Pediatrics at the Polls

Dr. Kade Goepferd: This is Talking Pediatrics, a clinical podcast by Children’s Minnesota, home to the Kid Experts, where the complex is our every day. Each episode, we bring you intriguing stories and relevant pediatric health care information as we partner with you in the care of your patients. Our guests, data, ideas and practical tips will surprise, challenge, and perhaps change, how you care for kids.

Welcome to Talking Pediatrics. I’m your host Dr. Kade Goepferd. It’s election season and it’s the time of the year when some of our patients who are now young adults are casting their vote for the first time. Some of our younger patients are asking questions about voting and politics that might seem hard to answer, and some of the parents we support might have questions about their own voter eligibility. Not to mention trying to sort out our own voting choices and how we can best show up for kids at the polls.

Joining us today is Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, whose job it is to protect, defend, and strengthen the right to vote in Minnesota. He is committed to expanding access to voting and removing barriers to voting and his office has initiatives specifically targeted to teaching students about voting logistics and helping young adults prepare for voting. We are so happy to have him with us today to discuss voting elections and how to help parents, kids, and young adults navigate this election season. Secretary Simon, thanks for joining us today.

Secretary of State Steve Simon: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: What motivated you to step into this role as Secretary of State?

Steve Simon: Well, I like to say that I am in the democracy business and that is a really joyous business, despite challenges. It really is. I see this business as connected to every issue because no matter what you feel on any issue, all roads really do lead to the ballot box. Meaning if you want to make progress on a particular thing or issue or initiative or passion, you really are going to want people elected to office who share your views and values. This is connected to everything no matter what you care about the most. Fortunately in Minnesota we have a long and proud tradition of voting and voting at really high rates and that’s a good thing.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Of course, in order to make a difference at the polls, we have to be able to understand how to vote and how to register and all of those things. What are some of the biggest barriers that you see when it comes to people accessing the right to vote?

Steve Simon: Well, first, let me say the good news in Minnesota is that there’s less there than meets the eye. Meaning people usually imagine voting and everything associated with it as being far more complex than it actually is. It’s actually far less complex than people imagine it to be in their head.

Let me just say from the outset, we have a great website, if I may say so. That’s a great one-stop shop, it’s MNVotes.gov. M-N like Minnesota, V-O-T-E-S dot gov. On that website you can find out what all the rules are. It’s very user friendly. You can even register to vote on that site. You can order a ballot to come to you on that site if you don’t want to go to a polling place, you can find out where your polling place is. You can even find out who or what is on your ballot by just typing in your address. If you’re wondering, hey, in my area, are we voting on state senate this year? Are we even voting on judges this year? You can enter that. That’s a good starting point.
In terms of overall barriers, I think part of it is people imagine it to be more complex than it is and part of it can be, particularly for new Americans, navigating what to them is a brand new system. Fortunately in Minnesota though, we make it easy and hassle-free for them as well.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Let’s start with some of our youngest patients, kids who are not yet old enough to vote but have a lot of questions about what voting is and elections. How would you explain this process to kids, to your own kid, to any kid who wonders what we’re all doing this November?

Steve Simon: As the father of two young kids myself, one who is 11 1/2 and one who is 10, I have some experience there, and I also travel throughout the state and talk to kids of all ages. I think particularly for younger kids, one way that I’ve tried to talk about it is it’s really about choices. It’s really about choices. Just like you might want to choose the pizza topping at home or you might want to choose where to go for fun on a particular weekend activity with family, it’s really about choices. It’s making choices, but in this case, it’s not about food, it’s not about an activity, it’s about who do we want our leaders to be.

Now this year offers a real opportunity because we have a presidential election and kids, even little kids can understand that. They might not understand county commissioner or judge, that might be an abstract kind of concept, but I think most kids, even very little young children understand the idea of the president. They might think of it as the boss of the country or the highest ranking person in the country. It’s really an opportunity to say it’s about choices.

Then when we get into maybe a little bit more advanced and an older age in terms of not just what is voting, but why do we vote, why is this important? I use an analogy which I’ve found effective sometimes, which is to say, picture yourself riding on a ship. You’re a passenger on a ship. Voting is like saying, I’m not just a passenger on the ship, I’m helping to steer the ship as well. I’m not just passively riding. I’m actually helping to determine the direction of this thing. Instead of a ship, obviously it’s our country or it’s our city or it’s our county or it’s our state. Those kinds of things are introductory ways that I at least have found are effective in talking to kids of various ages about voting, about the process, and about the why as well.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: One thing that I get tripped up with my own children and I think is following political trend in this country is when we talk about elections, we talk about winning and losing and there’s often this sense of my team and your team and who won and who lost, and it can get really polarized very quickly. The ship analogy to me sounds like an example of regardless of who’s at the helm or who’s the captain, we all still participate in steering the ship.

