This is Democracy – Episode 23: Young Voters

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Intro voices: This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.
Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of “This is Democracy”. Today we’re talking about young voters and how we can do a better job of getting young voters involved in our society and in particular, we are very fortunate this morning to have with us Pam Bixby. Good morning, Pam.
Pam Bixby: Good morning!
Jeremi: Pam is the co-chair of First Vote, which is a really wonderful program from the Austin area League of Women Voters– and the League of Women Voters by the way has existed since the early 20th century and done more than almost any other organization nationally to inform voters. Pam co-chairs First Vote, which is a collaborative effort between the League of Women Voters, the Travis County Tax Office Voter Registration division, and the Travis County, County Clerk Elections Division. And basically what First Vote does, and what Pam helps to do, is to educate, inspire, and register eligible high schoolers who are of voting age or will soon be of voting age. That’s really, really important work, before we turn to Pam and talk about this, this really crucial issue of young voters, we have a poem from a young non-voter, but someone who will soon be a voter, Mr. Zachary Suri. Zachary, what’s your poem about today?
Zachary Suri: Voting.
Jeremi: Voting, okay, yeah. (laughs) Very unique, go ahead.
Zachary: It’s titled, “If Not For Tomorrow.” “If not for tomorrow, then what is voting for? Stand up against the clouds, the darkening storms for these gales might one day rap on your own door. For these gales might one day rap on your own door, give the old little push and America reforms. If not for tomorrow, then what is voting for? If not for tomorrow, then what is voting for? Sign your story on the ballot in all its forms, for these gales might one day rap on your own door. For these gales might one day rap on your own door, we must all vote, ignore the stereotypical norms. If not for tomorrow, then what is voting for? If not for tomorrow, then what is voting for? Don’t throw the shutters which someday must yield to the sandstorms, for these gales might one day rap on your own door. To stand tall in the voting booth transforms adolescent strains to adulthood brains to forms. If not for tomorrow, then what is voting for? For these gales might one day rap on your own door.”
Jeremi: I like that, I like your villanelles, Zachary, that’s a poem of repetition, I like it. What’s the message?
Zachary: That we all need to vote as soon as we can and not just vote for our personal interest today or who we like the best, but for our futures and for our children.
Jeremi: Great, great. Pam, why is it so hard to get young people to be as engaged as Zachary says?
Pam: Well, first of all I want to say, Zachary, I really want a copy of that poem. (laughs) Because that, what that tells me is– his repetition is about the gales out there and that’s very apropos for today, right?
Jeremi: (laughs) Yes.
Pam: And so a lot of young folks, that’s– they think that’s just something that’s happening out there, it’s not happening to them, it’s their parents are involved, you know, and it’s not– they don’t see it effecting their own lives because, as parents, we protect our kids.
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: We deal with the crises that happen, whatever.
Jeremi: We shelter them from the gales.
Pam: We shelter them from the gales and so, but Zachary makes a great point is that, you know what? It’s, you’re going to grow up and it’s going to affect you and so if you get engaged early, you might be able to counteract some of those gales and put up the shutters, as you said, so.
Jeremi: Do you find that a lot of young people are just disgusted by what they see and turned off by it? Is that part of the problem?
Pam: Oh absolutely, I think cynicism is– hits people much younger than it used to, you know, they, it’s… And probably as a result of social media and everything that’s out there that they see, a lot of people are extremely cynical and I think that is one of the major problems. Another problem is, it’s not all that easy. (laughs)
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: It should be, I believe and the League of Women Voters believes, that this is a civic duty and a right, it’s not a privilege for a few, it’s a civic duty and a right and it should be as easy as possible.
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: And yet, many entities in the government make it very difficult and that’s actually how I started, how I got involved. If you want to–
Jeremi: Tell us more please!
Pam: I’ll give you my origin story.
Jeremi: Please!
Pam: So I have two college-age kids and a few years ago when my daughter was going to college, I knew she wasn’t going to be around for the election and I said, “Hey, let’s make sure you get an absentee ballot” or it’s called vote by mail. So I said, “Let’s make sure you do that,” and so I was helping her, she was you know getting off to college and I read all the rules and I just realized that there was a time period, that you know you had to do it within this month and so many days before the election and you had to… You had to apply first and then–
Jeremi: Wow.
