Replace "None" on About this Candidate page button

[JonellaCulmer]

For candidates participating in the upcoming Alabama special election, and Georgia House District 6 Special election, the button on the About this candidate page, that connects you with other candidates in the same election, currently reads: "View all candidates in the None Alabama Senate election". The "None" could be replaced with "Special" or "2017 Special".

Not entirely sure, but possibly related to this issue? https://github.com/18F/openFEC/issues/2621#event-1280376083

• [ ] For the first step, we will make "None" not show.

[JonellaCulmer]

@jenniferthibault This is off-topic, but I noticed the two buttons that lead you to the same place. The "View all candidates..." on the right and "Compare to opposing candidates" on the left. Do you happen recall, or can you point me to, the reason for including both?

[lbeaufort]

Good catch, @JonellaCulmer! Looks like the issue is here

I think that should be election_years but when I try it, it shows up in brackets.

[jenniferthibault]

@JonellaCulmer I'm always glad for a chance to do some GitHub archeology!

The View all candidates in the [year] [state] election card in the "About this candidate" tab was the first link to exist. This feature exists to help people put the candidate and their financial data in context of the race and other contenders.

We researched the existing experience of available elections info Issue: Elections/Map research: Conduct user interviews and synthesize the results #2100

And then we identified some quick wins to improve the experience Issue: Elections work-stream: Identify quick wins and mid-to-long-term wins #2167

One of the things we identified is that people were having a hard time finding the link to the full election from the candidate page, since it's only visible inside one tab (the "About" tab)

So that users could easily compare candidates running in a race, we created a more prominent link to comparison pages from candidate profile. Issue: Design new button linking to candidate comparison pages from candidate profile #2198

What I haven't found is any evidence of us discussing the duplicative nature of the link. Relying on conversational memory here, but I think we chose to keep it in both places because there was evidence that when people were in the "About" tab, they did expect to find a pathway there. Open to discussing further!

[JonellaCulmer]

Thanks for that background @jenniferthibault!

I understand the button on the "Compare opposing candidates" button being placed there so users can get to other candidate information regardless of the page they were viewing. And there is greater visual appeal to the "About" page button: it's larger, in the center of the page and features a nice little icon. So I understand why someone would click on that button too. I don't think they're have been any complaints or issue on this, so I'm not advocating for change just because I noticed something, but it's helpful to understand the background.

[JonellaCulmer]

Updated initial comment to reflect both the Georgia and Alabama special elections that are affected by this bug.

[xtine]

There's a fix going into next release that will not show "None" as an election year anymore.

[ccostino]

Fixed for the next release, and we've confirmed on the staging site:

[AmyKort]

Thanks!