Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John, welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I, a Great Lakes novice get people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton and I am going to remember this week to tell you that I work for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant at Purdue University. And I'm joined today by my good friend and co host Meghan Gunn. Megan, how are you?

Megan Gunn 0:26
I'm doing really good, Stuart, how are you doing?

Stuart Carlton 0:29
I'm also doing good. I'm feeling fired up. We had a nice 80 degree day yesterday, the last one for the year. But I experienced sweat, which I enjoyed. And now it is thundering and perhaps raining. And we are headed, of course to the inevitable decline of the weather towards winter. But I'm not going to talk about that. Because instead, what I'm going to talk about is it is almost election time. And I am not a political junkie. But I have been following the election with interest. I think because this is a high relevance time. I think for folks, how about you? You're fired up about the election?

Megan Gunn 0:59
I voted the other day. So I guess I was fired up and now I feel kind of just calm about it.

Stuart Carlton 1:06
I was gonna go vote at the arena. I think it's called Mackey. Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah, the basketball? Yeah, the basketball thing. And they had early voting. And so I was all fired up. And then somebody told me he waited in line for three hours to vote. And I said, You know what? My polling place opens at six in the morning on election day. My kids wake up at five. I'll be okay. Anyway,

Megan Gunn 1:26
I had a 10 minute wait. So you may want to try over on this side of town.

Stuart Carlton 1:30
10 minute, wait over on that site. Yeah, but then I have to get on my bike or drive. I think I've forgotten how to drive. It's been so long since I've done it regularly. At this point. I'm slowly regressing. Anyway. All right, good. So I guess that I'm really excited to talk to our guests, though. So it's election relevant, right? We wanted to keep it Great Lakes focus, but be very topical. Because that's, you know, a key thing for us is topical. So we're excited. We have an assistant professor of political science with us. So let's actually just play some interstitial music and then get going with it. Um, how about this one today.

Our guest today is Dr. Chris Devine. He is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Dayton, in the Great Lakes State of Ohio. And he does a lot of work into sort of politics in the area and vice presidents actually, of all things and stuff like that. And so we're really excited to talk to him. Hello, Chris. How are you? I'm great. It's good to join you. Thanks

Dr. Chris Devine 2:27
for inviting me on.

Stuart Carlton 2:28
Yeah, thank you for coming. So let's talk about the Midwest kind of as a battleground. You'll hear that a lot about Great Lakes states specifically and Midwest more generally, their battleground states. What does that mean? Precisely?

Dr. Chris Devine 2:39
Sure. And so I have to start off by mentioning the kind of the research that that I think tied me into this podcast is that I wrote a book chapter on the Midwest really, as a battleground that was part of a book published by the University Press of Kansas. It's called the conservative heartland, John Locke. And, and Kathy McNichol stock are the editors on that. And my co author on this chapter was my colleague, Dan Birdsong, at the University of Dayton. And I mentioned that I want to make sure I give him credit. Also, Dan is really, he has this passion, especially for answering your question here, What is a battleground? We often have discussions of this and he probably describe it better than I did. But strike give us a sink answer to this battleground is actually a term that comes from it's a military term applied to politics. It's not just it's not new, that we think of politics and war terms, sometimes even a campaign right, that also comes from

Stuart Carlton 3:35
the language of politics is really violent, isn't it? Is it actually is frighteningly

Dr. Chris Devine 3:39
so yes. On sometimes appropriately. So. I don't know. But, but yeah, a battleground, you know, it's contested ground, it's something that could be up for grabs. When we think of the Electoral College. Obviously, the the presidency is determined not by who wins the most votes overall. Otherwise, we would be, we'd have President Clinton right now. Instead, it's about who wins most votes Electoral College, almost every state except for pesky Maine and Nebraska, give all of their votes, whoever wins the most votes in the state, they have little different in the system. So most of the time, if you want those 18 electoral votes from Ohio, or 16, from Michigan, or whatever it might be, long as you get one more vote than the other person, you get all of them as we had so many close ones, for instance, in 2016, Michigan being decided by point 2%. So that was a battleground and in surely will be again this time.

Stuart Carlton 4:30
So is the Midwest have like an unusual concentration of battleground states? And is that why there seems like a big focus on it or? Or is it just feel that way? Because I live here now.

