Jane: This is But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids? I'm Jane
Lindholm. On this show, we take questions from kids just like
you all over the world, and we find answers. We do a lot of
science here on But Why? But today, we're thinking about a
different kind of science, political science. That's the
study of government and politics and how people relate to those
topics. Of course, here in the United States, politics is
something we hear a lot about every four years when we have a
presidential election, and a little bit every two years when
we have congressional elections. But elections happen all the
time. Sometimes towns and cities have elections for things like
mayors or town or city council. School districts elect people to
their school boards, and sometimes voters have to go to
the polls to agree to a town or school district budget.
Sometimes we'll even vote on local issues, and that's just in
the US. Elections of all sorts happen all over the world all
the time, going to the polls or mailing in a ballot, these are
important parts of our democracy. We'll be talking
today about voting in the context of the U.S. presidential
election. This show is based in the US, after all, but we hope
if you live in a different country, you'll learn something
too. Our guide today is Bridgett King from the University of
Kentucky.
Bridgett: I am a college professor, which means I teach
students who continue with school after they graduate from
high school. I am someone who is a political scientist, and what
that means is I study government, the people who work
in government, and sort of the things that they do and how
those decisions affect people.
Jane: Our first question is from Ellie.
Ellie: And I'm five years old, and I live in Massachusetts,
Cambridge, and my question is, what is voting?
Bridgett: Voting is how you tell people in elected office, or
people who will be in elected office, who you want there, what
you care about, what issues matter to you.
Jane: Voting is how we decide who's going to make decisions
for our towns, states and country. We elect the people who
run our governments, and sometimes we vote on decisions
about how to spend our money or what kind of changes we want to
make to our laws. The act of voting is actually pretty
simple. You have to register. That means, say that you want to
vote and make sure you're eligible or allowed to. You
register in the town or county that you live in. Generally, we
don't vote with our hands or our voices in major elections. We
vote using something called a ballot. A ballot is simply a
piece of paper with options to choose from. Often, you fill in
the circle next to the name of the candidate you want to vote
for. Sometimes there's a box that you can put a checkmark
next to, and sometimes you can write in the name of someone who
wasn't already printed on the ballot. You could even write in
your own name, but you wouldn't get elected unless lots of other
people wrote in your name too. Lots of people vote in person at
what's called a polling place. That just means it's a place set
up to take voters on election day. But lots of people vote
before the election using something called an absentee
ballot.
Bridgett: Yes, so absentee ballots, which are also
sometimes called vote by mail ballots, so that also can be a
little confusing, because different states use different
words to describe the same thing. Absentee ballots
basically give you an opportunity to not vote in
person. Maybe it's because you're busy or because you're
not going to be in town on election day, but it's a way for
you to still cast a ballot the same way you, the same ballot
you would vote if you voted in person, but to do it in a
different time frame that accommodates your schedule.
Jane: Because if you're busy or, let's say you were on vacation,
let's say your family decided to go out of town for a couple of
weeks, and you're out of town on election day, even if you were
at another place in the United States, you can't just go vote
wherever you want. You have to go vote in the town that you're
registered to vote in.
Bridgett: That is correct. And absentee ballots also allow
citizens who are overseas to vote as well. So it's not just
people who are maybe not at home on election day because they're
in another part of the country. Absentee ballots also let people
who are in other parts of the world still participate in our
democracy.
Jane: But if you're going to vote in person on election day,
you go to the polling place where you're registered to vote,
and you're going to be helped by people called poll workers, who,
you guessed it, are working at the polling place. There's a lot
to do on election day, so people volunteer to help out.
Bridgett: Yes, they're mostly volunteers, individuals who are
from your community. So they're your friends, your neighbors,
they might even be a relative, but they are the people who on
election day, will greet you when you show up and help you
work your way through the process to make sure you can
cast a ballot. The equipment or the machines that are in polling
locations are very different, sometimes within the same state,
but definitely across states. But generally, though, the
process is the same. You show up, someone is going to confirm
that you are who you are. You're going to receive a ballot,
you're going to make choices on that ballot, and then you're
going to submit it, and then it comes my favorite part, you get
an "I Voted" sticker.
