FOR BETHUEL BEST ONLY

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Professor Jane Smith

ENC 1101

30 September 2015

Title of Your Companion Narrative

The purpose of my Storify, "The Erosion of Voting Rights in America", is to raise

awareness about the assault on voting rights at the state and federal level. As a voter, I want to

energize other citizens to write legislators, protest, and speak out about this issue because it

affects every citizen, not just every voter. The context for my argument is the increase of laws

since 2000 that have restricted voting, including voter identification, the reduction of polling

places or hours, new rules for absentee ballots, or striking large numbers of registered voters

from the rolls. The most immediate issue is the challenge to "one person, one vote" brought by

Texas, which will be before the Supreme Court in 2016.

In my Storify, I appealed to Pathos and Ethos with the photos of the Civil Rights

Movement and the song by Sam Cooke. Most people think of the Civil Rights Movement as a

time when the struggle for justice and equality was "won," or at least significantly advanced.

Most people also feel a strong emotional connection to the events and figures of the Civil Rights

Movement. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks are viewed as quintessential American, and

patriotic, heroes. By connecting this to the current struggle for voting rights, I can help the

audience to see an ethical connection between these heroes of the 1960s and the need for heroes

today. I appeal to Logos in my Storify essay through providing a historical timeline of voting

rights in the United States from the enfranchisement of former slaves to the Civil Rights

movement. This timeline is a causal chronology that shows how the struggle for the right to vote

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has continued since the Constitution was first ratified by all of the states in 1790, with each

movement building upon the past. In addition to this historical timeline, I also appeal to logos by

including links to several news stories, maps, and photographs that detail the erosion of voting

rights since the 2000 election.

In my essay, I most clearly employ the rhetorical strategy "series of related claims",

establishing a link between the struggle for Civil Rights throughout the 20th century to those we

are seeing today, many of which are still tied to race, gender, and socioeconomic status. By

providing evidence about voting rights in the present, I show my audience how they might come

to be affected by this issue in the future, even if their preferred political party is currently in

power. Composing my Storify in order to appeal to a specific audience has shown me how

carefully writers must establish a series of related claims or a causal chronology in order to be

successful in achieving their purpose. It is easy to read something quickly online, as I often do

when looking for news or opinion pieces, but I had never before considered how much authors

consider the needs of their audience. I worried that I was being "biased" by including so more

references to voter issues encountered with Republican legislatures, for instance, which caused

me to think about whether or not I could lose conservative or Republican readers. Therefore, I

made sure to address that although these issues are currently affecting what most consider to be

the "Democratic base", there will be shifts in power over time. Being forced to consider these

issues with my own writing by justifying my rhetorical choices has helped me get a better

understanding of how other authors are making rhetorical choices as well.