Tangle - SPECIAL EDITION: Yes, you should vote.

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

Election day is in four days. Today, Tangle founder Isaac Saul discusses the reasons most people don't vote, and why you should.Find NPR's coverage on elections decided by a single vote here.If you're not sure what is happening in your state's midterm elections, use this site as a resource.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, I am going to be pitching to you the idea of voting. This is a little bit unusual, not our normal podcast. It's a little bit of a special edition. This is going out in our Friday edition newsletter. It's a piece I actually originally wrote, or I guess it was this year, it was January or February of 2022, but it feels really important to rerun today. And I think I'm going to do this maybe before every big election for the rest of

time and just kind of casually, incrementally update this piece as my argument sort of evolves. But the basic idea is that a lot of people don't vote and I think they should. So I'm going to tell you why. So an interesting thing happened to me in 2020. While the George Floyd protests spread across the United States, I watched my social circle snap into attention and dedicate themselves to understanding police violence, racial injustice, and politics in the places that they lived. For months on end, my social media feeds were filled with posts of support, explainers, and opinions. My inbox was full of questions. My dinners out and my time at the bar were dominated by explicitly political conversations, difficult, nuanced, informed

discussion. Everybody wanted to do something. In New York, this movement was palpable, and if there was one important moment to latch onto to effect some change, it was the impending mayoral race. Local politics have long been the most effective way to change policing and the judicial system, and New York was about to enter one of the wildest, most-watched mayoral races in recent memory, with a slew of progressives speaking the language of reform, running up against a former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and a tough-on-crime former cop who happened to also be black, Eric Adams. In New York, a city dominated by Democratic voters, the primary race was, for all intents and purposes, the actual mayoral race. But when it came around,

I noticed something peculiar and, frankly, shocking. Very few of my friends actually voted. When I asked people if they had voted, the most common response I got was, the election was today? There weren't many I voted stickers in my Instagram feed and there was very little political discussion about the race over dinners or at the bar. It was odd and confounding, but it is not at all unique. It's not a secret that many Americans are cynical about their vote. Whether you track this by the percentage of registered voters or the percentage of the voting age population who vote, the U.S. tends to sit pretty far down the list of developed nations when it comes to voter participation rates. Some countries near the top, like Australia or Belgium, have compulsory voting where it's required by law, but most do not.

Broadly speaking, there are two buckets that voters fall into when they talk about why they don't vote. Barriers and apathy. Barriers are the structural issues that voters run into that prevent them from voting, while apathy is the lack of interest, enthusiasm, or belief that their vote matters or will change anything. One of the most extensive examinations of these buckets came from FiveThirtyEight, which put together a survey of over 8,000 people while also tracking their voting history to understand how they participated in elections over time. The barriers by now are probably well known to you. Registering to vote can be cumbersome. It requires meeting deadlines,

having a stable home address, sending in paperwork, sometimes providing identification, and paying close attention to when elections are coming. Actually voting can be difficult too. It requires taking time off work or getting to a polling place before or after work. For many parents, it requires finding child care. For many voters, it requires actually getting to the polling place, sometimes via public transportation if you don't have a car, and doing it requires actually getting to the polling place, sometimes via public transportation if you don't have a car, and doing it in a timely fashion. The result is that in any given election, somewhere between 35% and 60% of eligible voters never cast a ballot. Thanks to these barriers, as FiveThirtyEight points out, the people who do vote tend to be higher income,

better educated, more likely to be white, and more likely to identify with a specific political party. Non-voters were more likely to be low-income, young, have low levels of education, and lack party identification. When asked about the barriers to voting, those surveyed in the 538 poll most often cited lines that lasted more than an hour, missing a voter registration deadline, not being able to get off work, and not being able to find or physically access their polling place, which is a major issue for Americans with disabilities. These barriers are real, insidious, and clearly play a large role in why many people don't vote. But the apathy bucket is, perhaps, even larger, and it's the one I'm going to address today. In the 538 survey, nearly a quarter of the non-voters or irregular voters, i.e. they didn't vote often, mentioned the barriers above.