Pam: And it’s all on paper. And then here was the kicker though, here’s where I really got involved. So I had printed off the– you know I went to the website of the County Clerk, the Voter Registration, I downloaded the ballot and I had it for– I mean not the ballot, the application–
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: to become, you know, for the ballot. And I had had it printed off and I had it sitting at my desk for a while and I knew I had to wait for a little bit for the window. And I had read somewhere that it could be emailed in so I thought, “Great, perfect.” So, but I couldn’t remember the email address, so I went back to the website a month later and I noticed another thing that had not been there before– and this is a couple years ago and basically it said, “Note: If you fax or email this form, please be aware that you must also mail the form to the Early Voting Clerk within four business days.” So I was furious– first of all, what, why would you have to also mail it?
Jeremi: Right, right!
Pam: Within a certain amount of time, you know? And who under thirty even know where a post office is or who has ever bought a stamp, I mean…
Jeremi: Exactly, exactly.
Pam: I just found that infuriating.
Jeremi: And why in fine print?
Pam: And why in fine print and why had it not been there a month before?
Jeremi: Yes.
Pam: And so I called, I emailed, I emailed Dana DeBeauvoir’s office to find out, I’m like, “Why is that there?” And what they told me was that that was a new thing that the Texas Legislature had just enacted.
Jeremi: Interesting.
Pam: To me, that was a barrier that just shot up.
Jeremi: Absolutely.
Pam: Because it was already difficult, there was already all these steps and that just infuriated me and then I got active.
Jeremi: Do you think that there are real efforts to disenfranchise young voters?
Pam: I really do believe that and this is one of them.
Jeremi: Sure.
Pam: Not making it easy, we don’t have automatic voter registration, there are efforts to curb– in fact I actually went into the legislative, the list of legislative actions set to be debated in this legislative session, there are many bills, dozens of bills out there related to voting. And there’s a few of them that want to reset the deadline for absentee– that one actually might be, there’s some good ones, but there’s also some other ones, such as cutting early voting short–
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: was one of them, but, so yes there are definitely efforts to put obstacles up.
Jeremi: And why do we put up with that? Almost no one I know would justify that, even those probably who propose these bills, would not go around saying they’re against young people voting, so why do we permit this?
Pam: Well, the justification is that, you know, they want to make sure that people who aren’t eligible to vote, don’t vote, but you know we don’t have a problem with too many people voting in this country. The problem is too few people voting.
Jeremi: Right, right. So what are you doing? What is First Vote doing and how can we help?
Pam: Okay, well what I’ll say is the League of Women Voters is completely non-partisan. So there’s no politics in it, whatsoever. We go into schools, we– well in fact I’ll give you some numbers from last year. And I just started doing this, First Vote started the year before last. Joyce LeBombard, who is now the president of the League of Women Voters, Austin area, started it and then Jody Klopp and I took it over the summer.
Jeremi: Fantastic.
Pam: And we reached, you know we’re all volunteers, the League is all volunteers and so…
Jeremi: And you could use more volunteers.
Pam: We could use more volunteers. I will say this, we keep getting– when people join the League and they say what they want to do, we have so many volunteers who want to help, that they say, “I want to do First Vote, I want to reach high schoolers,” so that’s fantastic. Now, of course, there’s a supply and demand issue because we can have, we had 60 volunteers last year, but then we have to get on the phone and call all the schools, and then fit into the Government classes and like make sure that like–
Jeremi: Sure, that was going to be my next question, how you do that.
Pam: Right, and so we made into 18 schools last fall, we registered 260 Travis and Williamson County 18 year olds, but we reached about 1,700 because we went into individual classrooms and we did our little presentation, which is– the presentation is about 15 minutes. We talk about the importance of voting, we try to interact with the students, ask them what they care about, tell them a little bit about the mechanics of voting because that’s the other thing. You know, you need to know what kind of ID to bring, which can be a barrier if you don’t drive, a lot of 18 year olds don’t drive now.
Jeremi: Right, right.
Pam: And so they don’t have a driver’s license, so how do they get– you know? And a student ID is not good enough and so we talk to them about what they, the mechanics, how you get there, how you find your polling place, there’s a lot of information now online. But, backing up, if an 18 year old doesn’t know what’s on the ballot or who’s on the ballot or doesn’t understand, you know, that’s the first thing is they need to feel like they’re competent enough to go into the polls.