Dr. Chris Devine 4:40
It is unusual. That's really what this this whole book chapter is about is kind of, you know, really saying that clearly and presenting some evidence to show it that this is not a new phenomenon that the Midwest has been the central battleground and electoral college. You know, we show that Going back into the 1800s, for instance, by a variety of measures in recent years, you look at where the candidates go, they go by far more to Midwest than to the rest of the country to other regions. In fact, we titled The chapter fly to country, right rather than than fly over when it comes to campaigns. It's where they're flying to. We see that in this campaign as well. Just to give an example, my favorite example, my state of Ohio in 2012, got 30% of all campaign visits for the entire country. One state. Yeah, not wasn't number one in 2016 and surely won't be in 2020, either. But it's always up there towards the top. So is the Midwest a major battleground? Yes, in terms of where the candidates are going to, if we track that back to even how often they're mentioned as battlegrounds in newspaper coverage media coverage. Dan birdsong took the lead on this one create a brilliant new measure of even determining, you know, how the media are covering states as battleground states, Midwestern states as a percentage of all states called battlegrounds and media coverage. Going back several decades, the Midwest is far ahead of any other region in that regard, as well. So by a number of different metrics, some new ones that we present, here's new data to document what I think most of us know, especially if you live in the Midwest. Yes, it's true the Midwest is is a battleground to a greater extent than any other region in the country. And that's typically the way it is.

Stuart Carlton 6:26
So, but I think of like, I feel like we're in times of migration right now. Right? Yeah. We're at least a lot of the population is moving out of the Midwest and concentrating on the coasts, maybe Is that accurate? I'm not sure are concentrating within the cities along the Midwest, so. So is that traditional battleground status, something that you expect to see continuing going forward? Or is it unclear at this point?

Dr. Chris Devine 6:48
is so great observation there that you know, it's true, we have population shifts, and that's going to influence the way to what extent certain areas are battlegrounds, for instance, southern states seem to be becoming more battlegrounds, especially Georgia, Texas, we'll see where it lands this time around. But some southern states are becoming much more competitive than they used to be. In part, in part, it's hard to know the various dynamics. But because some folks, especially from, let's say, the Northeast, and Midwest, are moving down to those areas. And oftentimes, these are more college educated folks who may be going down to the south four new job opportunities there typically are moving to metro areas. It's Houston, it's Atlanta, and so on. And a recent divide we see in politics than it used to be this way, really 2016 was the flashpoint for this is we're starting to see a major divide in partisan preferences between folks who do and do not have a college degree. So those without tend to be going more towards Donald Trump overall, it leads Republican candidates in those with more towards democratic candidates. So that's just one example of how Yes, migration can shift the competitive nests of states as the Midwest loses population in relative terms over time. That may be one reason why we're seeing fluctuations in competitiveness, where, you know, even in a state like Ohio, that used to be more competitive, at least last time around was not so much so. And then we have other states like Minnesota or Michigan that that, you know, for decades have not really been contested, at least haven't ended up close, work closely as last time around and probably will be destined.

Stuart Carlton 8:28
And of course, in the long Well, in the super long run, we're all dead, as John Maynard Keynes allegedly said, but, but thinking about how population patterns aren't static, right? And then we'll say the same. I mean, you look at some of the climate projections, for example, and, and it's expected that, you know, people might even start moving back toward this area that countries as other areas become less inhabitable. Maybe not might not be our lifetime, or at least not the next phase of our lifetime. But but I guess you might expect to see that again.

Dr. Chris Devine 8:52
Hmm. Yeah, it's possible, you know, I'm not sure if we're people would shift if I don't know, they're coming from Florida, Louisiana or whatever, they necessarily come to the Midwest, or they go to the west, Mountain West, for instance, or, you know, that's hard to project. But, you know, I'm sure we'll see some changes in, in migration patterns. And that could change, whether it's people coming into the Midwest or people leaving it, pricing changes in the future that could affect political affect the political map,

Stuart Carlton 9:25
and stupid question here. But but as the population changes, the number of electoral votes changes well over time, right. Is that is that tied to the census? Or how do you know what's the record? Yes,

Dr. Chris Devine 9:33
yes, it is. So basically, on the census. So we started off with every state gets two Senate seats. And then there are 435 House seats, house representatives to go around. It's not how originally was but for the past 100 years, by law, that's the cap. And so the question every 10 years after a census is how is the population shifted around, at least in relative terms, for instance, Ohio had lost power Population leading up to the 2010 census. And so it lost two seats in the House of Representatives. So it used to have 20 electoral votes and was 18. Probably we're going to lose another one, unfortunately, in this next round, so we'll be down to 15 house seats, you add the two Senate seats, that 17 electoral votes. So yes, it's based on since house representatives based on population and electoral votes represent the Senate plus House seats for every state that will affect Ohio and Indiana and potentially India, other states around the Midwest as well. Interesting.

