Stop Ignoring Mail-In Ballots If You Want to Win Pennsylvania

In Episode 29 of Podpinions, Rich and Bruce sit down with Julie De Vuono from Scott Presler’s Early Vote Action to talk about one of the most polarizing tactical issues in Pennsylvania politics: mail-in ballots.

Julie addresses why many conservatives distrust mail voting, why Early Vote Action still pushes it, and how to treat mail-in ballots as an “emergency backup plan” without surrendering your preference to vote in person. The discussion covers practical realities: confusing “ballot” vs. “application” mailers, what the PA application options actually mean, how campaigns use returned-ballot lists to target outreach, and why tracking/notifications and ballot cancellation/re-issue can add accountability.

If Pennsylvania is the battleground, this episode argues that refusing to engage mail-in voting is not a principle—it is a strategic disadvantage.

Guest: Julie De Vuono (Early Vote Action)
Topics: Pennsylvania elections, mail-in ballot strategy, voter outreach, ballot tracking, turnout operations

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Transcript

Title: Transcript - Sat, 24 Jan 2026 03:13:21 GMT
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2026 03:13:21 GMT, Duration: [01:59:02.20]
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Pod pinions.

I'm Rich.

And I'm Bruce. Tonight we have a special guest with.

Us, and it's Julie De Vuono.

Yes.

And she works for Scott Pressler. Yeah.

Early vote. Action.

My hair isn't nearly as nice as Scott's.

Neither is mine. Just saying.

You have hair.

Yeah. You can't see from the shine.

No.

What's funny is I. We've known Julie's husband for quite some time now, and I. I never got to meet you.

Oh, we met her briefly at.

Well, yeah, but I was getting to that. Oh, okay. So sorry. I've been friends with Julie's husband for. For about two, Two, three years. How long, you guys? Yeah, about two or three years now.

Right.

And met her son, but I never met her, so. But she knew about us from her husband, obviously.

And watching Pod pinions.

Right.

And so you guys talk. Mention my boss.

Right.

And I'm nudging my husband on the couch saying, hey, did you tell them I work for him?

No.

So Bruce and I, as you know, went to see Trumpet at Mount Scary Lodge or Mount Scary Casino Resort. That's right. I used to play there back in the day. eah.

And so we're standing there in line, freezing our asses off. It was, like, below 0 with 18 degrees.

Right.

But who's counting with this wind? And I should have brought hand warmers because the guy was selling those little beanie things and cleaning up.

Yeah, exactly.

So all of a sudden, she comes walking along. We have no idea who she is, and she goes, oh, my God, it's the Pod pinion guys. And all these people turn around and start looking at us like, who are these guys? And she goes, oh, my God.

And she's like, I fangirled them.

Yeah, big. So then all these people who have absolutely no idea who we are are asking us for, like, selfies.

I pulled out my iPad, and I pulled up your podcast so that they. I'm like, see, this is them.

So they're doing, like, selfies with one groupie. Yeah. But it was.

Got that one woman asking for your autograph.

Absolutely. And then selfies with these people. Oh, man, it was fun.

Hopefully they're watching. Maybe they are.

And then those two people that we met standing in line, the one guy actually came to one of my concerts.

And then I took off. I took off. Chaos. And then you left.

So then we said, we got to get her on.

Got you guys to sign up for your mail in ballots, and then left.

That's right. So speaking of Mail in ballots. Nice segue. That's the Democrat playbook.

Well, let me start with if it's okay.

Yeah, absolutely.

What is Early Vote Action? Who is Early Vote Action?

Who are they?

Early Vote Action is a right wing political action organization started by Scott Pressler with the idea that when you look at the statistics and the research, more right wing people, whether it's the Republicans or conservatives or right leaning independents, we had a higher percentage of people that just weren't registered to vote or weren't or they had very low activity. Now I like to joke and say it's because we have jobs in families and the left doesn't so much.

It's really not a joke.

But when you look at the numbers, we need to be activated. So this organization was started by Scott with the idea that if we just go out there and just get people to register to vote, then a larger percentage of them tend to be right wing people that just have been too busy. So we bring it to where they are, the, where you get your oil change done, or a grocery store, post office, county fairs, instead of having to go out of your way and I gotta do this, we're right there and you give me 90 seconds in your driver's license.

So now at the thing at Mount Airy, when Trump was there, did you actually register anybody?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I had a good night. I spend four hours walking the line. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Here we are with this long line. How many people would you say with?

Thousands.

It was a lot of people and they got nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. They are stuck in line. They are all.

But I would think that all those people would be, you know, registered Republicans.

You would be amazed. You'd be amazed.

Well, that's what I'm asking. I, I'm surprised.

Number one, a lot of them are right leaning independents. And the reason why we really try to encourage them to jump in and switch to be a Republican, if that reflects how they vote anyway or how they feel, is because two things really. One is they can change the face of the Republican Party to fit them, to make them feel more at home. Like right now, you know, you look at what the Republican Party is now compared to what it was 10 years ago.

No, it's night and day.

It's very different. It's a much different, bigger umbrella and it does reflect a much greater variety. And that's a good thing. And that's because a lot of people who said, you know, I agree with you, but I don't identify. I don't share that identity as a Republican. Well, by joining, you change the identity of what a Republican looks like. I mean, look at my boss. If you saw Scott Press on the street, would you look at that guy and say, that's a Republican? No, but, I mean, nobody's more hardcore MAGA than he is.

Absolutely.

So he's. So by joining, you're also changing the face of the Republican Party to match what, you know, a better variety. And then. And another reason is. And this is a little bit selfish, I guess. Here in Monroe county, we are very. We're about 5,000 away from flipping to becoming a red county. The state of Pennsylvania is only 42,000 away from flipping to becoming a red state.

Well, it's really just what's keeping it blue is Philly, Erie, and Pittsburgh.

But we chipped it away from.

And all the New Yorkers that moved here. No offense.

No. But the stats. Well, I'm not a New Yorker.

Well, you lived there.

I tolerated living there for 20 years, but I am not a New Yorker. And if you put that on my gravestone, I will haunt you. But we are 42,000 from flipping Pennsylvania to being an official, official red state.

Okay, that's awesome.

Think of the psychological impact that could have. Oh, huge politics. Psychological.

Josh Shapiro would lose his mind.

Not only that, look at a map where the wall to the liberal Northeast. Right. New Jersey, New York, all of New England. You know, I mean, think about it. Can you name a red state that's northeast of us? No, they're. No, they're all blue. And we are technically blue. We are. Well, legally. Technically, we're Blue.

Right.

By 42,000 people.

Right.

So if we can get 42,000 independents to switch to Republic. Well, 42,001 to switch to Republican. Now, Pennsylvania is a red state, and the psychological reverberations of that across politics could really help change things to, you know, make the rest of them maybe a little more nervous, maybe. You know, so part of me is just like, I don't want to live in a blue state. I lived in a Blue State for 20 years. It was not.

Me, too. I lived in Jersey.

Bruce lived in Jersey and a red state and out. So, yes, there's Philly and there's Pittsburgh, but there's also a lot of the rest of the state.

Well, that's it. The rest of the state's all red.

But they're not registered Republican voters.

Aha.

That makes a difference. The whole difference is right there.

Well, I know a whole Bunch of people don't even vote. They just got so disgusted because. Well, what's the point? Well, you know, you know, do you remember the last, what was it? 2016? When was it? No, it was 2020. Where in Philly they, the. At the polls. They put the, the paper, the brown paper up in the windows and wouldn't let the poll watchers come in.

But that's, that's what we got to overcome. We're only 42, 000 away from that 42,001.

If only half of your listeners and subscribed members to your podcast, registered Republican, we could do it.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, it's actually, we have the.

We have one little video that 50 something thousand views.

Yeah.

Which I can't believe. Yeah.

So he's still a base.

I am telling. I hear it all the time. I mean this is my job. I set up tables, I try to talk people and I hear, oh no, I don't register to vote. It doesn't matter. I try to convince them it does matter. But what also matters is you have these rights that were codified, guaranteed by our Constitution. Constitution that were, you know, bought with blood and treasure by our nation at the founding. And all of those rights, the linchpin, the cornerstone is your right to vote. Because if you don't vote, you could lose your right to free speech. It could happen. Look what's happening in, in the UK you could lose your second amendment right. You could lose the right to, you know, a jury of your peers, you write to not have the military put, you know, put people in your houses. That was. Why is that? Why is there a whole amendment devoted to that? Because during the Revolutionary War, the British would basically knock on your door and say, hey, we got four soldiers that are going to live in your house because they need, you know, that all of those rights pin on you voting. Because if you don't vote, there is no not voting. Like I was having a conversation with a woman from my church who before the last presidential election, she wasn't going to vote because she's believes, she believes very strongly in anti abortion, pro life. Trump wasn't pro life enough for her. And I'm like, so you're gonna let Kamala went who you know, up to nine months in post birth abortions.

Like, you know, the logic doesn't make sense.

She really did think she had three choices. She thought her choice was Kamala Trump not voting at all.

Wow.

And what I try to tell people is if you don't vote, you are voting Oh, I don't vote. Yo, you. You don't have a choice. You're gonna vote. You're either.

Even by not voting, you're still voting.

Voting for the side that you may agree less with.

Interesting.

That's. So there is no, you know. Oh, I don't vote. Oh, that's impossible. You vote. No, no, no, I don't. I've not. You vote. Yeah, No, I don't. Because if you don't actively vote, you're voting for the other side.

Right.

So. And we've done research to show that the good thing is a newly registered voter has 75 to 80% chance that they will vote in the next election. So just by getting people registered, we know if you're a newly registered voter, you're probably going to vote in the next election. What we want to try to do is turn people into regular voters. It's not just the presidential election. Every four years, Pennsylvania has an election every six months. And if you. And what the irony is, we get such a great turnout for the election that really has very little to do with our average everyday lives.

Right.

The local elections are the ones that affect your taxes, your schools, your ability to leave your house during a pandemic, your schools being open or closed. I mean, look what happened during COVID Right.

And on that. Hold your thought. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back.

to  Pod pinions, where the world's on fire and we show up like it's a backyard barbecue. Politicians roasted, woke, trends torched. Common sense. We've got you covered.

Welcome back, everybody.

We are back. We're here with Julie o from Remote Action. There you go.

Yeah.

And before I forget, I have a present for you guys.

Oh.

I brought you a gift. So I am respectfully requesting you put this in your place of business.

We can do that.

Awesome.

Absolutely. And you know this. Really? I talk to my buddies that hunt. This is. 30% of Pennsylvania hunters are not registered to vote. I don't get it. And they're the biggest complainers of what's going on. It's beyond me. I truly don't understand it. Do you guys have any research on this?

