In this engaging episode of The Jenny Beth Show, Josh McKoon, Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, shares insightful strategies for securing political victory in Georgia for the 2024 elections. McKoon delves into the importance of grassroots mobilization, emphasizing the power of neighbor-to-neighbor voter contact and early voting. He reflects on lessons learned from the 2020 election, highlighting improvements in election integrity and absentee ballot security under Senate Bill 202. McKoon also discusses key conservative values such as economic freedom, national security, and the protection of individual rights. Listeners will gain a comprehensive understanding of the GOP's approach to winning elections, the significance of voter engagement, and the crucial role of transparency and ethics in politics.
In this engaging episode of The Jenny Beth Show, Josh McKoon, Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, shares insightful strategies for securing political victory in Georgia for the 2024 elections. McKoon delves into the importance of grassroots mobilization, emphasizing the power of neighbor-to-neighbor voter contact and early voting. He reflects on lessons learned from the 2020 election, highlighting improvements in election integrity and absentee ballot security under Senate Bill 202. McKoon also discusses key conservative values such as economic freedom, national security, and the protection of individual rights. Listeners will gain a comprehensive understanding of the GOP's approach to winning elections, the significance of voter engagement, and the crucial role of transparency and ethics in politics.
Twitter/X: @JoshMcKoon | @jennybethm
Website: www.gagop.org
Jenny Beth Martin (00:10):
So
Josh Mckoon (00:12):
Thank you for having me.
Josh Mckoon (00:27):
Starting in elementary school, we had a mock collection. I was fascinated by that whole process. As I got into high school, I began to volunteer on campaigns I was very interested in that. Went off to college. I had my first paying job in politics. I was a campaign manager for Trey Gowdy when he ran for solicitor of Spartanburg County, South Carolina. And just continued that as I went to law school, continued my involvement in campaigns. And then when I moved back home to Columbus, started a young republican organization, became chairman of my county party, and then our state senator, who was a family friend, he decided he was going to run for higher office and he suggested that if I wanted to be an elected official, this was the time to jump in. That wasn't really in my plan or timeline, but took the leap and got elected the state senate in 2010. So it's been a lifelong passion for me being involved in campaigns and politics and government, my collect that would've been Bush and du. Yes, very much.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:51):
Where did you go to college?
Josh Mckoon (01:54):
I went to Furman University, a small liberal arts college in Greenville, South Carolina. I went to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Yes, I moved around quite a bit before coming back home to Columbus. Yes, I've had a lot of experience both within campaign organizations and on the formal party side in terms of how do you build a grassroots political machine from the precinct level up?
Josh Mckoon (02:46):
Well, I think the biggest lesson is trying to make sure people understand what wins elections. And I think a lot of times we watch cable news, we see these other things and we think it's about giving speeches or some splashy media and all those things have their place, but nothing replaces. Having people that are willing to go neighbor to neighbor, knocking on doors, making phone calls, that all important voter contact, which again is sort of the basic blocking and tackling of politics. Maybe not as gets as much attention, but to me that's the heart and soul of any effective political organization. So that's a lesson I learned over and over again during those years.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:34):
You have are,
Josh Mckoon (04:22):
Yeah, I think the challenge is to try to channel that energy into a constructive direction. And I was elected for the first time in 2010. Then obviously the key party wave was occurring and it was a very similar dynamic because you had people that hadn't engaged politically that were activated and wanted to see things change and trying to explain, okay, here's how we affect the change, right? If you want to affect the change you've got to, to win elections, to win elections, this is what you've got to do. You've got to go find the right candidate. Maybe you want to be a candidate for office, maybe you want to be a volunteer leader, but these are the ways that you effectively engage to cause change in our system. And I'm still one after all this time, I believe very strongly that we can affect great change in our politics and in our government if we choose to spend our time and resources on those measures that get us positive change. So that to me, the key with folks that are coming in that are new now is to say, yes, there's nothing wrong with being righteously angry about things that are happening now. Let's talk about what we're going to do about it
Jenny Beth Martin (06:01):
A little bit differently.