Stuart Carlton 10:35
And so with a theoretical, you know, there's talk of potentially adding additional states in the form Puerto Rico or Washington DC, or I just read about this, we'll talk about this with our other guests may be splitting off the Upper Peninsula into its own state, apparently, they want to secede. So I'm excited to read about that. But so then that same 435 will get divided up more ways, potentially.

Dr. Chris Devine 10:56
Yeah, that's right. It's possible, you know, the Constitution doesn't mandate that there'd be four and a three, five seats, it does mandate two Senate seats per state, and that the Electoral College formula be house plus Senate seats. So if the law, not the Constitution is not in the Constitution, but if the law were changed, so that there could be either we seek for for it with our foreign 35 seats, and now we shift that around adding in Puerto Rico or whatever states may come in, or that number is raised. So the other states don't necessarily have to adjust, gets complicated.

Stuart Carlton 11:34
Electoral calculus is maybe pretty accurate. Well, let's talk a little bit. So you've done a lot of research on vice presidents, which I think is an interesting topic to research, I will look up the famous quote, I won't say it because this is a family show about the value of the vice presidency.

Dr. Chris Devine 11:48
But I think you're right, that's what is it? It's not when we get a spit,

Stuart Carlton 11:53
warm bucket of spit. That's the second time in the episode we just released yesterday, we used to spit as a euphemism for something else and a Monty Python song. So yes, it's not worth a warm bucket of spit. However, your research is much more valuable. So your research itself is more valuable than the vice presidency, supposedly. So what how do you do vice presidency research? Or you'd like modeling or looking at you know, doing qualitative stuff? What can research you're doing with that? Exactly.

Dr. Chris Devine 12:19
So first, I have to defend the vice presidency. Okay. That's the famous quote from John Nance Garner, ftrs, first vice president for them.

Stuart Carlton 12:28
Babies, just FDR, who was tough to work with, right, yeah.

Dr. Chris Devine 12:30
Maybe. You know, Jonathan was coming from being Speaker of the House, he had presidential ambitions of his own and comparison, vice president didn't seem like much, you know, the constitutional responsibilities of the Vice President are pretty minimal. The main one really is breaking ties in the Senate, if there's ever a tie vote, and they're rarely are presiding over the Senate, but you know, they rarely do. And, of course, taking over for the President, if the President were to die or resign or something like that. In the last 40 or so years, really starting with the Carter administration, he reached an agreement when he selected Walter Mondale as his vice president to give more power to the Vice President. It's a model that worked really well. And so presidents since then have stuck with that. They don't have to there's no law requiring it, let alone constitutional provision, but they just tend to because it works to their advantage. So, you know, in short, what does the vice president do these days? The Vice President is a liaison domestic in domestic and foreign affairs. So negotiating with Congress, as Joe Biden did on budget deals in early 220 10s. Look at my pencil and Coronavirus Task Force and working with governors, they often serve as kind of, you know, just under the president level, ambassadors going around the world and and in maybe doing preliminary negotiations with foreign nations. So, so sorry, I just have to have to stick up. No,

Stuart Carlton 13:49
no, no. So the vice presidency now has emerged into it. No, of course, I was just being flippant with that. But obviously, the Vice President sees something with a lot of potential power and responsibility, even if it's not, you know, directly, constitutionally enabled or whatever. And so what do you do specifically with Vice Presidential type research?

