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Voting in America is not always straightforward, nor is its impact always clear. In this episode, we give you the basic tools to vote on Election Day, including tips for avoiding the roadblocks.
And for those of you on the fence about exercising that enfranchisement, a word to the wise: your vote matters.
Featuring:
Kim Wehle, professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law
Listen here:
Resources:
Click here for a Graphic Organizer for students to take notes upon while listening.
Transcript:
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:01] Before I started interviewing people for this voting thing. Nick, the question came up that often comes up at the show. We're talking about voting. Voting can be a political act, but is voting a political subject? And if we try to give people the tools to vote through this show, is that a political act?
Nick Capodice: [00:00:26] We've had this discussion in meetings dozens of times, and to me it feels like it shouldn't be. But maybe that's just my gut.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:32] Yeah, that's my gut, too. We've talked about this a lot, but still I had to ask.
Kim Wehle: [00:00:37] Well, I'm so glad you raised that point that asking or encouraging people to vote is somehow partisan. Because my last book last year was about the Constitution, how to read the Constitution and why. And sometimes talking about what's in the Constitution is perceived as partisan.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:52] This is Kim Wehle. After writing How to Read the Constitution and Why, she wrote a book called What You Need to Know About Voting and Why. And yes, she tells people how to vote and she doesn't think it's political.
Kim Wehle: [00:01:05] The reason that I say go ahead and vote is that we all are Americans and ultimately we are a government by the people. It's not a government by the Republicans or a government by the Democrats or a government by independents. It's government by the people.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:21] Kim's thing is, the framers set us up with this system that would allow us to self-govern. No. Depending on some King's good graces, we would be self-determined here. Voting is the tool they gave us to ensure that.
Kim Wehle: [00:01:36] And if we don't exercise our right to vote, the alternative is that politicians have the power. So I think it I don't think it's partisan really structurally and theoretically to encourage people to self-govern, because that is the compact that we as Americans have by birth. Essentially, that is reflected in the Constitution. And I think it's really doing a disservice. And it is partisan to suggest that somehow voting is not a good idea for any individual, because it's the only way that you can have your views heard regardless of where you are on a policy, whether you believe in climate change, you don't. You support immigration reform, you don't. You want LGBTQ rights, you don't. The way you get that heard is at the ballot box. Otherwise, people in power make that decision for you.
Howdy Doody archive: [00:02:30] But now, kids, here's a sign that says, Hey, kids, tell everybody it's your duty to vote.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:41] Welcome to Civics 101 the podcast about the way our democracy works. This is another episode about voting, but this time we're going to cover quite simply, how to do it.
Howdy Doody archive: [00:02:51] You have to be registered in order to vote.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:54] The ballot box is the place where your political and moral beliefs get amplified. That is where your ideas can become a reality.
Kim Wehle: [00:03:03] So kids, make sure that your moms and dads check the registration days in your community.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:09] Before we dig in, it must be said. Voting is not easy for everyone. There are a lot of laws, practices and policies in this country that end up disenfranchising people. And if you want to know more about that, you can check out the episode about voting right before this one in your podcast feed. It's called Why You Should Vote Even When They Don't Want You To. But if you just want to know how to do the dang thing, well, here we go.
Howdy Doody archive: [00:03:36] Remember, boys and girls, it's their duty and privilege to vote. Make sure that Mom and dad do.
Kim Wehle: [00:03:43] Number one is to register if you want to vote by mail. You have to usually apply to vote by mail in order to then vote by mail. So you have to make sure you're registered at the polls and then request a mail in ballot.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:56] Now, I want to point out that while all states have some form of mail-in voting, about a third of them require you to have some sort of excuse for needing that mail-in ballot. Those excuses range from being out of the country on Election Day to being over a certain age to having a religious reason for not being able to go to the polls.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:15] Though there are more and more cases of people challenging needing to have an excuse, a reason. All right. So registration is step one.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:23] Step two, step two is voting. Just because you've registered doesn't mean when you show up on that day that you're going to be able to vote. You have to make sure that your registration is up to date. If you've moved, you have to let your secretary of state know in your state that you've moved. If you've moved out of state, you have to re-register in the new state. Some states you can show up on voting day and register and that's awesome. But in most states it's a two-step process and you have to do the registration early enough in time and you have to show up at the polls with the requirements that your state mandates. Certain certain states have higher ID requirements than others.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:01] Can we pause this for just one minute? Because I'm forever stuck on this issue of registration and whether I'll actually be on the voter roll when I get to the polling place. I know that when you register to vote, you get placed on a voter roll. That's the list that says who can vote at a certain polling place? How can it be? If I'm a registered voter in my state, I might not be on the list.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:24] Yeah. All right. People who take issue with the way this particular practice plays out call it purging, but states call it list maintenance.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:34] And list maintenance. That is when people's names are taken off the voter roll.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:38] Yes. And to be clear, federal law mandates list maintenance. So this is something that states are required to do. If someone has died or moved or for some reason become ineligible to vote, their name is supposed to be stricken from that list. The specific reasons for canceling a registration are largely up to the states, and they do vary. The idea there is that if lists contain a bunch of people who aren't actually there and or can't actually vote, then you've got an inaccurate representation of a voter pool and you're spending more money on mailing notices, on printing ballots and running elections than you actually need to spend.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:20] Correct me if I'm wrong here, but there are people who say that this is actually a form of voter suppression, aren't there? Like people who haven't moved, who are still very much eligible to vote, who show up at their polling places raring to go and discover their name is not on the list.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:36] This happens - and not just to a handful of people. It happens to many hundreds of thousands of eligible and rightfully registered voters, which in a state where you can register day of. That's annoying, but fine. But in a state where you have to pre-register, that can pose a real problem and that's a problem. We'll be talking about more after the break.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:01] But before the break, it is time for Hannah and I to give our weekly reminder. For those of you who can't get enough civics that we have a newsletter, it's called Extra Credit. It's fun. It comes out every two weeks and you can sign up at our website, civics101podcast.org, or just click the link in the show notes.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:16] And while you're there on the website or in the show notes, you can also click the link to make a donation to this podcast. We are public radio, after all. We entirely depend on you to exist, so thanks. We're back. This is Civics one. One. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:43] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:44] And before the break, we were talking about the very common, very legal and somewhat problematic practice of states purging voter rolls.
