Sirius Technology Cuts Through Campaign Chaos
Every two to four years, when the election cycle comes around, political parties cycle their time and resources toward an all-out push to get out the vote. This process often entails a rigorous canvassing process where campaigns marshal an army of volunteers to go door-to-door to hunt for votes; more often than not, with imprecise and non-specific information. A little-known start up is determined to challenge that assumption by offering an intelligent approach to canvassing.
Philadelphia based Sirius Technology Solutions has developed a solution dubbed EVoTe. EVoTe leverages portable electronic devices and the Internet to shore up the effectiveness of canvassing by enabling campaigns to produce targeted walk lists and produce detailed reports though the software's reporting features.
Walk lists are lists of the voters canvassers are asked to contact each night. Walk lists are used to ratchet up support among low performing voters, swing voters and party loyalists.
Sirius's canvassing software is loaded onto Palms that accompany volunteers through their rounds. To avoid the troublesome process of calling on each and every doorstep, volunteers are provided with an itinerary of houses that need to be canvassed. A built-in mapping function seeks to alleviate confusion and directs campaign workers to the appropriate address.
"This allows for efficient canvassing versus 'blitzing an area,'" Sirius Director of Technology Howard Moseley told BetaNews.
A preliminary mock-up of the software was put to use by Philadelphia Democrat John F. Street during the 2003 mayoral election. Canvassers were equipped with 75-100 PDAs, and were able to register over 80,000 voters.
Greg Naylor, Field Director, Street for Mayor '03 commented on the campaign's use of EVoTe in a statement reading, "EVoTE’s reporting features allowed us to monitor worker productivity and assured us that the voter contact work we expected was underway around the city was actually happening. After all, people do not what you expect, but what you inspect.
Naylor continued, "And in fact, it was our past success using EVoTE that resulted in our repeated business with Sirius Technology Solutions during the current election cycle."
Greg Naylor is currently the State Director of ACT-PA.
In addition to pinpointing voters, the software can be used to enable volunteers to conduct surveys; solicit feedback; identify and register voters; educate voters about the candidates’ positions; monitor the progress of canvassers through a virtual "time clock" layer; or even designate a household to a "do not knock list".
EVoTE collects personally identifiable information which is transferred to a secure online database through a batch process.
Since the data is personally identifiable, the integrity of voters' information is assured by several controls: first, a custom syncing conduit; secondly, password protection on the Web front end; and lastly, granular permissions that are assigned to accounts.
Sirius's Microsoft .NET powered Web service is an online depository for data that is collected in the field; data that is transformed into reports, printed maps, walk lists and phone lists. Sirius keeps data redundant and stored at local datacenters. For security reasons, access rights are restricted.
When their license to the site expires, customers retain ownership of the database, which is considered to be their intellectual property.
Sirius has indicated its attention to leverage wireless Internet services to provide customers with real-time dynamic syncing with its servers once providers flesh out their networks. EVoTE will also be ported to Microsoft's Pocket PC platform and integrated with Pocket Streets.
Other improvements that are on tap for future releases include cross platform browser support –- currently Internet Explorer is the only compatible Web browser -– and alternative color schemes to improve visibility for voters who have disabilities.
The ability to successfully "get out the vote" is commonly attributed to the success of winning campaigns. A 1998 study conducted by Yale University found that "door-to-door canvassing raises the probability of turnout by 9.8 percentage points."
The impact of voter turnout on elections is undeniable. In the United States, the 2000 Presidential election was decided by a razor thin margin of just 537 votes in the state of Florida.
Sirius markets EVoTe with subscription-based pricing. As a result of this pricing model, paying customers receive free upgrades. More detailed information on pricing is available directly from Sirius Technology Solutions.