Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to consider the importance of voting both in our governmental system in the abstract and in the upcoming 2020 election, and try to make sense of the disconnect we often see in our SOC over the exercise of the franchise.
Joining me today is a man who, like Franklin Roosevelt, believes that the safeguard of democracy is education, because democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. Tunde. Ogunlana Tunde, are you ready to dispense some wisdom?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Always, sir. Always. All right. That's why I was born.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: All right. Also joining me today is a man who, like Thomas Jefferson, believes that Americans do not have a government by the majority, but rather a government by the majority who participate. Rick Ellsley. Rick, are you ready to share your thoughts on participation?
[00:01:14] Speaker C: Yes, I am. Thank you for inviting me again. All right. All right.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Now we're recording this on October 11, 2020, and we want to discuss voting in the American system today.
There's a lot there. There's a lot to unpack with this topic. So we wanted to start broadly and then drill down into some specifics as far as what's going on right now. So, Tunde, broadly speaking, why would you say that voting even matters in our governmental system?
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Well, I think voting is the one way. I mean, let's get real simplistic with it. It's the one way that the population has a chance to engage with its leadership, no matter what kind of society we're talking about, whether America or somewhere else.
And so voting is, you know, I would say it's our collective responsibilities
[00:02:00] Speaker A: as
[00:02:01] Speaker B: citizens of this nation to actively participate in the direction of our country over a long period of time through voting. I mean, I don't know how else to put it, but it's important for that reason. If we don't vote as a society and as collectively as citizens of the nation, then someone else is going to determine the direction for us.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: So it's the best, and there are plenty of people who would like to determine it for us.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: I think Winston Churchill said something to this effect, that it's the best system ever created until humanity figures out something better.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: No, he said. No, it was the reverse. He said that it's the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Okay, I stand corrected. But I think we meet somewhere in the same place. It's a similar thought, though.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: It's a similar thought. Yeah. Rick, what about you, man? Why do you think that voting, the act of voting, why do you think that matters in our governmental system?
[00:02:50] Speaker C: As United States citizens, we have been blessed with an amazing system. It may not be the best, but it's just a minimal. It's our duty. Other than jury duty and paying your taxes, your duty is to vote. It's to honor the people who sacrificed for us. It's to honor the fact that you live in this great country. And you know, we are a democratic republic, so our votes are for representatives for our government. And I think it's a very important value.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: I mean, and what you mean when you say a democratic republic, it's a representative democracy, what that means basically and what that the point that's distinguished there is versus direct democracy. Would you see that? Like with issues like in California they have proposition this or proposition that, or in Florida a lot of times we get to vote on specific issues. But a representative democracy is more so where you vote on the people who will represent you and then those people then actually have their hands on the lever of power. Either way though, those people are democratically elected. So when people get into these arguments about oh, is this a democracy or this and that, it's really misguided across the board because we do play a role in selecting. We may not choose the tax rate per se, but we do play a role through our vote in selecting the people who will then put their hands on the lever of power and select the tax rate or the law for this and that. For me, broadly speaking, I think that voting is mistaken. A lot of times voting people, we frame it as this individual thing or something that individuals have to do. And I think by framing it that way, a lot of times people will then look at the number of people and say that, well, for me individually it's insignificant because there's so many people. So what is my one vote going to mean? And I think that's just the wrong headed way to look at it. Voting is important. Voting is significant in our school system of government because voting is actually a collective act. It's us as a society making a selection and each member of that society is part of that collective. And so when you take the temperature of our society and only certain people are speaking up, so to speak, and saying, okay, well I like this or I don't like that, you get a distorted view of the impression of our society.
Actually there's a kids movie from a few years back called Inside out and they displayed Emotions as different characters in the movie. There's sadness and joy and anger and fear. And each one of those played a role in the operation of the person who was the kid that had those emotions inside of them. And if one or two of them weren't participating, the whole system got distorted. Because other emotions then were able to play an outsized role, whether relative to what they should have. So when I tell people as far as what you need to do as far as voting, there's some to it as far as like yes, you need to vote that make your voice heard, but it's also to just balance out everybody else's voice. So we don't have people who are fanatical about this or fanatical about that having an outsized voice. Everybody needs to participate so that the collective as a whole, the voice can be and the sensibilities of our collective as a whole can be what's represented. Not just some hyper motivated segment that is always showing up. And then people who are kind of just, well, it's all good one way or the other. We need their voice too. Because you know what? Everything isn't life or death like some people would have you believe.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Well, I think you bring up a good point across the board from a national, from a state, from a local standpoint. Voting is the key to change and it's the key to the status quo as well. If that's what happens.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: It's the key to power and control. And I think that, I mean, I think part of the problem is that people who are apathetic a lot of times believe that or feel like that. Oh well, I don't follow it that much. So therefore I'm not comfortable making these selections. But I would say that that's still, that's not right. Because the people who do follow it all that much are not necessarily more knowledgeable. It's really, that's why I said it's really about taking the collective temperature. When you see this or see that, what's your feeling on that? That's how you express that basically based on what you're receiving and whether if you're a person who's deep down in the books, then that'll be your approach. If you're a person that just goes by your gut, that's part of it too. But we want all of that. This is like if we're all in a room and the Temperature's set to 60 degrees and only certain people speak up and say, no, no, I think it's fine. The people that might Be cold. If they don't speak up and say, no, no, no, this is too cold, then the system doesn't get any feedback to say, hey, maybe 60 degrees is too cold. Like, the current conditions aren't acceptable. So I think we need the feedback from people regardless. We need their impressions. It doesn't have to be an academic impression.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Can I jump in real quick? The system we have of voting, constitutional republic, so on and so forth is really to prevent basically anarchy and wars. I mean, I think it was Claude Klaus Van Cloudwitz, I can't remember how to pronounce his name exactly, but a German military kind of historian and philosopher in the 1800s had a great saying, and he said basically that war is politics by another means.
