The Round Table: A YVote Podcast

Professor Hajnal noted that one of the great problems with today’s media is echo chambers. If we’re a conservative, we’re very likely to be tuning into Fox and online we’re likely to be looking at sites where our own views are being reflected back at us. And when it comes to social media, they’re trying to get more clicks by putting forward more and more extreme and salacious content which may be making us more extreme than we would otherwise be. He underscored how important it is to get cross-information going, and for liberals to hear what conservatives are hearing and for conservatives to hear what liberals are hearing.

Isaiah asked Professor Hajnal what role he thinks the media could play in voter education. Prof Hajnal noted that there are any number of roles. He shared his concern that so much of media coverage is akin to covering a horse race rather than really delving into issues and policies, which of course SHOULD be driving our voting choices. Providing more real information about candidates and their stances, as well as addressing the MISinformation going haywire, is vital and the media is still playing catch up.

Understanding the political implications surrounding COVID is the first step in understanding the challenges that will still face us after a vaccine is distributed. 2020 saw the largest number of voters in a U.S. presidential election in history partly due to the unprecedented events occurring in this country related to the pandemic, but also due to outrage at inequality and to the drastic levels of partisan polarization permeating American politics.

In discussing whether America’s rise in political participation to endure in the years ahead, our guest Zoli Hajnal, professor of political science at the UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, underscored his feelings that despite Biden’s best efforts, polarization is likely to remain a big challenge--which actually drives voter turnout but with consequences.

What issues are most on your mind about what we’ll have to deal with after we can get beyond the pandemic?

Prof Hajnal is skeptical that this year’s high turnout will last. All the barriers there BEFORE the election are still there--the process is complicated and convoluted, there are only two choices, we vote on a Tuesday instead of a holiday--and they affect some populations disproportionately. Professor Hajnal explained how this works against young Americans--we’re more mobile so we have to re-register each time we move, we might not know where our polling place is--so our enthusiasm has to be great enough to overcome the barriers. Further, we’ve got a lot going on in our lives--we’ve got school, we’re thinking about all kinds of things in addition to politics--and all of these factors contribute to why young people turn out at lower rates than other groups, even in 2020. Given all this, Professor Hajnal noted that he is hopeful but skeptical that increased turnout will be sustained. In local elections, the trend from the 1980s until well into the 2000s has been for turnout to decline.

Our guest Professor Zoli Hajnal noted that we know, based on amazing experiments, that mobilization works, and that good door to door outreach increases the odds of turnout quite significantly. Conversely, we DON’T have any evidence that the billions that we spend on advertising make a difference or persuade anyone. So in his view, we’re wasting billions of dollars on advertising that could be redirected to the mobilization that we know works.

In this week’s conversation with professor Zoli Hajnal, we discussed the measures our nation needs to bring forth to ensure that this year’s high levels of political participation and involvement transcend a single election cycle, with an emphasis on less enfranchised voters.

Towards the closing of our podcast, Laura Wolk turned the (round) table on our podcasters to learn more about our responses. Isaiah shared his avoidance of the media circus. Olivia shared her disappointment in how performative the hearings were, with Democratic senators posturing with their questions.

When asked about her thoughts on judicial reforms such as the recent talks about court packing and eliminating life tenure, Laura Wolk provided podcast listeners with her take on what are becoming fiercely contested conversations about judicial reforms. She shared her feelings about the importance of maintaining nine Judges and the continuity of the Supreme Court through its policy of life tenure,

Laura Wolk expressed concerns about the media’s bent in Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings. She felt there was a deep undercurrent that seemed to suggest that Judge Barrett, or Originalists in general, really want to take people’s rights away--for ex, they want to overturn the ACA. She feels this includes three presumptions about Conservative judges:

1) that they are pre-committed to certain policy goals, which she feels is unjustified,

2) that they would be disingenuously trying to sneak their policies in through the backdoor,

3) that their policy preferences and the answers they come to by analyzing the statutes are always the same.

She disagrees with all of these and shared a frame of reference from her personal experience, noting that she personally is uncomfortable with the death penalty but since the Constitution allows it, she wouldn’t allow her own personal biases to override it