(melodious music) - It's all about what we do as citizens, because democracy is based upon our actions.

- Democracy depends on what we do.

- That's a unique part of government, I think, in a democracy, it doesn't work without people.

- It's become more apparent that community is the cornerstone of, I think, our society.

- People think, "Oh, election administration is really complex and it's just this secret thing that happens behind closed doors," and that could not be further from the truth.

- [Everybody] And to republic for which it stands, one nation, under God.

- We are transparent, we invite the public to come in, participate.

- Democracy is on the honor system.

I mean, we all have to believe in democracy to work, so we need to have confidence in our elections.

That's kind of heavy on local election officials, to know that that's the case.

- It is important for the public and for voters to understand that there are actually a robust set of checks and balances in place, that they can trust election results.

- [Voter] Colorado modernized the way we do elections.

- I think if anybody has a question, they think that the election process is flawed, they need to come and look at it for themselves.

- I feel very confident in the process myself.

- According to the Pew Research Center...

I think everyone's entitled to have their own opinion, but it's important that your opinion has information backing it.

- Since we're teenagers, we are the future of New York, and the country, and the world.

- When the majority of the country thinks we're bad for democracy, not good, that is our problem to fix.

- Conversation's not a competition.

- We can get after each other, and it doesn't damage the relationship.

That's the point I think we're trying to get people to.

- I really worry we're moving to this place where people are afraid to compromise, they're afraid to talk, and I think that's one of the real dangers.

(melodious music) - [Protestors] This is what all the people want!

- [Narrator] What does it mean to be a good democratic citizen?

That's the question forward diplomat and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, asks and answers in his book, "The Bill of Obligations: The 10 Habits of Good Citizens."

Haas writes, "An obligation is not a requirement, like paying taxes or obeying the laws of the land.

An obligation is not what citizens must do, rather, it is what they should do."

What he defines as moral and political commitments, essential for a robust and healthy democracy.

- [Protestors] Shut it down!

- [Narrator] "They are habits easy enough to form," he says, "that we can all do."

And people are.

We found volunteers helping folks in rural areas get connected to broadband.

A serious effort to bring civility back to politics, and efforts to make elections as transparent as possible.

There's no age limit.

Anyone, anywhere, can do something.

Like these teenage fact-checkers in Florida, part of an organization called MediaWise at the Pointer Institute, working to combat misinformation one social media post at a time.

(melodious music) - The Teen Fact-Checking Network with MediaWise is basically teens across the nation who find misinformation online, and then we fact-check it.

- [Narrator] 18-year-old Bella Otte is one of about a dozen teenagers working with the Teen Fact-Checking Network and MediaWise.

- We ask our boss about claims we see, whether our friends have sent them to us, whether they've found it themselves, or if we see it when we're scrolling through the internet, and then we work to find the answer, we figure out whether or not is real.

For the TikTok captions, would you prefer that they're smaller and in the center?

- The Team Fact-Checking Network and MediaWise is a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network.

- [Narrator] Alex Mahadevan and is the Director of MediaWise at the Pointer Institute in Florida.

- [Teen] You wanna do as much of your own research first.

- The Teen Fact-Checking Network was launched in 2018.

Young people, it's not a surprise that they spend a lot of time online, whether that's TikTok or Snapchat, they're not going to newspapers to get the news.

They're going to TikTok, and typing in a few keywords about the latest climate change story of the day.

Now the problem is, on these social media sites, is they're seeing a lot of falsehoods, and that's gonna affect how they see the world.

- I realize that today, I can officially start voting.

- How they vote, how they participate in democracy.

- I did say that today.

- [Alex Mahadevan] These young minds are our future, and unfortunately they're exposed to a lot of misinformation.

- A California school district will require parents to be notified within 72 hours if their child starts going by a different name or pronouns.

- It's also important to look online at more reliable sources to go a little deeper.

I think on TikTok, if you have confidence and you say anything, you can get 100,000 people to like your post and believe it - [Influencer] You are not gonna believe what I just found in the kids' toy section in Walmart.

Bro, my first vape.

- There's a post I'm looking at right now where it's a joke about baby vapes, which is not true at all and doesn't exist.

And it's not a true thing, but when people saw it and it seemed like the person knew what they were talking about 'cause they were so shocked, people assumed it was right.

They didn't look online, they didn't double check.

Instead you just see a bunch of comments like, "What?

This can't be true," and "There's no way."

If you see something that makes you sad, angry, or shocked, it's really a good idea for you to look at other sources and make sure that that person has all the facts.

- [Narrator] The teens share what they vetted on their TikTok show.