So at the end of the day, when you have a large society of hundreds of millions of people, like we do in the United States, in order to solve problems, the electoral system, in a sense, and voting is the. Again, that's by the joke we had at the beginning, is the best system we got, or it's better than every other system, however we want to put it.
Unless we want to have more things, because, you know, we're here at this point in getting into mid October of 2020, we just had men arrested this week for threatening to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
And again, whether one likes that governor or not is not the point. The point is that that's probably not that productive for our society if people feel they should be solving their disagreements politically like that. So the idea of voting is that we all participate to keep a certain level of civility in society so that we don't have constant kind of kinetic strife and civil wars. So that, to me, is another important reason to keep this stuff going.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Rick, did you want to have one final thought on that?
[00:09:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I just think Tunde is right. Just to follow up on his point real quick, is that it doesn't really matter which way. It's just, hey, guys, for so many years, people have just complained and haven't voted, and we need to really look at turnout and get out there and figure it out. So I think it's very important that each person who complains and has complained in the past about the status of our country and to do things differently needs to get out and vote. And, you know, there's people now, thank goodness, that are very vocal about it and are getting involved that previously didn't.
And I think that's a very important thing. It's the basic duty of every citizen to vote, serve on jury Duty and pay taxes.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: And that's interesting with that. I know you mentioned that before and I think that we can look at those as obligations, but they're also solutions to problems that existed before. And that goes back to the Churchill quote. It's the worst form, except everything else has been tried. Not jury duty. Yeah, people may not like to do that, but the reason that that exists is so that people who are accused of something can, can receive judgment from a jury of their peers and not just some guy who is in power because he was born that way or because some person with a lot of money put him there. And so jury duty is, it's a, it's a obligation, so to speak, but it's also to protect you, to protect your son or to protect your, your friend or whatever if they're falsely accused. Particular. And so voting is kind of the same type of thing. We want politicians, people who have their hands on the lever of power to be, to at least feel like they have accountability to people. And the way you make them feel like that is by voting. If you don't vote, actually they do not feel like they're accountable to you.
And honestly that's for good reason because they're not, because they know you won't show up. You could do whatever, you could show up and kick them out of their house or whatever, and you're not going to show up to vote them out. So, you know, they're not thinking that they're accountable to you. They're accountable to the people who they believe if they don't make them happy, will show up and vote. Not for them. I also wanted to ask though, like seeing the efforts that are made to undermine people's vote, you know, like we, it's not, this isn't in the abstract, you know, like every people do watch the news or see reports where, you know that you have voter suppression or where you have wide scale voter apathy without even the suppression, just, I'm not interested, I'm not gonna do it. And we see that historically, we see it in the present. What do you make that such significant chunks of the American people just have an aversion to the exercise of the franchise by everyone. Either an aversion themselves or they don't want other people to vote for whatever reason. What do you make of that? Cause it's not like Americans don't think of themselves as being in favor of voting, you know, but if you look around and you say, okay, well, people for this nation of people who think that voting is important A lot of people don't vote, and a lot of people are good with trying to stop other people from voting through illicit means. You know, what do you guys make of that?
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Look, I think that, like a lot of reflection of human psychology in societies. I think a lot of people like the idea of democracy and of an open society and sharing beliefs and all that. But I think in reality, people are, you know, scared of other ideas that may not conform with their own. So, you know, when. When things like that, you know, when they kind of come together, those two forces, right? This idea that I like to be in an open society, I like to think of a democracy as where all these shared ideas, you know, in this kind of public square of thinking versus I don't want that person or that group to get in power because they're going to impose their will on me, and I'm not going to be comfortable at that. I think when both of those kind of, you know, confront each other in the human mind, I think the fear takes over and I think more people regress back to saying, okay, well, you know, I'd rather just do what's comfortable than take the risk of finding out if their political opponent will be. Would be something they'd like to see in power. And I think that goes on every side of the political spectrum. That's not to pick on one side or the other. So I think what happens, and we've all kind of talked about this stuff, I think whether it's us here on the show or the listeners, I mean, you've got these great documentaries like Social Dilemma on Netflix now. I think that's what social media and cable news and talk radio have done over the past decade. Plus has promoted so much fear and distrust towards the other, especially the other political view, not the other race or religion as much as the other political way of thinking that people now can't even bring themselves to accept that someone other than their perceived political group and mindset is going to be in power after this election. So if you're a Democrat, you can't stand to think of the idea of Donald Trump having another four years and how that's going to destroy the United States. And if you're a Republican, you can't stand to think of the idea of Joe Biden and the quote, unquote, socialist left taking over.
And again, whether either side is right or wrong doesn't really matter. It's just unhealthy for this type of polarization in this society.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: What do you think, Rick?
[00:14:36] Speaker C: Well, I mean, I Agree. I just think that hopefully the silver lining will be that we can get people more engaged in a productive way. You know, when we talked about doing this podcast with voting, I took a look back and I just wondering, you know, where. Where have we been as a country since we started voting? And if you look at some of these statistics from some of these studies that have been done and the US Census, there was a study, actually, University of Florida Department of History with my alma mater, Professor Michael McDonald, did a study that the US voter turnout from 1789 to the present, and it goes, you know, each election year and midterm year, when you look at this, we had 56% voting in 2016, according to the Pew research, right, 56% of eligible voters voted. But when you look back, you know, that's not a lot.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Number one, I think you can make the point that there's just not a significant amount of participation amongst the electorate as far as people could vote versus people who do. I think, I mean, that point is legit. I mean, no, that's inarguable, you know, and I wouldn't argue with it. I think that, I mean, looking at from both sides, I think there's a psychological thing at play with.
