MSU Extension 4-H Adulting 101

Welcome everyone to our September Adulting 101. Today, the topic is changing the world with your one vote. So welcome, everyone. We are so happy that you decided to join us today. And if you haven't already, consider putting in your chat, who you would pick as a fictional character to be president. Who would that be? And I'm going to turn it over to our presenter, Darren Bagley. But we also have Kim here, who is our ASL interpreter. So welcome, Kim. Thank you for being here. And, It's to you, Darren. Yeah. And one thing to think about with this question, is it's interesting because the skills it takes to get elected aren't necessarily the same as the skills it takes to lead once you're there. Like, it takes a lot of ego and putting yourself out there to get elected. But to lead effectively, you need to have some humility. And sometimes it's hard to find that balance of ego and humility in one person. So I see a couple of votes for Bluey. Yeah, Yeah, with this whole exercise, assume that they meet all the requirements. So assume that they're a US citizen and they're at least 35-years-old and things like that. So Superman, even though he's not from this planet, he can still be president. Hermine Grainger, Bruce Wayne, we got a Batman fan there. A whole bunch of good things. Some people I don't know, who we I'm going to need to look up and maybe do some more reading afterwards. But I want to let you know that MSU Extension programs are open to everyone regardless of their background. And if you feel that you're being discriminated anyway, you can reach out to our office and let them know, but we try to make our programs accessible to everyone. Now, I'm lucky enough. When people ask me what I do for a job, I say, I get to put politicians and young people in the same room and watch what happens, which is really, really fun. So this is a group it's from a while ago, but it's a group of 4-H Youth called the Michigan 4-H Youth Conservation Council. And this group presented to a Michigan Senate committee. And because of the work of this committee or this group, they actually changed the laws of the state of Michigan. That's a pretty powerful thing. I think if I went and made the same presentation that those young people made, I couldn't have changed things. Why do you think that is? Or do you believe me when I say that, that the young people, I think had more of an influence than I did? So let's say, for example, I was talking about the wonderful work 4-H does. If I was talking to a bunch of politicians, they'd say, Yeah, sure you say that you get paid by 4-H. So of course you support it. Whereas, when young people advocate on behalf of particular cause, they don't have all these hidden agendas and other things that a lot of adults do. They have innovative ideas. Yeah. Thanks, Michael. That was a good way to say it. More powerful meaning come from a group that doesn't necessarily have a political view. Now, now, Rachel, I'm not sure if it's Rachel or Rachelle, but when you say it's their future, you know, I've heard children are our future and things like that. I don't believe that. I think young people are leaders today. Right now, I see young people making a huge difference in the world, and it's not just the future, it's the present, which is powerful stuff. So I'm going to ask you a little trivia question here before we get started. How many state funded universities do we have here in Michigan? And you can go ahead and just type in the number of how many state funded universities do you think we have? Three. More than three. More than ten, 15, There you go, Erica. You got it. There they all are. Those are all the state funded universities. Now, this isn't colleges. This isn't community colleges, but this is state funded universities. And you'll see U of M is listed there three times. But I work in Flint, by the way, my name's Darren. And I work for 4-H. Now, the people in Flint for University of Michigan don't get treated the same as those folks in Ann Arbor. But those are all the universities we have here in the state. So what makes Michigan State University different from the 14 other state universities we have. And I know we've got some people not from Michigan on the call. This may be a little out of sorts. MSU is what's called a Land Grant University. Now, Michigan is the first one in the country. Now, before the Land Grant University system, colleges were primarily based for law and medicine. They taught people how to be doctors and lawyers. And if universities were mainly for law and medicine, what did other people do to learn their career? Well, most people became an apprentice. If you want to be a farmer, you'd study under another farmer. If you want to be an architect, you'd study under another architect. Yeah, you get involved in a trade or something like that. Well, the State of Michigan at the time, said, Well, no matter what program you want to go into, no matter what you want to go in for a career, there's things you can learn by going to a university. And so they created this university so everybody could go to school, no matter what they wanted to learn. And later on, the Congress, at the US level, decided as such a good idea that they copied the idea, and they spread it all across the country. Now, Michigan was the first one and then Penn State and then others. And a lot of times it's what's considered the Ag school in a state. And there's at least one land grant university in every state and territory across the United States. Some Southern states have two. One of those land grants is a historically Black college and university because in the southern states, they were segregated. And also, in Michigan, we have three other land grant colleges that are tribal land grants with some of our tribes that we have here in Michigan. Now, later