Jeremi: Right, and this has always been at the core of the League of Women Voters. When the organization is formed, it begins as an informational organization–
Pam: Exactly.
Jeremi: to inform women and men about voting and I know every year I use your guide, which lists for local, state, and federal races all the candidates, all the issues, all the propositions. So I assume you begin with that, right? You sort of, you show the students that.
Pam: We begin with that, we show them and now it’s all online and in fact, Vote411.org is the best– that’s actually national and so every local league uploads all of their own races. So this is a national website, Vote411.org
Jeremi: Vote411.org and Vote411 is one word.
Pam: Vote411 is one word and as an election nears, you can go there, you know put in your state, your county, whatever and all of your ballot will show up. So if there’s a city council member running, if there’s you know, there are ballot initiatives on the ballot. And so that all shows up and you can– it’s all non-partisan, they ask, the League asks candidates the same questions, they ask the same questions of every candidate and then they print their responses verbatim.
Jeremi: So how are you received when you go into high school classes? How do students react?
Pam: Well very well, you know, (laughs) some kids are super enthusiastic and they listen, other kids are pretty bored, you know? It’s not something that they’ve thought about or cared about. What we did, Jody and I about halfway through, we bought all these kind of fun things like eagle rings and, you know, frisbees and stuff like that with the Vote411.org and we would and we kind of used those as incentives. And we do this little ice breaker at the beginning to show kids, we have everyone stand up and we say, “This is your electorate, this is your group of people, now you’re all eligible to vote, half of you sit down. That half, you didn’t even– that half of the electorate in your age group didn’t get registered, didn’t bother to do that, they can’t have a say on this.” And then we say, “Okay, half of who’s left, sit down,” those people registered, awesome, that was really great, but they never made it to the polls.”
Jeremi: Right, right.
Pam: And then we show the very tiny fraction that’s left and say, “Do you really want these people to make all the decisions for you?” And so, you know, we do little things like that to kind of illustrate.
Jeremi: Sure, I think that’s very powerful.
Pam: Yeah.
Jeremi: How do you get people involved at a moment like now when clearly there are a lot of important political issues, but we don’t have an election that’s imminent or doesn’t seem imminent to a lot of people? How do you get– because part of what you’re trying to do is do this all before the last minute, right?
Pam: Well for sure and so that’s a very good question because we did it in the fall and there was an election coming up and of course there was an urgency and we had a deadline and we– we were able to get those 18 schools, I think we did that in three weeks and it was insane.
Jeremi: Wow, wow.
Pam: You know, we had all– we were all over the place and I had to take days off from work to do it. (laughs)
Jeremi: Oh my gosh.
Pam: But it was important and we did it, now we’re going to do it again in the spring, there’s no election. There are a couple of minor, you know local races that will happen, but yes, how do we get the enthusiasm up? It’s going to be more about just registering kids this time, we may cut down our presentation a little bit to get into more schools, but more kids will be eligible by then because of course in the… because there will be more 18 year olds.
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: So, you know, of course we’re– and we’ll talk about the next election and stuff.
Jeremi: Is it a larger story about having a voice in politics? I mean I think about the ways in which young people are engaged, I think, largely positively though as we’ve seen, not always positively around issues of race, around issues of immigration. Now concerned about the shut down and things of that– school funding. So is this part of a larger dialogue about students having their voices heard whether it’s through protest, through letters, through calls to Congress people, through voting, is that the way you think about it?
Pam: Yes, for sure and in fact, the National League, kind of gives us help, you know, they have a guide online that’s called… it’s called, “Empowering the Voters of Tomorrow,” and so we kind of, we look at that and we see they do kind of overall research on what works and what doesn’t work and they give us kind of helpful tips to integrate into our program. And one of the things that they say is, “Be positive,” show that, you know–
Jeremi: Yes.
Pam: The myth is that young people don’t care, they don’t vote, but there are so many examples of them stepping up, you know look at the Parkland students after the shooting.
Jeremi: Yes, yes.
Pam: And so what we talk about is this is a movement and it’s trending up and you can be a part of it and it’s more about being a part of it– it’s not like, “Oh you need to get out there.” It’s not an admonishment, it’s a positive trend.