And this is just plays out across the board. Like some people are confident and comfortable in speaking on things that they don't really know about, like that you might run across. Like some people you'll meet, you know, they'll know a little bit about a topic and they'll just tell you they know it all and they'll be 100% sure as far as what they know. And it may be, you know, they say little knowledge is dangerous. Like that's the thing. But that's only with some people. Some people, when they have a little knowledge, for whatever reason, they become very sure of themselves and will act on it. Other people, when they have a little knowledge or not a bunch of expertise in terms of a topic, will kind of pull back and just instinct, like that's just how they're wired. They'll just pull back and they won't be as assertive about it. And I think you have that a lot of times with the voting is that I feel like people who, a lot of times people who don't vote just don't feel like they know enough about the issues to vote, which is why I always say it's not about that.
Don't look at other people as knowing a lot. Like people, nobody really knows a lot about the issues. And the people who do have a lot of information about the issues. A lot of times can't see the forest for the trees. So we're really coming from all very similar place. That's why it's really about your impression of what's going on. And that's what we need to take to the temperature of. And so, but I, so I think that apathy, a lot of times I, I, I'm sympathetic to the apathy of, I don't really know that much about this, so I don't really want to speak on it because I respect that mindset if we're talking about running a business or something like that. But I don't think voting works like that. Like that's not what voting is. And on the other, on the other piece, just with the suppression, I think Tunde is 100% right. Like, I think that that's another human element of this thing, a human thing that when we disagree with someone, we want to minimize their ability to do things that we don't like. And so in that instance, what you see oftentimes is a higher allegiance to winning a argument or getting something done than to our system of government, of voting. And so they say, look, screw the vote if we don't win or if we're not going to win. And so I think then that's dangerous.
I don't think that's really a both sides issue. Like we have a party of voter suppression in this country.
And I mean, and that's clear, you know, like we have a party who had a consent decree against them, you know, in the courts, federal courts, for the last 40 years that just expired because they literally were actively trying to suppress people from voting. And that's all back on the table now. So I don't think that's a both sides issue. There is an issue with that. So I mean, it depends what year play in, but go ahead.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: It depends what year. If we're talking about the Dixiecrats, you got another side there?
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Well, yeah, well, but depends what you're talking about. Yeah, the Dixiecrats became, you know, the Dixiecrats became the current people, you know, like that they were incorporated into the Republican Party with the Southern Strategy. So I mean, but it's not just them now. And I agree with you though, if you go back some time, a lot of people did voter suppression, you know, it wasn't just, you know, like the current modern Republican Party has that problem.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: Yeah. My point is kind of what you're saying, which is it doesn't matter what you call them, Republicans, Democrats, it depends on the era and where they're, you know, where they're, what they're doing.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Correct. I'm not saying it's something that is unique to the modern Republican Party. I'm saying that currently, right now, it's the modern Republican Party that's doing this. If you go back throughout time, other parties have done it. I mean, you know, Democratic names have changed, stances have changed and everything like that. So right now, the issue that we have with suppression is primarily a one sided issue. The issue we have with apathy seems to just be an issue in general. Like the numbers you pointed out, Rick. That just seems to be. Everybody seems to be subject to that.
But basically I think that it's still a problem either way. It's something we need to talk about and then something we need to figure out a way to address separately, both sides because we need more people to participate.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: Well, if you look at that Pew Research from May 21st of 2018, they did this article which I think really says something sad about our country. Of 32 developed nations, the United States was 26th in percenting in the percentage of voting age, population that actually voted. I mean, 26 out of 32.
What are the other countries doing? A lot of them are, are European, some of them are Asian that are doing to, to get that vote out. Now what, what that article pointed out was some of those statistics were because they have compulsory voting. You're born, you're registered to vote. Oh, and also sometimes the police come to your house and drag you out of it to vote. So we have to look at that. And you don't really have a free voluntary choice. So some of those statistics are probably skewed. But this is the United States of America. We should.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Well, hold on. No, Rick. But they're not skewed.
They just represent different approaches. And I think that you have to. That's actually very instructive in the sense that that's how important they take voter participation, like in our country.
My point actually in combining the suppression with this discussion was that I don't think we can say that it is an American value for everyone to vote. Like we have segments of our population who strategically have decided that they do not want everyone to vote. Voter registration isn't something that is universal or anything like that. Like, yeah, some countries you're born, you're registered to vote.
As soon as you turn 18, you're registered to vote. It's instant. In Oregon, I think that that's the case right now.
It's not Something like, so we require people to register to vote, we require extra steps. And then we do things, we as collectively the nation, to undermine people's registration, or we throw people off the rolls because their name was similar to somebody else who shouldn't have been voted or anything like that. So I don't think as a nation we have a commitment where we, even collectively, all of us want everyone to vote. And if you have that, then of course we're gonna come in. Well, we're gonna come in 26 to 32, because we don't even want everybody to vote half the time. Or a lot of significant chunks of our population are actively working to prevent people from voting.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: Let me jump in here too, because, Rick, you're right. I lived in Australia for almost five years in the 90s, and that's one thing I remember that, you know, just remembering as just living there that they would find. They would find people for not voting in their elections. And so if you didn't vote, you paid, you know, I don't remember what the exact dollar amount. It wasn't huge, but let's say it was 100 bucks. You know, you just paid some nominal fine. And it's funny, we're talking about this. I've never really talked about this without, you know, I never really had a need to, but I used to always think that's an interesting symbolic gesture of the society because what they're saying as a country is we, we take this ability for you to participate in the system serious enough that we're going to consider it something that you should be fined if you don't. And so just like that, I mean, that just kind of the average person that is apathetic might be stirred to move and pull the lever to vote one way or another if they know they're going to get hit with a little fine.