Yeah. Well, I mean, nobody can really figure out the why because there's a million different whys. One of the things our organization was very successful with is we didn't just try to get all of Pennsylvania to register to vote. We targeted populations that we knew fundamentally agreed with conservative principles, but had a very low voter activity rate. So we Started doing that kind of research.

Like this county, Monroe county, the hunters. Well, no, but like Northeast pa. Like Monroe County, Pike County.

No, by communities, I mean like we targeted the Amish.

Oh, oh, okay.

We had a very aggressive.

I thought you were talking actual.

No, we had a very aggressive campaign to target the Amish.

And they came out big time.

They came out. You see pictures of the Amish with the Trump flags on Trump they turned out. But what's interesting is when you immerse into these communities like hunters, like the Amish, convicted felons, what are the reasons? And what we found is every population has a different reason, whether it's veterans. We target the veteran community, we target the gun owners. Right now we have here in Monroe county there's three different micro targets of veterans, gun owners, and then nursing home residents.

Really?

So we, So I try to get.

Wait a minute, you mean to tell me they're not registered?

So I try to get a little team to go and say, look, you have one job. I'm not going to try to send you out there to get 200 registered voters. I want you to target this population. Let's find out why.

But no, that really surprises me.

Why aren't they vote. Well, it's about the nursing home.

Yeah.

Oh, no, they, they are registered, but.

They just don't vote.

No, they do. They are very. This is the concern with the nursing home residents. Go on a quick segue.

You can take as long as you want.

They have a very high rate of signing of being registered to vote. They have a very high rate of signing up for the emergency backup ballots or mail in ballots, which we will talk about also, because that's a big, important, very important part of our strategy. And everybody hates it and gets triggered by it. But we'll talk about it. They actually have a very high rate of compliance with signing up for mail in ballots. Who's helping them complete those mail in ballots? What we found was a very high number of those mail in ballots that are completed by the nursing home residents are done. So with the help of who's there? The nursing staff.

Right.

And that doesn't mean that I'm accusing a nurse of taking some poor, you know, person's mail in ballot and filling it out for them. I'm not talking about that. But if you're in the nursing home, how. And you get your mail in ballot and you're like, I don't, I don't know who these people are. I don't understand these ballot initiatives. I'm not going to go. I mean, come on, Grandma isn't going to go. I mean, she might, but they're not going to go on Facebook or from their nursing home room. You know, they. How do they get their guidance? And who should I vote for? How should I vote on this?

Oh, very interesting.

Well, the nurse is there and she'll help, and she'll help.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more.

The problem is, unfortunately, as a former nurse, I'm embarrassed to say this. The overwhelming majority of nurses identify as Democrat, okay? And liberal.

But I don't think people think about that. You know what I mean? It's like your family members in a nursing home, you're not thinking about voting.

And all the other stuff.

You're worried more about whether their meds are given, if they're, you know, if they need to be changed or whatever.

A lot of people don't realize that there is the restriction that nursing homes have that political people, political organizations can't have, you know, can't go in and just, you know, go in and go door to door and talk to the residents. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing that, you know, they do have a little bit of like, hey, we don't want our poor residents being harassed.

Oh, absolutely.

By politicians. And, you know, so I don't think it's a bad thing that they have that protective bubble because they could be. It could be taken advantage of. What we're just trying to let families know is if you can't go in and talk to your, you know, family member or your loved one about the political issues, especially on the local level, because it's pretty easy, you watch Fox News or CNN to get a beam on the nationwide.

Right. But how many people do that?

It's a local.

Hey, what about the town supervisor? What about the district attorney of my county? What about, you know, the school board?

School board is huge. How.

How are they going to know the people that are listed in the school board?

They don't. So even I don't know, you know, and I'm on top of it.

So, you know, I tell people, go on their Facebook page. You learn a lot. Go on their Instagram page. And that's another reason. And I'm going to go another down another rabbit hole and we'll go. That is one of the reasons, one of the many reasons that until we get rid of mail in ballots, we need to use them.

Speaking of which, I showed you guys this earlier before we came on a federal judge blocked Trump's the Trump administration from enforcing mail in voting rules in an executive order. He, he had a, the whole thing. Trump where he was. You had to prove your citizenship.

Yeah.

And show voter id. Well, Washington and Oregon sued over this thing and some idiot judge actually like upheld, you know, upheld it.

So basically then what we have to do is do exactly what they don't.

Want us to do, and that's mail in ballots. Well, here's my. Wait. I have a question about this. All right, so you get a mail in ballot and the Democrats have been doing this for years. Right.

They've embraced them.

Right. But how do we know that our ballot is going to actually get counted?

Well, this is what I tell people when we say, first of all, because.

I'm really, I still like to vote in person.

First of all, we don't like mail in ballots either. A lot of people will find that shocking because that's what we push so much. We would love nothing more than for John Thune to pass the SAVE act and get voter id, get same day voting and get rid of mail in ballots because there are a lot of problems with them.

Huge.

But the problem is until we get rid of them, we are not going to win elections without using them the way the Democrats. Not the same way they use them, but taking this, this weapon, so to speak, and using it our way. And the best statistic I have to show people the real hard numbers. The last election here in November, Republicans requested 277,000 mail in ballots. Democrats requested 860,000.

Now how many registered voters do we have in this county?

Well, let me just get it. I don't want to get off.

Okay.

I'm dealing with numbers. My brain is. Okay, I did the math for you guys ahead of time.

Okay.

So The Democrats had 583,000 more mail in ballots than the Republicans. You with me so far?

Yeah.

Okay, so now that's just in Pennsylvania. Or is that in Pennsylvania?

Okay, so they had half a million more mail in ballots than. Than we did.

How many of those people were dead?

I don't know. But this is the number that I really want. They won. The Democrats won. Guess how many they won by? I don't know, 500, 2000. Which means they didn't beat us at the ballot box, they beat us at the mailbox. The number of mail in ballots. They had more than usual. Almost exactly the same number of votes. They had more than us.

Interesting.

So this is what I tell people about the mail in ballots. A lot of things to not like about them. But we're not saying to use them the way the Democrats use them, where you just sit at home, you get it in the mail, you fill it out, you put it in the mailbox. We're not saying that we're going to use this the way we use things to our own advantage. I use the analogy. It's like, okay, I hear, but I like voting in person. It's a tradition. It feels more patriotic. I like my polling place. I like, I like it. And that's fine. The Native Americans really loved their bows and arrows, right? They had a tradition. It was traditional. It was historic. It wasn't. They had an emotional attachment to it. And then a bunch of white guys showed up with guns.

Right.

And they had to adapt.

So what we're trying to say is you don't have to like it, but until we start using them, we're just going to keep losing.

Yeah, but why?

Because there's a couple reasons. What are the advantages of the mail in ballots the Democrats are reaping the benefit of? Well, number one, by signing up for a mail in ballot, you have created, it's like a life hack. You've created a built in system that notifies you for every election. Oh, so it's like a little tap on your shoulder. Hey, hey, there's a special election in three weeks.

Oh, I never thought of it that way. Yeah, I never thought of it.

Not have known about the special election unless you happen to catch it on the news. Lancaster had an election about a year ago. It was a special election. A special election is like a surprise election. Surprise. Somebody's retiring and we need to have an election to replace them.

Right.

So it's unexpected. Lancaster is a plus 25 Republican district that had had a Republican in that seat for 40 years, a Democrat one.

And it's all mail in.

And you know what the biggest reason, when we reached out to Republicans and said, hey, did you vote? No, why? I didn't even know there was an election.

Interesting. See, I didn't think of that.

Well, so that's why signing up for the mail in ballot creates a built in notification system.

But then I think about like what happened in Philly in the last President, well, in 2020, where you know, they were, they were doing all this weird stuff with the ballots.

Right. So the problem you have is with fraud.

Right?

Well, guess what? There's fraud at the polling place.

Oh, I know that because. Well, no, check this out.

So there's polling places that run out of paper.

No, wait, wait, listen to this one.

Or the wrong size table dinners.

Stop.

Or in Jersey, there were bomb threats in the last election at polling places.

But like where I. The polling place I go to is a little firehouse. So they're not. The little thing you stick your ballot in is not. Yeah, whatever. It's not supposed to be connected to the Internet, right? Not supposed to be. Well, guess what? I go to put the thing in and I see a cord going to a wireless router. And I said to the guy, well, what, what's that? Well, it's connected to the Internet. I said, it's not supposed to be. So, like, what's going on with that?

Well, in the last election, because I'm on this group chat with all the other county volunteer county coordinators. I'm the Monroe county coordinator. Every county has a coordinator. And so we had this group chat going on. I actually felt very fortunate. Monroe county really wasn't that bad because there were counties where I was getting, you know, they were talking about people. There was this one polling place. People were setting up Rose Road closed signs.

Really?

On the only road to the polling place.

Wow.

There were polling places that ran out of paper again. How do you run out of paper? Yeah, you know, there's problems with the machines being calibrated. You know, this is what I tell people. Well, I don't trust the mail in ballots. Oh, well, sounds to me like your problem is with fraud. Well, there's fraud at same day voting too.

Right.

So what we recommend is you sign up for the mail in ballot, you'll get notified of every election. You'll get the.

I didn't think of that.

You'll get the ballot mailed to you. Guess what you can do with that ballot?

You can rip it up or.

No, don't do that. You could sit at your table, make a cup of coffee, have your computer up and ready, and you can comfortably, calmly, thoughtfully go through every single candidate and you can look them up on Facebook or Instagram or X and you can get a picture of who that person is. Even if it's a school board member.

Yeah.

So if you think of that, know.

The candidates and you have a couple weeks to think about it.

Give yourself time to get to know the candidates then. And the issues. You can research the issues. So you get a preview of your ballot, and I don't mean a preview of somebody while you're in line getting ready to vote. And they hand you a mock ballot, Right. And you got 10 minutes. You've got all the time in the world.

You got a Couple weeks.

Research.

Well, here, wait, here's a question for you. When I lived in Jersey, and I don't know if they had this in New York when you were living there and when you were down in North Carolina, we had what was called a challenger. So each party had a challenger. They would sit at the door and they would have the. The complete voting record. You know, not record, but the role. The role of who? You know, with addresses, names and addresses and everything for that district. And then when the person would come in, there was a Republican and Democrat sitting next to each other with this list. And as the person would come in, you would show your. Either your driver's license or you give your name and you check. They would check it off. And they were also poll watchers, you know, doing the same thing. Watching. They don't do that here.

Well, I was a poll watcher.

Yeah, but they don't have this thing where they actually check the person's name off, you know, because that way dead people aren't voting. I don't. I never understood it. Did they do that in North Carolina when you were there?

I wasn't there long enough to the boat in there.

Okay, yeah. Well, did they have anything like that in New York?

I don't think, no. But I mean, but that.

To me, that was a great idea. And I was like, why don't they do that here?