Isla: My name is isla. I'm in Colorado, I'm five and a half
years old and why do people vote?
Jane: Isla in Colorado wants to know, why do people vote? So why
do we have the system, and why do people still do it?
Bridgett: Part of the reason is so, if you think back to like
early America, where the colonists basically had to
follow the desires of the King of England, in an effort to get
away from that after the American Revolution and the
founding of the United States, voting creates an opportunity
for citizens to express their choices, their desires and
things that they want to see happen, Not only in the nation,
but also in their local communities and in the states.
So voting is something that we do in a democracy, which is what
we live in, because it allows citizens to actively participate
in government.
Raanan: Hi, my name is Raanan, and I live in Houston, Texas. My
question is, how can someone win the most votes in the state in
America, but still lose the presidential election?
Jane: Did that question surprise you? You would think that in a
democracy, whoever gets the most votes wins, right? Well, kind
of. There's one other step in the presidential election, and
it's really complicated. When we vote for president, it doesn't
mean all the votes of everyone in the United States get added
together and counted. The way it works is each state gets counted
separately, and a small group of people called the Electoral
College are the people who actually get to vote for who
becomes our president.
Bridgett: When citizens show up to cast a ballot, we're talking
about president, you either vote from one candidate or the other,
and depending on in most states, which candidate gets the
majority of the votes cast by the public, that is where the
electors go. So you can think about the electors as kind of
being middlemen, right, who are in position to communicate to
our two major parties or to the government, actually, more
clearly, who it is that citizens in a specific state have
selected. So if, for example, let's say, in a state, the
Democratic candidate for president gets the majority of
the votes, then those democratic electors would go to the state
capital, and the electors or votes would be cast for that
person. In the event a republican candidate gets the
majority of the vote in a state, then the republican electors
basically assert that that state has been won by the republican
candidate, and that candidate, in turn, gets the electors.
Basically, you start with the popular vote. The popular vote
is then changed into an electoral vote, which is based
on the outcome of who wins the popular vote in the state, and
then those electors are then applied to reaching that 270
which you need to become president. It is complicated,
and it's not going anywhere.
Jane: There are a total of 538 people in the electoral college.
You need to get the votes of more than half of them to be
president. Half of 538 is 269 so when Bridget says you need 270
to be president, that means you've got to have at least one
more than half the votes of the electoral college. That 538
number seems kind of random, doesn't it? Well, it's not. Not
every state has the same number of electoral votes. It depends
on how many people live in each state. States with more people
get more votes.
Bridgett: That is true. So the number of electors is based on
the number of representatives in Congress, and that is the House
of Representatives plus the Senate put together. And so
because everyone has two senators, every state's the same
in that way, but because the House of Representatives is
based on population, that is why we see larger states with larger
populations having more electors, and smaller states
with smaller populations having a smaller number of electors.
Jane: In most states, all but Maine and Nebraska, whoever wins
Bridgett: Yes, but right, because so we don't have a
the most votes in that state gets all of that state's
electors. Even though they may only have won 60 percent of the
votes, they get 100 percent of the electors, which makes it
really important to try to win in states where it looks like
the election is going to be close, because you can get all
the electoral votes, even if you just get barely more popular
votes from regular people than the other candidate.
national popular vote, so across our fifty states, who gets the
most votes in their favor does not determine the outcome. So
when you're doing the presidential election math, the
best way to think about it is to sort of think about the
individual states and what is happening in each individual
state in terms of the popular vote, because that will then
determine who gets the electors. And you need electors to become
president. See, I
Jane: told you the Electoral College and our presidential
election system were confusing. Can you even remember the
question that started this whole explanation?
Raanan: How can someone win the most votes in the state in
America but still lose a presidential election?
