Angela Lin 0:11
Today we’re talking all things, elections and voting because that shit is coming up soon. But we’re not keeping it super insular just to the United States, we actually have a special guest with us, Savannah, who’s gonna be providing a different perspective because she is in Taiwan. Right now she is from Taiwan. So we’re also going to be talking about what democracy and voting is like, there kind of comparing and contrasting with the United States. So before we get started, I wanted to let Savannah give a little introduction to herself.
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Savannah 0:50
Okay, good morning is morning time from Taiwan. And I’m Savannah, I’m pretty honored to be invited. So first, thanks for inviting me. So basically, about me, I live in Taiwan, and I work as a flight attendant. So I think I did travel around the world, and then see different, you know, stuff about democracy, or how do we say that communism because I lived beside China? So I don’t know. Let’s talk about. Actually, I know Soviet, because when I went back to Taiwan, I think it was like, two or no, like three or four years ago by now. But I went back for my cousin’s wedding and my parent, I was with my parents. And they were like, do you need friends? I was like, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know anyone. And they’re like, okay, we’re gonna set you up with a friend date. And I was like, this might be a disaster. And then Savannah showed up, and she’s so fun. And she’s so bubbly. So we had a, we had a really good time. And we’ve been in touch ever since. So thank you, parents for setting me up on a friend thing.
Jesse Lin 1:59
That’s so nice.
Angela Lin 2:00
But before we get into, okay, compare and contrast, because our United States elections are coming up real quick. I think we wanted to give the plug, Jesse?
Jesse Lin 2:12
Yeah. So some of you guys might be wondering why we’re talking about the vote because the vote applies to everyone in the US. It’s particularly important, I think, for Asian Americans, because historically, Asian American voter turnout is much lower than any other ethnic race group in the US. And there are like a number of reasons we can talk about as to why that might be the case. But I think it’s really important as we move forward to be more civic minded and to develop our country and to move us in the direction that we all have a vision for, it’s super important that we get out and vote. And aside from that, there’s also talking about the vote with people, you know, having candid discussions about where you think you want the country to go, and which candidates represent that vision. So that’s why we’re here to talk about voting in the US and with some commentary compare / contrast with Savannah.
Angela Lin 3:19
Yeah. And one last blog, is, I think what gets a lot of attention is the candidates that are like the big ticket candidates, like the President, the Vice President, Supreme Court justices that we don’t get to vote on, but you know, like these big name, people, but actually, your local elections are probably arguably more important for your day to day life and things that are going to impact you where you live. And it’s something that is often overlooked, especially by young people like us, like I fully admit that I never really paid attention to local elections much. And President Obama actually came out with a really good Medium blog post, a few months back into quarantine, where he really hammered home, I think it was right after the George Floyd incident. And he made a good point of highlighting, you know, like, if you don’t want to see these kinds of injustice is happening in the future things with police misconduct, and the way that things are run in your city, like that’s done on a local level. So it’s up to you to pay attention to who you’ve elected there. And make sure you ask the people that you don’t feel are gonna, you know, push things in the right direction. So that’s, that’s somewhere that I’m going to spend a lot more time paying attention to, and just want to make sure that everyone else who’s thinking about voting is not just focused on the big flashy names, but also the stuff that’s actually going to impact your day to day in the locals local side.
Jesse Lin 4:50
Absolutely. Cool. So shall we get into it and talk about the voting process here versus Taiwan? I think we can start talking about the voting process here. I can say probably with fair accuracy and certainty that there is not really much of a voting process here. It’s kind of like, as with many things in this country, currently, it’s a very big dumpster fire that’s managed a million different ways across a million different states. So each state has slightly different regulations as to who can vote, how they can vote when they can vote. And yeah, it’s crazy, right?
Savannah 5:29
Yeah. So we do have news about America goes on. And Taiwan for no reason other country, like on the international news and Taiwan, we basically focus on only US and China. So as I know, I don’t know why. But as I know, there’s people are talking about the mail-in processes and the president right now who keep claiming, oh, the mail-in election is not going to get accuracy and different states have different rules. Some states allow you to sign up for a mail-in process that just one day ahead of the election for some, you know, you need to do like a week ahead or different state have different rules. And then when will they get the mail? So how do you make sure that everybody votes in all the mail counts?