[00:22:46] Speaker C: But what.
But I was just going to say, if we're from an aspirational standpoint, why should that be necessary? Maybe I'm naive and I probably am
[00:22:57] Speaker B: on this, but I don't think it's about people should want to vote. Yeah, but remember, people should want to do a lot of things, right? They should want to not smoke cigarettes. They should want to exercise and walk 30 minutes a day. They should want to, you know, eat healthy. They should want the planet to survive, you know, and not. Not, not be choked out with. With fossil fuel emissions. So there's a lot of things that we all think that we should want.
But then, you know, each individual, when asked to put it into practice something, you know, we all are individuals, so collectively we're going to go a direction or not based on, I guess, our culture. And if our culture is not, doesn't push participation as part of our culture, national culture, then it's just not going to happen. And we're going to have the statistics that you, that you read about the apathetic voting and pushing that is something
[00:23:44] Speaker C: I think we'll talk about later, where all the industries that you see now are really coming together to get out the vote. You can't see a commercial or get online and see a digital marketing ad where they're not asking you to vote. But my point was, if it's compulsory registration, I'm okay with that. But voting to avoid a fine, to me, that is.
I don't know that I agree that that's such a great thing.
I think that we have to inspire, I think that we have to educate, especially in the schools, about the importance of voting, have discussions like we're having today across the board at all levels and get people to understand the importance of voting. And I think that's important.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: And when I look back, that's not to say that you can't do both. I'm not saying whether it's a good idea to have fines, punishment for not voting or not. I think that it's just instructive to recognize different approaches.
And so you yourself, from a policy standpoint may disagree with that, but you can still acknowledge that that's a different approach and it does send a different signal in terms of the importance of something.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Now, whether you would go along with it or not, or whether you would, if that was on the ballot, you would say no, but. And I think that you gotta be careful, man, because you get lost into this romanticized version of democracy in terms of if you just teach people enough that they will then vote. But like Tunde said, you gotta live in reality, man. Like, conceivably you could teach people that, hey, you shouldn't dump poison in the lake that you're about to drink in out of. But that doesn't seem to work. Like, people will still pollute and then go fish in that lake and then support the person who's polluting, you know, like in that lake, and say, no, no, no, I know I fish in that lake, but I just think this company should be able to dump poison in this lake because that's just liberty to me. And so that's the reality of the situation.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: And so in the reality situation, matter of factly, sir, they shouldn't be allowed to pollute in that river.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: You're f. Come on, man.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Very presumptive of me. Huh? You don't want that three eyed fish like on the Simpsons intro. Remember that thing, you know, Mr. Burns over here with Smithers polluting the river. Come on guys.
[00:25:50] Speaker C: This three eyed fish tastes pretty good.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Well, no, so I'm just saying like you gotta stay in reality though. Also like it's, it would be great if everyone could be sufficiently inspired. But I don't think we've ever seen that. I mean, so you know, it's kind of far fetched.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: I, I don't know that it's so far fetched. I have to draw that back a little bit, I guess where you're coming from. I mean, maybe inspirational.
My point, my point is if we educate people a little bit more, I just don't believe that that taxing people to vote would mean that that's such a good. Excuse me. Taxing people if they don't vote or somehow punishing them if they don't vote is, is a good thing. One thing that I think might be good is we have a national holiday or something that gives everybody, you know, that particular day off. We already have early voting, but that particular day off and then, you know, proof that you voted. You can still get paid for your, for your job that day or some other solution. I don't know. But when you talk about recognizing the.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: I'm not saying, again, I'm not arguing that it is the right. I mean what they were saying. It's a very interesting approach.
[00:26:47] Speaker C: Oh yeah, there's approaches.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: It seems pretty extreme to me as well. But I think that I'm also pushing back on you on saying that like what evidence would you point to to say that it's possible to inspire people to vote en masse like that, like that just doesn't.
[00:27:02] Speaker C: Well, I mean, I don't know that there, that there is yet, but I'm hoping that we can use some of this energy that we see on both sides of this to get a great turnout for 2020. I mean, I.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Well, yeah, yeah, I mean we're hopeful for that. I do want to get to the specific challenges of this election because it does look like we're ramping up for at least a high desire to participate. Now, whether the actual participation happens due to pandemic due to efforts being made to prevent participation.
You know, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll see. You know, there's no way to know really. In Advance. But so what stands out to you about the specific challenges we're facing with turnout and choice in 2020? Rick, you can go ahead and get
[00:27:46] Speaker B: started on this one.
[00:27:47] Speaker C: Well, I was just going to say we have this issue with the mailing, and now there's this perception that if you mail your vote in, it may not get there. But in response to that, or what I have seen when you are on Facebook or when you're watching a video that someone sends you on YouTube or just anything, turn on the television, hear it on the radio, satellite radio, am.
Every industry I can think of collectively is really trying to get people to vote. The scientific community wrote an unprecedented letter. I saw something from the New England Journal of Medicine recently. There are the journalistic community, military commanders that used to serve. A lot of people are out there signing letters that say, get out and vote. And I just think that's unprecedented. And what's interesting is, and maybe it's just the stuff that I see in here, which is probably true, but they're all on the same side of this. I mean, it's very interesting to see in the public realm people who previously wouldn't be comfortable speaking out and taking a political position, actually stepping up and lending their name, signing a letter, speaking out on a. On a broadcast, being part of a political ad. And a lot of nonpartisan groups, social, religious, otherwise economic, are getting out there and saying, you got to get out and vote.
And I think that that's a great thing. And I think that that gets back to our earlier point to try to get people out there to vote.
