Navigating Democracy

Unlock the secrets of the U.S. electoral system with us on the "I'm Not Dumb but Podcast." Ever wondered what truly happens after you cast your vote? We promise to demystify the journey of your ballot, confront the myths of voter fraud, and reveal how technology and security work hand-in-hand to protect your vote.

We explore why trust and technology are becoming uneasy partners. We dive into the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which sought to streamline election processes, while also dissecting controversies like those involving Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News. Tune in for insights that are as enlightening as they are entertaining.

Chapters

• 0:00 US Ballot Counting Process Explained
• 10:20 Voting Machine Issues and Ballot Counting
• 20:54 Election Certification Process Overview

Transcript

Rob: 0:00

Yeah, what did we learn?

Cesar: 0:00

about today. So we just had a major presidential election. I knew they would win. You guys ever wonder what happens to your ballot after you guys vote.

Victor: 0:09

I put it in a machine that looks like a huge shredder, and then it just gets.

Cesar: 0:13

you know, they literally shred it.

Victor: 0:15

That's what they do they make me feel better about myself that I voted, and then they just do whatever they want.

Cesar: 0:20

Right. They give you the sticker and say all right.

Victor: 0:25

Thank you for voting. You voted. Thank you. You know what? Last time I went, though, they ran out of stickers.

Rob: 0:28

I had nothing to post on instagram, so you didn't really vote, bro, basically you're walking home and like everyone just looking at you, like he doesn't have a sticker on. What a fucking asshole. I voted.

Victor: 0:39

They ran out I walked by a bunch of illegals. They all had stickers. You went to like you like, went by the cemetery and there's a bunch of illegals.

Rob: 0:46

They all had stickers.

Victor: 0:49

You went by the cemetery and there's a bunch of stickers.

Cesar: 0:54

Wait. So what are we talking about? On this episode of the I'm Not Dumb but Podcast, we dive into the intricacies of the US ballot counting process. We'll discuss the roles of different counting systems, technology and security measures to ensure every vote is counted accurately. Is there really widespread voter fraud? I'm not dumb, but how are voting ballots counted in the United States? Welcome to the I'm not dumb but podcast, where we won't claim to have the answers to life's deepest questions but we'll give you an exciting journey into the realms of knowledge you never knew you needed Might be mainstream, but not common knowledge.

Cesar: 1:27

From artificial intelligence to conspiracy theories, no topic is too taboo for us to explore. Let's get curious together. My name is Cesar, joined always by Rob, hey, hello. I'm Victor, how y'all doing? And Chris, hey, what's up? What's going on? Did you guys vote?

Chris: 1:45

no yes, I did I always vote sam here. Yes, me too oh you don't vote.

Rob: 1:52

No, it's just easier to complain because you hate america I think that true americans don't know, I don't know I uh I didn't vote. Uh, because when I moved and I just got lazy and, honestly, like my wife didn't vote either. So I moved and I just got lazy and, honestly, like my wife didn't vote either and I was just going to vote against her. So we just figured.

Victor: 2:11

You were going to cancel each other out. Yeah, yeah.

Rob: 2:14

We're carbon neutral, we're political neutral. That's true.

Cesar: 2:17

Should have voted for the Green Party then.

Rob: 2:19

I don't really see the point in voting for any other party that's not in the two-party system.

Victor: 2:31

So the first time I ever voted, I voted for John Kerry, and I'm convinced that he lost because I voted for him If I want someone to win. I don't vote for them at all.

Rob: 2:37

You know what I like, though You're using the superstition to help your guy out. Thank you. Yeah, and honestly, that should count as a vote.

Victor: 2:44

But I also have other voting rules. If you have doctor, you're not getting my vote. Why not Really? Why You're full of yourself. Oh, I'm going to put doctor on the ballot no.

Rob: 3:00

You're fucking Mr First name, whoever the fuck, not Dr So-and-so bullshitstein, okay I think you're not getting my phone, man.

Victor: 3:06

I think you project okay. So no doctor, no doctor. If there's like a whole group of democrats, um, that are running for like re-election, like they're part of a council, I will vote for all of them, except I'll add one republican in there just to spice things up.

Rob: 3:18

Wow, you're like an agent of chaos, do you?

Cesar: 3:20

even know a republican when you do those ballots.

Victor: 3:23

I don't know any local person and I've tried to look up information.