I mean, look, we're just trying right now, we're just trying to get voter id, right? Like, you know, we got. We gotta.

No, but I just thought that was a good idea.

I mean, we gotta, you know, focus on the big, you know, like, hey, we don't need. If we could just get voter ID and perch the roles, then, right? We maybe wouldn't, you know, maybe.

I know dead people that are still registered in pa. Well, I'm still registered in New Jersey and I haven't lived there for 27 years. Go figure.

But the next thing that I tell people to do is now that you've looked over your mail and ballot, right, fold it. Fold it up in a little envelope, put in the glove compartment of your car and forget about it and go about your life because you have your emergency backup plan for voting. And this is where I talk about, we're making this our own. We're using the mail in ballots, but we're using them our way. Republicans, conservatives, right wingers, we are the party of emergency preparedness. We are the ones that have the generator, the water filtration system. We have the jumper cables in our car. We're the ones that you can always be relied on. You know, we've got that emergency plan in place, but we don't have an emergency backup plan for voting. Well, we do now, because now that mail in ballot is your emergency backup plan. So when I tell people when it comes to mail in ballots, we're not saying this is your primary way to vote, okay? We're saying this is your emergency backup plan. Because one of the biggest reasons why the Democrats beat us in the turnout game is because they embrace mail in ballots so they don't have the drop off. We have a drop off Republicans. It's famous for, you know. Well, I meant to go, why didn't you vote? I meant to vote. I planned to vote.

I got busy.

I.

And then something.

These are real stories. I'm telling you. I'm not making these up. My dad was just admitted into the hospital a week ago. We thought he was going to be out in time to vote, but now he's being sent to rehab. Well, did he get a mail in ballot as an emergency backup? Because then you could go bring it to his hospital, help him fill it out and it can get delivered. So we have this drop off the Democrats, like let's say the Democrats and Republicans. We're starting here a month before the election. We're activated. We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all gonna vote. We're all gonna vote. Well, because they get their mail in ballots, they fill them out, they put them in the mail, their votes make it across the finish line. Our votes, we got. Yeah, we got a thousand people. We're all gonna vote. We're gonna vote. We're gonna vote. We're gonna vote. Oh, wait, we just lost 10 people because their car broke down. We just lost some people because mom in Florida broke a hip and they got to be out of state. We just lost some truck drivers because they just got notified they're going to be out of state working. I mean, there's a million reasons.

So then you got your mail in ballot.

You can. So we get this drop off. Both sides may start with the same number of people who want to vote more of their want to votes. Vote more of our want to votes turn into wanted to, but wasn't able to. This is how we use these.

Aha.

You get your emergency backup ballot. You keep.

I hope you're taking notes.

And why do I say keep it in the glove compartment of your car? Because I'm the one who would go to vote at the polling place on election day and stand in line and get up there and say, I'm ready to vote. And they say, yeah, but you have a mail in ballot that was sent to you, so you have to turn in your mail in ballot in order to vote. In order to vote or else it'll count as two votes ballots. Oh, wait, it's in the glove compartment of my car. I can run and get it and then I can bring it, turn it.

In, and then vote.

They spoil it and they let you vote as normal.

But do they really destroy it?

They do it in front of you.

Okay, yeah.

So if I leave it in a safe place, like on top of the refrigerator, and I just stood up for two hours and I get there and they say, oh, what about that mail in ballot? I'm like, oh. And then I'm more likely to go home and, oh, now my kid's sick or my husband's. So I say put it in the glove compartment of your car so that when you're there and you forget, you're like, oh, wait, it's in my car. Let me go get it. So the biggest question I get and the biggest clarification that I really want to hit home is when people think I've had so many people ask me, yeah, but if I sign up for a mail in ballot, does that they don't realize they haven't lost the right to vote at the polling place.

See, that's what everybody thinks.

It's not one or the other. It's you get your mail in ballot, you get to look it over ahead of time and do your research. You put it in your glove compartment of your car, you voted the polls, and if you don't need it. But what do we say about everything from jumper cables to batteries, you're prepared to better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. So that's one of. You know, those are the reasons. That's basically my sales pitch on why, even though I hate mail in ballots and I would love for the President to do something about getting rid of them, until we do, we have to use them. And what I also tell people is, you know, the quickest, easiest, most efficient way to get rid of mail in ballots, if you're really committed to getting rid of mail in ballots, you know how you get rid of them? You use mail in ballots to get the right people in place to get rid of them. They win, and then they will get rid of mail in ballots. Because why is Trump having such a hard time right now with all of his executive orders going through.

Because the Democrats are going to win with the mail in ballots, that we're not going to do anything again.

And because we only have a majority in the House of what, like three.

Right.

And that's scary because if we lose.

That, if we had a bigger majority.

Right. Putting somebody in power that's going to do something about it, the only way it's really going to get done is if we just like too big to rig, we, we got to overwhelm them with mail in ballots so the Democrats.

Lose their edge so we can get more Republicans.

If we do that, the Democrats are going to be screaming.

Well, they're screaming already.

Well, you know, to get rid of mail in ballots.

Oh yeah.

And that was just what I was about to say. And the quickest way to get rid of mail in ballots is start winning with them. Because if the Republicans start winning with mail in ballots, guess how quickly the Democrats will be like, oh yeah, we got to get rid of them and.

Then we can get rid of them and go to paper.

Well, here's I now growing up. I mean I'm, I'm older than both of you.

I'm ancient.

Yeah, well, not quite.

Good one.

I'm not that old.

She's got to come back.

It's my opinion.

But there were absentee ballots. So if, if, let's say I was on the road, I'd fill out an absentee ballot and I'd send it in. That's a mail in ballot. But why this whole other thing, this whole other thing is like, it's called bizarre.

Yeah, it's called pre coat pre covered rules. Right. Post Covid rules.

Yeah, I know. This covet thing, it's like we're over it.

You know, pre Covid mail in ballots still existed.

It was called an absentee.

You had to have a justifiable, you had to have a reason. And then in Covid they decided with what they call universal mail in ballots, you don't need a reason. It's available to everybody universally.

Yeah, but it stayed.

We could go back to pre Covid rules when we say get rid of mail in ballots because I also have a lot of, you know, a lot of people I know that are older, maybe disabled, homebound, transportation issues, and they get nervous when we talk about getting rid of mail in ballot. I, I, I need. Yours are not going to go away.

Yes, it's an absentee ballot.

It's just going to become a need issue. Not a everybody universalist universally now a.

Lot of people I actually got one in the mail last year and I didn't even request one.

Are you sure it was a mail in ballot and not a mail in ballot application? Did you open it? Because I'm trying to think a lot.

No, I'm trying to think now. I don't know. I honestly don't know.

That's it. I've heard this before, I've done this, I've done this before. I get a lot of people come to me and say, I got five mail in ballots sent to my house last year. I said, did you open any of them? No, I just threw them right in the garbage. I said, I guarantee you those were not mail in ballots. Those are mail in ballots applications. They come in the mail looking very official, right? And very governmenty. And if you looked at it and you didn't open it, you might think it's a mail in ballot.

Okay.

But when you. I got one just the other day.

So that's probably what it was.

I'm already signed up for one.

Like, I already renew and you still got it.

And I still get this government official looking thing in the mail and I look over like, and I open it up and I actually had just somebody who, I had renewed their mail in ballot. I had just two days ago checked there. Because what we do is we sign you up, right? And then we, and then I, you know, we go online and check a couple of days later to make sure it's processed okay. And then I send you a text message or an email saying, hey, good news, your email, your mail in ballot renewal for 2026 is you have to.

Renew it every year.

You have to renew it every year. And that doesn't mean, oh well, I signed up in October, so I'm good until October. Even if you signed up that right before the November election, that was, you're only good for 2025.

Okay.

So after the November election. And you know, that's when right now we're trying to get people to realize that. Cause I have a lot of people saying, oh no, mine is fine. I just did it. I'm like, oh, did you do it before the November. Did you do it before election day? Yes. Okay, you gotta do it again. So it's not like I don't get the calendar year. It's not like a calendar year. It's anytime in 2025 you sign up for one that's only for 2025. Now we're trying to get people to renew their mail in ballots for 26. So that's that's a big part of my job right now.

So you're gonna have to register me for a mail in ballot.

I already renewed you guys when you were stuck in the Trump line. Oh, because you had nowhere else to go, Nothing else to do but my friend, you know, or my client.

No, we were busy signing autographs, but.

I texted him, hey, good. Just letting you know your mail in ballot renewal has been processed. And he said, okay, great. But that's weird because I just got a mail in ballot application in the mail.

Right?

So that somebody's not talking.

Well, this is what I told them. Those are mass mailings, okay? There's no brain that says, oh, this person didn't do it yet. Let me send them one.

You think we computerized.

It's just mass mailings. They. I get four or five a year. I mean, they just. You. They just mass mail them.

Now, do you. Do you actually vote in person or do you just send your ballot?

Because I'm usually working my little tail off on election day.

Now, what about your husband?

In the morning till midnight. He's stubborn. You know him.

He's like me. He goes at a pulse.

But he gets it as an emergency backup.

Okay?

Because life is uncertain and he.

No, I'm going to do that this year.

What if something happens?

So, you know, so that's the cutoff. Is that basically every general any midterm election or does it have to do with any local elections?

It's all of them. So when you sign up for like, you know, if I sign you up for a mail in ballot, on the mail in ballot application, there's two boxes. One box says, I only want a mail in ballot for this upcoming election. Let's say you usually want to vote in person and you don't want an emergency backup plan, but you know you are going to be out of state for that election. I only want it for that election. And then there's another box that you check. And I usually check that box. I tell people, let's just do it.

For all of them.

Once people understand.

No, now I, I mean, I committed.

That's the whole thing.

You just educated.

Didn't lose your choice. Choice. You can still. Once they realize, okay, but you check that box and you will get a mail and ballot sent to you for every election in 2020, including like school.

Board and all that stuff, including the special popup surprises.

That's what I was.

And those are the ones that are so important because those are the ones where we really have the terrible turnout because People don't know. How would you know? And then another reason we really encourage people to sign up for the mail in ballots is because then that puts you in our system. A lot of people get a little. I don't know what I mean, your system. What that does is that gives us a list of people who've signed up for mail ballot. It gives us something to work with, because without a list of Republicans by name and address, we can't help you. It's like, help us help you. It's like we try to tell Trump all the time when he start saying, I'm going to get rid of mail in ballots. And then everybody's like, I don't want a mail in ballot. Trump said, no. I'm like, help us help you, Trump. Help us help you.

Right.

We now have a list and with that list we can offer help, we can offer assistance, we can offer gentle reminders. And that's called ballot chasing.

So that's what you were showing me before.

Right. Ballot chasing is also a big part.

Of what they have, a really cool app.