Jesse Lin 6:16
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I yeah. I think federally, there really isn’t. As far as I’m aware, there really isn’t a federal thing that’s like overseeing how that is handled, that’s usually handled on the state level. So I think Angela, you and I were discussing, everyone in California is going to get a mail in ballot automatically. Yeah. But I live in New York, for example, and everyone who wants a mail-in ballot can get one, but you have to request it. So it’s not being sent automatically.
Angela Lin 6:48
Yeah. And things are also special this year, because of COVID. So like California doesn’t automatically send everyone a mail-in ballot. And normally, it’s because of COVID that, you know, voting can be dangerous when you’re congregating when you’re going to have thousands of people lining up to try to vote, that’s the usual process. A lot of people prefer to vote in person. But with COVID been such an issue. California proactively decided that everyone would receive a mail, mail-in ballot this year.
Savannah 7:22
So before the COVID, you should go to a voting booth for votes like in person people lining up and voting voting booths. So there’s only up
Angela Lin 7:31
You can do mail-in like, you can choose to do that. I used to actually I’ve always been a permanent mail-in ballot kind of person, I think because I’ve moved a lot so I I’ve always wanted to make sure I can vote no matter where I keep changing my address to. But But yeah, most people prefer I think most people do mail I mean, in person, because it feels like you’re doing something and everyone loves when you vote. You get a sticker that says I voted and so on that day, everyone wears their sticker and they’re like,
Savannah 8:06
You get stickers when you vote? That’s so cute. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in Taiwan, everyone needs to go to the vote station to vote we don’t have mail-in option.
Jesse Lin 8:18
So tell us what it’s like the process of voting in Taiwan. Obviously, Taiwan is much smaller than the US so probably there aren’t the same level of logistics problems and getting people to vote but I’m curious as to how it’s like administered like who actually does all the work of going to the polls and like many of them getting people registered
Savannah 8:40
Compared to US we are probably like I don’t know just way more easier cuz everybody needs to go to the voting station. So the legal voting ages are like I think 20 so if you’re already 20 they will when the voting they come they usually mail that’s not the vote they will mail you like how do we say that the information letter everyone’s What does this candidate talk about and everything like he’s age, where does he from? And he’s education and what is this candidate he or she wants so everybody can have information. And then on the voting day usually goes on eight to four. So they will like divided everyone into different section basically like into who how we say that. Five kilometers or even just each 10 kilometers have one voting booth which means everyone just needs to go out and vote it will be like 10 minutes walking destination basically for everyone. Because we are small, tiny country they are like more than thousand 2000s voting booth so everybody can go up votes, is there every corner is totally every corner like for example for mine. Me and my family just need to walk by for five minutes for a voting station is basically everywhere.
Angela Lin 10:03
Do you are you assigned a voting station? Or can you go to any of them
Savannah 10:08
They divided by where like, by your how do we say that – post code?
Angela Lin 10:14
Okay, so so they do they do tell you that you have to go to?
Savannah 10:18
By counties they do go you where you go, and usually the voting booths will be some elementary school and high school.
Jesse Lin 10:26
That’s similar to here. Yeah. So really important question. What is the voting right? Like in Taiwan? Like, is it mandatory that you vote? Is it optional that you vote?
Savannah 10:40
I think it’s option is not mandatory? It’s not like Australia, if you didn’t go to go they were like fine you like few thousand dollars? Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, yeah. But in Taiwan, this optional, but quite funny thing is like last year, our vote not last year, like this presidency election, we kind of go up to 70% of voting rate, which I think is pretty high.
Jesse Lin 11:03
That’s very high.
Savannah 11:04
Yeah, I think compared to us last year is only 40%. If I do read it correctly, that’s 40%. But we do it like 70%.