on, they decided that wasn't enough because not everyone can make it to that university. So they created the Extension service, which is what Kathy and I work for, and there's an Extension program in every county and every state and territory in the United States. Now, I work in Flint. And that's part of Genesee County. Now, the idea behind the Extension is two fold. One is to take the research from the community and put it in the hands of people to help them with whatever they're doing in their everyday lives. And the other piece is to take the questions that they have from the community and work with those scientists and researchers to try to get answers. Now, I work in Flint, what question do you think we have? And this happened a few years ago, and you might have heard about it, depending on how old you are you. Our kids drink water with a whole bunch of lead in it. What do we do? And so with Extension, we work with scientists on campus. We know lead affects brain development, particularly with young children. And so we worked with researchers on what you can do about that. For example, there's certain things you can eat that can help mitigate some of the effects of lead in the water. There's also, we know, like I said earlier, lead affects brain development, and by doing brain stimulating activities with young children, you can help mitigate some of those effects. You can't reverse them, but you can slow them down. And it's that two way connection between the communities and the university that what's Extension is all about. Now, we do things in a lot of different areas. Extension started in 1914, and most people in 1914 were farmers. Now, Michigan grows more tart cherries. We used to be number one in blueberries, but we grow a lot of fruit here in Michigan. Now, a few years ago, I don't know if you can see this right here. See that little white thing and that raspberry. That's a maggot. That's a fly larva from a little fruit fly. Normally, fruit flies only attack overripe or diseased fruit or damaged fruit. Well, this is a new kind of fruit fly in Michigan and attack fresh fruit. It could devastate things. And Extension work with farmers to help counteract that. So when you eat your berries, you don't get a little fly maggot in with your berries. We also do things with food nutrition. What we eat affects our health. What we can do to preserve food and how to make the most of limited dollars, you know with inflation the way it is. We can help people with that. We also have a Master Gardener program that tells people how to garden and teaches young people about gardening. And we also have 4-H, which is what Kathy and I work for. I want you to type in the chat if you think you know what any of the 4-Hs are. And I'll give you a hint, out of three of the Hs are body parts that start with H. Head hands. Yep, that's two of them. Head, heart hands and health. Yep. We got them all. Good job, everybody. Give yourself, virtual high five. But those are the 4-Hs. Now, what 4-H does, is 4-H is where young people work on a project, and the project can be in any area, and then they work with caring adults to try to improve and try to get better. Now, the project is just kind of what gets kids involved, and they learn things like resiliency. They learn about caring for others. They learn all sorts of things. And the projects can be in any number of areas. It can be water quality. That's me with a group of Flint students testing the Flint River. It can be with politics or it can be raising a chicken. A number of areas. We do a ride range of projects in 4-H. Now, one interesting thing about how 4-H got it started is way back in the early 1900s, scientists at universities developed new varieties of corn. And the old farmers have said, you know, I've been using this corn for a while. My dad used this corn. My grandfather used this corn. I'm going to keep using the same corn. And so the scientists at the university gave corn gave the corn seed to these young people. And in some cases, they got ten times the yield down their corn as the adults did. And so then the farmers said, Oh, maybe there is something to this new variety of corn. And we believe young people can change the world from things from farming to politics to any kind of area. All right. I'm going to ask you a question. Now, this is for Michigan. When was the most recent election day and when is the next election day? No, Joleen you do not need your camera. Go ahead and type in what you think was our last election day and what the next one's going to be. Some people are faster typers. November 5, is the next one, and the last one we had was August 6, that was our primary day in Michigan. So yeah. Some of you were close. But we can do early voting. Now, in some cases, those votes are very close. Now, this is from 2023. This is a vote in a city near us. There was a ballot proposal in the city. And if five people would have voted things differently, it would have changed the results of the election. I see Abby and Aspen have raised their hand. If you've got a question, you can just go ahead and put it in the chat. So why do you think people don't vote sometimes? .... Lack of understanding. Some people don't care. They're apathetic. They don't know what they're voting for. They don't believe. They don't think their vote matters. Yeah, there's a lot of things. But if you look at Montrose, for people who say that their vote doesn't matter, five people could have changed. In Berrien County, which for those who are in Michigan is in this part of Michigan right here. It was actually a tie for their county commissioner race, and they pulled the name out of a hat. And there's a lot of reasons why people don't vote. I hope I hope I can encourage you to vote when we get out of this. But another question. How many people do you think