Lots of companies have embraced flexible summer Fridays recently, giving employees the opportunity to ideate or work on unique projects.
For a group of Atlanta-based Mailchimp engineers, the last few Fridays have been used to build a platform that goes far beyond Mailchimp’s email and marketing capabilities. In fact, they’ve built a platform that can be used by every voter in the state of Georgia.
Voting On My Mind is a tech platform that pulls early voting precinct locations and times based on a user’s designated address, streamlining the process for those looking for alternatives to voting on November 3rd.
Mailchimp says such a platform is important this year because information about early voting is spread across multiple state and county websites — and has changed frequently over the past few weeks — making it difficult for everyone to access the information needed.
Example of the Voting On My Mind interface
Not only does the tool show where and when early voting station open, it also succinctly explains what you need to bring to the polls and where to find additional information regarding voting in the state of Georgia.
The platform is an extension of Mailchimp’s previous work to help employees become more engaged citizens. “In previous years, we’ve tried to make voting as easy as possible for employees by encouraging our managers to make work flexible, sharing relevant polling information, and pledging our support to prioritize barrier-free civic engagement,” Lain Shakespeare, Senior Director of Corporate Citizenship at Mailchimp, said in a statement.
“This year, we wanted to do more and try to make early voting easier for Mailchimp employees and all of our neighbors in our home state of Georgia. As a technology company, we were able to create Voting on My Mind quickly and in a user-friendly way,” continued Shakespeare.
Mailchimp is also joining a growing list of tech companies making Election Day a company-wide paid holiday.
Today (October 12) marks the first day of early voting for Georgia, which will run until October 30.