- The show is called "Is This Legit?"

And when I first saw it, I thought it was kind of a funny title, but it's grown on me.

I love it.

- Is this legit?

Let's find out.

- [Bella] The title is reflective of our purpose, which is to try and remain appealing to younger audiences.

- The first thing to ask is, who's behind the information?

- I think that it's important that we have resources where students can feel like they're being talked to rather than lectured to.

- Here at MediaWise, we have a few tips that can help you out if you find yourself in a tight spot.

- It's all about understanding different perspectives.

Every fact-check begins with thinking about how does this post make me feel?

So if a post makes you feel angry, upset, anxious, or laugh out loud, then you might start the fact-check.

- [Fact-Checker] A lot of what they're doing, they're using videos and photos out of context, and they were saying these were dead bodies.

This was a video of people at a protest from 2013.

- Second, is context, building and figuring out the context behind a post, an image, or a video.

Open tabs and show your friends and family how powerful lateral reading is.

What we found is teenagers nowadays, are incredibly passionate about what is happening to our democracy, about what is happening to climate, and during COVID-19, what was happening to the public health.

- Okay, positive feedback.

(teenagers chattering) - It was so funny.

So like, interactive.

- I think hard topics are interesting to do.

I like doing them, they make me feel purposeful.

But, you know, there's also the videos I do about whether or not jet packs are real, which I also like.

- We are 13 to 18 year olds, so think 8th to 12th graders.

- This is a group of incredibly precocious young people who joined MediaWise because they were passionate about fighting misinformation.

The teens lead the newsroom, and I think that's what makes it so impactful.

And quite honestly, I think newsrooms could learn a lot from the Teen Fact-Checking Network in terms of lifting up voices that may have not had a platform before.

(intense music) - How we got to this stage of people not trusting news was because we failed to remind them what we do and how we do it.

It was so ingrained in our culture, that we ended up raising one or two generations that didn't really know what journalism was or what we did, 'cause we failed to tell.

- [Narrator] Ted Streuli is the Executive Director of Oklahoma Watch, a statewide nonprofit executive news organization started in 2010.

- We cover stories around the state.

We do both investigative and some explanatory journalism.

We are especially interested in the topics of state governments, democracy, vulnerable populations, criminal justice, education, and race and equity.

We look for stories where we have an individual who has a problem they are trying to solve, and how they are representative of a much larger group of Oklahomans with a similar problem.

- [Narrator] That group makes up a significant part of the population, which is largely rural.

In fact, in some communities, people say substantive news is not even available.

- Where I live, we just don't have a regular paper anymore.

We have a brief and that's it, that comes out once a week.

- Newspapers are like magazines, nobody reads them anymore.

(melodious music) - You know, in Oklahoma, we have two metro areas that make up about half the state's population, and the other half is spread out around the rest of the state in rural or semi-rural communities.

It's an opportunity for us to find out not only if they trust us, but if they even know who we are.

And so getting out into some of those communities where we don't see them every day and we don't talk to them or hear from them every day, was an important component for us.

(melodious music) - We changed the demographics because of the way we were selecting and presenting stories.

- [Narrator] Dick Pryor from KGOU Public Radio works closely with Streuli.

- Ours is a collaborative project between KGOU and Oklahoma Watch, to build trust among news consumers in the State of Oklahoma.

It was spurred really, through the Oklahoma Media Center working with Joy Mayer of Trusting News.

How can we better create an environment in this state where people trust us better, trust us more?

- It was funny, I was doing this training with this group of journalists in Oklahoma... - [Narrator] Joy Mayer is the Founder and Director of Trusting News based in Sarasota, Florida.

- We are a nonprofit project that since 2016, has been learning as much as we can about how people decide what news to trust and how well news is serving the public, and helping journalists with strategies to demonstrate credibility and actively earn trust.

More and more people are feeling as if the integrity of journalism is up for debate, and trust is a really complicated equation, there are a lot of factors, and there aren't things that we're gonna do that will automatically make people trust the news again.

Do you think that some of these news rooms, did you get the sense from the proposals that they're actually poised to talk about that differently?

Is it done ethically and responsibly?

Who's funding this information?

It's hard to tell what is responsible and ethical and what is misinformation, what is irresponsible, what is out to mislead me, it's hard to tell.

And so I have a lot of empathy for people trying to consume information.

- Like if you're talking about mainstream media, there's been a lot of things that, in my opinion, are just aimed towards influencing people, but not to objective truth, but to their own appearance.

- CNN, Fox, you know, and I think they're kinda all against each other.

Journalism on TV is bought by people.

