- A much discussed problem across Wyoming is the deterioration in civics participation and civic engagement.

If you think that's a problem, our guest today is not part of it.

In fact, she's a crusader.

For the answer, we'll meet Gail Symons, founder of Civics 3 0 7.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming, PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle, Gail Symons Welcome to Wyoming Chronicle.

We're talking today about civics, which is your more than your pet project.

I describe it as your crusade practically these days.

It's not that easy to define.

What's, how would you define it?

Civics?

- Well, I always like to go back to my mom who if I ever grow up, I wanna be just like her.

- Say her name while we're here.

- Her name is Faye Simmons.

Okay.

Very involved in, in the community.

Mom used to say that government is nothing more than the way in which the community manages itself.

So for me, that's, that's the very heart of what civics is.

It's being involved in the community.

It is identifying and supporting people who act as our represent representatives, whether it is at the local county or state level, who will help to, or work towards building that community and, and reinforcing that community on the behalf of all of us.

Yeah.

- So it it has this loose definition maybe for a reason.

Yeah.

There's a lot that can get under that umbrella.

Before we came on camera, I was telling you about a, a class that I took, I think when I was a freshman in high school.

And the name for it was orientation.

And it had things like how to get your driver's license and how to open a bank account and what a mortgage was and what different types of insurance were, things like that.

But it also included how old you had to be to vote, how to register to vote, where to register to vote, what the election, the date of the primary election was, what legislation was all these things in that time.

And it's been a long time ago, it wasn't difficult.

It was interesting.

Everybody had to do it.

There didn't seem to be any objection to it.

You know a lot about civics and their working in civics education in the state.

What's the condition of that topic as a formal part of education in Wyoming these days?

- Well, first of all, I, I think that is a, a critical piece of what we should be providing in our schools.

How to be a functioning, effective adult and citizen.

- Simple as that really.

- Yeah.

And everything that you spoke about is necessary.

In order to be an effective adult, you, you have to know how to balance your checkbook, those kind of things.

Wash your clothes and, and vote.

The one of the things that I really like that education in Wyoming is looking at is a modeled off of, of Utah where they start with portrait of a, of a graduate.

And one of the areas of a portrait of a graduate is literally that whole idea of being an effective, impactful adult.

That's where I would put that whole kind of area that you were talking about in, is we are not just giving people a diploma, we're setting them on a path for adulthood.

And so that is a critical piece of their, of their education.

Now, currently, we have a whole lot of things on our, that have to be taught in school, and we keep adding to it and adding to it at, at some point, it, it, it's gonna bust at the, at the seams in our standards for civics.

When I looked at it, it has understanding the US constitution, the Wyoming Constitution, and you should vote.

My concern is that's not sufficient In order to be an effective citizen, it's not sufficient to understand all the ways in which offices that show up on the ballot every two years or every four years, depending how they are making decisions and in what areas do they make decisions that impact you personally and your family and your community.

And so this is an area that, that I looked at and said, this is a gap that we need to close.

Too many people don't understand.

They show up at a city council and wanna bring up an issue that actually belongs with the county commissioners.

And it's not that they're dumber, they just don't know.

And it's, and it's hard to find out.

So let's make it easier.

- Well, to that end, you've started a project, a campaign, an effort, which is more or less your job from what I can tell at this point, at least called Civics 3 0 7.

- Correct.

So Civics 3 0 7 started when I st in 2017.

I had come back full time by the way.

I just, I just have to have an aside here.

Three days before I turned 18, my mom said, your birthday's coming up, Gail, you know what that means?

And I'm like, yeah, I get to drink.

And she says, no, that means you're gonna go over to the courthouse and you're gonna register to vote.

That was over 50 years ago.

And I have not missed a, either a primary or a general election since no matter where I lived in the world, you know, between the Navy and General Electric.

You're a - Military officer for years.

- That's right.

I never missed a Sheridan County Wyoming election.

But in any case, so, so, so back to that, and I'm sorry that I got myself distracted, but looking at being in the legislature or watching what was going on in the legislature, rather, I couldn't keep up, I couldn't keep track of where the bills were.

And there's a daily sheet that comes out, but it just gives you what happened the previous day.

Well, if there was a bill that went to a committee two days ago, it doesn't show up on the latest list because that was the action two days ago.

So I started a tracker, a bill tracker, and I've been doing that for, you know, ever since 2017.

