Well, good afternoon, everyone and welcome to our conversation this afternoon. I'm Chancellor Susan Sciame-Giesecke. And I would like to begin by thanking our panelists today for engaging us and most important conversation as we approach our national elections. I thought in order to get us started, I kind of peruse some quotations and some famous sayings around the responsibility to vote, thought I would just share a few of them. Thomas Jefferson once said, we do not have governments by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate. Plato himself said one of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics that you end up being governed by your inferiors. Susan B. Anthony, of course, reminds us, we must never forget the importance of making our voice heard. Someone struggled for your right to vote, use it. And then Pat Mitchell made a similar comment to Susan B. Anthony's. Remember what the suffragists said when they finally wonder, long hard battle to get us the right to vote. Knowing that they probably would never get to exercise the right or see the results. They said, this is not for ourselves alone, it was for us and for every generation of women to come. If we don't vote, we are ignoring history, giving away the future. I think today our goal is to help all of us understand the importance of our boat. So I look forward to listening to the participants and to the panelists. So I turn it now to Dr. Rosalyn Davis. Thank you, Chancellor. I appreciate that. So as she mentioned, I am doctor rosin Davis. I'm a clinical associate professor of psychology here. I'm joined on the panel today by Dr. Chris Darr, Paul Cook and Sarah Heath. We're going to talk to you a little bit before we get into the question and answer period about the role of voting in American society. We're going to give you some tidbits on voter disenfranchisement as well as voter misinformation and disinformation campaigns that are currently running wild in politics. So to start with, I'm going to hand over the platform to Dr. Sarah Heath. And there I will. Thank you. So yeah, I teach history here at IU KOKOMO. And I guess the things that I would say about the right to vote is, you know, when you think it was just a 100 years ago that women finally won the right to vote after more than 70 years of activism. So I mean, this is one of the most fundamental rights that more than half of the nation's population were denied. There were all kinds of arguments used as to why women should not vote. Some said a person's husband or her father represented an entire family. Since women could eat, obtain credit, they couldn't sign contracts. They couldn't do a variety of things that would allow them civil recognition. Many people felt that it was simply asking too much to grant them the right to vote. Later when people propose the right to vote. People suggested, for example, well, you know, if a woman can vote, that means that she could also run for office. And so there were some people who mocks the whole idea of voting by the notion that women would be sort of dropping babies on the floor of Congress. And yet through all of that, women tried desperately. Some voted illegally. Others went on massive parades that attempted to draw attention away from the national leadership of the United States. Some people even were imprisoned and then eventually engaged in hunger strikes. And so I think very strongly about all of those things, right? That if, if just a 100 years ago, somebody like me did not even have the right to vote. You know, what, what is it that people went through to try to obtain this right? And what did they hoped they were going to get out of it. And so I think that, that, that to me is one of the keys about thinking about when I want to exercise a political right. I'm building on a historical precedent, but I also take that very seriously that it hasn't always existed for all of us. So and then I think we want at this point to hand off the baton to Dr. Paul Cook. Hi, everyone. I'm Paul cook. I'm associate professor of English here at IU COCOMO. And I study misinformation and its effects on society. Since 2016, I've been involved with the American Democracy Project, which is a kind of a consortium or partnership between colleges, universities, non-profit organizations, and some corporations like the New York Times. Our goal essentially is to connect students to the voting process, to help fill in the gaps of civics education, and to encourage students to register to vote and to vote. So we organize voting drives, we organize debate watches, debate discussion and we're actually having one. Let's see, next week, the morning after the debate on the 29th of September. And I was asked to come on essentially to talk about kind of some of the trends that we're seeing and misinformation and disinformation in terms of voting. And so I'll do that and then I'll talk a little bit about kind of what's usually called voter apathy and some of the trends and turn out and why we tend to see less, less turnout than, than would be ideal. To be frank, some of the reasons why white people don't vote in these elections, much less in the midterm elections. So which we tend to see a lot, a lot lower turn out for those as well. So I think it's helpful just to start by talking about essentially two different types of what's called problematic information. One is misinformation and one is disinformation. And the key distinction is that misinformation is anything that is misleading or false, but that is unintentionally. So, So it's, for example, there was a couple of weeks ago, a month ago or so, there was a kind of a campaign on Instagram and other social media platforms that was trying to, in a, in a very well-meaning way, trying to get the word out that if you plan on voting by mail, that you needed to have your your your absentee ballot postmarked by a certain date or the post office wasn't going to be able to count it. It turned out that that's not the case, that that it was incorrect information in and yet it wasn't as far as we can tell, it wasn't intentional, wasn't trying to mislead people. That's an example of misinformation. The other time which we're seeing a lot more Robin this campaign, all that. We also saw it back in 2016, as well as misinformation, which is false or misleading or inaccurate information that is expressly designed to mislead to get you to change your, your vote. So if you think about 2016, you can think about the, the Russian bots and the hacking that happened in that election. A lot of misinformation and this information was on Facebook and other social media platforms. And this election already we've seen a lot of what I would call process related disinformation. So it's just information that is specifically targeted at the process of voting. So it's trying to confuse people. It's trying to get them to think that they have to have a certain kind of ID or they have to register in some special but ultimately fictional and non-existent way or that they have to bring, you know, more forms of I D then than they need or that the polling places are going to close early. And this is really unfortunate. One of the sort of net effects of both misinformation and disinformation. Particularly when you put it into the kind of hyper, hyperpartisan crucible that is our current national politics is that it essentially turns people off from the entire process. And so you have a lot of people who just sort of choose to disconnect altogether rather than being engaged. And that's obviously not a good thing. So what we want to try to do today is addressed some of your questions about misinformation and GIS information and voting generally and see if we can get some good information out there to try to combat some of the negative information. One of the very best things that you can do as an individual is to try to stay a formed. I always say that the best defense is a good offense. And so the best defense against just information. And these various kinds of misinformation campaigns is to make sure that you're staying well-informed. And that might mean taking some time every single day to do your due diligence and to read reputable sources, mainstream sources. Sources that rely on journalistic ethos. And that you are keeping yourself well in form so that you are not easily duped. Just a few statistics that I want to throw out there as you back in 2016, which was our last general election, about a 138 million Americans voted or, or right at 58% of voting eligible Americans voted. So not quite 60%. And interestingly, in Indiana, it was 2.8 million Hoosiers voted, which is, which is right at 58% of the, of the voting eligible population. 