I mean, if you get told the same thing time after time after time, you believe it, and that's what they do.

- Many people don't see their own lives reflected in the news.

We like to ask the question, "Who would feel seen and understood by journalism?

And who might feel neglected or misrepresented by journalism?"

A lot of people don't see their own values in the news, they don't see their own lived experiences in the news for a whole variety of reasons.

- [Narrator] Mayer says journalists also need to be aware of what may seem like minor details in their own reporting.

- Little language sometimes.

You know, sometimes it'll be like, you know, "Houses in this neighborhood only cost $350,000."

Well, "only" means you don't think that's a lot of money, and that is completely subjective depending on what feels normal to you.

So there's just so much about what we...

It's what we see as normal.

- These days, the stakes are so high that even something minor, even something small like that... - A funny thing happens when journalists invite the public more into their process.

We did one research study where skeptical viewers of a local TV station attended a morning news meeting and heard what stories were being debated, saw who in Cincinnati, Ohio, was making the decisions.

The people who got that window into how decision making was done and who was making the decisions, reported higher levels of trust.

- We need to reach out to younger people, however we want to define young adults.

I love seeing a cross section of a community, people that are very knowledgeable about journalism and other people that really don't understand what we do, or why we do it, or how we do it.

And many times, we find out that people are just confused, so they just look at us as this monolithic thing called the news media.

And I think part of what we're trying to do is dispel that.

(melodious music) I think democracy is at risk.

That may be hyperbolic, but I think it's true, because if people don't trust certain institutions, including journalism, including the news, we start to come apart at the seams.

We have to have some common language, shared facts that we can agree on.

The environment has been so fractured, and people go in so many different directions, that now getting people to come together and have a conversation with those shared facts and those shared words that we can all agree on is difficult.

And I think that's the environment we're in right now.

And when you don't have that, democracy not only suffers, democracy can crumble.

(melodious music) - Thank you for taking time out of your Friday to come and see our work in action.

Today, we offer public ballot processing tours, and this is something that we do for every single election, even the small elections.

And the reason that we do a ballot processing tour is because we know that transparency is critical, and it's more critical now than it ever has been.

Have you been on the tour before?

- [Participant] Oh, yeah.

(bright music) - [Molly Fitzpatrick] Hi.

Welcome.

Here for the tour?

- [Narrator] Here in Boulder, Colorado, election workers are building trust through transparency, especially when it comes to the elections process.

- We gather together with a bipartisan canvas board.

- [Narrator] Molly Fitzpatrick works as a clerk and recorder for Boulder County.

- We know that in this moment, there's a lot of mis- and disinformation about our elections process.

And if we don't also have a voice in what happens in elections, then there's gonna be a lot of mistrust, because people are only hearing it from one side.

- I counted ballot number 10, and in your report, ballot number 10 says this.

- [Molly] Exactly.

Exactly.

A lot of the times, people come to the tours because they say, "Oh, I just wanna be able to speak to it."

You know, "I trust elections but I wanna be able to say, 'Here's why I trust them.'"

There is bipartisan oversight in every single part of elections across the country.

- I think it's great that it's transparent, and I feel a little more well-informed now and I can share that information with others.

We saw the full process of receiving ballots, opening ballots.

- We saw the whole thing.

- [Molly] Those ballot drop boxes are under video surveillance, and those ballot drop boxes are emptied by bipartisan teams.

So a Republican and a Democrat actually go to that ballot drop box, empty the ballot, secure it into boxes.

- All right, see you later.

- I have heard a lot about voter fraud.

I've also heard about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and I'm pretty much for sure that all three of those were a figment of people's imagination, but I really wanted to see it for myself.

- Yes.

- [Participant] How many ballots per pound?

- [Molly] How many ballots...?

- I was not disappointed.

It is labor intensive, it is technically intensive, and there are checks and balances all the way, so I'm gonna sleep well tonight.

(people protesting) - I'm so concerned about the chaos in our country, about all the accusations about fake elections and all that, and I'm sad about it, and I wanted to feel confident that I was right, that there isn't.

- They are weighed over here.

- And I am very convinced that at least in Boulder County, it's amazingly secure, and I just wanted to feel better about, what's the truth?

- In order to preserve American democracy, we need to ensure that folks have trust in our elections process.

We have regular checks with different agencies and departments.

- [Narrator] And one thing that's helping build that trust along with the election workers, volunteers.

- We have hundreds of brave men and women who are stepping up to be election judges to help facilitate democracy.

And so absolutely, I think, that Americans are concerned about our norm potentially becoming something that is at risk.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] Boulder is not the only place where citizens are stepping up.