Jesse Lin 11:13
And I’m curious, how does your like voting work? Because there’s been a lot of conversation about how how voting works in the US, because sometimes you don’t get very good candidates. So you kind of feel like you don’t have the right person to pick but then you have to pick like somebody anyways. But some countries are doing like ranked choice voting so that you can vote for like second best. And like the vote gets distributed in a way where it’s a little bit more fair than if you just have like one to two candidates. And you have to make a choice
Savannah 11:48
We only can choose one. Yes. Well, we can only choose one is like US, every presidential elections, only two or three people to choose, you don’t have much option. Yeah.
Jesse Lin 11:59
Yeah, I guess for Yeah, for our larger elections, it doesn’t matter. But usually like the rank choice, I think it’s like very interesting for local elections, because you can, number one, I like this person. Number two, I would like this person number three, I would like this person. So on and so forth
Savannah 12:14
Every election is only for one, you only can choose one for each, like categories, I believe.
Angela Lin 12:20
So let’s talk about the last election because that was well. Now it’s been almost a year. Right. But it feels like it was because of COVID. It feels like it was kind of recent, um, how important was the last election to you? Because I feel like there was a from what I hear from my family, at least that’s like where I get my Taiwanese information. It was like a big divide between kind of young people and older people in terms of the President, at least.
Savannah 12:53
The presidential you mean talk about the presidential election last time. So last is last year, am I correct? That’s up kind of a biggest election. I would say biggest because there’s a lot of news comes on. Because it’s pretty controversy is kind of like for young people. We don’t usually go to vote because we don’t care the president, and we don’t care. But last year on news, you can see a lot of news goes on. If we have two candidates, we have to have two parties in Taiwan, basically KMT, which is Kuo Ming Tang, if you transfer from Chinese, it means nothing English, but is KMT. And the other is Democratic Progressive Party, if I do mean, so we have two candidates, actually, number three, but nobody can number three, so just focus on these two, nobody can understand it. So we just focus on these two parties. And KMT is most known in Taiwan, people will say they are more aligned to the China side. They they came from China. And now a lot of policies based on what the previous president do is more like lay on China, they will do everything which is benefit China not our country. So for young people, the news keeps saying, if you vote for the candidate for KMT, Taiwan, will became a part of China, something goes on like this, which is really important for young people right here. We want our democracy we’re our own country. So that’s why everybody go out for vote, kind of really important last year.
Angela Lin 14:20
But this is her second term, right. So when her first term election have also been just as important because it was also I imagine,
Savannah 14:30
She – when her first time, which is I last time she is our first female candidate for presidents not vice president. President. And then that’s after eight years of the other president, the other president do eight years too. So each president do four years I think is kind of same as us and they can only have two times. So that’s president already did his eight years and he’s from the KMT which is China party something so people want change. That’s why I think a big process of she get elected because I think in Taiwan, for example, my grandma, they still have the old Chinese typical stereotype of women cannot be president.
Jesse Lin 15:12
Can ask a question about something you said earlier, you said that younger people don’t really turn out for the presidential election. Can you explain why that is?
Savannah 15:21
I remember, because so last time when I vote I was how old am I 26. So I did vote like last last time. Because that we don’t see much news about the presidential and for Taiwan, I don’t know for us, we don’t really care about politics, because it’s not related for our life. The recent yeah I say again again, the reason why we go vote this time, because all young people don’t want to be a part of China. That’s why we vote the previous time. There not much news, kind of saying, if you don’t go vote, your life will change. And if you don’t go vote one day, you might need to change your passport and Facebook like, for example, they will keep saying news this time. If you don’t go vote, you can no longer use Facebook, if you don’t go vote, you can no longer browsing on YouTube. That’s why pushing people to vote.
Angela Lin 16:14
They, young people were hurt social media.
Savannah 16:17
No, no, I want to keep my social media. That’s why we go to vote. So the biggest reason is, we don’t move it for because it’s not related to our life. But this time, if you want to keep Facebook and YouTube go vote. Will you feel the same as what Taiwanese do last year you feel crisis for young people? If I don’t go vote this time, my country will go down that’s what we feel less time. Do you get the same feeling if I don’t go this vote, everything change?