33% of those were absentee. And there are three ways that you can cast an absentee ballot in the state of Indiana. The first way is called in per person absentee, which is what's also known as early voting. This will begin on October the sixth and run all the way up to November second. And facts on the two saturdays preceding the election on November the third. There will be early early in-person voting. There's also absentee voting by male, although in Indiana you do have to meet some special qualifications for that. And then finally, there's what's called Travel board, which is for those who are overseas or those who are serving overseas. So there are three different ways to cast an absentee ballot in the state of Indiana. Some of the reasons that people give on the national level for not voting in elections is, as I mentioned, the kind of apathy that's often brought about by misinformation and disinformation and the political space, the kind of combativeness that comes along with that and with politics more generally that has the effects sometimes a turning people off. There's a lot of disillusionment with the two party system. People feel like they don't have much of a choice. In many cases, some people don't think that the issues that are on the national platform matter to them or that the national parties tend not to focus on the kinds of issues that would matter to them, such as reducing the deficit or marijuana legalization. At the federal level. Some people are very disillusioned with the electorial college. They don't understand why, for example, a candidate win the popular vote in 2016. And yet W2s the election because of the Electoral College. And then some folks just don't like to vote because they say that they live in a state where their vote doesn't count. And unfortunately, that would seem to be true for some. We know that there are six swing states this year. But at the same time, you have to be careful with that line of thinking because as we all know in 2016, Michigan was thought to be a solidly blue state and end an ultimately by a very narrow margin width for President Donald Trump's. So we do know that there are instances where that line of thinking that, oh, I don't live in a swing state, so my vote doesn't count are inaccurate. So anyway, I I that's a lot of information and I hope that I can address more of this in more detail, in depth conversation that follows, and in the Q and a. Thank you. Oh, and I'm going to turn things over now to my colleague, Dr. Chris Darn. Hello. I'm Dr. Chris dar and I'm a Professor of Communication Arts, currently teaching Political Communication. And I think I see a couple of students in the attendee list there. So that's pretty cool to see a couple of students here. I kind of approach this with two questions in. One follows on what Dr. Heath was saying and the other falls on Dr. Cook. So as far as doctor, he's talked about the 100th anniversary of women's right to vote and women in politics and running for election. And so one of the questions I had was, is it harder for women to get elected? And why is it? Okay because when you look at statistics, currently in the United States Senate, we have 26 female senators. That's 26%. In the house. We have a 101 women, that's 23%. And then according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 28.9% of all state legislators nationwide are women. So that's only 28.9%. If you're interested. Indiana has 24%. And the two states with the highest percentage of women in their state legislatures are colorado with 47, and Nevada with 52. So really Nevada is, is the closest to accurately representing the population. And we have a long way to go. So why is it? There's many reasons, but one thing I wanted to talk about in terms of women running for office is what's known as a double bind. Kathleen Jamison wrote a book called Beyond the Double Bind Women in leadership. And she talks about different sort of rhetorical traps that women are fall into. And it's one of those things where like there are sort of two options and either way you go, you're going to, you're going to lose that there's going to be negative consequences. So for instance, it's kinda like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. So one example she talks about is femininity versus competence, right? So we, she says we equate male characteristics with competence, right? So that means that if you're feminine, you're incompetent. If you're competent, you're not feminine. So women have to sort of straddle that line. They have to, they have to sort of, how do you achieve competence without giving up your femininity. So that is obviously based on some stereotypes. But one example would be Sarah Palin in 2008 running as vice presidential running mate to John McCain. There were a lot of stories about her appearance. She was depicted as feminine and attractive, yet incompetent. And Hillary Clinton often has been depicted as on feminine and sort of like the Iron Maiden. Competent on policy stuff but on feminine. Another example is body and brain. So Jamison talks about how women are evaluated female candidates much more than male candidates tend to be evaluated on their appearance. And how one example, if you know who Alexandria cause you a Cortez is. I went to her Wikipedia page the other day and in the lead paragraph was her trademark red lipstick was mentioned. Maybe that's changed. I don't know, you know, Wikipedia is but you don't see those kinda things about men. She talks about a couple other double binds such as aging and invisibility. Says about aging women are seen as less relevant where aging man are seen as distinguished. She also talks about sameness and difference. Women can be portrayed as the same as man, right? Like I have the same qualifications as any man running for this position. But somehow she's still inferior. So there's a lot there. We can talk about that if you guys have if anybody has questions about that. But I think that helps to sort of explain some of the challenges that women face as they're running for office. The other question, I won't spend too much time on this, but following up on what Dr. Cook was talking about in terms of turnout. So there are like he said, there's a lot of reasons that people don't get out and vote, right? But there are a couple of reasons, are a couple of factors that are actually caused by the campaigns themselves. Okay, so one of those is the negative campaigning. So we know from decades of research that negative campaigning sort of increases cynicism. So those people like Dr. Chuck mentioned pupil that, well, why should I, what's the difference there? All scum, they're all bad people. That kind of idea. So it, it energizes the base so to speak, because you know, it's the red meat, the basements, trunks. Trump's supporters want to see Biden get savage and vice versa. Biden, hardcore Biden supporters want to see ads that attack Donald Trump. Well, the impact of that is that there are people who are moderates or maybe undecided that don't, it doesn't appeal to them. They don't like all the nastiness politics and so that does drive down the vote. Now, one thing is that, is that maybe insidious about that whole thing is that campaigns know this, right? Campaigns know this. There has been a steady increase in negative campaigning since, since the advent of television and since the first presidential debates in 19601960, the 9% of television ads were considered negative ads. And in 2016, 55% of the ads were considered negative. Now I say this is, some of this might be maybe strategic BY campaigns because many presidential campaigns these days focus on setting up, instead of trying to persuade the moderates, it's become a game of turn out. How do we turn out the base? How do we turn out the base? So if we turn out the base by attacking the other, the other candidate that energize our base and drives a bar voter turnout, but it can drive down the turnout of people who are undecided, right? And so, you know, there's, there's campaigns know this and as they shift more. And my guess, my, my assertion, my claim is that candidates know, notice in these sophisticated presidential campaigns know that if they attack it, back attack. Not only will they encouraged their people to get out to vote, but they will also perhaps turn away. Moderate voters are undecided voters, but on some level, they're choosing what I want to say. They don't care, but they're choosing the turnout game over getting more people involved. They're choosing, fire up the base over persuade other people that we have good ideas. And so I think that's kind of problematic. But I will leave it at that and I don't know who's next. Dr. Davis, maybe. Yes, I will take back over at this point. So i appreciate my colleagues have already said the stage. The, one of the things that I will probably add to this discussion is to doctor he's point, yes, women were able to vote a 100 years from now or a 100 years ago. Black women and black individuals in general still had their right to vote infringed upon. It could be something as basic as a poll tax because you have to support the electoral process. So if you have the $2 to vote with, you don't get to vote. They would also be things like literacy tests and not Could you read, which is really what a literacy test is. But I need you to be able to cite chapter and verse this section of the constitution and explain it to me. Most of us couldn't do that now, let alone a few years post slavery ending when people were able to vote for black men anyway, initially. But people are also just actually threatened. If they'd made it to the polls and tried to vote. They were attacked. They were beaten, and unfortunately periodically they were killed. So there are moments in which yes, the voting thing is optional and there for us to embrace. But we also make it difficult for people to vote. We are one of the few major industrialized countries where we're not required to vote. And that the election is not a holiday, so that we don't have time off to go vote and we have to make that happen in the last four or five years. We've also seen arise in voter ID laws so that people can't vote if they don't have the right ID. And that can be college students, that could be the elderly, that could be Native Americans on a reservation who don't have visible street addresses. We've made voting in this country so much more difficult than we used to be. Because those are the people who tend to vote a certain direction. Whatever that direction is. They've made it more difficult for us. But that also makes it difficult for people who are poor to vote because they close a number of polling locations. There are a lot of things that we don't think about it when we come to vote because so many of us can do it easily. They're a whole generation of folks there, that generation segments of the country that have more struggles voting right now. And we need to talk about that piece of it as well because we don't, some of the students who are watching right now may not