Growth & Grace

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This is a kunv Studios original program. The following program is underwritten by Crawford management group, Harris capital Mortgage Group, Tiffany Lloyd consulting and Chris glow, and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jasmine Moore, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education even

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better than I was the last time, baby, we back,

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we back and we back and we back and we back.

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Hello, Hello and Happy Saturday to you all.

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Hey, how are tiff How you doing today?

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I'm doing amazing. How you're doing today? I

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am apps. You wanna know what it's it's October. It is cool outside. Yes, I am excited. It is election season. It

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is election season, and you are listening to growth and grace with with I'm Leah Crawford and I'm Tiffany. Sometimes I

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have to remember who I am. But today we are we're gonna have a good conversation today, because, like we said, y'all, we're gonna talk about those questions. We're excited about this, and I am excited because in the studio we have with us, Attorney Berner Rhodes Ford, and she is the well Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated far western region, connection and social action representative, and we are excited to have her here today, because I know one of the sororities goals is to educate people, educate the public about questions on the ballot. Absolutely So. Berna, good morning.

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Good morning. How

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are you, ladies?

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I am coming. Wonderful. Alright,

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so guys, I want to say, you know, hold tight. I want you to listen, because we're just going to give you some information about the questions that are on that ballot. Sam, that sample ballot that was mailed to you in the past week.

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So many times we get the ballots and we think we understand the questions, and sometimes we answer incorrectly because we have no idea what it truly means. So we had the great idea a few shows ago to have on an expert, expert to break down some of these, some of these questions that are important on the balance so that you can actually make an informed vote this year.

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I appreciate that. Come on Seth, let's start. Let's

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start. Let's get the party. So we're going to start with question number one on the ballot, amendment to the Nevada constitution. Shall the Nevada constitution be amended to remove certain provisions governing the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education and its administration of the State University and certain federal land grants funds to provide additional legislative oversight of public institutions of higher education through regular independent audits without repealing the current statutory election process or other existing statutory provisions relating to the Board of Regents. That's a whole lot of words. So

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let me say this, not only is a lot of words, big words, yes,

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we got a mouthful. We

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got some statutory in there.

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Legislative. Repealing

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federal land grants.

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It's a lot going on. What are they saying to us right now?

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Okay, so basically, what this question is asking simply, do you want to remove the Nevada System of Higher Education. It's often called inchy. Do you want to remove inche from the Constitution? In short, that's how you can think of it. So what does that mean if you remove it from the constitution? So of course, the Nevada constitution created the State University, which is now known it's gone through iterations, but it's now known as the Nevada System of Higher Education, that has eight institutions of higher education within the state of Nevada right now, some people refer to ng as the fourth branch of government, meaning that they some people say they control themselves. They kind of do their own thing. That is what people argue when they say it's the fourth branch of government. Of course, most people probably, probably listening to this station know that we only have three branches of government, and so certainly there is not a fourth branch of government. But the question really becomes about control. How much control does the Nevada System of Higher Education have, and how much control do citizens want it to have? So if you vote yes for question one, that means we want to have more legislative oversight of the Nevada System of Higher Education. We want our legislators to come in and just. Like with other branches of government, because inche is a state entity, just like our other branches of government are controlled by the legislature. People who vote yes for number one are saying, we want the legislator, legislature to have more oversight, and they also say that the framers of the Constitution never intended for NC to have as much power as it does right now and then. One other argument that they make is that the regents are sometimes not necessarily graduates of the Nevada System of Higher Education, or college graduates at all, and they don't have experience on a college campus, and so they don't actually know how to effectively monitor and govern the institutions. So those are the arguments of the people who will vote yes, okay, the arguments for the people who will vote no say the Constitution has been working just fine. There is no fourth branch of government, and we ought to be able to elect our representatives from our different constituencies to serve us on the Board of Regents. So those are the arguments for and against so thank you. Yes, you're very well.