Rob: 3:28

It's almost impossible to look up any information about yeah, that was my biggest thing too. I would get on there and look, I'm like who the hell are these people?

Chris: 3:37

what about those uh proposition? You have to vote yes or no. Yeah, but those you just read yeah, but unless you know exactly what it means, it's like you're kind of like guessing too right.

Cesar: 3:47

Some of them could be confusing.

Chris: 3:48

Yeah, I mean you have 50-50 chances, yes or no?

Cesar: 3:51

Yeah, let me start off by saying for our international listeners who may not know in most US states there are four ways you can vote. You can do it in person, vote early or wait for election day. If you don't go in person, you can get an absentee ballot and you can either submit it by mail or drop it off by a designated drop-off box. But you know what? I've never seen one of those.

Victor: 4:11

I've seen them in Oregon on fire.

Cesar: 4:14

Yeah, that's funny because that's one of the articles I was going to talk about. Did you guys hear?

Rob: 4:18

about that, or no?

Cesar: 4:18

No, no, yeah, I don't even know what that looks like so it's supposed to be like this big flame, retardant box where you drop in your ballots. And, like victor said, police in in washington and oregon are trying to find out who set blaze to two of these boxes. The us department of homeland security is getting on it and they're thinking that some social media users are discussing and encouraging various methods to sabotage these ballots and to they claim that they're trying to basically target the election infrastructure. It looks like I don't know if it was a bomb or something in one of the boxes, in a couple of the boxes.

Rob: 4:54

They probably just threw a bunch of vapes in there.

Cesar: 4:59

Well, like an e-battery, and usually if you're going in person, the process is very simple. You arrive at a polling place, election officials check for a name and address to make sure you're registered to vote. So these election officials work in pairs, so you know. When you go in you see those two old people at the desk, yeah, and looking for your name. I've never seen like a, like an angry one. They're always happy to see me.

Victor: 5:25

Oh, I've seen angry ones have you.

Cesar: 5:27

Yeah, I always get the nice like little grandmas, like hey, honey, ready to vote. I'm like yes, I am, and they're like thanks for coming yeah.

Victor: 5:36

I guess angry people are just drawn to me.

Rob: 5:39

I think you're drawn to angry people.

Victor: 5:41

Well maybe, maybe. That's what it is. I'm just gonna fuck myself.

Cesar: 5:45

Fun fact, they have pairs working at these desks. Both workers can't be from the same political party, so you gotta have one from the other. That's one of the safeguards that they implement you know what it is.

Victor: 5:55

It's because I can find my name faster than they can.

Rob: 5:59

Oh, you're rushing them, r rushing them, rushing them. These guys. They've been there for 10 hours. Yeah, she's been there for 10 hours. It's a day off from the library.

Victor: 6:09

It's the fucking alphabet. It's the fucking alphabet. If you can't find an s, I look, I'm looking through. I'm like it's a stack of papers, please. It's already split up by addresses and all this other stuff.

Rob: 6:21

Looking he's probably looking like how do you spell that name? That explains why he didn't come he didn't get off the Mayflower.

Victor: 6:28

I'll just tell you that.

Rob: 6:30

They're eating the dogs, the people that came in.

Cesar: 6:33

So then you know, voters cast their votes by either an electronic voting machine or paper ballots, which then get scanned. The process for an absentee ballot starts off by either requesting a ballot by mail.

Rob: 6:48

You fill out your elections and you make sure to provide all the adequate information and then submitting them. See, that's where you got me. I'm not going to request it by mail, to then submit it by mail, that's just too many steps. Yeah, at that point, either you just skip or yeah, I don't know who I'm going to vote for till the day it happens. I'll tell you right now. I don't know who I'm going to vote for till after the day it happens, and then, at that point I'm like I'm just too late.

Victor: 7:14

Rob has put more effort into finding supplements and vitamins than it is to just go to a fucking website, put in your address, and then they literally send it to you. Yeah, that is very true.

Cesar: 7:27

But you got to be careful because if you don't put the correct information down correctly and your signatures are not the same, they won't count.

Chris: 7:35

Yeah, oh shit, I think I might have changed up to my signature, actually, you know what Maybe you need to move to.

