Argumentative Letter on a Candidate or Mandatory Voting

The low-prep, 27-page resource, Argumentative Letter on a Candidate or Mandatory Voting has your middle and high school students take a position on either which presidential candidate to support or whether voting should be mandatory in the United States, write a 4-paragraph argumentative letter to the editor, and then send them off to online sites that accept letters to the editors, such as local, state, or national news sites. I have included links to

four online articles that address the pros and cons of making voting mandatory in the United States that the students can use for their research. If your students choose to do the candidate letter, this lesson works best if students have done my lesson, Where the Candidates Stand on the Issues or something similar to that.

This lesson doesn’t specifically teach how to write an argumentative essay.  It builds on what students already know, assuming they have already written argumentative essays.  Embedded in this lesson are a brainstorming activity for evidence and analysis, a template for writing the essay, a graphic organizer all of which provide scaffolded support to your diverse range of writers, and a rubric. 

Argumentative Letter on a Candidate or Mandatory Voting includes the following:

• a hyperlinked Table of Contents

• About this Resource-- an easy-to-use guide to everything you need to know about this resource

• a forced link copy to the Google Doc

• Common Core Literacy Standards for Writing in History

• Objectives and Learning Targets

• An Essential Question for Each Prompt:

  • For the Candidate Letter to the Editor:

    • What key qualities and policies make one presidential candidate more suitable than another?

    For the Mandatory Voting Letter to the Editor:

    • Should voting be mandatory in a democratic society?

• 3 Guiding Questions for Each Prompt:

  • For the Candidate Letter to the Editor:

    • What are the major policy differences between the two candidates?

    • How do the candidates' backgrounds and experiences shape their suitability for the presidency?

    • Which candidate's proposed solutions do you believe are more effective in addressing current societal challenges?

  • For the Mandatory Voting Letter to the Editor:

    • What are the arguments for and against mandatory voting?

    • How does mandatory voting affect voter turnout and representation?

    • What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of implementing mandatory voting laws?

• Student Handouts:

  • Evidence/Analysis Matrix for Candidates Argumentative Essay

  • Evidence Analysis Matrix for Mandatory Voting Argumentative Essay

  • Candidate Argumentative Essay Prompt

  • Mandatory Voting Argumentative Essay Prompt

  • Template for Candidate Argumentative Essay Prompt

  • Template for Mandatory Voting Argumentative Essay Prompt

  • Verbs and Transition Words and Phrases for Argumentative Writing

  • Graphic Organizer for Argumentative Essay

  • Argumentative Essay Rubric: Portrait and Landscape Format