Your Vote Matters - Election 2024 | 26

Buy Me a Coffee

Connect with me on Instagram and TikTok @witchybookkeeper

Learn more about how we can work together by visiting my website

Check out my Money Alchemy 101 course HERE

Transcript

Welcome to Money and Magic, the podcast that combines the mystical with the practical to help you navigate money in the muggle world. I'm your host, Chey, remote bookkeeper and judgment free money coach. I hope this podcast helps you create a harmonious relationship with your finances that empowers you to lead your truly magical life. 

Let's get started. Hey, magical humans. Welcome back to Money and Magic. We are back after an entire month off and I am beyond excited to talk to you again. This episode is one that I am very passionate about and I hope that you'll hear me out, even if you are someone who doesn't do politics. This election is one of the most important during our lifetimes this far and I think it is important to talk about all of the taboo subjects and that includes politics.

With that being said, let's chat about the 2024 elections. In a lot of my podcast episodes, I typically try to script them, or at least give myself  a little bit of an outline on what to talk about. But, when it comes to politics, I get my passion from just  talking to you. So that's what I'm gonna do.

The first thing I want to talk about is for any of you that are out there that might be like, oh, well, I don't do politics. My argument to that is you don't do politics until politics does you. And what I mean by that is I have a friend here locally  that has never really been too involved in politics because it didn't really have a whole lot to do with them.

But Here recently, unfortunately, their children were,  sexually abused by their grandfather. And, when it came down to pursuing that, the prosecutor decided it wasn't worth it, or there wasn't enough evidence, or whatever.  And, this is something where, now that we have a judge that's up for re election, this person in my life has  had good experiences with this judge, and so they will be voting for them again. 

But the biggest thing is, they never thought that politics had anything to do with them until it did.  I have another example locally for you as well.  One of my friends has a child that was born with a heart defect. And in Indiana, recently, there was, like, 700 million dollars that came up missing or unaccounted for within our Medicaid system for parents or family members to use.

That could stay home with their sick children and take care of them, they'd get paid for it.  So, pretty much what happened is Indiana Medicaid overpaid about 700 million  to people that it should not have. And when people reached out to the Attorney General and they were like, Hey, something's wrong here, can we look into this?

That Attorney General decided that that 700 million  Was not worth looking into. So my friend was no longer able to get paid what she was getting paid to take care of her sick child, along with a lot of the friends and people she knows. So these are two examples locally of what I mean when I say I don't do politics until politics does you.

Because in both these cases, these are people that my friends may or may not have voted for. And now that decision is directly affecting their lives. If you are, or you know, a woman, a person of color, a person that is a member of the LGBTQ community, then politics affects them differently. Every single day, whether they know it, whether you know it, or not.

When you have one side of things that are actively trying to take rights away from  women, from LGBTQ  people, from people of color, then that should be a red flag to say, Hey, something needs to change here.  The next argument that a lot of people tell me is, Oh, well, my vote doesn't matter. I'm just one vote.

My vote doesn't matter. And in the scheme of things, that might be true,  but I disagree because imagine if everyone felt that way, then no one would vote.  And I need you to understand that when I talk about voting and elections. I don't only mean for the President of the United States. I mean voting all the way down.

Voting for your governor. Voting for your mayor, your attorney general, who you put in Congress. These are all very important pieces of the election process. So for those of you that might know people or might be one of those people that believes that your vote is just one in a sea of millions and that it can't make much difference, I want to tell you about in 2000, Bush won Florida by 537  votes. 

Had 600 more pro gore voters gone to the polls in Florida, put their vote in for him, Then we might've had an entirely different president from 2000 to 2008.  And I know you might think, wow, 600 is a lot of people. It's really not. 600 people is one small town in my area. Actually, the town I live in has 800 people.

So 600 people really is not a whole lot. And so we need to start thinking more. Big picture, because your vote does matter. Your vote matters, no matter who you vote for. Your vote matters. No matter what level of the government it is, because your vote matters. And there are a lot of countries where people don't get to vote.

This is a right that we have. If you are a woman or a person of color, this is a right that our previous generations fought for. Unless you are a white man, you have had people  fighting for your right. to vote. So while your vote might not directly elect the president, your vote joins enough others in your voting district or your county.

It does matter, especially when it comes down to the electoral results. Most states have a winner take all system. So the popular vote winner is who gets the state's electoral votes.  There are also your local and state elections. Now, I know the electoral college can be kind of wonky for a lot of people, and we're not going to get into the depths of that in this episode, but when I say winner takes all system, I live in Indiana.

Most people in Indiana will tell you that Indiana has is a red state. I disagree. Indiana is definitely more purple than people believe. But we have a voter turnout issue. Mainly Republicans show up to vote, and the Democrats tend to sit back. They tend to think, oh, my vote doesn't matter. So therefore, most of the people that vote, the Republicans, get the popular vote for president, so the Electoral College votes for the Republican.

If we can get more people out to vote blue, and the winner take all system shows that the popular vote was for blue, then our Electoral College has to vote blue. So, while The presidential or other national elections do usually get a more significant voter turnout. Local elections are actually even more important, and they are typically decided by a much, much smaller group of voters. 

I think one of the biggest issues for voter turnout is that a lot of people just simply believe politics are very detached from their daily lives. They think, oh, politics aren't really touching my day to day life, so I'm not even really going to think about this. But, the truth could not be further from that point of view.

