Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi everyone.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: This is a special episode that I'm posting in December to both of my podcasts, Rethinking and Upper Valley Vibes. On one hand, it's the holiday season.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: And just taking a quick break from.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: The time required for having and editing discussions, which for Upper Valley Vibes will resume in January with some really great.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Stuff on the lineup.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: But also I've just had so many conversations with people who have expressed an interest in getting more involved after this really intense presidential election. So I recorded this special episode to help provide some information for people looking for some ways to invest their time and energy in helping contribute to their community or others around them beyond voting for President. I hope you find this information valuable and I also hope that you have a great and relaxing holiday season with family and friends. And if you have any suggestions of ways that people can get involved in their communities that I missed that I can add to any future lists, please do reach out and send them over to me at Alex Local Us. Enjoy.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Last month, millions of people turned out to vote I voted. Stickers made their way across social media. Ads and signs littered our Internet and streets for weeks and months leading up to it, and seemingly after and more than many hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on the whole thing. Now, regardless of what outcome you are personally hoping for or believe was right, either way, I want to do two things. First, I want to thank you and anyone who voted for participating in this important activity, and especially thank all of the poll workers, mostly who are volunteers, and the officials who oversaw the whole process.
And second, I'd like to remind you and anyone else who voted that voting, especially in a presidential election, well, you know the saying, hey, that's the least I can do. Well, voting for president is literally the least you can do. Now, before anyone gets too upset by that statement, let me a person who was actually elected to public office by only a 12 vote margin when they were 23 years old, take a few minutes in this sort of short episode here and explain what I mean and why it's so important to think about, especially for those of us who really care about being involved in the world around us. Now, going back a few years in the mid-1700s when some of the ideas were being debated about what direction this whole country idea thing would go in, it wasn't clear whether we would even want to directly elect a president, with a number of founders advocating for Congress to elect or select the president, while others wanted to see a more direct connection to the voters. And hey, several hundred years later we still don't actually directly elect the president. As most of us know, the compromise that was reached is that our President is elected by electors, which each state determines how to do within their state, but not by us voting in the polls like I believe every other office in the US is. But one of the main points back then was that the presidential election was not really supposed to be the most important election or take up the most attention from the average voter's perspective. There were a number of factions concerned with different possible problems or risks with each of the proposed ways to structure the presidency and the election for that and our government more broadly. And many were averse to the kind of power that was ingrained in the monarchy from which they had just rebelled. And ultimately, I think it's pretty fair to say that the general view was not that people were trying to create a super strong and large federal government that would be the center point of attention with one elected executive who would be super strong and would be the center point of all of that, but rather that some lessons were indeed learned from the far too central decentralized and weak governance during the Articles of Confederation period, and that even among some of the different opinions, there was some level of agreement that the federal government needed to be a bit stronger than that, but that it was still a largely coordinating and facilitating entity for many things, between and among a number of states which had been separate and were now united, but not necessarily the sink to which power would just continue to fall over decades and centuries, growing to the size and scope and the attention that it is in the presidency is today. And today the every four year presidential election garners the most attention by far from our media and voters and interest groups and everyone else. Although some local elections might see turnouts in the 5 to 10 to 20 to 25% range, we're often above 50% for presidential, which still doesn't feel amazing, but it's a lot more than a lot of state and local elections.
And to put some of this in perspective, how much activity and attention is generated in this election, the 2024 presidential election, plus the congressional elections, the total amount of money spent on that election will end up clocking in somewhere around $16 billion. And that is billion with a B. There are almost 50 countries with smaller GDPs than we spend on this one election. Let me say that again. Yes, we spent more on our 2024 election than the entire year's worth of economic activity in 50 and almost 50 countries around the world.
But do you know how many elected officials there are in total in the U.S. how many elections there actually are? Well, no one is quite 100% sure because there are so many, but most estimates put it well above 500,000 elected officials. Half a million people elected to various offices around the us that's starting to near the entire population of the state that I live in, Vermont. Yet we give so much attention to this one election every four years now, whether the federal government itself should be playing such a large role that it does seem to today. That's a debate for another day. But either way, I think we can all agree that the presidential election is extremely attention grabbing and important these days.