Jeremi: Do you think that certain candidates are more likely to inspire these students when you see them?
Pam: Oh my gosh, for sure. When we– oh here’s the other interesting thing. So I would ask, you know, “Do you know who’s running?” just to see like what the level of– the only person that anybody knew, was Beto.
Jeremi: Really?
Pam: They didn’t even know who he was running against, but they knew his name. Young, charismatic, you know, and so certainly those candidates inspire.
Jeremi: And do you think it’s more the candidate or the issue that inspires?
Pam: Honestly, I think it’s the candidate.
Jeremi: Interesting.
Pam: Here’s what I tell students, “Don’t try to wrap your head around everything that’s going out there, I can’t, I mean I can’t keep up with the news. Pick one or two issues, you’re about to go to college or maybe you’re going to sign up for the military or maybe you’re going to get out of high school and you just want a job, pay attention to that one thing and then find out what the candidates are saying about that one thing. And then, you know, start there and make it small,” give them a little bite that they can chew off and…
Jeremi: I think this, though, is an important piece of evidence for why we need young, exciting candidates.
Pam: Yes, we do, I think so. And you know I read– and this is a couple years ago, but I was in a meeting and, again, I’m going to take off my non-partisan League hat and put on my political hat because it was a democratic precinct meeting, and they had done kind of a survey of the democratic leaders in the state, they were all over 60 or over 70. I mean it skewed so far and not, and they’ve done great work and we’re proud of them, but their point was we need to infuse youth and energy into it.
Jeremi: Absolutely, I don’t think that’s a partisan point, I think that’s, as you point out, that that’s true on both sides of the aisle. So it sounds like one thing that’s necessary in addition to being positive and overcoming cynicism, is to have candidates whom young people can identify with, right?
Pam: Yes.
Jeremi: Zachary, did you want to come in?
Zachary: Yeah, I think that’s important. I think it’s important to have young candidates, people who can identify and I think it was really clear, like in the ways that Beto used social media and Ted Cruz didn’t. I think that it just showed that they were close in age, but they were trying to appeal to completely different generations. And I think just like old people want to see– aren’t like, don’t want to go out to the polls to vote for someone who’s younger, young people don’t want to go out to the polls to vote for someone who’s a lot older.
Jeremi: Right, right, so there has to be someone who can appeal to young voters, but hopefully not alienate other voters at the same time.
Zachary: Yeah.
Pam: It’s a tough, you know, it’s a tough call. (laughs)
Jeremi: It’s a very– I mean in some ways I think we might overstate the partisan differences and many of the differences might actually be demographic differences, generational differences. Yeah, just for the point you made where a lot of party leaders are of different generation, right?
Pam: For sure, yeah.
Jeremi: So in addition to getting and motivating younger, more exciting candidates, what else can listeners do? How else can they help to get young people involved and do it at an earlier age as you’re pointing out? What do you recommend?
Pam: Well I would say certainly, parents, can start talking to their kids about the issues earlier. You know I know in my house, I’m a democrat, my ex-husband was republican, we didn’t divorce because of that. (laughs)
Jeremi: (laughs)
Pam: But we had healthy debates around the table.
Jeremi: Yes, of course.
Pam: And we were moderate so an issue would come up and I’d say something and then my husband would make the opposite point and then we’d have a healthy discussion about it.
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: I don’t know how much of that is happening, you know, around tables in the country, but parents kind of bringing the issue home, debating different points, showing also, here’s the other thing is just how we talk about it, you know? The other side is not the enemy.
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: There are, we all probably want the same thing, or similar things, we have different ways of getting at it and it’s a huge country, we’re very diverse, and there’s not one way to do things.
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: And we need to compromise because, you know, we all need to play in the sandbox. So I guess at the parental level, at the family level, more conversations about that. And I think politicians need to ratchet it down, you know? Because their rhetoric has been extremely polarizing and that’s not good for the country.
Jeremi: Right.
Pam: But so and then you’re asking about, you know, what can–
Jeremi: Right, are there First Vote organizations around the country? There must be.
