Case History - The Democratic Party

As every vote was important, the party were given a spreadsheet at the start of each day that listed the absentee (postal) voters that had yet to return their voting papers.

This spreadsheet was then printed out and sections of it passed to the party workers in order that they could telephone the absentee voters to chase up the voting papers.

The following day, a new spreadsheet would be issued but the workers had no way of telling who they had contacted the previous day and there was a danger that some voters would be chased several times whilst others would never be called.

Our solution was to import the spreadsheets directly from Excel files into an online database and provide the party workers with a web interface. This enabled us to keep track of who had been called, who had already posted their votes and incorrect telephone numbers.

This also meant that party workers no longer had to visit the office each day to collect a section of the spreadsheet but could simply log on to the password protected web interface when they had free time.