Resources > Post-Election Debrief Toolkit

Post-Election Debrief Toolkit

A toolkit to help you debrief an election and plan for future elections.

Table of Contents

After an election, there is a brief period to pause and assess the important work you’ve accomplished. This opportunity to debrief helps foster growth and improvements within the office and is a critical aspect of preparing for future elections.

This toolkit will support you in debriefing an election and creating and facilitating space for you and your team to uncover areas of improvement that can increase employee satisfaction and improve the experience of your voters.

The toolkit includes recommendations and considerations for setting goals, planning activities and logistics, running the workshop, and planning the next steps.

The resource was created by the Center for Civic Design in collaboration with the US Alliance for Election Excellence.

What you’ll need

Microsoft Word or Google Docs to edit the worksheets
Colleagues who are available to have post-election debrief conversations
A download of the Planning and Facilitation Guide
A download of the Planning Worksheet
A download of Workshop Moderator Guide Template

Getting started

The opportunity to debrief after an election helps your office foster growth and improvements and is a critical aspect of preparing for future elections. Uses for this guide include recommendations and considerations for setting goals, planning activities and logistics, running the workshop, and planning the next steps to help you get started.

The toolkit will guide you through the steps to planning a debrief session, including:

Setting goals for your workshop
Planning your workshop activities
Planning other workshop logistics
Creating the agenda
Post-workshop next steps

Using the Tool

This toolkit is the first part of a series based on our election planning framework. It is designed for projects that require sufficient time, energy, and creativity for successful implementation. Planning is the opportunity to set goals for projects that help you improve your office.

This toolkit can help you create and facilitate space for you and your team to uncover areas of improvement that can increase employee satisfaction and improve the experience of your voters in the long term.

This toolkit is divided into 3 parts:

The planning and facilitation guide
The worksheet
The template

Section 1: The planning and facilitation guide

This guide details how to use design research skills to facilitate debrief workshops. It includes recommendations and considerations for setting goals, planning activities and logistics, running the workshop, and planning the next steps.

Section 2: The planning worksheet

The post-election workshop planning document is a companion to the planning and facilitation guide. It helps you organize your thoughts as you are planning your workshop.

Section 3: The workshop moderator guide template

The post-election workshop moderator guide template is the final agenda that you will use to run your workshop. After you have read the guide and filled out the planning document, synthesize your thoughts into the moderator guide template. This is the tool you will use on the day of the workshop to help you run the show!

A filled-out agenda document keeps you organized on the big day. It is a place for you to:

Keep track of time
Write notes to yourself
Script out directions or things you do not want to forget

Customizing for your office

Any tips for customizing this resource for my office?

The facilitation guide is a tool to help you become a better facilitator for debriefing conversations. Once you are confident in your facilitation skills, take the advice and customize it for what works best with your staff.

The planning worksheet is a tool that helps you organize your thoughts as you are planning your workshop. It aligns with specific sections of the facilitation guide. Feel free to disregard sections if they are not relevant to your plans, or add space to think through different parts of the planning process not documented!

The workshop moderator guide template will help you organize your workshops. Feel free to add or subtract sections that make sense for your workshop.

How do I know if this resource is helping?

You know this resource is helping if:

You feel more confident facilitating workshops with your staff
Your staff felt heard and excited for the next election
You’re able to walk away from the workshop having identified problems

Which Standards of Excellence does this resource support?

Voter communications

Which Values of Excellence does this resource support? Why?

Values for the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence define our shared vision for the way election departments across the country can aspire to excellence. These values help us navigate the challenges of delivering successful elections and maintaining our healthy democracy.

Alliance values are nonpartisan and designed by local election officials, designers, technologists and other experts to support local election departments.

You may find this tool especially helpful for this Value:

Comprehensive preparedness. We know from election offices that long-term planning can be a challenge and we wanted to find a way to make it easier. We found that election offices are overwhelmed and exhausted by putting out fires. This toolkit is designed to help you do just that.
Continuous improvement. This toolkit helps to build on the learnings from an election and incorporate them into future elections.

To learn more about the Values for Election Excellence, and to see the full list, visit the Alliance website.

Sharing Feedback

How was this resource developed?

This resource has been developed based on interviews and research with 5 election offices across the country, identifying the main problems, and then figuring out how they can be addressed. Share your experience with this resource and improve it for your peers by reaching out via support@ElectionExcellence.org.

How do I stay in touch?

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Have a specific idea, piece of feedback, or question? Send an email to support@ElectionExcellence.org