But 31% said that they decided not to vote because they disliked the candidate, and another 26% said they decided not to vote because they thought nothing would change as a result of the election. It's hard to blame people for this feeling. When you look at why people don't vote, the refrains are familiar. No matter who wins, nothing will change. I didn't like any of the candidates. The system is too broken to be fixed by voting. All the candidates are the same. I wanted to vote, but something came up. I don't believe in voting. Because of where I live, my vote doesn't matter. Nobody talks about issues that are important to me. I'm not sure if I can vote. There is truth in all of this. Just 60 of the 435 congressional races in the United States

were considered competitive in 2020. If you live in a state like New York or Louisiana, it can seem obvious that your vote in something like a presidential race doesn't matter. This, despite the fact that independents are now the largest political bloc in America, 43%, when people are asked to self-identify, Republicans are 30% and Democrats are 24%, according to September Gallup polling. All this is to say, I think these aren't legitimate gripes. Now, let me tell you why you should still vote. For starters, most elections involve more than just one race. If you're a liberal living in Wyoming where Trump won 70% of the vote in 2020, it might feel pointless to go to a presidential race. But that federal election also included races in Congress and perhaps local races or

ballot initiatives. In 2020, for instance, there were a huge number of ballot initiatives. Single issue yes or no votes on everything from marijuana legalization, to whether gig workers should be employees, to raising the minimum wage to $15. These are not votes to put people in power who you may not think are going to do anything, but they are literally an opportunity to, overnight, change the law in your state. Ballot initiatives on their own should be the reason for you to show up at the polls in most elections. Often, those ballot initiatives are actually directly tied to the barriers we wrote about above, meaning your vote could potentially reduce the number of barriers to voting that other people face. They could also change elections, like the initiatives in Alaska that ushered in ranked-choice voting.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season?

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. If you need any convincing your vote does count, though, you should know there were a huge number of close races for Congress. Georgia, New York, and Iowa all had key races whose results took weeks after election day to finalize. And across the country every year, there are local races that are decided by fewer than 100 votes.

In fact, there have been a number of significant elections decided by a single vote. NPR has helpfully put together a list of those races, which you can find a link to in today's episode description. Assuming for a moment that the empirical evidence your vote is likely to matter is not convincing, or perhaps it is really true that your vote is unlikely to change the result of any race where you live, consider this. Politicians respond to trends. In 2020, for instance, Democrats won the presidency, house, and senate. But what did they do for the months after the election? They spent time panicking about how many Hispanic voters they were losing. Why? Because even though they won all those elections, they saw a trend they didn't like, one that forced them to change their strategy. It's important to know that in politics, it is not simply about wins and losses. It is about electorates strategizing the future and those dreadful

long-term trends. When you go to vote in an election, even if your vote doesn't produce the outcome you want, it can produce a trend that forces your legislators to take notice. This is why Republicans worry about winning black voters and suburban moms, and it's why Democrats worry about Hispanic voters and white men without college degrees. The result of that worry is actual, legitimate change. Over time, parties will change their policy platforms where they campaign or their stances on issues to win over certain voting blocs. Your vote and the trend it produces can help change a party's platform even if it doesn't produce the electoral outcome you want. These are

all practical, tangible reasons to vote. You can incite change, elicit a response from politicians, and there are almost certainly issues where your life could be impacted. Now, on to the less tangible. Many non-voters express a belief that every politician is the same. I'm not entirely sure how to shatter that generalization, but let me put it bluntly, they are not. I have interviewed dozens of politicians. I've watched hundreds of debates. I've seen how bills are drafted and moved through Congress or state houses or city councils. Politicians are not all the same. Some are smart, qualified, honest, and motivated by sincere beliefs. Some are dishonest, opportunist, unqualified, and have fewer problem-solving skills than your average American. Some have very clear

