TURNOUT Episode 7: 'Stepping out of your partisan self'

Listen to new episodes of Movie Mix Movie Podcast every Monday on the Nashville Podcast Network, Available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Look for your children's eyes and you will discover the true magic of a forest. Find a forest near you and start exploring it. Discover the forest dot org. Brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the AD Council. My fellow Americans, I'm Katie Couric, and this

is turnout Volks. The people of this nation have spoken. They've delivered us a clear victory, a convincing victory. On Saturday, November seven, after days of County, Pennsylvania finally tipped the scales for the Biden Harris ticket of victory four, We the people We've won with the most votes ever cast from presidential ticket in the history of the nation, seventy four millions. That night in Wilmington, Delaware, the President elect and his vice president elect sent out a message of unity.

You chose hope and unity, decency, science, and yes truth. It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric. Laura the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. It was a refreshing moment. It was also historic. But while I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last. On Sunday, the day after those speeches, I woke up feeling like my old self again, just forty, I mean, four years older. Here's the thing

about President Donald Trump. I know him, or at least I got to know him during my fifteen years on the Today Shows This Is Today with P. D. Curry. Part of our job was to promote a reality show I had never seen, called The Apprentice. Last night, on The Apprentice, I did the unex acted. I didn't even give the fiery a chance to fight for her spot. His success, in fact, was partially our responsibility. The Donald, as he was known to Manhattan Night's, was very nice

to me. During those years. He supported my colon cancer efforts after my husband died, and I even attended his wedding to Milania in two thousand five. In two thousand and sixteen and the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I believed Hillary would have been a far better president, and I was disappointed and pretty shocked at the results. But Hillary Clinton's gracious concession speech moved me. We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought.

But I still believe in America and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. I tried to keep an open mind. I prayed that somehow the awesome and humbling job of leading our country would bring out the best in Donald Trump, that he would rise to the occasion.

But instead it was the opposite. As Trump's character sank lower and lower, we Americans were like the proverbial frog in the water. As that water got hotter and hotter. Over the course of his presidency, we became slowly accustomed to his norm breaking outrages, until it reached a roiling boil I recognized that some people appreciated that Donald Trump said it like it was, and that he became a

vessel for their fears and frustrations. But every day he seemed to take his bare hands and rip apart the gaping wound that already existed in our country, preventing any chance of events will healing. The birther who inexplicably promoted the false notion that Barack Obama was not a US citizen, gave birth to countless conspiracy theories and the nefarious groups that trade in them, And he sewed mistrust in our institutions. A reality star who locked his supporters into an alternate

reality and threw away the key. Donald Trump didn't grow bigger in the job. He grew smaller. And now it really is mourning in America. We have a president and vice president who will conduct themselves with dignity, humility, and decency. We must restore the soul of America. Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulstals. Now what presidents say in this battle matters.

It's time for our better angels revail. They have a huge task, of course, making millions of Americans who didn't support them feel seen, heard, and cared about. They must help them understand that the changing demographics of our country isn't something to fear, but to celebrate. And job number one is to lead the country out of an out of control pandemic that's leaving families grieving over the lives and livelihoods lost. I'm an optimist, but I'm not cock eyed.

We may never agree on everything, but I'm looking forward to, as Joe Biden said, lowering the temperature of our national thermostat and seeing each other as human beings, not bumper stickers or lawn signs. Maybe then we can get back to work and start making progress on some enormous problems that won't just go away on their own. I wanted Donald Trump to succeed, and I gave him a chance. For all those who voted for him, please do the same for the incoming administration. So keep an open mind

and maybe, just maybe we can all work together. We're gonna take a short break when we come back, let's see how our democracy is doing. Now that the election is almost in our rear. Freeme mirror, So I present state, whoever foot in Latina, but always keep their cal Hope is keen in California. From Cavalry Audio comes the new true crime podcast, The Shadow Girls. Were always wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody and started laughing.

