user satisfaction. Good UX design results in easy, relevant, useful, positive
experiences. Bad UX design leads to unhappy users.

This is not how we normally think of elections. Campaigns measure success
through short-term outputs -- voter contacts, fundraising totals, issue polls,
ad impressions -- and, ultimately, election results. Rarely do they evaluate how
individuals experience this as a singular, messy, democratic process. Each
campaign, PAC, nonprofit, and volunteer group may be focused on their own goal,
but the voter experiences it all at once. By the time theyΓÇÖre in line to vote,
theyΓÇÖve been hit with a flood of outreach -- spammy texts from unfamiliar
candidates, organizers with no local ties, clunky voter registration sites,
conflicting information, and confusing messages, even from campaigns they
support. Political teams can point to data that justifies this barrage, but the
effectiveness of voter contact has been steadily declining since 2008.
Intuitively, we know this approach has long-term costs. To address this, letΓÇÖs
evaluate the UX of an election cycle from the point of view of the end user, the
everyday citiz
en.

Specifically, how might we define the UX of an election cycle: the voter
experience (VX)? A VX lens could help us see the full impact of the electoral
cycle from the perspective that matters most: the votersΓÇÖ.

For example, what if we thought about elections in terms of questions like
these?

How do voters experience an election cycle, from start to finish? How do voters
perceive their interactions with political campaigns? What aspects of the
election cycle do voters enjoy? What do they dislike? Do citizens currently feel
fulfilled by voting? If voters ΓÇ£tune outΓÇ¥ of politics, what part of the
process has made them want to not pay attention?
What experiences decrease the number of eligible citizens who register and vote?
Are we able to measure the cumulative impacts of political content interactions
over the course of multiple election cycles? Can polls or focus groups help
researchers learn about longitudinal sentiment from citizens as they experience
multiple election cycles? If so, what would we want to learn in order to bolster
democratic participation and trust in institutions?
Thinking in terms of VX can help answer these questions. Moreover, researching
and designing around VX could help identify additional metrics, beyond
traditional turnout and engagement numbers, that better reflect the collective
impact of campaigning: of all those voter contact and persuasion efforts
combined.

This isnΓÇÖt a radically new idea, and earlier efforts to embed UX design into
electoral work yielded promising early benefits. In 2020, a coalition of
political tech builders created a Volunteer Experience program. The group held
design sprints for political tech tools, such as canvassing apps and phone
banking sites. Their goal was to apply UX principles to improve the volunteer
user flow, enhance data hygiene, and improve volunteer retention. If a few
sprints can improve the phone banking experience, imagine the transformative
possibilities of taking this lens to the VX as a whole.

If we want democracy to thrive long-term, we need to think beyond short-term
wins and table stakes. This isnΓÇÖt about replacing grassroots organizing or
civic action with digital tools. Rather, itΓÇÖs about learning from UX research
methodology to build lasting, meaningful engagement that involves both
technology and community organizing. Often, it is indeed local, on-the-ground
organizers who have been sounding the alarm about the long-term effects of
prioritizing short-term tactics. A VX approach may provide additional data to
bolster their arguments.

Learnings from a VX analysis of election cycles could also guide the design of
new programs that not only mobilize voters (to contribute, to campaign for their
candidates, and to vote), but also ensure that the entire process of voting,
post-election follow-up, and broader civic participation is as accessible,
intuitive, and fulfilling as possible. Better voter UX will lead to more
politically engaged citizens and higher voter turnout.

VX methodology may help combine real-time citizen feedback with centralized
decision-making. Moving beyond election cycles, focusing on the citizen UX could
accelerate possibilities for citizens to provide real-time feedback, review the
performance of elected officials and government, and receive help-desk-style
support with the same level of ease as other everyday ΓÇ£products.ΓÇ¥ By
understanding how people engage with civic life over time, we can better design
systems for citizens that strengthen participation, trust, and accountability at
every level.

Our hope is that this approach, and the new data and metrics uncovered by it,
will support shifts that help restore civic participation and strengthen trust
in institutions. With citizens oriented as the central users of our democratic
systems, we can build new best practices for fulfilling civic infrastructure
that foster a more effective and inclusive democracy.

The time for this is now. Despite hard-fought victories and lessons learned from
failures, many people working in politics privately acknowledge a hard truth:
our current approach isnΓÇÖt working. Every two years, people build campaigns,
mobilize voters, and drive engagement, but they are held back by what they
donΓÇÖt understand about the long-term impact of their efforts. VX thinking can
help solve that.

This essay was written with Hillary Lehr, and originally appeared on the Harvard
Kennedy School Ash CenterΓÇÖs website.

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Signal Blocks Windows Recall

[2025.05.23] This article gives a good rundown of the security risks of Windows
Recall, and the repurposed copyright protection tool that Signal used to block
the AI feature from scraping Signal data.

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Chinese-Owned VPNs

[2025.05.27] One one my biggest worries about VPNs is the amount of trust users
need to place in them, and how opaque most of them are about who owns them and
what sorts of data they retain.

A new study found that many commercials VPNS are (often surreptitiously) owned
by Chinese companies.

It would be hard for U.S. users to avoid the Chinese VPNs. The ownership of many
appeared deliberately opaque, with several concealing their structure behind
layers of offshore shell companies. TTP was able to determine the Chinese
ownership of the 20 VPN apps being offered to AppleΓÇÖs U.S. users by piecing
together corporate documents from around the world. None of those apps clearly
disclosed their Chinese ownership.

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Location Tracking App for Foreigners in Moscow

[2025.05.28] Russia is proposing a rule that all foreigners in Moscow install a
tracking app on their phones.

Using a mobile application that all foreigners will have to install on their
smartphones, the Russian state will receive the following information:

Residence location
Fingerprint
Face photograph
Real-time geo-location monitoring
This isnΓÇÖt the first time

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 * Origin: TCOB1: https/binkd/telnet binkd.rima.ie (618:500/1)