Me (far left) and the 4 other members of the team presenting our project to our mentors

Author: Joseph Dumond | Major: Computer Science | Semester: Fall 2023

My name is Joseph Dumond. I am a sophomore computer science major in the College of Engineering. This past fall semester, I had the pleasure to participate with Dr. Louise Hancox and Dr. Jennie Popp of the Honors College in an Honors Arkansas Research Scholars class centered on voting rights. Multiple universities across Arkansas participated in the class, so I got the opportunity to engage with non-University of Arkansas students as we learned about the history of Arkansas voting rights and current issues and trends. As part of the class, each universities’ group of students was required to design and implement their own research project that was in some way related to voting in Arkansas. I will be continuing the project that the University of Arkansas group undertook into the spring 2024 semester.

Our project was inspired by University of Arkansas professor, Dr. Angie Maxwell who has always recognized the need for a centralized database of voting information. She remarked that often the biggest issues surrounding voting stem from a lack of knowledge. In fact, historically and presently, Arkansas has suffered from extremely low numbers of voter turnout. No place can this be seen more prevalently than a college campus.

Put simply, the goal of our research project was to develop and create a medium to house information on all things voting. We began by compiling as much data as we could for each individual county in Arkansas. We focused our search on information regarding in-person voting, absentee voting, early voting, voter registration, and changing registration. Our team had the opportunity to meet with the Washington County Clerk and Election Commissioner and discovered that, thankfully, most voting information is standardized across the state. This is with the exception that individual counties set their Election Day locations and early voting locations along with where information regarding voting is posted. We also discovered that things like an individual’s polling locations, sample ballots, and elections dates could all be found on the website VoterView. We also decided to expand our database to include voting information for the other top six states that the University of Arkansas student body is composed.

With the data gathering step done, we then shifted our attention to the creation of a medium to convey our information. As the only computer science major surrounded by political science majors, it felt nice to wade back into more familiar territority. We decided that the best way to convey our information would be a website. Our reasoning was two-fold. One, we felt a website would be more easily received by a college audience and two, I had previous experience with website building. Initially, I built a website using a third-party site but discovered a need to find a different platform due to design constraints and financial concerns. The solution was to build a website using the University of Arkansas SharePoint. The SharePoint, though limited in its creation ability and techniques, allowed for multiple collaborators which allowed my team members to help me with both the design, layout, and language aspects. The website can be found here at https://uark.sharepoint.com/teams/votinghub.

Although the SharePoint site was a good first step, I feel the need to continue refining it further. One big issue is that the website is currently only accessible to those with an email registered to the University of Arkansas. In terms of next steps, I am excited to continue working with the website we have built. I will be conducting field tests and surveys to nail down the best type of language, font, color scheme, etc. so that the final product is the most user-friendly it can be to its users. I am also excited to explore the possibility of transitioning from a website to a mobile app, as this would make the information more accessible. My goal would be to create an app centered toward the college student. My dream would be to have them walk away from using the app with a clear idea of all the options available to them and the steps they may or may not need to take to pursue the voting option they wish. I thrilled to see where I can take this project next!