But with all that being said, voting especially for president is sort of like a nice Covid sourdough bread. And what I mean by that is that voting for the President every four years is accessible, easy, kind of fun, provides some novelty, especially when you do it the first few times, and it does provide something of value back, but it is merely a drop in the bucket of the incredible depth that exists behind it. Whether we're talking about baking or civic engagement, voting is just the beginning. Like a sourdough loaf was for many people during COVID And if you leave this episode with the image of voting being a big old loaf of sourdough, I think I've done half my job here. The other half is this. Although I am definitely no expert on baking, I am on civic engagement, and although I could go on for hours about the opportunities to get more involved, in the spirit of trying to keep this episode nice and short, here are five different things that you may want to consider shifting some attention to now that you've discharged your duty or responsibility of voting for President, and hopefully some other offices. That is, if you want to pass the beginner level and move on to intermediate or advanced. Some of you listening, I'm sure are familiar with some of these things, but hopefully some of these are interesting and relevant for some of you who are thinking about ways to invest some of your energy in things around you.
So number one is voting for other levels of government and other offices. This is kind of an easy one because most of you who are listening and most people who many people who do vote for President also vote for other things on the ballot, but not everybody does, and a lot of those are left blank. And I think it's worth getting to know the candidates or questions that are on the ballot and making informed decisions about those two, trying to keep track of how people are doing, whether people are following through on what they promised during the campaign and using that information in how you show up at future elections or even in other ways, which we'll talk more about in between elections.
Now, of course, this is a little bit on steroids. If you do live in New England and you live in a community like many of us do, where the legislative authority is actually vested in the voters, not in an elected group of people.
And so hopefully folks who live in many of those communities also participate in their direct democracy as well, including voting on a ballot and showing up at a traditional town meeting. If that is something your town does. Okay, Number two is running for elected office. Maybe not for president, but anything else, or nominating or getting someone else to run for elected office. Now, I've often said before that it doesn't really matter how many people vote if the candidates on the ballot are all the same kind of crappy options. Now, obviously that's a little bit overstated. There are some good folks out there, but by and large it's not a pretty picture. And I think all of us know that. And that's often because not many people actually do run for office. And there are thousands of elections at state and local levels that often have low turnout or open seats or aren't very competitive at all. Now, there's so many complicated dynamics to this. Not everybody can run for office. It's harder. If you are a single parent, for example, and work one or two jobs, it can be really challenging to run for office. And there's big differences between different types of offices and the time commitments that they require and the schedules that they are on. But it's really important to keep in mind how much stuff happens at the state, county, regional, local and tribal government level. I mean, we're talking, you know, public safety and emergency functions ranging from disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery, to policing, to fire prevention and suppression, to emergency medical services. And that can sort of slide into things like community health, such as community nurses. Of course, we're talking about education and all of the pieces connected to that. We're talking about housing. I mean, local governments make tons of decisions related to housing regarding zoning codes and all sorts of things that directly impact how good or fair housing policy is.
Same for transportation and how roads work and what forms of transportation are available or encouraged.
Sustainability and climate related policies and programs, recreation and arts, youth development, conservation, social services, senior services, court systems, waste management, recycling, water quality. I mean, there's so many things that are happening at the local level. And many of these offices that are leadership positions that oversee some of those areas. I mean, it's just worth keeping in mind that our entire system of government is designed for us to be involved and be in those positions of leadership.
And so there are just significant opportunities there, not only to put your own name on a ballot, which I think is worth thinking about, but maybe even more importantly, to think about people who, you know, who would be really great leaders in any of those areas. In fact, a lot of the leadership development programs I've worked on in the past, the evidence seems to suggest that we get a higher quality person when people actually nominate each other for some of these leadership opportunities. And I've seen this anecdotally. Some of the people that I think do the best job in these positions are people who actually had to have their arm twisted to run for office and then ended up over four or eight or 12 years just doing a really phenomenal job. So it's really worth thinking about. Do you have the time to run for office to get your name on a ballot? Or do you know someone who would be really great in one of these positions because they exemplify some really great, you know, leadership qualities that, of course, we could talk more about.
And in fact, there's a recent episode on the Rethinking podcast about the TV show Ted Lasso where we do talk about some of those leadership qualities.