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You want to know what? I appreciate that, because that was, um, that was kind of simple, very simple to understand yes, meaning that you want more legislative oversight and no meaning you want to leave it how it is. Yes, I appreciate that. Okay, so we're going to go on to question number three, hot topic. I'm so excited about this one. Come on. So

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shall the Nevada constitution be amended to allow all Nevada voters the right to participate in open primary elections to choose candidates for the general election, in which all voters may then rank the remaining candidates by preference for the offices of us, Senate. I'm sorry. US senators, US Representative, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, State Comptroller, Attorney General and state legislators.

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All right, so here we go. This one. You've actually probably seen commercials about this one. This one is of all of the ballot initiatives, I think the one that's gotten the most press. So this question is asking, do you want to allow people from all parties, whether they are independent or have not even chosen a party, to participate in the primary elections? So if you vote yes for this, this is an example of if you said yes, I am an independent. I choose not to associate with the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. However, as an as a voter, I should be able to say who goes on the Democratic ticket or who goes on the Republican ticket, and also I should be able to rank my choices. Okay, so that's what I'm saying. If I'm voting yes, if I am voting no, I am saying membership has its privileges, and if you want to vote in the Democratic primary, then register as a Democrat

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membership has its privileges. Yeah, that's exactly the connotation. Okay,

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yeah. So just trying to make it as simple as simple as possible, for people to make a sand Yes, totally

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makes sense. Okay, so

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you've been listening to growth and grace. I am Lee and Crawford. I'm Tiffany Lloyd, and we have attorney Bern rose Ford on the show with us breaking down these questions so that they're easy to understand. Because I don't know if y'all felt when I look at the book, I'm like, oh, Can somebody explain this to me like I am a three year old? How would I explain to a three year old what we need to do? All right, we are on to question number four. Number

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four, and this is an amendment. The question is, shall the ordinance of the Nevada constitution and the Nevada constitution be amended to remove language authority authorizing the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as a criminal punishment? This is another hot topic, guys, another

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hot topic, and I just had a conversation about this last week, or was in a community forum where this very question was addressed, and the question is, do when we imprison individuals, are they subject to slavery and or involuntary servitude. And so a vote on this question. If you vote yes, we're going to remove language authorizing the use of slavery and involuntary servitude. That means that you cannot, again, simple words. To take advantage of prisoners. You cannot put punishments on people, on prisoners, on other people, because of the crimes that they committed. The crime had the punishment has to be fair. But we cannot have slavery. We cannot have involuntary servitude if you vote no on this one, what you're saying is the system is just fine. There's nothing wrong with the system. It's worked this long, and so why are we changing it now?

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So Bruno, what would be an example of slavery that this amendment is referencing? Yeah. Yeah. So

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the some would argue that an example is, I'll say like a chain gang. Okay, I don't so I'll explain that. So where sometimes you see prisoners on side of the street? Okay, they are. They may be cleaning the highway right where you have municipal workers, you have people who actually get paid to do those jobs. But you have the prisoners out doing this. They're giving you free labor that'll basically like

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community service. So they have to do their community service. They have to go out here and do this, this free labor that you're paying somebody to do. So is that okay?

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Yes. And so that's an interesting term that you use community service, because community service is voluntary. They don't have a choice. So that's where you get to the slavery or involuntary servitude component.

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Got it because I'm doing I'm only doing this because I am on probation, and because I'm on probation, or whatever the sentence is, you're saying that I have to do these things. Got it? Okay? This

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could expand to America at large. Guys, involuntary servitude, right,

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right? Wow. Yeah, that's the when you don't have a choice, it's not community service. So, hmm,

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this is an interesting question, because

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never would have thought about it. Thought I thought of that. No, would have glanced over it, yeah, like, Oh, okay. You want to know what that you know right now, I

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will say there is a difference, though, if you say you might have an option. If you say, I want to reduce my sentence, or I want and then, then that's a choice for you to say, Yes, I'll go and do community service, okay? But if I'm in prison and you force me to go and do whatever labor it is that somebody else would normally get paid for, right? That's what this I love it.

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Question is addressed. Our legislators are thinking about everybody, yes, everybody, absolutely everybody. Love it. Okay, so since the time, we're going to skip five, and if we have time, we'll come back to five, because we got to come back to two and five we have time, but we wanted to get through the hot topics, so I'm going to move to six. We're going to move to six. Yes,

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all right. Should the Nevada constitution be amended to create an individual's fundamental rights to an abortion without interference by state or local governments, whichever the abortion is performed by a by a qualified health care professional until fetal viability or when necessary to protect the health or life of the pregnant individual at any point during the pregnancy, you want to know what this hot

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questions are hot.