have the right to vote in 20-24 because their laws floating around that if you're not at home when you register, you can't get back home to vote there, then you just don't get to vote sort of in the works. So you'd have to think about the bigger picture and make sure you vote in every election. I think it was Professor Cook who mentioned that. People always say, well, my vote doesn't matter. So why should I vote? To be clear, I grew up in Texas and I vote in every election, even though the state of Texas has never really got anything I wanted to do other than me the same taxes. You vote anyway because the national elections are one part of what we vote for, but the local elections are so much more crucial that impacts your school funding, your children's educational system, who represent you in your State Congress. So don't vote just every four years. Vote every time something shows up. When I got here, I lived, quote unquote in the county. So I would show up for re-election to vote and they would tell me, well, you know, live in COCOMO so you can't vote. I showed up the next one anyway until they told me, yeah, you're sitting now, come on and vote. So vote. And To recognize the struggles other people made for you to get here where the women, for the people of color, whereas it land owners, whoever it was, because very few people have the right to vote when the country was originally founded, it was basically white male landowners, which was still a tiny fraction of the country. We've come so far since then, but we do less to vote now than we did when we were struggling to get it. So I want to open this up to the panel now so that we can have more conversation and we do have questions coming in. What are your thoughts about sort of the combination of factors now that make it so that people are struggling to vote or just resistant to voting. I'll just say quickly, I think, I think that election day should be a national holiday. And the reason for that is exactly as Dr. Davis indicated. We have a lot of folks in this country, and I think this is particularly true of low-income people who very often tend to be voters of color. That it is, you know, if you've ever worked a shift at Meyer, a Walmart, or in the service industry, you know, how difficult it can be to get a shift off, you know how transient at your schedule can be and how much it can fluctuate from one week to the next. You know that in many cases, you might not even know what your schedule is until the very last minute then. And that makes it very, very, very difficult on low income voters, as well as on a lot of college students who are already juggling kind of adult responsibilities, being in school, being college students, working a job, working to job bringing five jobs. And so it makes it really hard for those books. When there's not a national holiday that would provide sort of a government mandated essentially a day off so that people could go to the polls and vote. That's my pin. Can I jump on that just for a second? Because what are they? Okay. So for example, in Georgia, I know the Secretary of State decided to close down polling places and they go, they close down a bunch of polling places in Atlanta. Okay, and you gotta wonder because Atlanta's where you're getting a Democrat votes and you got the black population versus the white rural population. But one of the responses to that is, I saw were recently governor Holcomb said, no, we're not going to expand vote by mail because we have early voting. Well, I looked in the early voting because I don't want to wait in line for ten hours on election day. I take it for granted that I can vote relatively quickly. Well, when I looked at the polling places, i said, oh, there's a church like a half a mile from my house or whether they're open one day from three to six PM. So saying one of the reactions to what Dr. Cook was just saying about having a national election day is. And yeah, it helps some to have early voting, right? That certainly helps. But it's not the be-all, end-all, and it doesn't solve every problem. We still have, you know, again, we take it for granted. I think that it's so easy. We can be in an hour and ten minutes. People who live in downtown Atlanta imagine that it's raining on election day and you have to stand in line for 12 hours. Some people aren't going to stay. They're going to leave early. And actually, Dr. GAR, I'll tell you, I knew a woman who was once the National President of the League of Women Voters. And she said that the data that they collected for years and years and years shows that when it rains, Democrats are less likely to participate. And so when the weather's nice, then you see more parity between the parties. But so it's just one of those statistics that you wouldn't think would affect one party more than the other. But she said no, the data's really firm on that. Now I guess another thing that I wanted to speak to was that bigger question about apathy, right? That and I don't know. And it revolves all around, you know, so for example, Dr. Cook talked about a lot of reasons that people are either misinformed or that they've unwittingly become the targets of disinformation campaigns. And sometimes what I hear from people that I talk to you about politics is, well, it doesn't make sense to vote when they're all corrupt, for example, or none of that really has anything to do with me. And so, you know, the things that I really wanted people to think about is especially something that Dr. Davis emphasized and that is, you know, you think about it. It may be that we have good reason to feel very cynical about some national leaders. But thinking locally, right? Locally is where you can have much more of an impact when you meet with your local city government officials and you tell them why you're angry about a decision that was made or you bring a small group even better, right? So voicing concerns can often get results. And I've actually seen this happening where sometimes a small group of parents or students or others has been able to speak very directly to look, here's a problem and this is what we're asking you to do. And so to me, that's maybe I look at it through rose colored sunglasses, but I really feel if I can target something that I can actually get done, right, then maybe it makes a lot of sense to do things locally. And I think the one really positive thing that comes from that is sometimes news media focuses on he look at what they're doing over in this little town and look how they solved this problem, right? So there was a broadcast this morning on how a university has reduced transmission of coated. It was like Cornell University, I'm really big institution. And so sometimes highlighting those really nice success stories is a great way to sort of renew your sense of, you know, what is the impact that I can make? And I think even more importantly, if it's overwhelming to think that you have to learn about all its politics as, as Dr. Cook was suggesting, maybe it's better to think about, well, look, I often struggle to pay a certain bill for college, or I often really have trouble getting to my college campus because of all the things that had to do with driving and taxes on roads and so on. So target a particular problem that really impacts you and go from there. That reminds me. First of all, the sort of false equivalence which a lot of voters have, right? Oh, they're all crux, okay, they're all bad. So they're all liars, right? There are, believe it or not, I'm going to actually say this in public. They are good people who run for office. There are bad people who run for office. I have purse and only met and talked with my Indiana represented in my Indiana State Senator. I feel like they're good people. One, I disagree with almost everything. The other I agree with almost everything, but I've talked to them and they listen. And I think they're basically they're, they're public they're into public service is the way my impression of them. I met Dick glued or onetime Indiana's state Indiana Senator for all those years. Seems like a pretty nice guy. I mean, he sat there and talked to me my kids per ten minutes when he didn't have to. I don't think he had a reputation. I think he had a pretty good reputation or leases for being honest and that sort of thing. I guess my point is that one of the reasons I think I've seen in some of the questions in the Q and a and Alan crab and off to ask something about turning the trend of young voters becoming actively involved. And if cynicism and that sort of focused on negativity is one of the reasons that people don't participate. I would do like what Dr. He just said and maybe if you could meet some of these people that represent you, you might change your mind a little bit. Maybe get involved, maybe go to a school board meeting and introduce yourself to some people. And that might help to, to see the positive side of all of this, right? And maybe that'll help some people to get more involved. But I really think we don't focus enough on local politics. It's all about the big presidential elections. And because those are so negative and so full of attack, attack, attack, we generalize that to politics generally. And that's just not, it's not the same on the local level. And I guess to be a little bit cynical, there was one thing that really surprised me in the last series of elections, and that is that people seem more and more attracted to an individual that basically says, let me tell you how bad the government stakes. Oh, and by the way, I want to join it. Right? And to me that's not a very encouraging message is if you, if you don't think that government is really good, and in many cases you don't offer a very specific plan. So that, that's another thing to consider is, you know, what, what are these candidates doing that will directly impact my daily life, right? So