Voter Guides, Get Your Voter Guides

Phoebe Connelly

One of the key strategies of the League of Independent Voters was to have its members create local voter guides for the 2004 General Election. The reasoning was two-fold: to engage youth voters in researching and examining their elections beyond mainstream media coverage and to provide voters with a handy guide to the ballot informed by voters like them. The results, more than 50 voter guides, are now available at www.indyvoter.org. The League is also encouraging voters to endorse their local voter guide, thereby gathering information about the voting blocs that exist around issues that matter to youth voters. As one email announcing the voter guides put it: We're building voter blocs of young voters (18-35… we're the least likely to vote, right?) across the country and voting as a community in order to effect the political change we want to see. EXPONENTIALIZE YOUR VOTE!

Phoebe Connelly, a former managing editor at In These Times, is Web Editor at The American Prospect.
The text is from the poem “QUADRENNIAL” by Golden, reprinted with permission. It was first published in the Poetry Project. Inside front cover photo by Golden.
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