Introduction to Pirate Money Radio and Guest Debbie Wathnow's Background
Kevin Freeman Welcome aboard another voyage of Pirate Money Radio, the show that sails against the storms of fiat tyranny, cultural confusion and counterfeit ideas to chart a course toward liberty, security and values built on biblical truth. I'm, your captain, Kevan Freeman, coming to you from the heart of Texas. If you're new to this ship, you can follow this hour on its own. Here's the question we're when you mark a ballot, how do you know what the person you're voting for actually believes and what they've actually done? On this program, we talk about doing your homework before you put your vote or, or your money somewhere. A, vote deserves the same homework that you give to your money. And with me in studio here at Liberty Hawk Ranch is Debbie Wathnow. She's the president of ivoterguide and a vice president of AFA Action. Ivoterguide is a free online voter guide. It's a division of AFA Action. And before any of that, she studied computer science at Princeton and worked as a systems engineer at Bell Labs. Debbie, welcome to Pirate Money Radio.
Debbie Wuthnow Great to be with you, Kevan.
Kevin Freeman You know, Debbie, I've known you a while. This is the first time I realized that you were a systems engineer. That's exciting.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, you know, somebody's got to do it.
Debbie Wathnow's Journey from Systems Engineer to Director of iVoterGuide
Kevin Freeman Yeah, but Bell Labs, I mean, all this modern technology and everything, that they were one of the true innovators.
Debbie Wuthnow Oh, it was exciting. The building I worked at was in Holmdel, NewSong Jersey. And that's how I learned what a trans. What's a, transistor looked like. It was a transistorist
Kevin Freeman translator.
Debbie Wuthnow Careful. But the transistor was invented at the building I worked at, so their water tower was shaped like a transistor because of it.
Kevin Freeman Wow. And then you left from that very, very important job to do something even more important?
Debbie Wuthnow Best job ever. I was a stay at home mom for 20 years raising my kids.
Kevin Freeman Raised your kids? How? How do you go from doing those two important occupations to now providing a voter guide that literally covers the entire country?
Debbie Wuthnow it's really a God story. It was never my plan, but it was God's plan. So every, you know, you look back at the footprints of your life and you can see how God orchestrated the whole thing. And that's how I ended up at Bell. That's how I ended up at Princeton. That's where I met my husband. And then, you know, I Wanted to be able to raise my kids. So we, we actually met and married. NewSong Jersey, moved to St. Louis on God's directions. He opened the doors and he opens the paths. And, I did discipleship studies and knew that God had a plan for my life. I'm not a sit still person. I don't know if you noticed that about me. I can talk kind of fast. I like to get a lot done. I don't rest well. And when my daughter started college, I knew that, I was an empty nest thing on my horizon. And I thought, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do with an empty nest? Because I was the room mom, I was the PTA mom, I ran the gymnastics meets, M. I was the coordinator of Bible study, I ran vbs, all of that. And so I said, God, you're going to have to show me what to do. And it was my Bible study teaching director was, I asked her to be a job reference. She came back a week later and said, you know, my husband programs this online voter guide and he's been complaining at the dinner table that he needs somebody to help him with it. I know you have a background in computer science. I know you haven't used it in 20 years, but are you interested? He said, he can train you in working for him. So I wasn't even going to look for a job until September. This was in January 2011. And by March, I had a. I had a job. So I sat at my kitchen table and he taught me how to do website stuff. And it was really. I saw it as God's provision and God's calling. And three years later, they named me director of operations, which was kind of like being the mom. Ah, it was my comfort zone. Right? Just make sure everything's working right and everybody's doing what they need to do is set up processes for this. And I still remember where I was standing. Richard Ford called me and said, the board's named you executive director. And I had an aha, ah, talk to God moment, because it wasn't a would you. It was, they have named you. And, in some prayer time, God said to me, you know, I called you to do this. I said, yeah, I was very clear. I prayed for the open window you gave it. He says, you do know that I equip those I call. Yes, I am confident of that. He says, and Debbie, you represent the target audience of ivoterguide. It's not the political activist who needs the research that I VoterGuide does. It's the soccer mom. It's the person raising their kids just trying to raise a good family that needs the information to vote wisely. So that's how I ended up here. Never was my plan, but it was, obviously God's plan. And he didn't use me to create ivoterguide, but he did use me to grow. To grow it. To get it to where it is today from where it was when I joined.