Then about five years ago, I started talking to people about if they vote or not, and if they don't, why, - Why?

- And the answer came up one of two things.

My vote doesn't count, or I didn't know the people on the ballot and I didn't wanna make the wrong choice.

From that came why vote?

So I have a, a separate website called Why vote.vote.

That is a one stop shop for elections that provides information on what did the, what did the offices do.

You can go in by county and, and we'll be doing this real soon, we've already got listed every office from governor on down.

'cause I am not gonna get involved in dc.

So from governor on down all the way down to precinct people, what are the offices that will show up on the ballot somewhere in your county in the next election, and then in May from 14 to 29 when people start filing, we'll grab those names and we'll add that there so that people can go to one place and see who all is running for that particular office.

And then we send out an invite for them to finish or to, to complete a profile.

And when they send it back, we'll put that online and then that gets linked.

So you literally can go to your county, click on your county.

At the very top is the county clerk's election website because that's, that's the truth.

And then all of the offices who's running, and if they have a profile, there will be a hyperlink so that you can go see the information about that, about that candidate.

It includes a picture, how to get ahold of them.

We ask, what is your background?

What is your education?

What is your experience?

And because I am a little bit biased, it says, what has been, what have you been engaged in in the community?

And then two questions.

One, why are you running?

And two, what do you hope to accomplish?

It's the same profile for everybody, but it makes it so that people can more readily find out who's running and then find out more about 'em.

We ask people to think of it as a resume because my whole idea about civics and about politics and about people running candidacy is that you are interviewing for a job and we as voters are deciding who we're gonna hire to do a particular job for us.

So that profile is meant to be a, a resume.

And therefore you are, you are putting out why it is that you think that you're the right person for the job.

You can't say anything about anybody else.

So that's the number one rule.

You can only talk about why you should be the person that is selected for that position.

The second thing is, and it becomes pretty, pretty obvious, is we're gonna, we're gonna be doing a, a really hard push to get as many candidates as possible to, to complete that because we're gonna push people to it throughout the state.

If somebody doesn't give a profile, well that's, that's one point of information - It's telling in and of itself.

- Yes.

- What do we lose when we don't have good civics participation, civics, literacy, civics education.

- Well, I, I, I think you, I gave you my, my quote about that's supposedly from Parles.

- You did, please say that - That is to the effect of, just because you're not interested in politics doesn't mean that politics isn't interested in you.

And the point is that every single office on that ballot is making decisions that impact your life.

It, they're making decisions about which, which streets in a town are gonna get snowplowed.

They're making decisions about where we're gonna have parks.

Are we going to fund our parks?

They're making decisions around planning.

Where are we gonna have more housing?

What kind of housing are we gonna have?

They're making decisions about the laws that that affect, you know, criminal law.

Civil law, how do we run businesses?

I mean it all the way through.

There is every part of your life is being impacted by decisions made by people who are elected to that office.

- These offices exist for a reason.

- They they absolutely do.

And it's back to, it's how we manage ourselves.

We're very pragmatic when we, when we run for office.

I've run for office in the past.

We're very pragmatic.

You only need 50% of the voters plus one.

So you go out and you knock on the doors of those people who are already registered and you talk to them.

And if it's for the primary, it's those that are registered in your own party and you're just trying to get 50% plus one.

If you're not registered to, they're not coming to your door.

They're not knocking and having a conversation with - Them who could blame them?

- It well, yeah, because it's a, they don't need, it's a numbers game.

Yeah.

It, it's, it's one of the reasons why it's so important to me that people indicate that candidates indicate how they're out in the community.

Do they show up for Rotary?

Do they show up for, for Chamber of Commerce events?

Are they involved with a school?

Are they, are they a part of the Elks Club?

Like where are they that they are interacting with other people who may have different ideas, but the number one way that you make sure you're in the conversation is that you register and you vote and you show up when they have a, a forum or there is a, an event where candidates are at and you show up and you talk to them.

Yeah.

- And in Wyoming, that's still quite possible to do in other places.

More difficult to do.

- Yeah.

- But it's not hard to find a city council member or a school board member or even a legislator if you, if you want to, - Well, - They're all around, - You'll run into them at the grocery store.

Yeah.

You'll, you'll see them on the street.

You'll see them at a, at a high school sporting event.

You have to know who they are.

But again, your interest is, is what sparks that.

