April 1, 2025 • 45 mins
Voting is an incredibly important part of being an American — not just every four years, and not just for the sticker! In this episode of Grown-Up Stuff, hosts Lea Palmieri and Matt Stillo speak with Joshua A. Douglas, a professor of law at the University of Kentucky, as well as an author and podcaster, who explains the way voting works in the US, from the polling booth to the country’s capitol, and what we can do as citizens to ensure we’re getting involved and staying involved in democracy for all.
To learn more about Josh, visit https://joshuaadouglas.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, fellow grown uppers. Before we get into today's episode,
which is an overview of voting in the United States,
it's important to say that this episode was recorded before
President Trump signed the executive Order called Preserving and Protecting
the Integrity of American Elections on March twenty fifth. This
order fundamentally changes voter registration requirements by mandating documented proof
(00:26):
of US citizenship to register for federal elections. It requires
all ballots to be received by election day and threatens
to withhold the federal funding from non compliance states. So
legal experts have questioned the president's authority to implement these changes,
with some people estimating up to twenty one million eligible
(00:48):
voters could face challenges registering due to lack of ready
access to citizenship documents. The order's implementation remains uncertain as
legal challenges are expected. This context is just it's essential
to understand how the voting landscape has shifted since we
recorded this discussion, as many of the processes and requirements
(01:08):
discussed may now be subject to significant changes pending legal outcomes.
But we emailed with our guests law professor at University
of Kentucky Joshua Douglas for comment who confirms all of
this in an article he released in Washington Monthly on
March twenty seventh, and goes on to say, quote, the
executive order will indeed be challenged in court, and if
(01:31):
the court follows the US Constitution and federal law, they
will swiftly strike it down. So with all that context
in mind, let's get into this week's episode.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Ruby, Welcome to grown Up Stuff. I'm Leah Palmery and
I'm Matt still O. And Matt, would you say that
you're doing good or great?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Just as solid good today? Not great?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well? You know what, you just voted because I gave
you two options and you voted for one, and.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I casted for the worst option. This is I should
always cast for greates. You should have I feel like
you think yourself into grate right. If you tell people
you're great, you're casting a vote for maybe feeling great.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Or you're just lying and making sure that they don't
have to respond to you in a conversation to hear
about all.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Your problems that could be that tooe.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Either way, yes, always go with I'm feeling great today.
But you did vote, and that is what matters, because
voting matters, and this is only right because we're going
to be exploring voting for grown ups.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
It's the way we as Americans have our voices heard.
And while hopefully we participate most years and not just
every four years, it's an incredibly important part of our
democratic process, and we even still had so much to
learn about it. Yeah, So we spoke with joshua A. Douglas,
who's a law professor, podcaster, author, and most of all,
he can explain both simple and complicated parts of our
(02:59):
civic duty to us in ways that are both informative
and fascinating at the very same time.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
And now here's Josh stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I'm Josh Douglas. I'm a law professor at the University
of Kentucky Go Wildcats. Often when I tell people I'm
a law professor, they'll think, oh, I'm not going to
be able to understand anything that you say or writ
And I've done a lot of work and worked really
hard to make my work and my scholarship accessible to
(03:35):
the general public because I think it's so important, especially
in my field of voting rights, for people to understand
what's going on. So to that end, I have my
own podcast called Democracy Optimist, I've also written two books
for a popular press. One came out in twenty nineteen
called to Vote for Us. The other came out in
(03:56):
twenty twenty four called The Court Versus the Voters. Both
are written for a general audience, or both are really
books of stories. I tell a lot of stories of
some really interesting people, and then sneak in a little
bit of law, but only what everyday Americans would need
to know to understand the stories. In fact, my last book,
The Court Versus the Voters, was listed on a website
(04:18):
as one of the top beach reads for twenty twenty
four about voting. Now, it's service strange category. I guess
beach reads about voting. But I did actually see someone
reading the book on the beach, which was really cool. Okay,
it was my wife, but but still I saw someone
reading the book on the beach, So I think it
counts lovely.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
We're really happier here. I said, we're going to be
talking about voting today, and we couldn't be doing it
with a better expert than Professor Douglas. Do your students
call you Professor Douglass.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Students call me Professor Douglas, But you can call me Josh,
you're not my thoughts. I won't cold call on you
with using the socratic method like I do with my students.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Oh thank you, because I don't know if I could
handle it. So I would love if you could, in
simple time, just talk a little bit about what voting
is and why it's so fundamental to our democracy in
the United States.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah. So, of course, voting is the process by which
we choose our elected leaders. And many people think of
just the presidential election as that's the biggest game in town.
It's the super Bowl of elections. But we actually elect
leaders from all levels of government, from federal Congress all
(05:27):
the way to your state legislature, your governor, and even
your local elected officials, your mayor, your city council, and
they have an immense impact on your daily life. I mean,
people I think don't realize sometimes how they're local officials
who they have the opportunity to elect impact the way
(05:48):
they interact in the world, whether it's from a pothole
on their street or the street lights turning on to
where their tax money goes. I often point back to
the Declaration of Independence founding document in the United States,
which says that a government is legitimate based on the
consent of the government. Consent of the government, well, the
(06:10):
governs all of us. So we're talking about grown up stuff.
How do we decide what our society looks like? And
it's pretty much nothing more grown up than that than
I guess paying taxes. But who leads us impacts that
as well. So it's really fundamental to people's everyday lives,
even if they don't realize it or recognize it.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, Josh, you may be a democracy optimist, but not
everybody feels the same. So how would you respond to
somebody who feels like their individual vote doesn't really matter.
They kind of drag their feet going to the polls
or don't do it at all. How do you say, no, no,
here's why your vote does matter.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Well, I think I have three responses to your question,
and the first is what does it mean to be
a democracy optimist. It's not that I think everything's going great,
that democracy is perfectly threat and we don't need to
change or fix things. It's that there's hope for the future.
Because if there's not hope, then what's the alternative wallowing
(07:09):
in our despair and having this fatalistic view that the
system is just doomed and we can't do anything about it,
and so we're going to retreat into our everyday lives
and not try to fix the system. And if we
do that, then yes, the system is doomed. So the
first answer to your question of why should I vote,
essentially is well, why not? Because it's up to all
(07:30):
of us, and people of asking me all the time
these days, how do we save democracy? Ultimately it's the people,
it's we the people, and so you should be wanting
to be part of that. Even if say you live
in a state where you kind of know who's going
to win the presidential electors in that state, or you
live in the district where, because of gerrymanderin the practice
(07:51):
of drawing skewed lines, you kind of know who's going
to win that district. The second answer is that your
vote probably isn't going to make a difference in the
outcome except for when it does, and you never know
when that's going to be. There are elections every year
that come down to one vote or that are tied.
So is your vote actually going to matter in the
(08:11):
presidential election? Probably not your one vote until it does,
until enough of us decide that we do want to
show up. And then I guess the third reason I
would say of why your vote matters is because even
if it doesn't make a difference in that the election
doesn't come down to one vote, representation matters. The election
officials know the constituencies that voted for them. This is
(08:35):
why elderly people get their policies looked at, where young
people don't, really because young people tend not to vote
as much. So it's about representation. It's about sending a
signal to the government, and frankly, not voting doesn't really
send much of a signal. I mean, you might say, well,
it's a signal that I'm unhappy with the current government,
but that doesn't really send the signal. It just means
(08:55):
that you can be ignored by elected officials, and that's
how we get into some of the problems that we
have today.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, I think one thing that blows my mind every
time elections come around, and I actually would love free
to correct me on this if I have the number wrong,
But it's around like forty three percent of the population
doesn't vote, So it.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Really depends on the election you're talking about. So in
the last presidential election, in November twenty twenty four, turnout
was about sixty three point nine percent. So the last
numbers I saw, and what was really frustrating to me
is that there were news stories that I saw the
day after the election talking about the strong voter engagement
(09:31):
that this was the second highest turnout ever, second only
the twenty twenty and yet turnout was just under sixty
four percent, which means that over a third of the
population did not show up. Right, how can we celebrate
strong voter engagement when a third of us are not participating.
So I'm actually working on a new book project right
now that looks at voter turnout and civic engagement. And
(09:54):
the working title will see if this lasts by the
time the book finally gets published in a couple of years.
But the working title is the Forgotten one Third, The
forgotten third, the one third of voters that we sort
of ignore because while they're not going to show up anyways.
And then you start talking about other elections, So midterm
elections for Congress, you hardly ever have turnout over fifty
(10:14):
percent nationwide. Then let's talk about some states, like my
state of Kentucky has off year elections where we elect
our governor in odd numbered years turnout thirty percent, which
means that if an election is close and one candidate
wins by only a little bit, just over fifteen percent
of eligible voters are selecting the leaders. And then we
(10:36):
can also talk about primary elections. So this is the
process where the political parties winnow down their candidates on
their side to one for the general election. Primary elections
have extremely low turnout, and yet often that's the only
game in town. It's the only one that matters because
of a district is so skewed towards the Democrats or
toilers of the Republicans, we pretty much know that the
(10:58):
nominee is going to to win the general election. So
we can talk about turnout is sixty four percent or whatever,
and that was a record only except for twenty twenty,
and that's good to celebrate that, but when we actually
dive into the numbers, it's a pretty sad story when
it comes to the strength of democracy.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Can we ever get it to one hundred?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Probably never one hundred, But I think there are various
strategies that can certainly boost turnout, and it's one of
the things I'm going to be discussing in my book.
