News Archive

Information about the 2016 election and its candidates was just about everywhere last year, so much so that many people are still experiencing overload. Yet the basic information voters need to navigate the election process—Where do I vote? What is on my ballot?— has always been more difficult to find.

Enter Samuel Derheimer, ’08, and his work for The Pew Charitable Trusts. Derheimer manages Pew’s election initiatives project.

“We work in elections, not politics,” Derheimer said. “We help voters find the information they need to participate in our democracy.”

To achieve this goal, Pew partnered with Google and election officials from all 50 states and the District of Columbia on the Voting Information Project (VIP) with the intention of putting accurate election information in places where voters would naturally come across it online.

Throughout the course of the 2016 election cycle, VIP saw over 120 million impressions across online and social media outlets. For example, anyone searching for their polling location on Google received VIP data. As did anyone who clicked on a link in their Facebook Newsfeed about basic election information. Additionally, VIP has mobile apps and a web site [www.gettothepolls.com].

Derheimer and his team at Pew monitored the entire country throughout the election cycle, including early voting, to ensure that the data returned by VIP was accurate. They even monitored where voting hours were extended on Election Day, ensuring that voters looking up their polling place in those areas were informed of the extension.

“That’s something we’re proud of,” Derheimer said. “Because we partner directly with state election officials, VIP can provide real-time information when problems arise because they always do on Election Day.”

Derheimer also works with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). ERIC is an independent non-profit, conceived and built with Pew’s assistance, made up of state election officials who upload their state’s voter rolls and other official state records in a secure and private way to match voter records across state lines. Participating states are then informed of voter records that may no longer be valid due to the voter moving or dying, as well as eligible citizens who have not yet registered. In 2016 alone, ERIC identified over 13 million eligible but unregistered citizens within the borders of its member states. The states then contacted those eligible citizens, educating them on the most streamlined path to registration.

“This is information the election officials have never had,” he said. “Through ERIC, the states are able to clean their rolls before an election, reducing any opportunities for fraud. At the same time, they’re able to ensure that all eligible, but only eligible, citizens are given the chance to register.”

Derheimer, a native of Fort Wayne who received his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame, was a fellow of the Program on Law and State Government (PLSG) at IU McKinney. After completing his undergraduate studies, Derheimer worked in campaigns for several years, yet it was the legal aspects of the political sphere that he found the most interesting, he said. The law school’s proximity to state government and the access to political agencies provided there made IU McKinney a natural choice, he said. And his PLSG fellowship played a vital part in Derheimer obtaining the career he now enjoys, he said.

“It was an important factor in why I’ve found success at a place like Pew,” Derheimer said of his PLSG fellowship. “I left Indy with practical experience working directly on policy and legislation. And it introduced me to really great mentors, obviously Professor Cynthia Baker at the law school, but also in the internships I was offered through the program.”