Steve Simon: That’s right. That is a way to take the edge off some of the team aspect of this, that it’s team red, team blue, team purple, team green, whatever. It’s not just about that. It’s about generally steering a ship. As I always point out, and I think to adults, we don’t think of it this way sometimes is elections happen all the time. This isn’t a once-in-forever decision. If someone that you favored or that your family favored or your parents or someone you know favored didn’t win, that office is up again or other offices are up again. We have a lot of elections in this country. We have federal elections and state elections and local elections. There are many opportunities to steer many ships.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: When we move into older kids or young adults who are either on that cusp of voting or maybe voting for the first time, how does the conversation change or how do you help them navigate how they’re going to be making these types of decisions of who to vote for and which candidates are going to be best aligned with their values?

Steve Simon: I think it’s a real opportunity and we know that if we can get young people thinking about themselves as voters, even before they officially are voters, say in late middle school or into high school, 15, 16, 17, if we can get them thinking of themselves that way, it means they’re much more likely to vote that first time that they’re eligible at 18, 19, 20 and so on. We know that if they vote that first time they’re eligible, they’re far more likely to make it a lifelong habit.

One of the things we’ve done in our office is we work with the YMCA statewide and we have what we call our Students Voting Program. It’s a mock election program for all students elementary through high school, where they get the opportunity to literally vote for candidates on the ballot. The reason that’s important is, and it may surprise some adults, but having seen this, it no longer surprises me, some kids, even those who are in high school, don’t understand that voting is simply darkening an oval. They think it’s more complicated. They think spelling is involved or writing is involved or something else is involved. When they come to find out it’s like a standardized test, all you’re doing physically literally is darkening and oval, they’re pleasantly surprised. Another example where something that they imagined was more complex is much simpler and easier than they had imagined.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Good resources for new voters to one, learn about the process but also start to understand which candidates hold which views or how they can make about how to cast their ballot for which candidates.

Steve Simon: It’s easy to find information on the big offices. You can find information very easily on a presidential candidate, but what about a candidate for school board or county commissioner or something like that? I think one starting point is our website MNVotes.gov, because when you type in your address to find out who or what is on your ballot, automatically a sample ballot will pop up depending on your address and it’ll show every contest and every candidate in every contest and links to their website. Now that’s a starting point and obviously candidate websites will only say all the nice and good things about the candidates, so you’re hearing about the candidates in their own words. That’s a starting point, not an ending point, but it is I think a good and useful and helpful starting point.

There are other groups statewide, nonpartisan voting engagement groups like the League of Women Voters, who do a really good job, particularly on the down ballot races of providing information, providing forums, candidate forums for example, for all manner of offices and also information about the candidates and where they stand on select issues.

I think in Minnesota we’re fortunate we have some media outlets which really do a good job. I want to just say the Star Tribune does a really good job of providing, around election time, resources and asking candidates questions and having candidates for particular offices answer the same, say three or four questions about what they do or where they stand. There are resources for those down ballot races, meaning the races that are not the top of the ticket like president or governor.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Along those lines, could you talk a little bit about the importance of voting in local elections and in off years and when it’s not a presidential election? Because I think voter turnout does tend to go down in those off years and often those are some of the elections that impact us most closely.

Steve Simon: Exactly, and I think embedded in your question is the answer, which is in terms of everyday impact, those local offices, the ones that don’t get as much attention as the president of the United States or the governor of the state of Minnesota, they will really impact you. Those are the offices that will impact snow removal on your street, trash collection on your street, public safety in your neighborhood, curriculum in your school. It’s really important to understand that those offices often have more of a direct and frequent impact on someone’s day-to-day life than president of the United States or member of Congress or something like that. It’s really important, and you can have a real impact as well on those issues that are really close to home. That’s really the pitch for those local offices, and you’re more likely to maybe know that person or know someone who knows that person. Not many people know candidates for president of the United States, but they might know a candidate for school board or a candidate for mayor or city council. That’s another aspect of this that should draw people closer.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: As a pediatrician, when I’m thinking through it, school board is something I think about a lot because I think about how the educational environment is shaped for kids that we’re taking care of, what access to health information they will or won’t have in schools, what access to resources like school nurses or gay straight alliances or things like that they will or won’t have in schools. I’ve seen firsthand how much of an impact our state legislators and our state senators have on the health of kids in this state, probably much more than the president or at the national level.

Let’s cover some of the basics. Who is eligible to vote in the state of Minnesota?

