Voting Made Simple

Congratulations to our partners at the Literacy Coalition of Central Texas
on the successful publication of the
Voting Made Simple guide!

This non-partisan voter’s guide was developed with the help of Central Texas Adult Literacy Students. In eight tabloid-sized pages printed on high quality newsprint with soft purple accents, this elegant, but simply worded guide provides a statement of what the political parties in Texas believe (in their own words) brief job descriptions of the offices up for election (developed by adult literacy students), brief candidate statements for all statewide offices, and a list of additional resources in the five counties served by the Coalition.

It’s hip, it’s accessible, it’s non-partisan, and it’s a great resource for literacy students AND for the rest of us!

With support from the Michael and Alice Kuhn Foundation and the Austin American Statesman, the Literacy Coalition printed and distributed 40,000 copies in barber shops, beauty salons, restaurants, libraries, and laundromats. If you can’t find the real deal, download this smaller-sized version.
This Voting Made Simple Guide was modeled on the Easy Voter Guide produced in California since 1994. I know a little bit about this project because I was a co-founder along with Susan Clark when I was the Executive Director for a library-based literacy program in California. Susan had the vision and I had the organization and infrastructure. The California State Librarian provided the lion’s share of funding in the early days. This project continues with a distribution of almost 5 million throughout the entire state of California. I’ll say more in another posting, but check out the Easy Voter Guide web site in the meantime.

This is just the Literacy Coalition’s first foray into providing non-partisan election information in an easy-to-read format. Based on the enthusiastic response, it won’t be the last. Watch out for 2008! How about a stack of guides in all 540-something libraries in the state?!