Writers Blog #8

For this week’s writer’s blog, I wanted to focus more on my Medium short feature assignment. I love the idea of this assignment because unfortunately our society and generation do not feel as though they are responsible for being aware of social issues. I think this assignment makes students look into issues they would not have otherwise. While some of these issues do not affect me directly, I still think it’s my responsibility to know that people out there are not given the same rights and opportunities. I also think it is somewhat my responsibility to speak out, as someone that can afford to speak out against social issues and inequalities. In a perfect world, everyone would be afforded the same rights and access to opportunities and there would be no social issues. However, this is not a perfect world and social issues only increase daily.

For my short feature story, I wanted to research and talk about voting access. As a political science major, this is something I have looked into quite a bit. Systems are set in place to hinder certain communities and people’s ability to vote. Outside of just voting access, our political system is so unfairly set up that many people do not even care to try because they feel as though their voices are not heard. For my piece, I wanted to specifically look at voting access in North Carolina. I’m not sure exactly how I will do this yet, but I at least have the direction I want to go in.

I have said this in my pitch and past blogs, with the upcoming election, it is crucial to talk about voting access and rights. Politics has always been a sensitive topic, however, I would say that it has gotten worse since the 2016 election and then even worse after the 2020 election. I would like to start my piece off by talking about current voting in North Carolina and then go over the inequalities. I would also like to look into some possible systemic reasons for this. Voting access was not hindered accidentally, so I would like to look into why. I think I would end it by talking about solutions and how we can make change happen. I want to include why officials think voting access has declined since 2020. I think it would also be important in this article to possibly mention how other readers in other states can look into voting in their homes. Voting access is so incredibly important, now more than ever, and people should feel inclined to pay attention to voting access and other social issues.

While voting access is not an issue I personally face, it is still a problem that others face. One of the main foundations of our country is being able to vote for your representatives. If not everyone can vote, is it really a fair democracy? I think these are interesting questions and look forward to hopefully being able to talk about them in the Medium short feature assignment.