And maybe they will stand in line for two days because some of these ads are talking about you may need to stand in that line for a day or two days, and maybe that'll motivate people.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: That seems like a terrible, terrible thing. They're saying it got. I haven't seen those but two days. Well, but I mean that to me, when I talk about the specific challenges for 2020, that is my biggest concern is just there seems to be not a lot of will to want amongst the leadership, the current leadership, to want to count all the votes or to make it difficult when you see efforts to reduce the number of polling locations, which seems to be not productive in terms of getting more people to vote that county.
Yeah, yeah. Well, Tunde sent something to us a couple days ago where it was in the state of Texas, they were limiting the number of drop boxes for early battens to one per county, which is like, it's ridiculous on many different levels. You know, because Texas is a big state, you have very populous counties, and then you have counties that are very spread out. It's like, it doesn't seem like it's going to help anybody. Well, it would help. Obviously, they're just trying to restrict how many people can vote, which, again, it doesn't seem like there is a will to get everybody to vote. And so I think the challenges that we face actually are more structural right now than even voter, and for good reason. Like you had mentioned, there's a lot of public support for voting right now, but there are a lot of people in power, it seems like, that are actively working to make it more difficult. Like, it's ridiculous, the thought that you'd have to stand in line for two days to vote like that. That means something's wrong with the voting system.
[00:30:53] Speaker C: That is why it's so important to vote, because the people who are making those decisions were elected, for the most part, it's an administrative roadblock. And those are.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: No, I mean, that's actually the reason to vote more than anything is so that that doesn't happen to you again.
You know, you got to put people in power that aren't trying to actively restrict people to vote.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: What about you, man?
[00:31:14] Speaker B: What are you looking at? That says a lot to it, James, is there's some people that the ends justify the means. And I think that's what we're seeing, too. And it's like you guys said, this goes beyond political parties and all that, because we could all look back at different times of history. In history, this has been morphed between different political ideologies, different parties. That's why, to me, whether it's far left or far right, it's all the same.
Because the idea is far right. Someone that is more extreme in their view is less likely to see their opponent as someone worthy of even having a voice.
And so when you look at that in kind of even today's landscape, like you're talking about, clearly, what saddens me is I feel like this administration is behaving this way out of their own security. Sorry, their own insecurity. And it's obvious. I mean, if you felt secure about not only your ability to win, but you believed in democracy the way that we all think it should be, where everyone has a voice and a fair chance to have their voice heard, then you either have to. You know, you would either see them as confident that they were going to win no matter who voted and wouldn't be playing these games, or they would Accept that maybe the will of the people's changed under their watch. And, you know, if they get voted out, they get voted out, and let's see how it plays out.
So what I think we're seeing is that there's some people that, because let's say their side, quote unquote, or their ideology is in power, they're okay with seeing these levers of government being used in order to go around what many of us that are looking at this see as the democratic process like we're talking about. I mean, I think it was Harris county in Texas, which is where I believe Houston is located, has 2 million residents, and they removed 11 out of 12 polling locations.
So, I mean, no one can tell me with a straight face that you really want everyone to vote if the governor makes moves like that. And the sad part is because there's a lot of assumptions out there, right? It's assumed that minorities are going to vote for Democrats.
And so, like you said, James, Texas is a huge state, but there are more minorities in the Houston area than there might be in the Fort Worth or other areas in the state of Texas. So the governor is doing this as a way to try and suppress votes from his political opponents because he's not a Democrat. And so. And that's kind of like plain and obvious. And that's my point, is no matter what political party I'm in, I would prefer to see my party, this is me, as an individual win through winning their argument with the voters and doing it what I would think is the right way. But I'm not everybody. And I recognize that there's some people that don't care about winning a fair fight, and they're interested in just maintaining power, and the ends justify the means. So I think that's what we're seeing. It's nothing new in humanity. I mean, we're just living through it.
And this whole show, what we're talking about, is correct. For people that don't like seeing that you have to exercise your right to vote because the only alternative is then physical conflict.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Well, you have to balance out. No, you have to balance out the radicals. And that's really what you're talking about. I mean, right now, at this current time, in 2020, the party that has kind of gone to the far extreme is the Republican Party, at least in terms of their leadership.
And so they are adopting an incjustifiable.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Can I stop you then for an explanation, James? That's very important, because a lot of people I know would say that why are you picking on Republicans? The left. Look at how far the left has gone. So can you explain to me in the audience?
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: Why do you say that in this example, though? I know there's a lot of different examples, but specifically with the voting issue.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Well, with the voting issue right now, yeah. The issue that we have is that this dates back to the 70s. The Republican Party basically decided strategically at that point that they want to try to limit the number of people that vote. Paul Weinrich, one of the consultants for the Republican Party back this was 1980s.
You can find this on YouTube, saying that we don't want everyone to vote. The more people that vote, the higher the voter turnout, the lower our leverage in the election is. So this has been a strategic decision that they've made. In 1980, they had the voter watch armed people showing up at polls in New Jersey. This is what led to the consent decree that I'm talking, that I referenced. From time to time, they have armed people showing up at polls for the Republican Party voter monitoring group or something like that to intimidate people from voting, to try to stop people from voting. And they got sued for that and then agreed to a settlement basically, that said, hey, you're not allowed to show up with guns to try to intimidate people from voting. That just expired in 2018. And so actually, what happens is when Donald Trump has gotten up a few times and said, hey, I want people at the polls.
They're recruiting people to be armed at the polls. That's because they just. This is the first election since 1980 where they weren't barred by court order from doing that. And so they're gearing up to do it. So basically. And then you have the scenario like North Carolina, for example, just recently in the last 10 years.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Explain that one.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's where they are specifically designing rules.
