Maine Voter Determination
A multimedia project focused on the determination of Maine Voters during the tumultuous 2020 election cycle. The project contains three separate stories, each focusing on a different element of the 2020 elections and making use of a different storytelling medium: video, audio, and text with photos.
Video Story: Early Voting
For the video portion of this project, I focused on the early voting process in my hometown. I interviewed Town Clerk Tody Justice to learn more about what the process looks like. Edited using Adobe Premiere Pro.
Audio Story: Rep. Sophie Warren on Bipartisanship
For the audio portion of the project, I interviewed new Maine State Representative Sophie Warren and got her views on the role bipartisanship in politics. I constructed the audio story using Adobe Audition.
Text Story: Voting in Scarborough, ME vs Baltimore, MD
Despite the numerous differences between a small town and a big city, one thing unites the citizens: voting. Whether they are from the small town of Scarborough, Maine, or the big city of Baltimore, Maryland, voters were alike in their determination to cast their ballots in the 2020 presidential election cycle.
“I was going to vote in this election, regardless of COVID”
- Trey Wright, first-time voter and resident of Scarborough, Maine
Voters of Scarborough, a small town in Maine, didn’t let the pandemic affect their votes. Alfred Wright, a 19-year-old college student at the University of Maine and long-time resident of Scarborough, voted with an absentee mail-in ballot. “I was nervous,” he says. “Nervous that my vote wouldn’t go through because it went through the mail and I didn’t directly deposit it into the booth.” Still, Wright didn’t let that stop him from voting.
“I was determined. I was going to do everything I could to make sure and get my vote in on time”
- Trey Wright, first-time voter and resident of Scarborough, Maine
Baltimore voters faced similar concerns, but also showed the same conviction. Vito Capuano, a young voter in Maryland, was not to be deterred by COVID in casting his vote. He gave an enthusiastic “I did!” to the question of if he voted in the 2020 presidential election. Capuano reports that he also submitted an absentee mail-in ballot to cast his vote.
“I was just cautious, I guess, when it came to voting during the pandemic”
- Vito Capuano, a young voter in Maryland
Due to the covid-19 pandemic, voters all across the nation, in small towns and big cities alike, were “cautious,” as Capuano says, when it came to casting their votes. Absentee voting played a significant role in this election cycle because of its convenience and safety factor – voters didn’t have to risk exposure to others or to the virus at the polls because they could fill out their ballots in the safety of their own home and submit them through the mail, like Capuano and Wright.
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According to the U.S. Elections Project, over 100 million U.S. citizens voted early in this election cycle, either in person or through the mail, which is a higher turnout than the 2016 presidential election. One thing is clear: it doesn’t matter if voters live in small towns or reside in large cities. What does matter is their determination to vote through any means possible.