The Weight of Your Vote
With the onset of Covid-19, more people are voting by mail then ever before. Mail in voting has grown from 24.9% in 2016 to 50.3% in 2020. Going to the polling station and casting your vote is an experience one remembers. You go to your local polling station, wait in line, check your name, cast your vote, and get your "I Voted" sticker. All of this experience and memories are lost in the mail in ballot process.
What if we treated the ballot with the respect it deserves and created more of an at home experience? For this project, I explored what our ballot process could be and disregarded the obvious cost of creating ballot packages for all voters.
Work featured on TheDieline.
For this concept, I wanted to explore the immense weight one's vote has and the importance of that decision. Your vote affects everything from the President down to the amount of school tax you pay. Your choice will affect you and your family for years to come and needs to be treated with the respect it deserves.
I wanted to make the package noticeably heavier then usual to emphasize the weight of your decision. I also liked the idea of creating a keepsake package that could kept to handed down to future generations kind of like how people save newspapers of important world events.
Explorations
The "Single Touch" concept is a response to the need for absolute transparency and security in the voting process. The philosophy is simple: the only person to physically handle the ballot should be the voter.
By introducing a tamper-evident, onetime snapfit locking case, the design creates a physical "chain of custody" that the voter can see and trust. Once the ballot is sealed between the protective covers, it remains untouched and untampered with until it reaches the counting facility. This project reimagines the ballot not just as a document, but as a protected asset.
Bringing the Polls Home
The "Ballot Box" concept bridges the gap between traditional inperson voting and the convenience of mail-in ballots. By designing the primary packaging to mimic the iconic white ballot box, the voter is greeted with a familiar symbol of democracy the moment it arrives at their door. This concept transforms the mail-in process into a ceremonial event, utilizing premium matte/gloss star patterns and fabric pull-tabs to create a moment of civic pride.
Extra layers of rigid box board added to create that extra weight in the package. Glued to the bottom of box so voter never sees them just feels them.
