Philly Sample Ballots

Crowdsource capturing those influential hand-outs at polling places.

This project aims to bring awareness to “sample ballots” in Philadelphia, the small flyers that are handed out to voters listing the candidates being endorsed by a particular organization or political ward. These pocket-sized pieces of paper can have an oversized influence on election outcomes, especially on so-called “low information” races, the ones featuring lesser-known offices and candidates.

By having people across the city upload pictures of sample ballots they receive in their neighborhood polling locations, we can start to keep a record of them, and eventually gain more understanding of how the flyers affect our local elections, and by extension, the influence of local ward endorsements. This everyday activity— taking photos and posting them online— steered towards a shared, cumulative project, also provides a simple way to get people civically engaged.

Use this website to view and search the sample ballot pictures that fellow citizens have submitted, or upload your own images.

You can even volunteer before election day to take photos of the sample ballots that are handed out at your own polling location. If a number of other people are already covering that spot, you can volunteer to cover another one near your neighborhood or work.

We're using a hackpad for ongoing documentation.

Development

First, install Node.js. We recommend installing yarn to use in place of npm, but you can use npm instead.

1. Install dependencies via yarn install (or npm install)
2. Run a development server via yarn start (or npm start)

To build a production version of the app, use yarn run build (or npm run build).