated time Hoosiers will have to wait in line to get to the check-in table, where they sign the poll book and get their ballot.
Roger Deetz, CEO and founder of IN Tech for Progress, said the hope is that the app will help encourage more people to vote and improve Indiana's poor voter turnout rate. The state has been falling in voter participation compared to other states, dropping from 38th place in the 2012 presidential election to 46th in 2020, according to the 2023 Indiana Civic Health Index.
"As Indiana technology workers, we're passionate about a thriving democracy, and if we can give back to the community to help sort of improve Indiana's civic engagement ... (we) were interested in doing that," Deetz said.
IN Tech for Progress led the development of the updated app with help from 10 to 12 volunteers who contributed over the course of 2024. The app runs on IN Tech for Progress systems.
The voting times app is accessible from any web browser, whether on a desktop or mobile device. Voters can visit the website, select one of the three available counties and then see the voting centers that are open, when they will close and how long the wait times are for each location.
Since Marion, Boone and Vigo counties use vote centers, Deetz said, voters can use the app to determine which voting site is best for them by seeing where the sites are located and how long the wait times are.
Although the app was launched Oct. 8, the day early voting began in Indiana, the voting sites are showing "wait time not reported" because little or no data has been entered. However, voters can bolster the app's pool of data by tapping the "Check In" button at the bottom of the screen and inputting real-time information. Once they have accessed the app, voters are asked two questions - how many people are standing in line ahead of you and how many people are behind you - and the answers are put through an algorithm, which calculates the wait time.
"We're hoping folks, just out of civic spirit, will check in and kind of share their experience," Deetz said.
Deetz emphasized IN Tech does not collect, share or sell any data on individual voters who use the app. In the past, the nonprofit provided aggregated data to some legislators who had questions about vote centers, which he sees as helping to achieve the app's mission.
IN Tech's goal is to not only provide a "great tool just for citizens to help them successfully vote," Deetz said, but also to help inform public policy. If voters have to wait in long lines, he added, perhaps the aggregated data from the app can offer some insight for conversations about the number and locations of voting centers.
"People, in my view, shouldn't have to wait very long to vote," Deetz said.
The pastrami on rye test
The app was initially developed and introduced for the November 2020 election, when the presidential contest between Republican incumbent Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden was anticipated to attract more voters than usual.
In that first year, the app gave wait times for only Marion County vote centers and relied on about 100 volunteers stationed at polling sites to input the data about the number of people waiting in line, Deetz said. About 60,000 voters in Indianapolis used the app during the 2020 election, he said, which signaled a demand for wait-time information.
However, the tech team realized the use of volunteers would not be scalable as they included more counties, Deetz said. So, the developers rebuilt the internal machinery to use crowdsourced submissions.
A version "halfway in between" using wait time info from both volunteers and voters was offered for the 2022 November mid-term election, Deetz said. The "pathetic turnout" for the election in Indiana, he said, did not yield much insight for the tech team, because so few voters showed up at the polls and used the app.
Meeting in January 2024, the tech crew sketched a project plan and then began completely redesigning the 2020 app, Deetz said. The team made a handful of fixes and small improvements, so the app would be more functional for voters in more counties.
"We took a lot of inspiration from the design of that first app," Deetz said. "We learned what worked well and what didn't and what was kind of hard for us to manage, and we tried to incorporate that into the design for the new 2024 version."
During the development phase, the team dispatched a volunteer to Shapiro's Delicatessen, south of downtown Indianapolis, to test the accuracy of the algorithm that is used to crunch the crowdsourced data. The volunteer observed the lunch line and inputted the data into the app, which was then run through the algorithm to learn how long diners would have to wait to get their sandwiches.
"It worked out really well," Deetz said of the deli test.
Boone and Vigo counties were selected for the expansion because they have vote centers, Deetz said. Also, because Vigo is home to Indiana State University and Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, IN Tech is hoping students will provide a lot of crowdsourced data.
IN Tech aims to have the app collecting and dispensing voting wait times for every Indiana county by either the 2026 mid-term or the 2028 general election, Deetz said.
As early voting hours expand and voting centers open on Saturday, Deetz expects more wait-time information will be entered and the app will become more useful to voters. Also Deetz said he is hopeful voter turnout will increase.
"We want to make Indiana a great place to live and work and we believe part of that means political change," Deetz said, adding IN Tech is not affiliated with any political party or any candidate running for office. "Just having (tech) folks that are willing to do some extra work, nights and weekends, and being civically inspired, I think that's a great indicator that there is a community here willing to work towards that vision for Indiana."
Marilyn Odendahl wrote this article for The Indiana Citizen.
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