How do I respond to the post below?

What concepts have you learned in this course that can help you understand the voting process in the U.S. and the reasons why we do not have a larger voter turnout?

One of the things I learned in reading this Chapter was that "by law, Congressional district maps must be redrawn every 10 years, following the national census. However, states can decide exactly how they draw district boundaries, and in most states the process is controlled by politicians." (Bennet, J., 2018, pp. 656-659) By allowing the very people who stand to benefit from the election draw the boundary lines to land in their favor, we are taking away from the people's voice. We also learned how electoral votes can supersede the popular vote in Presidential elections and how politicians have many avenues (such as a filibuster) to control voting in every way. These are just some of the many examples why Americans may choose to disregard voting - when they feel as if their voice doesn't matter, many say why speak up at all.

Include in your discussion post comments about all the graphs used in the article. Answer the following questions--

For the Education Economics graph, give potential reason(s) why the two sets of graphs look almost identical?

I think that the creators of the graph purposefully chose income/education levels that would most dramatically display the information they were trying to sell the reader on, which was that lower income/lower educated individuals tend to be non-voters. There also is no quantifiable measure for "some college", how were they gauging this information? The way the graph reads to me is that the amount of people who actually vote is almost equally distributed among income levels and education levels. The voter side of the graphs are broken out to almost equal thirds.

How does the usage of percent in graphs affect the graph and the interpretation of the graph?

In this graph the usage of percentages makes it difficult for me to understand the numbers behind the information.

How do the graphs used in the article help to slant the article in a certain direction?

The graph titles play a role in setting the expectation for what the graph is displaying. As an example, the graph below just displays registered voters, but it is titled "Las Vegas Is Home To Many Nonvoting Democrats". The graph is essentially meaningless when compared to the title of it unless you click into the Non-voter side which displays the information to more accurately represent the title. It also is displaying Congressional District 1, which comprises Las Vegas, a few suburbs and a bit of unincorporated Clark County. It is the smallest congressional district in the state of Nevada (as shown in the second image), yet the article is using this graph to support the larger theory that young people don't vote.

If you were the editor for this article, what would you have explained to the author about the graphs used?

I would have explained that the misrepresentation of information to gain support for a theory is not displaying the integrity that our articles are required to have to be published. They are skewing data and should be labeled and created with more accuracy and descriptive information.

How would you change the graphs to make them more honest (hint-they are not)?

As a whole, I would pick styles that represent the information in an easier to read format such as bar graphs displaying numbers, not percentages. I would utilize the US as a whole instead of the smallest congressional district in 1 state out of 52 to represent our nation's youth. I would alsonotinclude a graph that would need to have the note saying "Since the 18-29 age group contains voters who have not been eligible for the full eight-election span, that group's true "frequent voter rate" is incomplete. The number of individuals in each of these five age groups is roughly the same, except for the 50-69 group, which contains about three times as many individuals." which is basically admitting to misrepresenting information. (Khalid et al., 2018)

Compare the graphs used by the article to the graphs I have included here. In the article, and separately with the graphs I've included, what would be the conclusion a reader would draw about how important different demographics are to the outcome of an election?

Readers would determine that demographics are important in the outcome of an election. Demographics represent the profiles of the population of our nation. Both the article and these graphs give a snapshot of specific demographics that can be manipulated to influence results or opinions.

Explain how the use of either type of graph can be used to get an audience to see the information in a specific light.

The article seems to be using the graphs to make readers believe that young, lower income, and uneducated people vote less. The method of voting graph from the discussion is trying to show more and more people are using an early/absentee vote, and the age graph is trying to convey that the older members of our population are voting less. Any of the graphs can lead people to see things one way or another due to the lack of context and information given from the graph itself, paired with a non-defined data set or skewed data that isn't representative of the whole.