Election officials across the United States are preparing for an unprecedented general election this November. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has introduced new safety concerns for voters and poll workers, and officials are devising plans that minimize personal contact, reduce crowds, and limit common access to high-touch surfaces.
The ArcGIS Solutions team recently released the post Leveraging ArcGIS Solutions to conduct safe elections during the COVID-19 pandemic on the ArcGIS blog highlighting several ArcGIS Solutions that can be used conduct safe elections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Below you can find configuration help related to the Leveraging ArcGIS Solutions to conduct safe elections during the COVID-19 pandemic post that will help you modify election request types and
Promote Voting Alternatives
The Election Outreach solution can be used to share the wait times reported with the Election Management solution with voters. See the Configuring the Election Outreach solution document for help sharing wait times in the Election Polling places and Voting Centers applications (sections 4 & 5).
Create Health Safety Plans
The pattern highlighted in the Leveraging ArcGIS Solutions to conduct safe elections during the COVID-19 pandemic post is to use the Coronavirus Site Safety solution for election in 2 ways, 1) to create and share polling place or voting center health safety plans and 2) use the Crowd Counter application to track capacity as voters enter and exit. The Coronavirus Site Safety solution includes additional capabilities, however they may not be needed for use in elections.
The Coronavirus Site Safety solution includes the Coronavirus Site Safety Map Editor which can be used to build a polling place health safety plan. Additional health points, lines, and polygons may be needed to to create the health safety plans (for example, you may want to add voting machines). To add additional health points, lines, or polygons to be used in the Coronavirus Site Safety Map Editor:
New feature types will be available for use in creating health safety plans using the Coronavirus Site Safety Map Editor application.
Manage Election Day Activities
The Election Assistant application can be used by poll workers to request assistance (for example, additional ballots or computer support) at their assigned polling place. Like all ArcGIS Solutions, Election Assistant is configurable and extensible so with simple configuration changes we can incorporate COVID-19 categories (such as requests for sanitation supplies or PPE) to ensure poll workers maintain a safe polling place on Election Day.
Follow the steps below to add additional request types to the Election Requests ArcGIS Survey123 form then add the same request types to the Election Manager Workforce project.
Modifying the Election Requests Survey123 form:
Add newly defined request types to the Election Manager Workforce Project:
When poll workers create requests using Election Assistant and the Election Requests form, requests are automatically created as assignments in the corresponding Election Manager Workforce project. Using Election Manager, dispatchers can assign requests to field rovers. Occasionally a dispatcher may need to create an assignment directly without a request from a poll worker. To do that, optionally add the newly defined request types defined above into the Election Manager project.
This document was generated from the following discussion: Configuring ArcGIS Solutions to conduct safe elections during the COVID-19 pandemic