More than 800 miles away, hundreds of Missourians are working as clerks to ensure free and fair elections in their state.

- If you would pray with me.

Father, we all have a challenging path ahead.

Our will would've been that the path would've been wide, and easy, and downhill both ways, but that's probably not to be.

And so, Father, we ask that you give us the strength for what lies ahead, and we ask for your forgiveness when we fail, and in your Son's name we ask it.

Amen.

- [Everybody] Amen.

- I've been the clerk for a year and a half.

I was a hairdresser for 18 years.

I was actually hired as chief deputy, and then they decided that they wanted to put me as the elections clerk.

And so it has been a massive learning experience.

- [Narrator] Adrian Lee is just one of a number of new election workers Missouri will have this November.

The state has a high rate of turnover, putting the burden on clerks already there, as well as newer ones.

- It seems that you all run a great election, and I've vastly learned that I think the county clerks are probably the most important and powerful person in government.

- [Adrian Lee] This will be my very first presidential election.

It's intimidating.

(melodious music) - In Missouri, we have 116 jurisdictions that administer elections, and almost a third of those going into this year's presidential election are gonna be folks who have not administered a presidential election before.

- [Narrator] Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey are longtime county clerks in Missouri.

- So our voter population continues to grow, so it makes it very interesting to run elections 'cause we're constantly having to figure out if we need more polling places or bringing in more election judges.

We do everything from helping candidates to file, depending on what the election is, to ordering and producing all of the ballots, making sure our polling places have those, setting up and creating relationships with our polling places so that we have places for people to vote.

Educating voters, registering voters, recruiting poll workers so that we have enough people, and then certifying it afterwards, making sure it was all correct.

- Do they not have you prove it?

We prove ours.

It is about what I can prove with the election process, the tabulators, the testing, the audits when the elections are over.

They're accurate.

There is nothing, ever, that has indicated fraud or inaccuracy.

- "I Voted" stickers, which are very important.

Extension cords by the thousands.

All of the iPads and cell phones that we use.

So we have several thousand pieces of voting equipment, that all stays in a cage back there, with a red lock and a blue lock, so Democrat lock and a Republican lock.

95, you'll get 0 through 15.

- [Clerk 1] You're right.

- [Clerk 2] Okay.

- It is important for the public and for voters to understand that there are actually a robust set of checks and balances in place, that they can trust election results, and that election officials are real human beings that live in their communities that are trying to do the best they can.

(melodious music) - This is a (indistinct), so it's gonna record in a heart shape here.

Welcome to another exciting episode of "High Turnout Wide Margins."

This is Brianna Lennon, I'm a county clerk from Boone County, Missouri, and with me is my co-host... - Eric Fey, director of elections in St. Louis County, Missouri.

- And today, we're talking to... - Rachel Lightfoot, Polk County Clerk.

- [Narrator] One way Lennon and Fey help election officials and potential voters understand both the voting process and what's at stake, is through the podcast they created.

- And I thought, "Is there like a podcast that I should be listening to?"

And they were all like, "No, but if you made one, it'd be super cool, and I would love to hear it, and be on it."

And then Eric was like, "I would do that with you.

That sounds awesome."

Eric, go ahead and intro for me.

- [Eric Fey] Eric Fey, St. Louis County, Missouri.

- [Narrator] Despite their efforts to illuminate in full and instruct, the landscape this election season is a challenge.

- The whole dynamic of people having doubts and concerns about elections, it was amplified after 2020.

So, Adrian, thanks for doing this with us today.

Are there any aspects of that you are particularly concerned about or something you're very vigilant about now, knowing it's gonna be an issue later on?

- I guess, I'm mostly worried about making sure that we've had the ballots where they need to be and that I have everything set up, and security is good.

I'm a little intimidated just with the fact that it's a presidential election and I know that we will all be under scrutiny, so I just wanna make sure that I dot I's and cross my T's, and make sure everything's in place so that in case something does happen, I can show the chain of custody.

We wanna just give you all our love.

I believe in the system.

It's a principle thing.

Now I'm starting to get vested in it, and I feel like I need to stick around for a while, or at least try.

We have one of the best countries in the world.

- What would you say to a clerk that was thinking about going into the legislature and...?

Democracy is on the honor system.

I mean, we all have to believe in democracy to work, so we need to have confidence in our elections, and that's kind of heavy on local election officials, to know that that's the case.

But I think that the fact that we can focus on just the nuts and bolts and making sure everything works, and everything takes care of itself afterwards, is hopefully something that we're achieving.

At this point, this is what my goal is.

That's what keeps me going.

