Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

 

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Transcript

My guest today is Amy Widestrom, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters in Pennsylvania.

She is a doctor of philosophy and political science, was previously a chair at Arcadia University at the Department of Historical and Political Studies, and assistant professor at California State University.

She is passionate about nurturing institutions, committed to human and community equality, civic education, and empowerment.

When I reached out to the League of Women Voters, and Amy agreed to be on my podcast, I explained my intention is to educate the public on how our voting system works, and how it might be improved to be more effective and fair.

I learned during my personal studies, of course, that fair does not mean the majority rules in a democracy effort is supposed to be made for everyone's voice to be heard.

So I'm hoping Amy can explain a few of the most important issues with the current voting systems, and most importantly, focus on solutions.

Because in this podcast, we don't complain about something, we work on the solutions.

So what can we do to make it easier for all eligible Americans to vote, and ensure their vote really counts?

Don't be misled by the title of this organization, League of Women Voters.

Men have been members since 1974.

Membership is open to all persons who are at least 16 years of age.

The League operates in all 50 states with 300,000 supporters.

It is a nonpartisan organization, neither supporting nor opposing candidates or political parties.

The League is one of America's most trusted grassroots organizations.

This podcast is for educational purposes only.

Content may contain personal opinions.

Nothing in this podcast should be considered an endorsement by the League of Women Voters.

If you have questions or interested in becoming a member of the League of Women Voters, please contact a local office near you.

Details are in the show notes.

Welcome to my show, Amy.

Hi, Daniel.

Thank you for having me.

I'm happy to be here.

So the reason I asked you on the show is, in this morning, I was Googling, even though I've done my research a lot.

My gosh, the problems.

You know, people give me a hard time when I say it, I'm not really excited to vote, especially my brother.

And I don't think he understands.

He thinks, oh, the only voting issues are when you hear about one or two voting machines going bad.

And so there's so many.

I'm going to let you do most of the talking.

Give us the big stuff, low-hanging fruit people can really make a difference or what they should do.

One thing that I remember when I originally found the League was this term gerrymandering.

And just when you think, oh, go out and vote, my vote counts.

They're supposed to manipulate the boundaries for the constituencies.

So that if you're a minority, your vote counts.

But of course, then you can manipulate them to favor one part of your class.

And then you're like, yeah, it's like, why am I voting, right?

And then people think, you know, when you tell them you don't want to vote, they give you a hard time because you're American, you should vote.

And you're like, it won't, it, I mean, it literally, they can make it.

And that's just one.

It's staggering the number of tricks and games on something that you think you're just voting.

So go for it.

So I guess I'll start sort of big picture, right?

And to remind folks that and listeners, that we tend to think that voting really only matters every four years when we're electing the president.

When in fact, lots of decisions affecting our daily lives are made at the congressional level, at the state level, and at the local level, right?

I mean, things that really affect our day-to-day lives, like a trash pickup and our potholes on our streets, are all local level decisions.

And yet at the local level, that's where we see the lowest level turnout.

Average turnout in mayoral elections across the country is only about 25 percent.

When in fact, it's at the city and municipal levels where decisions are really high.

So you mean how everyone gets excited at its presidential election.

I never really thought about it.

Yeah, everybody gets all excited around every four years.

And right now, there's a lot of energy around the presidential election.

In Pennsylvania, we've got primaries for judicial and local elections in the spring, in six months, and yet everybody's all excited about November.

And obviously, the presidential elections are very important, right?

There's lots of good research that demonstrates that who wins the presidential election has serious consequences for economic policy and foreign policy and social policy.

But our local elections also matter.

And so it's really important to remind voters that when you register to vote and you go to vote, you're exercising a muscle to vote in every election, not to voting every four years.

Yeah, I think it just occurred to me, maybe the thinking is because maybe I have it.

The president will fix everything.

If we elect the right president, all problems are solved.

Right.

And we hear that a lot.

Right.

Like our gas prices are high and we blame the president.

The president can't really do much about gas prices, frankly.

And so, and yet that we sort of, we do, we sort of say, well, if we have the right president, however you define, right, whatever your leanings are, then things will be fixed when in fact, the president is part of a much larger team and part of a structure that has state legislators making lots of decisions and local politicians and elected officials making lots of decisions.

So it's important for voters to remember that.