Steve Simon: Pretty simple rules. You have to be 18, you have to be a citizen of the United States, you have to be a resident of Minnesota, which is defined as 20 days, so not a big burden, and you can’t currently be serving in prison. If you’ve met all of those, you’re good to go, you are a voter or you’re an eligible voter.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: We do have some podcast listeners that are not located in Minnesota. Some are located not even in this country. How do eligibility requirements for voting differ state to state?

Steve Simon: They differ slightly. There are some basics. You have to be 18, you have to be a resident of that state. I can’t speak for what the residency requirement is in other states, but it’s similar. If it’s not 20 days, it’s 30 or 45. Really there’s no state that I’m aware of where it’s six months or anything like that. Where we may differ from other states is how we treat formerly incarcerated folks, folks who have left prison behind. In Minnesota, thanks to a law last year that a lot of us worked on for a long time, those who have left prison behind can vote. In some states they can’t. That’s a tricky issue that people should look up because it really does differ state by state.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Then in terms of proof of your eligibility to vote, we hear a lot about voter ID and things like that. What are the rules in Minnesota for proving your eligibility to vote?

Steve Simon: In Minnesota as everywhere else in America, first you have to register to vote before you actually vote. I always like to take the mystery out of that term voter registration because it’s so mysterious. It really only means two things. To register to vote means you’ve just got to show that you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live. That’s it. It means two things. It doesn’t mean 20 things or eight things. It means two, you are who you say you are, you live where you say you live. In Minnesota, not speaking for any other state, we have a number of things, a long list of things that can be used to show either or both. It doesn’t have to be a driver’s license. Not everyone has one of those, but there are a multitude of things you can use.

I’ll give you an example on the second part, the live where you say you live part, we have a system in Minnesota at least called vouching, which means someone in your precinct, which is a fancy title for a neighborhood or cluster of neighborhoods, someone in your precinct can sign an oath under penalty of perjury saying, I swear that this person lives where this person says they live. That’s one example. We make it easy, we make it hassle-free. There’s a long list of things you can use to show either or both.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Can you register to vote the day of voting?

Steve Simon: Yes. In Minnesota, we’re fortunate. We’re one of only about 15 states where this is true, where you can do it on game day. You can decide the night before you’re going to vote or the morning of you’re going to vote and maybe you’ve never voted or you did many years ago, or you need to refresh your registration because you had a name change or you moved. You can walk right into your neighborhood polling place and you can register right there.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: For folks who live elsewhere, are there common practices around when people have to register by or is it widely varied?

Steve Simon: It does vary, but its typical amount of time is about a month before, so you need to get registered to vote typically a month before a given election. In November, that would be early October. That’s the typical rule for states that do not have Minnesota’s same-day voter registration law.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: I would assume that the requirements for proof of who you are and where you live differ state by state as well.

Steve Simon: They do. Minnesota’s list is more, I would say, generous and long than other states, but yes, that differs as well.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: One thing that has come up for me in clinic, where I have a number of families or parents who are new Americans and maybe haven’t voted in this country. How can we in the office approach this issue with families and make sure that they know that they can vote or how they can access that information?

Steve Simon: One of the things I’m most proud of is that we have more than doubled the number of non-English languages that we do all things elections in on our website, hard copy, everything from five to 11. 12, if you include American Sign Language, which we also have. I think it’s critically important. I know this from my own mother, people want technical information in their native language. That’s how we’re all wired and so on our website, we have all voting materials in 11 languages, from Hmong to Somali to Oromo to Spanish to Russian and the like. It’s MNVotes.gov, that’s the website and we want to make it easy for people who have chosen Minnesota and chosen America and who are eligible.

The key thing is they need to be a citizen and they need to be 18 and they need to be a resident of the state. Those are the key factors. If they meet all those criteria they are in, it does not matter their country of origin, and we will hopefully have a language that will accommodate them.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: One thing that the last presidential election I saw some of my colleagues attach to their hang tags or their ID tags, they would have a QR code that a family could just scan right in the clinic around this time of year. Just throwing in the question, are you registered to vote or do you need to register, and then they could scan a QR code. I’m not sure if that came from American Academy Pediatrics or where that came from, but are you aware of any similar tools or resources that we could have in our clinics and offices for families?

Steve Simon: Yes. I’m glad you mentioned that because we were part of that effort in past election cycles. We hope to have that same initiative this year just to make it easy and simple. One of the big barriers is just lack of information about the basics. Just the basics. Where do I go, what do I do? What does voter registration mean? The website really is a treasure of information and we hope and we think quite user-friendly. Just being able to go to a QR code to find something in a person’s native language, if that’s what makes it easier for them, it really is a great way to get people into the process in a hassle-free kind of way.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: As people who are taking care of kids, we typically will not endorse political candidates to our patients, but we may have pretty strong views on how we want to help make Minnesota or make our country the best possible place for kids. Do you have any recommendations of places that we can go, particularly to learn about how candidates are thinking about issues relating to kids and kids’ health or how they voted in the past, resources for us to make those decisions?