And we're going to. Yeah. Go through the app. And so what that does is we now get a list of all these people that are Republicans that signed up for mail in ballots and we can go in on the app that you can basically click and get the name and number and send them a gentle little, like, text message saying, hey, I saw that you requested a mail in ballot. You haven't turned it in yet. Do you have any questions? Is there anything you need help with? And you can always text back and say, I'm keeping it.

Oh, so I can respond.

Yeah.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, that's good info.

Yeah, no, I haven't turned it in yet because I'm just using it as an emergency backup.

Where does one get this app?

You can get it in the App Store, Apple or Android. And it's called, it's called early vote action.

Got that?

Early vote action.

And I don't. I mean, I know you said you could pop it up, but I'm trying to yell a little color scheme on your screen there. It's a little white box with a blue E and a blue A, and the little red, red V is kind of a check mark. But what this app allows you to do is you can basically it opens up looking like this and it's got like, hey, what do you want to do? And actually, I think I want to go back even one more. Yeah, this is how it opens. So when it first opens, it's really more like it shows like X conversations that Scott has done to let you know what's he doing, what's our organization doing? It's just kind of. But if you click this little box up here, you have a choice depending on your time or sometimes some people have physical constraints, they're stuck at home, they're not able to go knocking on doors. But they want to do something. There's send text messages and you click on it and it gives you a list of people who've requested a mail in ballot but haven't returned it yet. And you can send them a friendly little text message saying little, just a friendly reminder. The deadline for mail in ballot. You can turn it in up to an including election day. But if you need to sign like it's just a little nudge.

Now with the mail in ballot, you can actually drop it at the polls and then accounts or no, you have.

If you have to bring it to your election precinct. So ours for example, here in Monroe county is the cross street from the courthouse in Stroudsburg.

Yeah.

And that's actually the honestly most secure way of voting is to get your mail in ballot, fill it out and hand deliver it to the election precinct and put it in their ballot box directly, which is under 24 hours surveillance. You can do that up into and including election day. Okay, so let's say your plan was to vote at the polls and you show up and it's a long line or we ran out of paper, our computer, our machine is down. It's going to be four hours. Or like in New Jersey, bomb threat. Like you just something you get there and you're like, man, I got to be at work in an hour and a half and they're telling me the line is four hours long. What do I do? You take your mail in ballot, you drive to Stroudsburg and you drop it off in the election precinct. Every year that's what I do. A week before election day, I'll just fill out my mail and ballot, I'll drive and I'll turn it in. And you know, this is why I tell you it's the most secure way of voting. Because the weakest link in the chain. How do you think the ballots get from the polling place to the election precinct to be counted?

Well, somebody has to take them.

Who?

Well, usually it's the people from the election board.

The judge of elections.

Right.

Alone in her car.

Oh no, I know. And that's where I remember seeing videos where they were pulling like boxes of ballots out of Somebody's trunk. Oh, we need 40,000 more.

The first time I volunteered to be a poll watcher, the end of the night, we're shutting down the machines. We're nothing. And, you know, silly me, I'm like, so are we gonna have, like, is there gonna be a police escort that we're waiting for?

Nope.

And the judge of elections is like, why? Oh, well, are we waiting for one of those Brinks armored security trucks to come and pick up the ballots? No. Well, are we at least gonna have, like, a police escort for you? Like, it started with me asking, are we waiting for some kind of, like, security armored van?

You opened up a Pandora's box to deliver the ballots?

And she said, no. And I said, so how did the ballots get to the election precinct?

In her trunk.

I said, oh, I drive them. I'm like, so, are we waiting for a police escort?

No.

No. Are you at least going to bring the constable with you?

Nope.

Nope. I said, so you're going to drive alone at 12:30 in the morning on Sullivan Trail in the dark?

Yep.

Alone with the ballots in your car? I mean, what if you hit a deer? Or what if you get carjacked at Wawa, Like.

Exactly.

These are security concerns.

Oh, absolutely.

So what I.

But that's what I was talking about earlier.

Weakest link is there's so much security we worry about with voter ID and signing up. And are you with, you know, all of this? And yet the weakest link is the ballot is going from the polling place to the election precinct. Well, I don't have that weak link in my voting chain because I hand deliver it myself to the election precinct.

What we used to do in Jersey was at the end of the night, they open up the back of the machine. The Democrat and Republican would count the votes, right? And then that would get turned over to whoever. But they had both parties there counting the ballot.

Yeah, they do that. But there's this, like, what about provisionals? What about. And, you know, how does that information get brought over? You know, it's like, well, maybe I don't know, but maybe I don't need to know because I know how my ballot gets delivered.

Right. Well, why don't they just use the cord that's connected to the Internet?

Thank you. Thank you, Al Gore. You missed your cue.

Thank you.

And she's a regular watcher.

Yes.

You guys are too quick. And all this whole time, I've been waiting for the opening to say it, and it just really.

We just threw. I mean, we just threw you a Softball and you missed it.

I was never good at basement. I don't drive a Subaru.

But that was good.

We'll sneak it up.

So.

Well, how can that be fixed though?

I don't know. I leave that to smarter. Well, part of how it can be fixed is we vote for the judge of elections to be somebody who's a Republican. We vote for the, you know, election. Like all of those little like low ballot people are the ones that we have to trust to secure and deliver.

Well, Bruce and I were talking the other day about this very subject and his big thing is the primaries. Not even the general election, but the primaries are more important than the general election.

Do you know what percentage of voters turn out for the primaries versus the general?

I know the last election we had in November, which wasn't in the primary, our turnout was actually better. Like we really do think we're doing good work.

Well, not just that, but I think.

I think but the problem is the Democrats turnout was also better. So it's like, you know, chasing.

So the mail in ballots would cover the primaries as well.

Or not every single election. If you put check the box that you want one for every election, then you will get a mail in ballot sent to you to remind you, hey, there's an election coming up. Look at that. I should look this over and you know, you'll get it for every single election. If they get rid of mail. There's no election that would be like, oh, we're going by this rules or the rules are either all elections or known elections. So if they get rid of the mail in ballots it would, you know, go back to pre Covid rules for.

All elections, which would be great. But that would just. That would be state to state though.

Well, yeah.

Or would that be federal?

States control the election rules which is why you have some states that require voter ID and some that don't. That.

Don't you think Josh Shapiro will ever go for it?

No, he's worried about him blocking the no tax on tips and no tax on overtime.

Oh yeah, we were talking about that. We were talking about that earlier.

He must hate the service industry.

And Jamie, guess what? Joshy baby is not going to let you.

He's going to tax your tips.

He's going to tax your tips. Just so you know.

Yeah, I couldn't believe that when you told me that earlier. It's like unbelievable. This is absolutely unbelievable.

Basically he's has a lawsuit.

Well, he did the same thing. It didn't get as much media coverage but about a Year ago. A little less than a year ago. Right. Trump's only been in office for a year.

Not even.

Yeah, not even. Right.

It's hard to believe, but you know the title with the men and women's sports controversy, where I can't believe that.

Even went to the Supreme Court.

Well, even a year ago, when Trump had the executive order that no biological men in women's sports or spaces make it so, Josh Shapiro actually took our tax dollars. If they really want to make you angry, he took our tax dollars to fund a lawsuit to sue the Trump administration to block that from taking effect here in Pennsylvania.

Unbelievable.

So not only is he going against what a lot of us believe when it comes to women having a competitive, fighting chance in their sports, he's using your money to block it.

See, that's the part I don't get. Really. I seriously don't understand how a biological male can compete in women's sports. It's like, right here. Hello.

Well, they put so much emphasis. Like, the case in the Supreme Court right now is a person, a young person from West Virginia, that what they're trying to say is because this person started medical transition so young, they never entered or experienced the day of male puberty.

Sorry, wait a minute.

Sorry, I thought that didn't happen. Right, that doesn't happen. Right, that doesn't. They don't do that. Right. They don't medically transition children.

Yes, they do.

But now they have a young person who was medically transitioned prior to puberty. So what they're trying to say is, well, this person doesn't have those advantages because they never went through male puberty.

I'm calling bullshit on that one.

What they forget is that even before birth, in the womb, male babies are developing more faster twitch muscle.

Really?

Yeah. There's actual, like, differences biologically that can make a difference with, like, hand, eye coordination. It's called twitch. They have faster muscle twitch reaction. Okay, so there are things that even if you never go through male puberty, you still have advantages from being born biological.

All right. My big thing with that whole thing with the. With the transitioning of kids is like, where are the parents? I mean, what does that say about.

The parents being told, would you rather have a dead son or a trans daughter?

Yeah, but then I saw this one, I think. I'm not sure if it was a girl that became a guy or a guy became a girl, and they had to reverse it, and they finally, like, woke up and said, wait a minute.

Whoa.

This is a lot of detransition.

My position is it's all a distraction.

A distraction from what?

From everything they're doing. Everything from the fraud that they've. Billions and trillions of dollars that they're sending over to Somalia or, you know, the, the high speed train in California.

Which still hasn't been.

All this nonsense. And everybody's out there arguing whether a woman and a man can change. I mean, well, did you see the thing? Just stop and really think about it. It's like, what are you thinking? It's like we get into this science and all this nonsense.

Wait a minute. You just. Did you. Did either one of you see Josh Hawley?

Yes.

Yes.

With the doctor.

That was great.

Unbelievable. And it's like, can a man get pregnant? And she wouldn't answer the question.

But that's a, that's a tactic. That's to keep.

I wanted a drug. I wanted to like reach through the TV set and smack her in the face.

That's why we're talking about it. Because you got these two people on center stage doing a reality TV show or whatever. It's supposed to be a wwe, whatever wrestling challenge. They're battling it out in the center ring and everybody's cheering for this side or that side. And it's like everybody is getting caught up into this stuff and we're getting robbed. Our country is going to hell.

But if it is a distraction, I mean, just because something's being used as a distraction doesn't mean it isn't also an important issue.

Not as far as for the people that are involved. As far as the kids and the mental issues that could occur or the physical issues, but they wouldn't be there unless the adults. This didn't start with kids. This started with a group of adults pushing this stuff.

Yeah.

The same way with, with you want to talk about Nazis and everything else.

Oh, I'm sick of that.

Look back at the history of populations and the mental control that people are put under and then you can start to understand why are the adults trying to change the kids? Why are they trying to push this into their brain? Because then they're going to grow up to that. You got to start with the kids.

Well, what amazes me is having the advantage of growing up in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s when there was this. You said earlier how Democrats seem to own the idea of being loving and compassionate and caring. And I want to push back against that a little bit because when I was growing up, the message to children was, you are perfect or you are fine. Just how you are. Your job is to learn to love yourself as you are.

Absolutely.

It's your job of childhood to grow up to be a female.

Well, that's how we all grow up.

