Personal Contributions – Voting Rights

It is crazy to think that I only have one more week of my internship at ADL. While the time has passed all too quickly, I feel as though I have contributed a fair share of work products and unique perspectives throughout my tenure as a Technology Policy Intern. In my opinion, my greatest contribution so far has been my research on and voting rights and issues paired with my development of collateral materials for ADL to distribute as we approach the election. I have made five different guides on voting issues to help first time voters, college voters, voters with children, voters worried about COVID-19, and voters who would also like to volunteer. Each one of these guides discusses how to register to vote, the difficulties certain groups may face, and information on safe voting practices. These guides will allow ADL to reach out to different communities and populations of voters with materials directly pertaining to their voting situation.  Through the development of these guides, I have created the content that will make up the voting rights landing page on the ADL website, the go-to place for ADL’s resources on voting rights and information pertinent to voting in the 2020 election. Throughout this project I feel that I have also shared perspectives that have helped enhance the materials created. For example, as I was creating materials specifically for college voters, I was able to draw on my personal experience of trying to get to the polls on election day from campus, and the struggles my friends and I have faced registering to vote in a state that we do not live in. These perspectives allowed my team and I to prepare materials addressing a wide range of barriers college voters face rather than assuming college voters and adult voters are encountering the same obstacles. I was able to contribute my perspective again when discussing how it would be best to contact college campuses and distribute these guides to college students. As a Jewish organization, ADL has connections with many Hillel’s across the country, and can easily distribute the guides to the leaders of this organization. In addition to this, I proposed reaching out to school’s student involvement centers to ensure that no matter which groups a student is a part of, they can have access to these materials.