And also at the same time, they're, they're, they're creating the legislative districts, but they're setting up rules to specifically stop minorities from voting. You know, like, that's the rule, the way the rule is. And in fact, when they got sued, what does that mean? They tried to defend it in federal court, say, well, there's a lot of different ways to do it. That's my point.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Because when, when someone hears that, what they, what they might interpret it as, oh, that there's actually somebody saying, you just can't vote because you're, you know. So if you wanted to cut me off.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: No, no, that was admitted in open court.
That was admitted in open Court, the judge said, wow, that's about as big of a smoking gun as I could imagine. You can say, and I'm not going to be able to recount everything because this is going on at all times. But my point is that that's been a tactic that has been taken to actively prevent people from voting. Okay, so you just cited the example for Harris county in Texas that on its face would seem to be something that is not specifically targeted to help one party or hurt one party, hey, per county, one polling location or one Dropbox, excuse me, for ballots.
But the effect of that is to harm the counties where there are more people, where if it's 2 million people, that hurts you more than if there's 100,000 people. So I say that not as a partisan issue. I would say that anyone who's paying attention can say, see those examples that you don't have counter examples of that in the Democratic Party. Now, if you go back to the 1950s, you do the Democratic Party was doing all that stuff then, like, these aren't new tactics, you know. And then I guess you go back, go to Chicago and in the 70s, you know, the Democratic Party was doing that stuff with Daley and stuff like that. So it's just right now the Democratic Party isn't doing that stuff. And so it's I, when I say it's not a partisan issue per se, it's just right now what's going on is specifically the Republican Party, but it's not inherently the Republican Party in fact or. Go ahead, Rick, go ahead.
[00:38:33] Speaker C: Well, I was just going to say you're right to kind of, you know, point out some of the historical it doesn't matter what the party is in power. It's just who's in power.
But you know, and I'm not so sure about this, maybe I'm venture but I don't think that the Democratic Party is being run by the extreme that it seems like the Republican Party kind of is with Trump. But I don't even know that Trump is the traditional Republican Party. And that's the whole thing.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Well, yeah, he's not. He's taking advantage of the right.
[00:39:00] Speaker C: And that's what worries me about the election. Because do we want to be sitting here in February? And you have me on say, well, you know, there's still not a concession. We don't know in February, you know, typically what happens was they fight, they go, they vote. You kind of know who's going to be inaugurated by Inauguration Day. We had Bush v. Gore, and that was just closed because of the election process. But you didn't once have somebody saying, I'm never going to accept the results of the election. I mean, that's where structural elements scare. Right? The. The structural. Which she said in 2016 as well, right before. But the structural element that Tunde, I think that you guys both have been saying a little bit. That's what really scares me about this. When the President of the United States said, I won't accept the election results unless I think it's fair. And he has support. He's not in an island on that. That people have been vocal, not just in his circle, but outside his circle, in the leadership of his party, saying, well, we don't know. You know, that scares me.
And it just scares me. And the system is.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: And it goes to what Tunde was saying, where there are people right now that basically are of the mind that the ends justify the means and the ends are to end up in power. So how they end up in power is not like. So, I mean, that's a good point. Just as far as there's a. Basically, there is a undercurrent right now that if the system doesn't place me in power, then I'm going to throw the system out, but I'm going to use the system.
[00:40:28] Speaker C: Right. And I also want to pick up on that with Governor Whitmer in Michigan, because his rhetoric was really anti Governor Whitmer and all of these things that she was doing that he didn't like. And you've got these crazy militia. We still today, I think since last week when they announced it, have not heard, you know, a statement from the president, at least that I have seen, or maybe even a speech that says, this is absolutely unacceptable. We are all Americans. We are united. It doesn't matter what your party is. That is.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: You're not going to see that.
[00:40:57] Speaker C: No, but this is. No, I understand. That's my point, is that we are now kind of outside the structural system. Any president of the other party would have stood up and said, what are you doing? And I condemn this in the strongest possible terms and try to bring us together to unify. But the dog whistle at the debate with the. With the proud boys and then this thing, they're going to overthrow the government. They said they wanted a civil war for this. And in the pictures that they showed, they had one of the sheriffs in one of the counties there or cities that was participating in this a few years ago.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw that. And Rick, but let's not forget, man, this is a guy that honestly, and everybody kind of washed it under the rug. I mean, in his first six months, seven months in office, you know, there was a crystal knock, repeat in Charlottesville, Virginia, literally guys holding torches saying, Jews will not replace us. And he said there was fine people on both sides of that march.
[00:41:50] Speaker C: I'm not surprised. I'm just angry.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: There's nothing. This is not about him. There's nothing about him that should surprise us at all. Here's what I would say, though, is I'm also a little bit tired of everybody kind of always being scared of the whiny bully, because he's also been shown that when he gets punched in the nose, he's not that tough. And I think that who cares what he says if he loses the election? That's my point.
I would hope that the other party just acts like they should act and that Joe Biden shows up to the White House at some point and says, give me the keys, dude. And that's where the electorate is very important.
If Americans get in the street. I mean, think about what we saw this summer. You know, for all the rhetoric and all this, like you said, the irresponsibility of telling people to liberate Michigan months ago and all that, that leads some people, obviously not most people that are fans of Donald Trump will go do crazy stuff like this. But there are people on the fringes. So leadership's important. And you're right, we've never seen any leader in the United States like this, period.
[00:42:53] Speaker C: But we voted him. We voted him.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: No, the point is, is that if you had 2, 300 people at those things, that the government at the Michigan State Capitol, but you had literally hundreds of thousands of Americans protesting for racial justice and all that kind of stuff we saw over the summer. My point is that the numbers are much more in the favor of those that don't like where this is going.
And that's what scares the people in power, is they know that if they allow everyone to vote, they're probably out. And my point is, is that I think it's imperative among everybody that takes this democracy seriously that if it appears that Joe Biden fairly won the election, obviously it's gotta be, you know, a fairly won election and clear, and the President of the United States, who is Donald Trump, decides that he doesn't wanna step down, then obviously Americans gotta do something about it and be in the street and let their voices be heard.