The last time I ran one of the things that, that I would ask people besides residential property taxes, 'cause that was a given.

- Yeah.

- What are the other issues that you're concerned with?

And so many times I'd get, well, there's so many and I just can't keep up.

- Interesting.

- So I tell folks, find one or two issues that matter to you.

It's overwhelming if you have too many of them, but find one or two.

Do you have kids that are in school, have it be public schools, you are an outdoorsman or a hunter, maybe it's public lands.

So find one or two things and, and get knowledgeable about that.

And then use that as a basis for you.

How you are evaluating people who are running or the the conversations you're having with them.

That's, that's a skill I'm gonna come back to, to civics 3 0 7, please.

Because now what I'm doing, we are expanding civics 3 0 7 to be not just about the legislature.

They'll, they'll still be a piece of that, but we are expanding it into a Wyoming adult civics education e-learning site.

It's gonna start with 15 modules, and these will be no more than 10 minutes videos.

We will also have PowerPoints and infographics and some audio, some podcast because different people like to learn in, in different ways.

Sure.

But we wanna make it so that it's, it's how do you eat the elephant, right?

One bite at a time.

- One bite at a time.

- So, so we're gonna have 15, and it will cover all of the offices that will show up on year's primary election, again from governor on down.

So the top five state electeds Legislature, the eight county offices.

Many people don't even know that there's eight.

And then the combined mayor and council, and those are all gonna show up in the August primary.

And then when we, you know, once they get past the primary, we will add some more because there's some non-partisan, like the school boards.

School boards and, and special districts Yeah.

And college trustees that will, that will show up if you're gonna hire somebody for a job.

There's, there's really four parts to it.

Number one, you need to know what the job is that you're hiring somebody for.

So if somebody is running for county clerk, how do you determine if who the right person is?

If you don't know what the county clerk does.

So you need to know what the county clerk does.

You need to know that the candidate knows what the county clerk does.

- Good point.

- The, the, the third is that that candidate needs to be able to relate their experience into what the county clerk does, because they may not have been a county clerk before, but they, they should be able to articulate how their skills and knowledge, education experience rolls into that.

And then fourth, they need to, to be able to articulate why they are the best person for that job.

Because again, you are interviewing them to do a job for you.

And in this particular case, it's the, the county clerk.

So making it accessible so you can find out what do these, what do these jobs really do is important.

I, I kind of smiled, maybe I grimaced, but I kind of smiled on a recent announcement of somebody running for an office and they said that they were gonna keep taxes low.

That office has zero to do with taxes.

You know, so that may be important to you, but if that's the most important thing, then maybe this isn't the office that you wanna be running for.

- What's happened in Wyoming and in this country, do you think from the days when I was enjoying taking a class about registering to vote and who my local city council people were to.

Now when, as you say so many people say, well, I don't care about it, it's boring.

My vote doesn't count.

- Yeah.

- Doesn't affect me.

What, what went wrong over the past decades that's brought us here, - We've lost connections.

And probably the worst, some of the best and worst things that hap has happened to us is the internet and social media and the degree to which we can be disconnected from other people.

And we say things and we do things and we write things that we would never, ever due to a person's face.

Sure.

And so that disconnected.

There was a a, a study done.

I, I think they were trying to figure out why really good people do do horrible things.

And the more you're disconnected from the impact of, of your actions, the easier it is to take actions that harm others.

And that, I think is a, is a piece of it.

So we're, we're disconnected.

We also have a barrage of information we used to go from, from maybe not having enough information - Yeah.

- To, we have way too much information.

And the problem is we don't know what's good and what's bad.

The, because there's so much of it.

And critical thinking is something that we probably don't teach enough in our schools.

Like how do you, how do you ask probing questions?

You know, like kind of Socratic type questioning that probes and, and gets to the truth of something.

I I will say that younger generations, they kind of like, well, just because it's on the internet doesn't mean we believe it.

Us boomers, we tend to believe what we see on the, the internet because, you know, we grew up when people didn't, - You trusted - What you Yeah, you trusted him.

Right.

So, so now when we're not connecting with people, we we're, we're losing that, that sense of I if, if you're a candidate, I like the me I see in you.

And, and now it's, it is become sound bites and it's become ideology.

I just wrote a column last week about why ideology is, is I, I think toxic because it starts with an answer and then looks for a problem to solve when good governance, whether it is through civics or at whatever level starts with what's a problem that exists and how do we solve it?