So one bold idea that probably is not going to
get any traction in the US is compulsory voting that
a bunch of other countries have. Australia, everyone's required to
vote Brazil, and turnout is usually over eighty and sometimes
(11:41):
ninety percent in those countries, and it depends on how
they implement it. So Brazil's usually a little over eighty percent,
but it's pretty easy to provide an excuse. Australia has
a little bit of a more difficult process to get
out of it essentially, and they're usually at ninety three
ninety four percent. They have a big party at the
polls called democracy. They have what they call democracy sausages
(12:03):
during the sausage sizzle in Australia and kind of make
it a big event. I don't think we're ever going
to get to compulsory voting nationwide, although there is a movement.
So the Brookings Institute put out a study and I
was part of the working group that looked into this.
We called it universal voting instead of compulsory voting, because
I think that sounds nicer, and the full term is
(12:24):
universal civic duty voting to kind of emphasize how it's
people's civic duty, and there are some states that are
looking into either requiring it statewide or at least letting
localities local jurisdictions have compulsory voting. But short of that,
I think there are a lot of things we can
do to improve voter turnout. We know, for example, that
(12:45):
voter registration rules make a big difference in turnout, So
states vary on when you have to get on the roles.
Some states you have to be on the voter rolls
about a month before election day or you're out of luck.
But a bunch of other states have what we call
same day registration, where you can show up to the
(13:05):
polls and register and vote at the same time. And
what we know is that the states with the highest
turnout have same day voter registration. There's a whole bunch
of these sorts of policies that I think we can
adopt to improve turnout. And then the other side of
this has to be civic education. Civic engagement not only
K through twelve, but all the way through adulthood. And
(13:28):
we need to totally rethink and revamp the way we
handle the issue of civics education. As the other aspect
of this.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, oftentimes here after an election, you know, America has spoken,
and now we have a new president. But to your
point about representation, and thirty six thirty seven percent of
people didn't vote in the last presidential election, has America spoken
if not everyone is accounted for? So I do certainly
hope that we can in our lifetimes get to one
hundred percent. But before we get into the specifics about
(13:56):
how to register and like the nuts and bolts of
like how do you do it, I'd.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Actually love for you kind of walk us through it.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Just some of the major milestones in the evolution of
voting rights in America, because it wasn't always though everyone
could vote.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Right for a while, sure, so at the founding only
white male property owners aged twenty one and older could vote,
So it's a very restricted aspect. Then we have a
very sorry history of racial discrimination in this country in particular,
as well as discrimination on the basis of sex with
respect to women's suffrage. And then things have always been
(14:31):
kind of expanding and contracting as history has evolved. We've
had these expansions of who's allowed to vote, and then
there's pushbacks against it, and so the fight for voting
rights is a push and pull. Some of the most
notable moments in history on this were the fifteenth Amendment
to the US Constitution after the Civil War, which said
(14:52):
that states cannot deny the right to vote on the
basis of race. We had another fifty year struggle after
that for women's suffrage, and the nineteenth Amendment to the
US Constitution, ratified in nineteen twenty, said that states cannot
deny the right to vote on the basis of sex.
Then we had a lot of Jim Crow era policies
(15:14):
that made it very difficult for minorities in particular to participate,
and so finally Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of
nineteen sixty five, which tried to break down a lot
of the barriers to voter registration and voter access for
minority voters. And then the twenty sixth Amendment to the
US Constitution lowered the voting age from twenty one to eighteen. Interestingly,
(15:37):
on the voting age, there are some cities in the
US that let sixteen and seventeen year old vote in
either all local elections or school board elections. And so
we're not done talking about how to include more people
or to think about voter expansions along with the pushbacks
on voting rights that we've had.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I mean, if you can operate a car, I would
hope that, yes, you do have some sort of clear
train of thought of being able to vote. So I'm
not mad at that. So for those who have never
registered to vote before, what are the basic steps to
register to vote?
Speaker 3 (16:12):
So most states make it relatively easy by having an
online portal to register to vote. Now, if you're listening
from Texas, unfortunately, the state has continued to promote voter
restrictions or make it less easy to participate in a
variety of ways. And there's a couple other states that
don't have online voter registration, but most states do, and
(16:35):
so you can go and just do a quick Google search,
I think it's to vote dot Org will then link
you to each state's voter registration portal and usually takes
only a couple of minutes and you can get on
the voter rules. Some states, you'll have to choose a
political party to affiliate with. In those states they have
what we call closed primaries, where only members who registered
(16:58):
with that party can vote in their prime Marry other states,
you don't have to choose a party affiliation. And if
you don't want to do the online thing, if you
go to get your driver's license, you should be asked
whether you want to register to vote. It's a requirement
under federal law that every DMV and other government agency
like that gives you the opportunity to vote. And it's
(17:20):
a pretty simple one page form to fill out. So
the process of registering actually is not that difficult in
most states, but many places you actually have to affirmatively
do it.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
And then we hear a lot about you know, it's
election day and people have been registered before, but they
show them on the polls in that day and they
all of a sudden find out that they're not registered
or they've been taken off of a voter role. So
what are the most common reasons why people find themselves
unable to vote on election day? And how can that
be avoided?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah, so states are allowed to clean up their voter
rules and take people off and they'll get information like
people have died, people have moved away. In the states
that disenfranchise individuals with a felon conviction, if they get
notice of the felony conviction, states are allowed to take
your name off the voter roles. In addition, some states
(18:08):
follow a process where if you don't show up for
two federal elections in a row and then also don't
respond to a postcard that gets mailed to you, then
they can take you off the roles. So what do
you do if that occurs. Well, if you're in a
state with same day voter registration, no problem. You can
register at the polls right then. But if you're not
(18:30):
in a state with same day registration, especially if you're
in a state that has a deadline to register, you
actually are out of luck. With one kind of small
caveat there, if you ever show up to the polls
and they say your name's not on the roles, you're
not allowed to vote, and you're sure you're in the
right place, don't just leave without casting a ballot. Instead,
(18:53):
the poll workers are required to give you what's called
a provisional ballot, And this is about that you vote
and then they set aside and they figured it out
after the fact, after election day, whether to count it
or not. And this should dispel one myth about our elections,
which is that all absentee ballots, all provisional ballots that
are valid are counted, and so there's no concern about
(19:18):
casting that vote, and the election official results are not
official until a week or two later, when actually all
ballots are counted. Now, if you are not sure if
you're in the right place, well you have to make
sure you're in the right location, because if you fill
out a provisional ballot and it turns out that you
should have been somewhere else across town that was your
polling place, and then that provisional ballot will not count ultimately, Matt.
(19:41):
To answer your question of how can we avoid that,
I always tell people that four to six weeks before
election day, go on the online portal and check your registration.
I do it every year before the primary, and then
again kind of in mid September. I go online and
check my voter registration just to make sure there's no
problems with it. So the number one way to avoid
(20:03):
this is well before whatever deadline your state has for
closing the registration books, check your voter registration every single time.
It takes about thirty seconds, and it's worth it to
make sure you're good to go.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
You've mentioned this a little bit, that the voting laws
are different from state to state. So what are like
some significant variations that voters should be aware of depending
on where they live.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Well, one is the time that polls are open on
election day, as well as the number of early voting
days and the ability to vote by mail with or
without an excuse. So the states really vary on this.
Some states say that you have to show up at
the polls in person on election day unless you have
(20:45):
a valid excuse, and then you can request an absentee ballot,
and states vary on the deadlines for which to request
that ballot. Other states have certain number of early voting
days where you can go and show up before the
official And I don't really like calling it election day
anymore because we don't really have one election day. We
have election days or election week. So some states have
(21:08):
three days of early voting, some states have seven. Some
states have early voting on the Sunday before the election.
And then they're the rules for absentee balloting or mail
in balloting sometimes called vote at home. Some states you
can just request a ballot and you don't have to
provide an excuse. Other states it's going to ask for
your excuse, and then the deadlines for when you need
(21:31):
to request that ballot so it arrives to you on time,
as well as the deadline for when it needs to
arrive back to the election officials vary. So just the
logistics of voting, and then also we can talk about
voter ID laws. What kind of idea do you need? Now?
The good news is that there are resources out there
that can explain all this for the state that you're in.
(21:51):
So I mentioned vote dot org. It's a great website.
The League of Women Voters and nonprofit organization typically has
a website for ee state and it'll tell you here's
when the polls are open, here are the early voting days,
here are the locations, here's how you request about by
mail and whether you're allowed to, and here's what you
need to bring to the polls. Because states very on
(22:12):
their voter ide laws as well, I'd.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Actually love to hear a bit on the voter ide
laws if you don't mind.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah, So I like to tell people that no voter
ID law is made the same. States really vary, and
so you hear a ton of talk, a ton of
rhetoric about photo identification requirements for voting. And I'm someone
who does not think that voter ideal laws do much
good because they really don't get to any problem. The
only problem that they can root out, or any fraud
(22:41):
they can root out, is in person impersonation, someone showing
up to the polls and pretending there's someone they're not,
and we just know from evidence that that just doesn't
happen to any meaningful extent whatsoever. But we also know
that voter ideal laws can cause disenfranchisement. Now, I think
the right embellishes how much fraud there is that voter
idea law can prevent. I think the left embellishes how
(23:03):
much disenfranchisement actually occurs through voter ideal laws. But it
is not zero. There is still some people who are
prevented from voting. And if you show up to the
polls and you don't have your ID for whatever reason,
you can fill out what they call a reasonable impediment form,
basically a form that says, here's why I don't have
an idea, I have a reasonable impediment to getting an ID,
(23:26):
and you sign it under penalty of perjury. That's get
referred to the law enforcement, just a double check that
you're not lying. Essentially, again, each state is a little
bit different on this reasonable impediment form, But in many
states you have to then cast a provisional ballot, not
a regular bouot, and some states actually say if you
fill out that provisional ballot on election day, you've got
(23:48):
to go to the county clerk within five days to
show your ID or to fill out another form. So
it requires voters to take another step, and some studies
have shown that up to ten percent of the electorate
doesn't have an ID that would suffice under these laws.
