The release of the general election guides for Madison, Morgan, and Limestone counties calls for a time of celebration and reflection. We mailed out over 1,700 guides and gave around 20 organizations their own copies to distribute. Not only did these guides contain over 70 candidates with their own personalized biographies and list of top priorities but also information on electoral offices and their functions, amendments, absentee voting, and more! The time UWOC staff and volunteers spent on these guides was lengthy, the effort exuded was immense, and the research process was extensive. Our follow-through resulted in election guides that are beloved by candidates and constituents alike. As I celebrate with all of you and review the Madison County guide before I, myself, vote, it is important that I reflect inward on my experience creating the biggest election guides UWOC has touched. I want to illuminate UWOC’s community on my process, challenges, and lessons learned throughout this project to show the many forms of dedication that goes into being an informed voter.
I had many goals for the guides:
Highlight the role that local, state, and federal offices play in our everyday lives
Provide tools for individualized voting plans
Showcase the context needed to make informed decisions about electoral candidates
Empower the voices of the American minority and youth whose livelihoods most hang in the balance of our elections.
All of this, ultimately, to bring the information needed to make informed votes into one educational and accessible place.
To achieve these goals, I maintained a dedication to accessibility, comprehension, and education. When developing the election guides, I put myself into the shoes of the average American voter, which is uniformed. But can you blame us? Before joining United Women of Color, I tried to conduct my own research on candidates and make an informed decision, but I didn’t always have the time, energy, and effort to dedicate to such a hefty task. Combine that with additional research on the roles of each electoral office, where to go to vote, what I needed to bring, etc., we find the system’s barriers to information. Essential information is locked away behind pay walls, mountains of unnecessary text, or outdated websites, and voters don’t have the resources needed to sit and sift through the mess. When crafting the election guides, I had to remain aware at all times of this reality and try my best to alleviate the stress that comes from being an active participant in our democracy.
It is a difficult task. There’s either too much information available or not enough. (For example, candidates who are lesser known require 10x the normal allotment of time for research, and candidates who are extremely publicly known have 100+ articles written about them that need to be reviewed.) Language used to describe governance can be overly technical. Sources can vary in their reports. Biases fester in both local and statewide news organizations. Research takes extensive time and dedication (our most recent guides contained over 70 candidates, and I researched almost 60 of them!) The frustrating complexities of this work were tiring, but I knew that my perseverance was necessary. Then I had to ask myself: what is important? But this question can be very subjective. Next, what will people actually read? Well, that depends on the voter and their curiosity and capabilities. This struggle was a constant juggling act, and one that I am still learning the most effective way to handle for future guides.
In our most recent election guides, I spent a vast amount of time tweaking, correcting, and restructuring. I had to maintain a balance between education and accessibility, which meant if something was too wordy or sounded/appeared overly complicated I had to figure out a different way to present it. For example, the candidates’ bios used to be almost 100 words and a smaller font size. The day before the final copy was due, I realized the bios crowded the pages and spent two hours on the final day shortening all of them. It was hard discerning what to keep, but I chose to focus on the impact that the candidates have on their communities and the roles they play in other peoples’ lives. Sometimes leaving out information actually benefits the reader more as there’s a higher chance that they will read a section if it’s shorter.
The section of the guides that we knew would take the longest was the candidates. Not only did we have to research them and cite our sources, we then had to write biographies from scratch and determine three to five priorities that we felt were the most prominent in their campaign. To expedite the process, I hosted a volunteer writing party wherein UWOC volunteers took the candidates’ research pages and drafted a biography and bulleted priority list. Although not all of the work from that party was used, it still produced high-quality writing that sped up our process to a great degree. And we all had a good time doing it!
I wanted to also ensure that an easy-to-understand overview of electoral offices was present in the guides. Knowing WHO you’re going to vote for and their plans for the future are one thing, but knowing WHAT they’re actually going to be in control of is another. This knowledge can strengthen your ability to hold your representatives accountable and increase your awareness post-election years of who is having what kind of impact on your life. But to get people to soak in all of the electoral information, you need to draw their eyes to the page and to the text. I employed the use of graphics and charted power dynamics using arrows to accomplish such. I wanted to simplify our system of federalism to highlight the importance of offices that one might never think about. Just because other sources of information gloss over the role of, for example, the Public Service Commission, it doesn’t mean that those seats on the commission have little effect on our lives. In fact, the PSC has control over utility rates in Alabama, which have recently been on the rise.
One of the biggest additions to the election guides have been the glossary and the amendments. Both are included to accomplish a shared goal: make politics and governance easier to read. Sometimes candidates run a campaign platform with words you’ve never heard of, like ‘moratorium,’ which I was genuinely unfamiliar with even though many Democratic candidates discussed data centers using this terminology! Additionally, amendments to the Alabama Constitution are written in legal, technical language using terms that would sound out of place in a normal conversation. In both instances, an election guide needs to clear the air and establish mutual understanding with its audience. Yes, ‘moratorium’ sounds long and complicated when it really just means ‘pause in development’ and the amendments CAN make sense if you rewrite it in standard English language. All that’s needed is a political translator, a position that UWOC is proud to take on.
Look out for more guides in 2028! And get out and vote y’all!