And, you know, gosh darn it, save the tomboys and the femboys. What's wrong with being a feminine?

There's not.

Nothing.

There's nothing wrong with it.

Nothing.

And what's wrong with being a masculine woman?

Nothing.

And that was the message of the 80s and the 90s was, we're all a little different. And. And if one girl tends to lean more towards the masculine side, that's okay.

Yeah, I don't care.

And if a guy tends to lean more towards the feminine side, that's okay, too.

Yeah. Who cares?

All of us. That's loving because that compassion, that accept yourself for who you are and don't feel like you need to change yourself. You do, you.

But that's the story.

And then all of a sudden, we lost our. We lost our logo again.

And then all of a sudden, it became, oh, you can't be a feminine man. You can't be a masculine woman. You need to have surgery and take medication to change yourself into something.

See, that's twisted.

That's not loving and accepting.

No, that's cruel. That's really cool aggression.

And it's also maybe like, you know, we may be losing a lot of potentially, you know, children that are going to grow up to be gay, but they're not because they're told, well, you can't be gay. You are really the opposite gender, and you need to have surgery and medication. And there's been studies to show that.

And it's a progression.

We're the side saying, you accept you and you be you, and you love yourself, and I will love you how you are. And you do not need to go out there and stab with yourself with a bunch of chemicals and have a bunch of surgery.

Right. But it's a crazy slow progression. They start out slow like that. That's. That's the beginning of it. And then what they do is they expand it a little bit and they say, oh, well, they promote it more that. Okay, if you're a girl and you like girls and go ahead and do that.

Yes. But when did this start?

The boys. It's been.

Because when we were kids, and we're.

We're all three different generations here, taking away everybody's rights. You can't take it away like that.

The frog in the pot, you have.

To boil the frog slowly. You got to start out with regular water, turn on the stove slowly and let it boil.

But we also saw the steroids in. That was Covid.

Right.

Okay.

That's what it went.

But Covid also was a shock to a lot of people, and it split a lot of people up and it was too fast. So my, my view on the COVID thing, they, they, they had to rush it out to win an election. And not everybody was slow boiling yet. The water was still tempid and it woke too many people up. But if you can put that in people's minds and slowly start to change the vision, the Overton window, right. Then 10 years, 20 years, you got to play the long game. You can't do the short game over that time.

Okay, I can see that.

It can, it can get to where we're at now. Same thing with the, the mail in ballots.

Yeah, there was a slow progression.

We have to change the focus on that they're bad. And turn it around to, we need to use these in order to win.

And that's what you guys are trying.

To do our way. We don't have to just follow the Democrats and do it the way they do it.

Exactly.

We are almost using the weapon they've been using against us. We're using that weapon against our way.

Right.

But, but the problem with the mail in ballots is it was a shock.

Right.

Same thing with if we started 30 years ago letting men and women's sports too much of a shock. There was no progression. So Democrats have been using the mail in ballots for long time. They understand it and they were used to it, so they embraced it.

You know what amazes me with the Republicans is they like the Democrats, regardless of the topic, they stick together and the Republicans don't.

And that is an advantage they have. And that is why it is very frustrating.

It's like they send out a memo and then all of a sudden they're all on TV talking the exact same thing.

I've seen it. What I see is that when a Democrat is presented with a candidate or.

An issue, they back it 100%.

They look for the reasons to vote yes. They overlook the reasons to vote no, vote no. The Republicans did the opposite. The very first thing Republican does when they meet a candidate or they read an issue is look for the reasons to say no. And what I try to.

I'm guilty of that.

Yeah. Say, look, we're going to over. Democrats are amazing at overlooking things they have. I mean, they voted for a guy in Virginia who in text messages wanted his opponent killed and Wanted to watch these children die in the.

That blows me away. And people still voted for them because.

They can overlook a lot.

That's crazy. That guy should been jail.

If it means voting for their cause. They will overlook a lot. Republicans, they don't want to overlook anything. And I've seen Republicans fight like this woman I talked about at church. Oh, but Trump's not pro life enough, so I'm not going to vote.

Well, that's throwing a vote to the other side.

You're throwing the vote the other side. But can, can you. You can't overlook anything. The Republicans, they won't overlook anything. They want a perfect fit right there is not perfect. The Democrats have learned that they. And I hate giving them credit, but they don't let best interfere with better. They don't let, they don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

Okay, it makes sense.

The Republicans are looking for the reasons to not support.

I hope you guys are taking notes.

But before I try, I just wanted to take the one thing I did want to say though. On because it is very important to me about the, the transing of the kids issue with COVID that what I meant when I said Covid is human beings are savage creatures, especially Americans. I mean we are a population founded by people like Joe Rogan has said it, who crossed an ocean on a rickety boat with all their worldly belongings on their back and a baby in their arms. Or crawled across a desert with the same backpack and a baby in their.

Arms with a horse with no name to get here.

We are savage creatures. You can't lock us up for two years and expect us to not go batshit crazy.

See, I loved it.

I.

We talked about that earlier. I loved it. It was great.

Look, you look at the most emotionally and vulnerable population, right? Kids, teenagers, right? Preteens.

Yeah, that I can see.

The four year olds are fine, the.

Eight year olds, but the pre teens.

And the teenagers, they're just feeling the.

Roads right up for two years. And then here we are, the old people sitting back saying, why are they all going batshit crazy? Why are all the boys wanna be girls and the girls want to be boys? And there. Why are they going crazy?

Because they've been locked up for.

Hello, you just executed a master class on how to systematically make them crazy. And then you're sitting back and saying why are they crazy? And complaining that they're crazy. Hello, you're complaining they're crazy. You made them crazy. So I do put a lot of the responsibility on U.S. older generation.

And I feel like that's what I'm saying.

I feel like we really showed them a lot.

Yeah.

And when I hear people just kind of dis. Look at these crazy teenagers. They're all doing crazy things.

Well, yeah, yeah, but we were called crazy teenagers.

Yeah, but that. Crazy.

I mean, I don't.

What, you know, there's a fine line.

But anyway, I didn't want to get. I just wanted to make that point.

No, no, but that's to my point. It's the adults. It's. It's not the children. The children learn from the adults.

So.

Yeah, but now her kid, her kid I met and hung out with, he's like so well balanced. It's ridiculous. I mean, I'm sure he has his moments, you hear me?

But not everybody.

No, he's a great kid.

Not everybody has that. That same connection or whatever you want family.

We also rejected Covid.

Right?

Right when Covid started.

Well, you did. We all did the same thing. This is bullshit. And I'm not playing.

We reached out to like minded communities, right?

That's what we did.

But you can't.

Activities in clubs with other, like, not clubs, but like, I know, group activities for children that were other like minded people. So while other kids were locked in their house and social distancing, our kid was learning sailing or going out on a sailboat. Our kid was hiking in the woods or going to the beach, like, so.

He was still being active and using his brain.

Right. And even when, you know, we still had to do the, you know, there were still things and. But we intention. We looked and tried to find places that you could kind of almost be like an antidote, I mean, you know, to what he was getting. But I.

Because he's like completely normal, right. Compared to most teenagers.

Not everybody had that, you know, look at the.

But then again, it's going back to what you're saying. It's the parents.

Well, not everybody has a great playing game.

Right.

I think to me it's like I blame founder.

It's hard to be a parent when the government, I mean, and I'm not saying I'm not exonerating them, but it's hard to be a parent in a situation where the government is telling you constantly, daily, if you let your child leave the house, they could die.

Right.

Well, even us, you know, don't let your child transition. They will commit suicide.

Right.

And better to have, you know, dead son than a trans. Or better to have a trans daughter than a dead son. I mean, the psyop they did on parents.

It was unbelievable. We talk about this all the time.

That's what I'm saying about the slow.

But it's the same thing with the voting thing. It's like people have been brainwashed going back to go in a certain direction.

Well, I think part of it is they feel a little less patriotic if they don't go to vote on election day at the polls.

It just feels weird.

It's the same way to me. It's a holiday. One of my favorite holidays, Election Day. I know that makes me weird. I have an outfit. I have an outfit with a special patriotic scarf and I get. It's a.

So and we saw you dressed up that way.

No, I was dressed up like a mountain climber when I saw you.

That's true.

I was like, ready for the cold. But one of the things that I realized, you know, when I first started working for Early Vote Action and I really wasn't quite sold either. I was like, I like going to vote on election day and feel patriotic and I feel a connection to the founding fathers and it's great. And then a very wise co worker said to me, yeah, but you know what, though? Think about it. You get. We all want paper ballots, Remember? Paper ballots that you could read and fill out and drop in the ballot box. What's so traditional or patriotic about filling in Scantron circles and then trying to feed it into the machine? I'm trying to feed into the machine and just try it. And I gotta tell you, that first year that I did do the mail in ballots and I'm sitting at home with my coffee and I'm reading comfortably, I'm not being rushed and I'm doing my research and. And I filled out my ballot, I put in the envelope and I drove to the election precinct and when I dropped that ballot in the ballot box, that was more like how people voted back in the day, in the late, you know, 1780, whatever, or 1822. That's that line of tradition. That's. That almost. It's almost like a ritual. I felt this connection to. To people who voted for, you know, since our country was born.

Right.

I don't get that feeling when I'm trying to feed them.

No, it's creepy. It's kind of creepy because I'm thinking.

And I still wore my.

Some electronic thing is going to change my ballot. Actually, I asked. I do this every time you put the thing in and the guy's standing there and make sure you put, you know, put it in. It's like, can I have a receipt? What? I'd like a receipt that I voted. We don't do that. Well, why not? And I get no answer.

You know what, you get it with these, right? You get an email, you sign up for a mail in ballot. A couple days later you get an email saying you voted. Mail in ballot application has been received. And then a couple weeks later, you know, a certain number of weeks before the election, you get a reminder, an email, your mail in ballot's on its way. And I tell people, make a note of that date, like put it in your calendar. If you don't receive that ballot within a reasonable amount of time, like five, seven days, call the election precinct, say, hey, I got an email saying that my mail in ballot was in the mail. I haven't received it. Every mail in ballot has a tracking number on it. So what they'll do is they'll say, oh, well, that could have gone. That could have been stolen out of your mailbox. That could have gone to the wrong address. We're going to cancel that ballot and.

Send you a new one.

Okay, so that's even more secure then you.

Some people mail it. I don't mail it. I don't trust postal service, but I wouldn't either. But if you did put it in the mail or when I go and drop it off in the election precinct box day later, I get an email, your mail and ballot has been received. So you get a little bit more of that.

Okay.

That trackability with these that you may not get with.

You know what I wish you guys would do? What is push for election day being a national holiday where every. It's just shut down, nobody goes to work, and everybody can just go to the polls and vote that way. There's no excuse for not voting because you now have a holiday. I'm sure there'll be some slugs.