They also have a discriminatory effect. So we know just
based on population statistics that ideal laws tend to harm
(24:11):
minority voters more because they just tend to live in
inner cities where they don't have a license, they're taking
public transportation to work, they just don't have a need
for a photo ID in their everyday lives. And one
court actually said that the North Carolina law on voter
ida was passed to target minority voters, quote with almost
surgical precision. That is the draft of the law to
(24:32):
actually to try to disenfranchised minorities, and that got struck down.
But it gives you a sense of the kind of
battles that we have over voter ID laws.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
We'll be right back after a quick.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Break and we're back with more grown up stuff. How
do I don't.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
We talked a bit about the different types of voting
to between early voting, mail in, and day of Are
there specific advantages to any of those and disadvantages as well.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
That's an interesting question because experts, I think differ a
little bit on the benefits of voting one kind of
ballot or another. I think the cleanest way of voting
is to show up in person if you can so,
whether that's early voting in person or on election day
in person. And really early voting is great because you
typically avoid longer lines as compared to what you might
(25:31):
have on election day. And the reason I say early
voting is I think beneficial in person voting, that is,
is that you don't have any concerns about mistakes on
the way you fill out your ballot or the envelope
that goes along when you're voting an absentee, you've got
to fill out an envelope, you've got to sign it
in the right place. Some states actually make you have
witnesses to that as well. There's some states that go
(25:54):
even so far as to say, you need to get
a notary to notarize your absentee ballot. That makes it
very difficult. But there's just some a lot of hurdles
you have to clear as a voter, and if you
make a mistake, your ballot might not count, whereas if
you show up in person that minimizes the potential concerns
you might have with casting about. On the other hand,
(26:14):
voting at home is super convenient, and we know that
the states that make it easy to vote at home
have much higher turnout. So, for example, Colorado automatically mails
a ballot to every registered voter in the state, so
their convenience factor is really great for vote at home,
and I'm a big proponent of that of expansive vote
(26:34):
at home policies for voters who want to take advantage
of that. At the same time, it's easier for a
voter to make mistakes, so it's a balance between how
careful are you going to be to make sure you
don't make a mistake so your ballot counts versus the
ease of voting at home.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I can't tell you how much early voting and mail
in ballot voting has changed my life. You know on
a personal level, like I used to. You know, when
I was in my early twenties, I would work at
a coffee shop, and you know, on the voting day,
I would often lose money because I would actually go
vote and I'd have to give up a shift, or
you were rushing to vote early before work or trying
(27:08):
to squeeze it in at the end of the day,
so you were kind of in a rush. But with
early and mail in ballot voting, you actually have some time,
you know, on the weekend where you can feel a
little bit more intentional about how you vote. Because I'll
be totally honest and make a completely fool of myself.
Back in the days of trying to squeeze voting in,
I'd chow up the polls and have like no idea
who like fifty percent of the people on the ballot were.
(27:32):
You know, like iud obviously know like the main you know,
if it was a mayoral thing or a president, I
would know who those people were. But you know, there's
like people running for comptrol or and people running for
a judge position, and I'd be like, I actually have
no idea who those people are and what they're trying
to do, and so I wouldn't vote because I felt
like I had no say in the matter. But you
take the ballot home, you can do a little bit
of research on who these people are and what they're
(27:53):
trying to do. And so my question to you is, like,
how can we best prepare ourselves before going to the
voting booth to like really understand what we're voting for
and how to actually make an impact on what we
want to see.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Yeah, that's a great question. So there are organizations that
put out sample ballots and so you can see what's
on the ballot before you go to the polls, and
you can even fill out your sample ballots. You can
bring it with you, you know what you intend to
vote for. So I would encourage people to do that.
I think what you point to, though, is a more
systemic problem about civic education and how we educate ourselves
(28:33):
about what's on the ballot and what we want to
vote for and so and.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
What a comptroller does? What did they do?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah, exactly, And so this is where I think civic
organizations make a huge difference in helping to educate people
about what's on the ballot. So I mentioned the legal
women voters already and virtually every jurisdiction they put out
a great voting guide. But I've been remiss not to
mention an organization in my hometown of Lexston, can Tell
(29:00):
Ucky called Civic Lex. Now full disclosure, I'm on the
board of Civic Lex. So I'm very much proud of
the work that the organization does. But what it is
is to civic health organization that tries to educate local
people living in Lexington, Kentucky about their local government. What
does the local government do, who's in the local government,
(29:20):
what's happening in the local town meetings, the city meetings.
They put out a budget guide every year, easy to
read with pie charts that say, here's what happens to
your money the local taxes, Here's where it goes. And
they also put out a voter guide. The website's lex
dot Vote l ex dot Vote, and it has profiles
(29:40):
of every candidate for local office, so you can see
who are the people running for these positions. So we
need more of that, and so I encourage communities all
over to look at that model as a way to
help educate the public on what these officials do. So
for you, Matt in your elections. I would basically go
Google to see is there a legal women Voters or
(30:02):
other similar organization that puts out a voter guide. But
on the broader scale, I encourage people to think about
starting civic health organizations like civic LECs that can provide
that information to the public. Another thing that happens in
the voting booth is like in New York, this happens
all the time. A judge will be running for reelection,
but they're not running against anybody, so like, what what
(30:23):
do you do in that situation?
Speaker 1 (30:24):
It's like just vote for them, I guess, or just
say like boo, or what do you do in that situation?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
So there's a couple of scenarios there. So some states
do what they call retention elections for judges, so it's
a yes or no, so whether the person should keep
their job or not. And so again, if you can
download the sample ballot ahead of time and you can
see what the ballot is asking, you can research that judge,
does it seem like from the news stories they're doing
(30:50):
a good job, or what do they stand for? And
then vote your yes or no on retention. Other times,
you know it's a straight up election for a judge
and that which just means that no one's run against
that person. So if I don't know anything about that candidate,
I'll leave a blank or I'll do a write in
vote and put my daughter just for fun. She comes
to vote with me. She's not eighteen, she's not eligible,
(31:12):
but fund for her to see me write her name in.
You know, those elections, no one's running against that person.
And what's I think really sad and unfortunate is that
we have a ton of elections in this country that
are not contested, that only one candidate. And you mentioned judges,
but it it's even for members of Congress. Yeah, where
they get these elections where they're not contested, there's no opponents,
(31:34):
and so that's I think a big problem. And that
goes back to the jerrymandering I mentioned. Or people think, well,
why bother running because there's no chance of winning. We
haven't touched campaign finance issues, and you know, how do
you raise the money to run a successful campaign, the
media issues. So there's a lot of layers to the
problem of seeing only one candidate on the ballot.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So I love that you brought up jerrymandering because I
think it's one of those things. Maybe people have heard
about it, but they don't necessarily know exactly what it is.
So would you mind walking us through what jerrymandering is.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
So jerrymandering is the practice of the state legislature, so
the state level government drawing maps to ensure a particular outcome.
Jerrymandering has existed since our founding. The founding fathers when
they were drawing the maps for Virginia, they drew gerrymandered
map to try to ensure some people would be in
(32:30):
favorable districts or not. But the problem is that these days,
with technology, with computer algorithms, with how much we know
about voters and voter behavior, you can draw a gerrymander
with such preciseness that you can pretty much guarantee who's
going to win various districts. And so one way to
think about how to do it is what we call
(32:51):
packing and cracking. So let's say you have a group
of voters that all have the same demographics or maybe
have the same political affiliation. Well, if you can draw
a map where you put as many of them as
possible into one district, then they can win that district
with say eighty percent or ninety percent and have no
influence in the rest of the state or the rest
(33:13):
of the area. So why should you care? Because it
skews representation. It means that the people who we send
either to the state houses when it's a state map
for state legislature or Congress, are not actually representative of
the people and how they vote, because the maps often
dictate the outcomes, not the people.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
When we do have an election, we tend to hear
a lot about voter fraud, for better or worse, and
by that I mean for worse. But what is the
actual evidence regarding voter fraud in American elections? What can
you tell us about that?
Speaker 3 (33:48):
So I think we need to make sure to distinguish
between voter fraud and election fraud. So, voter fraud is
when a voter does something fraudulent, showing up to the
polls and try to vote twice, showing up to the
polls and pretending there's someone there not filling out multiple
absentee ballots illegally. That simply doesn't happen to any measurable degree.
(34:10):
You're always going to hear an anecdote here and an
anecdote there. Often they're embellished, you know, it's Oh, my
mother's sisters, friends, uncles, brothers, cousin said that this happened,
And so I often just question the actual evidence of it.