in this case, right, there are many college students or college professors. So what are candidates doing to help and support universities? How are they helping to fund public institutions like ours? We've seen lots of cuts in recent years and it's harder for us to provide additional help and support to students because of that. What are they doing to help you with things like, you know, any kind of tax break for people that earn very low incomes. How does that compare to the tax breaks that other people get, right? Those are just a few examples, but it's, I think sometimes people think when they hear that big language that it, though, I think the thing that it does is it harnesses your own sense of discontent. And that may explain why some people reacted to it. But it still didn't really give us answers as to, well, how's that going to help me? So that's I encourage people to really look into how are these policies, are proposals going to help you as an individual? To that point, we do have several questions, so I'm going to ask one for the entire panel. So this is from a student. I want to start with this. We have several, so I'm gonna get back around for them. They personally feel that local voting doesn't get as much attention as actual as other portions do. Most importantly, a lot of educational facilities fail to provide students with the tools necessary to even know how to vote locally. So what would you tell our students who are listening about how to vote and participate in the process. Ok, well before the webinar started, we had a link that I think is a really great starting point, indiana voters.org. So this is a nonpartisan area that you can seek out on the website. If you think that you might be registered to vote, there's a button that you can just check your voter status and it'll say where, what address your registered at if you're affiliated with a political party and so on. But if you know that you're not registered, you still have until October fifth. To do that. You can just click on the information right there. And you can, you can get yourself registered so that you're ready to start. Now another thing that a lot of people like to do is because I'm not always as familiar with local candidates and some of them don't advertise themselves very well. I really like to be able to print out, you know, what is my ballot kinda look like? Who are the candidates that are running? So now I have a chance I can go and do some research on him. I was going to say you can also go to Indiana.gov. That's where I got my information about where I could vote on what the times we're in. It's very thorough. You can also check your registration and you can see who's running. So yeah, that's a good place to go to, straight to, straight to the State Records. Indiana voters actually bounces to Indiana.gov. It's just an easier way to get there. That's all folks that they don't know the exact address for. That was a point in the comments box that I do want to share. Just so everyone who's listening. If you're 17 currently will be 18 before the general election, you can still register to vote. So please go ahead and do that if you were 17 right now, but will be 18 before November third. Did anyone else want to comment on how to get young folks and above? Otherwise, I have 1 for that and we can move along. Y variously Ross quickly. I mean, I, I sort of understand the intimidation, especially for younger voters. If you've never voted before, it can be quite intimidating to go into a gym or a church. And you're looking at this long ballot, you don't know what half of them mean? What's a comptroller, what's a what's a bond issue, right. And I think number one, I, I, I think you should remember that the poll workers are there to help you and you can ask them questions about the process and about, you know, what these things mean. I think that's, I think that's hugely important. I also think that it's, uh, as, as has already been mentioned, it's a matter of going online and taking ten or 15 minutes to read up on the ballot, what's it going to look like? Who's on the ballot this year, winter of the smaller elections, these local elections, they're often at weird times. They're not always in November, for example. And then, and then finally, I just think that that for, for young people in particular, they've really been disadvantaged because we've pulled a lot of civics education out of the K12 curriculum in favor of, of other things of these Common Core curriculum standards and testing and all of this. And so students aren't getting the kinds of civic education that even folks like we did, Jin xors coming up in the 990s got right. And so that's a shame and it's not entirely their fault. And so I, I just want to point that out that if you're a young voter and you don't even really know where to start. Number one, don't be intimidated. Number two, this stuff can easily be figured out. You know, the internet is a wonderful tool if you know how to use it. And don't be, don't be ashamed to ask for help, you know. Yeah. So maybe a white there's a website called What's on the ballot. And you can just Google and typing your address and it will tell you everything that's on the ballot for your upcoming election, whichever one is coming up. And then you can do some more digging into the candidates. I dig for everybody because I'm nosy and I've got free time when I'm uploading. So I would encourage you to do that as well. I'm sorry. I interrupted you. Oh, no, that's fine. I'm just going to say that I don't know who asked the question, but sharing things like that on social media might be helpful. Like if you have a lot of friends and you're 17 and you didn't know. That was a great question. I mean, a lot of people don't know that. We'll share that with your friends. Okay, so one of the other questions is, is it true that the electoral college was created partially to help maintain the power of the slave states to permit or encourage human trafficking. Well, I'm not a historian, but I'll just say very quickly, did Thomas Jefferson, who was a very charismatic founder. And there were others like him. Off his ILC was very European and very elitist and felt as though they were, these were classically educated men of min of their time in the 18th century, who frankly did not share the same kinds of democratic sensibilities in many cases that we do today. To wit, that they felt as though the people who made the big, the big important decisions, even in a democracy, should be the elites of that, of that society, should be the most educated, should be the, you know, the landed. That is to say those with a lot of money and a lot of property. And, you know, because when they lived in history, they had some decent reasons for thinking that we don't necessarily think that way anymore, or at least people don't really co-opted at. Although there are many elements of our, of our, of our current system that are set up to encourage obviously lots and lots of money in politics, right? So that's just, that's my response to that. And I'll let, I'll let Sarah it's a real historian inserted there as I'm account. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Let's let the historian tell us. And KCL. So and I will say I'm really a specialist in 20th century US history, but I will tell you that. So there are a lot of things that go into the creation of the electoral college. So one of them in fact, was the idea that you think about the time when the United States was created, right? And people really feared this demagogue. A monarch who just had, had absolute authority over the people. And so there were many people who thought that a democratic republic was really a great way to get the input of the people. But at the same time, there were also people and, and, or at least one of my H 105 students, John is in the group. So, so basically there's this whole idea that, well, you know, if you let the people vote, then democracy can also run rampant. And so, you know, we're worried about people that may be uninformed, who are worried about people that may get sucked into supporting any old candidate, but as we see fit. And so the Electoral College was kind of a compromise that you can take the election out of the hands of Congress. But you're, you're still selecting electors and say you're selecting from a group of people typically have some status, some prominence in their communities. And so this is a way that you can avoid the absolute power of a democracy right? That is counting every single vote and still be able to call it a representative government. So when they're dividing up these electoral votes, that's really what they're doing is a group of electors is appointed to represent the voting pattern in a state. And only a couple states in the United States do they divide votes if that election runs very, very close. So in most, It's all or nothing. And so the elector is then appointed to cast a vote that represents a much, much larger group of people. So it is a little messed up and that was considered, you think that that does have a relation to slavery, because the three-fifths compromise is date was established as a means by which you could count a portion of the slave population for purposes of adding representatives and all of the slaves states. So this is a way that you get slave owners into Congress. Well, you know, if you're counting three-fifths of the slave population for the purposes of representation. That means you're also adding to that, that whole pool, that consideration. The representation of the slave system and the means by which those votes are then carried out. So electors are actually assigned based upon the population of slave states prior to 1865. And that means they got more electors. Based upon the population of slaves who did not have the right to vote. I just wanted to chime in on