Damon Cann: Electronic vs. Paper Voter Guides and Citizen Knowledge
Cann began his presentation by describing how political knowledge is decreasing. Specifically, only 50-percent of college students can identify the term lengths of U.S. Representatives and Senators. Cann explained that while someone can say that it is impossible to know every subject, such as chemistry, politics may be more impactful on a daily basis than chemistry. Citizen knowledge matters because it is essential in the political process. Cann theorized that a possible solution to counter a lack of political knowledge is a neutral voter guide that is typically state sponsored. The voter guide is the most important in low-profile races because information is typically less
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To remedy the digital divide, people are allowed to request a paper ballot to be sent to their residence. This applies to civic engagement, because it may be important for people who are trying to get others involved to use online and paper methods.
After the study was completed, Cann found that there is very little difference between the knowledge gained from the paper voter guide and the postcard. Cann used several measurements of knowledge to determine how voters gained information from the two methods. Measurements included recognition on the ballot, recall of candidate names, recognition of candidate information, ballot issue information, combined with subjectiveness level of informedness and voter turnout rates.
Cann found that there is very little difference between voter guides and postcards indicating where people can find the voter guides online. This is because knowledge about the content within the voter guide was low for both the paper guide and the online guide. However, a weakness in this study is that it was not geared to see of voter guides have an effect on voter