Contrast that with election fraud, which is fraud on the
system itself. And this also happens very very rarely, but
(34:32):
a tad bit more than pure voter fraud. And yet
we have so many mechanisms within the process, within the
auditing process to find it. Now, it's hard to disprove
a negative. Right, So when my kids were younger, and
they might say, as I'm tucking him into bed, Daddy,
there's a monster under the bed. And no matter how
many times I looked for the monster and told them
(34:54):
there's no monster, how do you get them to believe me? Right? Yeah,
and that's sort of what this mantra of voter fraud is. Right.
No matter how many times the experts who are looking
at this and understand how the process works, understand all
of the auditing that happens after election day, they mutually
it's not over on election day. There's lots of processes
that happen in the weeks after. No matter how many
(35:14):
times you say it, though, how do you prove a
negative so they're not monsters under the bed. There's also
no massive voter fraud.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I love that answer. Let's trust the adults in the room, right, Okay,
So for people who are concerned, how can we assuage
those concerns and sort of balance it with like ensuring
that we do have broad access to voting rights that
we can get to that one hundred percent that we
talked about earlier.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
I mean, I think getting accurate information from prospective sources
is really important. So don't believe what you're seeing on
your social media feed if it's not from an official source.
I think we need to invest in local media. Local
media can save democracy if they continue to be independent.
And I have the privilege of speaking with a lot
(36:00):
of reporters just because people want to ask me about
voting rights issues. And I've never found a reporter who
is trying to skew the information or is not focused
on telling the truth. So focus on the respected sources
of information and be careful any time you spread something.
If something seems fantastical, maybe pause before we hit that
(36:20):
share button and verify the information. So we can each
do a lot to make sure that these lies don't
get spread and then continue to calm out when they're lies.
We need people from both sides to come together to
uphold the sanctity of and trust in our elections.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
On that note, too, are there reforms to voting rights
and access that you believe would strengthen American democracy? Are
there things that can be put in place to make
sure everyone feels great about like this is how we vote,
This is correct, and you know we did it right?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Well? Do I have a book for you or several
books for you? We could spend a whole hour talking
about the ways I think we should improve our election system.
But you know, one thing I'll say is that we
can look at the states that do this well. There
are states who are much better in respect to voter access,
with respect to trust in elections, and no surprise, with
respect to turnout. So look at Minnesota, which typically has
(37:20):
turnout just under eighty percent. You know, we're still not
getting to that ninety ninety five percent turnout, but Minnesota
is doing pretty good compared to a lot of other states.
And why well, they have a lot of policies that
make it easy to participate, same day voter registration, easy
absentee bouting access. They also have a culture of civic participation.
(37:41):
Colorado is another example of a state that generally is
doing this well and is at the top of the
list on measures of democracy. And so I think that
it's really worthwhile to look at the places that we know.
You know, again, we're not going to get to compulsory voting,
but we do have a model for some states that
are doing this well, and we can copy those states
(38:03):
in what they're doing and then build upon them.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
I am actually shocked we have gotten through this entire
interview and not once has the word sticker been said,
because I love a sticker. So I am somebody who
every single election, after I vote, I go outside and
I take a selfie with my sticker so that everyone
can see I voted today. Somebody once commented, you look
so happy about this, and I was like, I truly
(38:27):
am thrilled. But one thing that I think some people
have learned the hard way when it comes to pictures
and voting. In some states, you cannot take a picture
of yourself voting. What is the reason for that? And
also do you like to take a picture and a
little selfie with your sticker.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
As well, so no state will deny your vote if
you take a selfie. No, you could be subject to
criminal charges otherwise, but they're not going to take away
your vote. So they call them ballot selfies. You could
take your ballot selfie and then vote and then risk
whatever criminal sanctions they might try to bring against you,
but at least your vote be valid. So some states
(39:02):
do ban bout selfies, and the idea is that it's
trying to prevent vote buying. So we do have a
history of vote buying in this country in some jurisdictions,
and these days, if I'm going to buy someone's vote,
I want to make sure that they're voting for who
I want them to vote for, And so I might
tell them to take a picture of their bout with
their cell phone and then either show it to me
(39:23):
or put it up on social media, and then I
can't be linked with it, right because now it's just
out to the world and I can see that, oh,
it's a picture of you with your bout. Other states, though,
see this as a First Amendment right of expression of
showing that you are excited about your vote and trying
to encourage other people to vote for the candidates that
you support, and courts have gone in each direction. So
(39:46):
there's a court in New York that upheld the ballot
selfie ban and said there's concerns of vote buying. But
a court in New Hampshire struck down the ban on
ballot selfies under the First Amendment and said this was
a rite of free spece, each right of expression. For me,
what we always do is I always make sure to
take a picture of the kids outside the vote here
(40:07):
sign right outside the polling place, so I always get that.
Plus I always get the sticker. Occasionally I'll take a
picture of the ballot itself just for my own fun,
especially if I've written in my daughter. But Kentucky law
does not prohibit ballot selfie, so I'm in good footing there.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Okay, good. I mean Australia seems to have it right
with the voting sausages, so I think we've got to
upgrade from stickers to sausages or both. I mean both
marks too.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
So I wrote a column a number of years ago
for a newspaper in which I mentioned this, But I said,
what's more American than baseball and voting? Well, apple pie?
So I called for democracy apple pies, which makes sense
right around just before Thanksgiving, and you know Americans like
their sugar, so I thought it was.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
A good could make the sticker some food. I guarantee
you we'd see.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
A race or maybe one of those scratch and sniff stickers.
We should do.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
That be good too.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Well they had here in New York this past selection,
they had special Halloween stickers that you got if you
went and voted early on Halloween, so like they really
kept you on your toes as far as like which
sticker you were going to get which day. So you know,
I'm all for the sticker. I'm not trying to be greedy,
but I do like the pie idea.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Make it fun, make it fun.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
And then the last thing that I want to leave
us with, I love for us all to actually share
our favorite thing that came into our community through voting.
And so my wife and are big proponents of composting
because essentially, if you put organic materials into your trash
and it goes into a landfill, it releases a lot
of methane into the environment and it's really not great.
But they're composting. You can take your organic compounds and
you can turn them into mulch and soil and then
(41:37):
put that back into local community gardens to grow food
with and you're not wasting it and in the way
you would buy just throwing it in the trash. And
so we love composting, but it's been very difficult over
the years to compost. But we voted legislators into place
that have passed laws that make composting compulsory for the
entire city. It started in Queens and Brooklyn out spreading
all over New York City. So your building is required
(41:58):
to provide you with a compost band that gets picked
up by the city Cititation department. So that's one way
I've seen voting change things for the better. But I'd
love to open it up to both of you. There's
a couple.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Different directions I could go with this question, because I
do think that there are lots of ways that voting
can change local democracy. But I think maybe I'll just
tell a story about one of my favorite moments of
voting itself, which was when I was at the polls
and learned that the person in front of me was
a first time voter, and then words spread down the
(42:28):
line that it was a first time voter, and then
when she checked in to vote, the entire polling place
like the election, the poll workers, the election officials all
kind of got everyone in the polling place to give
her a round of applause, and you could see that
she was understanding the impact of what she was doing. That. Yeah, well,
her one vote may or may not make a difference
in who actually gets elected, but she was part of something,
(42:52):
she was part of a community. I could see sort
of the way it affected her, and it affected me
as well as someone who's voted for you know, every
election for many, many years. So that's not a policy
that's changed. And we could talk about other things, but
I just think the act of voting itself can be
so powerful for people, and it was really cool to
see that in person.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
I'm not topping that. I mean, that's wonderful. I think
we should all clap for first time voters because I
think that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
We really should. Yeah, and for first time registers. Yeah, yeah,
that too. Lovely Well, Josh, thank you so much for
joining us today and anything you want to say where
people can find your work about your new book coming
out of the books you've already written, please please tell them.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Now.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yeah, So I have a website, Joshuaadouglas dot com. It's
got all my stuff. You can find my podcast and
all the podcast places Democracy Optimist. And my latest book
is called The Court Versus the Voters. That's a fun
beach read, I'm told, and it's available, you know, in
all the places amazing.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And be sure to check out vote dot org to
be sure that you're registered and to check your registration
status if you are wonderful.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
Thank you so much, josh Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Okay, Matt, So now the real question is would you
rather get a sausage or a sticker on your way
out of the.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Polls ethereum team apple pie. But here's the thing about
places that don't serve food. That serve food, don't serve food.
If your thing is voting, stick to voting. If your
thing is ikey of making furniture, don't sell meatballs. They
may contain traces of horse.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Oh boy, oh boy. Or you're going to need a
law professor on your side after you're.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Making those claims.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I probably am. You already know. My answer is sticker.
I'm a big sticker girl.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
You could tell big sticker energy.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
But for our next episode, We're going the opposite of sticky,
and we are going nice and smooth.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I see what you did there.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
We're going to be speaking with Sean Wynn. He is
a pensoil lubricant technical specialist at Shell Lubricant and he's
going to tell us everything we need to know and
so much more about getting your oil changed.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
And if you listen to our previous episode on car
maintenance and think that you know everything that there is
to know, think again. We go deep on the oil
an unearthed knowledge that only a technical specialist would know.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, and he knows all of it, and he's so
excited about it. I can't wait to learn more until
next time. Good luck being a grown up.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
This is the production of Ruby Studio from My Heartmedia.