Jane: Thanks for the reminder, Raanan, because it's usually
winner take all in each state where the winner gets all the
electoral votes, even though they didn't get all of the votes
of the regular people, it's possible that overall, one
candidate could get more of the popular vote of the whole
country, the votes of each individual person, but still get
fewer of the Electoral College votes. Most recently, this
happened in 2000 when George W. Bush became president, even
though Al Gore had more votes, and in 2016 when Donald Trump
became president, even though Hillary Clinton got more votes.
Many people don't like the Electoral College and the way it
influences our election outcomes, but it's written into
the U.S. Constitution, and it would take a lot of work to get
rid of it. So Bridgett thinks it's here to stay, at least for
the foreseeable future. The presidency is the only office
where the Electoral College system is used. Okay, I need a
break, and maybe you do too more on voting and voting systems
coming up.
This is But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids? I'm Jane Lindholm,
we're learning about elections with Bridgett King, a political
scientist at the University of Kentucky. Here's a question from
Isaac.
Isaac: I'm eight years old, and I'm from Colorado, and my
question is, why are there color states like red and blue?
Jane: We often hear people, especially in the media, talking
about red states are going to vote this way and blue states
are going to vote this way. And it can be confusing, because the
states don't have colors, so why are we talking about them like
they have colors?
Bridgett: This language of red states and blue states wasn't
really agreed upon or consistent until the 2000 presidential
election. So before that, you would have newspapers or print
media inconsistently referring to democrats as red or blue or
republicans as red or blue. So this, this language we use to
describe states as red or blue is, I'm actually older than it.
It's relatively new. And so it was in the 2000 election that
sort of, news media agreed upon this idea that democrats would
be described as blue and republicans would be described
as red. And all that really means is that in a blue state,
overwhelmingly, the voters voted, at least in a
presidential election for the Democratic candidate, and in red
states, it means they voted overwhelmingly for the
Republican candidate.
Jane: So that a red state is a state that pretty consistently,
pretty usually, goes for a republican presidential
candidate, and a blue state pretty typically goes for the
democrat who's running for president. And then we sometimes
describe states that can go either direction as purple
states, because when you mix red and blue, that makes purple.
It does. So there are also states that from presidential
election to presidential election, sometimes they're red,
sometimes they're blue, and so, because they're not as easy to
sort of figure out in terms of what's going to happen on
election day, we refer to them as purple states, right? Because
they could either be red or they could be blue. And it's those
states that you also see presidents spending a lot of
their time, because those are the states where they have the
biggest chance of picking up new voters or those states can be
very important in helping them get enough electors to become
the president of the United States.
And those states are also sometimes called "swing states,"
because they swing back and forth from one to the other. Why
red and blue, though? Why? Why did it get decided that we would
call these two different political parties by the colors
red and blue, why not green and yellow?
Bridgett: I mean, I think it might be, in part have to do
with the advent of color TV. So there was a point in time, for
example, when, so when Ronald Reagan was president, for
example, like, because his name was Ronald Reagan.
Jane: This was back in the 80s.
Bridgett: Oh yes, in the 80s. Yes, important context. he was
affiliated with the color red, in part because his name began
with an R.
Jane: Really, that was part,that was why?
Bridgett: Yeah, so there's no real sort of, people sat in a
room and made this very well thought out sort of decision
about red and blue. Part of it, I mean, red and blue show up
really well on TV and in print media, so part of it is that,
but I mean, our red and blue states could just as easy be
green and orange, but again, perhaps not as pleasing on the
eyes. Red and blue are also colors that are deeply embedded
in the American flag. So in that way, it also perhaps makes the
most makes makes more sense compared to some other colors.
Jane: Maybe you've seen a map of the United States. We often see
them on TV and newspapers leading up to and after an
election where states are colored in red or blue,
depending on how they voted. Now you know what that means. Red
states are states that tend to vote republican, and blue states
tend to vote democratic. Often when you see maps like this,
it's a representation of the Electoral College that we just
learned about and which candidate that state's electors
are giving their votes to. We also have animals that represent
political parties. There's an elephant for republicans and a
donkey for democrats. What's that all about?