Which is why organizations like the League of Women Voters, right, our primary mission is to get people registered to vote, to get information, good trust or the information into the hands of voters and just to get them to vote in every election, right?

Not just the presidential election.

So that is, I think, the sort of number one message that people should take away.

Voting matters, especially at local levels when turnout is so low, right?

If in your mayoral election, only 15 percent of people are voting, your vote really matters, right?

Yeah.

Is one of the reasons, like myself, for example, like a judge will be on the ballot for re-election.

I don't know this man or woman and I don't want to vote because if someone knows them, I don't want to mess with their vote.

If they're really educated and I don't know a lot of the issues, right?

Yeah.

So local and judicial elections are very difficult for voters to navigate because finding information is hard.

And at the local level in lots of states, there's no party affiliation associated with the judge in particular.

So it won't have a D or an R after their name.

So you can't even use-

That's good.

Your party, it's good at the keeps them nonpartisan, right?

At the local level.

But it's hard then for voters to say, well, I'm a registered Republican or I'm a registered Democrat, I'll at least vote for the person my party supports.

If there's no D or R after their name, they don't know who to support.

So judicial elections are very challenging at the local level.

That's absolutely the case.

And very little money is given to those.

So is that something you would fix?

You would suggest they'd be allowed to do that?

I would suggest, well, most judges can campaign when they're running for office.

They have to stop being political after they run for office.

I'm not sure introducing money into judicial elections to help them campaign as a solution, because we see the consequences of big money at the federal elections.

So in 2020, $6.5 billion was spent on the presidential election.

That is a staggering amount.

billion?

billion.

$6.5 billion was spent on the presidential election alone.

That's a ton of money.

That'll fix a lot of problems.

And most of us, most of the average American, is not contributing that money to those elections.

Well, technically we are because it's trickled down.

Whoever gave the money, if it's a corporation, individual, they have a business, they weren't born.

Except they're not required depending on how they give money, we might not know they're giving money.

So it's not-

Oh yeah, we don't know.

Right?

So we can't vote with our purchase power, we can't-

We don't know.

Right.

Yeah, it is our purchase power because that's where the money came from.

Right.

If we don't know who-

We don't know.

We can't actually use the only power we have, which is purchase power, voting with our feed or voting with our dollars.

So I don't think introducing that to the judicial system is the right way to go.

I think that limiting campaign contributions and thinking about meaningful campaign finance reform, which the League of Women Voters supports.

Since that sounds like an important one, the money.

Yeah.

I'm from Arizona and John McCain, I remember him, was he one that was a while back?

The McCain fine gold bill, yeah.

Yeah.

It seems like he pounded on that for a decade.

They like to talk about it, but it sounds like nothing ever got done.

Yeah.

Well, it's hard, right?

You're asking legislators to vote on a piece of legislation that will limit their access to money, and they want access to money.

So it's the same, you raise gerrymandering and the drawing of electoral district line in lots of instances.

So gerrymandering and money and politics are two good examples.

We're asking the people who benefit from the system to vote to change the system, and that's a tough act.

You can imagine, if you were sitting in that position of power, that might be a hard thing for you to decide to do, right?

Yeah.

But that's what we're asking to do.

With redistricting across the country and we're advocating for this very strongly here, the League of Women Voters has a fiscal project called Fair Districts PA.

And we advocate through Fair Districts PA for better electoral districts.

You know, district lines...

Yeah.

I was just going to say, one of the ways to do that is to take it out of the hands of the elected officials and give it to the citizens.

So lots of states have implemented citizens redistricting commission to help draw those electoral boundaries more fairly.

There's a solution.

They're less politically motivated.

And so we're advocating for that here in Pennsylvania as well.

Oh, so you would have to do that state by state.

It's state by state.

So the constitution very clearly says that the time, place and manner of election are up to the state.

So outside of federal protections for voting rights, which are important to make sure that people are treated equally across the state for voting rights.

So 18-year-olds, women, African Americans and other voters of color, they are protected across the states with regards to their voting rights.

Other than that, most things having to do with election administration are left to the state and the local offices.

So in Pennsylvania, we've got a state election code that provides some guidelines, but we have 67 counties in the state of Pennsylvania, and that means that our elections are administered 57 different ways.

By different ways, you mean different rules?

Not rules in terms of like you have to be 18 to vote, you have to be a citizen to vote, you have to be a resident of Pennsylvania for 30 days to vote.