Pam: Oh, well here’s what I wanted to say, you know the League is not the only organization doing this and in fact in Austin, we’re actually convening a group of Austin organizations that are involved in young voter registration, in fact, our meeting is on Thursday. We have the Children’s Defense Fund coming in, JOLT, which is an organization that focuses on issues affecting the Latino community in Texas, Texas Freedom Network and the Texas Civil Rights Project, we’re all getting together on Thursday to plan a meeting of even more organizations to do some better organizing about how– because we all kind of do our own thing and we want to kind of make it more streamlined.
Jeremi: And you’re all volunteers, right? I mean you’re all there.
Pam: We’re all– I think some of those other organizations, they have staff, but they also have volunteers, yeah.
Jeremi: And all– and those of you who are volunteers were able to get certified to be registrars to register people to vote and things of that sort.
Pam: Yes, we all have to be, in fact, it’s a two year certification, we all have to now get re-certified because we all got certified two years ago. So there’s an effort by the Travis County Office Register’s Office, to get us all re-certified.
Jeremi: Great, so one thing people can do is certainly join organizations and get involved and make themselves, in whatever the rules are for their states, qualified registrars to then go around and register people to vote. It sounds to me like one of the things that’s very powerful is you’re going into these schools and going to these meetings as a volunteer, making it clear that you yourself are giving your time and it seems to me that creates a moral obligation for those in the room to think about how they’re using their time.
Pam: For sure and well, and here’s the other thing, as I mentioned, there are dozens of proposed bills in the Texas Legislature right now, some of them very good, making voter registration automatic through the Department of Public Safety Transactions. There are bills related to incarcerated people, there are bills related to making sure there are polling places on university campuses. So if you’re at all politically savvy, or not even, call your Texas Legislatures–
Jeremi: Or whatever state you’re in.
Pam: Or whatever state you’re in and support, offer your support for those bills that make it easier for young people to vote.
Jeremi: Yes, yeah, this is–
Zachary: I think we also, though, we need more government education and civics classes. I think that it’s under prioritized and taught from like a boring, like, textbook standpoint. I think there needs to be more education and engagement that makes it fun and interesting for students where they’re actually getting a voice where they’re getting to like participate in the governmental process instead of just being on the sidelines, reading a textbook.
Zachary: Right.
Pam: Jeremi, that is an excellent point and in fact last year the League in Austin was invited to a meeting of civic’s teachers, government teachers, and they kind of convened this work group to talk exactly about what you’re saying. How do you engage, how do you make it interesting, how do infuse this into the curriculum and make sure it’s in the curriculum?
Jeremi: Right, I think it’s incumbent on teachers, just like parents, to first of all, as Zachary said to educate young people, but also to inspire them. Teachers shouldn’t take a position in a partisan way, but they certainly should make it clear that this is civic duty to vote.
Pam: For sure, yeah.
Jeremi: And to help inform.
Pam: And I will say having gone into 18 schools in Austin and I didn’t go into all 18 of those, we all– some of our volunteers took up others, but there was a huge difference– and those were the teachers who invited us in, so they were clearly like in the top quartile of teachers interested in this and wanted to make sure that their students had access to it, but even so, you know, there were differences in how engaged they were. And so, you know, I just think civics education, as Jeremi said, should be a top–
Jeremi: Zachary, as Zachary said.
Pam: I mean, I’m sorry, (laughs) as Zachary said, should be a top priority.
Jeremi: Yes.
Zachary: Well I think it’s also not just the teachers, I think the teachers try really hard, I think it’s also that like in terms of funding wise and just societally, we under prioritize education in government and participation. I think in other countries, there’s a lot more education on the democratic process and engagement, like, at a very early age.
Jeremi: Right, I think until recently we’ve taken democracy for granted and haven’t even thought about how you educate a new generation to understand and participate in that.
Pam: And truly, an educated population is the basis of democracy. If your population is not educated, it cannot govern itself.
Jeremi: That’s right, well this goes back to the founders, this was a very key and important point for them that our democracy would only be as strong as the participation of our citizens. Pam, thank you for all that you do, I think you’ve inspired us to all think about the ways we can not only vote ourselves, but help to vote, inform, and engage young people who are not only future voters, but future leaders and boy do we need them now, more than ever.
Pam: Yes, we do.
Jeremi: And, Zachary, thank you for your poem as always. Thank you for joining us on This is Democracy.
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Intro voices: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke and you can find his music at HarrisonLemke.com. Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday, featuring new perspectives on democracy.
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