Unless your car breaks down or somebody.

Yeah.

You know, but you.

But that's. Why don't we just have that day off? Hey, Scott should be pushing.

Not a bad idea. But you know What? Scott's working 25 hours a day, eight days a week just trying to get voter ID.

No, I know.

Past the save.

Pass the save.

So we got a triage.

No, I get it, I get it.

And the problem, the problem is. And back to the men's and women's sports. Not to get back to that, but we got a lot of trans Democrats, too many pushing against changing anything. Well, like they're Republicans under name, but they actually wish or identify as.

Oh, you mean like some. Okay, I was like. I thought you meant my township supervisor.

That's what I thought he was talking about. But that's what I was talking about. The lunatic.

The infamous.

Could or could not be.

I don't know, you know, whose name is really Larry.

But my, my point on it, the trans Democrats.

So you mean Democrats.

I'm talking about Republicans.

Really? Democrat.

Who are actually like our. Like our. We were talking about it earlier. The district attorney. District attorney.

Yeah, but he's the opposite. He was a Republican.

Well, yeah, but I think he always was a Democrat.

So we have. My guess, we have a whole crew of them that vote not like the Democrats. They don't stick together. They vote against the Republican Party. So this whole push for getting rid of mail in ballots or having a election day holiday is never going to pass until we get out the. The trans Democrats that are in our Republican Party, Conservative Party, MAGA Party, whatever you want to call it. So that's even more important to do exactly what we're talking about tonight. Get a mail in ballot as a backup. That way you're notified for all of the elections. I love your idea about sitting over with coffee, especially for the primaries, because once the general election comes in, those candidates have already been picked through the primary.

Right.

So the most important thing is to sit down, like Julie said, grab a cup of coffee, go through the list of the primaries and research them.

Go on Facebook, go on Instagram. You can learn a lot about somebody from their Instagram.

Oh, I'm sure.

Yep. You could even go and see where they're speaking and you know, go there and check them out. The school board. But that to me is probably one of the most important things going forward is to vote in the primaries. You got to vote in the primaries and get a backup ballot. Use that ballot as a research. And that way when you go into vote, because let's face it, you got to be honest with yourself. I could be honest with myself. I go in that day, I'm asking, all right, so who's watch what and you know what I mean. That way you have knowledge of who you're going to vote for. Download Fortunate Son the night before. Play that on the way to dropping off the. The ballot or go to vote or whatever you want to do. Then my suggestion, after the two songs you want Fortunate Son and the Blues Brothers, Soul man when you get done. But they're all the way home, you can. It don't matter.

So I'm more of a Tom McDonald fan.

Just just trying to lighten it up. I know, make it fun. Make it fun. It's not a choreograph.

But, you know, you can also go to, you know, for a couple, for a couple of months before the election. I know. Here in Monroe county, our local Monroe county gop, they meet the second Thursday of every month at, you know, you go on their website, get the address. They. It's called the Weiss building on 6 11. And they meet 6:30. And in the three or four months up to election day, once a candidate has declared at every GOP meeting, they are allowed to get up and speak and speak and take questions.

So now how does go to the.

GOP meetings and learn and hear the candidates speak? Even school board, even judge of elections, there's no candidate, no position too big or too small.

So now how does that process work? Like, if somebody wants to run for office, does the GOP pick the candidates? Or like, I could just go and say, I want to run for school board.

Yeah. I mean, what they do is they will tell every monthly meeting coming up, like, we just started it now because primaries are coming up a couple months. And they'll say, hey, these are the positions that are open in this township. They have two open positions, one for judge of elections or one for township supervisors. Or anybody interested in running, let us know, we'll help you.

Because I always thought it was like, all boys, you know, the all boys club.

Anybody like, you go in, you say, like, you know, I could be sitting there. And they say, oh, the 115 Coolba they need. There were three different. Four different positions that were open. School board, township supervisor, judge of elections. Anybody interested? And if so, come and ask. And you go up and say, hey, I live in this township. I'll run for a position. What do I do? Okay. And they'll walk you through the process. You go to the election precinct, you say, I want to be a candidate for this position. They'll give you, you know, an application that you need to fill out, and you need to get at least 10 signatures. You have to be registered Republicans that live in your area. Area. You get those 10 signatures, you turn it in, you're on the ballot for the primary. For the primary.

Because I've noticed, I don't know if you guys have noticed, but you go in to vote, and there's only one.

Name on the ballot because nobody. Nobody ran.

It's like, wow, right?

And unfortunately, Republicans have a harder time getting again, maybe because we have jobs and families and we're busy. But you Know what? Look, I think it's 1774. Look what they had to give up. Look what they were facing.

A lot.

I think we can, you know, because I hear all the time. Yeah, but I, I'm working two jobs, my kids in school, you know, my mother's. I, I gotta check on my mother every weekend. I got family, I got work. I don't have another minute to breathe. Yeah, I. If you're saying it's hard, I agree with you. Is it worth it? I mean, come on.

Right?

You know, but the mail in ballot thing, there's no more excuse then.

Right. But as far as running for. I think a gentler, kinder approach is to say, why don't you start by going to some school board meetings. Why don't you start by going to your.

Because I get so pissed off when I go to these things. I start yelling at them.

Go to your township.

I do. Have you ever been to one of those? It's a zoo.

Well, you know, start by going.

I do. I've gone through a couple of them. I get so pissed off, it's like I have to leave.

Run for.

No, I could never do that. My wife would kill me. I'd be in divorce court.

They were facing a little bit more than an angry wife.

Oh my.

True.

My muskets. I'm. It's dirty. I'm. It's in the back. I haven't used it.

You know, I've thought about it. I've thought about it. But then I'm thinking like all the mudslinging, it's. Is it really worth it?

Is our country worth it?

Well, yeah, absolutely.

Well, you're talking about local too. You're not talking about you're taxes worth it.

Yeah.

Your kids, quality of your kids. You know, in Pennsylvania we spend $23,000 per student.

I know. It's disgusting, isn't it, how bad the schools. It's horrible.

23. It would be hard to find a private school in Pennsylvania that costs that much. I'm sure they're out there. But that's like around the going rate, right? Exactly. So we are spending per pupil. If we just took that 23,000, if we even do, we could say we're just going to send you a check for 20 grand. We're going to save $3,000 per kid would be great. And the. And they could put their. Yeah, we're saving money and they're getting a better education.

The only way we get to do that is that we get people to.

Now I, I'm Not. I'm not telling stories out of school here, but I have some.

Is it a long story?

They've been busting my chops about this because before you, Darren, they've been busting my chops about the storytelling. I know you had to do it.

You had a trump weave.

Yeah.

Does the weave.

No, I have some. I have some schoolteacher friends here. Here in Pennsylvania, and I've asked them about this. It's like, how can you possibly pass these kids when they can't even read and write? You know what the answer I get is? They are forced into doing it because of the tax dollars.

They don't get the funding.

Right.

When we first moved, I said, well, that's when we. When we first moved here, my son was in ninth grade. And, you know, we register him for school. He goes to school, and he comes home one day, and, you know, we're. We're those parents that are, like, all in his business, especially with school. So we're like, hey, what are you doing in. What do they call it now? Ela. We used to call it English. Right, Ela? It's like the. Where they read and like, oh, what. What book are you guys reading right now? Getting ready to read. And he said, the name of the book. And I don't remember the name of the book, but it was a good book. Oh, yeah, that's a great book. Read that book. I said, okay, but what's your assignment? And he's like, what do you mean? I said, well, you're reading this book. Is it.

Don't you have to do a book report?

Well, do you. Are. Do you have to read, like, a chapter a week? Do you have to read a chapter a night? Like, what's your. Because my kid's in a lot of activities, and he could very quick. Like, I'm trying to teach him management.

Time management.

Time management. So you don't suddenly be like, I got four days to read War and Peace.

Yeah, but he became an Eagle Scout, so he definitely has some kind of management skills, you know?

But how are you breaking this big. How is your teacher breaking this up? What is your teacher like? What's your assignment? He's like, oh, no, we don't have home reading. We don't. We don't read it at home. Oh, so you're reading it during class time? We're. And what was interesting, because he didn't say read. He kept saying, oh, no, we're covering. We're doing, like. We're doing it in class. I'm like, okay, well, what is. What are you doing? Are you reading? Like, are you each taking turns reading a paragraph through the class? No. So, what, you're all just sitting there reading quietly while the teacher's scrolling on Amazon or Facebook? Like, how are you. Oh, no, we're not doing it that way. Like, he's gonna be a little evasive. I'm like, how are you reading this book? And that's when he finally knew. He got. I got him. He's like, well, we're listening to an audiobook.

Are you serious? You gotta be kidding me.

Like, you're listening to an audiobook in class to read this book? And then I got.

Do they open the book and actually, like, follow along?

No, they just listen and I got.

That's not reading a book.

That's what I said. I said that's not reading a book. That uses a different part of your brain. And what about reading comprehension? When you're reading, sometimes you stop and reread so you understand if you're listening, you don't have time to do that because you'll fall behind and you'll miss what's next.

Right.

So it's a different part of your brain processing. And I'm going to get on my. I'm going to call that teacher and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what's funny is he's like, mom, you don't understand. Especially since COVID It's like, most of my class can't read.

Whoa.

This is ninth grade high school.

Wow.

Here in the Pocono Mountains. I'm not gonna dox which high school. Because we have more than one.

They all suck. But you hear me, they all suck.

That's crazy. But what's funny was I didn't also like.

No, it's not crazy. It's sad.

But what I felt like was he was just saying with the teacher, you know, that's. He was almost parroting what he probably heard the teacher say. Well, since COVID a lot of kids can't read, and we don't want to embarrass them.

Well, no, what you do is you tutor them or you give them special help after school. Right? I mean, that's what they did when I was a kid. If you were having issues. I mean, I had issues in math class, so the math teacher took me aside after school and tutored me.

Yeah, but do you think that a teacher's union that had them protesting, writing their wills, of course, not being forced to go back into the classroom, that was nuts. Are gonna be. No, it's gonna be easy to get them to.

No, of course not. They don't want to work now.

Yeah.

Wow, that's sad, though. Yeah, that's really sad.

No, I mean, it's. It's the way of the world.

Now, I have a question going back to your little visual things here. This one with the. Yeah, with the voters.

Yes.

So now, out of these numbers, how many registered voters total? So you don't know?

I have it in my notes somewhere.

I'm just curious if these numbers jive with the actual total number of registered voters in your state.

Do the math. Republican, total vote.

I just told you I was bad at math.

Oh, you're gonna make me.

He can read, though.

I can read. I can write, too.

The American public school system.

But no, I was just curious, like, how many?

Five, four, five.

How many total?

One plus 204-826-52653,000,593. 736.

Okay, so now.

And this is all a Pennsylvania.