Kevin Freeman Oh, yeah. No. And I remember when I voter guides first started. And I started as voter guides and not online and so forth. I remember all of these things. Cause I was working with Kelly Shackelford and First Liberty and Richard Ford there. But, I'll tell you, it's kind of amazing. You've pulled so much together in one very, brief, response. You've got Christian. You've got engineer. Uh-huh. You've got mom. Uh-huh. You've got very social individual, because you like to connect people. And PTA and all of that. That's an unusual packaging. But
Debbie Wuthnow I'm actually an introvert. So the social part's the one that kind of stretches me the most. This. This public Persona and is stretching me out of my comfort zone. I'd rather sit in the back
Kevin Freeman and make sure it works. Engineer going. Because I've got a family. my sister family is all engineers. And so I understand that the family, the engineer. I like to solve problems, but I can go and do it by myself. I don't need a whole lot of people around.
Debbie Wuthnow But it's gotten so big. I'm so blessed that we have a great team@ivoterguide. That, that's what brings us here, is to bring my team here for some respite.
Kevin Freeman That's what you're here at Liberty Hawk. So I just want to hit this. Where did. When did you come to Christ? Where did that come from?
Debbie Wuthnow Oh, gosh. I was 16 years old in high school, and it was through my debate partner when my mom had been diagnosed with cancer and I was struggling.
Kevin Freeman Debate partner. Yeah. All right, I want to hit that. And then I want to talk about your mom for a second. But the debate partner, because debate was my thing in high school, I was big into that.
Debbie Wuthnow I did speech and debate in high school, and I did oratory and extemporaneous. So the extent has come in very handy in this current role of, you know, you get a topic and 30 minutes later, you have to give it an eight minute speech.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, I'm not going to ascribe. I know what the topics were. In my day. And I'm. We're just going to. I remember the seven
Debbie Wuthnow divot. Yeah. The ten digit mail code was one of them. Should we go from five? Yeah,
Kevin Freeman yeah. No. We talked about energy, we talked about health care. We talked and none of those things have been solved.
Debbie Wuthnow No. True, true. And then I did do debate, partner debate. So you had to be able to argue either
Kevin Freeman side of the case. National Forensic League. Yeah,
Debbie Wuthnow I'm a double Ruby. Yeah.
Kevin Freeman me too. Double Ruby. Congratulations. And that was where in NewSong Jersey.
Debbie Wuthnow Kickapoo High School, Springfield, Missouri. Brad Pitt was the year behind me in my class.
Kevin Freeman Brad Pitt. Yes. Wow. So that is behind me because Brad's younger than me and by, by a good mark. You
Debbie Wuthnow didn't need to say
Kevin Freeman that. But honestly that those were very formative years. So that prepared you because you have to see both sides of an argument.
Debbie Wuthnow You do. And you have to think logically, which as an engineer that comes very naturally to me. Logic is, is actually second nature.
Kevin Freeman And your. Mine was all pre computer, so we, we drug around boxes of files and
Debbie Wuthnow big file cabinets. I actually got gouged by one getting it under the bus for a tournament.
Kevin Freeman So. Yeah, I remember all, all of those back in the day. That's interesting. We'll have to have long conversations here at Liberty Hawk about that.
How iVoterGuide Empowers Voters with Objective Information
But all right, so, so I see that. I see how it all comes together and you know, introvert, but forced into public speaking, which is great. I think it's great training and I recommend that for everybody. Get your kids to, to do that. But then seeing both sides, and that's what you kind of do with, with I voter guide. You put both sides out there.
Debbie Wuthnow Right. We're not telling people which way to vote or who to vote for. We're really just giving them the tools, the research, the information so they can decide for themselves. Because it's nonpartisan. It's not an endorsement list of people to vote for. It's not Republican, it's not Democrat. It's just information from both sides of the spectrum. I call, I look, I describe it as computer ah, science. It's pixels. We gather data points which I think are the, you know, the pixels. The more pixels we get, the better picture we get of, each candidate.
Kevin Freeman And yet I, see in the current election, I see a lot of candidates that don't want to really show where they stand on things. They want to obscure it, they want to hide it. And your job is to ferret it out through very incite. Again, that's a debate technique. You got to get your opponent to, to admit who they are, where they stand. Yes.
Debbie Wuthnow Right. Ask the right question, phrase things. Yes, that's right. So I mean the questionnaire that we have, we spend hours to probably 20 to 30 hours in, when we get that questionnaire ready to try to get at each nuance of part positions and values for the candidates.
Kevin Freeman This is incredible public service because you walk in and you get a 30 second ad on television and they're going to do one or two things, talk about how great they are or how terrible their opponent is. They're not really going to tell you anything about what they intend on doing.
