--:-- [Sound of a podcast intro]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The United States presidential election is now less than a week away. It might take days to get the results. It might take a week. It might take a month. We don't know. But it could be over on November 3rd. And wouldn't that be nice?
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've been talking about this election on the show since February of 2019. Seriously, I looked it up recently. We've come at it from any number of angles, but one thing we haven't done a ton of is just hear how people plan to vote, who people plan to vote for.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So today, we're going to do that. We're going to hear from farmers, from frontline workers. We're going to hear from political organizers and from a few voters who are named Ruth. But let's kick things off with someone who's voting for the very first time.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alexi Reyes: Hi, my name is Alexi Reyes. I'm a Mexican photographer and artist. I'm 19 and I live in Texas. This year, I'm going to be voting for Biden-Harris.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Alexi Reyes: I think right now we really do need a change in leadership. I wouldn't say I'm an enthusiastic Biden voter. I would say that I want change. And I think the best way to have that is to elect Biden into office.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Alexi Reyes: I'm passionate about things like making sure we get a cure for COVID. and that it ends soon. I think same-sex marriage is super important and shouldn't be taken away. I also believe things like gun control are super important, especially as someone that just graduated.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Alexi Reyes: I think it's super important to feel safe in school because it's somewhere you need to go learn, not be worried about your safety. The Hispanic boat can definitely vary, but I think with younger people, we're focused on everyone rather than just ourselves.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Armando Ibarra. I'm the president of the Miami Young Republicans. And I'm very proud to be voting for President Donald Trump.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Armando Ibarra: Here are our Miami Latino community. We feel like he values us. And this goes for the Cuban-American community, for the Venezuelan-American community, for the Colombian-American community, for the Nicaraguan-American community.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Armando Ibarra: He came to Miami and he made promises to us. He promised us that maximum pressure against the Cuban and Venezuelan and Nicaraguan dictatorships. He promised that he would stand with the Venezuelan people. And he recognized Juan Guaidó as a legitimate president of Venezuela.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Armando Ibarra: He indicted Nicolás Maduro. He came here and he promised Colombian-Americans that he would stand with President Abar Uribe and that he would fight against Castro Chavismo that's trying to harm Colombia.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Leslie Mack. I am 44 years old. I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York, but I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. Janet Braden, 65, and I live in Crawford, Texas.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Leslie Mack: The issue I organize most around is racial justice, social justice, and Black liberation. I've already voted for President Trump.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Leslie Mack: I think what we're going to see is that a Biden win will be very directly connected to mobilization of progressive racial justice movements across the country.
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--:-- Leslie Mack: And so when we come out of this election, hopefully on the other side, these conversations are going to have to be around where the gaps exist between what we see as the direct needs and material needs of our communities and what the Biden-Harris camp might see as solutions to those issues.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Leslie Mack: My father was a manufacturer in East LA of architectural hardware. He sold his company in late 70s because he no longer wanted to deal with all of the regulations and used to say if he ran his company like the government, he would have been bankrupt years ago.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Leslie Mack: And I thought, you know, could a businessman do any worse than the idiot politicians that we've had for the last umpteen skillion years that it's just not ever getting better.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Leslie Mack: They say they're doing something, but they're not. We are looking at a catastrophic tumble into fascism on one side and then the other maintenance of a flawed but certainly still democratic system.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Leslie Mack: And so the attacks on birthright citizenship, on curbing immigrants and refugees here in this country, the significant amount of deportations. All of those things have directly affected my personal community.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My main reason for voting for who I vote for are taxes. Obviously, the safety of this country. You know, we've always had borders. Why can't we continue to have borders?
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Leslie Mack: I don't have a problem with bringing people into this country, but they need to play by the rules. We have the rules. Let's follow them. Otherwise, why even have stop signs?
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Fana Hader. I am 26 years old and I live in Lyle, Illinois, and I am a kindergarten teacher.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Fana Hader: I will be voting for Joe Biden this year. Something that's very important to me is that everyone should feel comfortable in the space that you're living in.
