Help GOTV Over Mobile
Help members find their polling place, check their registration deadline, and learn their voting options over mobile -- all personalized to their location with Ascend's new election tools.
Election season means a flood of questions: Where do I vote? When does early voting start? What's the deadline to register?
Introducing the Polling Place Locator, a new bot action in Ascend's flow builder that automatically finds a member's nearest polling place and sends it directly to them over SMS.
What It Does
The Polling Place Locator connects to the IWillVote API to look up polling place data by address. When a member reaches this step in your flow, Ascend matches their saved address to the nearest polling place and sends back the location and hours, automatically.
How It Works in a Flow
Setting up the Polling Place Locator is straightforward. Here's the basic structure:
Step 1: Collect the member's address. Before the Polling Place Locator can find a match, it needs the member's full address: street address, city, state, and zip code. Use a Collect Info bot action with the Full Address option to gather all of this in a single step. Ascend will automatically geo-validate the address.
Step 2: Set up the Polling Place Locator. Select the election and the state or states you want to find polling places for. You can choose specific states or select "All available states" to automatically include any state where IWillVote data is available.
Step 3: Write your success message. Compose the message members will receive when a polling place is found. Drop in the dynamic fields for polling place address and hours.
Step 4: Add a validation message. Not every address will produce a match; the member might have incomplete data, or IWillVote may not have coverage for their state yet. A validation message makes sure those members still get a helpful response.
Help GOTV
Two new dynamic fields are available exclusively in the Polling Place Locator bot action:
Nearest Polling Place Address pulls in the full location: building name, street address, city, state, and zip. Members see something like: Main Street Library, 123 W Main St, Springfield, IL 60102.
Nearest Polling Place Hours of Operation shows when the polls are open on election day, like: 7am-7pm.
Drop both into your success message and members get everything they need to show up and vote in one text.
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More Election Info, Available Everywhere
The Polling Place Locator is part of a broader set of new election dynamic fields that can be used in any bot action, not just the Polling Place Locator. These fields pull data from IWillVote and are available for any member with a valid state on their record....no address collection needed.
That means you can text members their voter registration deadline, early voting start date, ballot request deadline, and more. Election data is automatically populated by state, with no manual lookups or CSV uploads required.
A few examples of what you can send:
"The voter registration deadline in your state is [registerOnlineBy]. Register here: [link]"
"Early voting starts [earlyVotingStartBy] in your state. Here's what you need to know: [earlyVotingStartByNote]"
"In your state, you can [Voting Methods]. Here's how to make a plan: [link]"
These fields are active through the election cycle and automatically become unavailable once the election ends. To see a complete list of available election data, click here.
Built for Scale
One of the biggest advantages of the Polling Place Locator is that it works for your entire list over text. Every person gets a response tailored to their address.
Pair it with a nudge to follow up with members who don't respond, or route members who need extra help into your Inbox for a one-on-one conversation. The Polling Place Locator fits into the same flow builder you already use, so it works alongside everything else you've already built.
Getting Started
The Polling Place Locator is available now in the flow builder. Head to the Flows page, click Add Flow, and look for Polling Place Locator in the bot actions menu.
