When President Trump admitted in August that he was blocking post office funding to stop a surge in mail-in votes, Stephen Colbert decided to help. He proposed a series of non-partisan, educational videos through The Late Show that summer, explaining to viewers how to vote in each state in the U.S., plus D.C.

His staff quickly learned how difficult it would be to get accurate information —proving just how complex the laws are when it comes to casting a ballot in the United States.

“It became very complicated,” said Late Show with Stephen Colbert Producer Paige Kendig. “It turns out voting rules across the country are incredibly complex.”

The 51 videos live on the Better Know A Ballot website and The Late Show’s YouTube account, and were pushed out across The Late Show social channels, as well as Colbert’s personal Twitter account. The videos, on YouTube and social, have garnered 5.23M views. Some elements of the videos were also broken up and used during some broadcasts of CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Kendig, Supervising Producer Aaron Cohen, and Associate Producer Emily R. Newman spoke to the ViacomCBS Newsroom about the initiative and the difficult process of maintaining accuracy amid ever-changing laws and guidelines.

Nicole Bitette: What motivated The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to launch an educational voting initiative?

Paige Kendig: A lot of it had to do with COVID-19. Stephen [Colbert] wanted to make sure that people knew how to vote from home and by mail, if possible. The educational aspect was motivated by the fact that if people can understand how to vote by mail and when they can get their ballots in on time, we might understand on election day who the president would be. I don't think Stephen [Colbert] or any of us had any idea how much work it would be to break it down state by state.

Aaron Cohen: The initial idea was how to vote by mail, but it  became about how to vote early and other ways to return your  absentee ballot, and other ways to vote. The initial plan has gradually evolved as voting laws have changed.

Emily R. Newman: In the initial research, we quickly realized that finding voting information is not only difficult, but daunting. Absentee and early voting resources were scattered and buried in ways that made it unclear just what voters needed to do. Deadlines are counted back from Election Day, instead of providing an actual date. At every turn, you want to throw your hands up. If we could create something that made an important thing easier to understand in a year that, itself, has been so hard to understand then that could really help people.

NB: What is the benefit of having this information come from Stephen Colbert?

PK: If you look for the information yourself, you realize how incredibly complicated it is. Every state has a different platform. With people moving across the country and back home with their parents and registering in different places, we figured we could use the show’s name and our reach to help simplify it. Plus, have it live on a website where people can easily find what they're looking for.

AC: Our audience comes to Stephen [Colbert] for his jokes, and through these videos, they get one or two of those at the top and the rest is information on how to vote in their state. The value add is that you get a taste of our show and Stephen [Colbert] in each of these videos.

NB: How have people responded to the videos?

PK: The response has been pretty incredible. The latest video about Washington State has 26K views and the site itself has drawn over 400K users and 1.23M pageviews. Some of the most-viewed pages include those for California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois. The feedback has been really positive, just people thanking us. It was also nice that it was a completely non-partisan project.

NB: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in making sure the information in these videos was accurate and up to date?

PK: Where do we start? We had to change some videos three or four times because the laws were constantly changing. We had a whole team of people set up calling local clerks’ offices to confirm things, and every single fact that went into the website or the videos was triple-checked. Almost all of them were checked by calling the local clerks in different states, and even some of the clerks didn’t know the answers.

AC: It would have been a big enough challenge to create 51 videos about how to vote in each state and D.C. and put the information on the website. It was essentially a living project. Deadlines for requesting your ballots were getting outdated as time went on. But the people working on this project were also full-time employees of The Late Show, which is producing a show every night.  It was a massive project that was happening simultaneously with a show every night.

ERN: In a year like this, the "best advice" for voting was a moving target. There's COVID-19 risk for in person voting, but USPS concerns for voting by mail, and then there's election law changes that seem small but have a huge impact. It was an ongoing process to be sure that we were using the most up to date resources and pointing to all the best options - even as what was "best" kept changing. Voting in our country is also so complicated that we had to do a herculean amount of research just to find the right question to ask in order to accurately explain the process. It was a challenge we overcame because we knew how important it was to get it right.

NB: What are you hopeful this campaign will accomplish?

PK:  Everybody understands that getting people to the polls this election year is incredibly important. If  we could somehow break down the convoluted process that is voting in this country, especially voting by mail, then at least we're helping others.

AC: There's never been a year like this. There's never been an election like this. Many of the things that we were attempting to help people with during this campaign, those complications would exist in any election but are amplified this year, due to COVID-19. If we’re able to make it even a little easier for someone to figure out how they can vote, then that is a mission accomplished.

PK: After 51 videos and 65 updates to the videos, it was a massive undertaking, especially while we were doing live shows around the conventions and our regularly scheduled live shows, but everybody on the team, including Stephen [Colbert], is just incredibly proud to be a part of it.