Cesar: 7:43

there's three states that actually automatically send a ballot to everyone, all registered voters. What states are those? Colorado, washington and Oregon Subsequently the same places where your ballot is going to get burned. Burn it. But there's 27 states where you can actually request an absentee ballot for any reason and then 20 of them require, like, a valid reason. Like you're not around, you know. So that's for our international listeners. How did the voting machines work? They come in various types with a different way of recording and counting votes. I get the bubble sheet.

Victor: 8:19

You fill out the bubbles and then you put it in the machine. At one time there was switches. You had to push switches down.

Chris: 8:27

Yes, I do remember that one.

Victor: 8:29

I've done that as well.

Rob: 8:30

Those are the impregnated ballots. I guess they didn't completely puncture and they were just impregnated. They weren't punctured completely.

Victor: 8:39

Are you talking about for the 2000 election?

Cesar: 8:42

Because then you don't know who you actually voted for Exactly. Is that something about for the 2000 election? Because then you don't know who you actually voted for Because they're not going to do it for you Exactly.

Rob: 8:45

There was a bunch of people that had voted for somebody, but because they didn't puncture it completely, they may or may not have counted it correctly. They didn't remember it growing up.

Cesar: 8:55

We'll talk about that later, but that's an issue that happened in the 2000 elections. All the states have all different policies and even counties have all different policies.

Chris: 9:05

States have all different policies and even counties have all different policies.

Cesar: 9:09

Really One giant clusterfuck. Yeah, so the machine that Victor was talking about are called optical scan voting machines, and these are the ones I think we've only we've gone accustomed to. These machines read paper ballots that voters mark by filling in ovals or connecting arrows, then, after marking, voters feed it into the scanners which tally the votes, and then these ballots are kept as a paper trail. The other type, it's called the direct recording electronic machines, or DRAE for short, and they call it DRAE because these machines make beats. I'll be here all day.

Rob: 9:39

Yikes.

Cesar: 9:41

Tough crowd, tough crowd tough crowd, tough crowd.

Rob: 9:48

Yeah, you guys. You guys don't know, that was that was fine.

Victor: 9:50

You can find that joke out there in the middle of the ocean as a pile of garbage too soon bro too soon I don't know if we can say that yet it's too soon, let's try it.

Rob: 10:01

Let's just try it.

Cesar: 10:02

Okay, we're getting there voters make selections on a touch screen or a push button interface and the machine records their choices directly into the memory, and these often provide a voter-verified paper audit trail, and states like Indiana, Texas and Kentucky use these in the 2020 election.

Victor: 10:20

So these are electronic voting machines.

Cesar: 10:22

Yeah, these are electronic voting machines. These are actually like machines, where you vote on top of the machine. You press it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and these have issues, though Since the 2000s, less and less states have been using these.

Victor: 10:33

Are they using them less and less because they're not working correctly or people don't trust them? Are they like old technology?

Cesar: 10:41

Yeah, it's basically old technology and old pieces of equipment, so after a certain point you're not finding the same to try to like fix them. It's leading to issues. And also, like McDonald's ice cream machines, yeah, and even if they're fixed right, it's already out there that they're never working. So when you go to McDonald's, you already expect it to not work.

Rob: 11:03

Yeah, you're like oh, the McFlurry's on sale, that doesn't really matter.

Victor: 11:07

Yeah, oh, the machine's not working. Yeah, it's kind of like that.

Rob: 11:10

Can I get an ice cream cone? We don't have ice cream right now.

Cesar: 11:13

And then the last one. It's called the ballot marking devices, and these are designed to assist voters in marking paper ballots and BMDs, guide voters through selections on a screen and then print a marked paper ballot which can be scanned by an optical scan machine for counting. I think I've seen these for people who have disabilities. These machines are supposed to incorporate security features to ensure accuracy, such as encryption, secure transmission of data and regular audits. However, protocols vary by location, so exact features and types can differ.

Chris: 11:46

That's really interesting because you would think as a system in America, you would think they'll unify the whole system to keep it fair or whatever.

Cesar: 11:56

Funny you mentioned that.

Victor: 11:57

So in the 2000s we had issue with the ballots 27,000 ballots were thrown out, either under votes with no one chosen or over votes where more than one candidate was selected back in 2000.

Cesar: 12:09

Congress created legislation and they also did funding to try to kind of overhaul the way we do these voting systems. In 2002, the United States Congress made sweeping reforms to the nation's process and they created what's called the HAVA, the Help America Vote Act. It just created new mandatory minimum standards for states to follow in several key areas of election administration.