Dr. Chris Devine 14:06
Sure. So this book is with another co author, Kyle Copco of Elizabethtown College, and it's called the running mates matter. And it's really the first book that ever tackles this question, believe it or not of what effect running mates have on the election. There are other ways you know, what to do with media coverage or selection. But do they actually move votes? We bring together a few different perspectives on this different ways that they could influence the vote, and it is a quantitative research methodology that we use. In short, what we look at is first of all, when the running mate is more popular, or for that matter, unpopular. Is that shifting how everyone votes do we see large movement in voting percentage based on that? For the most part, we don't, for that matter, when a running mate suddenly gets more popular, it doesn't have a lasting effect on their presidential candidate. We also look at we call targeted effects in that deals with not necessarily appealing to the whole country. Eat, but is the running mate. The vice presidential selection a good way to pick up votes among a certain group of voters. So is Kamala Harris going to add votes among women and among African Americans, of course, the first one we can test based on previous evidence, the latter, we can't test yet, but we'll see what comes out of 2020. Just in terms of historical examples, but by and large, not much in the way of these targeted effects, what we do find is that there tends to be this indirect effect, kind of makes sense, when you think about it, people are not really voting for vice president, they might like that person or dislike that person. But, you know, ultimately, the power disparity between those two folks only makes sense. You're gonna choose the person you prefer for president, regardless of who got elected as vice president, but your sense of that choice who this person is like, okay, Trump versus Biden, what's their judgment? What's their leadership ability? What's their political ideology? What are their priorities? What's their administration going to look like? The choice of a running mate, when you have so many different people you could pick from tells people a lot about the presidential candidates. So just for one quick example, one thing we show from 2008, simply because the the data available that year, lend themselves to this much better than any other year, we can show that the more people perceived Sarah Palin as being ready to be president, if necessary, the better they thought of John McCain's judgment. Now, of course, a lot of that flipped flipped around, because there were more doubts than usual about Baylands readiness to be president. So basically, that perception that she wasn't ready wasn't up to the job like she should be for typical vice president hurt perceptions of McCain's judgment, and that hurt his vote total, we can show that statistically in the book and flip that around for Joe Biden tended to be seen as, as more ready to be president necessary. That enhanced perceptions of Brock Obama's judgment and added votes for him, you know, we're talking about the margins, nothing dramatic. But yes, they matter electorally, just not really in the way we typically think of bringing in a certain group of voters or just, you know, driving everyone's vote overall, it's more of this indirect.

Stuart Carlton 17:08
That sounds like it's some relatively complicated model, though, modeling, potentially, because you're trying to tease out a little bit of causality there, I suppose, which sounds like it's pretty hard to do. Have there been other vice presidents historically, who have had, you know, significant really big kind of influences that you're able to find in terms of turning up votes are getting, you know, reflecting well, on their president top of the ticket or whatever?

Dr. Chris Devine 17:30
It's hard to say I don't want to dodge here. But I have to say that the the, the evidence is really the data you can use to investigate these things is limited what I just described in 2008. There just happened to be surveys, even that were launched before Palin selection, that asked really pointed things about perceptions of the running mate, usually you don't get a question in a survey, that's like, Does this person have good judgment? And that you'll get one that asked like, right, on a scale from zero to 100? What do you think of that, which is kind of a rough measure, as as it is, and you get to these causality issues. I should mention, just quickly on that, in terms of terms of cause that how do you know, the running mates driving things? One thing we can do is there are some surveys away 12 and 16. These panels surveys, where they they go back to the same people over time over the course of the campaign and ask them, how are you going to vote? And at some point, at least what do you think of the running mate? They asked us what, what groups you belong to in certain social groups or political groups. So there we can actually see, for instance, just give you one example. Let's take Mike Pence in 2016. We can see how evangelical Christians or conservatives are Midwesterners for that matter, actually, that's appropriate for this right, we can see how they were planning to vote before his selection. And then see if a subsequent movement and their intentions on how they're going to vote was that driven by being evangelical or being conservative, or being a Midwesterner controlling for other factors. And so there's one where we can pretty confidently say, believe it or not actually being evangelical or conservative or Midwestern, all three of those did not significantly, in statistical sense, explain and movement toward the Trump ticket toward the Republican ticket. And we often don't see those home state or regional effects.

Stuart Carlton 19:20
That's really interesting. In terms of, first of all, the panel service is great. It's someone that does a fair amount of survey research, I follow kind of, you know, you see, these polls pop up periodically, and I get jealous because there's a lot of work being done to do that. So that's, that's awesome.

Megan Gunn 19:33
As you're talking about Mike Pence and how everything kind of changed, especially Indiana perception after he was put on to the 2016 ticket. Is there typically a positive effect on on the VPS homestate once they're selected for a ticket? Or how does that work?

Dr. Chris Devine 19:51
Believe it or not, there's not much of a home state of fact, that is one of the things you know, everybody knows about running mates, right? Is that if you want to Pick up a certain certain state you want to pick up. I don't know, Michigan, let's say a Biden should have picked Gretchen Whitmer, you're already got California in the bag. Why bother with Kamala Harris pick Gretchen Whitmer. And instead, you hear a lot of this talk during the campaign. And, you know, we're not the first to, to look into this. But our first book called Copco and AI, VP advantage of 2016 was all in this home state of fact, it's really the most in depth treatment of that, again, using different methodologies. And what we show pretty consistently is there really is not a home state, of fact, the best evidence if there's any of this would be it's not entirely clear, but maybe someone who comes from a smaller state at least smaller in terms of population, there's probably more coherent sense of identity in those states, like it means something to be in Delaware, from Delaware that could be distinctive, or maybe even Alaska in that case. Where wear like that actually matters in a way that no offense, but being from Ohio or Indiana, I don't know that might not be a central to who people are just because there are different parts of that state different identities within that state.