(melodious music) - We can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here.

- [Mr. O'Brien] Okay, that's fine.

Perfect.

- You wanna do it now?

- [Mr. O'Brien] I'd love to do it right now.

- Well, stand your butt up then.

- You stand your butt up.

- [Man] Hold it!

Stop it!

- [Narrator] From brawls on the Senate floor to arguments on the street over abortion rights, decorum in our democracy seems increasingly absent, and civility almost non-existent.

- This is not easy.

It is not easy to do with Nolan, it is not easy to do with other people with whom I disagree.

- Too many people think the goal is to just stomp somebody else into the ground and prove, "My views are so much more superior than their views," and to walk away feeling like, you know, "Look at me."

You know, we understand that we're not gonna convert each other.

- This is something we're not gonna be able to agree on.

- [Narrator] Stephen Henderson and Nolan Finley are doing everything they can to make civility the rule and not the exception.

- I moved back to Detroit from Washington in 2007, and to become the editorial page editor at the Free Press, and I think Nolan was already the editorial page editor at the news, and I think it was really easy for people to say, "Well, here we got this Black liberal editorial page editor on one hand, and this white conservative editorial page editor on the other hand.

I bet if we get 'em together, they'll fight."

And so they did get us together, and we did, we argued, we argued really passionately and, you know, found out pretty quickly, that there's almost no issue that we really agree on.

They were never threatening anyone else.

- So maybe...

Hang on a second.

Hang on a second.

I'm gonna stop.

- There are lots of people who will argue with each other and really don't like each other much, and will get into really awful contentious spaces together, that never seemed natural for Nolan and I.

- And we resonate to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who, and I'll paraphrase, who said, "We hate each other because we fear each other, and we fear each other because we don't understand each other, and we don't understand each other because we don't talk to each other."

And our goal with this Great Lake Civility Project is to get people to talk to each other.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] The two journalists started the Great Lake Civility Project in 2020 in Detroit, Michigan.

Its mission, build healthy disagreement and constructive dialogue.

- The sort of key word for this project is the ability to sit and listen to somebody else, listen to someone else's story, and listen in a way that really respects what they're saying as opposed to anticipating what you might say in response.

Something that's really hard to do.

- And I think that's where we first got the idea of the benefit of bringing people together who assumed they hated each other, assumed they had no... Could see no value in each other, and just letting them talk to each other and try to figure out why people thought the way they thought.

- Please welcome our hosts and our presenters, Nolan and Stephen.

(audience applauding) - And we appreciate you all coming out to listen to a conversation we've been having now with community groups of all sorts and all different kind of places, for three years now.

- So the first question we always get is, okay, so how do you do that?

What are the practical ways that you interact with somebody that you disagree with, in a non-awful way?

- [Narrator] The cornerstone of their method, Four Pillars of Civility.

Don't make assumptions.

- Wait and try to get to know the person before you decide who they are.

- [Narrator] Set reasonable expectations.

- We talk about instead, trying to extract value from understanding where that other person is coming from.

- [Narrator] Listen.

- You'd have to be committed to actually listening to the other person explain who they are, and what they think, and what their position is.

- [Narrator] And invest in relationships.

- We really talk about making the investment that says, "I won't walk away from this because of the disagreement."

I'm not going to Thanksgiving because my Uncle Joe is gonna be there and I can't deal with him, I can't have a conversation with him anymore.

I won't go to a neighborhood function because I know somebody's gonna be there who I disagree with.

- We want you to go away now for a little bit, and talk with each other.

- [Narrator] People break into groups to workshop these ideas.

- I'm Charlotte.

I'm in my sophomore year right now.

- And you are?

- Sabrina.

- Sabrina?

- At a certain point, it should be considered, okay, this is an actual being.

- I'm not quite understanding what you mean.

- Well, I know I don't have to ask for that.

- You guys are getting so into it, and I think it really speaks to the hunger that people have.

- [Narrator] And if people don't find common ground, at least they can agree to disagree respectfully.

- I think too many of us today, are extraordinarily comfortable having a political discussion with people who think just the way we do.

And I've read a stat that said 72% of people only talk politics with the people who affirm them, the people on their side.

It's useful to challenge yourself, and test yourself, and expand the possibilities in terms of what you might believe.

(melodious music) - I think you can trace a lot of the problems that we are experiencing now, to the disappearance of civics as a basic subject in American schools.

Civics was a course, and I suspect if you check the curriculum in a lot of high schools in America, it's not there anymore.

- [Narrator] That wasn't always the case.

The Founding Fathers of this country believed that education was critical to democracy.