Josh Mckoon (06:20):
Yes. So when I ran in 2010, I ran on an ethics platform. At that time, Georgia was one of only three states in the country that had no limitation on gifts from lobbyists to members of the legislature. And famously we had back at that time the speaker of the state house, his family, his staff, their family, take him to Europe on a vacation ostensibly to study HighSpeed rail, a six figure amount that was spent. I don't think there was any expectation the lobbyist was going to disclose that, but the lobbyist did. And so we wanted to bring forward a hundred dollars limitation on lobbyist gifts, which I thought was a pretty modest position to take. It was a firestorm at the legislature. It took three years to get anything done on that. I introduced religious freedom legislation that wound up unfortunately being controversial. I don't know why people think protecting your free exercise right under the First amendment is controversial.
Josh Mckoon (07:22):
I was very frustrated about a lot of process issues at the legislature. One of those was in the state senate. We did not live stream our committee meetings. Now this is 20 13, 20 14. And so Periscope, for those of you that might remember what that was, but one of these apps that allowed you to live stream from your phone, I'd been demanding for years that they do it. And then finally, I just told the committee chairs on the committees that I served, I said, I've bought myself a tripod for my little cell phone and I'm going to live stream every committee meeting I participate in until we get the money to do that. I wanted recorded votes on amendments on the floor because that wasn't happening. And so you would have people go to the back of the Senate chamber, stand behind a pillar and have alligator arms voting yes or no on things, and people didn't know how their representative was voting. So none of these things put me on a lot of Christmas card lists. I was not out to create strife. These were just all things that I thought were common sense. There were the reason that people, to go back to an earlier question, you said people in the Tea Party movement, they wanted to see openness and transparency in their government. And so that's not everything I did, but that maybe gives you some flavor of what I did while I was there.
Jenny Beth Martin (08:42):
And you're right when we first started,
Josh Mckoon (09:22):
Right? And it's hard to engage in the process at that time. If you had a controversial issue, that committee room would fill up. And so if you couldn't get to downtown Atlanta on a working day and spend your entire day over there, you had no way to know what happened in the committee meeting. You had to rely on the Atlanta Journal constitution or Georgia Public Broadcasting to give you some kind of summary of what happened. So I'm very appreciative that senate leadership did find the money wired the rooms. Now of course, everything's livestreamed, whether you're in Brunswick or Bainbridge or somewhere in between, you can see everything that your legislature is doing, which allows you to again have that more effective action. Talking about
Jenny Beth Martin (10:15):
What makes you Republican conservative,
Josh Mckoon (10:18):
I certainly consider myself a conservative. I believe in economic freedom. One of the things I'm an attorney is my profession. I had a client, a physician from the Philippines, and his family was all still in the Philippines. And I asked him one time, I said, why did you come to America? And he said, well, Josh, my father was a cobbler. Not that there's anything wrong with that line of work, but he said, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do something else. And if I'd stayed in the Philippines, that's what I would've had to do. But in America, I have an opportunity, I have a chance. And so I want to see that the culture and the laws that allow that to happen for folks to continue that economic freedom. I also feel very strongly in the traditions of this country. People put it a lot of different ways.
Josh Mckoon (11:12):
Some people call it social conservatism, some people call it values voting. But I believe strongly in protecting innocent human life. I believe strongly in protecting the right of people of every faith to practice their faith the way they see fit. You think about covid and you think about what happened to churches and temples In many states, we didn't have that problem really here in Georgia. But if you are in the wrong state and corporate worship is central to what you believe in terms of your eternal destiny, the is incredibly offensive. So economic freedom, the sort of social conservative issues I think a lot of us talk about. And then finally, national security. And for me, from a national security perspective, it's not just how we project American power around the world, but it's what President Trump has talked about over and over again in terms of being able to control our borders and ports of entry. I feel like we're the only developed nation on earth that actually has a policy of saying, we're not going to protect our border. We're not going to protect our ports of entry. So broadly speaking, we can talk about a hundred different issues. But those are the three kind of legs of the stool that I think about when I describe myself as a conservative.