Victor: 12:34

The reason why states have control over this. It's because it's in the Constitution. Oh, there you go, Just like that. Huh, that's that simple. I mean, that's usually how it works.

Rob: 12:45

I got to really get back and read that. I think I missed that class. Yeah, I missed that.

Cesar: 12:51

Try reading anything ever. So election officials test voting and ballot counting machines regularly to make sure that they work properly. So almost all states and territories perform a logic and accuracy test on voting and ballot counting machines regularly to make sure that they work properly. So almost all states and territories perform a logic and accuracy tests on voting and ballot counting machines. Now we want to spread this information that these voting machines don't actually do what they're supposed to. Well then you might get in trouble, and that's what happened to Fox News A couple of years ago. They got sued because they started spreading propaganda. I think Donald Trump talked about that. The voting machines I think was it Michigan Partly spread it, I don't know which state it was.

Cesar: 13:28

I think he said that the voters went in. They voted for Republicans and the machines changed.

Victor: 13:36

And then he went on.

Cesar: 13:36

Fox. News and spread it and all the pundits kept doing the same thing, so they got sued by the Minion.

Victor: 13:42

And I think the crazy thing about it is because after they deposed a bunch of them, they stated like yeah, we knew this was a lie, but we wanted to keep pushing it.

Cesar: 13:50

Wow you are fake news. So the Minion voting systems sued Fox for $1.6 billion and that they argued that the top rated news outlet damaged the company's reputation by peddling these phony conspiracy theories that claim that its equipment switched votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. And did they win or they settled? They got $800 million.

Victor: 14:13

Dominion and this case was partly the reason why Tucker Carlson got fired from Fox News. It's got to be a big misunderstanding.

Cesar: 14:20

So Dominion set out to prove in a lawsuit that Fox acted with malice in airing an allegation that it knew to be false, Just like Victor said, with reckless disregard for the truth. It presented volumes of internal emails and text messages that show that Fox executives and personalities saying that they knew that the accusations were untrue, and they still aired the falsehoods.

Victor: 14:40

Elon Musk tweeted about it.

Cesar: 14:42

Oh my God, this guy.

Victor: 14:44

Sorry, elon Musk, the country's worst immigrant made a tweet about the guy's a genius, okay?

Rob: 14:51

Did you see that rocket ship catch itself?

Victor: 14:53

He's not a rocket scientist. He hired rocket scientists. He's the leader of my book. He is yeah, exactly oh my God, those rocket scientists.

Rob: 14:59

He's the leader of my book. He is yeah, exactly. Oh my God, those rocket scientists would be out of a job if it wasn't for this immigrant creating jobs for other immigrants.

Victor: 15:08

I don't know how that works, but so his tweet was something along the lines of like oh, I'm going to hire Dominion machines so I can press one thing and get 60.

Cesar: 15:19

He's going to get sued and they're going to get a nice little paycheck. Oh my.

Victor: 15:23

God. He used to be on Trump's deportation list, did you guys?

Cesar: 15:27

hear that he's trying to like buy people's votes. He's doing a lottery.

Rob: 15:31

It's a lottery if you vote it's a million dollars, yeah, every few weeks. A million dollars, yeah, if you vote for Trump every week.

Chris: 15:42

I'm Doc Gothic Maga.

Cesar: 15:45

Plus, he owns X, so I heard its algorithms are starting to push one candidate over the other and start spreading misinformation.

Victor: 15:54

Twitter because I refuse to call it X. Twitter is a complete cesspool of just misinformation. Now.

Rob: 16:02

Is it really?

Victor: 16:03

It's really bad yeah.

Rob: 16:05

I mean, I just feel like it's impossible to regulate that.

Victor: 16:08

Follow us on Twitter. Yeah, yeah, definitely on X or X or X.

Cesar: 16:12

Definitely.

Rob: 16:13

And don't forget to subscribe on your Dominion voting machine.

Cesar: 16:19

Go fuck yourself. After the polls close in your state and the last voters have cast their ballots, poll workers begin to close the precincts and they start to tabulate the votes. Each state has a different requirement for the process, but the steps generally include you got to secure the voting machine and then you got to ensure that the number of voters who checked in corresponds with the number of voters who checked in corresponds with the number of ballots that were cast. Each precinct tabulates votes, results and then report those numbers to a central office in its county or town. Are they doing this by hand? The ones that do like the electronic machine. They have that ballot, but what they do is they have these actual physical ballots and they kind of compare. At the very end they do double check. They do double check, okay, so just to make sure that the machine had this amount of ballots counted, the physical ballots also match that.

