Civic Icons Help Voters in the Aloha State

Featured image: designs drawn in notebook

Images are a powerful way to reach voters. They grab the eye, can communicate information more quickly than text, and they’re great for illustrating steps in a process.

That’s what Raymund de Vega discovered this past fall when using the civic icons from ElectionTools.org to connect with Voters in Hawaii. Raymund, who is Election Specialist at the Hawaii Office of Elections, found that when he used these image resources, he was able to better inform voters while also saving his office time and labor.

Raymund first got exposed to ElectionTools.org through an article on StateScoop, and he quickly gravitated to the Civic Icons and Images, realizing they’d be useful for a brochure on absentee voting that his office was developing.

He was looking for an easy way to show the basic steps of absentee voting, and he saw how the civic icons could streamline his design process.

“Many times, it is a lengthy process in getting voting collateral designed,” says Raymund. “The images allowed us to bypass outsourcing the work and to put out election information on short notice.”

According to Raymund, using the icons was easy. He created the brochure in PowerPoint, downloaded the icons, and imported them into the document. Once the brochure was ready, he made it available as a PDF on the Office of Elections website.

Section from brochure shows icons illustrating a voter marking, signing, and mailing a ballot

The civic icons as used in the Hawaii brochure

To determine if the brochure was a success, Raymund used a common metric that’s probably familiar to many election offices.

“One measure of success of voter education materials,” Raymund explains, “is the volume of calls or email inquiries our office receives. Many times, when information is effectively communicated via our website, we can attribute the low volume to the effectiveness of our materials.”

Fortunately, that’s exactly what happened.

“Once the absentee ballots were mailed,” he says, “I posted the guide to our homepage to supplement the absentee voting information already available. We experienced less inquiries about topics covered in the guide.”

Reflecting on his experience with the civic icons, Raymund says that what’s great about resources like ElectionTools.org is that they can help election offices do more with less.

“Election administrators should be aware of the wealth of resources available,” he stresses. “It is becoming increasingly simple to do the work of many in a more cost-efficient way. Administrators can now do many things in house, and in turn, can evaluate and address the needs of their communities quicker.”

Could icons, images, or graphics help your office with a communication goal? Check out the Civic Icons and Images along with the other graphics tools at ElectionTools.org.