[00:43:52] Speaker C: Well, I don't.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: I don't mean 5,000 people. I'm talking about millions I don't know.
[00:43:56] Speaker C: I don't know that I agree with that. I think the military will remove the president. But do you want to see that like some, you know, crazy banana republic
[00:44:04] Speaker A: that actually opens up a whole nother can of worms?
[00:44:06] Speaker B: I'm just saying that you'd much rather
[00:44:08] Speaker A: have the people remove the president.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: But that's what I'm a point is whatever happens, if this doesn't go smoothly, let's put it that way, and I mean this smoothly. No, I know, but if the president wins, he wins, and that's life, right? If he wins fairly in an election. But if he wins, hold on.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: Let's stick to the vote, because we've already. I think that when people tell you things, you should believe them. And the president and many of his supporters, Lindsey Graham, they've already said that they are trying to win this through the courts. So they've already conceded that the vote is going to be something that is not their strong point and that they're going to try to sue their way to delay certification or to get things certified in a different way by the courts. That's part of the reason why they're trying to get another Supreme Court justice on before the vote happens.
So that's dealing with the 2020 election and what we see. I think that Rick pointed to something very interesting, which was just how from a civic standpoint, socially, we're seeing a lot more entities, a lot of entities that are coming out in favor of just voting and that voting actually shouldn't be a partisan message.
I want everyone to vote and then whatever. Again, the collective will of the people is that we'll go by that. But I also believe that the collective will of the people will be by and large, good. It'll advance us.
So if you actually don't believe that the collective will of the people would be good, then maybe that may be a reason why you would want to suppress the vote. But in that case, then maybe you picked the wrong country, because this is a country where the collective will of the people should have certain level of control. But what do you think would have to happen for more Americans to come together about just the concept of voting?
And that could be in this election or moving forward. I mean, we are a government of the people, by the people and for the people, at least we're supposed to be. And so what can be done to make voting itself less of a partisan issue, more of an issue of something we're proud of?
And maybe that's already happening. Maybe what we've seen over the last four years is what can make that happen.
But you know, tell me what you think, Tunde, what do you have on this one?
[00:46:16] Speaker B: I just think it's. And I don't know how to fix this, but I think the problem is like, and we alluded to this a bit earlier, one that you guys did in your comments that you know, people are looking for information, people want to be informed, right? And we are in changing times and environment over the last decade, two decades, and then we got the pandemic, other things that are scaring people. So I think the problem we have is that there are people holding them out themselves out there as experts on any of the cable news networks, both, you know, I'll pick on MSNBC and Fox just because they're on the extremes of, of, of both sides of the aisle and they're both in each of the mainstream. They're the mainstream and that's what I'm saying. But they both engage in the sensationalism where you look at every single night that the same people are experts on all these different issues and they're telling their viewers how bad the other side is. And so until we deal with that not being the center place, you know, those types of environments, whether it's on cable news or social media or talk radio, until we, we have another way for people to congregate for information. That's the problem is that when you turn on Fox or MSNBC right after, let's say a debate or the State of the Union or something, it's like you're watching two different countries.
And so I guess until we can solve that, where people get back to the Walter Cronkite thing, where you got a kind of centralized source of information of facts that is agreed upon from most people. And I'm not definitely not advocating for George Orwell state run media or something, I'm just saying that we have fractured our collective kind of journey of information as a society. And that's why I said I don't have the answer. But until that gets solved, I don't know how this gets better. Because everyone's living in alternative bubble realities and each of us, our reality is the most important thing. You know, so, you know, I don't know.
[00:48:10] Speaker C: I have an idea.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: I hand a baton.
[00:48:12] Speaker C: Yes, I have an idea. I think that what we have seen with sports and industry and media and science and the judiciary and public figures and the musician world and everything that we're seeing in the entertainment world and leaders of corporations, everyone's kind of Saying, hey, go out and vote. But it's kind of like, wink, wink, nod, nod, vote for this side. And I don't think that's as helpful. It's good that people are trying to get others engaged. But I think what would kind of be nice is if you see all of those leaders in all of those industries, one with a red hat, one with a blue hat, standing next to each other, who, you know, kind of support each side from their other public statements and say, hey, guys, we're holding hands. We want you to go vote. Vote red, vote blue, whatever. Just go vote. Let's have an overwhelming participation, and then whoever wins will have more.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: Well, Rick, what do you think is stopping that from happening?
[00:49:06] Speaker C: I think it's.
I don't know what's stopping that, and I think it's fairly simple. Good people to come together who are well known and, and public, who are respected by Americans or are viewed many times by Americans to just say, let's, let's get out the vote. You know, they used to have rock the vote. And I don't, you know, that was in the 90s. They started that, but that was a little bit. It felt a little bit more bipartisan. I don't know. But we need that.
[00:49:37] Speaker B: I challenge you because I've seen some of these. And here's what I would say, I think. And this isn't directly towards you. No, I'm just saying, like I saw. I saw that there was a congressman who entered in something this week and trying to accuse Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for being foreign influencers on voting because they had to get out the vote message. Now, I watched the little message they had.
It wasn't partisan. They said, get out the vote. Just go vote. It's important, all that. I think the assumption from that congressman was that they were trying to support Biden for whatever reason. Right.
But when you actually look at what they said, it wasn't supporting any candidate. And then he, you know, I'm sure it was a political messaging move to do this because Meghan Markle's American and she has a, you know, she can vote in this country, so she can obviously, you know, say whatever she wants to say as relates to that.