Jesse Lin 16:46
I mean, I think from my perspective, definitely younger people have become more energized about the voting process. Because I remember when I was like 20-21, like, it was, like cool to I mean, I don’t want to say it was cool to vote, like, I feel like not a lot of people were talking about voting, like, it’s not like an exciting thing. And we don’t get like time off to do it. So it’s like, I mean, like, technically, I think technically, you have the companies have to give you like two hours or something. But it’s like just not done in a way that makes it easy for you to vote. So it’s like, kind of difficult, like you have to go out of your way to do it. But then, as more and more of the news came up about how like, I guess the direction that the government was going or the direction that the country is going and with all of these things that have been happening that Angela has said, I think it’s really motivated a lot more people to try and vote because they realize that the vote does matter. Like it does matter who you put in places of power from both local elections to the highest office in the US, because those people affect the policy which affects our lives.
Angela Lin 18:02
For me, I don’t disagree with anything you just said. But I kind of feel like the most youth driven election of like recent times has been was Obama’s first run. I think that was the biggest youth driven movement. And it’s because he spoke to young people in a way that like no other politician has ever spoken to our people and like, honestly, we’re young people are like constantly still, like grieving over the fact that we don’t have Obama still as a president. Like we’re we can’t get over it. It’s like a boyfriend that broke up with you that like you don’t want to accept that that happened. Um, and I remember that feeling of like, oh my god, this is like this has changed because he was the first black president so so for you guys like first female president right? It’s like, this is a big like, if nothing like symbolic change forward country, and he like really understood young people and like seem like, actually listened and cared. And like, that was the last president I think were like, everyone, it felt like more young people came out like explicitly because they were positively motivated to want to vote. I do agree like young people are like very much like we have to vote now like that. But it’s more driven by like what you were saying of like a little bit of like crisis mode. It’s different because in the Obama era was like, hopeful you’re like this, I can like, be a part of like, really positive step forward for the country versus I need to vote to like, prevent the country from going backwards
Jesse Lin 19:42
Yeah. I’m so glad you said that. Because I think that’s exactly the case with Obama. The campaign spoke to the needs and the ideals that young people had for the US with the current elections and like the people that are in place now. It’s like they’re speaking to the same people that people were speaking to in the previous elections, which is like older people, like people with families. And the honest truth is that those people have completely different needs and a completely different vision for the country than young people do.
Angela Lin 20:18
So let’s talk a little bit you talked about the biggest deciding factor and the latest Taiwanese election was democracy versus not. So we wanted to get your thoughts on the current climate with China because I think there’s always since the beginning of Taiwan, there’s always been like China’s threatening to take back Taiwan, like they never really wanted you to go away in the first place. But I think it was last week or two weeks ago when China sent like a bunch of those fighter planes.
Savannah 20:50
That’s a lot I heard this another one this morning. We do hear this like “brrrrr” this sound in Taipei, there’s another one this morning, I believe.
Angela Lin 20:58
So what are what are you guys feeling now with like that kind of stuff happening live over your heads? Like, does it kind of feel like well, they’re always making fake threats? This is not anything real? Or does it feel like it’s a little bit different and there’s something to be afraid of?
Savannah 21:16
I don’t know much for other people. But for me in person, I do watch a lot of you know, news around the world. So my personal experience, I definitely feel like scary, especially when your personal you are sleeping like for example, this morning, I was getting up and getting ready for this podcast. And then you hear the sounds is actually happening. You hear the very loud noise fighter planes. Probably flying above your apartment. You’re thinking about is it going to happens. Is it really gonna happens. The easiest way is one day, we probably need to change our passport change to another country. But the hardest way we still scared like one day. Because Taiwan is such a tiny country if they do throw something. We’re all gone. Oh my god.
Angela Lin 22:00
What has the President said about like preparing for something like that.
Savannah 22:06
Oh, she did. I don’t know how to say does English it she did a lot of rehearsal about the army. I don’t know how to say that English defense. Okay, the defense of rehearsal. But speaking the truth, how many people we do have in Taiwan? How many soldier we do have so but I think for my personal view, it probably won’t happen since Taiwan, the location is quite good. Japan, South Korea, especially even US there are a lot of battleship but on Taiwan trying to protect ourselves. I think we’ll be fine.