Steve Simon: I think when it comes to those decisions, it really is about trusted voices in a particular place. You mentioned a couple of different organizations and whether they endorse candidates or not, that’s the other thing. Many groups, nonprofits, professionals, others don’t endorse, but they do become limited mini-platforms for candidates to say how they feel about issues. The organization might not endorse or choose or pick, but they might serve as a way for people interested in that issue or pursuit or area to find out where people stand. I can’t say with certainty that any particular group may or may not do that, but find out, don’t assume that because a professional organization or an associated nonprofit doesn’t endorse, that they don’t have resources about where candidates stand, particularly at the federal level, particularly not just the presidential candidates, but candidates for the US House and the US Senate. In my experience, many professional organizations in the medical field, in the legal field, in other fields do provide that space on a website, for example, to air out differences among the candidates even if they are ultimately neutral on the outcome.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: For those who are in Minnesota, I do want to mention our Children’s Minnesota Advocacy Network. If you go to childrensmn.org and search for Children’s Minnesota Advocacy Network, there’s a join button and that will get you information from our folks here at Children’s Minnesota about what’s happening here in the state for kids and issues that we’re paying attention to. For example, last year, one issue we were following really closely was preschool lunches for kids and really wanting to make sure that our kids had what they needed to eat and meet their basic needs in schools. That’s where you can find the issues that we’re following that are close to kids.

I would say as someone who… LGBTQ youth and trans and gender diverse kids is an issue that’s very close to my heart and so I’ll often go to websites like the Human Rights Campaign that might talk about specific issues. I think if people find that there’s something that is really connected to them and their political beliefs, searching out organizations like you mentioned would be good.

I want to end with, again, going back to our role as helping parents do their job best. Any advice or resources for parents as they’re navigating conversations with their kids this time of year about elections and voting and simplifying that conversation?

Steve Simon: The benefit in Minnesota and in many states is that there’s less there than meets the eye. It is very often less complicated than young people imagine it, and that’s a nice and happy surprise. When it’s the opposite, then you get into a problem. They think it’s a certain level of complexity and it’s even more complex. This is the opposite. They imagine all sorts of things and complexities that just aren’t there, and they’re really surprised and at ease to learn how easy the process is. Again, our website is a good one-stop shop to figure out what the rules are and where to go and the like, and that’s MNVotes.gov.

I also want to commend the League of Women Voters nationally, in Minnesota, in many of their state chapters. They have a really, really great, and I think effective ongoing narrative and story to tell to young people in particular. They’re rigorously nonpartisan. They host candidate events and forums. They don’t endorse candidates, and I think they’ve been particularly sensitive to the needs of youth, so that’s one great one.

In Minnesota, we have an organization called the Minnesota Youth Council, which is what it sounds like. It was created in state law. It’s basically run by students across the state, and they do a great job in breaking down all these terms, in making voting more accessible for people.

YMCA in Minnesota and I gather in many other states is also a great resource. They often run the Youth in Government program, something that I am an alum of in Minnesota, regardless, they do a great job in just making voting and the choosing process more accessible. They offer resources and links. Those are a few ideas that I have that I’ve encountered that can be useful.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Any books or children’s-oriented material that you’d recommend?

Steve Simon: Yes, so there’s one that I remember. It came out just a few years ago. There’s actually a Minnesota connection. It’s a great book. The story and the illustrations are great, called Monster Needs Your Vote. Monster Needs Your Vote. It’s by an author Paul Czajak. He has a Minnesota connection. He spent some time in Minnesota. I actually corresponded with him. It’s really a great read. It’s great for kids. It’s really centered at younger kids, but it’s a really fun book. I read it to my daughter when she was of a certain age, and it’s really a great way to get kids thinking about elections and campaigning and what that means. Great read. Monster Needs Your Vote.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Well, thank you so much. I know from looking at your website that you do a lot of advocacy with kids and youth and have gone to schools to talk to kids about voting. Maybe not in the next few months as things are really heating up around the election, but certainly appreciate your willingness to take that on and working directly with young people. Thanks for joining us today on the podcast. It’s been really great to have this conversation.

Steve Simon: Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kade Goepferd: Thank you for listening to Talking Pediatrics. Come back next time for a new episode with our caregivers and experts in pediatric health. Our showrunner is Cora Nelson. Episodes are produced, engineered and edited by Jake Beaver and Patrick Bixler. Our marketing representatives are Amie Juba and Krithika Devanathan. For information and additional episodes, check us out on your favorite podcast platform or go to childrensmn.org/talkingpediatrics.