VIP Expands Election Support

Article December 2, 2015 By: Amy Cohen Read time:

Projects: Election Initiatives

The Voting Information Project (VIP) is significantly expanding its support of state and local elections in 2016. In addition to the Nov. 8 general election, the project will provide critical information, such as polling place locations and ballot summaries, for voters in more than 70 elections, starting in January. The races include presidential primaries in 32 states and statewide primaries in 41 states, as well as runoffs where applicable, and dozens of local and municipal elections, including fire district and school board races across the country. VIP will not provide information for caucuses.

Although some states are able to quickly and easily provide VIP with the necessary information, many others do not have the infrastructure to efficiently collect and share the data, particularly for local and municipal elections. To address this, VIP worked in Arizona, California, Idaho, New Jersey, Ohio, and West Virginia in 2014 and 2015 to build systems to automate the collection of polling place and ballot information for all elections.

VIP data is available at no cost through customizable tools and apps as well as Get to the Polls, a website developed by Pew in collaboration with the Internet Association that allows voters to enter their addresses and find ballot and candidate information and the location and hours of their polling places. Developers can use the Google Civic Information API to include VIP data in their applications.

Amy Cohen is an officer for election initiatives at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

VIP to Provide Data for More than 70 Elections in 2016
Dates (2016)	State(s)	Election Type
Jan. 5	Rhode Island	Special election
Jan. 26	New Jersey	Special election
Feb. 9	Washington	Special election
Feb. 20	New Jersey	Fire district election
	Rhode Island	Special election
	South Carolina	Presidential primary (R)
Feb. 27	South Carolina	Presidential primary (R)
March 1	Oklahoma, Vermont, Virginia	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
March 5	Louisiana	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
March 8	Idaho	Presidential primary (R)
	Michigan	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
	Mississippi	Presidential primary (R) and (D), statewide primary
	New Jersey	Special school board election
March 15	Florida, Missouri	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
	North Carolina, Ohio	Presidential primary (R) and (D), statewide primary
March 22	Arizona	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
March 29	Mississippi	Runoff statewide primary
April 5	Wisconsin	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
April 19	New York	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
April 26	Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
	Maryland, Pennsylvania	Presidential primary (R) and (D), statewide primary
	Washington	Special election
May 3	Indiana	Presidential primary (R) and (D), statewide primary
May 10	Nebraska, West Virginia	Presidential primary (R) and (D), statewide primary
	New Jersey	Municipal nonpartisan election
May 17	Idaho	Statewide primary
	Kentucky, Oregon	Presidential primary (D), statewide primary
May 24	North Carolina	Runoff statewide primary
	Washington	Presidential primary (R) and (D)
June 7	California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico	Presidential primary (R) and (D), statewide primary
	Iowa	Statewide primary
June 14	District of Columbia	Presidential primary (R) and (D), districtwide primary
	Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Virginia	Statewide primary
	New Jersey	Municipal nonpartisan runoff
June 28	Colorado, Oklahoma	Statewide primary
	New York	Federal primary
	South Carolina	Runoff statewide primary
	Utah	Statewide primary
Aug. 2	Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Washington	Statewide primary
Aug. 9	Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, Wisconsin	Statewide primary
Aug. 13	Hawaii	Statewide primary
Aug. 16	Alaska, Wyoming	Statewide primary
Aug. 30	Arizona, Florida	Statewide primary
Sept. 13	Delaware, New York, Rhode Island	Statewide primary
Sept. 27	New Jersey	Special school board election
Nov. 29	Mississippi	Runoff election
Dec. 10	Louisiana	Runoff election
Dec. 13	New Jersey	Special school board election

Note: The list of supported elections is subject to change.
Source: Voting Information Project (https://www.votinginfoproject.org)
© 2015 The Pew Charitable Trusts

VIP is a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, in partnership with the states and Google, to ensure that voters in the United States have the official information they need to cast a ballot, such as where to vote and what’s on the ballot.

Please check the website for regular updates to the calendar of elections and get notified as data go live by joining the VIP Google Group. For more information about VIP, please contact [email protected].

Follow us on Twitter using #electiondata and get the latest data dispatches, research, and news by subscribing today.