NYC Votes Ranked Choice Voting Video 2021
VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS - MOTION & VIDEO
VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS - MOTION & VIDEO
Starting in 2021, New York City has implemented Ranked Choice Voting in special and primary elections for city offices (Mayor, Public Advocate, Comptroller, Borough President, and City Council). As the largest jurisdiction in the United States to adopt Ranked Choice Voting, we were aware that the outcome of these elections would influence all future campaigns both locally and nationally.
Our agency, NYC Votes, the city's sole nonprofit, nonpartisan government organization, was tasked by the City Charter with educating voters about Ranked Choice Voting. Being seen as a trusted, official, and reliably unbiased source of information was essential. We knew we wanted to create a resource for Ranked Choice Voting that would be accessible and inclusive, easy to understand and easy to share, and would erase any skepticism of voting or changes to the process due to the previous election. Since NYC will use Ranked Choice Voting for the foreseeable future, the intention was for this video to have a long shelf life even after leading our education campaign this year.
We collaborated with the talented animation team at Mighty Oak— an NYC-based agency, and New Yorkers like us. We saw this as an opportunity to bring the paper ballot voters will be filling out “to life” through animation. Our aim was to ensure that after watching the video, voters would know what Ranked Choice Voting is, the benefits it has for voters, how to fill out their ballots, and have a high-level understanding of how their vote will be counted. We wanted New York City voters to feel empowered, confident and well-informed.
A lot of currently existing Ranked Choice Voting material is only available in English. We want to solve that challenge by making this video multilingual and accessible to folks with different levels of English literacy through clear visual demonstrations. In addition to language, we also took into consideration civic literacy: use simple phrasing, avoid specialized terms and jargon that may be unfamiliar, and provide information in small, digestible “chunks.” It was also very important to us that the video messaging would be clear to anyone with visual or audio impairments; viewers with low vision can access key information via audio and viewers who do not need or use audio can access essential points.
Using Adobe illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Media Encoder, and Adobe Premiere, the finished product is a multimedia composition exploring illustration, typefaces and NYC landmarks. The video's friendly, approachable vibe really resonated with our audience.
This video, and corresponding social media clips, can be found on the NYC Votes website and our social media channels. It has also been shared by partner organizations and has been used as a key tool in training sessions for city government, elected officials, and advocacy organizations across the city.