Our executive producers are Lea Pomery and Matt Stillo.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
This episode was edited and engineered by Sierra Spreen and
Speaker 1 (45:22):
We want to think our teammates at Ruby Studio, including
Sarah you, Ethan Fixel, Ragious, Wan krasnov Lydia, Kim Amber Smith, Harper, Wayne,
Deborah Garrett, and Andy Kelly.
Hello, fellow grown uppers. Before we get into today's episode,
which is an overview of voting in the United States,
it's important to say that this episode was recorded before
President Trump signed the executive Order called Preserving and Protecting
the Integrity of American Elections on March twenty fifth. This
order fundamentally changes voter registration requirements by mandating documented proof
(00:26):
of US citizenship to register for federal elections. It requires
all ballots to be received by election day and threatens
to withhold the federal funding from non compliance states. So
legal experts have questioned the president's authority to implement these changes,
with some people estimating up to twenty one million eligible
(00:48):
voters could face challenges registering due to lack of ready
access to citizenship documents. The order's implementation remains uncertain as
legal challenges are expected. This context is just it's essential
to understand how the voting landscape has shifted since we
recorded this discussion, as many of the processes and requirements
(01:08):
discussed may now be subject to significant changes pending legal outcomes.
But we emailed with our guests law professor at University
of Kentucky Joshua Douglas for comment who confirms all of
this in an article he released in Washington Monthly on
March twenty seventh, and goes on to say, quote, the
executive order will indeed be challenged in court, and if
(01:31):
the court follows the US Constitution and federal law, they
will swiftly strike it down. So with all that context
in mind, let's get into this week's episode.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Ruby, Welcome to grown Up Stuff. I'm Leah Palmery and
I'm Matt still O. And Matt, would you say that
you're doing good or great?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Just as solid good today? Not great?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well? You know what, you just voted because I gave
you two options and you voted for one, and.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I casted for the worst option. This is I should
always cast for greates. You should have I feel like
you think yourself into grate right. If you tell people
you're great, you're casting a vote for maybe feeling great.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Or you're just lying and making sure that they don't
have to respond to you in a conversation to hear
about all.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Your problems that could be that tooe.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Either way, yes, always go with I'm feeling great today.
But you did vote, and that is what matters, because
voting matters, and this is only right because we're going
to be exploring voting for grown ups.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
It's the way we as Americans have our voices heard.
And while hopefully we participate most years and not just
every four years, it's an incredibly important part of our
democratic process, and we even still had so much to
learn about it. Yeah, So we spoke with joshua A. Douglas,
who's a law professor, podcaster, author, and most of all,
he can explain both simple and complicated parts of our
(02:59):
civic duty to us in ways that are both informative
and fascinating at the very same time.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
And now here's Josh stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I'm Josh Douglas. I'm a law professor at the University
of Kentucky Go Wildcats. Often when I tell people I'm
a law professor, they'll think, oh, I'm not going to
be able to understand anything that you say or writ
And I've done a lot of work and worked really
hard to make my work and my scholarship accessible to
(03:35):
the general public because I think it's so important, especially
in my field of voting rights, for people to understand
what's going on. So to that end, I have my
own podcast called Democracy Optimist, I've also written two books
for a popular press. One came out in twenty nineteen
called to Vote for Us. The other came out in
(03:56):
twenty twenty four called The Court Versus the Voters. Both
are written for a general audience, or both are really
books of stories. I tell a lot of stories of
some really interesting people, and then sneak in a little
bit of law, but only what everyday Americans would need
to know to understand the stories. In fact, my last book,
The Court Versus the Voters, was listed on a website
(04:18):
as one of the top beach reads for twenty twenty
four about voting. Now, it's service strange category. I guess
beach reads about voting. But I did actually see someone
reading the book on the beach, which was really cool. Okay,
it was my wife, but but still I saw someone
reading the book on the beach, So I think it
counts lovely.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
We're really happier here. I said, we're going to be
talking about voting today, and we couldn't be doing it
with a better expert than Professor Douglas. Do your students
call you Professor Douglass.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Students call me Professor Douglas, But you can call me Josh,
you're not my thoughts. I won't cold call on you
with using the socratic method like I do with my students.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Oh thank you, because I don't know if I could
handle it. So I would love if you could, in
simple time, just talk a little bit about what voting
is and why it's so fundamental to our democracy in
the United States.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah. So, of course, voting is the process by which
we choose our elected leaders. And many people think of
just the presidential election as that's the biggest game in town.
It's the super Bowl of elections. But we actually elect
leaders from all levels of government, from federal Congress all
(05:27):
the way to your state legislature, your governor, and even
your local elected officials, your mayor, your city council, and
they have an immense impact on your daily life. I mean,
people I think don't realize sometimes how they're local officials
who they have the opportunity to elect impact the way
(05:48):
they interact in the world, whether it's from a pothole
on their street or the street lights turning on to
where their tax money goes. I often point back to
the Declaration of Independence founding document in the United States,
which says that a government is legitimate based on the
consent of the government. Consent of the government, well, the
(06:10):
governs all of us. So we're talking about grown up stuff.
How do we decide what our society looks like? And
it's pretty much nothing more grown up than that than
I guess paying taxes. But who leads us impacts that
as well. So it's really fundamental to people's everyday lives,
even if they don't realize it or recognize it.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, Josh, you may be a democracy optimist, but not
everybody feels the same. So how would you respond to
somebody who feels like their individual vote doesn't really matter.
They kind of drag their feet going to the polls
or don't do it at all. How do you say, no, no,
here's why your vote does matter.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Well, I think I have three responses to your question,
and the first is what does it mean to be
a democracy optimist. It's not that I think everything's going great,
that democracy is perfectly threat and we don't need to
change or fix things. It's that there's hope for the future.
Because if there's not hope, then what's the alternative wallowing
(07:09):
in our despair and having this fatalistic view that the
system is just doomed and we can't do anything about it,
and so we're going to retreat into our everyday lives
and not try to fix the system. And if we
do that, then yes, the system is doomed. So the
first answer to your question of why should I vote,
essentially is well, why not? Because it's up to all
(07:30):
of us, and people of asking me all the time
these days, how do we save democracy? Ultimately it's the people,
it's we the people, and so you should be wanting
to be part of that. Even if say you live
in a state where you kind of know who's going
to win the presidential electors in that state, or you
live in the district where, because of gerrymanderin the practice
(07:51):
of drawing skewed lines, you kind of know who's going
to win that district. The second answer is that your
vote probably isn't going to make a difference in the
outcome except for when it does, and you never know
when that's going to be. There are elections every year
that come down to one vote or that are tied.
So is your vote actually going to matter in the
(08:11):
presidential election? Probably not your one vote until it does,
until enough of us decide that we do want to
show up. And then I guess the third reason I
would say of why your vote matters is because even
if it doesn't make a difference in that the election
doesn't come down to one vote, representation matters. The election
officials know the constituencies that voted for them. This is
(08:35):
why elderly people get their policies looked at, where young
people don't, really because young people tend not to vote
as much. So it's about representation. It's about sending a
signal to the government, and frankly, not voting doesn't really
send much of a signal. I mean, you might say, well,
it's a signal that I'm unhappy with the current government,
but that doesn't really send the signal. It just means
(08:55):
that you can be ignored by elected officials, and that's
how we get into some of the problems that we
have today.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, I think one thing that blows my mind every
time elections come around, and I actually would love free
to correct me on this if I have the number wrong,
But it's around like forty three percent of the population
doesn't vote, So it.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Really depends on the election you're talking about. So in
the last presidential election, in November twenty twenty four, turnout
was about sixty three point nine percent. So the last
numbers I saw, and what was really frustrating to me
is that there were news stories that I saw the
day after the election talking about the strong voter engagement
(09:31):
that this was the second highest turnout ever, second only
the twenty twenty and yet turnout was just under sixty
four percent, which means that over a third of the
population did not show up. Right, how can we celebrate
strong voter engagement when a third of us are not participating.
So I'm actually working on a new book project right
now that looks at voter turnout and civic engagement. And
(09:54):
the working title will see if this lasts by the
time the book finally gets published in a couple of years.
But the working title is the Forgotten one Third, The
forgotten third, the one third of voters that we sort
of ignore because while they're not going to show up anyways.
And then you start talking about other elections, So midterm
elections for Congress, you hardly ever have turnout over fifty
(10:14):
percent nationwide. Then let's talk about some states, like my
state of Kentucky has off year elections where we elect
our governor in odd numbered years turnout thirty percent, which
means that if an election is close and one candidate
wins by only a little bit, just over fifteen percent
of eligible voters are selecting the leaders. And then we
(10:36):
can also talk about primary elections. So this is the
process where the political parties winnow down their candidates on
their side to one for the general election. Primary elections
have extremely low turnout, and yet often that's the only
game in town. It's the only one that matters because
of a district is so skewed towards the Democrats or
toilers of the Republicans, we pretty much know that the
(10:58):
nominee is going to to win the general election. So
we can talk about turnout is sixty four percent or whatever,
and that was a record only except for twenty twenty,
and that's good to celebrate that, but when we actually
dive into the numbers, it's a pretty sad story when
it comes to the strength of democracy.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Can we ever get it to one hundred?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Probably never one hundred, But I think there are various
strategies that can certainly boost turnout, and it's one of
the things I'm going to be discussing in my book.