Debbie Wuthnow They don't really want to. And in fact we've seen evidence that they tell you what they think you want to hear to vote for them. They don't tell you exactly what they're going to do.
Kevin Freeman And then no wonder you ever feel that you go vote for somebody and you think they're going to do one thing and then they get in office and they do completely the opposite of what you thought.
Debbie Wuthnow We have a new name for that, the Spam Burger, because that's what Spamberger in Virginia ran for governor saying, I'm this moderate Democrat, I'm not going to do these things the minute she's elected. Day one signs abortion to birth. just all kinds of liberal policies. So that's the whole bait and switch. It's now called you're Spam Burgered.
Kevin Freeman Yep. All right, so we're going to talk about this. And there's a lot of money behind it. And there are only three things you can do with your money. You can give it, you can spend it, or you can invest it. Here at Pirate Money Radio, we work to explain solutions that support all three areas in a way that promotes liberty, security and values. Patriot Mobile, it's a mobile phone company. They support the Pirate Money radio program. Patriot Mobile uses US carriers including AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile, and operates on both Apple and Android phones. More information about the economic war room. Patriot Mobile is [email protected] AFR Debbie, we've got like 15 seconds. Where do people find I voter guide?
Debbie Wuthnow Go to ivoterguide.com Enter your personalized address. Get your personalized voter guide.
Kevin Freeman All right, we're going to be talking with Debbie. What now? About I voter Guide. She's got a fascinating background and it's a way that you can learn who you should vote for that aligns with your values. We'll cover this and more when we come back after this break.
Mike Carter Welcome back to Pirate Money Radio with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. And we're joined by Debbie Wath now from I Voter Guide. She's got a fascinating story. She's a wonderful Christian lady I've known for a number of years, and she really does have that solution. When you're facing an election, how do you know who you're voting for? Are they really the people they claim to be? All right, so Debbie, walk us through this. Imagine I'm here with my laptop. And I'm going to type in. And I'm going to go to I Voter Guide. where do I go? What do I type in?
Debbie Wuthnow You type in I, the letter I voterguide.com
Kevin Freeman ivoterguide.com Then
Debbie Wuthnow you'll see a video.
Kevin Freeman Okay, walk me through it.
Debbie Wuthnow Okay, so, our goal, as you can see, is to help you vote wisely. It has that text. We are grounded in guiding, rooted in research. But what you do is in that little white box, it says physical address. Type in your physical address into that white box and then click the gold button that says View my Voter Guide.
Kevin Freeman Okay.
Debbie Wuthnow And we'll pull up the personalized ballot for Kevan and Marnie Freeman based upon your districts. So it's only going to include the races on your ballot that I Voter Guide is researching as far down as we go in your area. So you don't need to know I'm in congressional district 23 and state senate district four. And what school. Even school districts as we cover them, it's all based on your address. So it's not to
Kevin Freeman the full address though. Not just the zip code.
Debbie Wuthnow Not just the zip code. Because as we started going further down, ballot for school districts, zip codes have multiple districts. We just, we really need to be precise and have that voting address. We're not going to follow up and ping you on anything really. It's, it's to provide you the personalized ballot. And we do that for every address in America.
Kevin Freeman And it's got a gauge there from liberal to conservative.
Debbie Wuthnow It does.
Kevin Freeman What should I click after I see it?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, say, the, the gauge is based upon the data that we got gathered on a candidate. If you want to see the data we gathered on that candidate, click anywhere on that tile or the gold button that says View Candidate Prof. And that will take you to the profile page for that candidate. We've created them just in this election for 8,500 candidates that we have evaluated. And on that page we can talk you through what you, what we found on each candidate. Did you click in? Kevan, are you ready?
Kevin Freeman Yeah. No. Give me an example of what someone might find if you want. Well,
Debbie Wuthnow I'm going to go to one myself. So I'm going to go to my personalized ballot.
Kevin Freeman Okay.