that. If you look at the Constitution before the 17th Amendment, which allowed for the direct election of senators. The only people in our federal government that were directly elected were members of the House. Senators were elected by state legislatures, president was elected by the Electoral College. Supreme Court has appointed a nominated by the president and approved by the Senate. So I think that goes to Cook's point about there's a certain amount of elite ism in that amongst the founders, the educated elite. But also, I believe Thomas Jefferson wrote about the, the Electoral College in terms of rural states versus urban states. That he thought that without the Electoral College or rural states, which I'm not sure that might be code for slave states. Rural states would not win national elections. So I think the answer to that question about slavery is yes. And that was what I was going to add to the gist of it is yes, because the slave states added so much to you, Dr. He's point, in terms of population because of their ability to count the slaves that were currently present. And that was the only way they really agreed to come to the table on the electoral college because they never would have won an election otherwise from the South. Okay, so our next question. Are there steps at a local level to help change the access to voting so it is more accessible to everyone. I will confess to you a little bit of ignorance here. How our polling places for early voting determined. Because it seems like one on a local level, one thing that would make it better would be having more places to vote. Like I said, the place where I was playing too early vote if I don't go on October 17th between 3600 PM, I'm going to be woven somewhere else. How was that place chosen? I don't know how that's done. State governments get to do that and it's usually whatever ruling party is in place, we have more with one and less with others. And that's happened since the Supreme Court knocked down parts of the Voting Rights Act. So that as soon as that got stricken, I believe it was in 2013, we've seen our rash of closing of polling locations in poor urban areas. So we've made it more difficult for people to vote and they get to basically do that however they see fit. And they justified in terms of the election expense, but that's the only real justification they're given. And now that we don't have that portion of the Civil Rights Act in place. They don't have to get pre-approval to do it. Well, so that's kind of what came out. And we haven't talked at all about coded yet. And the effect that that's going to have on the election, which is astonishing, but I think it fits him as well because if anything is a litmus test for the political will to make voting easier. It's the coronavirus and this pandemic that we've been experiencing, we should all be voting by mail, period, end of sentence. And the fact that that that we are not staying up at night, trying to come up with more ways to get people to vote by mail in the middle of this global pandemic, I think is an excellent indication of how little political will exists to make voting easier for the most people. And like I said, Governor Hogan just issued, you know, he had been asked about and they had been quote unquote, considering expanding voting by mail. And his justification for not doing it was, well, there's early voting. Right? And you have to ask yourself why? You have to ask yourself why those in power don't want to expand vote by mail. By mail. That they're not being really any evidence that there's widespread fraud in voting by mail. People have been voting absentee forever. None. Yeah. I mean, virtually none. Yeah. So currently there are about four states that are only voting by mail, but they are only those for everyone else has varying degrees. I know someone asked earlier, so I just want to tie this into this part of the conversation. Indiana is saying that they will they want you to have specific reasons to vote by mail. My mother immediately qualifies because she's over 65. So you're over 65 or urine ill health. You can sort of make a combination request for that just off the board. I am neither of those things, thankfully. But because I live with her, I said, Can I have a ballot and they gave it to me. What I would encourage you to do if you're wanting to vote by mail is send in the application, then check on their voting portal that was received and it wasn't rejected. Because if it was, you still have time to send it another one. If it was wasn't Neil know when it's coming out to you when we just got our ballots a couple days ago. In terms of early voting. So we do have the polling locations, but it turns out you can also vote at your county clerk's office and most of the counties in the state. So if you want to, you can just go into the county clerk's office, check before you get there and aspirin your ballot boat and call it a day. It makes it a little bit easier, but not dramatically. So in terms of what we can do locally, we can keep fighting the good fight as it were, and keep pressuring our representatives to expand this because they are the people who vote on it. And the governor is never of any state really going to say, oh no, Sure, just vote however you want to. Just go ahead and do that, Right? Well, and it really is compounded because you think it is up to the state boards of election to approve and establish the different voting locations. But what often happens in towns, right, is will, now people have to come up with people who can work the poles. And you've gotta be there to open them up at six AM. And so that's difficult. Then, you know, they often have either poll watchers or at least somebody who's registered to sort of make sure that people are obeying the rules. So a member of my family was one of those people that was asked to volunteer through work and did so and basically said, you know, there were minor scuffles where you continually had to remind people about No, you can't campaign within this distance and I'm telling you that that's too close and there were all kinds of things that kept cropping up. So from a local standpoint, it's often these questions of people power and the cost of getting those things going. And I think that that's used often is the convenient reason why you're just not going to approve additional polling locations, for example. So it's like, well, if it's that important to you, you're going to find a way to get there. And this is sometimes to groups of people who Barely have the money to get a state ID or a driver's license, who really have to figure out a walking route to get to their polling location. And so it can be really, really difficult. Yeah, there's a critical shortage this year, a poll workers as well, because most poll workers tend to be retired people, most retired people tend to be senior citizens. And senior citizens, again are not supposed to be outright now and then it'll little global pandemic because they're so vulnerable to the coronavirus. And so there again, we've got I I don't want to be doom and gloom OR alarmist, but I I'm concerned about about November third in particular. And if you're a young person who is looking for a concrete way to get involved, I would highly suggest if you're young and able bodied and healthy, I would highly suggest that you volunteer to pupil worker this year. So related to this conversation, there was a question about male in voter suppression and is it a real man? Yes. Actually, it is because they can disqualify your boat if your signature doesn't match? Yes. The most recent time you were there, whatever time that was. But for all of us, are signatures fluctuate a little bit each time we sign it? I will say the state of Indiana has said very clearly with our application or a balance that if our ballot was rejected because of one of those reasons, we have eight days after the election was completed to correct the ballot. So I'm giving them credit for doing that because that's a rule they did modify because of coded so that we didn't have to come in immediately and fix it. But yes, people's ballots and actually one of the major elections in Georgia, one stacy abrams running they disqualify quite a number of mail-in votes because of either missing ID or something they called perfect match. Like everything had to be perfect when you filled out your application to what you did when you voted. And if that didn't happen, they disqualified your ballot. I'll give you some examples of that because I used to live in Georgia in one of the things that they would do is, you know, so if my name is Sarah E. Heath and I signed with my middle initial, if I signed my ballot and didn't include my middle initial, that's where that exact match then could be counted against me or it could be used to disqualify me. And so one of the allegations that circulated was that they were using perfect match, but they were basing it upon the zip code of people who mailed it in. And so it turned into very serious questions as to whether they were exercising indirect race and class bias just based on the zip codes where people lived. There, I saw a story, I think in North Carolina there's already been a lot of balanced disqualified and it's disproportionately than black and Latinos who have been there. For those reasons. You mentioned signatures, et cetera. But there is I was reading like you mentioned in Indiana, there are some remedies for some of this, like if you show up to vote and you don't have your ID, you can still cast the provisional value and then you gotta go to the courthouse and show your ID. And there's even a scenario. I hope I don't get this wrong where you can basically swear by affidavit that that was you and that is your balance. So you can't it's very hard to do. You can actually, but again, why are we making it so hard? Jonathan Grant pointed