Actually, politics are so much intertwined in our daily lives. And I want to give you just a few examples of what politics touches. So, when I say politics, I'm talking about zoning legislation.  I'm talking about public schools. Here in Indiana, we have a Republican government that takes in public funds for education and then has a voucher program that they allow people to use for private schools.

So we are taking public money and sending it to private schools. to private schools. I don't think that's okay. That's politics. When you go to your public library, or the public park, or the public transportation system, all of that is politics. All of that is funded by our government, which is politics. It is decided by who is in office. 

And these are all pieces that touch everybody's individual daily lives. This could be through taxes, city planning, school funding, state benefits. Politics is setting speed limit signs. where you can or cannot smoke. I remember when I was younger, you could smoke in any restaurant, any bar, anywhere in Indiana. 

And now my county years and years ago passed legislation that you can't smoke in restaurants at all. You can't smoke in bars at all. But you drive one county over or two counties north and you can smoke in all the bars. And that is politics. Specifically, politics. Right there. The price of sugar that goes into your chocolate bars.

That is determined a lot by politics. So, we talk about everything happening right now in America. Politics are playing a huge role. So, if you think that politics are not affecting your everyday life, or not affecting the everyday life of your family, of those that you know and love, then you are sorely mistaken, my friend. 

Obviously, I could ramble on and on and on about all of this stuff, but I'm not gonna put you through that. I just wanted to kind of maybe give you a little bit more insight into kind of what I mean. A few other things that you might look at when you are trying to decide whether or not politics affects you.

Healthcare. Whether or not you are able to access it, what it costs you, whether it is privatized or not, that is all politics. Labor laws. Saying who can and cannot work. I know when I was younger, I had to have a work permit to work when I was like 14. Now in Indiana,  they'll just let you work. You don't have to have the work permit.

They changed those labor laws. Infrastructure.  Do you have roads that are getting paved or not getting paved in your area? Politics. One of the biggest ones, internet access. And a lot of people say, oh, internet access is free, blah, blah, blah. Well, that's not true. I will say, recently, Indiana is one of the states that has changed the laws when it comes to internet pornography.

Whether you agree or disagree on pornography, Indiana requires people to upload their driver's license in order for them to be able to access pornography on the internet.  And, to me, I don't think the government should be able to control that. It is internet. Period. You should not have a hand in what people can and cannot see on the internet.

But that's politics. If you are some of the people in my area that have experienced extreme rate hikes in your utilities, that is politics. Here in Indiana, we have a, like a regulation board and our Republican governor went to the board and said, Hey, we would like to allow you to up those rates. We don't care.

So everybody's utilities went up.  If that governor would have said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Our people can't afford that. We have to find a different way. We don't approve that. Then the rates might have gone down, or they could have stayed the same. But when you don't have people involved, when you don't have people looking into the day to day politics, they just do whatever they want. 

So that's just kind of how I feel about politics. And why I believe that you should care. You don't have to, but we've made it this far and you might hopefully be wondering, okay, well, how do I vote? What do I need to do?  It might be too late for you to register to vote this year. But still go register because you'll be able to vote in all of the years to come. 

If you are registered and you're like, okay, now how do I vote? November 7th is election day. So you can go to a polling location and vote in person on that day.  However, most states also have absentee ballots, which in Indiana you have to apply for and they mail it to you. Or you could do early voting, which is what I tell people to do.

Here in my county, you go to the county building. They give you access to this room and it's set up just like a regular polling location. You go over to the ballot box, you cast your vote, and you leave. Done. The biggest reason I tell people that it's best to vote early It's because you never know what might happen on election day.

A prime example is today I was heading home. I got sideswiped by a hit and run driver. I waited two hours for a police officer to show up so I could file a police report. If that would have happened on election day and I was on my way to the polls and they closed in two hours, Election day is in November, so in Indiana, it could be snowing, it could be a blizzard outside, for all we know.

So I would rather be safe than sorry and vote early. My last tip for you is to do your research. It is not that difficult to figure out who's on your ballot, and you can pretty quickly see who you're voting for. See where people stand on what is most important to you.  If you have any questions, please, please, please reach out to me and I will gladly help you figure out how to register, how to vote, help you organize transportation to voting.

If that's what you need, help you research whatever it is.  I just want you to get out and vote.  I tried my best not to bore you with stats and figures and all of that in this episode. I just wanted to share my passion for election and voter education and hopefully inspire someone to vote for their first time or inspire someone to inspire someone to vote for their first time.

The next episode is going to bring our podcast full circle, because we are going to be talking all about Samhain. So, stay tuned for that, and also, stay tuned for November, because that is when my new podcast, Budgets and Boundaries, That I'm co hosting will be out and you will be able to listen to that.

So I will see you on the next one. And that's a wrap for another spellbinding episode of Money Magic. I hope you learned something that can help you navigate money in the muggle world. If you have any questions, topics, or even your own money and magic story that you'd like to share, Reach out to me on social media, I'd love to hear from you.

And if you have found this show insightful, I'd truly appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, leave me a review, and share Money Magic with your friends and family. Think of it like casting a spell to help others on their financial journeys.  As always, stand tall, shine bright, and stay grounded.

I'll see you next time.