So one bold idea that probably is not going to
get any traction in the US is compulsory voting that
a bunch of other countries have. Australia, everyone's required to
vote Brazil, and turnout is usually over eighty and sometimes
(11:41):
ninety percent in those countries, and it depends on how
they implement it. So Brazil's usually a little over eighty percent,
but it's pretty easy to provide an excuse. Australia has
a little bit of a more difficult process to get
out of it essentially, and they're usually at ninety three
ninety four percent. They have a big party at the
polls called democracy. They have what they call democracy sausages
(12:03):
during the sausage sizzle in Australia and kind of make
it a big event. I don't think we're ever going
to get to compulsory voting nationwide, although there is a movement.
So the Brookings Institute put out a study and I
was part of the working group that looked into this.
We called it universal voting instead of compulsory voting, because
I think that sounds nicer, and the full term is
(12:24):
universal civic duty voting to kind of emphasize how it's
people's civic duty, and there are some states that are
looking into either requiring it statewide or at least letting
localities local jurisdictions have compulsory voting. But short of that,
I think there are a lot of things we can
do to improve voter turnout. We know, for example, that
(12:45):
voter registration rules make a big difference in turnout, So
states vary on when you have to get on the roles.
Some states you have to be on the voter rolls
about a month before election day or you're out of luck.
But a bunch of other states have what we call
same day registration, where you can show up to the
(13:05):
polls and register and vote at the same time. And
what we know is that the states with the highest
turnout have same day voter registration. There's a whole bunch
of these sorts of policies that I think we can
adopt to improve turnout. And then the other side of
this has to be civic education. Civic engagement not only
K through twelve, but all the way through adulthood. And
(13:28):
we need to totally rethink and revamp the way we
handle the issue of civics education. As the other aspect
of this.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, oftentimes here after an election, you know, America has spoken,
and now we have a new president. But to your
point about representation, and thirty six thirty seven percent of
people didn't vote in the last presidential election, has America spoken
if not everyone is accounted for? So I do certainly
hope that we can in our lifetimes get to one
hundred percent. But before we get into the specifics about
(13:56):
how to register and like the nuts and bolts of
like how do you do it, I'd.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Actually love for you kind of walk us through it.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Just some of the major milestones in the evolution of
voting rights in America, because it wasn't always though everyone
could vote.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Right for a while, sure, so at the founding only
white male property owners aged twenty one and older could vote,
So it's a very restricted aspect. Then we have a
very sorry history of racial discrimination in this country in particular,
as well as discrimination on the basis of sex with
respect to women's suffrage. And then things have always been
(14:31):
kind of expanding and contracting as history has evolved. We've
had these expansions of who's allowed to vote, and then
there's pushbacks against it, and so the fight for voting
rights is a push and pull. Some of the most
notable moments in history on this were the fifteenth Amendment
to the US Constitution after the Civil War, which said
(14:52):
that states cannot deny the right to vote on the
basis of race. We had another fifty year struggle after
that for women's suffrage, and the nineteenth Amendment to the
US Constitution, ratified in nineteen twenty, said that states cannot
deny the right to vote on the basis of sex.
Then we had a lot of Jim Crow era policies
(15:14):
that made it very difficult for minorities in particular to participate,
and so finally Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of
nineteen sixty five, which tried to break down a lot
of the barriers to voter registration and voter access for
minority voters. And then the twenty sixth Amendment to the
US Constitution lowered the voting age from twenty one to eighteen. Interestingly,
(15:37):
on the voting age, there are some cities in the
US that let sixteen and seventeen year old vote in
either all local elections or school board elections. And so
we're not done talking about how to include more people
or to think about voter expansions along with the pushbacks
on voting rights that we've had.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I mean, if you can operate a car, I would
hope that, yes, you do have some sort of clear
train of thought of being able to vote. So I'm
not mad at that. So for those who have never
registered to vote before, what are the basic steps to
register to vote?
Speaker 3 (16:12):
So most states make it relatively easy by having an
online portal to register to vote. Now, if you're listening
from Texas, unfortunately, the state has continued to promote voter
restrictions or make it less easy to participate in a
variety of ways. And there's a couple other states that
don't have online voter registration, but most states do, and
(16:35):
so you can go and just do a quick Google search,
I think it's to vote dot Org will then link
you to each state's voter registration portal and usually takes
only a couple of minutes and you can get on
the voter rules. Some states, you'll have to choose a
political party to affiliate with. In those states they have
what we call closed primaries, where only members who registered
(16:58):
with that party can vote in their prime Marry other states,
you don't have to choose a party affiliation. And if
you don't want to do the online thing, if you
go to get your driver's license, you should be asked
whether you want to register to vote. It's a requirement
under federal law that every DMV and other government agency
like that gives you the opportunity to vote. And it's
(17:20):
a pretty simple one page form to fill out. So
the process of registering actually is not that difficult in
most states, but many places you actually have to affirmatively
do it.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
And then we hear a lot about you know, it's
election day and people have been registered before, but they
show them on the polls in that day and they
all of a sudden find out that they're not registered
or they've been taken off of a voter role. So
what are the most common reasons why people find themselves
unable to vote on election day? And how can that
be avoided?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah, so states are allowed to clean up their voter
rules and take people off and they'll get information like
people have died, people have moved away. In the states
that disenfranchise individuals with a felon conviction, if they get
notice of the felony conviction, states are allowed to take
your name off the voter roles. In addition, some states
(18:08):
follow a process where if you don't show up for
two federal elections in a row and then also don't
respond to a postcard that gets mailed to you, then
they can take you off the roles. So what do
you do if that occurs. Well, if you're in a
state with same day voter registration, no problem. You can
register at the polls right then. But if you're not
(18:30):
in a state with same day registration, especially if you're
in a state that has a deadline to register, you
actually are out of luck. With one kind of small
caveat there, if you ever show up to the polls
and they say your name's not on the roles, you're
not allowed to vote, and you're sure you're in the
right place, don't just leave without casting a ballot. Instead,
(18:53):
the poll workers are required to give you what's called
a provisional ballot, And this is about that you vote
and then they set aside and they figured it out
after the fact, after election day, whether to count it
or not. And this should dispel one myth about our elections,
which is that all absentee ballots, all provisional ballots that
are valid are counted, and so there's no concern about
(19:18):
casting that vote, and the election official results are not
official until a week or two later, when actually all
ballots are counted. Now, if you are not sure if
you're in the right place, well you have to make
sure you're in the right location, because if you fill
out a provisional ballot and it turns out that you
should have been somewhere else across town that was your
polling place, and then that provisional ballot will not count ultimately, Matt.
(19:41):
To answer your question of how can we avoid that,
I always tell people that four to six weeks before
election day, go on the online portal and check your registration.
I do it every year before the primary, and then
again kind of in mid September. I go online and
check my voter registration just to make sure there's no
problems with it. So the number one way to avoid
(20:03):
this is well before whatever deadline your state has for
closing the registration books, check your voter registration every single time.
It takes about thirty seconds, and it's worth it to
make sure you're good to go.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
You've mentioned this a little bit, that the voting laws
are different from state to state. So what are like
some significant variations that voters should be aware of depending
on where they live.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Well, one is the time that polls are open on
election day, as well as the number of early voting
days and the ability to vote by mail with or
without an excuse. So the states really vary on this.
Some states say that you have to show up at
the polls in person on election day unless you have
(20:45):
a valid excuse, and then you can request an absentee ballot,
and states vary on the deadlines for which to request
that ballot. Other states have certain number of early voting
days where you can go and show up before the
official And I don't really like calling it election day
anymore because we don't really have one election day. We
have election days or election week. So some states have
(21:08):
three days of early voting, some states have seven. Some
states have early voting on the Sunday before the election.
And then they're the rules for absentee balloting or mail
in balloting sometimes called vote at home. Some states you
can just request a ballot and you don't have to
provide an excuse. Other states it's going to ask for
your excuse, and then the deadlines for when you need
(21:31):
to request that ballot so it arrives to you on time,
as well as the deadline for when it needs to
arrive back to the election officials vary. So just the
logistics of voting, and then also we can talk about
voter ID laws. What kind of idea do you need? Now?
The good news is that there are resources out there
that can explain all this for the state that you're in.
(21:51):
So I mentioned vote dot org. It's a great website.
The League of Women Voters and nonprofit organization typically has
a website for ee state and it'll tell you here's
when the polls are open, here are the early voting days,
here are the locations, here's how you request about by
mail and whether you're allowed to, and here's what you
need to bring to the polls. Because states very on
(22:12):
their voter ide laws as well, I'd.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Actually love to hear a bit on the voter ide
laws if you don't mind.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah, So I like to tell people that no voter
ID law is made the same. States really vary, and
so you hear a ton of talk, a ton of
rhetoric about photo identification requirements for voting. And I'm someone
who does not think that voter ideal laws do much
good because they really don't get to any problem. The
only problem that they can root out, or any fraud
(22:41):
they can root out, is in person impersonation, someone showing
up to the polls and pretending there's someone they're not,
and we just know from evidence that that just doesn't
happen to any meaningful extent whatsoever. But we also know
that voter ideal laws can cause disenfranchisement. Now, I think
the right embellishes how much fraud there is that voter
idea law can prevent. I think the left embellishes how
(23:03):
much disenfranchisement actually occurs through voter ideal laws. But it
is not zero. There is still some people who are
prevented from voting. And if you show up to the
polls and you don't have your ID for whatever reason,
you can fill out what they call a reasonable impediment form,
basically a form that says, here's why I don't have
an idea, I have a reasonable impediment to getting an ID,
(23:26):
and you sign it under penalty of perjury. That's get
referred to the law enforcement, just a double check that
you're not lying. Essentially, again, each state is a little
bit different on this reasonable impediment form, But in many
states you have to then cast a provisional ballot, not
a regular bouot, and some states actually say if you
fill out that provisional ballot on election day, you've got
(23:48):
to go to the county clerk within five days to
show your ID or to fill out another form. So
it requires voters to take another step, and some studies
have shown that up to ten percent of the electorate
doesn't have an ID that would suffice under these laws.