Josh Mckoon (13:01):
So as we got into the 2018 election cycle, I had made a decision. I'd gotten married, I had some other things changing in my life. I had sort of decided this chapter of being in the state legislature, I'm ready to move on. I don't really believe in formal term limits, but I felt like eight years was enough for me. And then when then Secretary Kemp decided to run for governor in my law practice, I had handled election law cases. I was very concerned about the upcoming 2020 presidential election. I knew that we were going to be changing the method of voting in our state because the dbol electronic voting machines were being decommissioned, and the next Secretary of State would get to decide that. So I decided to run for Secretary, secretary State. I was unsuccessful in that election,
Josh Mckoon (13:55):
But very grateful for the opportunity. I met some great people. It was a great experience for me. And then I sort of took a step back, stayed involved with the Republican party, but was very happy to support Mike and David Schafer when he ran for Party Chairman in 2019. Again, 2021 really didn't have any plans to get involved at that level when he made the decision not to run again and looked around at what the field looked like and everything else. And again, just like 2020, I felt like this election cycle was going to be so, so important that it was worth stepping up and trying to have the opportunity to volunteer in that role. So that's sort of how I went from being in the state senate to where I'm now
Jenny Beth Martin (15:23):
Question.
Josh Mckoon (15:24):
Yeah, so to begin with, I think people should feel much better about where we are in 2024 than where we are in 2020. Let me be very quick to add that. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm not saying it's where I want it to be, but let's talk for just a moment about some of the things that I believe went wrong in 2020. One of those things was the installation of drop boxes for the deposit of paper absentee ballot. Now, is it true that we still have drop boxes in 2024? Yes. But in 2020, there was really no guidance about where these drop boxes were placed, what security measures were around the drop boxes, the times of day that they could be accessed. Now they have to be inside government buildings. There are security measures that are around that. And so I feel a lot better about where we are on drop boxes.
Josh Mckoon (16:26):
In Senate Bill 2 0 2, there were a lot of different measures put in place around absentee voting that I think were important. And if you look at what happened to overall absentee voting in 2020 over 1.3 million absentee ballots were cast in the 2020 election. Now, I believe absentee voting should be like using the emergency lane on the highway. It means something has gone wrong. You're sick, you're unexpectedly out of the country, you're shut in, you're physically unable to get to a precinct. Maybe you have a medical condition that you can't get out there. So there's certainly a population for whom absentee voting is appropriate and should be available, but it shouldn't be 1.3 million people. So in the 2022 election, we saw that number sort of return to what we typically expect in a Georgia election between a quarter of 1,000,300 50,000 paper absentee ballots. So I feel much better about the security around paper absentee ballots than I did in 2020. I don't anticipate that we will have what happened in 2020 in terms of the Secretary of State's office money to send out 6.9 million absentee ballot request forms.
Josh Mckoon (17:46):
It may sound like a small thing, but that was hugely significant in terms of what then happened later on in the election. The Secretary of State is no longer on the State Elections Board. There's a lot more independence of the State Elections Board. There's rulemaking authority and additional authority vested in the State Elections Board to sort of referee the conduct of local elections offices. So we've seen, in my view, a lot of changes up till the 2024 legislative session. Now, the 2024 legislative session, whether you're coming at it from a Republican perspective, you can talk to a lot of voter integrity advocate. Everyone agrees it was a home run session for election integrity. We had a lot of additional pieces of legislation passed that I believe put even additional safeguards in place. The other thing I'll mention and then I'll hush is trying to police voter roles because frankly, the accuracy of the voter information has a lot to do with whether or not you have a fair elections process. Or to put it another way, the more bad information in a voter role, the more opportunity there is for malfeasance and fraud, things of that
Jenny Beth Martin (19:07):
Nature.
