What Next - First-Timers: Out of Prison and Finally Able to Vote
Slate Daily Feed
Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2020
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Winning November’s presidential election will likely mean turning out a whole host of people who have never voted before. In our new series, First-Timers, we speak with voters from around the country and across the political spectrum to ask them what’s bringing them to the ballot box for the first time.
Guest: Dewayne Comer, a formerly incarcerated first-time voter from Syracuse, New York.
Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm wondering if you can describe to me what election day is going to look like for you. |
| 0:09.7 | Like, are you going to go to the polls on election day? |
| 0:12.2 | Oh, I can't. First time voting, you think I'm going to let them get away that easy? I'm going to vote. |
| 0:18.6 | It's pretty hard to miss the joy in Dwayne Comer's voice when you talked to him about the election. |
| 0:24.7 | This is the first year Dwayne is going to be able to cast a ballot. |
| 0:27.6 | He says if he had his way, he'd drive a Cadillac to the polls. |
| 0:32.3 | You know what I'm actually going to do? |
| 0:33.7 | I'm going to record it on my phone because this is really going to be nice. |
| 0:36.8 | Just roll up. Yes. Roll up, going, do, I'm going to record it on my phone because this is really going to be nice. Just roll up. |
| 0:38.0 | Yes. Roll up, go and do the vote. Have someone who's there, you know, just film me doing this. |
| 0:46.1 | Because this to me is monumental. If I told like 18 year old you that you were this hyped for voting, would he have believed |
| 0:56.3 | you? |
| 0:57.3 | No. |
| 0:58.3 | No. |
| 0:59.3 | No. |
| 1:00.3 | Not at all. |
| 1:01.3 | Dwayne is 50 now. |
| 1:04.6 | Part of the reason his younger self might not have understood this excitement is that he was living |
| 1:11.8 | a pretty different life back then. Dwayne spent most of his adulthood incarcerated, watching |
| 1:18.2 | elections play out with his fellow inmates in the prison law library. |
| 1:22.7 | And me now actually getting that opportunity, I wouldn't miss it for the world. I noticed not only am I going |
| 1:30.2 | to be smiling, the ones that was in that law library going to be smiling. I wanted to talk to Dwayne |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.