Prosecutors described him as a serial killer survant, kicking up these girls, getting him in a position of vulnerability. When he got hold of their neck, that was it. I'm Caroline Asia, a journalist and lifelong resident at the Pacific Northwest. I grew up near the banks of the Green River and in the shadow of the killer that bears its name. How many times did you bring the camera? One of time? Just one? He started fantasizing about having sex with his mother,

and he fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't only about tracking down the killer. It's about the victims. We stayed in the woods. He always liked to call in the woods all of the kind of strange. You know how he feels about prostitutes. Listen to The Shadow Girls on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Chuck Wicks from Love Country. Talk to Chuck. Where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also

if you love country. Here's the deal. If you love country music, you can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan country music, well, you can call in anytime, like, oh, I want to talk about this. Haul Cogan called in season one. He's like Chuck the Lobster. I love your podcast. I mean Jason al Dean, Jimmy, Allen, Carley, Pierce, Laurena, Lena. So many huge stars have been on Love Country Talk to Chuck season two. It's gonna get even better. I'm

gonna have the same big, giant, huge stars. But I think it's time bring some people in the studio right off the street. You love country music, fine, come talk to Chuck. That's how cool we are. I'm just saying it. I'm saying it out loud. Listen to new episodes of Love Country Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Now that this unprecedented pandemic election is technically behind us, we thought it'd be helpful to get a temperature read on our democracy. Elections were far better than some of the worst case scenarios.

To do that, we brought back Jesse Littlewood of Common Cause and it still had some challenges for voters that we think could be improved because democracy works best when more people participate, and we think that there's a lot of reforms in the elections to build on, but democracy needs to keep pushing forward to have a democracy that truly works for everyone. During the early voting period and on election Day, Common Cause was out there and across

the country keeping an eye on democracy at work. So the Election Protection Coalition that Common Cause is proud to be one of the leaders of not Only is deployed people in the field into over forty states helping to monitor the poll in places. Um you know, many of our volunteers were in a car or on a bicycle sort of traveling between a couple of polling places to

make sure that the election was running smoothly. You know, our partners, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under law Man the eight six six are about hotline which received you know, a record number of calls, and that's not necessarily because there was a record number of problems, but there were people who learned that there was a resource for them to answer their question, to find out where they're polling place, was to understand what kind of ID

they needed, and they were able to get their questions answered and actually participate. Now that data is actually really vital to be able to make a plan to change any of the problems that did crop up on election day.

So that data, the data that comes from our field volunteers, the data that we found from our social media monitoring program, We're going to turn that into uh usable actionable insights for state legislatures and other decision makers to see where there were systemic problems and be able to address those

on their state level. In this country, we administer elections on a state by state level, sometimes county by county, and so being able to actually be a source of information and to help advocate for voters of any party to participate and get over some of these hurdles is something we're gonna do. You know. I think one thing that I found really remarkable was in our social media

monitoring program. You know, we set that program up to not only look for the disinformation that is attacking voters, you know, telling people the wrong ways to vote or telling them that their vote doesn't count, or trying to undercut their belief in the integrity of the system. We also set that system up because we know many voters don't know the hotline number or don't know who to

call if they have a problem. And we found just a remarkable number of instances of voters tweeting out that they had a problem, that they were told they had to use a pro national ballot, or that there was a long line at their polling place, or they couldn't be found in the voter rules. And we were able to connect with those voters because we have this network of volunteers and tell them, Okay, you can actually get your problem solved. You can call eight six six r

vote Um. If you're being told to use a provisional ballot, you should talk to the sire vote volunteer or your administrator and find out why, because maybe you're just in the wrong polling place and if you go to a different polling place, you won't have to vote provisionally. So we we saw a lot of folks use these social media tools to kind of throw up a flare and ask for help, and because we had this network of volunteers, we were able to do a little bit of a

search and rescue mission. We found those folks and we were able to get them that information. And because social media is a publishing platform, other people saw that too, when they saw their friends ask for help and that a resource was there. I think that's important on an individual level, but also, and I be a little cheesy here, it's it's also important on kind of a societal democratic

participation level. There's so much happening right now in especially on social media that is a competing it's a partisan warfare. It's two parties attacking each other, either about policies or about the election process. And to see that there was individuals, voters, people just like them saying we're here to help you. I don't care what party you're part of, I don't care who you're voting for. You have a right to vote.

I'm here to help you. I think that actually matters, to push back on the way that, you know, politics right now is kind of a blood sport and a winner take all contests, and instead we were able to have democracy and action of voters helping voters, you know, stepping outside of our own partisan bubble and saying there's gonna be problems that people have. I don't really care where or you know, what party they are, but I'm

going to step in and try and help them. And I think that that goes to the process of rebuilding a stronger civic fabric in this country. Jeff he says, big picture, there are two major takeaways from election. Number one takeaway from me is that when you give people opportunities to vote on a day other than the first Tuesday in November, they will take you up on the offer and it will make your first day in November

election day run much smoother. Expanding early vote, expanding vote by mail, those are huge benefits not just to voters but to the people who need to administer the elections because it reduces the volume that you have to go through on that day. I also think that voters are getting the message pretty clearly that UM their vote matters when you see that the margin of victory and some of these contests is really really narrow. Now, Common Cause

is not a big proponent of the electoral college. In fact, we support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact because the way the electoral College works UM is a real voter depression in terms of making folks feel like their vote doesn't actually out in the presidential contest in many states, but as we saw, there are some very close races and some of these key battleground states, and I think it sends a message clearly to the voters that every

vote does matter, and the narrow margin of victory means how important is for everyone to turn out and make their voice hurt in our democracy when we come back, what that big turnout could mean for future elections. That's right after this. My name is the south Shire in the linebacker for the San Francisco forty NS. COVID hit so many different people, from the very top to the very bottom. There's nobody not being affected by COVID in some way, shape or form, and so I think that

that but a lot of people together. I've teamed up with cal Hope to let Californians know about the resources and support available to all of you that may be dealing with mental health issues. Go to cal hope dot org to chat with a live person or call their war at one eight three seven Hope. That's eight seven h o P. The art world, it is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging off people's walls. You know, they don't even know or suspect

that they're fakes. I'm at like Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed, and forgery in the art world. You knew the painting was fake. Um Listen to Art Fraud starting February one on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of Get Real with

Caroline Hobby, Honest Women, Honest Talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real as conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps, knowing

when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body as a woman. A little bit about myself. I was a country music artist in a trio. I traveled the country open for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on the Amazing Race twice. And I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of A Thousand Horses, and we have our precious daughter, Sonny.

Who's to Listen to new episodes of Get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcast. I believe that we had a higher turnout than almost at any other point in the

history of the electorate. Again, here's Jesse Littlewood of Common Cause, and that is like a testament to the great work of elections workers, as well as the changes that we made to the election systems in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which could have crashed our turnout and instead it actually increased it from the last four years, which is a remarkable success story. Now, there were very real problems that

happened to individuals over the course of election day. There's far too many barriers to be able to exercise your vote, especially when it comes to people of color and low income communities, or people with disabilities, or other folks like students who still have a lot of barriers in their way in order to be able to vote, but we saw no large scale meltdown of the election process, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the changes that we made in the process

included expanding the vote by mail system to far more voters than ever before. And it also the number of early days that voters could participate meant that a very large portion of the votes were already in before or the singular election day on the first Tuesday in November. And because of that, that reduced some of the administrative challenges that we've seen in the past. High turnout is good news, but Jesse says there were still those familiar

barriers to the ballot. The thing I don't want to do is erase the challenges that some people still have and being able to exercise their right to vote. And those challenges don't happen just on election day. They come through restrictive laws like strict voter ID laws that we know disenfranchise individuals, particularly voters of color, more so than others.

Those barriers still exist, right and the challenges of removing people unduly from the voter rolls when they haven't been active in the most recent elections, these challenges are still there, and yet despite that democracy one people overcame those barriers.

More people participated as a voter in this election than in previous periods, and that was because of the in trist in participating in the democracy and the fact that elections workers really stood up to the challenge and we're able to do more um in terms of actually administering this election. Despite not having the resources that they needed to have to be able to fully administer it in the challenges that we had, they did a lot with what they were able to do, so I would call

it certainly a qualified success. I wouldn't say that it was perfect because democracy is a process, it is not a destination, and we are still need to eliminate any of the barriers two people participating in our democracy, of which there's there still exists far too many. This election also brought to the surface new potential obstructions to voting that organizations like Common Cause are watching and plant to fight.