out very hopefully in the chat that you are, if you need to, you can go to the and the, and get a free state-issued ID card that will be suitable for purposes of voting. So if you did not have a driver's license or don't want to get a driver's license. Um, you can you can do that for free. There again though, you have to go to the DMV, you have to fill that out, et cetera. One of our next question is, do you think there's a big gap between races and voter turn out? And can you maybe just talk a little bit about the inequities and disparities related to race and voting today, if there are any. So I don't think there is. I know there is because the data shows that there is an enormous disparity. If you coat, if I can, I can send out some links, but yeah, I mean, that area's an enormous disparity depending on ethnicity and race, as well as age and other factors. And make that a little bit more though. I mentioned Georgia as an example. And it's hard to not see that for what it really is, which is just a blade, an effort to depress the black vote. I mean, you know, when you've got, let's just be honest for a second. When you've got Republican leadership that says we're going to close down 50 polling places and they're all going to be in black neighborhoods. It's kind of hard not to conclude what's obviously going on there. So yeah, the answer is definitely yes. Yeah. I mean, I I would I would follow up on that by by also a point that I made, that I made earlier, which is just talking about class for a little bit, not about race necessarily, but just about class. If you are someone who is juggling jobs, if you are trying to piece together a living, if you are working in a lot of these service industry type positions that are already very kind of iffy in terms of your rights and your your, you know, what your, you know, time off and things like this. You know, a lot of people just would rather just not take the chance on losing their job. Which might mean the difference between eating or paying the rent that month, right? And going out to vote for something that in the moment seems very abstract, quite frankly, right? And I think that just looking at it from, I mean, yes, the data exists for race and ethnicity and age demographics. But just looking at the class issue alone. People who are, who have, who have the good fortune to have sort of solid middle-class jobs. It is much easier for them to vote than it is for low-income people. And that's probably, it is. There's probably some legacy of I will just discrimination with the voting process. My grandmother very rarely voted, but she also grew up in a time where she was physically discouraged from doing so for lack of a better phrase. And I don't think my grandfather ever voted because of the same things he would have been intimidated with theoretically also does job if he had tried to vote in Shreveport, Louisiana at the time. So that legacy lingers in some communities. Unfortunately. In addition to the other things we've already talked about, especially with the voter suppression issue. The states that have gone on the widest terror with the new voter ID laws are restrictions have some of the largest minority populations. So they're deliberately trying to restructure how the vote goes. And that can be something as redistricting. Neighborhoods that had been predominantly minority forever been suddenly are now in alleyways and doing odd things. So that is now likely to swing a different direction. So yes, there's a disparity there and some of it's just to all the points that you don't have the time, you don't have the resources, your districts are getting shut down for your polling locations. I'm not quite sure how to do this, but I just found the if you go to the census.gov website, did a really, really, really good kind of recap of the 2016 general election. And they broke it down by here we get OBS put this into the, into the chat. They broke it down by the different race and ethnicity categories that the census uses show that there was a precipitous decline in minority voter turnout in 2016. Just preventing the zoom webinar chat. I hope that went out. You descended to us, but we'll get it out to everybody that they tend to year five. Okay? So our next question is, what are we, what are we most concerned about for voting in the upcoming election? And what is, what can we as citizens do about it? I, I would say Cove it as Paul was saying, is gotta be right up there. You know, none of us want to get sick. And when you think about going and waiting in a long line on election day, That's going to be a problem for a lot of people. A lot of people aren't going to want to vote. I guess this may sound over simplistic, but what I have actually been telling students try to vote early, okay? Do is as rare as Ross was saying. You know, you can find out what the rules are on some of these things like mail and voting. And if your vote, if your bowels rejected, you have time to fix it. You gotta start early. You got to start like right now, that's my best advice for how do you deal with this? If you're thinking about voting by mail, find out right away if it's possible, get it in early and then if there's a problem, you can fix it. Try to vote early when the lines not as Long. Another thing I would point out, I saw one story about the states that are doing early voting and some of the lines were really, really long, but they look a lot longer than they are because people are staying six feet apart. If you go to drive by somewhere, that sounds pretty basic. If you drive by the lines around the block, that might not be as long as it looks. So you've might have to wait. But I guess that's my advice for what, what should people do? I'm worried about Cove it and I think the answer's simple answers get started early, so you don't have to go on election day, Wayne ivory towers or worse, you get sick and you don't boat or you're worried about getting sick and at the last minute you decide I'm not going to risk it. And not really model the hands. Sir, I think that another thing is, you know, in addition to coated 11, big concern that a lot of people have is just how polarized politics is. And, you know, in addition to the GIS information that Dr. Cook talked about and the trepidation that many minority voters feel like Dr. Davis was speaking about, right? I think that there's just this generic sense in it. And for, for people who may already feel like a voting isn't really worth it for me. One thing that I often tell people is, you know, I've, I've talked to a number of supporters of the current president and he said, it's just not turning out like I hoped, but I don't know if I could vote for the other guy either. And my argument there is, but you don't have to cast a vote for every single candidate, right? If you, if you really decide after looking at their platforms, that you cannot support either one. There are state and there are local elections that are also very, very important. And in some cases, especially on the state and local level, a lot of people, party officials will actually look at, well, if there were randomly 10 thousand people who cast ballots in a particular campaign, and the winner ends up getting 3 thousand, right? Well, it means that a lot of people are choosing not to vote and not to vote for either one. And so that kind of data can sometimes be a hint right to the candidate like boy, you might have one, but you better start listening to your constituency a little bit more closely. So that's why I always tell people is if you feel really ambivalent about somebody, if you're just not sure that you feel really good about casting the vote. Do not cast the vote for that person, but do cast votes where you can and for the candidate so you feel like you know better. I will say I'm worried about an entirely different things. In addition to those two things, I am worried about Cove it because I don't want my mother to get sick. She has been sick before. It's not fun. I am worried a little bit about people just being empathetic and not voting at all. But my biggest concern right now is what's going to happen depending on the outcome of the election. I'm concerned about the payroll tax being cut because of so security goes away then my mother's okay because she lives with me, but there are a whole lot of people who will not be okay because our primary source of income is social security. I'm worried about education funding because it feels like we're on a mad dash to defund it. Higher education because it makes people think for themselves. Like some of the things that have happened in the last public are few weeks in public discourse that just made me go really. Learning about someone is anti-American. Okay, I'm in trouble because I teach about those things. I'm concerned about honestly education across the board because our current education secretary doesn't seem to understand education. That's a problem for the K through 12 system. So I need people to vote. And to Dr. He's point, maybe don't vote for the president if you don't have to, but why don't you have to just flow like this is one of those times where I do understand people's right to vote third-party, or stay at home. We did that in 2016. It and haven't gone well for the vast majority of us. So I need you to maybe get over whatever trepidation that isn't big about the other people who would be impacted by your lack of participation. Especially because so many people suffered. To get to this point, Dr. Heath and I would not be able to vote, were it not for the suffragists millions of years ago who did all of that work without knowing that they were going to be able to vote. My sorority is very proud of the fact that the first public act they had after they were founded, was to participate in the suffrage march. That was in 1913. They were the only large black, or if they