Archive: [00:07:54] The staggering purge of some.
Archive: [00:07:55] 200,000 New York City voters from the 20 counties.
Archive: [00:07:59] With a history of voter discrimination have been purging people at higher.
Archive: [00:08:03] Rates than the Texas secretary.
Archive: [00:08:04] Of state's office says. It's questioning the citizenship status of thousands of.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:08] Registered county removes thousands of registered voters on a regular basis for inactivity. It's supposed to catch people who have moved, but we found it can happen to people who have lived at the same address for years.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:21] These are lists with millions of people on them and it's human beings doing the list maintenance and they make mistakes.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:30] A lot of them.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:31] So let's say I am a voter who is nervous about this possibility of a voter roll purge or maintenance or whatever. How do I make absolutely sure that my registration is going to count?
Kim Wehle: [00:08:41] So you have to get your ducks in a row for both. That's why I call it - it's like a recipe. You register and you could add step one be make sure your registration is up to date and then be show up at the polls with whatever documentation that you need to show you. Prove that you are who you are.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:56] Bear with me, Hannah. I'm going to push this just a little bit more because, look, I American voter X am not perfect. And maybe just getting to the polls was tricky enough. Right now in the pandemic, I'm worried about remembering my mask, making sure I have child care taken care of because I can't bring them into the polls. And it's a whole megillah. So let's say I get there, I don't have my ID, but I know I'm eligible, I know I'm registered. What do I do.
Kim Wehle: [00:09:27] If they turn you away? Step three would be always ask for what's called a provisional ballot, which federal law requires them to just give you a backup ballot. Essentially, that may or may not get counted depends on the state. Some states make you then follow up with your documentation, but at least it means that you had an opportunity to have your voice heard. In some measure, you didn't just go home empty-handed.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:50] Also, by the way, some states only require that you sign a form confirming your identity. So the processes vary. The important thing is to ask. Actually, the important thing is to demand. If the polling person is still like, sorry to have cookies, no provisional ballot for you. Then this is what you say. All right, give me a provisional ballot with receipt, as is required by law when requested. Memorize that.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:23] Yeah. Very good. Very lawyerly. The issue of the polling place itself, like I show up armed with confirmed registration and an ID and I know what to say if all else fails and I show up at my polling place and it isn't a polling place at all, it's closed. Or, as we have seen in recent elections, the line is like 6 hours long and I have to go take care of my kids.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:47] This is the slightly mushier thing about accessing the polls and a lot of voting rights advocates would say that stuff like this is pretty hard to defend poll closure or understaffed polls. They happen. They happen a lot. And yes, it means that some people end up basically prohibited from voting. States cite all sorts of reasons for closing polls, by the way, from tight budgets to needing to be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act to a polling place having had in recent years a low turnout. I brought the closing question to Andrea Hailey. She's the CEO of Vote.org. I also asked her if she thought voting was a partisan subject, by the way, and she also said no. And neither, in her estimation, is reasonable access to the polls.
