Enrolling 700k+ Users to Power the Polls

2020 was a pivotal election year for progressive candidates up and down the ballot. But after the pandemic began, we saw a massive deficit of poll workers—many of whom were elderly, high-risk individuals who couldn't participate in high-exposure volunteer efforts. Power the Polls was built overnight by progressive tech leaders to fill this vacuum of need. 

As the lead product manager on this campaign, I worked to scale this website—over the course of just a few weeks—alongside a designer and full-stack dev. We ran research on common questions that potential poll workers had; uncovered what incentives drove users to sign up; designed, developed, and iterated the microsite PowerThePolls.org; and coordinated directly with hundreds of local polling election boards across the country to ensure no role was left unfilled. 

As demand for partnership with Power the Polls grew, we also worked to scale a CMS that allowed our team to quickly create unique landing pages and URLs for external orgs. This simplified the process for onboarding new partners, and drove additional volunteer sign-ups across the country. This also made it easy for us to track and report out which partners were driving the most sign-ups via ActionKit—fostering some friendly competition leading up to election day. 

In the span of four months, and with the help of over 300+ partners, Power the Polls led to over 700,000+ sign-ups for volunteer poll workers across the country—and got press coverage in the New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, and many other outlets.