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--:-- Fana Hader: So I am a Muslim who wears hijab. I never felt like I stood out in a negative way. And I've never experienced this in my life where I feel anxious walking down the street because of the stares that I get or what people might say.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Fana Hader: As a kindergarten teacher, one thing right off the bat that myself and a lot of educators were not happy with when Trump got elected was that he chose Betsy DeVos as his secretary for education.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Fana Hader: And she is an individual who has absolutely zero experience in education and in public education. And a lot of what she is promoting under the Trump administration is to cut federal funding and take that money and spend it towards private schooling.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Terrence Waz. I am 41 years old. I'm a McDonald's worker and a leader in the fight for 15 in the union living in Kansas City, Missouri.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Terrence Waz: When I think about the upcoming election and so much at stake, and when you think about what the working class has been going through, even before the pandemic began this year, the lack of union, the lack of health care, the lack of a living wage all across the board, all across the country, it's clear that the working class best interest has not been upheld in this current administration.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Terrence Waz: So I think from a personal standpoint, it's clear that I'm on the Biden-Harris ticket. And my plan for Election Day is to vote in person.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I promised you'd hear from some voters named Ruth. They're coming after a quick break on Today Explained.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
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--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, and within seconds you will have your email and calendars synced. You'll see all your relationships in a fully-fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
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--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained. We'll be right back.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: and more. Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right, we're back. On the show today, we're hearing from voters, conservative, progressive, white, black, and of course, farmers.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president loves to talk about farmers, and some of them love to talk about him. Well, my name is Chris Peterson, and I live in Grantsburg, Wisconsin, and I will be 68 years old.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Chris Peterson: We have a dairy farm in northwest Wisconsin, about 70 miles north of Minneapolis-St. Paul. And I'm going to be voting for President Trump in all my time on the farm.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Chris Peterson: I grew up in Minneapolis. I was a city selector and I married this really cute farmer in northern Wisconsin. And in all my time as a farmer, I was so struck by how difficult it was that agriculture was and how hard it was to get milk out of cows and worry about the crops and blah, blah, blah.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Chris Peterson: And President Trump talks about agriculture and his farmers. He talks about them all the time. And he values what we do and he keeps his promises.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Matt Russell, 50 years old, Lacona, Iowa. I'm a farmer and my husband and I farm here in South Central Iowa. We're voting for Vice President Biden and Senator Kamala Harris.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Matt Russell: I think this administration has invested tens of billions of dollars. I think we could be approaching a hundred billion dollars in this administration to try to just keep the farm industry or the agricultural industry in the United States in a status quo position.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Matt Russell: And that's not good for us. Instead of thinking about how do we invest to make our systems more resilient, we just kind of doubled down on what we've got.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Matt Russell: So I think the Trump administration has used rural America for political purposes. And in terms of farmers, they've unleashed an unbelievable amount of subsidies in compensation for the trade war and in failing on COVID.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Ruth Malhotra and I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm 36 years old.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: My name is Ruth Little. I live just outside of Orlando, Florida, and I'm 61. I've been involved in Republican politics for a very long time, actually going back to 1996.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: I was only 12 years old. And ever since that time, have taken a real interest in politics and the presidency. I'm still undecided. I'm not happy with either of the choices, honestly.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: Trump is just not a nice person. I just think he's problematic in a lot of ways. I think the fact that he's had so many cabinet positions, people rotating in and out.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: But Trump is tougher. I think he's kind of known as a negotiator. And while you might disagree with some of the details, the work that he's done with our relations to China, I think there was adjustments to our trade agreements with China that were easy to ignore.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: And I think it was high time that we addressed some of the trade issues. and the way that China sees intellectual property rights.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: When 2016 rolled around, I was really shocked and disillusioned in many ways to see how President Trump sort of took center stage. It seemed like he came out of nowhere.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: And the policies he was promoting and the promises he was making, I just didn't trust that he would follow through with that. I thought, you know, maybe a lot of this is just pandering to these different constituencies, especially to myself as an evangelical Christian.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: I thought, well, maybe he's just telling us what we want to hear. So I voted independent four years ago, my first time to not vote Republican.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: Joe Biden, honestly, his age is part of my concern. Trump really seems to be pretty sharp whether you agree with him or not.