But it's just this idea, I think, Rick, where I agree with you, is we're so polarized that that's my point. Somebody coming out, depending on how the viewer views them, if they view them already as a liberal person and that person says, get out the vote, they think they're supporting Biden, right? If the person, if it was Toby Keith or Keith Urban or some country singer saying get out the vote, I'm sure that someone that's a Democrat looking might think that they're supporting Trump and trying to. And that's where I think it's sad is that polarization that the viewer.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: And that's where I think, I think you guys are misdiagnosing this completely. Like, I think there's only one side has a problem with messages of getting out to vote.
I don't see where Joe Biden objects to messages from getting out to vote. No matter who's making that message. I just don't see it. And as long as that's the case, then you are somewhat limited in terms of bipartisan messages about voting. What is the partisan issue is whether everybody should vote. And as long as that's a partisan issue, then we're going to have this problem. And now, yes, the way news is presented to U.S. news, as long as news is going to be for profit, it is more profitable to present news in a episodic and emotionally tinged way than it is to present news in a straight, by the book way. Walter Conkright doesn't make money like Bill O'Reilly, period.
So it's not going to happen like you guys are. You guys got to come to reality and realize that what we have now is actually more in line with historical norms than the three main news networks delivering news relatively, or trying to do it straight by the book. That was an exception. If you go back to the 1800s, there wasn't just these straight sources of news that just give it to you how it is. And that's it. That's not how it works. It was partisan newspapers, it was partisan this, partisan that. And so that's kind of, that's the norm. And we're just coming back to that. I think, again, what is needed to counteract that, though, is greater participation. Everybody's heard the saying that you can fool some of the people all the time. All of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. That's why we need everybody to vote, because everybody is not going to be duped by the same messages or roped in with the same emotional.
Please, everybody's not going to get hit with all that. So if only the people that are susceptible to certain emotional messages are the ones voting, then our country is going to get tied up in those emotional issues because they're the ones who are being represented. But if the people who aren't feeling that aren't getting roped in by those emotional messages, are voting also. Then they counterbalance. They counteract the balance. They change the balance. And so our country doesn't become obsessed with one issue or this issue or that issue.
So it's all of us that need to participate more. Again, not because we're so knowledgeable on all these issues, but because we just have to allow the entire society to have a voice as opposed to these specific supercharged up people. They're going to be there no matter what. Those supercharged up people are going to be there no matter what. We're not going to be able to get rid of them. We have to outnumber them in terms of people who don't look at everything that's serious, who don't look at someone who disagrees with them as some enemy, you know, who doesn't look at any person from the other party as a radicalized person that's trying to do all this types of crazy stuff to America. The people who don't think like that and thus aren't that charged up about all these things all the time, need to speak, need their voices to be heard more. Those people need to participate. And obviously the problem there is that the people who are supercharged up are gonna be more motivated to vote, but the people who aren't supercharged up are gonna have to be motivated some other way to vote because their voice is needed. That's what we need more.
[00:54:27] Speaker C: I agree. And I don't know, listening to this and kind of hearing you say, well, maybe a lot of this is aspirational. And it being John Lennon's birthday a couple of days ago, you know, you can call me a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
And we need more of those out there who are not the only one, you know, to get out there and say, look, we can have smart government, moderate government, people can recognize and respect each other's point of view. We can all work together for the betterment of this country militarily, economically, socially.
And I don't. I just. I mean, maybe I still have that dream.
[00:55:02] Speaker A: I don't knock you for the dream, man, actually. No, I mean, you are what America was trying to do. Like, if you have a constitutional. Yeah, if you have a constitutional republic, like we do with democratically elected officials, the whole point of that is moderation. The point of a constitution is so that the majority can't exert tyranny over minorities. The majority says, hey, we like to have everybody under six feet is A majority. So can the people who are under six feet say, hey, anybody over six feet, you have to kneel every time you pass a person who is under six feet?
[00:55:37] Speaker B: Well, I'd have a big issue with that. Exactly.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: That's why you need a constitution, because the majority could vote on that and you'd be out of luck. And so the whole point of a constitution is to moderate the population and say, look, just because there's more of you guys, you can't do types of crazy stuff to the people that there's less of. And so the constitution is to moderate the masses. The part of democratic part, though, we got to get that part too, where we're electing officials, where officials feel accountable to everyone. Remember, that's the other piece though, that, and I talk about it as the collective decision making. But the other piece about it that's very important is that politicians are responsive to people, but they're only responsive to the people they think are voting. And so if they don't think you're voting, whether or not that's actually the case or not, it's who they think is voting is who they're trying to please enough of them.
And so now where that goes off the rail, what we see now is where politicians just stop trying to appeal to masses of people and just say, we're gonna appeal to a narrow slice and then try to knock out as many of the other people. That creates a problem. But we can address that with policy. But ultimately we need people to participate because that is the lifeblood of the system, of the people, by the people, for the people. So we gotta live that.
[00:56:48] Speaker C: Amen.
[00:56:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So, well. Yeah. Well, now we appreciate everybody joining us on this one. It's something that obviously we feel very passionate about because we care, you know, we care about having a democratic system, a system where people ultimately do have a say. That is not a given in the way humans govern themselves or are governed. I should say that is very much an exception. And so if we want to keep it, then we're going to have to want it. We're going to have to want it more than the people who want to get rid of it.
And there are people who will are willing to get rid of it. As we've said earlier, people are willing to get rid of it if they don't think they have the number. But I'm not here to tell you who to vote for. I just want you to get out there and let your sensibilities guide you. So until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:57:30] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Iguana.
[00:57:32] Speaker C: I'm Rick Ellsley and we thank you
[00:57:34] Speaker A: for joining us and we'll see you next time. Subscribe, rate, review and check us on Twitter as well. All itdn and have a good day and get out there.
[00:57:42] Speaker C: Vote.