Stuart Carlton 21:09
Your identity is a little more diffuse in those. Yep. So here's a question. I was doing research for this. Why is every vice president from Indiana? I mean, that's not actually true. But there have been about 12 vice presidents from the Great Lakes states that Knott County, New York, New York is a Great Lakes State, but I didn't want to have to portion them out halfway to the Atlantic coast. So and then six of those had been from Indiana. So is this because it's just because of the Midwest being such a battleground that even though you found that, you know, maybe there isn't that big effect people still think there is or maybe they used to think there is Is it because of that trying to win the battleground or there's something about Indiana that is a sponge into which people can throw their political aspirations are something

Dr. Chris Devine 21:50
just a lot of great people live in Indiana. Just trying to get on your good side. A lot of that goes back to an earlier era. So of course we have Mike Pence now and Dan Quayle beforehand serving as Vice President prior to that, if I'm getting this right, check me on this, I think last was Thomas Marshall under Woodrow Wilson. And there were some others before that early 1900s, late 1800s. So

Stuart Carlton 22:20
let's see. Thomas Marshall. So are you gonna be checking now? Thomas Marshall? Yep, was under Wilson. Oh, you name that, didn't you? Wow. You're a nerd Fairbanks.

Dr. Chris Devine 22:32
Yeah. Fairbanks. And he ran once in Lawson and ran with a different candidate. He ran with Teddy Roosevelt and one and oh four. And then he ran with Charles Evans Hughes 1916. And last

Stuart Carlton 22:44
number go listen to you on both Thomas Andrews Hendrix, no relation to Jimmy judging by his picture. Let's see. Oh, boy. Choi Wheeler Colfax, Jr.

Dr. Chris Devine 22:58
I actually don't know how you say it. I used to say Schyler. Schuyler has been the fewest corrupts if he didn't come back for a second term. gave him the boot.

Stuart Carlton 23:08
Anyway, but so and they've been there, maybe more and there's Illinois. We got we got your best practices covered. But so well, that I forgot what you were saying.

Dr. Chris Devine 23:19
I can jump back in on that actually. Because I can I distracted you it was good trivia. I love good trivia. So if you look at the those vice president came from Indiana, most of them came from an era where the Vice President really did not have much power. So this modern era, and there's actually good evidence to suggest this not from us. Jody Baumgardner is another political scientist who really studies vice presidential selection. One thing he shows is that state competitiveness used to matter more in an earlier era, Experience matters more, since about 1960, as vise friends have become more powerful, the competitiveness or the size of their state in terms of electoral votes, statistically predicts does less to predict does very, really nothing anymore to predict whether they're selected. And so in an earlier era, when Vice Presidents weren't terribly consequential unless the president died, which happened more than anyway, in those earlier eras. Yeah, I mean, picking a vice president, what does it do for you at best to help you to win a state and maybe win the election, so there was more of incentive back then. You pick someone from a battleground state at that time, Indiana was one of the key battleground states Ohio and New York typically because they had more electoral votes. They were actually singled out for presidential nominations. So it was it was often the what was hey we have a vice presidential slot leftover. How about Indiana? Let's let's work them in here. Are New Jersey was often competing for that.

Stuart Carlton 24:52
Throw New Jersey a bone. Yeah, sure. Yep. That makes sense. And then so then speculating and maybe not. So you're talked a lot. It's interesting about how the Vice President sees you evolved, right? And so this is pure speculation. I just thought of it and we can edit it out if it doesn't work. But how do you think that might continue? Like going forward in the next 100? How does the vice presidency look 100 years that it doesn't now, obviously, it will be a robot. And people have implanted. But I mean, forgetting all that it'll be hooked up to the matrix. How do you think the position might change if like current trends continue? Or what do you kind of forecast going in there?