Number three, being appointed to a position or board or committee. This is especially relevant for folks who want to get much more involved. But maybe running for office is too big of a commitment, or maybe you're new in a community and just not ready for something like that, or not in the right place in your life. But pretty much all of those areas that I just mentioned, in many of the towns and cities around the U.S. there are many different ways that you can be involved by being appointed to a board or committee in almost all of those different areas. And whether that is to a statutory board that might make decisions over certain areas, such as a planning board or a zoning board, or an advisory committee that might work with those groups to shape policies or programs. I mean, many towns are literally turning everything upside down looking for people to help in these roles. Every town that I've worked in has had a number of vacancies on boards and committees when I came in that they were struggling to fill.
And so it's pretty easy to get involved in some of those things out there. And in fact, you can check on your town website. You could contact or reach out to some folks that you know are already involved. I mean, one of the nice things is that pretty much all of the records for all of these groups, their agendas and minutes and membership are all public documents that should be available online.
You can go, you can just walk down, call your town hall where you live and talk to your town clerk or your town manager or one of your local elected officials and just ask them where they need help today and figure out ways where the opportunities are that you could plug in. And I think most people you'll find are going to be really excited that someone is coming to them, offering to volunteer some time. And I think as ready, as long as you're ready to go into that and with the sort of mindset of learning and plugging in rather than sort of being a bull in a china shop, even if you do have some ideas of things you want to do, I think as long as you go in ready to learn, understanding that a lot of people may have been involved in some of these things for a while, people will welcome you with open arms and welcome your energy and welcome your ideas a little further down the line. So there's lots of opportunities there and a lot of those can be a little bit less of a time consuming commitment than actually running for an elected position.
Now, number four, if you're looking for ways to get more involved in this way, but you don't feel like you have the time commitment to join a border committee, which often do require, you know, a once a month meeting, doing some work in between that and a multi year term, there are many ways that you can just help out in your community and not just for your town government, but there are so many local organizations, nonprofits, businesses and community groups. I mean from things as large as Rotary Club and Lions Club Club to as small as just a group of neighbors on a street that are meeting every month or twice a year to pull invasive species out of the gardens or lawn on their block, or pulling tires out of a local river. There are so many things at the local level that need our attention. And help can get you outside, can get you meeting other people in your community who also care about things that are happening around them and don't necessarily have to do with setting or making recommendations on policy, but just helping out in that moment. There's a lot of opportunities to spend just an afternoon or just a day or a few days a year on something like that. And it's a great way to get your feet wet, especially if you're pulling tires out of a river. Sorry.
And it's a great way to get your Feet wet, because you can get in, you can meet the people, you can learn about what's happening in the community without making sort of a multi month or multi year commitment or having to take stands or doing research on policy or anything like that. You can just go help out, meet some other people in your community and get a little bit of a better sense of what's out there. Okay, Number five, this could go in so many different directions, but it's really important and sort of and worth mentioning, which is things having to do with local media, journalism and information accessibility out in the public. So the first example of that, and I covered this in a recent episode of the Upper Valley Vibes podcast, which was a group from Raymond, New Hampshire, called the Raymond Voter Information Project. This is a group of residents in Raymond, New Hampshire, which has a town meeting form of government, an SB2 town meeting form of government, where people in the community formed a nonpartisan, an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit that every year leading up to town meeting, they put out a voter guide. And in that voter guide, all of the items on the agenda, which is called a warrant in New England, all the items on that, they give a summary, they give the financial impact, they give links to more information, they give sources to where they got their information from. They even provide reasons you might vote for it and reasons why you might vote against it. This is an incredibly valuable practice and activity in this community. This is the main way that people learn about what is happening at town meeting every year.
And this is a group of residents who volunteer with their own independent, nonpartisan nonprofit to do this. And people have come to really trust it over the last 15 years. So that's a really good way, something like that, or even that sort of exact thing. And the folks at the Raymond Voter Information Project are really interested in helping people in other communities in New England do something similar. And their contact information is on that podcast episode. You can reach out to them to learn more about what they do in their community, how they make it successful, and check out that podcast episode for lessons learned over the years and more information about that. So that's one way that you can help connect people in your community to better information about things that are happening and decisions that are being made. The next is this also could go in a lot of directions is journalism and news and things like that. This is such an important part of the way our democracy is supposed to function. And I'm a little biased. I wrote for my newspaper in high school, I wrote for my newspaper in college. I wrote my newspaper in South Orange before I decided to run for office. And so I think that newspapers are really important, but they are going through. But it's hard to make the dollars work on the business model front. I think we've seen a lot of news outlets really struggle with that. And some places go into this really bad spiral where they start cutting people, the quality goes down, less people subscribe less ads, they start cutting people and it just kind of gets worse and worse. And they often get bought out by really large companies that don't really seem to do as good of a job as a lot of the locally owned ones do. But there are many ways to think about getting involved here. Whether it is being, you know, like a part time, almost a volunteer correspondent for a local paper, where sometimes you might get paid a stipend for covering a certain issue or series of issues.