They also have a discriminatory effect. So we know just
based on population statistics that ideal laws tend to harm
(24:11):
minority voters more because they just tend to live in
inner cities where they don't have a license, they're taking
public transportation to work, they just don't have a need
for a photo ID in their everyday lives. And one
court actually said that the North Carolina law on voter
ida was passed to target minority voters, quote with almost
surgical precision. That is the draft of the law to
(24:32):
actually to try to disenfranchised minorities, and that got struck down.
But it gives you a sense of the kind of
battles that we have over voter ID laws.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
We'll be right back after a quick.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Break and we're back with more grown up stuff. How
do I don't.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
We talked a bit about the different types of voting
to between early voting, mail in, and day of Are
there specific advantages to any of those and disadvantages as well.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
That's an interesting question because experts, I think differ a
little bit on the benefits of voting one kind of
ballot or another. I think the cleanest way of voting
is to show up in person if you can so,
whether that's early voting in person or on election day
in person. And really early voting is great because you
typically avoid longer lines as compared to what you might
(25:31):
have on election day. And the reason I say early
voting is I think beneficial in person voting, that is,
is that you don't have any concerns about mistakes on
the way you fill out your ballot or the envelope
that goes along when you're voting an absentee, you've got
to fill out an envelope, you've got to sign it
in the right place. Some states actually make you have
witnesses to that as well. There's some states that go
(25:54):
even so far as to say, you need to get
a notary to notarize your absentee ballot. That makes it
very difficult. But there's just some a lot of hurdles
you have to clear as a voter, and if you
make a mistake, your ballot might not count, whereas if
you show up in person that minimizes the potential concerns
you might have with casting about. On the other hand,
(26:14):
voting at home is super convenient, and we know that
the states that make it easy to vote at home
have much higher turnout. So, for example, Colorado automatically mails
a ballot to every registered voter in the state, so
their convenience factor is really great for vote at home,
and I'm a big proponent of that of expansive vote
(26:34):
at home policies for voters who want to take advantage
of that. At the same time, it's easier for a
voter to make mistakes, so it's a balance between how
careful are you going to be to make sure you
don't make a mistake so your ballot counts versus the
ease of voting at home.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I can't tell you how much early voting and mail
in ballot voting has changed my life. You know on
a personal level, like I used to. You know, when
I was in my early twenties, I would work at
a coffee shop, and you know, on the voting day,
I would often lose money because I would actually go
vote and I'd have to give up a shift, or
you were rushing to vote early before work or trying
(27:08):
to squeeze it in at the end of the day,
so you were kind of in a rush. But with
early and mail in ballot voting, you actually have some time,
you know, on the weekend where you can feel a
little bit more intentional about how you vote. Because I'll
be totally honest and make a completely fool of myself.
Back in the days of trying to squeeze voting in,
I'd chow up the polls and have like no idea
who like fifty percent of the people on the ballot were.
(27:32):
You know, like iud obviously know like the main you know,
if it was a mayoral thing or a president, I
would know who those people were. But you know, there's
like people running for comptrol or and people running for
a judge position, and I'd be like, I actually have
no idea who those people are and what they're trying
to do, and so I wouldn't vote because I felt
like I had no say in the matter. But you
take the ballot home, you can do a little bit
of research on who these people are and what they're
(27:53):
trying to do. And so my question to you is, like,
how can we best prepare ourselves before going to the
voting booth to like really understand what we're voting for
and how to actually make an impact on what we
want to see.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Yeah, that's a great question. So there are organizations that
put out sample ballots and so you can see what's
on the ballot before you go to the polls, and
you can even fill out your sample ballots. You can
bring it with you, you know what you intend to
vote for. So I would encourage people to do that.
I think what you point to, though, is a more
systemic problem about civic education and how we educate ourselves
(28:33):
about what's on the ballot and what we want to
vote for and so and.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
What a comptroller does? What did they do?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah, exactly, And so this is where I think civic
organizations make a huge difference in helping to educate people
about what's on the ballot. So I mentioned the legal
women voters already and virtually every jurisdiction they put out
a great voting guide. But I've been remiss not to
mention an organization in my hometown of Lexston, can Tell
(29:00):
Ucky called Civic Lex. Now full disclosure, I'm on the
board of Civic Lex. So I'm very much proud of
the work that the organization does. But what it is
is to civic health organization that tries to educate local
people living in Lexington, Kentucky about their local government. What
does the local government do, who's in the local government,
(29:20):
what's happening in the local town meetings, the city meetings.
They put out a budget guide every year, easy to
read with pie charts that say, here's what happens to
your money the local taxes, Here's where it goes. And
they also put out a voter guide. The website's lex
dot Vote l ex dot Vote, and it has profiles
(29:40):
of every candidate for local office, so you can see
who are the people running for these positions. So we
need more of that, and so I encourage communities all
over to look at that model as a way to
help educate the public on what these officials do. So
for you, Matt in your elections. I would basically go
Google to see is there a legal women Voters or
(30:02):
other similar organization that puts out a voter guide. But
on the broader scale, I encourage people to think about
starting civic health organizations like civic LECs that can provide
that information to the public. Another thing that happens in
the voting booth is like in New York, this happens
all the time. A judge will be running for reelection,
but they're not running against anybody, so like, what what
(30:23):
do you do in that situation?
Speaker 1 (30:24):
It's like just vote for them, I guess, or just
say like boo, or what do you do in that situation?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
So there's a couple of scenarios there. So some states
do what they call retention elections for judges, so it's
a yes or no, so whether the person should keep
their job or not. And so again, if you can
download the sample ballot ahead of time and you can
see what the ballot is asking, you can research that judge,
does it seem like from the news stories they're doing
(30:50):
a good job, or what do they stand for? And
then vote your yes or no on retention. Other times,
you know it's a straight up election for a judge
and that which just means that no one's run against
that person. So if I don't know anything about that candidate,
I'll leave a blank or I'll do a write in
vote and put my daughter just for fun. She comes
to vote with me. She's not eighteen, she's not eligible,
(31:12):
but fund for her to see me write her name in.
You know, those elections, no one's running against that person.
And what's I think really sad and unfortunate is that
we have a ton of elections in this country that
are not contested, that only one candidate. And you mentioned judges,
but it it's even for members of Congress. Yeah, where
they get these elections where they're not contested, there's no opponents,
(31:34):
and so that's I think a big problem. And that
goes back to the jerrymandering I mentioned. Or people think, well,
why bother running because there's no chance of winning. We
haven't touched campaign finance issues, and you know, how do
you raise the money to run a successful campaign, the
media issues. So there's a lot of layers to the
problem of seeing only one candidate on the ballot.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So I love that you brought up jerrymandering because I
think it's one of those things. Maybe people have heard
about it, but they don't necessarily know exactly what it is.
So would you mind walking us through what jerrymandering is.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
So jerrymandering is the practice of the state legislature, so
the state level government drawing maps to ensure a particular outcome.
Jerrymandering has existed since our founding. The founding fathers when
they were drawing the maps for Virginia, they drew gerrymandered
map to try to ensure some people would be in
(32:30):
favorable districts or not. But the problem is that these days,
with technology, with computer algorithms, with how much we know
about voters and voter behavior, you can draw a gerrymander
with such preciseness that you can pretty much guarantee who's
going to win various districts. And so one way to
think about how to do it is what we call
(32:51):
packing and cracking. So let's say you have a group
of voters that all have the same demographics or maybe
have the same political affiliation. Well, if you can draw
a map where you put as many of them as
possible into one district, then they can win that district
with say eighty percent or ninety percent and have no
influence in the rest of the state or the rest
(33:13):
of the area. So why should you care? Because it
skews representation. It means that the people who we send
either to the state houses when it's a state map
for state legislature or Congress, are not actually representative of
the people and how they vote, because the maps often
dictate the outcomes, not the people.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
When we do have an election, we tend to hear
a lot about voter fraud, for better or worse, and
by that I mean for worse. But what is the
actual evidence regarding voter fraud in American elections? What can
you tell us about that?
Speaker 3 (33:48):
So I think we need to make sure to distinguish
between voter fraud and election fraud. So, voter fraud is
when a voter does something fraudulent, showing up to the
polls and try to vote twice, showing up to the
polls and pretending there's someone there not filling out multiple
absentee ballots illegally. That simply doesn't happen to any measurable degree.
(34:10):
You're always going to hear an anecdote here and an
anecdote there. Often they're embellished, you know, it's Oh, my
mother's sisters, friends, uncles, brothers, cousin said that this happened,
And so I often just question the actual evidence of it.
Contrast that with election fraud, which is fraud on the
system itself. And this also happens very very rarely, but
(34:32):
a tad bit more than pure voter fraud. And yet
we have so many mechanisms within the process, within the
auditing process to find it. Now, it's hard to disprove
a negative. Right, So when my kids were younger, and
they might say, as I'm tucking him into bed, Daddy,
there's a monster under the bed. And no matter how
many times I looked for the monster and told them
(34:54):
there's no monster, how do you get them to believe me? Right? Yeah,
and that's sort of what this mantra of voter fraud is. Right.