Up until the 1960s, American high schools required up to three courses in government and civics.

That has changed over time.

But at Union Square Academy for Health Sciences, a public high school in New York City, social studies teacher David Edelman is working to change that.

- What I learned was there was a department of civics at this school, and that was not uncommon in New York City public schools, but a whole department devoted to civics and community involvement, and solving real community problems.

- [Narrator] The school has a rich history of civic education and engagement.

(melodious music) - That resonates with me, especially as a teacher, given the fact that there's been so much emphasis placed, rightfully so, on building civic engagement, connecting civics to social studies and history as well.

And New York City now has...

They've renamed the social studies department the Department of Social Studies and Civic Engagement.

Jury duty is another great example of direct democracy, right?

Perhaps the most power you'll ever have in your life is when you're selected to be a juror.

Schools are not meant to be places of just pure thought experiment.

We write an essay and hand it in, and you get a grade and nothing happens to it.

Write something that you care about and do something with it.

What branch or branches of government are involved in this process?

Use it as a forum to making a real impact in your community, and the more local, the better.

How many jurors are there?

And how many need to vote guilty?

- [Students] All of them.

- So as one person, as a sole individual, you have the power to prevent somebody from being found guilty and going to jail.

The first thing that I ask of them to do in class is I give them a syllabus to take what we're doing in class and extend it beyond the classroom.

Be as specific as possible.

And I have them reflect on like, what is interesting, surprising, and what questions that they have about the class, and then they fill out a survey.

- [Narrator] Edelman calls them Classroom Caucuses.

- What does that entail?

What's a caucus?

- So it's when we all decide a really big decision.

- And then I also have them identify what they think is the biggest problem in our school, what they think is the biggest problem in our city, in our state, in our country, and around the world.

And that's the first thing that they do, and that kind of drives everything else we do in class together.

- Hey, good morning.

- Hey, good morning.

- [Narrator] Students also participate in a civics club that Edelman helped create at the school this last year.

- What would you say inspired you to join civics?

- I think it's to share and to teach other persons that always we have to have a voice, and sometimes we have to fight for that.

- I feel like New York has a lot more resources for students, just because you have more volunteer opportunities.

- [Narrator] Because of the state's commitment to civics, there is strong support for the kids outside of the classroom as well.

Civics Day here, held at the New York City bar.

- We are here for New York City Civics Day.

It's a statewide event, it's kind of like the Super Bowl of civics and student activism.

Basically, I have 16 different students who are representing seven projects that we've been working on.

- I am here with my team and we are going to be explaining to other people to help us out by doing petitions, so that we can make a bigger impact this time.

Because the last time I did it, we only focused on our school, and having support from our peers, and students, and staff in that school specifically.

- [Interviewer] Is there a petition or a student bill of rights or...?

- Yes, there is a petition.

Right now, we have 143 signatures.

We're hoping to get our goal to about 1,000 petition signatures.

After that, yeah.

- We were able to talk to Rita Joseph, who is a member of city council.

We want to broaden the impact that we're going to be making, so we want to also talk to the students and teachers that are in New York State, and in other schools as well.

(audience applauding) - All right, thank you so, so much.

It is a pleasure to be with you all this morning.

We are civic friends, and at Generation Citizen, we don't believe that one generation runs the race, holds the power, makes the decisions, and then hands the baton to the next one.

We recognize that we all need to be engaged in moving our society forward, moving our communities forward, if we want to have an inclusive and engaged democracy.

- [Narrator] Elizabeth Clay Roy is Chief Executive Officer of Generation Citizen, a national civics organization sponsoring this Civics Day.

Today, students who have been working on projects all semester are sharing their ideas.

- And that's what your work has been all about this semester, on issues that matter most to you, not issues that you read about in the headlines or someone told you you should focus on, but the issues that you and your friends are talking about, whether that's teen domestic violence, school lunch issues and nutrition, mental health care.

Those are tools you may have practiced over the last few months, but you will build on those in the years to come, and that's how we're gonna make our societies a stronger place to live.

(audience applauding) - [Announcer] Please welcome to the stage Sumaiya Alum.

(audience applauding) - Ah.

So many people.

(audience laughing) Generation Citizen and Action Civics allows students the opportunity to use school as a venue to do something and actually change their community.

The reason I choose to continue to fight to get fresh, nutritious, culturally affirming food for the students in New York City schools is because I passionately believe that we can make this happen.

Have you ever heard the saying, "Small ripples make big waves,"?

Text it, tweet it, post it to Instagram.

Thank you for listening to my speech and I hope we have many more amazing Civics Days to come in the future.