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: My perception is that the Democrats tend to have a slightly softer position on international matters And I think there certainly a time for diplomacy but I think there's also a time for strength.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: You know, the number one issue for me is dignity of human life, starting with life at conception. And so he made a lot of promises to the pro-life community four years ago.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: Again, I was somewhat skeptical, but he has championed the pro-life cause from day one in his administration. For instance, the heartbeat bills were prevalent throughout the country.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: Other issues of importance are religious liberty, free speech, you know, the whole category of First Amendment issues. As I followed those actions and seen tangible results.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: I do feel that it's the same intellectual honesty that compelled me to oppose his candidacy last time is actually what is compelling me to vote for him this time.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: I'm frustrated with the machine that, again, has given me two choices that are not good. I would have liked to have had two completely different choices in 2016, And I really wish that we had different choices.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: Now, I'm puzzled and dismayed that the collective we came up with these two candidates. You know, I still do have serious concerns about President Trump.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: And it's not an easy decision for me. And as a friend of mine says, you know, sometimes you're given a menu of undesirable options and you have to choose from that.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Ruth Malhotra: And so I just pray for wisdom and realize that it's the people who make America great, not any one person in political power, but all of us doing our part to contribute to a healthy and hopeful society.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Arthur Longworth. I'm 55 years old, and I am in the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe, Washington.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: that incarcerated people in Washington state are not allowed to vote. In the presidential election, if I could vote, I would vote for Biden.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: I don't end it on Biden because, you know, I have to believe in redemption as possible. Why is the concept of remorse and redemption so important to me?
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: I guess I have to believe it. As a young person, I killed somebody. I was sent to prison for murder. I've spent my whole adult life locked up in prison.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: But I have a sentence that never has an end until I die. If I don't believe in those things, I don't believe in myself.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: And I think where Biden comes in on redemption is important. He's a hard choice. I mean, he is a guy who was an ardent backer of the 1994 crime bill, one of the biggest contributors to the mass incarceration state we have going on.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: but where the possibility of redemption comes in is, you know, I've heard Biden admit he was wrong. I mean, that's big for me.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: I'm aware Kamala Harris is his running mate, but that's the long record as a prosecutor and the record of being attorney general. But I've also heard her express, If not, remorse for her past actions, at least a determination to move forward and look more deeply into those things.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: I'm conscious that Trump, before he was president, used his money, his power in this country to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times, pulling for the death penalty against the Central Park Five, those people who weren't even 18 years old.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Arthur Longworth: For a crime, it turns out, they didn't even end up committing. And he's never apologized for that. And now he wants to portray himself as a prison reformer. He's not showing any signs of redemption.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Arthur Longworth. You might remember Arthur from a previous episode of Today Explained. He was on our show about COVID-19 in American prisons back in April.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We wanted to hear from Arthur again because he's one of many American citizens who don't have the privilege of voting this year. There's about 5 million of them out there.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Anyone who's incarcerated outside of Vermont or Maine, most people who have been convicted of felonies, people on probation, our friends in American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And let's not forget voter suppression. Like every other year, votes won't be counted this year. People will be turned away from the polls because their names aren't on the rolls, because they don't have ID.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As we covered on our show yesterday, the Supreme Court just overruled an effort to extend voting deadlines on mailed ballots in Wisconsin, deadlines that were extended because we're in a global pandemic.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And finally, let's not forget people who just can't get Tuesday off to go vote. People who have to work.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In spite of all of that, American voters are already breaking records this year. There have already been something like 70 million votes cast by some counts, and some forecasters say 65% of the country will show up to vote in this presidential election, the highest number since 1908.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that is during a global pandemic.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramas-Furam. The Today Explained team includes Halima Shah, Will Reed, Muj Zaydi, Amina Al-Sadi, and Noam Hassenfeld, who contributes music too.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The rest of our music comes from Breakmaster Cylinder. Extra help this week from Bird Pinkerton, Cecilia Lay, and Paul Mounsey.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Afim Shapiro is the show's engineer. Golda Arthur is our supervising producer, and Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts.
--:-- [Sound of a brief pause]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