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There are some hot questions, hot questions,

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good questions this year. Go ahead

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Absolutely So Question Six is just saying, Do you want a constitutional right for a woman to have an abortion? Okay, that's, it doesn't get right to choose. This is about a right to choose. So, so the people, yes, I do

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have a question about that, if they make it federally illegal, because that's what I mean, because that's the conversation, right? Um, then what happens to this?

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Well, you often have federal laws, and then some states will challenge the federal laws, and then you end up in Supreme Court. Got it. And so if there, for example, if you think about the makeup of the Supreme Court that overturned Roe versus Wade, if there is a federal ban, the Supreme Court has already overturned it. So if there's a federal ban, then the states cannot, wow, make that those individual changes. So the only way the states are going to have the opportunity to make these laws on individual levels is if there is not a federal ban, and so they they're gonna have to try to figure out, and it's gonna probably go all the way back up to the Supreme Court, if you have competing state and federal laws. But so you already know was, you already have the forecast of the Supreme Court on which way it's gonna go, because

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Roe v Wade was overturned. Yes. So now. Don't this is why this probably this question came back up that is correct to make it so that in our state, yes, this is legal, because in some states, they've already said it's not right and it's not good in those states for what we heard. So y'all, not only do you need to vote for the questions, you need to vote in the elect. We need to know who is representing

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us. You need to know who's representing you, and you need to vote for people who would would support legislation the way you would as you were answering these ballot questions. If you're voting however you're voting on these issues, you need to vote for candidates who would vote the same, or who would M who would suggest legislation along the lines that you would so it's important, yes, it has to be in alignment. Yes, it has to be in alignment.

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I appreciate that that, yeah, this is number six Hot Topic. Hot Topic,

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yeah, so just again. So if you vote yes on six, that means you want a constitutional right to a state, constitutional right to abortion, because Roe versus Wade has been overturned, and now there's no federal protection, and so states are now having to do it individually. So in the state of Nevada, if you vote yes, that means a woman will have a right to an abortion. If you vote no, it means there is no constitutional right to an abortion. Okay? Doesn't mean you can't it just means it's no. It just means there's no constitutional right. And

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let me Okay, let's talk about what does that mean? Yes, so, so

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what? So what that means, if there is no, if you vote no, if there's no constitutional right, every legislative session, legislators can introduce legislation that could remove your right to an abortion. So that's

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why now sad, because you can give us a civics class too. How many times do these questions have to be posed to voters before they actually go into our Constitution?

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A constitutional change has to be presented twice. Okay, to voters.

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Okay. So we need to know how many times any of these questions were presented? Were they presented in the last election cycle and then yes, okay,

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well, I don't know. The answer is, I don't know about this one. I believe question one was presented before. Okay, yes, okay, okay, so we need to do some additional research, but I suspect that question six has not been presented before, because Roe versus Wade was overturned after the session, correct, after

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the session. So, but it's good to know. Hold

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on, I'm a little confused. So you said it has to be presented twice, right? Yeah. So if this is number one, it's mandatory that it be presented again. Or if it go if say, we all vote one way, yes, and it's and this passes, right? Yes, it'll have to be presented once again, constitutional changes have to be okay, okay. Listen, learning, learning, okay.

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And if you look, I mean, and that's why it's very important just to be knowledgeable. Yeah, about this process.

