The Ten News: Election Day Kid Takeover

[MUSIC PLAYING] NICO GONZALEZ WISLER: Hey, Forever Ago listeners. Producer Nico Gonzalez Wisler here. We're taking this week off to get ready for our live show this weekend in Minneapolis, but we have a super special guest episode from our friends at the Ten News. It's their election day kid takeover. Keep listening to learn all about how the US presidential election works and hear about some elections taking place around the world this year. We'll be back next week with a brand new Forever Ago all about gladiators.

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[CAR HONKING]

RYAN: I'm coming, Pam. Hold on. I got my ID, my special voting socks. Where's my election day snack pack? There it is. I'm ready, Pam! I'm coming. It's time to vote, baby.

EVERETT: Tupelo, I think they're gone. Where are you? Tupelo.

TUPELO: Right behind you, Everett.

EVERETT: You scared the crumpets out of me. That's some S tier camouflage. You've just been standing here against the wall and they didn't notice you?

TUPELO: Yeah, Ryan's not very observant when he has to be somewhere. You were hiding in the filing cabinet. How was that?

EVERETT: Not good, dude. Not good. Ryan keeps his gym socks in there. It smelled like burnt cheese.

SPEAKER: Ooh.

TUPELO: That's gross. Well, the adults are out voting today and we have the studio to ourselves. Should we start the show?

EVERETT: Yeah. It's time to get down with the get down. I'm Everett.

TUPELO: And I'm Tupelo. It's Tuesday, November 5, election day.

EVERETT: We are the Ten News, and this is an election day kid takeover.

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EVERETT: It's finally election day here in the United States, and the presidential race is looking like a close one. Former President Donald Trump is facing off against Vice President Kamala Harris, and everyone is waiting to see who will win.

TUPELO: Hopefully the grownups you know are out voting today. Or maybe they voted early, like Pam. Since we've heard a lot from the adults, we decided to take over the studio and share three things we think are important to know about election day.

EVERETT: Number one, our very first thing to comes from a fellow Ten'er, Alonso.

ALONSO: I am from Houston, Texas. And my question is, how hard is it to win a election?

TUPELO: Great question, Alonso. It is incredibly hard to win. In the presidential election, you need 270 out of the available 538 electoral college votes to win. A candidate can win the popular vote, meaning all the votes from the people in the US that vote but lose the electoral college.

EVERETT: And what is the electoral college again?

TUPELO: It is a system where each of the states have a set number of electoral votes that go to each candidate when they win the majority of votes in that state. California, for example, is a winner-takes-all vote. So if the candidate wins the state by even just one vote, all of California's 55 electoral college votes are allocated to that candidate. It's bananas.

EVERETT: Number two. Every vote must and will count. With so many Americans voting early and voting today, this could be a record turnout. While there are leaders casting doubt in the voting process, saying that we should expect voter fraud, our US elections have generally been safe and fair. While former President Donald Trump still refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election, every state certified their election results and no widespread voter fraud was found. And President Biden fairly won.

TUPELO: Number three. We may have to wait days or even weeks to know who the new president will be. It takes time to make sure all the votes are counted, and different states have different deadlines for accepting absentee and mail-in ballots. And if the numbers are super close, there could be a recount where they double-check for the ballots. In 2020, it took four days for all the votes to get counted and declare Joe Biden the winner.

EVERETT: In 2016, the Associated Press called it for former President Trump the day after the election at 2:30 in the morning.

TUPELO: And in the year 2000, before either of us was born, it took 35 days, the longest amount of time in modern history, to declare the winner.

EVERETT: In the end, Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by a mere 537 votes.

TUPELO: Wow, you weren't kidding when you said every vote counts.

BEN: Hi. I'm Ben. I'm eight and I live in Oklahoma. What I want to tell the candidates is that I hope whoever wins listens to the people and does the best job they can. And I hope they put video games in school.

EVERETT: You know what, Tupelo? We've been talking about the US presidential election a lot for a long time. But what about the rest of the world?

