Stop the Pandemic: Step 8. Cast Your Votes
Step 8: Cast Your Votes!
You can click on any of the slides above to go to that Step.
8.1. Introduction to Step 8: Cast Your Votes
In this final Step 8, you will cast your votes for the top three proposals for stopping the pandemic. In the days ahead you can monitor the ongoing vote as more students take this minicourse around the country and world. We encourage you to also download your speech and send it and your video to your elected representatives at the local, state, and federal levels. Finally, return to your Stop the Pandemic Project and reflect on what you have learned about lifting your voice–and the importance of lifting every voice. Remember you can keep your Stop the Pandemic Project and keep working on it in the future.
Democratic and Academic Competencies
In this final Step, you will be able to learn and use the following competencies:
Academic Competencies to Apply in This Step 8:
Critical Thinking: Reflect on the meaning of what you have learned about democracy and stopping the pandemic in this course.
Democratic Competencies to Apply in This Step 8:
Democratic Values: Reflect on which values have most influenced your position and understanding of how to stop the pandemic.
Democratic Skills and Practices: Voting for Referenda: By casting your votes for these different proposals you are exercising one of your most important democratic rights and responsibilities.
Democratic Skills and Practices: Lobbying: By sending the results of this vote to our elected officials in our states and in DC, we are also exercising our democratic responsibility to advocate for proposals to solve major social problems.
8.2. Why It's So Important to Vote!
Ultimately, democracy depends on people lifting their voices through voting. Our votes determine who gets elected at all levels and that in turn determines what laws get passed by our senators and representatives and enacted by our mayors, governors, and the President.
Scroll on the Sway below to think about why it's so important for everyone to be registered and to vote.
8.3. Cast Your Votes!
This is the culmination of all your work.
This is your vote. Your democratic voice.
You can keep track of the vote on the link in 8.4.
Congratulations on making it to this point through the Eight Steps and through learning the Academic and Democratic Competencies.
8.4. Keep Track of the Votes
You can check the running tally of the vote by clicking on the button below. You can also copy the following link so that you can keep track of the ongoing vote after you're done with this minicourse and the other Lift Every Voice minicourses.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-VWSTSBPK9/
8.5. Why It's So Important to Lobby Elected Officials!
Elections take place every 2, 4, or 6 years. In between elections, we need to monitor our elected officials and how they vote or how our laws and budgets are implemented. Moreover, in between elections, we need to lobby (educate and advocate) our elected officials to pass the legislation we support and to address the contemporary broader social issues.
Lobbying can take the form of writing letters, meeting with elected officials, and/or community organizing.
Scroll down the Sway below to learn more about lobbying.
8.6. Lift Your Voice and Send Your Proposal and Your Video to Your Elected Representatives
Now it's your turn to lobby your local, state, or federal elected officials.
Write one or more elected officials encouraging them to read and/or listen to your speech advocating one or more solutions for stopping the pandemic.
You can download your speech from your Stop the Pandemic Proposal and you can also download the video of your speech as a MP4. (provide database for looking up elected officials, plus the outline of a letter)
8.7. Reflect on What You Haved Learned About Lifting Your Voice
In this final Step, I'd like to encourage to reflect upon what you have learned from this minicourse about lifting your voice—lifting our voices.
Also, feel free to provide any comments on ways to improve this minicourse.
8.8. Wrap Up
Hopefully, you'll remember these Eight Steps when you take on the next major social or ecological problem that you are concerned with.
- Connect to the problem
- Take different points of view
- Analyze the facts
- Listen to and share stories
- Read proposals and listen to speeches
- Write, present, advocate
- Discuss, debate, negotiate
- Cast your votes
Probably, most importantly, for the rest of your lives is to continue to embrace and use the democratic values of love and freedom to guide your way through your life and to help create a more a more compassionate, just, and free country and world!
Be safe. Be determined. Be hopeful. Never give up. Lift your voice.
Revised 3/4/2021.