case study
Yolo County’s Enterprise GIS Approach to Elections
In 2018, Yolo County, California, embarked on a journey of continuous innovation by integrating location-based solutions into its election operations. Today, the county continues to expand the use of geographic information system (GIS) technology in every aspect of elections, demonstrating that true innovation is not a one-time event but a sustained effort.
Yolo County's Election Office improved how it dispatched assistance and displayed election results during the 2018 midterm elections. Significant progress has been made since its first implementation of ArcGIS Enterprise. The office has a clear understanding that elections are spatial. To employees, it's about knowing where ballots are, where voters live, and where more resources are needed; dispatching staff to resolve concerns; and informing election winners.
Having the Vision to Keep Improving Through GIS
Before 2018, staff relied on phone calls to intake assistance requests for voting locations and then would have to call their Election Day rovers to see who was nearby to address any concerns. Addressing calls and manually finding staff would slow response times and clarity once issues were resolved. Employees then turned to a workflow using ArcGIS Workforce and ArcGIS Dashboards that showed a complete overview as requests came in, automated assignments based on location and availability of rovers, and real-time progress as assignments were completed.
"At the time, seeing where staff were on a map and knowing who was nearby gave control back to our election department," said Jesse Salinas, assessor, clerk-recorder, and registrar of voters for Yolo County. "We knew what was happening when and could follow-up with staff if things were taking longer than expected."
Salinas continued, "That instance showed how the functionality of a map and GIS can provide so much insight. And if it can simplify the workload there, it could also streamline other aspects of our work."
Since then, Yolo County staff have moved from street-range-based addressing in their election software to address point. The election and GIS teams worked together to verify addresses against the county’s primary address database to provide greater address accuracy, which is essential to making sure voters receive the correct ballot.
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“Our election office just gets it. They know that to provide our residents with the best service, they must think spatially and determine how location is the basis of every part of their work,” said Mary Ellen Rosebrough-Gay, GIS manager for Yolo County. “Now, each time they come up with a new idea for a workflow, they ask how GIS can support it.”
Today, Yolo County's Election Office, in collaboration with the county's GIS team, has established an Election Day command center site using ArcGIS Experience Builder. This site features several operational dashboards that support individual workflows crucial to opening a voting center, ensuring proper language resources at voting locations, tracking real-time ballot movement, managing wait times, and reimbursing volunteers' mileage. The value of GIS, once a part of a single workflow, has now permeated every aspect of their Election Day operations

Robust Ballot Collection Workflow
When staff is dispatched to collect ballots, their location is pinged every 30 seconds from the moment they leave election headquarters to when they arrive at their assigned voting location and back. At that point, ballot collection staff input how many ballots were collected and at what time, along with other necessary information, and take pictures using ArcGIS Survey123. That information is then fed to a real-time dashboard that staff can see. As they drive to drop box locations, office staff can see the driver’s breadcrumbs of where they have been and where they are heading to ensure they are taking the most optimal routes.

"As soon as 8:00 p.m. hits, ballot counting begins, and the pressure is on. Knowing which voting location's ballots need to be retrieved gives me a clear understanding of where we are in the process," said Armando Salud, Yolo County Deputy of Elections. "It can get very intense and stressful. Having a map where I see where the ballots are coming from ensures nothing gets overlooked."
As ballots arrive, election staff recount the ballots and then re-enter what they counted into a form that feeds the information on their Ballot Collection Counts dashboard to ensure that both the recounting and the initial count match. As information is signed off on within the application, it ensures no ballot is uncounted. Or if there is a discrepancy, staff can address it then and there. While this happens, each step is time-stamped in their GIS for further reporting services or any possible audits. Again, every piece of information related to ballot collecting is recorded and stored in the county's GIS. The data being collected can go beyond this workflow to support year-long planning efforts and analyses.

Impact of GIS Technology on Ballot Collection
Once the ballots are accounted for, election staff can use the information collected to further analyze how each vote center and drop box performed. Previously, because the ballot collection data was handwritten on paper forms, transcribing the data on spreadsheets was so time-consuming that conducting further analysis was always an afterthought. Now that ballot-related information is recorded and uploaded directly into the GIS, the county can quickly filter through the data to create additional dashboards that provide more insight on overall performance
The county’s election office can now see when the voting spikes occurred and which voting locations and options peaked on what days. Having access to information like this on-the-fly allows the county to quickly see where they can make future adjustments or determine which communities may need additional drop boxes. The faster staff have answers to the questions that come right after an election, the sooner they can allocate resources and time to improve the next election. Using a GIS-enabled election management system, their workflows are constantly storing every bit of information to respond to any need, question, and possibility that may arise and provide insight they didn’t have before.
As with any election, everyone involved is waiting for election results as soon as voting locations close. This was one of the original workflows the county used GIS to conduct. County staff moved away from tabulated results that only displayed result counts per candidate and measures to multiple interactive dashboards that displayed who won where. The election office continues to display county election results via interactive web maps that foster transparency. After so many years of maintaining this data in GIS, staff can also compare voter turnout year over year, demonstrating the long-term value of the data and the continuity of the election process.

Maximizing the Value of Election Data to Support Outreach
The county also has voter turnout data that goes back to 2018 in GIS. This helps pinpoint which precincts have had low voter turnout over the years. Salinas previously mentioned that his goal was to look at patterns of low participation in the various neighborhoods and develop strategies to change the less engaged election patterns of the past toward greater participation in the future.
Today, he and his team are doing just that. The county can display voter information on a map and overlay other variables and demographic information to fully understand who recently participated and uncover any barriers to voting. For example, because the team has each registered voter’s address, they can calculate the commute time for each voter in relation to existing voting locations and determine whether those locations are optimal. Additionally, the team can see what languages are predominately spoken in areas of low turnout and voter registration.

As county staff begin to see which neighborhoods need more resources, they can continue to double-down on these areas and prioritize their voter outreach efforts. Yolo County has recently partnered with a local nonprofit to canvas neighborhoods with low turnout. County staff equipped volunteers going door-to-door with an ArcGIS Survey123 form. After visiting each household, volunteers are asked to input their interaction, whether they left voting resources, and the predominant household language.
Similarly to other previously mentioned workflows, that data is then fed onto a dashboard in real time to inform the election office of overall progress per neighborhood and gather authoritative demographic data.
Beyond the countywide required mailings, the county can now provide additional focused outreach to lower turnout areas which will ultimately save the county thousands in resources.