 Good afternoon. Today is July 2nd, 2019, and we're here today to talk to you about civic engagement and voting. About 243 years ago today, on July 2nd, 1776, the Declaration of Independence of our great United States of America was signed. And one of the great traditions of the United States of America is democracy and voting. A tradition that it seems like people are participating in less and less over time, because as of the last presidential election in 2016, only about 51 percent of people actually turned out to vote. And during the midterms last year, only about 49 percent of people turned out to vote in those elections. Now, I kind of wanted to know why were people doing this? Why don't people turn out to vote more? And what do they feel about democracy? And so I assembled this small group over here, here to go out to go ask people on the streets of Burlington about why this was the case. And so my name is Ian, and I'd like to introduce the other members of this group. Hey, Sherry. This is Sherry over here. And Sherry, why are you part of this group? I was concerned that I didn't know enough information about the government, so I kind of wanted to find out if anyone else was in the same boat. Yeah, that kind of seems like my target demographic here. And this is Linda, right? Yes. Yes, Linda, why did you join this group? I joined this group because my concern is about the transportation system in Vermont and why the political parties have not done anything about it yet. Yeah. Do you ride the bus? I do. Okay. Yeah, so that's a big concern in the lives of people like you. People rely on that system, and you wanted to find out why, you know, why people don't seem to be caring. The people in charge don't seem to care too much about it. Yes. All right. And you are? Sophia. Sophia. Yes. So Sophia, why did you join this group? I joined this group because I wanted to learn about the voting system around how people with disabilities can be included. All right. Well, you came to the right place. So yeah, so while we were out there in the street, what did you guys learn from this? I learned that there was a lot more people out there not voting. I thought I was kind of a small percentage. But after doing research and talking to people on the street, I realized there's many, many reasons why people don't vote. So even though it may not be the same reason I'm not voting, there's just a large percent of people not voting. And that's, I think, why a lot of people are really unhappy with the things that are going on. They don't realize that there's massive amounts of people that are getting their voice heard. Yeah. And Linda, would you say something similar yourself? Yes, because when we went out talking to people, everybody has almost the same response that they've been voting from the past and nothing has been done. So they are not sure if they're going to vote again, but they will try. So they all want the government to do something about enhancing the problems of the community. Yeah. And Sophia, how about you? I would agree that people, some people won't vote completely, but the young people have started voting more. Yeah, I'd say I'd learn something quite similar myself. When we were out there interviewing people, I was quite surprised to hear from people who basically said that they don't believe that their vote matters at all. And that's why they've just stopped. And part of that is because of our two-party system, we have two dominant parties in this country, the Democrat Party and the Republican Party. And people feel like they only have two options to actually pick from in this country, although there are primary elections where you do get to pick the final two nominees for each party. And so do you guys vote in primary elections? I don't because, well, I didn't, because I didn't know enough about what was going on, really, and about the candidates. So one of the things that I'm trying to figure out more is locally what people do in each of their positions and just learn more about local stuff. And I also realized that it's not just the presidential elections that really matter. It's all the people you vote in under the president that gets you to the president. So I think people misunderstand the importance of their local elections. And I'm one of them. And now I'm going to look into it a lot more, what's going on locally. And I think we'll be represented. Represented did. Representative. It's all right. Much better if more of us did vote and look into our local government. All right, Sherry, what did you think? Linda. All right, Linda. Sorry. So for voting, I am planning to vote next year. So with all this information gathered and things that are going on, I'm ready to vote next year. And I'm going to look at into the promises of the politicians and see which one really wants to do what I believe in. So I will vote for that person. All right. And Sophia. I usually vote for the presidential election because I feel I know more about it than the primary. All right. Do you vote in any other elections besides the presidential election? No, just presidential. Okay. That's all right. So is there anything else that we've learned from going out and talking to, you know, the everyday people of Burlington? A lot of the people that we spoke to were actually from out of state. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that Vermont would be a place that would get so many tourists, but it turns out that people actually kind of have heard of us and want to visit us. So that was a surprise for me. I learned that Vermont is a very peaceful place. And from the most of the people we interviewed that came inside, they were strangers. They're coming from other states to stay maybe for one week or two, spend the holiday with their families. They were not necessarily here. And they were also complaining that it's expensive. So and those are the things we are going to talk about to see how the politicians can help to resolve those problems. Yeah. How about you, Sophia? I'd agree with Linda. Yeah. That's quite all right if you believe what you want to say, as Ulriban said. So anyway, from going out and talking to the people and learning about the voting habits of others and all these other offices that besides the president that are out there that you can vote for, do you plan to change your voting habits for the future elections? Absolutely. All right. Absolutely. It's convinced me that I really need to get more involved and just stop being one of those people that just complains about everything and really doesn't figure out what is the problem and get to the bottom of it myself and vote for every single position I can possibly vote for. Yeah. Linda, what about you? I strongly believe I should participate to vote because if I continue to complain and say, this is what I once done and I'm not part of it, my votes count. If I vote, then it will be helpful. They're going to start trying to vote in the primary election other than the presidential. Yeah. That does sound good. And you know, just keep in mind that primary elections aren't just for the president of the United States. You know, primary elections oftentimes determine the nominees for basically every office in America, including the, you know, your congressman, federally, your senators, and your state legislatures as well, leaders as well. So, you know, it's important to get out there and pick from the big pool of candidates first before you get down to the final two who are going to go head-to-head on election day. And, you know, I kind of hope, myself, I kind of hope to start going out in more mid-term elections. I was too young to vote in the last presidential election and that's definitely something that I plan to do come 2020. And yeah, so anyway, speaking of voting, you know, we're all here because of a few different political issues. Linda here, for example, she's one of her main political motivations is, as we were discussing earlier, she relies on public transportation to get around, you know, which includes our bus system. And anyone who's ever ridden the bus system up here in the Burlington area, you know, it's not really the best. It's kind of atrocious. There's not to, the lines don't really go the places you need them to go. The buses are wildly off schedule. Sometimes they just randomly go out of service for no reason, which can be quite inconvenient if you've been waiting at a bus stop for 28 minutes or even longer in some cases. So, Linda, what does motivate you to, does that motivate you to vote and what do you think, what issues do you have with the public transportation system? So I have been living here for a while and I see that the transportation system has not really changed. And if you have to go to, inside the other series, in Vermont, the buses comes in, some of them want our intervals to pick up the commuters. And that used to take a longer time. Sometimes there was a time I saw like, maybe a pregnant woman standing at the bus stop, waiting with another child. And yeah, she has to wait for like one hour before the bus comes. So I'm just like saying, the buses we have that are running in the city is very long, very big buses. And because the city is getting like a bit populated, so if they can make it something faster, like smaller buses that stops, they can also create the bus stop new, I mean, extra bus stops where you don't have to work for too long before you get to get into the bus to take you to where you are going to, because I think it's a big kind of delay for also my concern is that some people that, there's some workers somewhere, the mothers especially, they have their kids, they have to drop them off in school if they don't have car. So if they have some buses that are taking people from one place to the other very closely and the time interval is short, it will help them. It won't be stressed out because stress leads to so many things, they can be frustrated, they can be depressed, and then when they get sick, they go to the hospital. So it's a chain of problems. So if that one is addressed, the mother that is dropping the child in the school will be able to relax and then get to work. Maybe when she gets to work she's late and then she'll be, I mean, at work she's late and she's going to be in trouble. But if there is something that makes her to be faster than what she did, like the buses thing, the duration, so that one can also help. And also for the students going to school as well, sometimes I see my, maybe students, they're standing at the bus stop and they want to get to their destination. Or if you have to wake up early in the morning, you can sleep. But because you want to catch up with the bus very early and at certain time you can sleep very well, you are worried. So all those things are my really big concern about the bus, the transportation system within four months. I have experienced myself. I parked my bus, my car and I entered the bus and I went somewhere and I waited for four good hours. At the bus stop? Yes. Wow. And when I waited there, the buses come but they will pass. Why did they pass? Because there was nobody at the bus stop but I was standing there but I have to look for a shed. So if the buses get to the bus stop they should stop maybe like five, at least five minutes for somebody that is leaving their spots to go and hang out somewhere to come before they move. So I felt, if I was in that situation and I was thinking of other people that have experienced things like that, but it's not everybody