Angela Lin 22:41
Okay, I hope so.
Savannah 22:42
Yeah, they don’t, they don’t need to fight. They just cut off all our financial system. Since there are a lot of big, you know, company surviving by China. They just cut off the finance, we will be gone. So I think they will if it won’t happen for my personal view.
Jesse Lin 23:01
So I was going to ask because you basically told us about this concern with China, but you personally don’t think that anything will happen? How much do the politicians there use this to like try and manipulate people into choosing one way or not? Is it like a lot?
Savannah 23:20
Like US election they say if you don’t vote for the woman President Taiwan will go back to China. They use this all the time. Like, oh, especially last election, they use the Hong Kong crisis to they’ll say, look what happened in Hong Kong, it’s gonna be Taiwan. They say if you don’t go vote Hong Kong today, tomorrow, Taiwan. That’s the biggest slogan for this election. So they do use this to manipulate it all the time. Oh, especially we do have our first time how do we say the English we remove the mayor? We get to vote like for example, in California, everybody can vote, say we don’t like this senator, we can remove him. We do remember, a mayor in Taiwan, like this year, is the first time happened in history because we found out first of all, he said he’s promised are fake and the secondary we found out he probably get money from China. That’s as what I see from the news. So that’s why we recall him like remove him from his position. we vote to remove him from his position. First time in the history quite big deal, that’s why you say manipulated.
Jesse Lin 24:30
Yeah. And do people like a lot of people buy into it? Like they believe in it.
Savannah 24:37
That’s why he’s been removed it because we buy what the other party say. Is it fake is true? I don’t know from my personal view. I don’t know. But it does happen. Okay.
Angela Lin 24:49
Wow. This is then a very fun conversation. very enlightening.
Jesse Lin 24:55
Yeah. Many many things. Yeah.
Angela Lin 24:56
Really? Yeah, we learned a lot. Thank you for joining us.
Savannah 24:59
Yeah. Thank you for inviting so cool. It’s my first podcast its so fun.
Angela Lin 25:05
Well, I think we’ll transition this into the closing section then. So Jesse in our pre recording, just so you guys know, we were pre recording this episode it’s actually the night of the first presidential debate happening in three minutes. So
Jesse Lin 25:22
It’s on C-Span
Angela Lin 25:23
We’re very excited to watch that soon. But since it’s where we have politics, top of mine, we want to close out with reminding our listeners of where are how they can vote. California, pretty easy. Like I said, you should be getting your mail in ballot. But if you want to track where your ballot is, you probably already got 1000 emails like I did. But if you did not, there’s a website called ballot tracks the tracks is trax. There are a million different ways you can check on your voter status. But vote.org is another one that just make sure you’re signed up with a lot of times you just assume but better to double track and then the ballot tracks for California to track where your your thing actually is in the mail.
Jesse Lin 26:14
Okay, and before I get into to New York, just reminder, Election Day is November 3, November 3rd- just just so everyone remembers what the day actually is. In New York, you can request an absentee ballot online right now, you should do it as soon as you can. Because there are a lot of requests. And we’ve already seen a few issues with the board of elections, not sending the right things. If you want to vote in person, you can do so on election day, or you can do early voting. Early voting in person runs from October 24th on October 24 to November 1. And as a reminder, you can request an absentee ballot, you can also early vote, or you can also vote on election day. It does not like requesting one thing does not mean you cannot go in person to vote.
Angela Lin 27:11
Very true. And I think all those things are also true for California. But since you’re getting the mail-in ballot. You might as well just use the fucking mail-in ballot. It’s a definitive thing you’re getting.
Savannah 27:22
Go vote everyone. It only take a few minutes, why not? Just go do it.
Angela Lin 27:29
All right. Well, if you like this episode, if you want to learn more about how Taiwan works with their voting system, or you want to give your opinion on any of the stuff we talked about today, feel free to write us in. Telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com that your is Y-O-U-R-E.