Bridgett: They actually derive from a cartoon. So there was a
cartoonist who, in sort of discussing our political
landscape, used a donkey and an elephant, labeling the donkey
the democratic sort of party slash candidate and the
Republican Party the elephant, the Republican Party slash
candidate. And so over time, it kind of just stuck, and the
parties kind of adopted these symbols. So like a lot of the
things that seem to be sort of long-standing intentional,
things that we use to understand our political parties,
oftentimes, kind of just happened as a consequence of, in
the case of the elephant and the donkey, someone trying to be
funny, or in the case of us thinking about red and blue,
obviously them being in the American flag, but also thinking
about that, there was no consensus until about 24 years
ago, with respect to which candidate or which party would
be described as red versus blue.
Jane: I should also mention, I keep saying our two political
parties. We have more than two political parties in the United
States. We have many, many political parties right now, in
this point in American history and culture, the Democratic
Party and the Republican Party are the two strongest parties,
but it hasn't always been that way, and it probably will not be
that way forever and ever. Things change over time. We have
different political parties, and even sometimes we have people
who don't run within any political party. They're called
independents, and we've never had an independent for
president, but we have independents who represent their
constituents, the voters and the people who live in their state
in Congress. So I don't mean to give the impression that we only
have two political parties. We just currently have two that are
the strongest, and they wind up taking a lot of the votes.
Bridgett: Outside of our two major political parties, there
are other people who have put themselves in the race to be
president. A couple weeks ago, I was giving a lecture, and I
wanted to know how many people had filed to run for president,
and it's somewhere over 400, right? So there are, I know it's
a lot. The problem is they often don't have the resources or the
visibility, or sort of the support of individuals who are
affiliated with our two major political parties, so it's often
harder for them to get the number of votes which we talked
about that are necessary within the state to secure the number
of electors that you eventually need to become president.
So we talked a little bit about the states, and states wind up
being very important when it comes to all elections. Really,
we vote in a lot of different ways in this country, and each
state runs its own elections. Why don't we all do it the same
way? Why don't we just sort of nationally vote regardless of
what state we're in. Why are states in control?
The Constitution provides the states with the authority to
effectively determine election processes and procedures, and so
there are some constitutional amendments and some pieces of
federal legislation that do make some things consistent. But
because of the Constitution, the Constitution is, in fact, what
gives states the power and authority to design their
election systems the way they choose. And so you can think
about why that might be good, right? Because it allows states
to create systems that might better reflect the preferences
of their voters or what it is that their voters want.
Jane: And that, as you said, is the way it's been written up in
our constitution. So this is sort of the way the U.S. was
founded, and it's the way that it runs. But when we think about
states, and we we kind of separate them out, and we call
certain states red states and other states blue states. Do you
think that's fair? Is that a good way to do it, or does that
somehow not quite represent how different we all are and yet how
the same. I mean, it's, it's sort of divides us up in an odd
way.
Bridgett: Yeah, I mean, I think red states and blue states are a
good way to describe a state or a city, even, or, you know,
calling them red or blue if you just want to talk about the
majority of people within a place who cast a ballot right
but we also know that there are people who don't vote, and even
in your red states or blue states, there are people who
don't vote with the majority. And so when we talk about states
using this, sort of these colors as the descriptors, there's the
potential to ignore, or for people who don't necessarily
vote in according to the color of their state, to feel like
they're not as much as part of the process and that their voice
doesn't matter as much.
Jane: Do you think that affects how we feel about our elections?
Bridgett: Yes, as you know, when we think about why people don't
participate, particularly when you look at surveys, one of the
I would say top three or four reasons is usually that people
feel disconnected from the process, or they feel like they
don't know enough about what's happening. And so when people
who can participate but feel like they aren't in the best
position to do so choose not to, not only are they not voting,
but they tend to be less engaged civically in general. So maybe
they're also not watching the news, they're not reading the
newspaper, they're not following candidates, candidates or
campaigns. And you know, when we think about democracy and sort
of why we vote in the first place, part of it is to get the
input of citizens so they have a say in sort of what it is that
government does or what it prioritizes or focuses on. And
when so many people don't participate, they're basically
excluding themselves from the conversation.
Jane: If voting is so important, why can't everyone do it?
Elizabeth: My name is Elizabeth. I live in St. Albans, Vermont,
and I'm four years old, and my question is, why can kids not
vote for president?
Benjamin: Hi, I am Benjamin. I am seven years old, and I am
from Brewster, New York, and my question is, why can't kids
vote?
Bridgett: The voting age in the United States has not always
been 18. At one point it was 21. But so if we think about why
younger children can't participate, one of the things
that I think we as a country and people value is that individuals
participating also having enough information to sort of
understand the offices, who they're voting for, what it is
that individuals do, and sort of why an issue or other sort of
things someone might be deciding on on the ballot matters. And so
one of the hopes is that as young people go from
kindergarten through 12th grade, they're getting civic education.
They're learning about government institutions and
structure what it is that our elected officials do how to
vote, perhaps more importantly, and so that when they graduate
from high school, they will have enough information to be
informed citizens and to make decisions in the voting booth on
election day when they're able to.
Jane: You know, I mentioned that we have not always had just two
political parties, or these two political parties, and you
mentioned Bridgett, we haven't always had the same age range of
people who are allowed to vote. And in fact, there have been
lots of changes over our country's history in who is
allowed to vote, and who isn't, and who is allowed to vote in
this country reflects what we believe as a culture, and often
what the people in power believe is the right of someone to be
able to vote. And you know, our history has some not so great
voting records. People of color have not been allowed to vote in
our country's past, women have not been allowed to vote. People
who did not own land have not been allowed to vote. And so
it's not necessarily going to be the same forever with the age
range of people who can vote too. And so if you are a kid who
thinks I'm 16, or I'm 14, and I think I should be able to vote,
so. That's something that you can work on and advocate for or
make a case for, because our country is not set in stone, and
we have made changes over the course of history.
Bridgett: You can have conversations with your parent
or other adult about what's happening. I know a lot of
schools sometimes bring in the voting equipment so students
can, like, use it for, like, student council elections. A lot
of states create opportunities for young people to design their
"I Voted" stickers, which, if you'll recall, is my favorite
part of the sort of in person process. There's programs like
this where you can learn more. So there's beyond being able to
cast a ballot. I just want to encourage everyone to sort of
consider all of the other ways you can be civically engaged or
educate yourself. I know for me, when I was younger, when my
mother would go vote, she would take me. I may or may not have
stolen her sticker, but she would take me, and I would stand
in the booth while she made her selections. And I mean, I think
it's a good way for young people to sort of get a sense of what
the process looks like, even before they're able to
participate in it themselves.
Jane: So if you're curious about the election, start talking to
the adults around you about it. That's all the time we have for
today. But our next episode is about elections too. We're going
to talk more deeply about voting and how people know their votes
are getting counted by the machines and devices used at
polling places.
Bridgett: It's very important that not only are they accurate,
but that people believe and have trust and faith and confidence
that what they mark in that bubble on their actual ballot is
what actually shows up in the totals that makes the decision.
Jane: As always, if you have a question about anything, have an
adult record it. You can submit a question through our website,
or you can record it on a smartphone using a voice
recording app, and then have your adult email the file to
questions@butwhykids.org We can't answer every question we
get, but we love hearing what's on your mind. But Why, is
produced by Melody Bodette and meet Jane Lindholm at Vermont
Public and distributed by PRX. Joey Palumbo is the video editor
on our YouTube series, But Why Bites. Our theme music is by
Luke Reynolds. We'll be back in two weeks with an all new
episode. Until then, stay curious!