I vote for in an election cycle. So how many different people now, so like, President would count as one and I vote for a president every 4 years. There's two senators in each state, so that would be three, and then governor and on down the line. How many different positions do you think I vote for? At all level, state, federal, local, everything. Sean says at least 40. He's the closest. Delilah or Dalia, I'm not sure how you say your name. That's the closest. I vote for 99 different people. These are the 99 different people I vote for. A president, two senators, a congressman at the federal level at the state level. I've got the governor, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, my state senator and my state rep. I vote for the State Board of Education. I vote for the trustees for MSU, University of Michigan and Wayne State. I vote for my local Community College School Board. I vote for my local school board, judges. I vote for things at the county level at the township level because I live in a township, not in a city. And I like politics. I'm a political nerd. And I can't keep track of 99 different people. It's difficult to keep track of all those different people. And I'm guessing most of you have a similar number of people you vote for, at least if you live in Michigan. If you live in other states, I'm not sure. But that's a lot of different people. Do I need 99 people telling me what to do? You know, I I don't know. So now, they're not all on the ballot every single time. For example, you know, if you talk about the MSU Board of Trustees, those are eight year terms. So I'll only vote for someone new, you know, there's two every year, but they'll be there for eight years. So I don't vote for all eight of them every year. But this November 5, I've got 24 decisions to make. 24 different boxes, I'm checking and deciding who I have to vote for. Which is a lot. Now, we'll talk more about how to do that, how to make those decisions. Now, the first thing you need to do is you need to register to vote. Now, here in Michigan, if you're going to register online, you have to do that before October 21, if you're going to register online. Now, if you're registering in person, you can do that even on the day of the election. There was a ballot proposal a few years ago that changed. And if Kathy wants to throw those links in the chat, the links of where you can register, and if you're going to be 18 before the election day, you can register now, even if you're not 18 yet. You can register. And if you're not sure if you're registered to vote, you can go to that second link there. On the slide and figure out if you're registered. Now, in Michigan, anytime, including on the day of election, you can register to vote at your City or a Township clerk, and you can look that up online. They're usually pretty easy to find or at any Secretary of State's office where you get your driver's license, you can register to vote. Now, what do you think you need for proof of address in order to register to vote? Yeah, If you're 18 years of age to vote, you need to just go you can go online until October 21, or any time including in person at your clerk's office Abby. You need some kind of proof of residence. Now, if you have a driver's license or state ID, You can do that. Now, they want to know where your address is, and different clerks require different things. Some say you bring that ID, and if you don't have an ID, you need to fill out what's called an affidavit. It's just like a legal document saying, Yes, I live at this address. And sometimes some clerks, it depends on the clerk require they might ask you to bring an official piece of mail. To you at that address. And one thing that some students have used is if they get the report card mailed to them, you know, they can see that if their driver's license or state ID does not have an address on them. And again, if you don't have a photo ID, you're going to need to fill out a paperwork, fill out that affidavit. So the next thing after you're registered, is you got to figure out who you're going to vote for. So how do you decide? Who do you believe when you try to figure out who you're going to vote for? Who do you think has reliable information? I'm curious. Who would, with these 99 different people, Who would you decide? How would you talk to people? How do you think you could get information? Would you talk to your parents? Would you talk to your siblings? Looking up live videos, interviews, recent campaigns, talk to your pastor neutral news sources Is there such thing as a neutral news source? I don't know. ... So there was a question, and I'm going to answer. Someone says if they live in Saginaw, they're from Jackson, where do they register? Register where where you, the address is. If you change your address, like, you want to change it on your ID. Students in Michigan, they can register if you're a college student, you can register to vote at your temporary address as a student or at your permanent address. You can choose either one. One says, Do not rely on Facebook, the news isn't always true. I always try to look at multiple different decisions, multiple different places because there's a lot of different resources out there. And when they're trying to get elected, they're going to say what's going to get them elected. And we're going to go in a bit. Now, before you research, one thing to know is try to understand yourself. Figure out what issues are important to you. Because do you think there's a person out there who you agree with 100% of the time on every single issue? It's unlikely that there is a person that you will agree with on everything. I don't know of any two people who agree on everything. And so you have to before you do the research, try to delve into yourself. What are the issues that are most important to