that will complain. Some would have been used to it but if they make it a little bit improved, if there is improvement it will help a lot. Yeah. I mean I've heard some better experiences from our neighbors to the north where I think that would address your main problem with the wait times and people just the bus is just leaving without waiting, seeing if anyone is at the stop. I know that in Montreal the buses will always stop at the designated stop, wait like 10, 20, 30 seconds, something like that. And if no one comes along they will just drive right by. It's not much time but it's certainly better than what we got. And also your other issue was timeliness. Yeah. So like you said if they wait, that one has maybe waited for 10 minutes. Another 10 minutes somebody else should come. So there shouldn't be that gap. That gap is too long. Yeah. And it's sickening. It makes somebody, you know, it can be depressing. It can be frustrating. It can lead to your health issues especially like I still say mothers, like a mother your car can break down and you're like oh let me jump into the bus but you will never get the bus because it's going to be take you like one hour before you get to another bus. Yeah. It's the smaller buses maybe. Yeah. The smaller buses. Yeah. Frequently. Yeah. Definitely. You know, take it how long it takes for the buses to actually go through their routes and go through the stops. You know that is a definite issue. You know, I'm not someone who has to rely on public transportation anymore. I got a car in November but I can still see the problems of the transportation system because coming here to the TV studio today, you know, I went to Google Maps to get directions here from my home. It said it would take about 18 minutes for me to drive here but if I wanted to go up through public transportation it would take about 46 so. Oh my goodness. That's it. That's about a little more than double the travel time so that really does show you just the problems with public transportation in this town. Now at least one of the few positives about the public transportation system here is that it is accessible to the disabled and speaking of Sophia. One of the issues that you're motivated by is, you know, disability access to not just a transportation and other public areas of life but private areas such as work and school and stuff like that. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? I think that some people that are like disabled don't get enough help with certain things that they should be getting help for. I think if people could like help out and possibly like help them out a little bit more than others then it would be pretty much better off. Yeah, is there any way that you can think of that people can start, you know, because oftentimes it's not, you know, it's not that people are ignorant and purposely gain, you know, dissing on the disabled is that they just don't know how to help so is there any way that you can tell the public about how to help these people? Like if you like see someone that's probably disabled needing help like on buses also some people won't move for disabled people. Definitely, do you think there's a role in government for that? I'd say so. Okay and yeah and speaking of government, Sherry, you've certainly learned a lot about voting and being informed. Do you think there's any way that you can stay informed and go out other than going out and vote more? Well in doing this project I've learned just scratch the surface of the like the whole nation and its patterns and everything as far as voting, who votes, who's registered and who doesn't vote even though they're registered and all that but it's taken me a while to get the information on our local stuff. I find that I'm having to go to a lot of different places on the internet to get information and I've been working on it for a couple weeks now and it just seems like I still haven't gotten to the bottom of, you know, who are our, you know, counselors and, you know, all the little, all the different departments of Burlington. I still haven't really figured that out yet. I'm still working on that and once I know all the different positions there are then I got to work from there, you know, when they get elected, what they do and such. So it's kind of still work in progress. Still learning a lot. Well you've taken the first steps and that's what's important so I wish you luck with your research and yeah so we're here today. That was our discussion on democracy and about 253 years ago today they, the founding fathers of this nation declared independence from Britain because they had this crazy idea that maybe the people should be able to either rule themselves or pick the people that they want to rule them instead of having to listen to the guy who just so happens to be descended from someone who just happened to have the biggest army a few hundred or thousand years ago and that's what we gained when we broke away from Great Britain and you know it's important for us as Americans to realize that we have this privilege that not a lot of other countries in the world often have and that's the ability to go out there learn about the people who want to be our leaders and then choose them ourselves and so in conclusion I think that it's important to you know go out there go and research the candidates in primary elections and mid-term elections and every election for almost any elected office that you can think of and it's important to make your voice heard and go out and vote on whatever day it is you need to go elect these people just remember that as we go into the 2020 campaign season which kicked off last week with the Democrat at debates and primary season is next year and go get ready if Vermont all right that's it