Josh Mckoon (19:18):
Exactly. So what I tell people all the time that have questions about elections processes because of what happened in 2020, they're hesitant. They say, well, why should I bother voting? The message that I have tried to deliver repeatedly to them is we have a lot more eyes on this process than we did in 2020. We have better laws than we did in 2020. But the most important thing is there is a 100% chance that if our people don't turn out and vote, we will not win the election. So we need everyone to turn out and vote. Now, if you're not comfortable voting on an electronic voting machine, then go ahead and request a paper absentee ballot. I hope if you do that, that you will physically carry it to the elections office and not rely on the United States Postal Service to
Jenny Beth Martin (20:06):
Get it there.
Josh Mckoon (20:16):
Exactly. So we just need to make sure everybody does turn out and vote. But yes, I think people can have a lot more confidence in our process in 2024 than what went wrong in 2020.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:27):
I think that requested those kinds.
Josh Mckoon (23:25):
Yes, and I think that you're absolutely right that the sending out the absentee ballot request forms, there was no statutory authorization for the Secretary of State to do that. The Georgia General Assembly did not appropriate any funds to do that. He took federal funds that were made available during Covid and used those to do it on his own authority without any statutory authorization. Same thing with the drop boxes. That was an emergency rule that came about. So I do feel like the legislature has put a lot of guardrails up that were not present in 2020. I certainly have a much greater degree of confidence. And the last thing I'll say about this, the RNC, the constellation of organizations, yours included, the Georgia Republican Party. We have lots of people focusing on election integrity and making sure that we've got observers in place. We have preemptively been involved in litigation.
Josh Mckoon (24:28):
The Georgia Republican Party involved in over half a dozen lawsuits right now indirectly involved in some others. There's a lawsuit that was filed by Elections board member in Fulton County to talk about the authority of an individual member of a Board of elections. That's hugely significant that we're going to get a decision on beforehand. So that's the other thing I think folks that are watching or listening to this should know is that we aren't waiting until November 5th and then say, oh my goodness, there are all these problems. We are being much more proactive in getting out in front of these issues than we did in 2020. Exactly.
Josh Mckoon (25:49):
So you probably hit on, I mean the number one education project we've been engaging in for the last 12 months, and of course the RNC originally was talking about bank the vote. Now they're calling it slump the vote, but it's the same idea, which is the way I describe it is that for many, many election cycles, Democrats have figured out that you want to move as many of your voters too early voting as you can to make it easier for you to finish your Get Out the Vote program with these lower propensity voters, people less likely to vote that you need to make multiple contacts with. I would say that the Republican Party has had the position, let's put it in the football context. I'm the head coach at University of Georgia, and I tell you, Jenny Beth, we're not going to play offense for the first three quarters of the game.
Josh Mckoon (26:41):
Every time we get the ball, we're going to flip it back. The other team, I don't think I'd be the head coach very long if I told you we're going to score five touchdowns in the fourth quarter, we're going to throw a bunch of Hail Marys. Well, that's how we've been doing our Get Out the vote. And so whether you like early voting or not in Georgia, that's the law. We've got this three week early voting window, and then we have election day. If you are a 100% Trump Republican down the ballot voter, you show up every time the polls open. It helps the Georgia Republican Party for you to vote early because of course we know we don't know who you voted for, but we know that you had voted. And so now we don't have to spend money communicating with you. It's like writing us a check and we're able to take those additional resources and then go after those low propensity voters that we know if we get them to the poll, they're going to vote for President Trump.
Josh Mckoon (27:34):
But they require just communication after communication to do it, and that costs money. So early voting is a hugely important initiative for us. I was very encouraged that more early voters in the May primary pick a Republican ballot than a Democratic ballot. Obviously that's not nearly the population we're going to have that votes in the general election, but we're going to continue to relentlessly push that message of, please take advantage of early voting. If you're not comfortable voting on an electronic voting machine, request a paper absentee ballot as soon as the window opens, get that paper absentee ballot voted, and then get it into your elections office as quickly as possible, because we get notice of that too through the credit for voting reports. So that is really, really crucial in my opinion, in terms of our success in the election.
Josh Mckoon (30:23):
And these are all of course, finite resources. I mean, we only have so much money. We only have so many volunteer man hours. And so again, that's why I say if someone votes early, it is like donating to us because now you freed up the resources that would've been spent, as you say, trying to get that person out on election day. The other thing I'll say, I have people tell me all the time, Josh, it's my tradition. I like voting on election day. I'm not telling people that you can't vote on election day. What I am saying is things happen in the presidential preference. Primary. I have someone that I work with at my day job got called to meet me in Savannah for an emergency, had to get up at five o'clock in the morning on the day of the election, came down, met me at 9:00 AM We were working straight through about two o'clock.
Josh Mckoon (31:11):
We took a lunch break and he looked up at me and said, Josh, I didn't vote. And he wasn't going to get home in time to vote. Now, he didn't know when he went to bed Monday night that that was going to happen. But things happen. People get sick, people have accidents, all kinds of things happen. So if you go vote early, you've taken all of that off the table. You don't have to worry about it. And this is a little flip what I'm about to say, but I tell people all the time, I vote on the first day of early voting, and one of the reasons is if I get hit by a bus walking back to my car, my last act on this earth will have been to vote to fire Joe Biden and the vote will count. So there's a lot of reasons. The lines, the waiting, all of that is taken off the table if you just go ahead and vote early. So we're spending a lot of time on, and if you encounter a line, you can go back the next day. You show up at your precinct on election day and you've allotted yourself an hour to vote, and there's a long line and you've got to get to your kids' ball game or there's something else that's pressing on you. There's no tomorrow, right? It's election day. So that's another reason to take advantage of early voting,
Jenny Beth Martin (33:24):
The Democrats I whether we like.
Josh Mckoon (35:04):
Well, so much of the reporting on campaigns and some voting behavior is about the horse race. And just to extend the sports analogy for a moment, think about being at your favorite team's football game. Now, there's some diehard fans that this won't apply to, but you're in the third quarter and the opposition team's up to Touchdown stadium begins to empty out, and that's what you're talking about. We want our people enthusiastic and engaged until the final whistle blows. And I think it will be such a boost in that Friday leading up to election day, we're able to say, look, there's been this incredible Republican enthusiasm during early voting. Republicans have outvoted Democrats and early voting the first time ever and general election. I think that leads to this reverse of what you're talking about, where there's more enthusiasm, you have more people engaging in that last critical
Jenny Beth Martin (36:38):
North Carolina.
Josh Mckoon (36:45):
Yeah, I think the more people can read and understand that dynamic, I think it's really important.
Jenny Beth Martin (36:50):
People are,
Josh Mckoon (37:04):
Yes, he's made it very clear that he supports the same thing. I say, make a plan, whatever that's going to be intentional about how you're going to vote. If you're going to vote on election day, make sure you give yourself a lot of time. Try to pick a time of day where it may not be as crowded and you won't have as big of a line. So I don't want people taking away from this conversation we're saying, don't vote on election day. There are lots of reasons that it helps us to vote early, but just please vote. Make sure you vote. I do think it's important for people to know this fact, which I think is interesting. When you look at people that voted on voting machines in 2020 in Georgia, if those have been the only votes counted in the 2020 election in Georgia, president Trump would've won.
Josh Mckoon (37:55):
So when you look at it was the paper absentee ballot where Joe Biden built up his advantage. Now, that doesn't mean we're not going to be policing every part of this process every way we can think about, but I do think that's an important thing that a lot of people, as I've been traveling around the state, we're not familiar with or aware of. So I wouldn't allow personally, I'll vote early, I'll vote on one of the machines. But if somebody doesn't want to do that again, like President Trump said, make a plan. If it's a paper absentee ballot, if it's early voting, if it's voting on election day, just please vote. Oh.
Josh Mckoon (39:01):
So I think that the three issues that I hear about repeatedly are the economy, immigration, border security, and what I'll just say is global security. So when you talk about the economy, obviously I do the grocery shopping in my house. And so when you go to the grocery store and you see those prices, basic staples, everything that I can think of, the price has gone up. The price has gone up dramatically. I believe for a family of four, there was a study out that says, you're spending $28,000 more than you were in 2020 on again, just basic things you need to live, right?
Josh Mckoon (39:53):
Right. It's a stunning amount of money, and that's not normal. And it's so interesting to me. You'll hear people on the left and the dialogue is, oh, the economy's great. Look at the Dow Jones industrials. Look at the GDP or some of these other macroeconomic indicators. But we all know inflation is this enormous tax that's not levied by the government. It's sort of indirectly levied by the government by printing a bunch of money. But that's a huge issue for people choosing between gas, groceries and medicine. I mean, that's a real issue. And many households across this country in our own state, immigration, border security, it's a huge issue for a variety of reasons. We've seen it brought home in a very personal way here in Georgia, the murder of Lake and Riley. You've seen the murder of that poor 12-year-old girl in Texas. This is a real issue and it's a real issue whether your state borders a foreign country or not.
Josh Mckoon (41:00):
And so people are seeing the very real issues there, the strain on our infrastructure, the strain on social services, the issues that creates within the broader economy. And then yes, national security, global security, however you want to call it, the fact that there's a hot war going on in the state of Israel, and you can draw a straight line. President Trump had Iran basically bankrupt, had very effectively use the sanctions regime, in my view, to bring the eye tolls to their knees. And then President Biden gets in, sends them billions of dollars. It's clear that that money went to Hezbollah, Hamas, other bad actors that enabled the October 7th attack on Israel. We are now approaching a one year anniversary of that. And you think about where President Trump left that with the Abraham Accords, tremendous progress between the state of Israel and other Arab powers, and whether this administration's in capacity to serve or just an unwillingness to lead, watching Russian troops mobilize on the border of Ukraine, doing nothing and waiting for them to invade basically.
Josh Mckoon (42:25):
And now we're into the third year of that calamity. I saw an interview just the other day where they were recounting a meeting President Trump had with Taliban leadership when he was talking about how we were going to have this orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. And that he point blank said to the leader of the Taliban, if a single American is harmed, I will kill you and handed him an aerial photo of his home that is projecting American strength. And when you create a more dangerous world, and when you allow military age, men from these countries that want to do Americans harm could simply walk into our country, you're creating a very, very dangerous situation. So those are the three things that I'm consistently hearing from folks. Economic anxiety, anxiety about the border, and then this national security, global security issue,
Jenny Beth Martin (43:53):
Other countries.
Josh Mckoon (44:02):
And to your point about, you asked about nationally versus Georgia. If we get in a hot war, if sons and daughters of this country are asked to go to these far away places and fight and be killed, Georgia will disproportionately shoulder that burden. If you know anything about Georgia and the military bases here and the many, many families with a long traditional military service that impacts our state. I'm not saying it doesn't impact every state, but it impacts our state in an enormous way. And so yes, we talk about these far away places, but to your point, it has a direct and extremely personal potential cost if we don't get a hold of the situation and try to get where we were under President Trump, which was relative peaced around the world and prosperity at home.
Josh Mckoon (45:15):
So I tell people at almost every speaking opportunity I say, you look at the polling on these issues that you and I just discussed. President Trump enjoys very significant advantages in polling on leadership, on the economy, leadership on immigration and leadership on foreign policy. I think we have a much better organization than we did four years ago. I'm extremely grateful. Several cycles back, it would be the Georgia Republican Party versus the Democratic Party Fair Fight Action New Georgia project. And now we have the great work that y'all are doing, the great work, a number of other independent organizations are doing that are on the political right. So in my opinion, there's so many ways we have the wind at our back. I think there are two significant challenges. What I tell people is the only thing that's going to stop us is us fellow Republicans.