That's all a Pennsylvania, right? I think there's more than that. That's my guess.

More people.

Yeah.

Or registered.

Yeah, I'm guessing. Because that doesn't seem right. I mean, how many people live in Philadelphia alone?

You know what I mean? Well, we could check the number, but.

You also have to remember this was not a major.

No, no, I get that. I get that, but I'm still curious, like, the overall total of registered voters in Pennsylvania.

Oh, you mean the total number. Okay, this is total number of people who voted.

Correct.

You mean total number of registered voters.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Because I'm thinking. I'm thinking this is like.

I think what you're saying is what fraction of registered. Are that?

Yeah.

I mean.

No, you don't. Yeah, you don't have to do that. But you follow them where I'm saying.

Go to the website that tells us, like, every Monday we get numbers updated. That tells us.

Because I'm just thinking, how many new.

Republicans, how many new Democrats, how many independents, how many total? Like, there's this whole breakdown.

Right.

But in the whole, whole state. Because I think some of these numbers are, like, off.

And what are you going to do about it?

Well, I don't know.

Gotta have an action plan.

Yeah. I mean, and it's to register more Republicans, obviously.

Yeah.

So getting back to the Numbers, was it 42,000-give- or take?

It's. It's 42. I could give you the exact number if you'd like.

Well, just to be safe.

But it's A little more than 42,000. It's 42 and change.

Yeah. Just to be safe, we can have a little overage. So out of 42,500, just to be safe, little buffer. How many in Monroe county do we need to flip it?

Last time I checked, we were about 5,000.

About 5,000.

Which is nothing. Well, except that we had this huge influx of people coming in from New York.

Yeah. But you know what?

It take the total off.

But I have an answer for that.

If we take the total state number, 42,000 and only 5,000 or 5,000 in Monroe county, that's a pretty big chunk.

Well, we're one of the more.

Right.

Heavily.

Right. So what I'm saying is we really need people to come out. If you lean conservative even then. Yeah.

Like you were talking about with the independence.

Yeah. I mean, it's 5,000 people. It's not that much. No, let's do our part in Monroe county.

And you can come to the GOP building on 6, 11 and I think in Scot run.

Yep.

Every Tuesday night from 5pm to 7pm I'm there with my plucky crew of volunteers and helpers. And we are there to register. Change your voter registration if you need an address change, sign you up for mail in ballot, renew your mail and ballot, answer your questions about any of this.

No, I learned a lot tonight just from about this.

Even if you're the mail in ballot.

Thing, especially young people, if you have. If you. I'm talking about this one gentleman I know. He thought he may be interested in doing something politically.

Okay.

So I introduced him to a couple people and well, it seems like it's going on.

So that's good news about that too. Just about. When was it? September. We. Well, not we, but in Monroe county we have a Young Republican senior club that also meets at the gop.

That's cool.

And it's on the last Monday or a fourth Monday of every month. So fourth Monday of the month, 6:30pm you go to the GOP building. It's the Young Republicans. And we even got a Teen Republicans group.

Oh, no kidding.

I was president. I was actually president of the New Jersey teenage Republicans.

Cool.

Well, 1973 come. No, two 72 mentor.

So. And we have the teen Republicans and young Republicans meet at the same time.

Now is there a statewide Young Republicans as well? And what's the age group for them?

Young Republicans. It's kind of surprising. It goes. It's basically like 18 to 39. Yeah.

Wow.

And there was actually. I sometimes dip into the young Republicans meeting. Even though I'm old and I'm like always embarrassing, like I'm sorry I'm.

You look like you're 12 compared to.

Me, but I'm like, I'm sorry I'm invading your space. But I want to let you guys know this is what's going on and does anybody need anything? You know, and they were actually in a big discussion about how that should probably be divided into two age groups.

Okay.

Because the, the concerns of somebody in.

Their 20s is different than somebody, are.

Very different than somebody in their 30s. The Young Republicans, you know, in their 30s. That's a great place to talk to people about school board and property taxes where the 20 somethings are worried about, you know, am I ever going to be able to buy a home? Can I afford to go to college? Should I go to college or should I, you know, look at, you know, trade? You know, they have different concerns and so, but it was really interesting and you know, so the teens meet at the same time. They, I think they start a half an hour later. But it's. If you go at like 6:30, that, that's in there. And then the women's Republican, Monroe County Republican women. Third Wednesday. Yeah, third Wednesday of the month. So there are a lot of groups. I mean you keep yourself pretty busy. Tuesday nights is really more just kind of an open house drop in. We have coffee, tea, snacks. It's also a hangout. You know, you got nothing else to do, nowhere else to be, and you want to come and hang out with politically like minded people, come on by and, and you know, grab a chair and start bullshitting. Yeah. And build community.

Right.

Really.

See that's the thing is, is Republicans don't do that. The Democrats do and our side for whatever reason doesn't. And it's always been that way as far as kind of like as far as I can remember.

You know, you have this preconceived notion of all right, you know, we're gonna go to the GOP building and it's, you know, an office thing and you know, I'll see the secretary and then, you know, thank you very much for coming and leave.

No, this is a hangout.

This is, you know, it's good information to get out there because what I envision or what somebody else envisions and again, being conservative, you have different pre notions of what could happen or what does happen. So it's great information to know.

Yeah. You know, and we'd love to.

And the website is early vote Action.

And you know, you can also get connected to your local county coordinator.

This is nationwide.

Well, early vote action is mostly Pennsylvania, but we're starting to.

Well, because Scott.

Spread out.

Scott Pressler, who's the founder of this group, he's from pa.

He moved here.

That's what I. But, I mean, he lives here. That's what I meant. But now I'm seeing him, like, on the news. He's everywhere. I mean, this guy's going every. He was in Utah yesterday, I think.

Well, I mean, this program can be utilized nationwide. You know what I mean?

So he's trying to expand it.

He is, but we're trying to focus on PA in a smart way. Are, you know, most of its pa. Because that's where we started. That's where we had the most time. But we're starting to send these little tendrils out to. Like, we did, you know, a lot of work in New Jersey before the last election, you know, to try to help get the. You know, get the Republican governor.

I don't think Jersey will ever flow right now.

I know, and I think he was, you know. Yeah, you're right. It's kind of like, where's Wal. Where's Waldo? Where's. Or who is it? Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Where in the world is Scott Pressler? He's all over the place.

No, he is. I mean, I saw him on the news, and I think it was. It wasn't. Maybe it wasn't Utah, but it was someplace west of here.

Well, he was in California a little while ago. Really. Trying to get them to push their voter id.

Okay.

And Benny Johnson, too, Was. Was there.

Yes.

You know, you'll see these political hotspots pop up, and that's where. If that's where the work is, that's where.

Now, does he do this on his own or somebody call him there for help?

I.

You don't know.

I am not my boss's keeper. The less I know about, the better. The less I know, the better.

You're just focused on your thing.

I just take my orders.

So now, in Monroe county, let's take Stroudsburg.

Okay.

All right.

You mean the little blue bubble in a red county?

Yes, which I don't get at all. There was this wonderful woman running for mayor. I can't even remember her name.

Lisa Van Wee.

No, no, no. Republican. It was. Oh, I can't. I'm having a senior moment. Anyhow, the guy that got elected, the Democrat, he resigned.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. This has been all over our Facebook page or the Monroe County GOP Facebook page.

Yeah, but the guy resigns to take a $75,000 a year job. Carrie. Carrie Manning. That was it. She was running against him.

Yes.

And she had a lot of votes.

Yeah.

And she didn't win.

Well, you know what we see, but.

But like what's going to happen now?

What we see every election night. And I saw, you know, when I the first election that I worked the polls or worked in the, at the polling place, you have, you always have the Republican bump on the day of election, Right.

As far as voters of.

Yeah. And like the Republican candidates will often be like, I remember at my polling place that night. Pennsylvania has this lovely tradition. It's so cute. I really think it's just adorable that every night at the end of the note, they post the results on the door.

Oh, on the door.

Yeah. Or a window.

Okay.

Like, it's basically. No, I've never heard of any other state that does that. Like when I first moved here, I'm like, what are you doing? They're like, oh, it's tradition, Pennsylvania. We post the results on the building so people can come and see. And I was like, oh, that's so cute. That's so like, you know, traditional.

See, if you passed your test, all the kids would.

Yeah, it was like this old fashioned throwback to when you'd be riding by on your horse and you'd be like, oh, that's right, today's election day. Let me go see. But anyway, so the results were. There were two particular candidates, Republican candidates that we were working really hard to local candidates to get, you know, get elected. And they were both, they both had won. And I went home so happy. I was like, oh, yay.

And then you woke up and the next morning.

And actually the funny thing is the next day was one of the candidates actual birthday. And I woke up, I'm like, oh, I got a text. Congratulations. And what better birthday present than to win your election? And before I, you know, I go to, I'm like, I see all these text messages that were like consolatory. Oh, we're so sorry.

How does that work?

Like, what happened? The mail in ballots are counted at 3am Aha. So the day of votes put the Republicans ahead, but then the mail in.

Ballots came in and blew us out of the water.

So that's why there's this big push to, you know, get people to get their mail in ballots even, you know, before. I mean, I'd be happy if you just get the mail in ballot So I know you're going to cast your vote and that nothing's going to come in in between that. And if that means you're going to vote on election day, but you're going to keep it for a backup, I'm happy with that.

So on election day, you usually try.

To get people to tournament ahead of time. Because then we start saying, oh, okay, we, we're doing okay. And it also allows us to know where do we need to direct our efforts to get, which makes sense.

So now the organization you work for is separate from the gop?

Yes. Yeah, we're completely separate. Early Vote Action is its own independent entity.

But you're also helping out the GOP in Monroe County.

We help all sorts of.

I mean, you personally, you're doing. Yeah, right.

Because that's just, you know, where the help is needed.

Right.

You know, it's. It's the place and people, People like.

Across the country can get involved in their own.

But I also.

Their own county or town.

Like I set up. I did a ton of. When the weather was nicer, I did a ton of cruiser nights. Pennsylvania, they love their cruiser night.

Yep.

I was like three of them a week. I'm like, wow. They love their cars. So I would set up a table at a cruiser night.

Oh, that's cool.

Hey, I'd have my signs up.

Scott was down at the outdoor, the great outdoor expo.

We do all the county fairs.

Yeah.

I've set up at oil change places, at post offices, at. Yeah. The grocery stores, markets. You know, I set up my little table and I have my little stuff and I. Everybody walks by, I'm like, are you registered to vote? Have you signed up for a mail in ballot? I've only been called a fascist once.

Really? I get called a Nazi on a daily basis. I do. I swear to God. Mostly on Facebook.

But that's because you're always going, hi. Hi.

That's not even funny. No, I do. I get beat up all the time. Constant.