While we were expecting a large amount of disinformation about the elections, I think I was still surprised by the volume, the consistency, and the sort of ferocity of it. And I think while we have seen it increase, sort of year over year. I am concerned that specifically around the disinformation about the participation in democracy will continue to be just like a tactic used by partisans in order to

secure victory for their preferred candidate. UH whether or not that becomes really part of the party and the campaign apparatus remains to be seen. We know that there were a number of legal challenges filed by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee about certain types of reforms that were made to do expansion of the voting process, including the vote by mail system and early voting drop

boxes and how many are allowed per county. That kind of legal push to restrict reforms that could give more people access to voting, I think is really troubling and something that will be really important to pay attention to

in the future. While it appears that President Trump has lost reelection, Republicans across the country did not fare that badly, and so it is going to be interesting to see how the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party decides to steer their course when it comes to deciding what are the kinds of voting reforms they they want to encourage.

We're kind of voting reforms they want to discourage. What is troubling about that is that, by and large, states and the elections administrators in those states have a pretty good idea, especially when they're are in dialogue with voter protection groups, what voters need to be successful and to be able to participate and to see it become a key campaign tactic to try and change the rules of the system. I don't think that is beneficial to voters

or to our democracy. So we're gonna watch dog that kind of process UM in the future, as we continue to look at how polling places are deployed and other kinds of reform UM, we'd like to see a lot of the kind of reforms that clearly increased turnout remain in place. UM. As we voters are now starting to get experienced with more vote by mail options, those are

positive reforms that will help more voters turn out. So we'd like to see what can be done to ensure that those are permanent reforms that are available to more voters in the future elections. It's great that we saw more Republicans, Independence, and Democrats participate in this election than

any other. That's the bottom line of what a good democracy looks like is when there is a robust contest between competing ideas and the body politic decides to make their voice heard in what that outcome is going to be.

But my hope, and this may be something of rose colored glasses, but my hope is that it's also people determining for themselves that it's important to be an active citizen right and to actually decide for themselves that what they're gonna do is they're going to participate in one of the ways, one of the most important ways, not the only way, but one of the ways of making their voice heard in shaping the future and the decisions

of our country. And that means deciding to vote. And I hope that everyone, regardless of your political belief, decides that that is something you will continue to do throughout future elections. And as for President Trump, so far refusal to concede, Jesse says, the fact is the process continues, whether a losing candidate wants it to or not. The

will of the people decides. The votes were cast, the votes are counted, the process moves forward, and those are that's who is the next person elected as president or in any other office. So in some sense, it's immaterial. The president's decision to not concede the election is immaterial to the progress of our electoral system. And that's the way it should be, because it's not up to the person in the office to decide what the process is. It's up to the voters in our democracy and the

process that's laid out through our laws. But Jesse says the president's continued rhetoric is crossing a lie that we've never seen before. It is corrosive to our democratic process and participation by voters in future elections. When a losing candidate doesn't concede the election, that's just the reality because then it makes individuals potentially not trust the results of the system or the way that the system is set up and operates. I don't think that they get well,

that's not the way that the process plays out. I think it is really disappointing, and I think it is dispiriting from someone my perspective of someone who wants to see a robust democracy not only in but in all future elections. To see um, that kind of response coming from someone who you know is going to you know, leave kicking and screaming instead of reflecting on the process played out, and that the if the voters have spoken,

there the will that they're going to accept. When I think about the fact that many top Republicans, although some have congratulated, you know, and said we congratulate President elect Biden, many have not, I think it's again it ultimately it's immaterial to the results of the election, which will play out based off of the will of the people, the votes that are counted, and the process that goes forward.

I think it is really disappointing and it is potentially a source of additional conflict among voters and our country when at the result of a tension filled, highly partisan, really intense election that they are unwilling to quickly move the country forward when the result is very clear those Republican elected officials were elected through a democratic process just like the kind we had days ago that clearly has

resulted in many races being called. I wish that they would, um, you know, take the opportunity to stand up for the process, even if the candidate that they preferred wasn't the victor, and put their country over their party. Jesse reiterates that there was plenty of hope in the election process. I am really just floored by the response of election workers

poll workers. Uh, you know, we had a whole wave of young people applying to be poll workers, so that poll workers who are historically older were able to not be at risk of potential coronavirus. Uh. You know at the polling place, we saw more volunteers in the election protection program than we've seen in any other cycle that

