Our History
In October 2008, The Pew Charitable Trusts published a report entitled “Being Online is Not Enough,” which found that millions of Americans went online in search of answers to their general election questions. At the time, however, no standardized, reliable source existed for voters to obtain this basic Election Day information. VIP was created as a joint effort of state and local officials, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and Google to bring official voting information to voters via the internet.
In June 2018, Pew turned management of these efforts over to Democracy Works, a nonpartisan, civic tech nonprofit organization that shares the project’s goals and mission.
Over the years, VIP has evolved to serve today’s voters with the election information they need. This work has included expanding the dataset to support early vote and ballot drop-off locations, supporting smaller and off-year elections, and giving election offices the ability to highlight critical information to voters.
By making official election information easily searchable online on a range of platforms, VIP has become an essential part of the voting experience for millions of Americans.