Responding to feedback from users, the Illinois State Board of Elections debuted a new website today, making it easier for people to thumb through the massive information database housed by the agency.
“Our challenge was to organize and present a mountain of elections-related data quickly and sensibly. We think we’ve met this challenge with our new website," said Board of Elections director Dan White in a statement.
The site is splashier and better organized than its predecessor, customizing search options for different groups, including voters, candidates, committees, reporters, businesses and more.
Spokesman Rupert Borgsmiller says the goal was to make the site more user-friendly. It now incorporates an intuitive Google-type search function, which suggests possible topics to users.
"There's a ton of information that's out there and is accessible, and we're hoping that (users) will be able to find the information they're looking for in a much easier way than they used to," he says.
Borgsmillers says the site's improvements were driven by user feedback.
"If people have issues ... believe me, we're not immune and we will take those things into consideration," he told the Current.
“There’s a lot of information in our site, but it’s useless if people can’t find it," White said.