Turnout among 18 to 29-year-olds is consistently lower than other age brackets, so states looking to preregistration as one option to engage young voters in the electoral process.
We can remedy that by making pre-registration easy. Pre-registration is an election procedure that allows individuals younger than 18 years of age to register to vote, so they are eligible to cast a ballot when they reach 18, the voting age for all state and federal elections. In normal circumstances, a pre-registrant will fill out an application and be added to the voter registration list with a “pending” or “preregistration” status. Upon turning 18, the individual is added to the voter registration list and able to cast a ballot.
Texas permits a person who is 17 years and 10 months of age to register. In fact! According to the Texas Tribune, Texas has one of the youngest populations in the country. It’s projected that by 2022, one in three voters in Texas will be under 30.
We can begin by setting up an online portal where qualified youth can fill out voter registration applications online, or retrieve information on how to register in-person at a Board of Elections office or the Department of Motor Vehicles. They will then be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, without needing a separate trip to the Board of Elections.
Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?
When young people are engaged from any early age they stay engaged, and this benefits not just the City of Austin, but all of us.
What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?
Currently, Travis County maintains a voter registeration portal here, however, no pre-registration portal can be found.
Where can we find any research/data available/articles?
Testing, including automated tests and sanity checks
Maintenance, Devops
What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?
On the look out for front-end, back-end, and full-stack developers to begin development.
How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?
Github is a good starting point.
Project management
Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:
Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).
[x] Create this idea issue
[x] Flesh out the who, where, and what questions above
[ ] Start the conversation about this idea on Slack Replace this link to the #general channel with your project's preferred channel.
Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:
Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:
[x] Post an update at least once a month to this issue. Use BASEDEF for ideas, but it's ok even if your update is just "nothing new happened this month" or "we saw a small increase in traffic to our app this month". If there's no activity for two months, that's no problem, life happens. We'll just label this as backlog so others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it as abandoned so that others can pick up this idea and run with it.
[ ] Create a README file in your project repository. This file should help newcomers understand what your project is, why it's important, and kinds of help you're looking for.
[ ] Create issues to describe each task that you plan to do or need help with and how a contributor can get started on that task. You might start and stop a lot, so consider issues as your to-do list.
This will make it easier for you to manage your github repo access. People on a team have the same level of access. Admin access will allow your trusted contributors to make changes as needed.
You can remove and add people to your team as needed.
Note: You can also allow collaborators outside of your team and give them more limited access.
[ ] Create a user group in Slack so you can "@" your core contributors all at once, without bothering other people who use the Slack channel. You'll need permission from a Slack admin, so just mention @leadership on Slack to get this set up.
[ ] Create a Google Drive, Dropbox, or other cloud storage to share larger files. Github and Data.World are good for code and data, respectively, especially when you need version control. But they're not good for very large files, documentation, articles, etc. A cloud storage option will allow you to easily share, create, and collaborate on documents with your team and help organize ideas and thoughts.
Doing this early on can help your team stay organized and to onboard new contributors who wouldn't have access to files you all have shared over email.
Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:
To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.
[ ] Create an issue on the open-austin.github.io repo with the title Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project :balloon:
[ ] Tell the City of Austin. If your idea is in a shareable format and can benefit people around the city, go to that site and follow the instructions on the bottom of the page to showcase your work there.
If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Turnout among 18 to 29-year-olds is consistently lower than other age brackets, so states looking to preregistration as one option to engage young voters in the electoral process.
We can remedy that by making pre-registration easy. Pre-registration is an election procedure that allows individuals younger than 18 years of age to register to vote, so they are eligible to cast a ballot when they reach 18, the voting age for all state and federal elections. In normal circumstances, a pre-registrant will fill out an application and be added to the voter registration list with a “pending” or “preregistration” status. Upon turning 18, the individual is added to the voter registration list and able to cast a ballot.
Texas permits a person who is 17 years and 10 months of age to register. In fact! According to the Texas Tribune, Texas has one of the youngest populations in the country. It’s projected that by 2022, one in three voters in Texas will be under 30.
We can begin by setting up an online portal where qualified youth can fill out voter registration applications online, or retrieve information on how to register in-person at a Board of Elections office or the Department of Motor Vehicles. They will then be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, without needing a separate trip to the Board of Elections.
Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?
When young people are engaged from any early age they stay engaged, and this benefits not just the City of Austin, but all of us.
What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?
Currently, Travis County maintains a voter registeration portal here, however, no pre-registration portal can be found.
Where can we find any research/data available/articles?
What help do you need now?
What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?
On the look out for front-end, back-end, and full-stack developers to begin development.
How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?
Github is a good starting point.
Project management
Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:
Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).
Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:
Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:
backlogso others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it asabandonedso that others can pick up this idea and run with it.Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:
To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.
Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project :balloon:If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.