ideological stances tied to capitalism or religious beliefs or the founding fathers. Some have ideological stances tied to equity or civil rights or progress. As Tangle demonstrates daily, there are also two dominant ideologies in the United States, conservative and liberal. This duopoly is not perfect, and I sometimes regret breaking issues down along those lines, but it exists in part because it is real. Because so many Americans hold incongruent and mixed views, the breakdown of left and right in the United States is not easy. Media Bias Fact Checked has a useful explanation of left and right. It describes left as being collectivism, community over the individual, equality,

environmental protection, expanded educational opportunities, social safety nets for those who need them. The right, meanwhile, is described as individualism, individual over the community, limited government with the individual freedom and personal property rights, competition. As Hiram Lewis recently argued, convincingly entangled, the idea of left and right is mostly a myth. Even conceding that, though, the two tribes who subscribe to these views, Republican and Democrat, tend to emphasize the values outlined above. This left-right, liberal-conservative, or Democrat-Republican dichotomy is real. We see it every day in Tangle. All politicians are not

the same. Now, let's assume for a moment that you are not buying any of this. Let's assume that you're here and you are still wholly convinced your vote doesn't matter and all politicians are the same. Let me propose this to you. Those politicians you loathe and that system you are deriding, they depend on your apathy. They need it to succeed. They need you to believe what you believe in order to stay in power and to keep the status quo. Quite literally, one of the only ways you can fight them, and a tangible way, is to vote. Like him or hate him, Andrew Yang actually explained why this is so important quite clearly to me during our interview last year. When discussing how politicians hold onto power, Yang said this about being an incumbent candidate in a primary race.

It's like, all I have to do is keep myself from getting primaried among the 10 to 15% most extreme people in my district, and then I win. So I'll act like a little bit more of a zealot or a jackass or whatever, just like duck certain questions. Our democracy is structurally broken and most of us know it on some level and so we're checking out. In other words, because the only people who are voting are those with super strong political beliefs far to one side of the left-right spectrum, that's who politicians campaign to. The apathy from everyone else is a tool they use to stay in power and an incentive for them to move to the fringe. Yang's solution is to switch to open primaries and rank-choice voting.

My solution is that you vote. In fact, I'd argue that Yang's solution is essentially impossible unless more people vote. Finally, I'll give you a little bit of the flag-loving mush. You should vote because you can. Of all the years to reflect on this freedom we have, this year should drive it home. In Ukraine, we're watching a foreign leader who imprisons and kills political dissidents try to remove the option to choose elected leaders from Ukrainians. In Iran, protesters are dying in the streets to fight back against a regime that is trying to police everything down to what they wear. Hong Kongers who have tried to tough out the incursion from Beijing are currently holding on to what is left of their representative

democracy for dear life. This right that we have did not come easily. Many people died fighting for it. Many people are currently risking their lives to come here and enjoy it. You can mock this as American exceptionalism, but it isn't. Sure, we are not the only democracy in the world. And yes, our democracy is currently in a raucous, dangerous place where many voters don't even believe election outcomes and gerrymandering has become a legitimate crisis. That's all the more reason to participate. Choosing our elected representatives is a gift, like being born into a family with financial stability or being born with a healthy functioning body. Do not waste it in the name of apathy. Seize it. Make it better. On November 8th, four days from now, states across the country will be holding

their 2022 midterm election day. Over 30 million people have already voted. If you're not sure what is happening, there's a link in today's episode description that you can use that has a helpful resource for who you need to vote on in this election. As you probably know by now, I don't care who you vote for, but I do care and hope deeply that more and more people begin to participate in our democratic process. So, if you haven't yet, consider this my plea for you to join the fray. Please, go vote. and edited and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Sean Brady, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly,

and our social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who designed our logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our website at www.readtangle.com. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis We'll be right back. families buried history and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.

Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.