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The Voting Booth

2020 young adult novel by Brandy Colbert

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ126203051 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Voting Booth is a 2020 young adult novel by Brandy Colbert about two 18-year-olds on their first election day as registered voters.

Plot

The Voting Booth centers the perspectives of two young adults, Marva Sheridan and Duke Crenshaw, who do not initially know one another. Marva, who is Black, spends her free time helping other register to vote and is excited for her first opportunity to vote, even after she learns that her white boyfriend, Alec, has decided not to vote as a protest against the two-party system. Duke, who is mixed race, feels the need to vote given his late brother Julian's political activism but is more excited about playing for his band's first paying gig. On the day of the election, Marva sees Duke turned away from the polling place. Marva's social justice instincts kick in, and the two make it their goal to help Duke discern his voter registration issues. Throughout the day, they "discuss race ..., privilege ..., and their different family dynamics", and turn from strangers to something more as "Duke falls hard for passionate, driven Marva, and she begins to appreciate his laid-back charm".

Reception

The Voting Booth received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly.

On behalf of Shelf Awareness, Jaclyn Fulwood described The Voting Booth as a "sweet, politically minded YA romance".

According to Booklist's Maggie Reagan, the book's alternating perspectives allow Colbert to "warmly and appealingly [address] issues that many teens, especially those considering how their own first vote may play out, are facing".

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “The Voting Booth” as 2020 young adult novel by Brandy Colbert. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Voting, Booth and young.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2020—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Voting, Booth and young providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Voting Booth”, the useful work is to connect “2020 young adult novel by Brandy Colbert” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q126203051. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2020.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Voting Booth”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Voting Booth primary sources, The Voting Booth archive and Voting research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Voting Booth”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Voting Booth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.