you? Is it education? Is it the economy? Is it civil rights? Is it abortion? And I'm curious. What are the different issues that are important to you? And there's a huge range of issues out there. We got health care, we've got environment, LGBTQ issues. Economy, racism, drugs. And so before you even research the candidates, try to figure out which of these issues are important to you? Because candidates have different views on different issues, and if you are researching certain issues, but you don't care about them, then you might want to focus on a different candidate who has a stance on certain issues. All right. So here's a opinion question. Now, I'm going to ask you to put 1-10 on this continuum. If you think government helps people with their problems, 100% of the time, put one in the chat. If you think government is the problem, 100% of the time, put ten in the chat. If you're somewhere in the middle, you can put a two, you can put a five, you can put a seven, you can anything in the chat. I see a lot of fives in there. I see some people leaning on one end or the other. I saw a few tens. All right. Now, what does it mean when you say the government? Now, I'm going to tell you something. This webinar you're sitting in right now is run by the government. Kathy and I both work for Michigan State University, and we are government employees because Michigan State University is part of our state government. And there's a lot of other things that are part of government that could be something you have an issue to. If you think the government is always part of the problem, do you think the military we should get rid of the military, or we should get rid of roads? Or should we get rid of police? And maybe we should? And when I asked this question, I'm just trying to get you to think about what are all the different things "government" does. And one thing I like to talk about is when government's working well, most people don't notice it. Like there's an office at the county level here in Michigan called the Drain Commissioner. And most people don't know who their Drain Commissioner is. And they make sure flooding doesn't happen in communities. And if something isn't working right and the drains aren't flowing away from your house and your house gets flooded out, it becomes a big deal. But when the water is moving, the way it's supposed to, you probably don't notice it. Or if you're on city water, and turn on the water and water comes out of the faucet and you can take a drink. You probably don't think about it. But if your water is not coming out of the faucet, you might worry about it. Alright. Lots of good discussion going on in the chat here. Alright, I'm going to throw up another question here. Now, a lot of people talk about the founders of the country, like they all agreed on everything. And they did. You know, here's two things from John Adams and Ben Franklin. John Adams said, property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. And Ben Franklin said, Property is a creature of society and is subject to the calls of that society whenever its necessities require it, even to the last farthing. And a farthing is like a penny. So, do you are you more on the John Adams side? You should be able to do whatever you want on your own land, or are you more on the Ben Franklin side? Property should be used to benefit society again. Put in that one to ten scale. I see a lot more extremes here, a lot more ones and tens and fewer in the middle. And it's an interesting discussion. Because let's say, for example, they wanted to, there's a lack of shopping in your community. And they wanted to tear down your house and put up a shopping mall. Do you think government should be able to do that? A lot of people would argue no. But that has been done in some communities where they've torn down houses to build a shopping mall or a sports stadium or things like that. Now, if you're more on the one side, you know, you should be able to do whatever you want on your own land. Does that mean your neighbors should be able to play songs at 1:00 in the morning as loud as they want? Like, imagine your neighbor was playing Baby Shark at 1:00 in the morning, over and over again. Baby Shark do do do do to do, baby shark do do do do to do baby shark do do do do to do I'm guessing a lot of you would be sick of that. ... Yeah, I got it stuck in your head. It depends on what the song if If it's a song you like, they should be able to play it. But if it's a song you hate, they shouldn't be able to play it. Is that what your opinion is? Someone said, well, you should be courteous to others. Yeah, you should be courteous to others. But are people always courteous to others? Or do we need laws to enforce that? I think most people would probably be courteous, but there's some jerks out there. All right. We got another one to ten question. All right. More controversial here. Let me... No one should be able to own any weapons or anyone should be able to own any weapon they want. See a lot, I saw a few tens. See some depends. And this is very controversial. Now, an interesting thing is we've got the Second Amendment of the Constitution. And the Second Amendment of the Constitution, I'm going to read it verbatim here. I thought I had it on my next slide, but I don't. Let me read it real quick here. And it's not as as some people think it is. It says, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." So in the Second Amendment, it says "well regulated" and it also says shall not be infringed. So which is it? And maybe that's why we've been debating it for almost 250 years. All right. I think this is the last one. Government at the national level has the biggest impact on my life. Or government at the local level has the biggest impact on my life. Where are you? See a lot of variability. I see some tens, I see local. They both do. This is some interesting discussion here. Now, I find this interesting for those who say it's in the middle or local level. Almost everybody in the country knows who the president is, and they know who's running for the presidential race. How many people know who their city council person is or their township person? You know, a lot of people don't. Even though local government, even when the federal government distributes dollars. Usually it's , for education, for example, it's a local school board who decides what happens with those dollars. And if you're a student in school, do any of you know one of your school boards members names? And if you're good for you, for you for those who do. But most people don't. And if you're a student, they have an impact on your life. All right. So we talked about understanding what issues are important to you and knowing what those issues are is important before you research the candidates. Because you got to know what's important to you before you decide who you're going to vote for. Now, one and someone mentioned this earlier, this is one of my favorite websites for information. This is called vote 411. org And I'll put that in the chat because that's that one I know. And it's the League of Women Voters, and they have chapters all over the country. And if you want information, they send every candidate, at least in our area, if you've got a local chapter. They send every candidate a questionnaire to fill out to get their opinions. And it's a free site and you can gather information about candidates there. I highly recommend it that they provide lots of information so you can make your best decision. Now, here, for example, here in Michigan, we've got a Senate race that's up right now. And this is information that they have about Ellissa Slotkin, who's a Democratic candidate and Mike Rogers, who's the Republican candidate. There's other candidates as well. But it has information about them about where their education was, their background, their experience. So you can better make a decision. And let me go to the League of Women Voters site, just a second here. Let me. And so for example, you can also search the website, and here's Mike Rogers website right here. And you can see right here, you can click on where it says issues. And once you know what issues are important to you, you can see where they stand on different issues. He's talking about the economy here. He talked about the border, he talks about crime. He talks about all those things. And then you can go to another candidate, Ellissa Slotkin, and she's got things that she says, priority and she says, opportunity agenda, and you can see the different things that she says. And she's got details on protecting our civil rights, if civil rights is important to you. And you can see the details on that. You can talk about safety, things like that. And that's the Democrat and Republican. But there's also other parties are harder to find information about. Like, this is the Libertarian candidate, Joseph Solis Mullen. And then there's the Green Party candidate, and he's got his own website, too, and, you know, he says he's unconnected to billionaires of the CIA. And the Natural Law Party candidate, I don't know if you can see up here. He's actually a magician. And when I searched for him at first, the same website he uses for his Magic act he's using for his Senate campaign. Let me go back to view on my slide show here. So I'm going to respond to the question in the chat. Why do some serve more than two terms? Why are there no term limits? It's because the rules of that organization don't have term limits. In the US Congress and in the US Senate, there are no term limits. You can serve in the House and Senate as many years as you are alive. But the President can only serve 24 year terms. And there's different arguments for that. Some people say, Well, if there's no term limits, you'll keep people in there forever who don't do a good job. And an argument against term limits is, well, if they are doing a good job, why should you have to get rid of them just because they've been there a certain amount of time? You know, you wouldn't get rid of your auto mechanic, just because you've had the same auto mechanic for a certain amount of time. Yeah. Washington set the standard, our first president to two years, and others followed that precedent, except for one, there's one president who served more than two terms. Bonus points in the chat, if you know who that was. Yeah. There you go, Erica Franklin Roosevelt. So you can do research on your own. You can go to vote 411. You can go to the candidates websites, and also just Google them in general and look for different news articles on them, things like that. If they're an incumbent, which means there's someone who's been in office before. There's public records of how they voted on different things, so you can look up their record and see how they voted on different things in the past and see if there's things that you agree with. Other positions like judges, it's harder to find a record on judges, usually. And so it's harder to vote for. And and you can also go to organizations or people you trust. And we talked about a little bit about that earlier. So Jelena, you know, your first election, please vote. And I would go to vote 411 ahead of time or go to your state Secretary of State Site and get a listing of who's going to be on your ballot. And we'll talk more about this in a little bit. Yeah. So what are some organizations or people you trust? If any of these folks endorse somebody? Would you go with things just because of the Well, do you guys know who these people are? Selina Gomez is the number one on Instagram. She's an actress and a singer. Abe Lame, the guy in the middle is the number one TikToker. And Mr. Beast is the number one YouTube. If they said to vote for somebody for president, would you agree with them? Nope. But you can go to a lot of different organizations. You can go to environmental organizations like Sierra Club, you can go to Right to Life. You can go to a lot of different groups and see who they endorse. For a particular issue. If that issue is important to you. You can do that. You can check out the American Civil Liberties Union or the National Rifle Association. A lot of different organizations will endorse candidates. If that's the issue that's important to you, If the right to own firearms is very important to you, you might want to look at the National Rifle Association and see who they're voting for. If environmental issues are important to you, you might go to Sierra Club and see who they endorse. Now, the next thing is you can vote. Now you can vote on election day or you can vote early. What do you think might be an advantage of voting early? Yeah, I appreciate what Rachel and Michael are saying there. That single issue is You might not want to consider a single issue. You might want to look at all the different issues people are voting on and decide which is most important to you. So voting early could be less stressful. Yeah. It's less stressful for several reasons. One, it gives you some time because you can look at your ballot, and you can research every candidate, and you can see who's on there and you don't have to worry about, you know, Okay, I'm in the voting booth. I've got things to happen. Or what if you're sick on election day, you know, then you can't go in and vote and things like that. Now, here in Michigan, we've got no reason early voting, so everybody can vote early. You don't need any reason at all. Everybody can do it. Not every state is that way. It's also called absentee vote. And you can reach out to your local clerks. You can call them. You can mail them. They will mail you a ballot if you request one. Yeah, if you're working on election day, if you don't know how long the lines are going to be. If you're in the military and you're overseas, there's lots of reasons why there could be an advantage to vote vote early. So someone asked a question. TV ads do not have to be true. What about the candidate's own site? People have a right to say things on their own website, which may or may not be true. Also advertising. Now, if someone if someone says something about you, that's not true. You could sue them in a civil court. You can even sue them for damages if you think it damaged your reputation. But that takes a while to go through that court process. Older people can send in their ballot in the mail? They do not have to. No one is required to. Now, if you vote early, here in Michigan, you can go to the Secretary of State's website and they'll say, if you put your ballot in the mail, and you're not sure if your local clerk received it, you can check that. You can check to see if they received your ballot. So a person said in the chat, when interviews and live videos come in, you can't tell what's true and what's not. Yep. Candidates can lie, and they do. And that's why you have to do research. And that's why I personally like early voting because I can do research and try to figure out who I want to vote for. Really lively discussion in the chat here. I'm liking this. And a lot of things can be created on AI. There can be voice and video and all sorts of misinformation out there. And it's difficult to know what's real and what's not. And even within, when you do search, when you do your own research, you're going to get more things that look like what you've already searched. Example, if you search, Joe Biden is an idiot, every other Google search you do after that on that same computer is going to make Joe Biden look bad. And if you type in Joe Biden as a genius, every other search you do after that is going to make Joe Biden look good. And anytime you click on something on, anytime you watch a TikTok video or a Facebook reel or a YouTube short or like something on Instagram, anytime you follow things on social media, you will get more things that look like that thing you liked. And why are the companies doing that? Because they want to keep you on their platform. They think you like this thing and they want to keep you there longer. Because that's how they make money, and then they show you more ads and they can sell or make more money on their ads. They're not doing it to be sinister or anything. Well, I can't say that for sure, but really they just want to make money like every other business. And we already talked about advantages of voting early. Someone asked in the chat, how old do you need to be to run for president? And you need to be at least 35 to run for president. And another person asked if there's anything you can do as a minor, and there are things. We will talk about that in just a little bit about different things you can do even if you can't vote. So on election day, you can go to your polling place. If you don't know where that is, you can look that up at the Secretary of State's site. Someone asked about an age limit for running for office. And in Michigan, we do have an age limit for our judges. There's an age limit at which judges are no longer able to run for additional office. Now, so on election day, campaign material is not allowed within 100 feet of the entrance to the polling location. So there may be people in the parking lot, but they can't be within 100 foot of the door saying, vote for this person or vote for this issue. That's illegal in the state of Michigan. I'm not sure what it is in other states. So if you feel you're harassed while voting, what would you do? Because it occasionally does happen. So you can talk to the precinct worker, that'd be the first place to go talk to those poll workers and