Victor: 17:12

Because sometimes when you're counting paper like they stick to each other. Yeah, to hell, and you got to lick your fingers.

Cesar: 17:17

But you see those ballot sheets, those things are huge. I wouldn't lick them, I wouldn't lick them. I wouldn't lick them. Paper cut you get on those things. Probably die you would probably die.

Chris: 17:25

My goodness, so dramatic.

Cesar: 17:26

Ballots filled in person can start being counted after the polls close on Election Day. If the voting center uses paper ballots, each ballot is sealed and delivered to a vote counting center and once the ballot arrives, the election staff starts the vote counting process. And if the digital voting machines are used, election officials send over voter data to the counting center and the voting data can either be sent electronically or be hand delivered to the counting center and once the data arrives, officials can start processing the results. In some states, votes cast during the early voting period are counted before the election day, but the results for those ballots are not published until after the polls close on election day, and in other states, early votes are counted only on the day of the election.

Rob: 18:13

How many people do they have working at these voting centers to be able to count all this stuff? I'm not sure what's the average time it takes to count all these votes.

Victor: 18:22

Well, it depends. It's not even about counting them. It's counting them and making sure they match the other numbers, right?

Cesar: 18:28

This is literally not counting yet. This is just getting these ballots in and processing. Just looking at making sure that everything is in. Yeah, making sure everything is Sounds like a nightmare. Yeah, making sure everything is Sounds like a nightmare.

Rob: 18:40

Yeah, that's why they got two people one person from every party working there, because somebody's in the back counting like one, two three.

Cesar: 18:53

We ran out of stickers. Doesn't matter, you don't want them anyway, don't?

Victor: 18:56

even care. Poor fucking grandmas out there. My fingers hurt.

Cesar: 19:00

Keep counting grandmamas out there, my fingers hurt.

Chris: 19:02

Keep counting, grandma, now your back's going to hurt because you just pulled landscaping duty and then they asked for a recount and he did Fuck.

Victor: 19:10

Oh no, Not a recount.

Cesar: 19:14

Isn't that what happened in Florida when they had to do a hand count for?

Victor: 19:17

all those. You just had too many old people voting. They didn't know what they were voting for. I don't know if you saw this, but Joe Biden did some early voting. Did anyone check his ballot to make sure he filled it out correctly?

Rob: 19:31

Maybe he got that email, it didn't count. He definitely wouldn't tell me. Nah, he voted for Trump. I don't think he likes Kambala.

Cesar: 19:38

You would never know, Unless he gets a letter in the mail saying damn it, my vote didn't count.

Chris: 19:45

Eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID.

Cesar: 19:49

Fun fact did you guys know that in the election of 1800, voting began in some states in April and continued through October?

Victor: 19:56

Wow, it's 1800. I mean, it takes you three days just to get to the, your voting location. You gotta take a horse and buggy and shit.

Cesar: 20:04

That's why in 1845, congress passed legislation that established the election day as we know it now I don't see why we don't get off on this.

Victor: 20:13

Me neither. We are the beacon of democracy, exactly, and we don't have a day off to go vote do other countries?

Cesar: 20:22

we're the beacon of democracy here in switzerland.

Rob: 20:29

Uh, who'd you guys vote for america?

Victor: 20:33

yo, the world watches our election.

Rob: 20:36

Yeah, yeah, because they want to know how it's going to go. They watch it more than we do.

Cesar: 20:40

They understand the candidates. They understand, like, the policies more than we do, because what happens here affects them so much more than it does here and all of those who believe in freedom and democracy. So how long does each state have to certify election result? So the final step in an election is certifying the result, and election results are certified by the chief election official in each state. Winners of the elections cannot be sworn into their positions until the results of the election are certified. First, counties must finish counting all mail-in and provisional ballots. This is also when the ballot curing process occurs. Once this process is finished, counties send the total results for their area to state officials. The deadlines for this part of the process differ by state. The official review and double check each outcome from the counties. Once state officials are finished, that's when the chief election official for each state certifies the results. As I'm going to do this, I'm like this process is super tedious.

