The Role of GIS in Fair and Transparent Elections

Expressing the anxiety that surrounds the upcoming election, we ask Eric Fey, director of elections for St. Louis County, whether he is apprehensive about the 2024 vote. “I’m apprehensive about every single election every time,” he answers. “Unlike NASA, there is no scrubbing the launch. The day is coming ready or not.” Or, as he has observed elsewhere, “If we … don’t get our part right, citizens don’t have faith or trust in anything else running in county government.”

Fey’s response to the question from Data-Smart Solutions belies the extraordinary apparatus he and his team has built over the past ten years to administer elections, facilitate voter participation and ensure stakeholder confidence—all at a time when polarization has eroded trust. Highly visualized geographic information systems (GIS) technology, a focus on meeting challenges and an abiding commitment to transparency are foundational to his success.

Election Administration

Most voters think about elections in terms of policies and the candidates running for office. But for the individuals charged with administering elections, they are also about building trust so that stakeholders of all stripes feel confident in the integrity of the system. Not surprisingly, GIS technology sits at the center of their work offering solutions that enhance participation as well as trust. Location-based tools allow election officials to:

• Accurately draw district and precinct boundaries after the decennial census in compliance with legal requirements such as contiguity rules and compactness. Here geocoding helps officials manage boundaries to ensure that each voter is registered in the correct district and receive the correct ballot when they vote.
• Optimize the siting of polling places to ensure accessibility. Layered geospatial data combines factors such as transportation, neighborhood density, physical barriers and historical voting patterns into siting decisions.
• Provide pre- and post-election tools to stakeholders; and on Election Day monitor activity and provide services to voters, public officials and the media.
• Efficiently allocate field staff and other resources prior to voting and on Election Day address problems that arise in a timely fashion.
• Share election information and analysis.

In each of these areas, St. Louis County’s use of GIS powers internal designs and voter utilization.

Fostering Innovation in Saint Louis County

St. Louis County, excluding the city of St. Louis, has a population of just under one million people, 724,000 registered voters and 230 polling places. What makes the county unique is its jurisdictional complexity. In addition to the county’s two congressional districts, seven county council districts and thirty state representative districts, it is home to eighty-seven cities, their wards, twenty-five school and twenty-five fire districts as well as numerous other special purpose districts.

Fey, a lifelong resident of St. Louis has worked for the Board of Elections since 2007. When he was appointed Director in 2015, the department’s utilization of technology was rudimentary. On a mission to modernize election administration county-wide, Fey began attending conferences and investigating how elections, and other officials around the country employed GIS to execute their responsibilities. What he discovered set Fey on a bold course of action characteristic of innovators inside and outside government.

First, Fey recognized that without the right talent, his vision could not happen. With his co-director, he reclassified the office’s GIS positions, increased base salaries and posted the jobs publicly.

Next Fey and his new team started asking questions, building a culture of experimentation. “Can we do this? Can we try that?” We asked Fey whether agency officials had been intentional in terms of the functionality they developed, whether they had guided by some sort of comprehensive plan. Here too his answer echoes that of other innovators.

The team started with basic applications, creating an interactive way for stakeholders to access district maps, look up polling places and view election results. With this basic functionality in place, the team realized that more advanced applications could do much more. “That’s when things really started clicking,” Fey said. And it reinforced the department’s emerging culture of innovation–one that focuses on developing functionality in response to challenges as they arise. Today, St. Louis County is a leader in the application of spatial tools to administer elections.

St. Louis County's Innovative Approach to Election Administration

St. Louis County’s focus on transparency, digital innovation and improving the experience of internal and external users in each of its functions has proven transformative. The agency’s willingness to adapt, to develop new applications and to use visualization to communicate critical information has inspired greater stakeholder confidence.

Redistricting and Boundary Management

Most redistricting occurs after the decennial census. But occasionally a jurisdiction is sued because its boundaries are out of compliance with federal regulations or because information has not been entered into the voter database correctly. In these cases, lines must be redrawn and elections rerun, both of which are expensive. When Fey first took over the elections board, staff redrew district boundaries on paper maps. Today they use digital maps which are posted on the county’s  redistricting hub.

“The political class” who Fey defined as including elected officials, political party operatives and the media, access the hub to understand (among other things) the implications of line changes on their constituencies. Voters access the hub to get candidate information. While many of them know the names of the candidates running for national and state office, the same cannot be said for down ballot races, especially more obscure special purpose district contests. To paraphrase Fey, if one of these voters gets an incorrect ballot, it is unlikely they would know it. Geocoding voters’ addresses makes sure that does not happen.

