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Hey, everybody. It's Mariel.

I don't know if you've heard, but there's a big election coming up this fall.

We're going to choose a new president, choose representatives.

You may be voting for a senator and for candidates in state and local races.

So this episode is a primer on voting.

I talked to NPR correspondent Miles Parks about how to register and when,

how to find out what voting methods are available in your state,

and how to make sure you have the right ID if ID is required.

A couple things before we jump in.

One is that voting is not run by the federal government.

It's a state by state, it's a county by county thing. So when we're talking about how to do things,

it's going to be slightly different in all the different places across the country.

Also, one of my big picture takeaways from this conversation is this.

Voting generally in the U.S. has gotten a lot easier if you look at a couple big measures.

One, registration. Online voter registration 20 years ago was literally not a thing.

The other big thing is actually how you cast your ballot.

20 years ago, 80% of voters were voting on election day. Now almost every state offers some version of early voting, whether that's early in-person voting or absentee mail voting.

So there are more options now for how to vote.

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