- Maker: Bilal Amodu
- Genre: Election Ballot
- Level: Graduate
- Program: Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media
- Course: WRIT 5340: Multimodality & Digital Media
- Instructor: Dr. Eric Mason
- Semester Created: Winter 2021
Description:
This project, assembled in the months following the 2020 presidential election, was an attempt to subvert the serious and objective image of the general election ballot and thereby comment upon the nature of choice in the United States’ democracy from the local to federal levels. Given the recent election, the ballot was intended in part as a commentary on the 2020 campaign season, more broadly on social issues and Americans’ value of agency.
Reflection:
The original draft of this project was composed in Microsoft Word using tables, which presented formatting challenges as the columns and rows were not neatly aligned. I then realized that I wanted the project to be interactive, and with Dr. Mason’s help, reproduced it through the website Jot Forms. The project’s interactive nature reinforces its association with choice and agency, by allowing the reader to participate directly in the experience and thereby “have a say” in selecting from what an assortment of intentionally unappealing and bewildering options. The viewer is asked to “Choose One” candidate for each race, but is occasionally able to writr in his or her own candidate, though this feature was used judiciously to illustrate the limited options that exist to voters in some contests.
As mentioned in the description, the project served as a commentary on the 2020 elections, though it placed limited emphasis on the presidential election, which only occupied one box yet has dominated media coverage over the past two years. Much of the focus in this project was placed on the state and local elections, which were inspired by the local elections that took place in South Florida during the 2020 election season (I will not name any specific names in case any of the candidates involved are reading this), though details were often exaggerated or distorted for the purpose of humor or commentary. This ballot also comments upon issues specific to elections such as limited options in down-the-ballot races, the wording of ballot initiatives, and the sense of dissonance between the people’s needs and the government’s priorities. In addition to politics, this projects comments more broadly upon racism, reproductive rights, local government corruption, and misinformation.
This project could absolutely be extended to comment upon the double standard and social barriers that women and people of color face when seeking political office, as this was unfortunately not an area explored in this draft despite broader social developments occurring in the United States. The formatting options afforded by Jot Forms also would have enabled this project to comment upon voting restrictions by placing multiple pages of required content before participants engage with the project. The project could also further address the barriers that continue to restrict the ease and availability of voting, such as immigration status, or education.