No matter how many times the experts who are looking
at this and understand how the process works, understand all
of the auditing that happens after election day, they mutually
it's not over on election day. There's lots of processes
that happen in the weeks after. No matter how many
(35:14):
times you say it, though, how do you prove a
negative so they're not monsters under the bed. There's also
no massive voter fraud.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I love that answer. Let's trust the adults in the room, right, Okay,
So for people who are concerned, how can we assuage
those concerns and sort of balance it with like ensuring
that we do have broad access to voting rights that
we can get to that one hundred percent that we
talked about earlier.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
I mean, I think getting accurate information from prospective sources
is really important. So don't believe what you're seeing on
your social media feed if it's not from an official source.
I think we need to invest in local media. Local
media can save democracy if they continue to be independent.
And I have the privilege of speaking with a lot
(36:00):
of reporters just because people want to ask me about
voting rights issues. And I've never found a reporter who
is trying to skew the information or is not focused
on telling the truth. So focus on the respected sources
of information and be careful any time you spread something.
If something seems fantastical, maybe pause before we hit that
(36:20):
share button and verify the information. So we can each
do a lot to make sure that these lies don't
get spread and then continue to calm out when they're lies.
We need people from both sides to come together to
uphold the sanctity of and trust in our elections.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
On that note, too, are there reforms to voting rights
and access that you believe would strengthen American democracy? Are
there things that can be put in place to make
sure everyone feels great about like this is how we vote,
This is correct, and you know we did it right?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Well? Do I have a book for you or several
books for you? We could spend a whole hour talking
about the ways I think we should improve our election system.
But you know, one thing I'll say is that we
can look at the states that do this well. There
are states who are much better in respect to voter access,
with respect to trust in elections, and no surprise, with
respect to turnout. So look at Minnesota, which typically has
(37:20):
turnout just under eighty percent. You know, we're still not
getting to that ninety ninety five percent turnout, but Minnesota
is doing pretty good compared to a lot of other states.
And why well, they have a lot of policies that
make it easy to participate, same day voter registration, easy
absentee bouting access. They also have a culture of civic participation.
(37:41):
Colorado is another example of a state that generally is
doing this well and is at the top of the
list on measures of democracy. And so I think that
it's really worthwhile to look at the places that we know.
You know, again, we're not going to get to compulsory voting,
but we do have a model for some states that
are doing this well, and we can copy those states
(38:03):
in what they're doing and then build upon them.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
I am actually shocked we have gotten through this entire
interview and not once has the word sticker been said,
because I love a sticker. So I am somebody who
every single election, after I vote, I go outside and
I take a selfie with my sticker so that everyone
can see I voted today. Somebody once commented, you look
so happy about this, and I was like, I truly
(38:27):
am thrilled. But one thing that I think some people
have learned the hard way when it comes to pictures
and voting. In some states, you cannot take a picture
of yourself voting. What is the reason for that? And
also do you like to take a picture and a
little selfie with your sticker.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
As well, so no state will deny your vote if
you take a selfie. No, you could be subject to
criminal charges otherwise, but they're not going to take away
your vote. So they call them ballot selfies. You could
take your ballot selfie and then vote and then risk
whatever criminal sanctions they might try to bring against you,
but at least your vote be valid. So some states
(39:02):
do ban bout selfies, and the idea is that it's
trying to prevent vote buying. So we do have a
history of vote buying in this country in some jurisdictions,
and these days, if I'm going to buy someone's vote,
I want to make sure that they're voting for who
I want them to vote for, And so I might
tell them to take a picture of their bout with
their cell phone and then either show it to me
(39:23):
or put it up on social media, and then I
can't be linked with it, right because now it's just
out to the world and I can see that, oh,
it's a picture of you with your bout. Other states, though,
see this as a First Amendment right of expression of
showing that you are excited about your vote and trying
to encourage other people to vote for the candidates that
you support, and courts have gone in each direction. So
(39:46):
there's a court in New York that upheld the ballot
selfie ban and said there's concerns of vote buying. But
a court in New Hampshire struck down the ban on
ballot selfies under the First Amendment and said this was
a rite of free spece, each right of expression. For me,
what we always do is I always make sure to
take a picture of the kids outside the vote here
(40:07):
sign right outside the polling place, so I always get that.
Plus I always get the sticker. Occasionally I'll take a
picture of the ballot itself just for my own fun,
especially if I've written in my daughter. But Kentucky law
does not prohibit ballot selfie, so I'm in good footing there.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Okay, good. I mean Australia seems to have it right
with the voting sausages, so I think we've got to
upgrade from stickers to sausages or both. I mean both
marks too.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
So I wrote a column a number of years ago
for a newspaper in which I mentioned this, But I said,
what's more American than baseball and voting? Well, apple pie?
So I called for democracy apple pies, which makes sense
right around just before Thanksgiving, and you know Americans like
their sugar, so I thought it was.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
A good could make the sticker some food. I guarantee
you we'd see.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
A race or maybe one of those scratch and sniff stickers.
We should do.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
That be good too.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Well they had here in New York this past selection,
they had special Halloween stickers that you got if you
went and voted early on Halloween, so like they really
kept you on your toes as far as like which
sticker you were going to get which day. So you know,
I'm all for the sticker. I'm not trying to be greedy,
but I do like the pie idea.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Make it fun, make it fun.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
And then the last thing that I want to leave
us with, I love for us all to actually share
our favorite thing that came into our community through voting.
And so my wife and are big proponents of composting
because essentially, if you put organic materials into your trash
and it goes into a landfill, it releases a lot
of methane into the environment and it's really not great.
But they're composting. You can take your organic compounds and
you can turn them into mulch and soil and then
(41:37):
put that back into local community gardens to grow food
with and you're not wasting it and in the way
you would buy just throwing it in the trash. And
so we love composting, but it's been very difficult over
the years to compost. But we voted legislators into place
that have passed laws that make composting compulsory for the
entire city. It started in Queens and Brooklyn out spreading
all over New York City. So your building is required
(41:58):
to provide you with a compost band that gets picked
up by the city Cititation department. So that's one way
I've seen voting change things for the better. But I'd
love to open it up to both of you. There's
a couple.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Different directions I could go with this question, because I
do think that there are lots of ways that voting
can change local democracy. But I think maybe I'll just
tell a story about one of my favorite moments of
voting itself, which was when I was at the polls
and learned that the person in front of me was
a first time voter, and then words spread down the
(42:28):
line that it was a first time voter, and then
when she checked in to vote, the entire polling place
like the election, the poll workers, the election officials all
kind of got everyone in the polling place to give
her a round of applause, and you could see that
she was understanding the impact of what she was doing. That. Yeah, well,
her one vote may or may not make a difference
in who actually gets elected, but she was part of something,
(42:52):
she was part of a community. I could see sort
of the way it affected her, and it affected me
as well as someone who's voted for you know, every
election for many, many years. So that's not a policy
that's changed. And we could talk about other things, but
I just think the act of voting itself can be
so powerful for people, and it was really cool to
see that in person.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
I'm not topping that. I mean, that's wonderful. I think
we should all clap for first time voters because I
think that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
We really should. Yeah, and for first time registers. Yeah, yeah,
that too. Lovely Well, Josh, thank you so much for
joining us today and anything you want to say where
people can find your work about your new book coming
out of the books you've already written, please please tell them.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Now.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yeah, So I have a website, Joshuaadouglas dot com. It's
got all my stuff. You can find my podcast and
all the podcast places Democracy Optimist. And my latest book
is called The Court Versus the Voters. That's a fun
beach read, I'm told, and it's available, you know, in
all the places amazing.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And be sure to check out vote dot org to
be sure that you're registered and to check your registration
status if you are wonderful.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
Thank you so much, josh Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Okay, Matt, So now the real question is would you
rather get a sausage or a sticker on your way
out of the.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Polls ethereum team apple pie. But here's the thing about
places that don't serve food. That serve food, don't serve food.
If your thing is voting, stick to voting. If your
thing is ikey of making furniture, don't sell meatballs. They
may contain traces of horse.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Oh boy, oh boy. Or you're going to need a
law professor on your side after you're.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Making those claims.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I probably am. You already know. My answer is sticker.
I'm a big sticker girl.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
You could tell big sticker energy.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
But for our next episode, We're going the opposite of sticky,
and we are going nice and smooth.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I see what you did there.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
We're going to be speaking with Sean Wynn. He is
a pensoil lubricant technical specialist at Shell Lubricant and he's
going to tell us everything we need to know and
so much more about getting your oil changed.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
And if you listen to our previous episode on car
maintenance and think that you know everything that there is
to know, think again. We go deep on the oil
an unearthed knowledge that only a technical specialist would know.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, and he knows all of it, and he's so
excited about it. I can't wait to learn more until
next time. Good luck being a grown up.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
This is the production of Ruby Studio from My Heartmedia.
Our executive producers are Lea Pomery and Matt Stillo.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
This episode was edited and engineered by Sierra Spreen and
Speaker 1 (45:22):
We want to think our teammates at Ruby Studio, including
Sarah you, Ethan Fixel, Ragious, Wan krasnov Lydia, Kim Amber Smith, Harper, Wayne,
Deborah Garrett, and Andy Kelly.
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