(audience applauding and cheering) - We get $3,750, and what you're gonna do is you're going to make proposals.

As a school, we're gonna vote on that money, we're gonna vote on the budget, all right?

So that's direct democracy.

- [Narrator] Back in David Edelman's social studies class, he's running through the branches of government, but he's also giving students the chance to explore another form of direct democracy firsthand.

- When we engage in participatory budgeting, we negate this whole process, and it's us, the people, that propose the budgets, and it's us that vote and select the winning proposal.

- [Student] Guys, $96 per route.

- [Narrator] In another city, this one in the Midwest, people in Evanston, Illinois, are gathering here to vote on a number of different proposals, and deciding how to spend the money from the American Rescue Plan Act.

(melodious music) - Scoot the table a bit, so that the people can walk to the front if they need to.

- Okay, leave these two.

- Perfect timing, we're right down the hall in Bobby's room, and so thanks for coming.

Yeah, I'll get some tape for it.

My name is Matt Ouren, I'm the participatory budgeting manager for the city of Evanston, and today is the second project expo for the participatory budgeting process.

So what's gonna happen today, is several of the budget delegates who developed proposals, they spent seven months with us, working hard, and with the city, to make a huge list of ideas into a list of 20 proposals for the community to vote on.

You all are empowered to make decisions, you're helping, so I appreciate it.

We've had a awesome team of volunteers, an awesome partnership with the University of Northwestern, and a technical assistant team from Northwestern that has really started from the beginning, doing outreach to people.

Participatory budgeting is a mouthful and lots of people don't know what it is, but we've been doing a lot of face-to-face outreach, canvassing.

Even if they can do some art about what they hope for the city, something like that, that would be cool.

- That's what we're all about anyway.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Participatory budgeting means letting citizens decide what the government does with its money.

And although we have voting processes that let us decide, through our current democratic processes, this is a more direct route where citizens can see where their money's going, or there's more transparency in the way that the money's being spent.

- [Narrator] And some of the initiatives up for a vote from these budget delegates.

- I mean, that's the nature of this, is to give to small businesses a little bit of funds to keep them afloat and advance them into the new technology.

- Say you as a student had a job, you had an apartment, and now all of a sudden you're struggling, if we have this program, we can give you, you know, how much money- - Oh, this is called Evanston Present and Futures Teen Parent Program.

This is a entrepreneurial mentorship program that helps teen parents between the ages of 13 and 24 years old.

- So this is Evanston Fair Fares.

The goal is to provide low income Evanstonians with discounted transit costs.

- [Narrator] With a total of 20 proposals, the common denominator here is residents create the programs and drive the efforts.

Mandoda Baboyai is the participatory budgeting manager for Evanston, and she says her office received thousands of ideas from every demographic in the city.

- And I think that has a lot to do with the staff, as well as our approach in outreach, making sure that we reached all corners of the city of Evanston, making sure that everyone was represented, making sure that all voices were being heard, and making sure that everyone had a chance to come to the table and express to the city of Evanston how they felt the money should be spent.

- My name's Daniel Biss, I'm the Mayor of Evanston, Illinois, and I'm just excited to check out this participatory budgeting expo and learn more about some of the projects that are being promoted here.

- Hey, Mr. Mayor.

- [Mayor Biss] How are you?

- Good, how are you?

- You know, we have an active community, but there's still a difference between actively weighing in when your elected representatives make the decisions for you, versus actually spending the money yourself.

And I think there's something really empowering and motivating when residents see they have that authority in their own hands.

Is the roller skating project separate or is it part of the same thing?

- Yeah, it's like a different...

The roller skating is a different project.

- [Narrator] But only seven winners in the end, with Mental Health First-Aid taking top prize, a total of 3,400 votes received and more than $51,000 awarded in funds.

- This process to me, is an opportunity for community members to engage in a meaningful way in local government.

Many of the ways that people engage with government is through sort of consultation or giving feedback, things like that.

But this is an opportunity for community members to collaborate with government.

And in many ways, the government is deferring to community members, so the outcome is really clear, which inspires a whole different level of engagement, and hopefully to build trust in what we're doing.

- Thank you so much.

- I think this is real democracy.

I think this is democracy at its finest.

(funky music) (melodious music) - [Narrator] Back in Boulder, Colorado, the future lies in the hands of these industrious and civic-minded high schoolers who are working their very first election through the Boulder County Student Democracy Program.

- It sounded super interesting and a great way for me to get involved, and so I filled out an application, I reached out, and I got offered the position, and so now I'm here to help out and do my best.

- These have to be returned by 7 o'clock today.

