Election Reminder Service

About the Program

Category: Civic Education and Public Information (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

The Oakland County Clerk’s Online Election Reminder Service, which sends emails to voters to alert them to upcoming elections, was launched just prior to the November 2009 election. We believe this is one of the first-such services offered at the county level. The objective of the new service was two-fold. Foremost, our office wanted to improve voter turnout by offering our residents a gentle reminder – sort of an electronic Post-it note – about approaching community, school, state and federal elections. Voters subscribe to the service, which is free, on our website at www.oakgov.com/clerkrod simply by using their email address. The alert includes links to our elections website so users can access candidate lists, ballot proposal language, polling locations, elections results, etc. In addition to informing voters, the new service has drawn more users to our website, helping us publicize our online services. In light of economic challenges, as well as budget cuts and staff reductions, we are pushing to increase online orders as a way to better distribute our workload. The new service, which came out of a leadership committee brainstorming session, relies on a subscriber-based email system that was already in place, so it was implemented at virtually zero cost. In the three years the Election Reminder Service has been in existence, nearly 30,000 emails have been sent out to remind subscribers of upcoming elections.