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Emily Garcia is an investigative journalist covering politics at the intersections of education, money and the law.

I joined The Red & Black in the fall of 2020—the semester I transferred to the University of Georgia. Despite the pandemic, I was able to cover multiple protests, in-person events and the 2020 election in Athens. The articles I wrote were nice additions to my portfolio but the real gains I made were in my ability to share knowledge with the community. Writing for The Red & Black also launched me into multiple political research-based internships, such as Georgia Public Broadcasting, the Georgia affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union and Ballotpedia.

At Georgia Public Broadcasting, I primarily researched voting bills proposed in the Georgia General Assembly. In a story about the impact of Senate Bill 202 on poll workers, I called poll managers from several counties of varying sizes around Georgia and asked a series of questions about how the bill would impact their precincts. Their answers opened my eyes to the tangible impact state legislation has on individuals and their ability to do their jobs.

Since working with GPB, I have found that I am most eager to write when I have the opportunity to explain these tangible impacts to the general public. This resulted in my application to the ACLU of Georgia to work as a policy intern during the special redistricting session. Currently, I am researching and writing about prison-based gerrymandering—a project I pitched to my supervisor when I learned that the ACLU of Georgia had not yet published any work on the subject.

I also intern with the news department at Ballotpedia and update their application programming interface to reflect changes in the status of political officeholders. I am particularly passionate about this work because it aligns with my belief that the public should have accessible and reliable information about the people who govern them.

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Selected Works:

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Professional Links:

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