The following is a guest post from Julie Zavon, which shows how citizens seeking to improve the process of election administration really can make a difference, especially when they can get a reporter interested in a story:

The PA polling place lookup tool didn’t work for multiple municipalities in PA, affecting tens of thousands of voters. I reported it several times. the State and my county each said the other was responsible. Nobody drilled down to discover a problem in the computer programming of the lookup tool until Carter Walker at Votebeat got interested after I contacted him.

I had met with the county, as I regularly do, to discuss election questions. My last question was why the polling place lookup tool isn’t fixed. The County said they gave the PA Department of State (DOS) corrections for the tool many times, but they were never uploaded. That led me to write to the head of DOS, Al Schmidt. I then sent the letter to all elected state reps from my county and to dozens of journalists. 

Carter Walker (Votebeat) called me and then followed up spending hours researching how many counties statewide have problems with the lookup tool and how many voters are affected. He did a massive amount of work. His research and communications with DOS resulted in DOS focusing on the computer programming problem. See this report.

I’ve reported this issue for years, and I’m thrilled the problem can finally be fixed. I’m immensely grateful to Carter Walker. Successful advocacy is persistence and relationship building and lucky timing.

Since I retired I divide my time between artwork and advocacy for election systems and voter rights. I follow local election administration closely, I’ve been a poll worker many times, I work for Election Protection, and I blog on election issues to educate the public. My keen interest in elections comes from spending many years working in the former USSR and other countries that have unaccountable governments.