hi it's augustana and liv
hi it's augustana and liv and welcome
back to our channel i
hate politics but i think it's a
necessary evil and
this stuff can just be so negative and
soul-sucking
so despite the wealth of information out
there i've realized
i'm nowhere near as informed as i should
be and
i think that's particularly important
heading into this next presidential
election
so i thought maybe there are many others
who feel the same
i'm pretty divided on almost every issue
but researching for
my youtube videos has actually kind of
given me renewed purpose
and really opened my eyes to a whole
bunch of things and
just reading and absorbing all that
information out there i just i always
find myself oop
sorry i always find myself going into a
rabbit hole
you know researching random stuff so now
i guess i'd like to take you all along
for
the journey all that to say i
wanted to start a new series or i am
starting a new series called know before
you vote
and in each video i will attempt to
break down
a major current thing issue whatever
and tell you kind of where each party or
candidate stands
on that issue if you know i can find all
that
out from a reliable source anyway i will
link all of the
sources for the video in the description
box
below because i do strongly dislike the
two-party system and
find it pretty limiting i'm going to try
to be
as unbiased and nonpartisan as humanly
possible
and i mean at least that's the plan so i
don't want to tell you what political
views you should have
i just i just want to help give you some
starting points to
form your own opinions about some things
or maybe look into another side of
something that you haven't thought of
um especially during a time when i feel
like everyone else is telling you what
to think
i don't want to tell you what to think i
just want to present to you information
as i discover it so what better subject
to kick off this series with
than the elections process raise your
hand if you know how many electors in
the electoral college your state has
** LIV: I have no hands...and no vote :p  **
currently there are 538 electors in the
electoral college
and their sole purpose is to elect the
president and vice president
and 270 votes are needed for
them to win the electoral college is
probably the most misunderstood part of
the elections process
and yet it's them not us who actually
elect the president and vice president
and honestly even with all my research
this all still had my head spinning
um so in a true democracy people would
directly elect
their leaders however the u.s and most
other western democracies
operate on a representative democracy
system where we
pick elected officials to represent us
in government
this is our country and this is our
country
during elections time detectors are
typically chosen via like state
party convention which is just a big
political party meeting
and then there's florida whose governor
chooses their electors
once the electors are chosen the
timeline basically looks like this
november 3rd 2020 this year will be
election day
in some states if you look down at your
ballot you'll actually see their names
december 14th 2020 the electors vote
then january 6 is when congress meets to
count the electoral votes
and then january 20th is inauguration
day where the president-elect is sworn
in as president of the united states
america is a federalist government so we
have a strong
central government and states actually
have a significant amount of power
the electoral college kind of helps
preserve the importance of states
but there are quite a few cons to it
first
we'll talk about the plurality versus
majority distinction
in a plurality voting system the
candidate with the most votes wins
for example like if candidate a receives
45 votes
candidate b 35 votes and candidate c
20 votes the candidate who got 45 votes
wins
all of the electoral votes for their
state even though
55 percent of voters voted against them
so the electors are then required to
all pick candidate a and cast all of
their ballots for that one person
and i feel like i confused myself saying
that but whatever
voting via a majority would mean that
candidate a received
50 of all the votes and therefore won
the election
versus in the prior scenario had less
than 50 percent of the votes
and yet won the election because they
still
had more votes than candidate b
i think you get what i'm saying honestly
reading about it it didn't really seem
like it's a big issue
but it's it's what leads to presidents
winning the election without
winning the popular vote in general this
style of voting
using electors and voting via plurality
have
made people just feel less involved and
less like their vote counts
including myself there have been four
total cases
where a president was elected who lost a
popular vote
that was trump in 2016. bush
in 2000 before that only two other
presidents rutherford b
hayes and benjamin harrison in the 1800s
seems like the major criticism of the
electoral college and rightfully so
is that it encourages presidential
candidates to
target swing states and essentially
ignore states in which their party
has like a traditionally solid bearing
where you hear red states and blue
states
well their swing states are ones that
tend to
flip-flop and they change every year
depending on who's up for election
but florida is one particularly
important
and consistent swing state with a large
number of electoral votes
and a very diverse voting population
since 2000 the winner of florida's
electoral vote has become
president-elect
it's kind of one of those things where
if you win florida you have
a very very very good chance of winning
the election so it's an important swing
state that presidential nominees will
cater to for example democratic nominee
joe biden
spent tens of millions so far in
campaign ads specifically targeting
florida's spanish-speaking population
as well as addressing coven-19 issues
that are kind of specific to
their tourist tourism industry down
there in 2019
president trump changed his address from
new york to florida
and recently tweeted that he
specifically encouraged mail-in voting
for florida
in a true democracy everyone gets a vote
so
having the electoral college choose for
their states
and based on this plurality it like
literally goes against democratic ideals
and when you add in the power of swing
states it
stands to reason that our election
process definitely is in need of reform
all right so next i want to get into
actual voting um
but let's have a quick chat about voter
suppression i'm only barely going to
touch on this
because i think it would take hours to
pick apart so
major examples of voter suppression
are closing voting polls and
voter purging also usps
this usps male and voting issue it's the
current mess
method of voter suppression however a
bill was passed in the house of
representatives that
blocks changes from happening until
after the election
and for usps to prioritize election mail
another method of voter suppression is
the closing of voting polls
the voting rights act of 1965
made it so that states had to request
official authorization to
close polling areas because it had been
shown that many states particularly in
the south
were targeting minority communities when
shutting down
polling places but then in 2013
the supreme court case shelby county
versus holder
deemed that unconstitutional and so now
there's been a resurgence of voting
polls being shut down primarily in
minority communities
with texas taking the lead and georgia
louisiana mississippi falling not far
behind
another method of voter suppression is
voter purging
where voter registration lists are
scrubbed and voters who are deceased or
otherwise deemed ineligible
are removed however there doesn't seem
to be a uniform system in place for this
and for how these lists are combed and
and how voters are purged the the
process
is kind of shrouded in secrecy so it
makes it difficult to
figure out where any corruption or
inaccuracies occur
i personally know someone who is wrongly
removed from
the voter roll for their state so if
you're planning to vote
check to make sure you're still
registered because
only 21 states and dc allow same-day
voter registration
part of the reason for that is with
same-day registration you do risk fraud
because there's no time to check the
accuracy of voter registration info
but on the contrary same-day
registration makes it easier for folks
who maybe move often
or procrastinate um it seems
like we're becoming increasingly nomadic
kind of as a
society and younger voters especially or
folks who have been wrongly removed for
the registry like
all these people could really benefit
from same-day registration
in their state i don't really have a
segue to my ending
um but yeah i want to keep it short and
sweet
and kind of figure out what you guys
want to know so if you don't mind
maybe ask me some questions you have
going into this voting period maybe
something
you just don't have the time to research
that you think is important to know
before you vote
so i guess the goal of today's video was
to give you all enough information to
conduct further research
if you wanted and come to your own
conclusions
or maybe i've even killed two birds with
one stone by
desensitizing y'all to both snakes and
politics
um i think we all want to do our part by
being
active and informed citizens without
letting it completely overwhelm us
especially now in this time
so i think even politics can have a
happy medium
all right liam i think we're done