But how they check voter registration before you vote, how you vote, how they decide to handle mail-in ballots or absentee ballots, those are all up to the count.

That's a huge thing because we're just speaking about, I'm willing to give up my share of the pie because it's the fair thing to do.

Like if I went to the voting poll, it's not in my interest to change this, but I'm going to vote to change it because it's the right thing to do.

It won't even get changed then because 67 different ways of preventing classes of voters from voting or-

Well, it's not, I mean, there's general protections that everyone has the right to.

If you go to your polling place on election day in any of the counties in Pennsylvania, you can vote and your vote will be counted.

There are a number of protections in place to protect election integrity.

If you request a mail-in ballot or an absentee ballot, and you get it in by the deadline, you submit it by the deadline, and you follow the instructions on the form, your vote will be counted.

There are a number of ways to protect the integrity of that vote.

When you request a mail-in ballot, for example, when you receive it in the mail, there's a barcode on the bottom that's assigned only to you.

There's no way if you were to like, sometimes we hear rumors of people duplicating ballots or something.

Well, because that barcode is assigned to one person, they will know instantly if that barcode has been scanned multiple times, and that vote can't be counted.

What's the 67 different ways?

What is different between 67?

One thing that's different, and this is something that the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania is really fighting against is that, for example, when you submit a mail-in ballot, there are all these rules you have to follow to submit it.

You fill out your ballot and then you fold it and you put it in the secrecy envelope and you have to sign the secrecy envelope and date it.

Those are the rules?

You put it in another envelope and you mail it.

Now, some counties, if they say they put their birthday instead of the date that they submitted the ballot, say a voter wrote their birthday rather than the date they submitted the ballot, which is the date you're supposed to use, they'll notify the voter and say, you can come in and correct this so we can process your ballot.

Oh, and then they have to walk, they have to drive down.

Well, yeah, they have to go and fix it, but they can, some counties don't notify voters that there was an error and they just dismiss the ballot.

That's getting tricky.

It's implicitly implied, right?

And so one of the things that the League does in partnership with a number of other organizations is track which counties dismiss ballots for what reason, and then we advocate for those ballots to be counted.

And in fact, we litigate about this.

We sue the Department of State to equally apply rules and say, you know, a date on the...

I was about to ask, yeah, how come you don't make them all do things the same?

Yeah.

And what we're advocating for currently is there's general agreement that the signature on the secrecy ballot and the date on the secrecy, sorry, on the secrecy envelope is not material to voting, right?

The most important thing is the ballot that's inside.

Your signature and the date don't influence the vote at all.

Because it's scanned, so you don't even really need to sign it.

And they're not supposed to look at the signature against another signature, like they're just using it to dismiss ballots.

And so we're assuming they can't use them to dismiss any ballots.

No counties can use incorrect dates to dismiss any ballots because it's not material to the act of voting.

That's what we're adding to the vote.

You mean if I just put the wrong date down that I voted, like at the year, like a year or so?

Some counties, right.

So like say you put 23 instead of 24.

Or say, no, this year we're voting on November 5th.

Say you think it's November 4th and you put November 4th.

Some counties will say it's the wrong date and we're going to dismiss ballots.

Why do they even ask you for that then?

Because it's a ballot they mailed.

They know what date, they know what election it's for.

Why do they even need to put the date on it?

Some counties have tried to put the year, so just fill in 2024 to encourage people not to write the wrong date.

That is still confusing for some voters.

We're really advocating to not use it.

Yeah, I'm saying even wiser.

Yeah, don't use the date because they're mailing you a bar.

They're scanning the barcode.

It's like I go to the grocery store and buying something.

I know what date it.

The expiration date is on the food.

I don't look at it to see what I'm buying.

You got a stamp on when the piece of mail has been profiled.

There's a stamp on that so you know it's in before.

They can't count anything that if it's after the 8 p.m.

when the polls close, they can't count the ballots anyways.

It is something that the League of Women Voters does not agree with.

We're really trying to, like I said, we're in litigation currently.

Now you mentioned the four states and four counties to stop doing that.

You mentioned the barcode, which sounds very simple and up to par with technology.

What about the question that somebody asked me because they knew I was going to have you on the show, Pennsylvania resident about how you can just show up show utility bill and not a proper federal issued ID?

Yeah.

There are a number of IDs you can use when you go to vote.

Now it's important to note that you can register to vote online.

You can register to vote at a number of state offices, so the DMV or other state offices.

In those instances, say when you registered to vote online, you're not showing an ID then, right?

You're just affirming that it's you.

The first time you vote at a polling place, you have to show a voter ID.

If it's the first time voting, or if you've changed polling place, it's validating.

It's validating.

It's just affirming that it's you.

After that, you don't need a voter ID to vote.

Perfect.

In the state of Pennsylvania, the only time you need a voter ID is when it's your first time voting, or it's the first time voting in that location.

The IDs you can use are a driver's license, another state ID that's been issued, a photo ID by a different governing, a federal photo ID, a passport, a student ID, a military ID, an employment ID.

You can also just use your voter registration card that you get when you register to vote.

They mail you a card.

That doesn't have your picture on it, but that's an ID.

You can use a firearm permit.

You can use a utility bill.

So currently there is a good law in place, but there are people that want to change it and make it less.

There are people that want to change it and make it less.

So you can bring a utility bill?

There are.

You can also use a utility bill.

So the non-photo IDs that you can use are voter registration card, firearm permit.

Now, so do you think that's, does the League agree with that?

You shouldn't have to, the utility bill is fine.

Yeah, and in part because our mission is to really empower voters, to be active voters.

And we're trying to have reasonable ID laws in place that lower access, barriers to access.

And so we don't want people to have to take public transit and pay for an ID if they can't afford it, right?

And so when you register to vote, you have to vote in the polling place associated with your address, right?

You can't just pick any polling place to vote.

Whatever your address is, when you registered, you have to register in that polling place.

So you bring a utility bill that demonstrates you live in that area.

I think that's perfectly fine.

Yeah.

So I'm from Arizona, too.

I went to college there 20 years.

My family lives there.

The border crossings are a big thing because, and also I lived in New Mexico for a while.

And literally, I want to give illegal immigrants their driver's licenses, even though I can't get one because with the Real ID Act, it's really difficult to get a driver's license if you're renting some place and you're not paying utilities and then you're supposed to show all that stuff.

So anyhow, what's supposed to keep a non-citizen that has a utility bill from voting?

Well, you have to be registered to vote to vote and a non-citizen can't register to vote.

A utility bill isn't going to get you a registration.

So this is misinformation that I'm reading from somewhere.

This is the thing, people try to manipulate, like who's writing that article, what organization, who's behind him.

You cannot vote if you're not registered to vote.

You have to be 18, you have to be a citizen and you have to have been a resident of Pennsylvania for 30 days.

Okay.

So in order to register to vote.

I would have had to show real ID.

Then it's like, oh, I'm going to vote, I don't have my ID anymore or with me, and then I do have a utility bill, that kind of thing, it sounds fair.

Well, you don't have to present ID when you're registered to vote, but the Bureau of election in your locality confirms that you are eligible to vote when you register.

If a non-citizen were to try to register, they would not affirm the registration, they wouldn't give them a registration card to vote.

No, I'm not following that part.

So if I type in my name and age and lie and say that I'm a citizen when I'm not, on the back end, our bureaus of elections and Department of State confirm the validity of our voter roll lists.

They make sure that everybody on that list is actually eligible to vote.

So you would not be put on the voter list if you are not a citizen.

Right?

You could eventually know what to vote because when you walk into the poll to vote, there's a list of everybody who's eligible.

And if you're not on that list, you can't vote.

How do they determine the eligibility?

So that's what that's the process of, that's why we ask people to register to vote.

We make sure people are 18, we make sure they're citizens, we make sure they're residents of Pennsylvania.

Oh, you would check like a social security number or something.

That's part of what the Department of State does, is manages what we call the voter role list.

I see.

Now, it can be challenging and some people get concerned because they hear about dead people on voter role lists or voting the voter role list.

Every state has laws that guide the way that they manage their voter role list.

In the state of Pennsylvania, if you do not vote in two federal elections, so if you don't vote in a congressional election, and then a presidential election, or if you don't vote in two presidential elections, and you don't vote at all in a congressional election in between, you will get a notice that says, it looks like you're an inactive voter.

We are going to remove you from the voter role list if you do not tell us that you want to remain an active voter.

They send a couple of notices, and so they give you a chance to respond.

If you don't respond, they tell you again.

Then at that point, they will remove you from the list.

There is a process for cleaning up the list.

They also double check the list against Social Security death reports.

They remove people who have died, and they remove inactive voters following this law.

Every state has a law that guides the way that they manage their voter role list.

Removing people who have died, for example, move to a different country sounds great.

You got to keep the list managed, because one thought I had is why ever crop the list?

You don't want someone fishing and going finding unused one.

But on the flip side, say it's been 10 years since I wanted to vote, I'm still a citizen.

I guess I'm giving up some privilege just to help manage the process, because really, I'm questioning why should I ever be purged?

Well, I'm an American.

I'm born here until I die.

Why should I be purged till I die?

Yeah.

Well, part of that is because people move and you don't say the same address, and one of the ways that we do make sure that-

Oh, it's state.

It's state by state.

I forgot about that.

It's at the state level.

Yeah.

It's just making sure that the people who are in the state are in the state and voting.

Got it.

And it's also good.

If you haven't voted in 10 years, I would say go check your voter registration status.

That makes perfect sense now, Amy.

It makes perfect.

I was thinking at a national level.

I'm always, as long as I'm alive and I'm an American citizen, but I remember you mentioned really clearly, it's all the states.

Yeah, the constitution says pretty clearly that it's up to the state.

So that makes sense.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah, of course.

And I would say if folks, so I would remind people then, because of all of this that we're talking about, on election day, there's often a great deal of confusion that voters have about where they're supposed to vote.

And sometimes voting poll locations change for a variety.

Okay.

So that's a, I'm glad you brought that up because, yeah, I still, you're going to tell me why it's a good thing or okay to have to not be able to go to any voting poll.

I'm in the state, I'm represented by the state.

How come I can come down in the south part of the state on a business trip?

And I'm like, oh, it's voting day.

How come I can't go anywhere?

Yeah, that's a good question.

So one of the ways that you could, we could fix that.

So when you, again, when you register to vote, you put your address down, you're assigned to a polling place.

One of the ways we can address exactly this problem is to have what we call same day voter registration.

So if you are from one part of Arizona and you're two hours away in another part of Arizona on election day, with same day voter registration, you could walk into any polling place, register to vote at that location, and vote at the same time.

But that's not in place right now.

It's in place in some states, not in Pennsylvania, and we advocate for that, right?

It's also good for voters who maybe have been on the fence about voting, or are uncertain about whether they can vote because of family obligations, or whatever the case is, and they decide on election day, you know what?

I think I want to vote.

But if they haven't registered 30 days ago, they can't vote.

That's happened to me.

Yeah, exactly.

If we had same day voter registration, you can walk into any polling place, register to vote and vote.

It's happened to me when I moved from state to state, and then I just didn't have a driver's license, change head, and et cetera, and I couldn't vote.

You need an address to register to vote.

If you're staying with a friend because you just relocated or whatever the case is, or say you are just housing insecure in general, and you don't have a permanent address, how do you register to vote?

Whereas with same day voter registration, folks who are housing insecure, folks who are in transition in their life, folks who have just moved states, people who are traveling for work, whatever the case could be, they could walk in and register to vote and vote at that location on that day.

What do you think about the-

It would be really empowering for voters.

What do you think about, I see the term felony disenfranchement, meaning if you have a criminal conviction, you can't vote.

Well, that's not true in most states actually.

So it's again, and in fact, this is, I think, a really interesting point.

So across the states, there are a variety of-

every state has a different-

have different rules about voting if you have a felony conviction.

So some states are very strict.

They tend to be in the south and the only way you can get your voting rights reinstated is if you have permission by the state, like the governor's granted you permission.

In the state of Pennsylvania, you can register and vote if you are a pretrial detainee, confined to an institution awaiting trial.

If you were ever convicted of a misdemeanor, if you've gotten released and will be released, if you're on probation or on parole-

So very state by state, very state by state.

State by state and in Pennsylvania and in most states, actually, most people with felony convictions can vote, but it's really important to go to yours to Google.

Yeah.

Felony voting in your state and you'll see the rules.

But it is a very common misconception that convicted felons cannot vote as a rule and that's just not the case.

Does the League support allowing, if you have a criminal conviction, allow you to vote, it shouldn't be a factor?

