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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

First-Timers: A True Independent Voter

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Daily News

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2020

⏱️ 17 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jeffrey Yaw lives in the Fingerlakes region of upstate New York. He’s a recent convert to Catholicism who attended the March for Life back in January. He’s anti-abortion but pro-Medicare for All and has very little faith in the two-party system. So, with his first presidential ballot ever, he’s voting for a third-party candidate, but that doesn’t mean he’s given up on democracy.

Guest: Jeffrey Yaw, a student at SUNY Geneseo and a first-time voter.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

When I hear people talk about the energy of young voters, sometimes to me, it feels like they're conflating young with liberal, which is why when we set out to talk to first-time voters this year, I wanted to talk to someone like Jeff Yaw.

0:21.8

I'll be honest.

0:22.9

You know, if you think back to your high school days,

0:25.8

where they have, you know, they're giving you the talk on the experience of Irish immigrants

0:29.8

and Italian immigrants and whatnot, and there were all these, like, cartoons that depicted

0:33.5

the Pope as an octopus and the Catholics are going to take over the world, that's basically

0:38.3

what I want.

0:41.8

I'm the religious extremist your parents warned you about.

0:45.1

Jeff's 20 years old, lives in upstate New York, a pretty conservative region.

0:50.9

He says maybe the most inspired he's felt politically over the last year or so has been when he went to the March for Life back in January.

1:01.0

It was just nice to be, you know, surrounded by people who feel the same way about something that's so important to you.

1:09.0

It is my profound honor to be the first president in history to attend the March for Life.

1:17.6

In an odd way, it kind of gave me hope for just the American process in general.

1:23.6

Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.

1:31.7

For Jeff, this right-to-life march, it's in the same bucket as demonstrations against the Dakota

1:37.6

Access pipeline, or the Black Lives Matter movement. What really gave him hope at this political rally?

1:45.7

It wasn't the speech President Trump made,

1:48.2

or even meeting up with so many other people who think like him.

1:52.7

It was something else.

1:54.5

Every now and again on the side of the road, you know,

1:56.3

you'd see one person sitting by themselves with a pro-choice sign.

2:02.6

That takes balls. I mean, to sit there in front of an entire crowd with the exact opposite opinion.

...

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