Rob: 21:42

Yeah, voter fraud allegations, I don't know man no, it's the illegals bro it is I don't know, because these I'm sure there's some errors and stuff like that.

Victor: 21:55

I find yeah, I mean you can't have this many hands in the pot and not have a problem, even though there's so many redundancies and recounts so the claim, as I understand it, these fucking people are coming up with is that people that are illegal are somehow registering to vote Okay, and therefore, when they go in, it's just hey, that's me, I'm already registered, here's your ballot.

Rob: 22:21

How can they do that, though, is it?

Chris: 22:22

more like an identity theft.

Rob: 22:24

I don't think they can.

Victor: 22:25

It's funny because every time someone brings this up to me, they go hey, did you see the, this chinese uh citizen that was voting? And it's like okay, since you just told me it sounds like he just got caught.

Cesar: 22:37

So yeah, I think the fact that people are getting caught means that the system is actually working right does that make sense?

Cesar: 22:44

yeah, yeah, I will find you. I think in pennsylvania, I think lancaster, pennsylvania, they have um a recent investigation they found that a couple of um and they caught it off the like, off the bat. It looks like some. What they're claiming is that this group is trying to register people to vote, but the ballots like the, when they register the ballots that they dropped off, they all were off Kind of weird. So the election officials who received the vote kind of caught wind of it and there's been like multiple districts that the investigations are still ongoing. But that's what it looks like. It looks like some group is trying to do this, but they're not succeeding.

Cesar: 23:28

They mentioned that the handwriting on all of them looked exactly the same.

Chris: 23:32

It's like a one guy thing, right-handed and left-handed, going back and forth. Gee, that's crazy.

Rob: 23:40

though the ones that should be locked up are the ones that cheat. I'm sure some of it's getting through, but probably not enough to make a difference. Can't be a hundred percent.

Cesar: 23:49

In 2016,. Russia tried to hack us, literally infiltrated our machines.

Rob: 23:55

Oh really, the Dominion machines.

Cesar: 23:58

Yeah, so in 2016, cyber actors affiliated with the Russian government conducted an unprecedented and coordinated cyber campaign against state election infrastructure. Russian actors scanned databases for vulnerabilities, attempted intrusions and, in a small number of cases, successfully penetrated a voter registration database. So this was an activity of a larger campaign to prepare and undermine confidence in the voting process. But the committee that was kind of sanctioned to investigate this found that they were not successful in manipulating any of the votes or deleting or modifying or registrations. But they tried, but they tried. So if Russia can hack in there and be unsuccessful, I don't think Joe Schmoe writing his name on ballots and submitting them is going to do anything. Let me call the Russians to help and, like I mentioned, they are safeguards to protect from voter fraud. Like New York, in particular has voter ID and registration checks. They have electronic poll books, tracking and verification for absentee ballots. They have training for poll workers. They have poll workers.

Rob: 25:09

What kind of training do these poll?

Victor: 25:11

workers get.

Rob: 25:13

Maybe I should go vote, yeah, maybe.

Victor: 25:17

Oh, not, actually. They're not actually working the poll, they're not working the poll.

Rob: 25:21

They're working at the poll. Okay, okay, okay.

Victor: 25:24

So don't grab a bunch of singles before going to vote. No, no, no but the voter turnout would be a lot higher.

Cesar: 25:32

A high-end stripper for governors or athletes. So there's a complex system of checks and balances in place to ensure accuracy and election integrity. When ballots are voted, they go into a locked and sealed ballot box in every single location. That ballot box is not opened again until the tabulation process begins and as polls close, around the country, poll workers deliver in-person ballots to election offices where mail-in ballots have already been delivered. There are a lot of redundancies and a lot of safeguards.

Cesar: 26:03

For this process, like anything else, there's a lot of controversies. Trump, back in 2020, tried to undermine the faith in the election results by claiming that a lot of these ballots were not counted. In one particular sense, it's kind of just seeding doubt in the minds of voters and just with that doubt, even if it's not happening, you just might be successful at preventing people from either trying to vote or actually believing in the outcome of the elections. That's why a lot of people still say, if you ask them, I see those YouTube videos like, oh no, the election was false. Trump won, yeah, but those people are deranged. But there's a lot of them like that and I doubt none of those people because I didn't know all these safeguards that were put in place to protect the levels.

Victor: 26:47

That's why they should listen to our podcast.