What is the. I guess not most important part, but what's the most misconception or comment that you get that we can let everybody know now, like if somebody was asking you everything you want to know about.

Mail in ballots, the biggest misconception is people think if they sign up that they have to choose one or the other.

That's what I always say, that if.

I sign up for a mail in ballot, I can't vote at the polls. And that's not true. You sign up for a mail in ballot and if you change your Mind. Or if you're just keeping it as a backup, you absolutely just bring it with you, turn it in at the polling place, they will spoil it in front of you, and then you can vote as normal. Okay, so this is not the only. You know, it. It's not even like we tell people is it's not even the preferred way to vote. I mean, it is if you want. The most secure way to vote is the. To get one and hand deliver it yourself. But you don't have to choose one or the other. You're not committed to voting by mail. Once you sign up for one, you always can change your mind and go to the polls. You just have to bring it with you. And that is why I tell people, put it in the glove compartment of the car. And that's every piece of it, the envelope. Because sometimes people show up with just about like, no, you actually have to turn in the whole packet because every piece of the packet has that tracking number on it. Okay, so you have to put. Bring in the whole.

Now, what's the difference between this and a provisional ballot?

Well, provisional ballot is. Those are ballots that are identified as. We're not sure if this should be counted or not. We need to clarify something.

Well, what would, what would make that a provisional?

What, what would, what would be an example. Yeah, an example of a provisional ballot would be if somebody showed up and they said, hey, I, you know, and they're like, oh, you got a mail in ballot so you can't vote. Oh, I threw it in the garbage. I thought it was junk mail.

Okay.

I changed my mind and thought I could just throw it in the garbage and come and vote in person.

And you can't do that.

Right. So they'll say, okay, well, you know what, we'll have you do a provisional ballot and then we'll make sure that someone else didn't use that. You know, it's. The provisional ballot is. Okay, we'll. We'll let you vote. We'll collect this ballot, but we need to do a little bit more verification.

Does it ever get counted?

That's controversial. Some people will tell you, oh, yeah, every single one. Every single one gets counted. I've heard from a lot of people, they say, oh, they only count it. They only count the provisionals if it's close and the provisionals are needed to break up close election. I don't know, it's above my pay grade. But, you know, one of the things that I saw that where they had to have a provisional is you had a father And a son that was a junior and a senior.

Oh, same name.

Yeah. And the father had come in and the election worker gave him the son's ballot by mistake.

Oops.

So then when the son came in later to vote, you voted already. They're like, you voted already. So they were like trying to figure out how to square that circle. And you know, that was the judge of elect. I, I don't know what she ended up doing, but that would have been a situation for a professional.

The other I've heard is if a machine, if the machine goes down.

Well, that's why they ran out of paper for the provisionals in another county because their machines went down for four hours. So they had to give everybody provisionals and then they ran out of provisionals.

And then did those provisionals ever get counted? We don't know.

But if you had your mail in.

Ballot, you wouldn't have to worry about it. You go to the election precinct and drop it off.

And that's another most important part too is you keep your mail in ballot. If you're going to use it, go to the pre precinct vote, but keep it with you up until you're ready to vote in person.

Yeah. In the glove compartment of your car.

And then turn it in.

Right.

And then go vote.

Or, or do what Julie said and actually go to the election board and drop it in their box.

You could, you could do that with the mailing.

The only situation where I would say you kind of have to, you know, put it through the mail is if you have no other choice.

Right.

Like the situation with somebody who, you know, they're in the hospital, they did get a mail in ballot, it's at home, their son brings it into them, they can fill it out and you know, but even in that situation there is a pathway. Call the election precinct and get a, a person to be your designated ballot delivery person. But you know, or you know, so situations like, like that. But what I tell people is, look, oh, but I don't trust postal service. Okay. Well it's better than not voting at all.

Right.

So it's something and there is a.

Tracking number on it. So if it something, if it doesn't get delivered, you can call and like you were saying, you can check online to see if the thing actually made it there and if it doesn't, you get a new one.

Yeah. You know, one of the best lines that I heard is there's another organization that, where we work very well together. We don't have any kind of competition. Like they're great. It's called phase. And the guy who runs them is this guy Cliff Maloney. And he and Scott work together really well, especially when it starts getting up close to election. We work with them, they work with us. And Scott and Cliff work very well together. And they together had this phrase on one of their X Men posts that I thought was really, you know, summed it up well, I said we have found the secret recipe, now let's get cooking.

Which makes sense.

And that's the frustrating thing is when I try to tell people, you know, we, we really did find the key to that lock. We did really find this pathway to success. Success for Republicans to win elections. Now we just have to get the Republicans on board to use it, right? And that is, that's the hard part. Getting signed up for the mail and ballots so that you get that notification. So you will never miss an election because you didn't know there was an election. You will never have an uneducated or uninformed vote because you have time to sit at home and educate yourself on every single single candidate and every single issue. You will never have an issue where an emergency happens and you're not able to make the polls because if the emergency happens, you have your mail in ballot, you can drop it off the election precinct and then deal with your emergency. And even if you go all the way to on election day and you're standing in line and it's going to be four hours and the machines are down and they ran out of provisionals and they ran out of paper, you can always take that and deliver it to the election precinct. So these are just the it again it goes back to. We need to convert more of those wanna votes to DID votes because we're losing a lot of wanna votes to wanna votes. Couldn't vote. And you know, there's another thing too that I, there's always a good backup. If I didn't bring up that because I did have this one woman and she was just really uncomfortable with the postal service. She's like, I just don't trust.

Well, I don't trust.

What if I sign up for one and I don't get it? I said, well then you call them and say I didn't get it and they'll send you another one. She said, but what if I don't get that one? Okay. I would be remiss if I didn't explain that you can wait for early voting to start. It's usually about a month before election day. You can walk into the election Precinct and vote and request your same day mail and ballot and they will hand it to you and you will fill it out and then you drop it in the ballot box so you don't even have to like trust it be mailed to you.

Yeah. We didn't even talk about the early voting thing. Now I am so against that. It's unbelievable.

Now I will warn you, if you go in there and say, I want to vote early, I want to do early voting, they'll tell you we don't have early voting voting in Pennsylvania.

Yeah, but they do.

It's called same day mail.

No, but I, I, I have a real problem with this whole early voting thing because as you know, I mean, I'm preaching the choir here. But maybe you guys don't know is that a candidate presents himself as, let's say, abc. Right. And then you vote, you know, you vote early and then all of a sudden that candidate does something really stupid or something comes out about him and it's like, oh, my God, I already voted for him. I really screwed up.

Yeah. They said after the debate and what's funny is my feelings have changed.

Oh, you talking about the debate with Trump and Biden?

No, with Fetterman and Dr. Oz. And after that debate, one of the most like common googled phrases in Pennsylvania is, how can I change my mail? How can I change if I already voted early? How can I change my can? But the irony is their thought was, oh, I already voted for Fetterman because he's a Democrat.

Right.

But holy cow, that debate performance was really showing the reality of the disability was struggling with. And yet in retrospect, he's my favorite Democrat right now.

I'm still on the fence about him.

Boy.

But then again, I, and I also remind people you have to look at his voting record. Yeah, he talks a good talk.

Right.

And I, but he still votes with them.

Say one of those, one of the last of the old school, common sense Democrat Pennsylvania, common sense democracy, Democrats in how he believes and how he feels and what he wants. But, but when push comes to shove and there's pen to paper, he always votes with the Democrats.

Right.

But yeah, I think I covered everything you want to know about Early Vote Action. I encourage people to check out our website, reach out to your local county court.

And the website, again is early vote action.com and, and people can get involved. Yeah.

And it's easy. And that's what we had talked about the app a little bit. You download the app and you have a choice of basically Texting people, little messages to say, hey, the. You know, don't forget about election day and please, you know, or the deadline for voter registration is coming up. The deadline of a. So you send these little text. You don't have to write them. You literally just sit there while you're standing in line at the bank or getting your oil change, and you can send out 50 text messages. This is what. And. Or that. You can send postcards, or you can get a walking list and go knock on doors. It gives you a lot of choices. You can't even make phone calls.

That scares me.

But, you know, this is what I've learned about the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans need to be nudged, right?

No, no, you're right. You're 100, right.

Democrats don't.

Nope.

The Republicans are the ones that need those little points of contact to get them to.

Yeah, the Democrats send a memo out and they all, like, just band together.

Well, because they've also embraced the easy way of voting. They are not concerned with, well, is it safe? Is it, you know, it's convenient? Is it, you know, gonna make it there? Could it be messed with? They don't care.

Right.

They just want numbers in my mailbox. I fill it out, I put a stamp on it. I put it back in my mailbox.

Done.

I voted. Because they also know that historically, the mail in voting has benefited their side. So when we talk about, well, we don't trust them. Well, because we have reason not to. And I will be the first to say, look, you know, it's hard to sell something that's got such a terrible track record and such a terrible history. Mail in ballots, you know, universal mail in ballots. When Covid happened, there was a lot of suspicious activity that was taking advantage of the mail in ballot.

Yeah, but we all. You're being nice about it. There was, like, major voter fraud, but.

We have improved things.

True.

Now, you. You don't just have everybody gets one in their mailbox. Some people get three.

Right.

You actually have to request one. You have to sign up for it. You have to renew it every year. So if anything changes, that's just Pennsylvania. Right.

Each state is different.

I actually have people push back. They're like, what do you mean? I got to renew it every year. I'm like, look, you wanted more security. This is.

Yeah, right.

To make sure you are testifying on paper every year that your address is.

The same and that you're still alive.

And that you're still alive, and then you haven't Moved like this is a security measure. So they have got.

Not to make it. It's not to make it more difficult is to make it more.

More secure. Which makes sense. Yep. And that's what it's all about.

That's what it's all.

Did you have fun?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm a little nervous about, you know, getting home in this dark woodland forest.

Yeah.

We're out in the middle of now.

Nowhere.

Out of nowhere.

Secret, secret, secret, secret meeting tonight.

That's right. And.

But thanks. Thank you, Scott Pressler, and thanks for starting this early program.

Thank you for having us coming on.

With us and the opportunity to answer the questions and because I learned something. It was stuff I didn't know either.

Yeah.

I thought it's really good.

I thought the mail and ballot thing was something completely different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So thank you.

Yep. Good information. Good information.

We have to come. We have to come back to this. This little hole in a wall place. It's kind of cool.

Yeah. Well, we gotta just make sure nobody.

Tell you where it is. But then I'd have to kill you.

Right.

Tell you the location. But then I'd have to kill you.

Pod pinions on the road.

Yes.

Out in the middle of the nowhere.

All right, guys, well, we're going to wrap it up.

Y.

All right.

All right. Episode 29. Done.

Done in the books. Yep. And we'll see you next time.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye.

Thanks, guys.

You're welcome.

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