are in, they still did it and have things thrown at them that entire march. Take a moment and think about the people in your lives, maybe not you, who will be impacted by your ability to vote and you don't. Let me throw something out here. I had a conversation with Dr. Cook this morning. And first of all, so Dr. Davis just mentioned a bunch of different issues that you're concerned about, specific issues and a lot of people don't do that kind of research. They don't do that kind of work, right? And so I said to poll this morning that people who don't vote are lazy. And he said What I like the way you put it better as being somewhat of a smart alec. I don't know what do I say? It was a long time ago. You said keeping Chao knew we were taught requires intellectual effort is the way you put it. It requires etat. Well, we were talking last night. I was watching my like football and Chris called me and he said, Oh, I don't follow football. And we got into talking about football and about the NFL. And I, I just basically said, don't, don't be one of these people with politics where, oh, if I get invited to do a Superbowl party, you know, all go but I don't really follow football, right? You know, do your due diligence, do the intellectual work that it takes to follow this stuff because it really is important. And, and, and so you don't have to follow pro football, but I think, you know, follow, follow politics. And that really is part, part of your duty, you know, part of the, what you get for the privilege of living in this country and enjoying the freedoms that you have is doing the work, doing your homework, right? And figuring out this stuff. And I, I, that, that was my sort of analogy, right? To follow, you know, follow football, right? Don't be a suitable only FootballFan when it come to politics. But I want to come back to something Dr. David Sacks. I think this is just so poignant and it's a wonderful note to end on. Actually, I did this idea that, you know, think about somebody besides yourself. Think about somebody besides you. I think that's actually a really good message, right? Because it's, it's not all about users. There's a hole. There's a, there's a whole 300 million of us who aren't you, right? So think about somebody and think about yourself to write, but think about somebody else, virgins. Yeah, and I, I, you know, I guess I agree a little bit of a smart alec, sometimes somebody you don't know me. Some may know that. But you know, as far as being in foreground to get up on my high horse and talk about your civic duty and all that. But having taught political communication for many years, I used to get, you know, oh, I can't believe the students don't know this and they don't know that, they don't want it. And then it dawned on me one time that not everybody's family follows politics all the time and not everybody learns about civics in high school. And it's not their fault. You know what I mean? So if, but I do think to encourage people to be informed is very important for all of us. Not just people who are teaching like us, but to encourage people to look into the issues. You know, I remember I think it was one of the classes I taught, Canadian would have a net. Basically, some of the students are like, I can't believe, I can't believe that the Republicans are passing such and such tax bill. And I wanted to go, if you follow politics over the last 50 years, you would know what a republican tax cut is going to look like. But you know, I guess that I'm not trying to bash people and I was I was just being a smart about people being lazy. I think not everybody follows polished, but you need to, and I think part of becoming educated, if you're going to IU COCOMO or somewhere else or if you're just visiting from the community. I mean, it is sort of your duty to do these things and to think about other people, but also your own self-interest is very much affected by these things. And so when you vote democrat, you're voting for a certain tax position, which could help or hurt you. Write so your own financial interests. If nothing else. If you don't care about other people, you probably care about your own wallet. You for I care about ethical and moral issues. So, you know, bottom line is, I guess I think it's important to be informed and I would encourage the same thing and it does take work, but, you know, you can take five minutes every day to read the news. We have one statement and then one question left. So, so in this statement, democracies can be messy and the people can make terrible choices. As Winston Churchill said, Democracy is the worst form of government except all the other. So that is our statement. Any thoughts about that? Yes, sir. To being being syllable and Winston Churchill, with all due respect, we do not live in a democracy. We live in a representative republic. So take that. Okay. Thank you, Dean, being salvo for being a good sport. Our last question right now is, Do we have any resources other than indiana voters that we would recommend for those who are having trouble finding unbiased information, especially when we're researching local issues. So I always look for the counterpoint to whatever you have found. So if you start on CNN, go look for another source on the completely other end of the spectrum does to see what's out there. And if I don't want to do that much digging, I go to MSNBC, which seems to be a little bit more even keeled than some of the outline sources. We used to give out a really good infographic in Psych that basically rank all of the news media sources about their bias, leanings. And if Britain, essentially one of my students, I can send it to you later. But yeah, just I would always look in more than one source because one sources usually meant to get you a certain emotional reaction. And you need to see how someone else is covering the same information. Another great thing to do since you mentioned local elections is I just saw this on the front cover of the perspective today that they've announced the upcoming debates for the common council. And so there's an opportunity to see both Democratic and Republican candidates and then compare their answers, right? You just start thinking about, does this make sense to me or do I like the sound of how they're proposing to spend that kind of money, right? And so you can make up your own mind as to how those local candidates really help you out. So the local paper is not really great. I would say that of the two, I think the perspective has a longer tradition of investigative style of reporting. They may print some of the results or you may be able to search online and see if there's either a immediate grab that you can pull some highlights from that debate or a newspaper that would provide you with at least a summary if those responses. Another less biased source is the League of Women Voters, who they're explicitly nonpartisan. So members, of course, have their own political views. But they also will do things like print a little election leaflet and they asked the same question to all candidates. And so there too, you can really just kind of review the written responses. I think a couple years ago there was a candidate running who gave literally like less than five words for every answer. And so that person didn't win. And then it puts pretty obvious, right? They didn't really give anybody an idea what they intended to do. But you can often get a really good sense of how that person might represent you effectively or not. And we could do an entire webinar on the decline of local news over the last several decades. And what I mean by that is just the way that these small town newspapers had been bought out by these giant conglomerates like Malachi and others. And the negative effects that, that's had on, on what used to be really, really good local reporting. Where we could learn about what was going on in your local elections and in your community. I would say for the question on sort of national news, I would say National Public Radio. And in particular, w FYI, which is the local affiliate here in Indianapolis. They do a really good job of covering a lot of state stuff. So like what's going on around the state of Indiana, as well as some in-depth reporting in the local communities as well as of course, your, your national coverage. And then I would just echo what the other panelists have said, which is don't look at one source. I mean, you know, you need to be looking at a variety of different news sources, in a variety, in a variety of different modalities across the spectrum. Because one of the things that's going to do is give you a much fuller and more substantive sense of the issues. So don't just stick with one source and, and don't even stick with one sort of set of sources from a particular perspective. You know, challenge yourself to look at a variety of perspectives. You know, we did a interesting activity in political communication the other day we had, we read an NPR story, which is like eight pages long about the ruling of the Supreme Court this summer about Donald Trump's tax returns. And then we read a story from Fox, which was about three paragraphs and a story from MS and BC, which was also about three paragraphs. And you can really see the difference in the amount of fact that is available in a story from NPR or one of those major news organizations. Versus just opinion, you know, just a couple of paragraphs of opinion in some of the other sources there. And so again, this is one of those things. Again, the false equivalence write o of media is biased. Okay, we all know that they are politically. There are places that are left-leaning, places that are rightly. But you're going to get better depth of analysis, more factual information, and answer to one of the questions from earlier you're going to get from a place like NPR or the API or, you know, some