we've been involved in. They're just to me, it felt like there was a wave of civic participation, not just in voting, but in putting democrat see into action and stepping out of your partisan self and into a democratic self and helping to build a stronger civic society and a civic fabric where we encourage in each other, even if we don't agree on all the issues, encourage each

other to participate. And speaking of strong civic participation, before we go today, there's someone else we wanted to check in with. I continued up until October, registerring, going to the parole facilities, the state parole facilities. You may remember in that Scott, the volunteer for the League of Women Voters. She helps register return citizens in New Jersey for the first time in a hundred and seventy six years when the law the law it went in effect March seventeenth

that those on parole O privation could vote. She's featured in episode two of this series. I wanted to make sure they were all registering well. Of course, she's also a long time poll worker. I'm what they call a permanent worker. And what we what we had to do is we had to go before we could the election day, you had to go to a refresher course, and they had set up quite a few of them in different areas.

And I went to the refresher course. And what they do was they combine those like myself who have been pro worker for years, senior pro workers, and also all the new ones. And they had like old hundred new ones. And there were various ages, but mostly younger because the majority of pro workers are seniors, because most people don't want to take off the day, even though we're paid two hundred dollars for the day, but a lot of them.

You have to be there five fifteen in the morning because the law says you must have the voting machines ready by six am, so you have to get there early enough to set up the machine, do the paperwork, all that you have to do so that if someone comes in at six am, you have to have that ready to vote, got machooting ready for them, and then eight o'clock is the last time. So it's a very very long day and a lot of people, you know, you have children, whatnot. From five fifteen the morning to

eight to night. How could you do it? But for for college students, for other people, they've been begging for some time to try to get a younger audience, a younger participants in so that we would be able to accommodate because as more and more of the sears retire or you know, they pass, or they're not able to anymore, there's not enough people to replace them. And that's already looking beyond and the changes in her state that she

hopes will continue to expand voting access. Yes, there's still things that need to be changed and need to be you know, worked long and whatnot, but hopefully we will

continue to see change. And what I know that they're working on in New Jersey, but you know, it doesn't have the priority of course compared to COVID, but those who are incarcerated in New Jersey, they want to eliminate that as a barrier because two states Maine in Vermont never had it, so if you're incarcerated parolea probation you

could always vote. And they were hoping that New Jersey would have been the third, but it didn't get the support that it needed, so I didn't do it, and she is already organizing to help more return citizens register for future elections. I was asked by the assistant director of the State Parole Board, Okay, to please return to the facilities where I had registered people on parolea probation, and he added more to it. He gave me. He

emailed me. He asked me to visit this facility and I said, oh, I'm sorry, I don't know where it's. You know the address. I don't know of this place. He said, oh, so he sent it to me and on it about six more places. So right now in New Jersey there's over eighty three thousand people off roll A probation and if we only registered three thousand, that's a lot of people we missed. Huh. So hopefully going back to these facilities, I've I've emailed all the people

who said they wanted to help me. I've emailed them all, and I'm waiting for them to respond because I'm hoping to do it the first of December to go start visiting facility that Thank you and that for all your hard work. That does it For this week's episode of Turnout, Thanks everyone so much for listening and to keep an eye on the news, you can subscribe to my morning newsletter wake Up Call. Just go to Katie Currek dot com to sign up. Until next time, I'm Katie Couric

and take care Democracy Fighters Everywhere. Turnout is a production of I Heart Media and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Katie Couric and Courtney Littz. Supervising producers Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements, Eliza Coostus and Emily Pento. Editing by Derrick Clements and Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derrick Clements. Our researcher is Gabriel Loser and special thanks to my right hand woman Adriana Fasio. You can follow me and

all my election cut bridge at Katie Correct. Meanwhile, yes, I'm Katie Correct. Thanks so much for listening everyone. We'll see you next time. Oh jamaatral in California. Executive producer Harris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How Men Think, and that's good news for anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone. It's real talk, straight from the source. How Men Think podcast is exactly what we need to

figure them out. It's going to be fun and formative and probably a bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the minds of men. Listen to How Men Think on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The art world it is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know they don't even know or suspect that their fakes. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed, and forgery in the

art world. I just walked in and saw this bright red painting presuming to be a Rothko. Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to be made, a lot of money. I'm listening to what they're paying for these things. It was an incredible mans of money. You knew the painting was fake. Um Listen to Art Fraud starting February one on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts