Voter Registration
Overview
We partner with Rock The Vote to register young people to vote on behalf of DoSomething.org, by redirecting to them to the Rock The Vote (RTV) registration website and appending our partner ID:
register.rockthevote.com/registrants/new?partner=37187
We can pre-populate the voter registration email address and zip via email_address and home_zip_code query parameters, which we often include when redirecting an authenticated user on the web:
rockthevote.com/registrants/new?partner=37187&source=user:58e68d5da0bfad4c3b4cd722,source:web,source_details:onlinedrivereferral,referral=true&email_address=puppet.sloth@dosomething.org&home_zip_code=94116
Import
Our importer app, Chompy downloads all voter registrations created with our partner ID, and imports them as voter-reg posts by posting to the Rogue API. See import docs for details.
Tracking Source
When we redirect to the RTV registration form, we include a source query parameter. Per the RTV docs, a source parameter is used to:
track the success of various campaigns, affiliates, social media posts, and more using just one tool.
When we download the RTV reports, each registration contains the source query parameter that was present when the user began their registration. The expected values to pass for the source are comma-separated key:value substrings:
user:5547be89469c64ec7d8b518d,source:web,source_details:VoterRegQuiz_completed_notsure
This tracking source value is saved within the serialized details field of the voter-reg post, and is utilized by both the Chompy import and Looker:
user- This is the Northstar user ID of either the authenticated user registering to vote, or the referring alpha user for a beta registration, when thereferralkey is present.group_id- This is the Rogue group ID stored on the campaign signup, if user is sharing their link from a groups OVRD campaign.source- This is similar to autm_source.Examples:
web,sms,email
source_detail- This is similar to autm_campaign.Examples:
hellobar,broadcastID_4YOiqwTVOOVklZFARAFd4h,VoterRegQuiz_completed_votebymail,onlinedrivereferral
referral- If this is set, theuserparameter should be used as thereferrer_user_idon thevoter-regpost.
Notes
Some older voter registration URLs may contain
campaignIDandcampaignRunIDkeys within their tracking source. These have long been deprecated by the import: when we first started on voter registration, we used multiple campaigns. The import would update thecampaignIDandcampaignRunIDvalues on thevoter-regpost if present within the tracking source. See #171090116 for details.
Voting Portal
We host our voting portal, vote.dosomething.org on Instapage. It displays a form that prompts for email and zip, and redirects them to the Rock The Vote registration URL with our partner ID, pre-populating the email and zip submitted from the form.
When constructing a URL for the voting portal, we include the tracking source via a r query parameter, which is then added as a source parameter when redirecting the user to the RTV registration site after they enter their email and zip (handled via JS on Instapage).
Example:
vote.dosomething.org/covid19?r=campaignID:8017,campaignRunID:8022,source:web,source_details:VoterRegQuiz_completed_notsure
Influencers
We host customized voter registration drives for influencers on our Instapage, by creating pages like https://vote.dosomething.org/NoorAldayeh on Instapage and passing a relevant tracking source when redirecting to the RTV registration site:
source:influencer,source_details:noor_aldayeh
Content types
VoterRegistrationAction- Links to a voting portal page. Aclicked_voter_registration_actionanalytics event is fired when the user clicks on the CTA to visit the voter registration portal.VoterRegistrationDriveAction- Used in OVRD campaigns
Utilities
CivicEngine Voter Widget
A CivicEngine Voter Widget can be embedded in the footer of a ContentBlock.
We share an instance of this Voter Widget on behalf The Movement Cooperative, who control its configuration. The Voter Widget will display a form to enter your address to a mail-in ballot until October 10, 2020. After October 10, it will display to enter your address to find your polling location.

Note: For the 2018 election, we used a
PollLocatorcomponent which linked to the Voting Information Project. In 2020, we'll instead be using the CivicEngine Voter Widget as a polling locator, so thePollLocatorcomponent was removed in #2373.
Start Voter Registration Form
The StartVoterRegistrationForm component displays form fields for email and zip, and redirects a user directly to the RTV registration site upon submitting. It's currently hardcoded on the Voter Registration Drive Page and the Quiz Result Page components.
A clicked_voter_registration_action analytics event is fired when the user submits the form to continue their voter registration on the RTV registration site.
Online Drives
The call to action in the Online Voter Registration Drive (OVRD) campaign asks a member (the alpha) to get their friends to register to vote, by providing them with a custom OVRD page URL to share with their friends (the betas).
Voter Registration Drive Page
The VoterRegistrationDrivePage is a hardcoded component, displayed on path /us/my-voter-registration-drive?referrer_user_id=58e68d5da0bfad4c3b4cd722 (where the referrer_user_id is our alpha's user ID).
This beta page shares some components with the OVRD campaign pages, like its CoverImage and scholarship information. The OVRD campaign's contentful ID, 3pwxnRZxociqMaQCMcGOyc, is the same in all of our dev, qa and production spaces. Usually this isn't the case -- our Contentful ID's don't match between our dev and production spaces -- but this entry was created before we introduced different Contentful environments to our Phoenix space. Because of this, we're able to hardcode this Contentful ID to use in both dev and production environments.
We hardcode specific configuration ContentBlock ID's:
Production:
Register To Vote ContentBlock - 2d2i2M3yn4RB9pZYVzQxGm
FAQ ContentBlock - 4yP8BdIdiGU0qwZaFyzmsm
OVRD Campaign Link ContentBlock - 30rCn63G1rnpzojCXC9PmF
Dev:
Register To Vote ContentBlock - bt0jUBYJaKoi1oab25Wmx
FAQ ContentBlock - 3cXc0RPMVNeE4surEqFujL
OVRD Campaign Link ContentBlock - 3p2qz2JPCvgVitgRVBoMFz
Notes:
The initial version of OVRD beta page was hosted on Instapage - https://vote.dosomething.org/member-drives. Example URL:
vote.dosomething.org/member-drive?userId=${referrerUserId}&r=user:${referrerUserId},source:web,source_details:onlinedrivereferral,referral=true
This page had inline JS that would query Northstar to find a user's first name based on the userId query parameter passed.
Quiz
The Quiz content type is only used for voter registration campaigns.
Users are redirected to /us/quiz-results/:id to see their quiz result on a Quiz Result Page.
The QuizResultPage component expects the :id route parameter to be the ID of one of the Link Action entries referenced by the Quiz's Result Blocks multi-value reference field.
To display the Start Voter Registration Form on a quiz result, add a sourceDetails property to the Additional Content field on the quiz result's Link Action entry. This value will be set to the source_details of the voter registration tracking source if a user submits the form.
A header image can be added by selecting an asset in the Affiliate Logo field.
A static Gallery Block entry is displayed all for all Quiz result ID's:
Production: 78WaGsvDEzAxnreEvNx3Za
Dev: 2VGFq3XBcqCfKOA8mC5mP4
Voting Quiz Campaign
Gated:
/us/campaigns/ready-vote- user must signup to take the quiz from the action pageUngated:
/us/campaigns/ready-vote/quiz/ready- user can take quiz but must signup to see their result
Production Quiz Results:
p7hqjSP4Y1U6ad0UDz4iS - Vote By Mail
1giTEF3B2hO2CyccmhlVDm - In-Person Voting
21PDBge2bKCTWMe5f9eo1H - Unsure of Voting
14KfeAs265httjNMf1jwTw - Ineligible to Vote
Dev Quiz Results:
Related links:
Quiz documentation - This was removed in #1369 when we moved editorial guides into the Campaign Playbook.
Notes:
Please avoid editing the Quiz entries if possible, as they are delicately configured (deleting one of the
LinkActionentries referenced by theresultBlocksfield would not be pretty).
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