In 2019 St. Louis County adopted a vote anywhere model. This proved critical during the COVID19 pandemic when it was particularly important to avoid overcrowding. The County’s print-on-demand system allowed St. Louis County to shift from a site-centric to a voter-centric model. When a registered voter signs into an electronic poll book “…the appropriate ballot, specific to their precinct, is printed for them.”

GIS tools lend greater precision to the redistricting process. While accuracy is necessary, it is not sufficient to ensure public confidence. St. Louis County’s redistricting hub provides the requisite transparency to assure stakeholders that districts have been fairly drawn and that voters vote where they should.

Polling Place and Ballot Box Placement

Elections officials use location intelligence to site polling places and ballot boxes. Layered data allows them to simultaneously consider factors like population density, public transportation and accessibility for people with disabilities.

Fey shared a powerful example of how visualized data surfaced gaps in the County’s network. Missouri implemented early voting in 2022. After the November election officials examined voting patterns. They found dead zones, areas where few people voted early. Analysts determined that these areas lacked absentee satellite voting options. Rather than driving to more distant satellites, voters simply waited until Election Day when they had more sites to choose from.

Today drive times figure importantly in decisions regarding where to locate polling places and absentee voting sites. Using the County’s look-up apps, voters can see the locations of the polling places and absentee voting options closest to the address they enter.

Optimizing the distribution of polling places and ballot boxes improves the voter experience and encourages participation. Both are critical during this period of waning trust in the electoral system.

Stakeholder Tools

Over the years, Fey’s office has developed multiple tools for voters, party officials and the media. In an innovation first implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic when elections officials feared overcrowding, staff developed the County’s line tracker. “We didn’t want people standing in line, cheek to jowl...so we thought of ways to make the process more user friendly for voters.”

On Election Day the line tracker details wait times by polling place. High school students at polling locations periodically count the number of people in line, enter this data into a survey tool which populates a map on the County’s website. The map’s slide function allows users to select a radius and plot the most efficient routes to get to the locations identified. Constituents can also download sample ballots and obtain information about the issues upon which they will be voting.

On election night, ballot boxes are taken from voting sites to collection points and then to the County Elections office. In the past Fey’s team had no visibility into the status of each box until it reached the office. That created headaches for staff fielding an avalanche of calls from officials wanting to know where things stood. In a development of which Fey is clearly proud, poll workers now seal a cell phone in each ballot box. The phones ping continually allowing officials to visualize the precise location of each box which generates enormous confidence in the integrity of the system.

Resource Allocation

Logistics figure significantly into election administration.

On Election Day, field staff and “roving trouble-shooters” must be ready to address equipment and other issues as quickly as possible. The “trouble-shooters” transmit their location to the elections office. To avoid delays where they are likely to be most problematic, Fey and his team sort data on queue length at polling sites. Locations with the longest lines are listed first. In the event of competing demands, the team prioritizes the assignment of trouble-shooters based on proximity, expertise and the number of voters affected.

These prosaic but important refinements reduce the risk that voters take unremarkable issues and presume them to be an indication of system failure.

Election Information and Analysis

Like other election commissions, St. Louis County produces a trend report after each election. Hard copies are shared with elected officials county-wide. The biennial report includes information on turnout and voting results. For politicians and political operatives this information is invaluable.

Fey takes transparency and education seriously. Since 2020 he has invited stakeholders to the Board of Elections offices and warehouse. Fey and his team give tours, presentations and host press days. And not just in a passive way. Fey invites everyone from political parties to chambers of commerce to the Boys Scouts. It pays off, Fey said, “Almost everybody at the end of the day will say, ‘I had no idea what happened at the Board of Elections. It is eye opening. It gives me a lot more confidence in the system.’”

Innovation and Impact

In all these examples, we see the influence of Fey’s approach to modernization. When he and his team identify a challenge that adversely impacts the efficient operation of the department or negatively affects one of the stakeholder groups the department serves, the team designs functionality to address it. St. Louis County’s reputation as a leader in election administration is no accident; it is the product of ongoing, small, solution-focused innovations. For government officials working with limited budgets and in environments with a low tolerance for risk, there is much to learn from St. Louis County.

At the end of our interview, we returned to the question of trust. Fey acknowledged that there will always be a small segment of people who sow disinformation. But added, “I think the insulation against disinformation taking hold is being well organized, well administered and transparent."  St. Louis County has achieved just that, combining the right culture and the right technology with a commitment to service and transparency.