Chris: 26:49

Yeah, Hit that follow button bitches, do you guys get nervous when you start to feel the ovals? No, no, is it just me?

Rob: 26:59

Aren't you by yourself.

Chris: 27:00

Why are you getting?

Rob: 27:00

nervous You're not doing it with somebody else. It's not an SATs. No one's watching.

Chris: 27:06

I think I get like like this anxiety since I get this paper, I like all the anxiety calm and I feel like I'm taking a test. So I'm like literally circling, like there's no right or wrong answer, right, so I'm circling it. I'm like, oh shit, did I do this? Right? It's not to go back and read it like there's no right or wrong answer.

Rob: 27:22

Right and I get the fate of the entire world. I get so nervous.

Chris: 27:28

And I'm like, literally just like picking like my to my left, to the right, make sure no one's looking and I'm like you don't have privacy walls they usually have like privacy walls. I'm like looking around making sure no one's looking at me, chris you need help, you look I get really nervous with this. I'm really nervous with this. You need help, bro. Like when I'm done, I'm like oh shit, did I do this everything correctly? So I go back and then double check everything.

Victor: 27:51

You need to take a Percocet and then, go vote. Smoke a joint and then fucking go vote Chris's vote has never counted. Because he's always. It's like the test scantron.

Cesar: 28:06

Yeah, when it tells you don't do this, don't do that, Chris does that.

Victor: 28:10

He has it erased five times and fills it in five times.

Chris: 28:14

There's like a hole. I admit I eventually ripped it.

Victor: 28:18

He asked for another pencil because he like burned through this one. All right, but anyways.

Cesar: 28:23

What did we learn today, Chris? What did we learn today, man?

Chris: 28:27

I think it's kind of weird that the state doesn't have one single rule that governs how voting systems or the counting system work. It's odd to me, it's really odd to me. It's like, since they have their own rules and one set of regulations by state or the county, I feel like they need to fix that first, just to have like continuity among all states and counties well, they won't, because it's states rights that's the only thing that gets me like I'm just like that's a little shady right there.

Chris: 29:04

But otherwise, like I said, there was a lot of information about voting in county. I had no idea, so.

Rob: 29:09

Rob, what about you man? Yeah, I always found this confusing and you know the way you broke it down. It makes sense. I get that now, but I still find it confusing. I mean, I get that there's a lot of redundancies, I get that there's different steps and and because there's so many different States and they all have their own rules on doing it, like, I mean, I guess the main thing is that, wherever you are, get out there and vote. That's the main, most important thing. I really think so. Um, however, you're gonna do it. You know if you're gonna do it in person or you're gonna mail in ballot, uh, just get out there and from the guy who doesn't vote did you vote for me?

Rob: 29:49

actually I'll send you my ballot and you can go ahead and do mine too, while you're at it, chris you do his ballots. And then both of our ballots won't even count.

Victor: 30:01

He'll be a fucking nervous wreck.

Rob: 30:03

There's like two holes in these. Did you fill out two of these? Yeah, my buddy couldn't make it. I'm his absentee. That's not how that works.

Chris: 30:16

Then another article. Korean man tried to.

Cesar: 30:22

Victor, what about you, man?

Victor: 30:24

Listen, I just feel even more secure that the voting process has got a lot of safety nets. I mean, I still think, listen, if your person didn't win this year, I think it's still important to vote every year, even if it's not a presidential election, and I'm just waiting for the point where I can just have Chad GPT vote for me.

Chris: 30:47

So I'll try, maybe next year For the first time after I vote this year as American, I feel like I was, like I did something for this country.

Cesar: 30:57

That's why.

Chris: 30:58

I felt that's how I felt this year for the first time. So yeah, please go vote for next year if you didn't this year. Well said.

Cesar: 31:10

As we wrap up today's episode on the ballot counting process, I hope you've gained a deeper understanding of the steps and safeguards that go into ensuring each vote counts. So the next time you cast your ballot, know that your vote is secure. And, if you enjoyed today's show, hit that follow button and spread the word of this amazing podcast you discovered. We want you to be an active part of our community, Whether you have questions, suggestions or just want to share your thoughts on our topic. We want to hear from you. Find us on Twitter at I'm Not Dumb but, and on YouTube at I'm Not Dumb but Podcast. Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged and remember, stay curious. God bless, Stay informed, stay engaged and remember, stay curious.

Chris: 31:52

God bless, god bless. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree.