Improve text/messaging when an election is cancelled

michaeljcollinsuk commented 3 years ago

Issue and Steps to Reproduce

WCIVF cancellations / postponements - the web page text doesn't contain a date (so it's a bit meaningless, unless you know to look at the URL) and the text for the reason contains gibberish...

I happened upon this because it was the first google result for North Lanarkshire local election Thorniewood https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/elections/local.north-lanarkshire.thorniewood.by.2020-11-19/thorniewood/ (edited)

Trivially, the Read more link goes to the LA's notices of election etc page, despite its position on WCIVF (after information about a cancellation / postponement) suggesting it'll be a link to information about the postponement, such as https://www.motherwelltimes.co.uk/news/politics/sudden-call-thorniewood-election-3039377

Screenshots

Expected

Date of ballot/election that is cancelled to be displayed
Improve text/messaging
Make sure CTAs are relevant

Additional Details

Originally reported by @jf1 in Slack #whocanivotefor channel

chris48s commented 3 years ago

@symroe can run you through this, but info about cancelled elections is stored in EE. This particular text is in https://elections.democracyclub.org.uk/admin/elections/metadata/46/change/ WCIVF just syncs it and displays it, so if you want to edit this, do it there. This one will be Sym's handywork, but I suspect in this particular case:

It was supposed to be "This area will move..."
At the time this was posted, https://www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/your-council/elections-and-voting/elections/north-lanarkshire-council-ward-14-thorniewood probably did actually contain useful information, but now (6 months later) it doesn't any more

Slightly more widely, providing better information about cancelled elections is really about populating EE with correct information as you become aware of it (this is really about process and people, not building a better website). Also bear in mind it can be hard to provide useful info at the point you first need to write this text as often at the point a notice of cancellation or notice of countermanded poll is published, its important to make it clear that the poll is cancelled, but all you know is it is not happening. In the case of a countermanded poll (where a candidate dies inbetween the SOPNs and polling day), often the new date for the replacement election won't be confirmed until after the date the poll was originally scheduled for because electoral services teams have y'know.. other things to be getting on with :)

As I say, talk to Sym about it but more widely these 'metadata' objects https://elections.democracyclub.org.uk/admin/elections/metadata/ can be used to store any kind of additional info/notification (non-standard ID requirements in some areas is the other one we used this for a lot) and then associated with any relevant ballot objects.

chris48s commented 3 years ago

As is often my style with these things, I wrote that last night and then remembered another important thing.

As well as the ability to associate these metadata objects with elections the other useful feature that exists in EE and WCIVF for dealing with cancelled elections is the ability to say that one ballot is the replacement or rescheduled version of a ballot that was cancelled.

So for example, https://elections.democracyclub.org.uk/elections/local.forest-of-dean.newent-taynton.2019-05-02/ was countermanded and then replaced by https://elections.democracyclub.org.uk/elections/local.forest-of-dean.newent-taynton.2019-06-20/ and EE can store this - it is set via the admin. See https://elections.democracyclub.org.uk/admin/elections/election/18379 https://elections.democracyclub.org.uk/admin/elections/election/23097

Then if you do that, WCIVF can sync/display that info. See https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/elections/local.forest-of-dean.newent-taynton.2019-05-02/ for example.

Again, that is code that already exists in EE and WCIVF (actually using it to fill info in as you become aware of it is the hard part)

Finally note not all cancelled elections get rescheduled: One really common thing that happens is that no poll takes place because the election was uncontested so in that case it just doesn't happen - there's no replacement.

chris48s commented 3 years ago

Probably could have just linked to the docs tbh :facepalm:

DemocracyClub / WhoCanIVoteFor