I learned about this program through my school, because one day people from our local election office came, were trying to register students that were old enough to vote, and they presented this opportunity, and I found it super interesting, and so I decided to sign up and try to be involved with the program.

- Hi, are you looking to vote today?

- [Voter] Yes.

- I actually learned about the program through Olivia and I thought it would be a super cool opportunity to be a part of the election, because we're not able to vote, so I just filled out an application and it was accepted about a month later, and now I'm able to work this election and the one in November as well.

- Hi, I'm Eliza.

Nice to meet you.

- I'm Becky.

- Like, you could get anyone to say hi to people, but what they're really doing is they're having me learn so that 10 years from now, if I go in to be a tech judge or a lead, I know what I'm doing.

- [Max] We can give you a mail ballot.

- [Voter] Yes.

- A lot of these students come back and they actually greet voters, they check them in, they answer their questions, so it's taking it up to that next level of engagement.

- [Max] Is that better?

Okay.

On my first day, they kind of explained how the voting center worked, what my specific roles were of introducing people, helping with mail ballots, and bringing people over to help vote in person.

- [Olivia] And for someone that has issues with their ballot, either like they need to confirm an ID or they lost their ballot.

- Yeah, we can kind of help with anyone's voting needs.

- Thanks guys, for being here.

- We met both of you guys, or at least Mills, I think, you through High School Voter Registration Awareness Week, and just curious, you know, what that interaction was like.

- I was honestly kind of terrified before I started.

I was worried people would expect me to know things that I definitely wouldn't know.

The first thing that someone told me was, "Sit here, you're gonna be so bored until people start coming in, and then you're gonna have fun."

So it's been a really positive experience, and I honestly did not expect it to be as enjoyable as it has been.

- Hi, there.

Is it signed and sealed?

- [Voter] Yes, it is.

- Great.

Thank you so much.

Enjoy your day.

I am super interested in politics.

I can't wait to vote, and I watch debates and I follow certain political parties, and it's just important that everyone has their voices heard and that we're all able to contribute to the society.

- I think we're gonna be living through history with the '24 election.

I think that it is going to be very impactful.

I'm looking forward to it.

A little bit of anxiety, but I think it'll all work out in the end.

- I've learned a lot about, you know, how you get registered, what you need to get registered.

Essentially, how we keep things secure with the election.

Like, every morning, have the first voter declare that the box is empty to the entire room, and then we lock it while they watch, just so that they know that there's no tampering going on.

Thanks for voting.

(people chattering) - That was one of the intentions with voter pre-registration actually, is, you know, to get 16, 17 year olds thinking about what their role is, and democracy started before they were even eligible to vote, so it sounds like that really matched what has been interesting to you about this program, so that's amazing.

- It was nice to see what I've been feeling reflected in policy.

- [Woman] Very cool.

- I think America is at risk if people of a young age do not start voting, because I think especially with Generation Z, people's opinions and ideas have definitely swayed from the normal, and I think that with the use of social media and other things, if kids do not want to participate in elections, that it's gonna ruin our democracy for sure.

- Participating in an election, even though I can't vote, is the best thing I can do to help support the democracy that we all live in.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] The invaluable lesson learned here, engagement matters when it comes to democracy.

- Eliza?

- Yeah.

- Nice to meet you.

- You too.

I think engagement is important for the younger generation before they're able to vote.

It definitely gets more important as you get older, but I do think that there is still a lot of importance in being involved when you're younger.

- I'm really happy that I've been a part of democracy and having my say in democracy so early.

I had a voter, the first time she went in, she went with her mom and it was like one of the first elections where women were allowed to vote, and just learning those experiences and how people have interacted with voting, it's been really interesting, I've really enjoyed it.

(melodious music) - Colorado has the great program that allows students to become involved even though they're not 18 and not eligible to vote.

I think that program could be rolled out across the entire country, so that people all over the US can get involved in democracy and not just people who are over 18.

(melodious music) (melodious music continues) - I don't think any of us has the luxury to be sanguine about the future of American democracy.

My goal is to have a national conversation about it, to have people reexamine what is citizenship, and to think of citizenship as something more than just rights.

To think of citizenship as also encompassing obligations.

The big if when it comes to optimism is whether Americans will take it on themselves to make the necessary things happen.

- [Narrator] But optimism can be found when civic-minded people from Missouri and Colorado, Michigan and Oklahoma, from Florida and New York, make an effort to be informed and get involved, when they treat each other with civility and respect, and when they value the norms that make up the very foundation of our democracy.

(melodious music) (melodious music continues) (melodious music continues)