Dr. Chris Devine 25:25
You know, there's been relative stability. Over the last, you know, that nearly half century really a powerful vice presidents ones that have an office directly in the West Wing, which I don't know if that seems like much, but it really is a big deal. They have frequent access, they're always there, they're allowed into high level meetings, they get the intelligence briefings, they get one on one time with the President, there's often a lunchtime per week setup. In some cases, that's been pretty stable for you know, for the last again, nearly half century, there's some fluctuations and what they do some take on more specific tasks than others. So I guess the best I could say is that there seems to be not a steady increase in overall responsibility, some shifting and where they focus their energy. And some of that depends on you know, quarks of who's president, who's Vice President, what they want to do and how they get along, and all that kind of stuff. But I can't say I have any good reason to believe it's going to become much more powerful over time. It's possible we could see some of these things codified in law, that Vice President take on certain duties, I, as long as presidents are seeing it to their advantage to keep giving this responsibility to the Vice President. I don't think there's really need for some intervention, legally speaking, or in terms of constitutional amendments. So So I would anticipate that, that probably vice presidents are going to continue to be this important governing partner, but in in formal sense, unless, you know, perhaps there's something about the job of being president and becomes infinitely infinitely more complex. And you just needed someone to have official responsibility for this other duty. But, you know, honestly, often, the response is to create a new Department of Government, new agency, and give responsibility, least formal responsibility to a cabinet secretary.

Megan Gunn 27:18
For I guess, for those of us that haven't already voted, going into election night, what what should we be looking for? What are you specifically looking for?

Dr. Chris Devine 27:28
There's so much going on with this, it's hard to nail down to one or two things, I think the I think it's important to make sure everyone knows going into it, and if you're following us closely, is may be old news. But just to be clear, it's unlikely that we're going to know the winner on election night. Part of that has to do with variation in state laws on when incoming ballots can be counted. Now, there are some states that allow ballots to be counted immediately, as soon as they're received, I'm talking about if there's an early vote absentee vote, immediately counted, some of them at some period beforehand, a certain number of days before the election, they can start counting the votes, some it starts at different points on election day or election night. So there's some states including Pennsylvania, that they're not gonna they're gonna get a ton. Of course, Pennsylvania probably is. If the election comes down to one state, it's probably Pennsylvania, that's how most estimates have it. I'm not saying it will. But if it did, that would probably be the state to watch. So some states like Pennsylvania, who may be, which may be critical. They can't start counting these ballots that have come in, you know, through other means, not cast on election day, they can't start counting them until Election Day or election night, I forget exactly when they when they have it, I think it's when the polls, suppose I could be wrong. There will also be depending on on the state, some ballots that don't, they have to be postmarked by election day. But they don't arrive until the day after two days after maybe three days after. So those will still be there to be counted. So depending on how close the overall races, depending on how close a particular state is, especially if it's a decisive one. You know that that's why it's hard to speak about election night. Because I'd like to think we'd have a quick resolution, whoever wins that we at least agree on who won pretty quickly. Frankly, I think it's gonna take some patients that were not accustomed to. And I do fear how that's going to play into different narratives of what exactly has gone on, you might see something where the vote totals are looking a certain way on election night, and one candidate may seize on that and say, Look at one, and then totally legitimate votes that were count cast in proper ways and are counted in proper ways. Come in a day or two or three later, at least that they're, they're added to the tally until that time later. And some people might try to portray that as somehow illegitimate when it's not. That's the thing that I really have posts on my mind, frankly, going into election night, just beside the kind of battleground electoral map stuff.

Megan Gunn 29:55
So it's like December that we should be expecting to know who the actual winner is

Dr. Chris Devine 30:01
too hard to say it depends on, on on whether there are legal disputes, which could very well may be there is, according to federal law, there doesn't have to be electoral vote Electoral College has to meet in December, I forget the exact date, I want to say it's the 12th or 14th, or somewhere in there, it's kind of mid December, where the Electoral College will vote. And that means in every state, the members of Electoral College separately in their respective states are meeting to vote on the same day at the same time. Then it those are transmitted to Congress and the Vice President, appropriately enough, is the one who actually opens those envelopes, those seal certificates, this is one other constitutional role to have to be able to count. It's a high bar. So the vice president opens them and they're counted. That happens in early January.

Megan Gunn 30:56
i Okay, so I have a follow up question in this, Stuart, feel free to edit it out. But there are a lot of people that are thinking about not voting because they don't see their vote counting because it is like ultimately up to the Electoral College to decide who gets elected. So what would you have to say to those people?