Maybe you could start your own online news media outlet in your community. I've seen some of those work. Again, I think it's hard to make the business models work, but there are some interesting opportunities out there of ways that we might be able to financially support journalism and news outlets better. But good journalism that cares about trying to get to truth, that cares about explaining the complexity of the issues that communities face. And ultimately that isn't just trying to sell papers to make money, but is trying to be a positive impact in the communities that they serve really as a public service and a public benefit. So many different ways to be involved in that capacity.
The third way to be involved in sort of local media and information accessibility is being a good civic citizen. I wish I had a slightly more, like, specific definition to this. It's something that a handful of us are kind of working on. But basically what this means is approaching issues in your community and approaching other people where your goal isn't necessarily to convince people what your opinion on an issue is in a given conversation, but it's to help other people show up as the best versions of themselves, helping facilitate difficult conversations between other people, helping people get connected to more information.
Almost like what a librarian does. People come in, might ask a question, and their role often is trying to connect that person to good information and helping them be able to make whatever decision they're trying to make. There are organizations out there, like Braver Angels, that do training for things like this.
And I think this is an area that's sort of undervalued, which means that, you know, maybe there's a Facebook thread in your community that's going out of control about some local issue. And instead of jumping in and trying to convince people what you believe and that what you believe is right, maybe it's trying to ask people questions, flesh ideas out from others, help people see commonalities, help people engage in empathetic and constructive ways. If only in some small towns, if only a few people took that as their role in the sort of civic ecosystem, said, I'm going to be a good civic citizen, and when I see these things going in the wrong direction, I'm just going to try and help get them going in a more constructive direction. That would have a really positive effect on how things work in a lot of our communities.
And then the last thing in the sort of local media and information accessibility. If you've listened to my podcast in the past, you often have heard this sort of framework about thinking about things, starting with ourselves individually, then moving to the next tier of our family and friends, the people that we have really trusted relationships with, then moving beyond that to the people we kind of work with and know, but a little less well, and then moving beyond that to our sort of, you know, larger society in how we kind of engage in our politics. And so thinking about how you engage with that first tier in which is that family and friends of people who you have trusted relationships with and having, and making sure that you're being intentional about how you have conversations with those other people, and that we don't have to approach some of those conversations in the ways that it sort of feels like we often need to, which is convincing other people that they, that they should believe the thing that we believe, but rather, again, taking that same example from the sort of being good civic citizen, but trying to facilitate people really being critical thinkers, but allowing them to come to their own opinions about things. But how do we engage with those people close to us that we do have good relationships with?
And those dynamics, those interactions, can also have a really positive impact on our sort of civics around us. So if you voted in the presidential election recently, or even if you didn't vote for the presidential in the presidential election recently, I wanted to provide this episode to a thank you for doing that, but also remind folks that that is just one small step in the much larger scheme of how to be engaged in our democracy. This entire system is designed specifically for us to be able to be much more involved in it than just voting in an election every few years. And in fact, when you look around the world and throughout human history, we are incredibly fortunate and lucky to live in a time and a place that allows us as much access as there actually is. And to recap those things are, number one, voting for other candidates and at other levels of government consistently and following up and holding those folks accountable. Number two, is running for office yourself or nominating someone who, you know, who would be really great at it to run for office.
Number three, looking at being appointed to a position on a statutory board or advisory committee in your community. Number four is just finding a way to help out with your town government, with a local nonprofit, with a local business that might be doing something in an afternoon or a day that helps the community. And number five is thinking about ways to connect people in your community to better information about the things that are happening. So if you're listening to this and you've made it all the way to the end, you're already going down the road, as many of the people who I know listen to this podcast are already, well, in this kind of direction of being involved and being interested in their community. But again, if you voted in this last election and you're looking for ways to be more involved going forward so you don't have to wait four years to, to to take an action that, that has a positive effect on your democracy, I hope these five different things provide a little bit of inspiration, provide a little bit of information about all of the amazing opportunities that are out there that are all looking for you and your energy and your ideas to help make them better.
