After reading and fact checking Jace’s KP draft I found that it was mostly factual. I did find nine opinions and three statements that are unverifiable. Majority of the opinions expressed were due to added opinions to true statements which change the validity of the statements. With simple reworking of the sentences these opinions can easily become factual. The three unverifiable statements are simply statements that the reader will have no way of verifying. An example is Jace stating “he wanted to expand his knowledge” this is something that may be true but unprovable.

The first source that was used was “Presidential Election Process.” USAGov, 13 July 2020, www.usa.gov/election

To validate all of the sourced materials I used the 5 W’s.  This is a very good resource to use as it is a government site that has several links about the election process in this country. It even has a two plus minute video on the steps that take place to become the President of the United States. It describes the electoral college, all the requirements to be a candidate for the Presidency and more. All the information was easy to find without much effort and the site was updated July 13, 2020. As the criteria has not changed and this is a Presidential election year the information provided is current and relevant.

The second source was from Merriam-Webster website as this source was used to define the word democracy. The link took me right to the definition on Merriam-Webster’s website and was the easiest source to validate. Merriam-Webster has been around since 1828 and they update their information on a yearly basis. Very reliable source.

The third source used was from the website www.presidentusa.net. this was updated in 2020. The site is owned and operated by Baaron’s Hill LLC an independent entity that is not affiliated with the government, any university or business. The link did take me to the information and it was easy to navigate and find. However finding any information about Baaron’s Hill LLC was not easy. The information was correct as I crosschecked it with other sites. However I do not consider this a very reliable source as there is almost no information about the publisher available. Digging through the site I found ads as well as links to other websites and even events about first ladies that had pictures of women that were never married to any president.

The fourth reference was billofrightsinstitute.org/engage/student-resources/think-the-vote/primaries-and-caucuses. Like every site listed by Jace they take me directly to the information that he used and very little digging is needed to find the information. the BRI or Bill of Rights Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization based out of Arlington Virginia by Charles and David Koch. This article was updated in 2020 and the information is relevant as the criteria has not changed. Based on what I have read about the BRI I do not consider it to be a good source for materials. The BRI has been accused of trying to rewrite history and to sell contracts to public schools so they can receive the money that public schools would have received. In 2014 in North Carolina they had a $100,000 contract with the state to develop a curriculum to be taught in the public schools. As history teacher Bryan Proffitt from Hillside high School in Durham stated “people whose principal concern is profit-making should not develop curriculum, curriculum should be developed in a democratic fashion by people closest to the classroom.” Other history teachers in the state stated they already have a wealth of resources available to them for teaching founding principles and it was not appropriate for a Koch brothers connected group to write public school course materials. 

The fifth resource used was from www.dummies.com and was written by Ann M. DeLaney. Ann at the time of the writing was a Standing Trustee in Chapter 13 Bankruptcy for the Southern District of Indiana. She was the first woman to serve as Chair of a major political party in Indiana and the first woman nominated by a major party as a candidate for Indian Lt. Governor. She has also been a delegate to the state and national party conventions. Dummies has been around since 1991 with the purpose of making it easier to learn new skills, lessons or a multitude of things. They have a great reputation for making things so easy to learn that a dummy can learn it. Jace used this source very well but did include a bit of opinion which is something that Dummies books usually have contained in them. The opinions used are meant to make it more fun and engaging for the reader to learn as it usually reads like a conversation. Like a conversation there are opinions thrown in every now an again. Overall this is a good resource to use.

The final resource is the U.S. Embassy & Consulate in Thailand. This is based in Bangkok Thailand and is a website owned by the U.S. government. The link Jace provides makes my job as a fact checker easy as it takes me straight to where he obtained his information from. This webpage is designed to inform those who live in Thailand that may be thinking about becoming U.S. citizens how our General Election works. It is not very wordy and is straight to the point and accurate. This is a fantastic source to use for this paper as they are also links to National Conventions, Primaries and Caucuses as well as how the Electoral College works.

Attached below is my fact checking of Jace’s Knowledge Paper.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YfKi3BjXRVMF7XMKkwpcIme_sSR4RdZoHLsHqNScT50/edit?usp=sharing