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It's so important. So many people, by default, go out to the polls and they just vote if it's if it sounds good, right, without actually understanding like what we are doing. So that is why I'm so excited about today's conversation. Well, not only that, though, what we were finding is most people don't go down ballot, right? So they just, they just stop at the one, one office, yes, and don't go down the ballot. They go in, do that one thing, and walk out. Well,

Unknown Speaker 18:34
it's interesting, but it's ineffective. It's ineffective because you, the person at the top, is usually just the person who say, for example, will take governor as an example. The governor has some executive authority, but for the most part, the governor is signing bills that are sent to him or her by the legislature. I always call figurehead, well, yeah, in many ways because but now they have veto power, so not exactly figurehead, but I see what you're saying the governor. Probably 75% of what the governor is going to do is going to be reliant upon the legislature. Yes, so your assembly. So you think, Oh, I'm going to vote for the governor and nobody else. It doesn't work that way. You have to vote for your assembly person. You have to vote for the senator in your district. Because if you have people who are going to send bills to the governor that you don't agree with, then what difference does it make if you voted for the governor, the governor is getting all these bills that you don't agree with. So you've got to vote down ballot. You've got to vote for judges as well. And I know if you're in the community, unless you're an attorney, and trust me, all attorneys don't know all the judges, because you don't practice in front of all the judges, right? So you've got to do research. You've got to find out who practices in front of these judges. How look at these judges records, if you care about civil rights, how do these judges, you know, are their sentences fair to all people in the community? If they're criminal judges, how do they treat contract disputes? If you care about, if you're a business owner and you care about, do they side with, you know, businesses more are with the plaintiffs. More, right? Those are issues you want to know. Well, the

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other side too is, first, you got to understand what court handles, what? Because when I tell you, I'm like, department and Family Court, department, J dot, right? Then I got, oh, court. I

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got District Court, right?

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I got a justice of the peace. Then I have a court. I got, I got a Henderson, and then it's a lot.

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So are the candidates, though, a lot. So many times I've had conversations with people they know nothing about the candidates. They just vote, oh, is that a Democrat? I'm voting this Democrat in and they don't know what they represent or who they are. So let me

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ask you this, where is a good place Berna, if I wanted to research about a candidate. So

Unknown Speaker 21:01
they all have what is it? Ballotpedia. I think Ballotpedia has information on all candidates. Of course, the candidates website will have information about them. I would recommend, if you don't know any of the candidates in a race, go and research all of their information. Go to their social media. That is smart, see what they're actually talking about. Because those websites, those are like 10 people have

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looked at those. They're templates, and it's not live. But I honestly

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did not put my stuff up. I put on my website what I want you

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to know. You put the best, the best of me, right on the website. Yes, you tell who you really are through social media that is so smart, yes, yes. So please go do all other research. Social Media pages love it, yep. Are they making comments that you find repulsive? Because they're not really gonna that's, that's how they're gonna vote, that's how they're going to if they're a judge, that's probably how they're going to rule. So you have to just, even though judges are not partisan. Who you know? Who do these people associate with? Are these people that I would want to associate with? Are these causes I support, things of that nature? Wow.

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That was excellent. That

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was amazing. I told you. We have again. I'm gonna introduce her. We have Mrs. Berna Rhodes Ford. She is the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated far western region, connection and social action representative, and she is here today to help us to understand these ballot questions. Because Tiffany, when you read the first one, I was like, Yeah, this is, this is, I would look at him, but yeah, it was a lot of words.

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I mean, you're right with a lot of words, and

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you sit at home like, oh, I don't even know what that mean, right? I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna skip all of that. Right, right? Skip statutory. All right. So number seven.

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So hold on, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to growth and Grace radio with Leah Crawford and Tiffany Lloyd, and we are talking ballot questions we are on to number seven guys. This question asks, Should the Nevada constitution be amended to require voters to either present photo identification to verify their identity when voting in person, or to provide certain personal information to verify their identity when voting by mail? Ballot. Yeah,

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so this is all about voter ID. Do you think that enough has been done with regard to voting? So if you vote yes for this, you're saying we want every person who comes to the polls to show us their ID, because we think voting is important, and we believe you ought to be required to show some form of identification when you go to cast your ballot. If you vote no, your train of thought is this lends itself to too much voter suppression, and you've already had to provide ID. You've already had to provide to show, demonstrate who you are when you registered to vote, and so no additional steps should be required to allow people to exercise their fundamental right to vote.