TUPELO: That's a great question, Everett. Sometimes it's easy to forget that wherever you live isn't the center of the universe. I know this is a kid takeover, but let's go to a grown up Ten News correspondent, Jamie, to tell us about the other elections around the world.

JAMIE GAREH: Hey, Ten'ers. Jamie here coming to you from Boston. 2024 has been a confusing year, for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones has been, at least for me, the election. And if somehow you're just hearing about the election now for the first time on November 5, the whole country is going to come together to decide whether the next president of the United States will be Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. And while this election is incredibly important and will define how we live for the next four years, it's also an important year for many other countries around the world as it is the biggest election year in history.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, almost half the world will be, or already has, voted in an election this year, with over 70 elections in total. From Iceland to Senegal, Panama to Sri Lanka, things are about to look very different for many years to come across the world. And I'm here to tell you all about it.

First, let's start with my home country, the United Kingdom. On July 4, while everyone here was stuffing their faces with hot dogs and celebrating independence from the British, the British themselves were celebrating a separation from the Conservative Party, the right wing party of that had been ruling for 14 years. The people of UK decided to bring in a man named Keir Starmer and his left wing Labor Party, one that stands in support of immigration to helping in the fight against climate change and trying to uplift those most in need, among many other things.

And what's really amazing about this election is if, like me, you've been keeping up with every speech, debate, and tweet from the US election for the last year, or what really feels like 10 years, the election campaign in the UK was just six weeks long. Six weeks, that's it, for the nation to decide who can best lead them forward. And as a Brit myself, I can tell you, it is much, much less exhausting.

And if you think six weeks sounds crazy short, imagine a campaign that lasted just 10 days. That's exactly what happened in Senegal this year. A country on the West Coast of Africa lined with beautiful beaches and all kinds of incredible wildlife, like lions, elephants, monkeys. Here, now President Bassirou Diomaye Faye was released from prison just 10 days before the election happened. And he won. And no, he's not a dangerous criminal. He was actually imprisoned because the president before him viewed him as a political rival and was threatened by him.

But that didn't stop him from running. And his victory has been viewed as not just a victory for Senegal, but a victory for democracy all across the world. After he won, the whole of Senegal erupted into a big party. And what made things even sweeter was that he won the election on his 44th birthday, making him the youngest current elected leader in Africa.

And finally, in India, a country with 1.4 billion people, the largest election in history took place with almost a billion people heading to the voting stations, making up 12% of the world's population. There are more people eligible to vote in India than in the European Union, the US, Canada, and Mexico all combined, and that makes voting just a little bit more complicated. Instead of the election being held on one day, it was held over 44 days to ensure that everyone who was able to vote could.

The election began on April 19 and ended on June 1, and India's Narendra Modi secured his third term in power, meaning this was the third time he was elected. So while being able to pull off such a huge election was a big win for democracy, in many countries around the world, sadly, elections may not always be as democratic as they seem. Countries like Russia and North Korea, although they both held elections this year, are ruled by dictators who completely control those elections.

Other countries like Venezuela and Chad had similar outcomes this year too. And while there were many winners, such as Senegal and Mexico, where they elected their first ever female president, we must remember how lucky we are to be in a country where we really have a say in the people that lead us and who we choose to make our lives just that little bit better.

I'm Jamie Gareh, and I'll see you on November 5.

EVERETT: Thank you so much, Jamie. I love hearing what's happening in other parts of the world.

TUPELO: Now that the grownups are out voting, we've probably got some time while we wait for the 2024 results. What should we do in the meantime, Everett?

EVERETT: I'm thinking we build a fort in Pam's office, then borrow to video games and LEGOs from Ryan's collection.

TUPELO: And maybe raid Cap's not so secret snack drawer for the stuff she hides from Ryan.

EVERETT: Let's go.

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TUPELO: Just a reminder, our regular 10 things you need to know will drop on Thursday. I'm Tupelo, and I wanted to give a shout out to the students at Green Central Escuela Bilingue. Como ustedes.

EVERETT: I'm Everett, and I wanted to give a shout out to my classmates at Creekside Elementary. Thanks for being my friends guys, and thank you for listening to this Ten News election special report.