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, we do in part because the original idea behind our criminal justice system in the United States is that, when you committed a crime, you violated the social contract, you go to prison, you pay your debt to society, and however the court decides if it's probation or parole or restitution or volunteer hours or time in an institution, whatever it is, you pay your debt to society.

When you come back to society, we want to make you a whole citizen again.

I think that's-

Yeah.

And so we do support that.

And like I said, in most states, you can vote if you have a felony conviction.

It's just making sure you research the laws pertaining to your state.

And in some states, you can vote with a felony conviction from prison, actually.

There's two states where you can be a convicted felon in prison and still vote.

So it varies wildly across the country.

I think it's good to allow that.

At first, when you read about, oh, I don't want criminals voting.

Then think about it, though, this is how my brain considers all the possibilities.

What if the people in power want to make a law that targeted certain groups, so they would get arrested for some silly law, now be convicted and now they can't vote?

Then you have a country that has this great democracy, and that's one way you can take potshots at it and control it more.

That's an interesting point too, because if you look at the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution, more than half are protecting citizens against arbitrary actions against the government designed to create essentially a class of political prisoners.

More than half are to protect us against the government, from preventing us from being citizens.

It's another sneaky way.

We can't just vote.

I'm a citizen.

It's that simple.

Yeah.

There are certainly ways that your listeners and you could be advocating to make the system more accessible and open.

Expand felon voting rights, expand the same day voting registration.

You can expand early voting.

Lots of states have early voting.

Pennsylvania's early voting system is a little strange, but one of the challenges people have is that in the United States, election day is a Tuesday and polls are open during working hours when lots of people have jobs and family obligations and kids to take care of.

In Pennsylvania, our polls are open from 7 AM to 8 PM.

Well, if you've got young kids at a full-time job, those are tough hours to be able to vote.

There should be a Walmart next to Walmart or Target or some 24-hour place to midnight.

There are some folks who, there's a couple of different reforms that folks have suggested.

Either just creating an early voting period where you can vote in-person two weeks before the election.

Some folks advocate for making election day a 24-hour, so you can vote any time in the 24 hours.

Yeah, that's what makes sense to me.

Yeah.

Because what if you work in the day shift or the night shift?

Correct.

Some folks say, let's move it to a weekend day or over just a two-day weekend.

Shift workers who work weekends could go, but people who know how weekends off can go.

Say we fix it, so actually my vote gets to count, I get to vote, it counts.

How else can my vote not really count in terms of, I don't know if we covered gerrymandering enough or are there other things in terms of the borders and how the votes actually counted, like ranked choice voting and games like that?

There's a couple of ways that people feel like their vote doesn't count and things that people can advocate for.

One is gerrymandering or drawing the district lines around our congressional districts and our state-level districts.

They have been drawn over time by political parties to benefit the party.

The way the law works in most states, again, because elections are left to states, in most states, state legislators, the people elected to office in your state capital, are the ones drawing the borders.

Conflict interest again.

Doesn't make much sense.

That's correct.

One of the ways, and so they've drawn borders that we call it packing.

They pack in voters that benefit them, or we call it cracking.

They crack apart people who don't like them, to diffuse their political power across multiple districts, so they're not the majority.

One thing I don't understand, walk me through the actual counting process, because let's take it's voting for governor, for example, and we've got these boundaries.

I don't understand why there's even boundaries because-

Well, the governor has a state-wide election, so the districts don't matter so much.

The way it matters is for members of the House of Representatives and then members for the state legislators.

So in Pennsylvania, our assembly and our senate, those have districts around them.

And so basically, say for Congress, an election district for Congress, there's about one representative for every 650,000 to 700,000 people.

So what happens is every 10 years with the census, they'll say there are X number of people in, there's 13 million people in Pennsylvania, and now we have to divide them up into these congressional districts.

We have X number of members of Congress, so we have this number of districts, and now we've got to divide the state into this number of districts.

That's how we get lumped into districts.

They basically divide the population by the number of representatives, and then build districts around them geographically.

Yeah, like if I was in a housing development in a new neighborhood, then my neighborhood gets a representative, and my neighborhood is going to vote on a representative, which makes sense.

But what this boundary is, what you're saying is, no, my next, next door neighbor, he's going to be in a different district, even though he should really be in my same neighborhood.

Possibly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there are some really crazy district lines out there.

There used to be one in Pennsylvania that sort of looked like a dragon wrapping around the city.

Like somebody had drawn it, so it was this skinny strip that just wrapped all the way around the city, which doesn't make any sense geographically.

Yeah, and then back to my neighbor, we're best friends, and we're really in the same community.

Now, we're at odds with the...

Now, he's being represented by somebody different than me.

Yeah, and so if you wanted to advocate for your neighborhood, right?

If you wanted to advocate for your neighborhood, then you'd have to go talk to two different elected officials when you really...

We're at odds with each other, possibly.

Possibly, yeah.

We're on the same page.

We want the same thing as neighbors, but we've got different representatives now.

Right, and so this is how the drawing of our district maps really does affect representation, right?

Because we can put certain populations in the districts, or we can distribute them across districts, we can separate neighborhoods, so they're not being represented by the same people.

When you think, I'm really upset about whatever it might be, if you've got to go talk to three different people because there's three different representatives covering your neighborhood.

Well, that's a ton of time, right?

There's the bigger picture.

You're thinking it's your neighborhood, but it's the state issues they're voting on, and now the party, a certain party has more control over the state issues just because they divided your neighborhood in a different fashion.

You didn't see it coming.

Yeah.

So one of the things that we, I mean, we're strong advocates for Fair Districts in Pennsylvania and getting a Citizens Redistricting commission to remove the power.

What is slowing you down?

What's the opposition saying?

Well, our state house is not particularly productive at the moment.

They're not passing a lot of legislation.

This gets us back to the people who it's going good for.

They don't want to change things.

Correct.

Yeah, that's correct.

We need the people who are benefiting from the system to vote to change the system.

How's that going to happen?

It's hard.

You know how it happens?

It's through our members writing letters and making phone calls and showing up in the state house and holding rallies.

Voting for somebody different.

Voting for somebody who will support it, asking your politicians, will you support this if I vote for you?

There's lots of ways that citizens can advocate for it.

We have to do it though.

This is why I'm having you on the show, Amy, though, because even doing my research, knowing you're on the show, I have no idea about this.

I would never have known.

You hear about this stuff and it's just this technical jargon.

You think, oh, it's complicated.

I don't understand it.

They try to make it complicated so you don't understand it and you just, I can't worry about that.

I don't know what it means and can't do that.

Well, I have to tell you, it's also true that we don't have a great civic education infrastructure in this country.

Most of us don't learn a lot about this going through school either.

That's another way.

If they keep you ignorant, you can't make change because you don't understand.

Well, part of it is we've invested in STEM education, which is really important.

But civic education is also really important and it's hard to be an active and an empowered voter.

If you don't know how your vote matters, you don't believe that your vote matters, it's really hard to be activated.

I think we covered enough for our voters to digest.

Tell me your story.

How did you get involved in this?

So passionate.

You have degrees in political science and it's a good cause.

How did you choose this?

Yeah.

I majored in English and theater in college, actually.

I spent most of my time as an electrician and a lighting designer in theaters.

Once I graduated from college, I moved to San Francisco and I began working for some non-profits.

My last job there is working for a low-income housing organization, and I got really interested in housing policy.

It's how do we decide where certain populations are going to live in our city?

Because we have real problems with residential segregation in American cities, and so I got really interested in why is our low-income housing all in one place?

That was really what is going on here.

I also happened to be volunteering inside San Quentin at the time.

I was helping to teach literature courses for folks who were incarcerated in San Quentin.

I got interested in our criminal justice policy.

I decided to go get a PhD in political science, just to figure out the connection between just what we're talking about actually, public policy, so how the decisions that government may affect our propensity and willingness to be active citizens.

What's the relationship there?

Because we tend to think in the United States that, and the data bears this out.

Everything's perfect.

We tend to think everything's perfect.

We also, we say when we look at people voting, it's people with higher incomes, people with higher levels of education, people who are married.

There's these patterns among active voters.

I wanted to figure out, is there something about the way we're setting up our society that is actually systematically disenfranchising some folks?

Not through telling them they can't vote, but just by disempowerment.

That's really what I got interested in.

I did a bunch of research on economic segregation, so the way we organize economic classes in our cities and what that does to the voting behavior.

I looked at the ways that public policies intersect with voting behavior and civic engagement, and I was a professor for 14 years or so.