of those newspapers that have been around for The Wall Street Journal has been around for 200 years. Okay. They know what they're doing. They have journalistic standards, they print fact. You'll see in their analysis they tend to favor republican tax policy, okay, fine. But you're gonna get a lot of good information that is more unbiased. You could argue that nothing is unbiased, but it is less biased than perhaps what you're going to get on a website. So I don't wanna oversimplify it. Again, maybe we should get that media bias chart out. We, I've talked about that in every class. But I think Chris, there's there's value in some of those. Yeah, there's value in opinion, right? There's value in going and see what Fox says about the tax, which aren't they? Because go to, I mean, this, this whole illusion that all media is bad. It's sort of like saying whole movies are bad, right? Which I think is a really an untenable position, right? Yeah. Certainly, there's some crappy movies out there that should have never been made. But there are also some really brilliant works of art, okay? And so, you know, there aren't any new media. The same way. News media is the same way. There are journalists right now who are literally risking their lives to get stories for people going into very dangerous places and reporting on things that are happening around this country. And so I get, I get a little hot under the collar when I, when I hear this overly simplistic kind of argument that oh, we'll all media is it's not the case. We will put that actually betrays is your, your ignorance of media and how it works, not a problem with the media, right? So I think, you know, I think the question is more, more appropriately, where do I go to find good, high-quality information? That, that should be your, that should be your focus. Okay. So we have another question about, I never know where I can find information regarding city election isn't mainly in the newspaper any particularly pleased to find out about local politicians. I linked into the chat box the sources that I would say what's on the ballot. So vote for on one.org about pedia.org. We'll tell you who's running or what is on the ballot in terms of investigating them. Unfortunately, there's not really a collection unless you have a good local newspaper. So we do have to do some individual digging on our own. Doctor, he's listening to debates, listening to them speak in public when they're invited. Every now and then, different community groups will ask both candidates to come to an event. Speak about their position. Thank You. Can take some time and go. Please do because then you're going to get the best version of who they are. So you can make a decision about what you like or don't like about those folks. Other thoughts from the rest of the panel. And then Lafayette and I, sometimes you get that from the WI-FI television station. They'll get a quote from the mayor. It's harder to get the local information because generally speaking, one of the biases other than the ideological bias in the news media is conflict, right? And drama. And so we get that with presidential politics. We don't get that so much. You know, we had the mayor of West Lafayette, Pat, signed a mask mandate this summer. It didn't get a whole lot of coverage, right? I saw it one day and like a week later, some people were mad about it. But every day we have heard about ad nauseam, about Donald Trump and this national anti mask business. So it's hard but it's there. You know what says I gotta sit through two stories about car wrecks and a fire at a daycare. Before I get a quote from the Mayor about, you know, Cove it but the information is there takes time. Now the key thing I'm hearing from everybody, this stuff takes time, it takes effort. It's not easy. Yeah. And that's what concerns me because what I think what's happening in some ways is that there's a separation and it's building between people who do have the time and they have the luxury to stay well informed and, or who are lucky enough to have jobs they kind of demanded and those who don't. And I think that's really concerning because this is something for everyone being civically minded and being aware of what's going on is something everyone should be able to do. And I'm, I'm afraid that some people just aren't able to do it and that's a concern. So we are probably at our last five or ten minutes of our webinar. Do you guys have any closing thoughts you want to share with the panelists are still already attendees who are still hanging out with us for well, I would say again, I guess my closing thought is like like anything doing a little bit of homework and getting started early is going to help you a lot. And it will put your mind a little ease if you're worried about things like what's going on with the post office. You know, some of the things we've talked about again, you know, try to figure out where you're going to vote. Make a plan for when you're going to vote, right? If you want to do the mail like Dr. David said, you know, you do have if you make a mistake, you do get a chance to correct things and there are options. So if you can't find your ID on election day, if you've done your homework and you understand that you can still vote a provisional ballot, then he does helpful. Right. So do Ten minutes worth of homework and five minutes worth of planning will make you feel much better and try to get out there and get it done early. Dr. heat, the Dr. Cook, I guess just for myself where I would say is, in addition to all of the media sources, you can always feel free to ask us a brief question and I don't want to offer like a one hour, you know, sort of asked me 20 questions about your issues, but but I would say I'm more than happy to answer questions if you just catch me and passing and you want a little bit more information about an issue and why people might think it's so important. We're certainly here as a resource and we're happy to help if we can. Yeah, I would say just like if you have a physical fitness regimen that you do every day, I think we have to start thinking about citizenship as an everyday thing and not as something that we do on election day or every year when the Super Bowl comes around, right? And we get invited to a party and we have to we have to treat it like an everyday thing. We have to follow this stuff all the time and it doesn't have to be all day every day. I mean, I you know, you don't have to exercise, you know, 18 hours a day to be physically fit. I think I think, you know, as Dr. Dorsey, I mean, 15 minutes while you're waiting in line to get your ID or while you're waiting in line to vote or whatever, right. Take some time to making it a habit. I think that's, I think that's the key is it's gotta be something that you do every day. It can't just be a once in a while. In a sorry, I have a couple more. So one is listen to a TV or radio like while you're packing up your stuff to get ready to leave. So in five or ten minutes, pick a really good news station and just go with that. The second thing I really just wish as a send off his, I really wish that people would return to the lost art of civil conversation. And civil conversation can still be engaged. But I think that Americans in general tend to do a lot of name calling and not every last person, right? But it seems like, you know, well, he's a fascist and oh, she's a socialist in that, like you felt like you prove something. And so to that end, I really try to look at international news media. So, you know, there's a lot of international media that is translated into English. So the German national news, the BBC is already in English. But I think that many of those sources are really good for sort of trying to think about the ways that other people talk about politics. And maybe we can try to bring that back. I, I love to be able to engage in a real conversation with people about why do you think differently from me on this topic. But I just don't want somebody to yell at me. And I try not to yell at them either. But that, that's an art that I think are quickly losing here in the USA. And I don't yell, I'm to all of my students knowledge, petty. So I will insult you in different ways that don't involve me raising my voice or calling your name whatsoever. I will say that I think we've also gotten to the point where we have descended into we vote for one issue and one issue only. And it doesn't matter what the rest of the person's platform or policy is. And I would say that's a luxury I don't have. When I told you about all the things that I was worried about, if it was just one issue, it still wouldn't be that I could vote on one issue because I think about the other people who are involved. So if you can vote for one issue, I'm super jealous because I'm not there with you. But I think we also to Dr. Keyes point, Dr. Doris pointing to Dr. Cook's point, we need to Congress have more conversation around politics. We've made one of these things we just don't talk about with people so that we can continue to like them. But maybe you don't really like that person. You just hang out with them. So that could be a different issue as well. Let's talk more. I'm an open book gamma military kid. I talk about almost everything because there's no reason not to you. But yeah, let's let's have more conversation. So I think all of you for joining us today, this was a really good conversation. You have some really good questions. And we hope that we'll be able to post a different kind of screening and a couple of weeks and we need to work out. But it'll be a documentary specifically on voter disenfranchisement. It's a documentary that's about 90 minutes long and it's really, really good. So hopefully we'll be announcing that shortly, but thank you for coming. We appreciate all feedback and participation. We hope you have a great day.