Saturday, October 11, 2008

1-866-OUR-VOTE elections hotline upgraded to handle more calls

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From: Verified Voting Foundation

Voter Hot Line Upgraded for Election

by Todd R. Weiss, Computerworld
October 11th, 2008


With the Nov. 4 presidential election less than four weeks away, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is gearing up its IT systems to handle an expected 150,000 Election Day telephone calls on voting-related issues to its toll-free hot line.

The Washington-based nonprofit group created a basic telephone hot line -- 1-866-OUR-VOTE -- four years ago for the 2004 election, using a system of linked phone lines to connect voters with volunteer lawyers and paralegals.

Because it used traditional phone architecture, some of the hot line offices had an overflow of calls that couldn't be handled quickly enough, while others had excess capacity and volunteers who were available but couldn't be reached by voters. The problem was that the system had been set up manually and once created, it couldn't be quickly changed to adjust to incoming call patterns.

Jon Greenbaum, director of the committee's Voting Rights Project, said the group needed to find a better way to handle the Election Day crush of expected calls and help more voters deal with problems as they cast their ballots.

For the 2006 off-year elections, the group brought in Angel.com, a McLean, Va.-based call center and interactive voice response system vendor. Using Angel.com's Web-based Virtual Call Center application, the Election Day hot line can be monitored in real-time online and reconfigured instantly to re-route calls to available hot line volunteers across the country.


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