Then I recently shifted to working with the League of Women Voters, in part because I've been talking so much and teaching a lot about American democracy.

I taught all American politics classes for many years, but I was excited to get back doing the work of democracy, really working with voters and working with all of our volunteers who are on the ground.

We have dozens and dozens of events planned over the next three months.

Somebody's got to do it.

I'm sure to vote.

Why not me?

I was like, you know what, maybe I should stop talking about it.

Then teaching is near and dear to my heart, and I love my students.

But I wanted to start doing it rather than talking about it.

That's how I ended up with the League of Women Voters.

A little bit how you open this up.

We've got to be solution oriented.

I felt like I wasn't being solution oriented.

I used to be big on complaining and just get to stressed out and angry all the time and nothing changes.

There are lots of ways that people can help with the system.

So find an organization that matters to them.

There's lots of democracy organizations out there.

The League of Women Voters is one of them.

You can volunteer for an organization.

You can donate to an organization.

We're all nonprofits.

So this is good because one of the focusing on solutions, I was going to ask you as we wrap, what's one or two or three things you don't overwhelm people.

But actually, if you join or donate to an organization like League of Women Voters, then that's their job.

You trust them.

They will take the day.

And it's really helpful.

For an organization like ours where our budget isn't huge, every dollar is so helpful in getting materials out into our communities.

We have local chapters all over the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

And so we're sending out all the materials they need to manage the events they're doing, where they register and educate thousands of voters across the state, right?

It's our volunteers that do it, where we only have three staff.

We're an all-volunteer organization beyond that, and we have to cover the whole state.

So if you're listening and you're interested in the topics and questions, and take my word for it, people go to, where can I go, Amy?

I'm going to the League of Women Voters website or something like that.

Every state, there are 50 state chapters, and you can find the local chapter there.

So if you're in Pennsylvania, it's palwv.org.

You can also just Google League of Women Voters, Oregon, and your league will come right up.

You can find a way to connect to a local chapter and get involved.

You can find a way to donate.

To check your voter registration status, to generate a sample ballot based on where you actually live, go to vote411.org.

If you type in your address, it'll say, here are all the candidates on your specific ballot.

You can print it out so you can take it to the polls with you.

Like a cheat sheet or notes.

Yes, you can write notes on it, you can bring it into the polls with you.

You can check your registration status, you can register to vote if you need to, you can check your polling place.

That's vote411.org.

Most importantly, it really is get out and vote.

That is the number one thing you can do, because votes really do matter.

I mean, if you think about, we have a district here in Pennsylvania that is down to three votes.

Three votes.

Oh, you mean on the district that gerrymandering you're talking about.

Well, I mean, just a person won the district by three votes, right?

And so if you're voting not just for the president, but you're voting for all of the other things on the ballot, what we call down ballot, your vote really matters.

And so the most important thing you can do is get registered, get out there and vote and support organizations that are really working to empower voters like the League of Women Voters.

Yeah.

And you can trust the League of Women Voters.

Trust me.

We are non-partisan.

We've been around for 104 years.

Yeah.

And they're not just for women.

Exactly.

I was about to say again, they're not just.

It did start with women though, right?

It was around when women were trying to get the right to vote, which talk about when we talk about the people in power, it's working for them.

Why do they want to change it?

That was a tough battle, but this is-

It was a tough battle.

It took a long time, but right after the League of Women Voters Incorporated, right after the right to vote was given to women, and the idea was that political parties and politicians had never talked to women, right?

They were trying to educate them and mobilize them, and so this organization formed to do just that, to step in and fill that void.

The League in Pennsylvania actually existed prior to when the national League started and when they started, we changed our name to match theirs, and so we joined the organization.

But women's organizations like this have been around for over a century.

And again, now our mission is just to empower voters and defend democracy and anybody could join that fight.

Nice.

Any last words, Amy?

I know you probably have a busy schedule, busy day ahead of you.

I appreciate you being on my show.

I, you know, thank you for having me.

It's been, it's been really nice talking with you.

And I would just say, like I said, check vote411.org, check out the League of Women Voters.

And really just, this is, every election is an important election.

And so every time you vote, you're, you're building the muscle and you're building the muscle memory of voting.

So just get out there and vote.

Awesome.

Thanks, Amy.

Have a great day.

Thank you so much.

Bye.