let them know what you think is going on. You can also reach out to the local police if you feel that you're being harassed or that voters are being harassed. And then you can also reach out to your local clerk or the Secretary of State. And if you still don't feel like anything's being done, you can contact the Federal Civil Rights Department. When you vote, this is an example of what your ballot might look like. And this is an old one. This is over a decade ago. But one example is you can vote for straight party ticket. If you want to vote for all the Republicans, you can do that or or all the Democrats or third parties, you can do that. One thing, and you don't want to fill out every vote, if you align with a particular party, you can do that. Now, it doesn't vote in nonpartisan races. Here in Michigan, judges are nonpartisan, and school boards are nonpartisan, so you have to vote for them additionally. Now, you'll notice, like here under the State Board of Education, says, Vote for not more than two. Be aware, in some cases, you need to fill in two spots, and also look on the back side of your ballot. Sometimes there's races on the back side of the ballot that you need to check out as well. Fill in the blanks completely. Also, you can put in a write in. You see in this blank line here, but you have to fill in the dot next to that write in. If your write in is not officially registered, it might not count. Now, there's also something If you fill out more than one dot, and I did this once, I actually filled out two dots under my presidential race. And I teach this stuff, so I should know better. But if you do that, if you fill or you fill in the wrong person, you can go to your county clerk and it's something called spoiling the ballot, and you have to fill out a little piece of paper there and they'll give you a fresh ballot, and they'll destroy your old one. So someone asked this question earlier. What are other ways to get involved besides voting? What can you do to get involved if you feel strongly about a campaign? Please do not riot. I would not encourage that. But protest is a different thing. You can protest. You can put signs up in your yard. Also, you can work on a campaign. Any candidate will be glad to have you help them. You might knock on doors and talk to people, write postcards, put up signs in your window, put things on social media, anything like that you could do. There's another big thing that no one has listed yet. Usually anytime you go to a website, it's the first thing you see when you visit their website. Oh, volunteer is one, you can volunteer a lot of ways, but the Usually, when you go to a website for the first time for a political candidate, they will ask you for money. Date. There you go, Christian. You can donate money to a campaign. And that's something that they will find very helpful. And depending on the campaign, it also helps them access more dollars other than because if you donate, and then they can say, Oh, we've donated or we've raised this much money in the last month, and more people will want to give money to that campaign sometimes. We had another question in the chat. Can you skip a section on the ballot? You do not need to vote in every race. As a matter of fact, some people just vote in president, and they don't vote in anything else. And that is your right to do so. And when the results come out, that's called an "under vote". I would encourage you to vote in every race and research those local campaigns, but I understand if you don't feel you have enough information to make a decision, or you don't feel any of the candidates are worthwhile. And you don't want to vote for any of them because you think they're all no good. You can do that, too. An under vote is if you didn't fill in any circle for that particular person. And I see someone put in there. If you don't vote, you can't complain on who won. And I share that sentiment. its my opinion, too. If you don't vote, then you're saying, whatever happens, I don't care. And so your vote does count. Even if your person doesn't get elected, it sends a message. All right. And we just got a few minutes left. There's a link. Hopefully, Kathy can put the link to our evaluation in the chat. Or you can pull out your phone and do a QR code to do the evaluation. And I'll open it up for any other questions. If people want to put more questions in the chat. Thanks, Kathy for sharing that. And I want to thank you guys all for being here. I especially want to thank Kim for keeping up with my fast talking here. Let's all give Kim some applause here. Oh yeah, that applause. That's the way you do it. And thanks, Kathy for maintaining things. And thank you guys. Lots of participation here in the chat. I really appreciate um, Everything here. Thank you, Darren. Very informative, great resources. I love the discussion. I think this webinar has had the most chat going on. That's for sure. It's a great topic. So thank you, all. We will be sending out some of the links that we had in the chat. Probably won't be coming out until next week. This video was recorded. So you'll get the link in case you want to watch it again or maybe tell a friend, Hey, this is a great video. To have them watch it. And then our next one will be in October, October 9, and that is going to be on paying for Post-secondary Ed. Another great topic coming up for our Adulting 101 series. And thank you so much, Darren. Thank you so much, Kim, for being here. And thank you all for investing in the time and investing in yourself. And for caring about our country and our local politics, 'cause it's so important to make a difference. Yes. And go out and vote, right? Yes. Or get involved. If you're of age. if go out and get involved in a campaign, no matter what you think do things to get your people elected. Yeah. So thank you all.