Josh Mckoon (46:16):
This is not a good time for us to have a lot of infighting on issues that frankly can be thrashed out after November 5th, whether that's personalities or politics or policies. We don't need to do that. We need to focus on getting President Trump elected, getting Republicans elected up and down the ballot. The other related issue, and I want to be very clear about this, you and I have already kind of discussed, I think you and I agree, there were significant election administration issues and problems with the 2020 election. So I'm not denying that. I'm saying that because of that, that you're not going to vote, that you simply are not going to participate in the political process. That is a challenge. Now, is it 1% of our potential voters that feel that way? Is it fewer? I can't tell you with any degree of certainty. I can tell you with regularity, when I go to a county Republican party meeting, I'll have someone in that room say, well, it's rigged. I'm not going to vote. And we've got to strongly push back and say, every single one of us, we got to vote like our lives depend on it.
Josh Mckoon (48:28):
And so those are real challenges. You asked the question, I'm going to be frank and candid in my answer. I think we are combating those challenges effectively. I'll say, I've had many, many conversations that started off in that sort of angry tone. I'm throwing my hands up and they ended with the my saying, I am going to make a plan to vote. I'm going to go knock on doors. I'm going to work on that. But have we totally resolved that? Certainly not. It's something we're going to be working on for the,
Josh Mckoon (49:37):
And I suspect of course, as you know, better than I, four months long time in politics, but everywhere I go, if I get in an Uber, if I'm getting my hair cut, I'm chairman of the Georgia Republican Party who you voting for president. I hope you vote for Donald Trump. The support is coming from very interesting places. There are places where I would've expected to maybe be chased out of the room where people are saying, no, it was better under President Trump. I'm voting for President Trump, so I don't want to leave anybody with the idea that nobody thinks the sky is falling. But we do have those challenges that we've got to face head on and be very frank and candid about it, to knock those things down and get everybody out to vote. That is true. Some people like to play golf. I think everybody has their thing they do to sort of blow off some steam after a long week. But I really do enjoy karaoke. Yes. So there are two different times. When I was in law school, I did some study abroad over in Greece and I won a karaoke contest there. And then a couple of years ago, I was at an international convention of a charitable organization. We had a talent show and won that as well. So I've had two different times where my karaoke skills, to the extent there were recognized
Jenny Beth Martin (51:16):
Karaoke.
Josh Mckoon (51:18):
I mean, like I said, everybody's got their thing. That's my thing, and I really enjoy it. I'm a big Elvis Presley fan. I sing a lot of his old standards, but I enjoy a wide variety of songs. It's just fun to get out there and have a good time with folks and forget about our problems for a little while. So
Josh Mckoon (51:52):
James Madison, I would say, I think the Constitution's a pretty amazing document, and obviously he had a lot to do with it. I think that you think about the whole scope of human history and the time that we're living in, and of course we have our problems, but I can't think of any other place or any other time I would like to be alive. And I really feel like if you were going to distill it down to one person, we were really owe him a enormous debt of gratitude for setting up this amazing constitutional republic that has endured for almost two and a half centuries.
Josh Mckoon (52:44):
Well, I'd love it for them to check out our website ga.org. There's a lot of information you can find there if you are feeling like I want to do something, but what can I do? That's a good place to start that conversation and get in touch with me or some of our staff or some of our other excellent volunteer leaders around the state. And I'd echo something you said earlier, which is number one, make a plan to vote. Number two, identify 10 other people between now and election day that you have a conversation with them and you make sure you make it your business that they're going to get out and go vote. And if everybody does that, it's going to be an early election night for us. It's going to a much different experience than we had in 2020. Very good. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Okay. That this time for real? Yes. Yes.