Because then we have a whole range of solutions.

But if you start with an answer that's, you don't, it - Excludes so much.

- Yeah.

So that, that was a piece of it.

The more we receive information, the more likely we are the same information, the more likely we are to see it as the truth.

So if we just get bombarded with the same like soundbite over and over and over again, we tend to see it as the truth.

I saw a, an opinion article that talks about how governance is full of nuance and, and, and it's complex and we're dealing with many different requirements in people.

But politics is all about getting a soundbite that hits.

So it's up to us as voters, as citizens to able to weed through and say, no, you don't, you don't get to just give me some soundbite and, and have me accept that as a substitute for the fact that I want you to think through what you're doing, even if I disagree with you, if I know that you are predisposed to get as much information as the time allows, process it and then make a decision.

Well, your soundbite doesn't tell me any of that.

It's the most - Simplistic possible entry to the most complicated possible issue.

- Absolutely.

- And they just don't go together.

- Yeah.

I'm looking at a training module in civics 3 0 7 that is under a, a curriculum of how to be a savvy voter and having one module be how do you process mailers in your mailbox box?

And it's, - I'm, I'm tempted to answer that, but you go ahead.

- So you pull them all out and you pick it up and you look at it.

If you are immediately angry, know that that is by design.

When you're angry or you're afraid, it's all lizard brain.

Your frontal cortex isn't working, you're not thinking.

So if it makes you angry, understand that, look to see who put it out and then put it aside.

Yeah.

That's, that's - One piece.

Anger and anger and fear aren't the basis for good decision.

- Exactly.

- Just never.

- So pull out the next one and if it makes you question like you've got a concern or you want to know more, that's a, a good one to, to look into.

So again, turn it over, see who paid for it and that, put that into a second pile because that might be one that gives you a way to find out more information.

And it might be about an issue that you care about or an issue that you don't care about, but you know, somebody else does that is, you know, impactful in the, in the race.

And then pull the next one out.

And if it's about a specific candidate and about what they stand for, it's almost guaranteed that that's from the candidate.

So turn around, look at it.

Who paid for it?

Is it the candidate or the candidate committee?

And that's the third pile because those are the people that, that's the, the mail piece that is trying to tell you who they are.

So that's the starting piece of who is that candidate And, and use that.

So now you've got the three piles and when you're looking at that one, that makes you angry, mark down who that came from because they might start getting sneaky.

Always look to see who paid for that particular piece.

So that's on how to do the mail.

I've got another one that's how do you meet a candidate at your own doorway?

They come, they knock up and they say, I'm Joe Smith, I'm running for X and I'm gonna keep them from stealing your guns.

Well if you already know the one or two issues that you have, you can say you're gonna own the conversation.

I'm so glad you stopped by.

That's not a particular concern of mine.

But perhaps you can talk to me about early childhood education or how do we preserve public lands, like the, the issue that you care about and have that be the conversation.

So it's about you, not them.

- And you'll learn a lot about that candidate right - After that.

- Yeah, - I'm a data person.

63% of the legislators were decided in the August primary election, the participation rate, only 50% of Wyoming eligible citizens are registered to vote, - Even registered to vote, - Even registered to vote.

And in August of 2024, where normally 70% of Republicans and about 50, maybe a little less than 50% of Democrats show up to vote in those partisan primaries.

Where historically, for example, 70%, it was down 10 points.

That translates to 24,000 votes statewide.

So if we can increase the number, the percentage of eligible citizens who are registered and increase the number of registered voters that participate and it and, and to do that, we make it really accessible for them to learn what are the offices, what are the processes?

Who are the people that are running so that they feel comfortable, that they know enough to select the right person for them.

Again, back to what's in my selfish best interest.

And I think that we can actually have numbers where that shows up.

We would love to have volunteers under the umbrella of civics 3 0 7, which we are trying to keep to the education part.

I've brought under that my why vote.

There's a contact on there.

So info@whyvote.vote, and let us know where you are, what you're interested in doing.

The more volunteers we have, the better.

And again, it's strictly nonpartisan.

I honestly don't care what your politics are.

This isn't about politics, this is about community.

- You are a true believer and it's an important topic and you're putting everything you have into it.

And that in itself is an inspiration.

Gail Symons, I appreciate your time.

I hope our viewers do as well.

And thanks for being with us on Wyoming Chronicle.

- Thank you.