Dr. Chris Devine 31:17
I would say it, it depends on the state. But in most states, the electors are legally bound to vote for whoever wins the vote in that state. I can't say off the top my head whether this is true in Indiana, for instance, or which states, but I believe it's 31 or 32 states now require their electors to vote in accordance with how the people of that state voted. So you are finding that at least in most of these states, and there's actually disputed whether that was constitutional, it's not a matter of of constitutional provision that they're bound in such a way, obviously, this is vary by state. So there's some flexibility for states to make choices here. There was some question of whether a state could actually penalize an elector for not exercising their conscience instead, just following the will of the people that was resolved last July, and the Supreme Court affirm that, yes, states if they want to, can bind their electors in that way.

Megan Gunn 32:11
Which makes sense because they're representing that state and

Stuart Carlton 32:18
in fact, check Indiana does not bind the electors, which is very Indiana. Great. Well, Chris, this is actually really interesting. I always say that, and I'm usually lying, but this time, I'm not that going on there. But no, this is really fascinating. You're obviously a wealth of knowledge about this stuff. And it's something that's so very important, and so very timely, so that's good. But that's actually not why we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes. The reason we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes is to answer two questions. And the first one is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast, or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose?

Dr. Chris Devine 33:01
Hands down the sandwich. There are two things that I am competent to make when it comes to food, salads and sandwiches. I love making a good sandwich. So any day, I just had one for lunch myself. It was fantastic sandwich.

Stuart Carlton 33:13
There we go. So what kind of sandwich? So the next question is usually where should I go and date and to get a sandwich? Tell me about your lunch sandwich. That's fine. Let's just go deep on Sandoz here.

Dr. Chris Devine 33:23
You want me to I can? Yeah. All right. Can you tell us the bread to lunch meat on and then you dice? Let's see. cucumbers, onions, and Serrano peppers, olive oil and vinegar. Some lettuce, kale is even better if you can get it. Melt some cheese on it put in the microwave for a minute. And then you put hummus on the top piece of bread. Yeah, cut it in half. That's fantastic.

Megan Gunn 33:45
It sounds like salad and sandwich forms.

Dr. Chris Devine 33:50
Really, I make I make one meal except one of them. I put it between breads. toasted bread. That's my secret. I like that. That's really awesome. You have anything? I think you're right about that.

Stuart Carlton 34:03
That's good. And then the second question says, We'd like to leave our listeners with like one piece of life advice. It can be big or small, serious or silly. You know, what is something and we'd like to give people something to ruminate on. So if you had to give a piece of life advice, what would that be?

Dr. Chris Devine 34:18
I would say on a serious note, it's really hard to keep up with the news right now and I struggle with my myself, even though I have a deep interest in it, of course, and I'm talking to students and and others about what's going on. But one thing that I find is actually most helpful and understanding current events is history. You hear people talk about, you know, reading history books, actually no more history or making historical allusions that they often can't back up. I'm just so often struck by as much as I'm coming from political science standpoint in doing quantitative analysis in a lot of these cases, as I was describing, you know, a lot of times you won't understand current events, read more history. There are so many things that you think are just unique to the area you live in. And actually, there's different versions of things that have happened before. We could take populism for instance, which of course is front and center right now I read a book on populism couple years ago, it was written in the 90s. I was amazed by how much the words of folks like Pat Buchanan, you know, you could just insert into today or another book, I was reading about Spiro Agnew of Vice President, fantastic book that came out a year or so go from the University of Virginia press about him. And, you know, the things he was saying, sound much like what you hear in politics today, so, so much that we think is new isn't actually new. I don't know if that's reassuring to think, Hey, we got through before we can do it again. Or if it's depressing, so things don't change. But that perspective is one that I think is important for all of us to have.

Stuart Carlton 35:49
That sounds really wonderful. Well, Chris, where can people go to find out more about your work? Is there a social media thing you'd like to direct people to website? Obviously, go buy the book? We'll link to that in our show notes. Thank you. Yeah,

Dr. Chris Devine 35:59
that'd be great. You can find me on Twitter. I'm at Prof. Divine, er, OFDV I N E. And you can go to my website. It's Christopher Jade divine.com. Christopher J. divine.com.

Stuart Carlton 36:11
We will link to all of those in the show notes. Yes. Plug away. What else? Yeah.

Dr. Chris Devine 36:15
That that's, that's it. I hope that helps. And I appreciate the opportunity to be on here. Megan steward. This has been fun. And And hey, let's do again some time. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 36:23
absolutely. Chris. open invitation. All right. Thank you so much.

Well, that was really interesting. I in another life, I think I would be a politics junkie. But my life is not empty right now. So I'm glad to get you no real expert on there to come and give us the quick and dirty version of it. That was awesome.

Megan Gunn 36:53
For sure. I was super surprised that people specialize in studying the vice president.

