Collection of Sources for Youth Voters 1

Christopher Rodriguez
Professor Wallace
LIS 572
5 December 2018
Collection of Sources for Youth Voters

The final project consists of a collection of resources geared towards young adult voters

aged 18-24 years old. This specific age range was key due to the fact that at age 18, citizens of

the United States are eligible to vote in their home state. The age of 24 is also a crucial age, for

the reason that those who fall in this age group have already had the opportunity to vote during

various elections, including two presidential elections. The intended purpose of the collection

aims to help guide young voters in their decision making. Whether potential voters are planning

to go to the voting polls, or whether they would simply like more knowledge regarding what

laws are being processed as well as potential political candidates, the collection aims to provide

relevant information. It is often difficult to decide how or what to vote, especially with various

untrustworthy sources around the world and terms such as “Fake News” being heavily used in

recent years. The type of information that is available on television, online and in other forms of

media is not always high-quality, and can even damage one’s perception of the news. With that

in mind, the central focus of many of these documents pertains to voting. Another goal of the

collection aims to both directly and indirectly teach the users about the voting process, as well as

laws regarding the voting process.

The purpose of this collection is not only meant to guide young voters, but it is meant to

inspire them as well. It is important for people to understand why they need to vote, as well as to

understand which issues they feel are important to them. This type of endeavor can only begin

with high quality information and reliable sources. It is important for voters, and people in
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general, to know that there are in fact, legitimate places to find reliable information. With today’s

technology, we simply do not have to settle for what we see on television or hear on the radio or

what we read on social media. As soon as voters know that there are trustworthy and credible

resources available online, they can begin to explore their beliefs and learn more about

government processes along the way.

Although the databases introduced in this course were extremely helpful, some did not

provide the type of information that was needed for this project. The wonderful aspect about this

assignment was the ability to utilize all of the knowledge that was built upon throughout the

semester. For this particular assignment, it was necessary to look mainly at census data and

various government resources. One of the best places to search for documents during this

assignment was ProQuest Congressional and Census.gov. It was databases such as ProQuest

Congressional and Congress.gov that held what was most needed for this age range. In today’s

reality, taking the time to sort out which information may be deemed unnecessary was a bit of a

challenging task. There were a number of times in which some documents did not appear as they

seem, and would only provide limited or incomplete information altogether. Some very

interesting information such as public statements, provided excellent insight into what people

were thinking and how they felt the government should approach certain issues. However, it was

at this point that the question of document length came into play during the research process.

One of the most difficult aspects of the curation process was to determine the lengths of

each resource. A question that constantly came up asked how interactive people would be with

lengthy documents concerning a subject that might be new to them. At first, it may seem as

though lengthy documents would be more valuable, or more official or provide more accurate

information than shorter documents. Although the decision was made to cut out many documents
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and resources that were a page or less in length, it was also extremely helpful to be able to use a

select few as an introduction to government documents. Lengthy resources can be a bit daunting,

and for people who are new to government documents, it would be best to provide a quick

introduction to ease new voters into the process of searching for and reading government

information. One specific item however that was left out dealt with population. The importance

of providing population data is to show young voters just how many of them are out there in the

United States, as well as how much their votes matter during an election. During this search, it

was no mistake that many different variables were sought out such as sex, gender, race and

others. The most important piece of information was the age range, because unlike race, gender

and ethnicity, all those who are in the same age group have that one factor in common and can

look at the data a bit more equally. Websites such as census.gov and socialexplorer.com were

tremendously useful in acquiring statistical data for the targeted age range, sex range and ethic

range. While these various pieces of information were sought, vague information was left out, as

well as information that only discussed one population instead of many.

Another question that reoccurred throughout the research process was whether the types

of information in the collection were written in such a way that readers could easily pick out the

meaning of the important parts. It was also essential to sort out documents that may have been

outdated or may not necessarily pertain to the current political climate. A lot of work was done to

filter out certain years, and nothing from over 50 years ago was used for the collection. It was

because of this that the collection featured many results from the more recent years such as 2016,

2017 and 2018. A lot of what pertains to today’s political climate occurred during the Trump

Administration and shortly before that. Much of what is in place today stems from decisions
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made over the last few years, which gives new voters a better idea of where we are and how we

got here.

One of the key subjects that some of the documents needed to include was information

regarding how laws are made. It is important for voters to be able to see and understand the

process of a bill becoming a law. It is also important for voters to see how certain parties vote

regarding specific bills, as these young voters will take part in who is elected to the Senate and

the House of Representatives. Another factor in play is how new voters can read statements and

other information from those who are of high position in the United States Government. The

information found in some resources may be enough for voters to reconsider who they want to

vote for during an upcoming election year. On the other hand, it is also important to not flood the

collection with resources that are solely, or predominantly in favor of one party over another. In

other words, it would be unfair to provide someone with a collection of documents that solely

oppose the points of view from the left, or solely oppose the points of view from the right. The

goal was not to make anybody look bad, but to tell a story, and to shed light on what various

citizens think and believe to be good for the people.

Although at times it was tempting to try and stretch how a certain document was relevant

to the collection, it was difficult to make justifications for certain types of information. Instead of

focusing completely on one subject area, an attempt was made to locate documents that cover a

wide range of topics. For example, a step during the research process consisted of removing

articles that were focused only on a single topic such as health, economics or even the

environment. The plan then shifted in such a way that documents featuring many topics were

sought to replace single topics. Instead of having three entries focused entirely on health,

documents were sought that included many topics such combining health, economics and the
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environment all in one source. Documents regarding what topics voters are most interested in

was the goal, and not necessarily one broad topic.

What was also discovered to be of relevance to youth voters, is the ways in which they

can actively vote in the next upcoming election. Census.gov provided an excellent article

regarding the different ways in which young voters currently vote, whether it be on election day,

or by turning in an early ballot. Some of the information was found to be valuable, however,

much of it can be found with a simple Google search, and probably would not fit in with a

collection of resources such as this. It was somewhat of a difficult decision to make, however

there are other resources with similar information available, including which methods people

prefer or which are more convenient.

What prevents people from voting was also an interesting aspect to explore. It was

necessary to include reasons why people do not vote, as one of the most commonly heard

reasons is that some people do not feel as if their vote matters. Documents that were exclude

with regards to this subject included whether or not people were satisfied with the outcomes of

the elections. Although there are quite a number of satisfaction surveys containing different

views of voters, it was made a high priority to not add any documents that too negatively

reflected disappointed voters. The opposite affect is mean to be achieved, in that young people

need to be inspired to vote, and not to find any justifications as to why they should not vote in

any elections.

All in all, this collection was designed to encourage young voters in three specific ways.

The first way was to show voters what types of documents are available to them should they

decide to research a specific candidate, their beliefs or policies, and even which party they

belong to at the time. The second way was to highlight different topics of importance that young
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voters may relate to or agree with, in order to see what they can do to influence decision making

processes. The third way was to provide relevant information to those who are unfamiliar with

the voting or lawmaking process. The collection was intended to provide some general

information to voters aged 18-24, while keeping the essence of the topics and leaving out lengthy

or possibly irrelevant information to this group.