Unknown Speaker 24:13
Okay? So yes means you agree with this, and you want them to basically get more information from you get IDs in order for you to vote at the polls. At the polls, no means we want to keep it how it is. We go to the polls, we give our name, they mark it off, and we and we can vote. Yes,

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it's very interesting because, well, I've always done early voting, but I've always shown my ID. Always you don't have to in a battle. I always do. I always pull it up and show it well, you can. I'm just doing extra. You doing extra? Yes,

Unknown Speaker 24:45
I actually, yeah, you doing extra because I don't. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 24:49
I don't. You don't have to. We don't have to. And they probably just for being kind, because I know All right,

Unknown Speaker 24:56
and let's talk about that. So I the last time i. Showed it. I had a poll worker asked me for my ID, and I just looked at her and said, I'm not required to give that. But she only asked me for that because she was an older lady and she had trouble hearing Oh, and so it was. And so I just wrote my name down, so it was easier for her to see. Okay. And then obviously she found me, but I just was kind of testing the system a little bit to see if she was going to force me, because I knew what the law was. I knew I didn't have to. So it's kind

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of like Walmart. You don't have to show them you your receipt,

Unknown Speaker 25:34
but you absolutely you are certainly allowed. You are always you can do that. It's just not a requirement, okay?

Unknown Speaker 25:39
And they never said, Ma'am, you don't need to show us your ID. I'd never go. It's

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easier for them because they can see they don't have to hear you say your name. Have you spell it and all that. It's it's easier for the poll worker, but I have, I have had

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someone when I went to show them my ID say that, you know, I don't need that. I just need your name. Oh, okay. I did have someone do that. So, and I was, I

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was like, oh, so we've had all of the situation, all of the situations here. I appreciate that, but we, at the end of the day, we were all allowed to vote.

Unknown Speaker 26:09
And in Nevada, let's talk about the because I know we talked about tracking the ballot, because we only got a couple more tracking a ballot, because in Nevada, Berna, how can we vote? Nevada,

Unknown Speaker 26:20
you can vote in several different ways. You will get a mail in ballot soon. I don't know, I don't know the date, but I believe it'll be mailed. They'll be mailed out this week, right? They'll be mailed out this week. Early voting is from October 19 to November 1, and that is in person voting. You can go you can, literally, if you are driving down the street and see a voting station at the Walmart or in the grocery store parking lot, you can just pull over and vote. You don't have to vote in a specific precinct right in Nevada.

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How about on voting

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day? On voting day, you have to vote from 7am to 7pm you must be in line by 7pm in order to cast your vote. If you pull up at 701, you will not be allowed to vote, but as long as you are in line, even if you are not in the building to vote, yet you must be allowed to stay in line and have the opportunity to cast your vote. Now, let me also ask you this with the mail in ballot. So guys, I understand that everybody's getting a mail in ballot, yes. So you can vote from your home. You can vote from your home. You fill out your ballot, put it in the envelope, make sure you sign make sure you sign it, because if you don't, then another process has to happen, which is called curing the ballot on the back end, which just makes it more complicated. So you have to fill out your ballot, sign it and put in envelopes, sign it, walk right to your mailbox, which, even in communities that have community mailboxes, is probably not but 100 a few 100 feet from your front door. And so you don't even have to worry about long lines in Nevada. You just fill out your mail in battle ballot. Now what you cannot do is mail your mail in ballot and go to the polls and vote. You cannot do that. And you can track your ballot. You can trap, track your ballot through ballot tracks, through ballot, tracks, yes, and it's tracks, T, R, A, X,

Unknown Speaker 28:18
yes, and they will send you if you are registered, because I know I'm registered and I get the updates. Yes, we received your ballot, your and your vote has been counted. Yep. So we do, we do get text message updates again. This has been a wonderful Mrs. Ford. I want to thank you. Thank you for accepting the call to come and to talk to us about the ballot questions. I think every year we do this because this is, this helps for some of us. Okay, I don't know what I can guess what it means, but you just made this process now I can do some help me.

Unknown Speaker 28:53
I'm like, wait, all these words mean what? So we need to get the website up. You broke that down.

Unknown Speaker 28:58
She did very, easy, very simple. All right, until next

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week. This is growth and grace and everyone. Have a beautiful weekend. Have an

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amazing, amazing weekend and workout. Everybody work out

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and meditate and pray

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and pray. Meditate and pray. All right, have a great one. Everybody, bye, bye. You.

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