Andrea Hailey: [00:11:41] People should ask that of their county and state officials and say, what are the plans? Because, look, I'm head of Vote.org and when I went to vote on primary day in Indiana, I did not know that they were closing hundreds of polling locations. I didn't know that my I was going to be standing in line for hours at a time. It would. I think states are going to have to if you're going to have massive closures like that, you have to make that really well known to the public. But the public should demand that polling locations stay open. We know that polling locations tend to be closed or more difficult to reach, especially for lower-income folks in this country. I do not think all these closures are a mistake.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:25] The suggestion there is that there is something political going on, isn't it? If these closures aren't mistaken, that means people are being actively, purposefully denied the vote.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:36] There are a lot of people who would say that is not the case - that these measures are in place to protect the vote, to keep the vote secure, keep the process unsullied. And you can't discount the fact that even with the protective measures put in place by our Constitution and various laws, those laws don't always translate into action because they're being translated by fallible, corruptible, self-interested human beings. You know that James Madison quote from the Federalist Papers about men in government.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:09] Yeah. Boy, howdy do. If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:13] Yeah, well, he rounds that thought off by saying if angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. Which to me, is a pretty way of saying, look, behind the glossy operation, there are a bunch of fallible people, and those people need to be checked and checked again because they aren't angels, they're capable of corruption. And in fact, power has a tricky tendency to lead to corruption.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:43] What it sounds like you're suggesting, Hannah, is that we, the people are Madison's external control in this case. We are the ones who look at it from the outside. And we notice when things aren't exactly going the way of the angels.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:55] Yeah, that's my take.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:57] So here's my thing. That's really nice in theory. And the idea that voting is how we implement that external control is great. But given all the difficulties, which again I am now prepped for and given the things we discussed in part one, the Electoral College is the top of mind for me right now. For example, I need to know whether our vote actually works as that external control.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:19] I am going to firmly say yes, yes, and I am sure about that. Remember what we were saying about state and local government? That those are the people who we need to concentrate on, that is where the rubber meets the road.
Andrea Hailey: [00:14:35] I mean, state and local elections are the ones that affect your life more than almost more than any other election. And right now in this protest movement is a really good example of why local government matters. If you want a mayor that will hold a police chief accountable, you got to participate in that mayoral election and make sure that that mayor shares your values. If you want a D.A. that is going to file charges and you elect your D.A., you've got to figure out who that is and what kind of value system they hold. In some southern states you have the Supreme Court is elected in a few of the southern states. That's really important. These are the judges who are going to set the precedent on how your state law is governed.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:27] We have to remember that state laws govern voting. You know, we might not concentrate too much on state and local, but that that is really where the power starts. And your vote can actually govern state laws in a way that's external control.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:43] Even in a presidential election.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:45] Yes, there are almost certainly going to be what's called down-ballot offices on the presidential election ticket, the so-called lower stakes, less important ones, the ones that people don't necessarily pay attention to. But those are the ones you've got to pay attention to. That's where the change starts. And one last thing that I want to bring up on the subject of does my vote matter? Does it make a difference? The Y vote of it all, especially for the people to whom it really matters if they can sway the presidential election. Here's Kim Wehle again.
Kim Wehle: [00:16:24] The votes do matter. I mean, 537 votes in Florida put George Bush in office for eight years. And I don't think anyone can claim that that didn't change the course of not just American history, but global history and totally reshaped the Middle East and all. Most of us could name 537 people that we either know personally have met in our lives or just know of. It's not a lot. So that's number one. Number two is if it lets around 50% of eligible voters vote, you imagine if that were 60% or 70% or 80%. I mean, everyone has said if we grab one person, get them voting, politicians are going to have a harder time ignoring individual Americans in favor of dark money and corporate and corporate money in politics. So it's going to make your vote matter more if there's a tsunami of civic participation. The third piece has to really do with honoring the privilege of our ancestors and the privilege of actually having free and fair elections. I mean, Americans don't understand. It's not every country where even in a democracy that seems like a democracy where you really do have a government that is accountable to the people, that is not all in bed with, you know, power brokers and money gangsters. I mean, that is it's a real privilege. I mean, you could be maybe you're a religious person that you believe in a higher power. I feel like I'm blessed. And it's a gift to have been born and have my children born in this country. And it's honoring that gift. It's honoring that privilege that not everyone in the planet has.
Nick Capodice: [00:17:59] I have to tell you, Hannah, when I talk about voting and what I think about voting, I come to it lately, especially with a healthy dose of skepticism, sometimes cynicism. And Kim and you frankly are helping remind me that, yeah, we are a representative democracy and not everybody has that in this world. And it is a gift. It's something that we have to do.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:21] Yeah. And I think part of the idea is the only way to preserve it is to participate in it. Right? So go out and vote while you can. Thanks for listening to Civics 101. This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:01] And me, Nick Capodice
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:02] And it was edited by executive producer Rebecca Lavoie.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:04] Music in this episode includes tracks by Silicon Transmitter, The Tides, Spectacular Sound Productions, Shaolin Dub and Zylo Zyko.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:11] For more Civics 101 Follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like the show, find it useful, interesting, fun, whatever, share it on your social media, with your best friend, or your cranky uncle.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:24] We love the cranky uncle. The cranky uncle is such a character ....
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:28] I have one.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:29] I do too.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:30] I love chatting with my cranky uncle.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:32] My cranky uncle always knows what's right. Nick, I'm going to tell you the truth here. If he hears that I love you so much, uncle BLEEP. And lastly, sign up for our newsletter or make a donation to support our work at civics101podcast.org.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:47] Civics 101 is a production of NPR New Hampshire Public Radio.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:51] All right.