 I'm Charlotte Ann Lucas with NowCast SA, and I'm here today with Drew Galloway from Move San Antonio. NowCast, most people think of us as sort of local CNN or public television on the internet, and our mission is actually civic engagement. Tell me about what Move San Antonio is trying to do. Sure. Well, thank you so much, Charlotte Ann, for having me here today. It's a pleasure to be on NowCast. Move San Antonio, in our most basic essence, gives young people a voice in politics. We are a grassroots, non-partisan, non-profit organization building political power in underrepresented youth communities, and we do that three different ways, through civic engagement, through leadership development, and through progressive issue advocacy. And so we work across San Antonio on every single college campus registering young people to vote, teaching them about issues that they should care about and that matter to our generation, and then ultimately encouraging them just to go cast their vote, make their voice heard. And we train young people how to be community organizers and how to do peer-to-peer engagement and how to talk to other young people about these issues. And then we go out and we actually talk to legislators about issues that we care about, things like the millennial economy and voting rights and equity issues across the city. And so we're so proud to work here in San Antonio. Last year, our group registered 8,568 new registered voters here in San Antonio. And so it's a great honor to be here in San Antonio. That's terrific. And you just get some validation from Berkeley, from UC Berkeley, about actually being able to increase the voter turnout, not just the registration. Absolutely. So like last year in October and November, we participated in a nationwide test with Civic Nation, which is a group that cares about voter turnout and young people voting. And then also with UC Berkeley, who did the statistics on that test. And so we worked in two precincts onto the west of St. Mary's, and we knocked on every single door in that neighborhood. We sent phone calls into that neighborhood. We use text messages to communicate with the members in those two neighborhoods. And we just basically went out and told them, your voice matters. And we don't care who you vote for. Just get out there, cast your vote. Your voice matters. And we gave them some literature on the election. And we also invited them to an election day party that we held in both those precincts. And so when it came around to election day, we held a huge pizza party. We had like a dance off contest. We had games and just made it really, really fun. And what we saw is we saw that young people not only came out to like enjoy pizza and vote if they could, but they also brought their parents out. And so it was, they made it into like sort of a fun, recreational family environment. And so after everything was done, after UC Berkeley crunched all the numbers, and we had two control precincts where we didn't do any work and they analyzed that, turnout in the two areas that we did work in jumped 7% last election cycle. And so we're really, really proud of those numbers. Our team worked incredibly hard. And we're validating those again in the municipal election by going through additional tests to make sure that, you know, the message, we believe that the messages go out, talk to every single voter, tell them that their voice matters and they will get out and go vote. Well, and as you mentioned, the municipal election is coming up. May 6th is an election for the mayor and all 10 city council races, city bond issue, school issues. So it's a pretty big deal. And one of the things that we know, while in November, there was something in the vicinity of 52% of eligible voters came out to vote, historically municipal elections have been really, really pitiful. That's the nice word for it, but it's really embarrassing too. We have in Bear County an 80% voter registration rate, and in municipal elections, somewhere in the vicinity of 11% or 12% voter turnout. So I mean, what are we going to do this time to try to move that up when it's an election that some people can't even remember what day it is, right? Yeah. Well, and you know, if you look at the number of voters in 2015 that were 35 and under, it was only 3% that turned out. And so like, so we work in demographics with young people. And so we are out every single day right now doing voter registration. We have almost a 20 person team across San Antonio doing that work every single day. We're telling them that their voice matters. And once we get them registered, we're bringing them into a lot of events that we're holding. So for instance, last night, we just held Know Your Rights training at Northwest Vista with Raisa's in the next couple of weeks, we have an equal pay event. So issues that we're hearing from young people that matter to them, we're keeping them engaged by bringing them to events, having them interact with candidates through happy hours and that kind of stuff. And then ultimately, it will be much, much easier to mobilize them and get them to turn out. And so the goal this year, I know across San Antonio, there's lots of different organizations, but we're all talking, we want 20% turnout. So we're, we're shooting high, but like we're working hard towards it. Okay, we're in, we're in, we're in for that. So we're going to be working with you on one of these events that's coming up on April 1st. And you've got something really special planned. And by the way, if you can't be there in person, you'll be able to watch it live on NowCast. When we appreciate your support and so glad to have you. We have seen all the candidate forums that could come up every single cycle. And it's predominantly where, you know, politicians come into the front of room, answer a couple of questions and then take questions from the audience. That's the standard, you know, candidate form. We thought, how can we make this different? How can we make this like youth focused and and engage young people so that when they get to the voting booth, they remember, yeah, I remember that that, you know, this candidate said this or this candidate said that. And so the way we thought about is we're going to make this really fun and engaging and entertaining. And so I'm happy to announce that on April 1st, it's a Saturday night from six to nine, we're going to do the Move San Antonio Youth Forum. And it's called San Antonio Night Live. And and so it's going to be it's going to be sort of skit based. It's going to be a great way to have fun and talk about issues in a really fun, interesting way. Infrastructure is not like the most interesting conversation. But you know, you're going to learn a lot about like what city council does, what the mayors believe in. And it's going to be just an incredible opportunity to get together and talk about issues that affect our generation. So all of the candidates have been invited to this and invitations go out this week or next week. Okay. And and and hopefully, and it will be a night not just for the mayoral candidates, but for city council candidates as well. We're going to try to fit them all in. So that's why it's two and a half, three hours. But it's going to be fun. There's going to be, you know, different types of activities for them to do. And it's going to be it's definitely going to be a different candidate form. But it's going to be it's going to be something you're going to remember. Absolutely. And and and I think I'm really looking forward to it. I've had a little sneak peek behind the scenes. And that's why we're involved because this is going to be really, really good. And and it's also going to be something that you're going to want to go back and replay. And so we'll be able to read one. Yeah, if you can't make it to the brick, you can find it on nowcast.com. And and yeah, so it's going to be something you're going to want to look at and you're going to you're going to it's going to be really informational but also fun at the same time. That's terrific. Well, just a couple of reminders. Early voting in this election starts on April 24. And I want to point out something that that we've done one of the things that we've done well. At nowcast, I say we have an early voting map that you don't need to download any app for you just when when you're ready to go early vote, you just go to your phone and say early voting San Antonio our map pops up and it tells you where the closest place is to vote. And I'm really proud to say that we've had over the past several years 170,195 different people have used our early voting map. That's amazing. I used it last last election myself. So so thank you for doing that. No app needed. Just download that thing. And the election is on May 6. And there's probably going to be a runoff. We think there's going to be some runoffs. And so but it's going to be it's going to be a great time, you know, like at the election is on a Saturday, we're going to do party at the polls on a couple of those days as well. So keep an eye on our website. It's move San Antonio word or our Facebook page. We also have a Twitter feed. Instagram and Snapchat all at move San Antonio spelled out. And so you'll be able to find all those events and things that are happening all the way up to May 6. And the best the next one coming up is April 1. April 1. All right. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being thank you for all your work. We really appreciate it.