After a sleepless night and a 6-hour flight, the team is now in San Francisco and the site has been successfully launched! We’re extremely excited for it to get into the hands of the voting public. Because we want to get information out to voters as soon as possible, it meant that we had to skip some user testing before launch. Our information is not affected–we promise that what we tell you is complete and accurate. It may just be harder to access the information than we’d like. This means that there is a chance that you might find a bug on a page in the process–that’s where the link at the top of the page comes. If you’ve encountered something that you don’t think is right, feel free to click the link, type in the problem that’s occurred, and we’ll take a look ASAP. You can consider yourself part of the team.

If you’re curious, we’re in San Francisco this weekend to meet with a few larger web companies (”larger” is an understatement), and while I don’t want to set huge expectations, I think we’ll have a great result come this Wednesday. Plus, I’ll have a chance to take photos and video of our trip so you can learn more about the site, the team, and the future of both!

So, in the meantime, try out the site! Put in your zip code, walk through the steps, and you’ll be well on your way to voting absentee in no time. If you have any suggestions, questions, or comments, feel free to reach us at feedback@govoteabsentee.org.

Well, I didn’t end up voting because…

a) I just didn’t give a crap

b) I’m 20 and in college and we all know that young people don’t vote!

c) I was away at college, and to vote absentee in my home state, you must search a complicated website to find how to request a ballot. I had to figure out who my county clerk was, call her, get her to send me an application, fill in the application, send it back, wait for the ballot, and submit it before election day. I really did want to vote, but in the end it was just too much and missed the deadline.

When I asked my friends why they didn’t vote in 2006, the response was overwhelmingly (c)—our absentee voting system is just too complex and confusing. I wanted to vote absentee this year, and, in early spring, I went looking for an easy to use website that would directly give me any information I needed. This website would work for me in Wisconsin, as well as for my friends in other states. The idea was so obvious—this website had to exist, right?

Apparently not. So what did I do? I whined, of course. Luckily, I whined to my best-friend-since-first-grade/web-design-wizard Brian Moore.

He looked at me and said “We can build that website.”

I laughed. To me, websites are something magical, built at the wave of a wand by techies in California who bear no resemblence a nerdy 21-year-old from Wisconsin whose computer skills are basically limited to playing “Oregon Trail.”

But with a promise that I could take care of the voting information and outreach strategy while he took care of the technology, he convinced me. I was thrilled that Michele Felski-Smith and Kyle Warren came on board to manage the reams of data and handle programming, respectively. We secured a grant to allow us to develop and market our website (“What idiots gave you and Brian a grant?” my mother asked.)

And here we are. I know how excited I am to cast my vote this year. I hope you are too.

Please remember, our sole purpose in life is to make yours easier. If there’s any feature you’d like to see on the site, or any other criticisms or suggestions, please email us at feedback@govoteabsentee.org.