Stuart Carlton 37:00
Yeah, but I understand how now after because I didn't know the bucket of warm spit. That's a real quote, you can look it up. I'm not gonna link to it. We're a government organization. It's not spit. It's a different liquid. But so I knew that quote. But when I can see it was really interesting. But also, and we didn't get into this. It's actually applied research and way in terms of thinking about how to pick vice presidential candidates. Yeah, and it was interesting to hear about how because I, you know, the Midwest is always important. It's always you know, last last time it was, you know, Wisconsin was a big turning point in Michigan noises and you hear about Ohio and all that. And so I really enjoyed getting a chance to hear some of the details behind that. So it was great. Sounds good. Well, it's a good sound sandwich.

Megan Gunn 37:45
So it sounded delicious.

Stuart Carlton 37:47
Yeah, much better. I was going to make a sandwich for lunch, and I ended up having chili instead because we had leftovers and you know, I am the leftover vacuum in our house. But now I'm full of anger that I didn't make a sandwich.

Megan Gunn 38:00
as delicious as his sandwich sounded, though.

Stuart Carlton 38:03
No, no, no, definitely not. I can't make it. You know, well, I can't make a sandwich to save my life. I'm not a chef at all. I am more of an appreciator. Anyway, great. Well, Megan, where can people go to find out more about the work that you were doing both personally and with the familiar faces project,

Megan Gunn 38:21
you can find me on Twitter at underscore t f. F. P, and on Instagram at the familiar faces project.

Stuart Carlton 38:31
There we go. Wait a minute, actually, hold on now. Hold on. Let's talk. So you just had this big deal alone, so I quit. And so the one thing I did for my own mental health is I logged out of social media until after this election, because I feel like it's a relatively stressful time. And I do and especially with the pandemic in the election, it could Doom scrolling machine, like my fingers all decrepit, and I'm just full of anger and depression. So I logged off. But as I was logging off, I saw this really cool thing you were doing with some of your colleagues, I guess on communication and we'll talk about that a bit.

Megan Gunn 39:00
Yeah, sure. So we there was there I guess, starting back to back in May, with Chris Cooper, the Central Park birder there sparked a series of black in X groups. And so that was that was blackbirds week is the one that really got kicked off like in nature was one of the main hashtags in that way. And we there was a group that that was going around and asking for volunteers to participate for black and science communication. And so you can you can go on Twitter mainly on Twitter, hashtag black insight calm. And we had a whole week full of amazing things. We had workshops and, and panels the one of the things that I led was an outreach day and so we had three different scientists come on and one did a lot of different lab safety and terminology things and then we had one to the foam known project and talked about come reactions and physical properties. And then we had what was near and dear to my heart from the College of Agriculture. Food Science was representative. So we talked about food properties and different activities that kids could do at home. And so that was a lot of fun.

Stuart Carlton 40:13
Awesome. Well, I encourage you to look down right now at your phone. And right there at the bottom of the shownotes, you'll see a link both to Megan social stuff, but also to the what is it black inside, calm, black, inside

Megan Gunn 40:23
combat, calm, dark,

Stuart Carlton 40:25
there's a website, it's also

Megan Gunn 40:26
a website. So you can also go and you can go into the website, and you can find different black and science communicate, science, black, and you can find different black science communicators on this website. And they're, I mean, science communication revolves around all kinds of different fields, right? So I've got the Natural Resources background, there were people from the medical field and people that are in humanities and just all kinds of different venues. And so it was, it was a lot of fun.

Stuart Carlton 40:56
Well, that's really cool. I meant the website. Now. It's black and cy calm with two M's Cy calm with two M's for communication. Well, I encourage everybody to go and check that out. And hopefully, we'll have more about that in a future episode. I also encourage people to go and check out Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant I see grant.org And we're on many social things at i l i n Sea Grant for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant

and so that's gonna do it for the first quadrennial teach me about the Great Lakes election special. And so folks, I want to remind you, you know, special that we get to do this, and we get to vote, there are places that don't and for many, many years, people did not. And so it's easy to get in this mindset that your vote isn't important or it doesn't count. But I think it's really important to go out there and vote and sort of celebrate that and honor that. I'm going to read from President Abraham Lincoln's concluding remarks from his message to Congress on December 1 1862. This is a month before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and he wanted to deliver our message to Congress and so this is from the end of it, but first, if we're gonna go maudlin, let's go for much better.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not can any of us imagined better, but can we all do better? The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our cases new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.

So go out there and vote. It really matters