Debbie Wuthnow And load that up. So at the top of mine, I'm in Texas, as are you. And we start with. So at the top of the page where the ballot was, I'm going to just let you know there's voting information at the top. So if you don't know when early voting is going on in your state, it's pretty much. It started everywhere at this point in the nation.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. Now, this is going to air after the election has run. Okay. We recorded in advance, but it's going to air on Saturday after. Right after the election. So, for a lot of people, this is preparation for the next election. And just
Debbie Wuthnow also a way to check who won, because I Voter Guide will be updating your personalized ballot with who's who won. We'll add a winner banner so you can go there to find out who won. A lot of times it's hard to find out who wins. Down ballot. Yes. Right. So I Voter Guide can be your source for finding your election winners as well with your personalized winner list. So at the top of there, it's got a link to find your polling place before your next election or special election or school board. blue buttons there that let you know the levels of races that we cover. You can use those to navigate. But if you click in, I'm going to pick a Senate candidate and click into the Republican candidate for Senate in Texas. View the profile. Up at the top, you'll notice some little tiny icons, and those are the websites for that candidate, their social media, their LinkedIn, their website. We have the gauge and then we have all the data points. The most important data points are at the top, and then we scroll down. So the first data point are the scorecards. If that legisl. If that person has ever been a legislator. like, for example, Ken Paxton was a state House representative. So we have scorecards for when he served in the House and how he voted on bills. Talrico was also in the House. We have scorecards on him. So you can kind of compare those side by side. and because those are, you know, how they voted on legislation or passed legislation.
Kevin Freeman Well, on Tuesday, you may have been elated or you may have been disappointed. We don't know where you are based on that, but I want to tell you this is, you cannot put politics away once the election is over because it started right up again immediately. And you will see billions of dollars being spent. Influence you, control you, manipulate you. And I Voter Guide is a way that you can actually get real information to find out what lines up with your values. Now, this is a Christian radio program, and so we, like, we want people to align their biblical values, biblical values with their votes. And that's an important service that you're offering.
Debbie Wuthnow Huge. Our value is objective truth. Our goal is to find the truth about candidates. Because what you're on the radio, the cards that you get in the mail that you, you know, shuffle on your heart on your kitchen table to decide who to vote for, that doesn't tell you what they're going to do with power. It doesn't tell what they've done. It's what they want you to hear. We want the truth.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, I voterguy.com you type a street address, then you open up the full profile. It's as easy as it possibly could be. All right, we're gonna have to take a break. When we come back, I want to talk with you, Debbie, about what's behind a rating. Who reads all those records? What happens when a candidate says, you got me wrong? Because I'm sure candidates complain about it, but they need to help, and we need to know the truth. And the truth shall set us free. We'll be right back.
Mike Carter Pirate Money Radio, helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security, and values. Welcome back with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman Yes, and I'm joined by Debbie. What now, Debbie? Take us through the whole process. Imagine, a candidate says, I'm throwing my hat into the ring, and I want to be there. What happens from the day they file to the day the profile goes live and who touches all those points?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, it actually begins before that, so I'll lay some of the foundation. So we are downloading campaign finance reports and all the data from the Federal Election Commission, as well as every state where we go down ballot. So we've got the entire database from all of those organizations. We then, are looking for ideological organizations that either support candidates or oppose candidates. And we're matching those entities in campaign finance because following the money, as you know, tells us a lot about candidates. as candidates, file. And even as scorecards come out, which is in different timelines, we're entering scorecards for all the incumbents. We're always tracking the incumbents and entering scorecards that as they come out from liberal and conservative groups on their votes and just having that ready for when they file. Now, when candidate filing ends is when we're creating the initial profile for those challengers. Incumbents are already in the system. Obviously they ran before. So we're creating the profile. We're looking for the contact information, we're verifying that with them, and, starting to build the data points in. That's when we start matching that candidate to their campaign finance reports or to the data that's in the database so we can identify not just who's supporting their campaign, but who they, as an individual, have given money to.
Kevin Freeman So all this is the groundwork before, before you even send a questionnaire.
Debbie Wuthnow We have a huge, huge, millions and millions of records database on all of these. I mean, we started in 2011 doing this. That was one of my first roles, was writing the campaign finance system. So we're building all of that in there. and then we have a state lead for every state that is entering those candidates and putting in the contact information. They will send the candidates via email, a questionnaire invitation. And the. And the candidate does that online. They answer all of our questions in their own words or not or, you know, on the questions. we're, we're vetting panelists to get ready to score the candidates. We're gathering, you know, their sub, their websites and their social media. We have an endorsements team that is, then searching for endorsements and verifying that they are, you know, in this election for this candidate,
Kevin Freeman for this office,
Debbie Wuthnow huge. Those are people who do the deep dive, maybe even interview candidates to choose, especially in a party primary, who's the candidate they say is the best one for the job. So it's a great data point. It would be endorsements. Campaign finance would be next important then endorsements. We do independent research. If we find, you know, somebody wrote an, article or a book or was on an interview or something, we will add that to another information bucket. And then we have the questionnaire. And once we have all of that gathered, we actually have the candidate quality control it and look at it and make sure this looks right. Did you really give money to ACLU or did you give money to this? Or vice versa?
Kevin Freeman What if they're deceptive? I mean, they say one thing and you've got them in public speeches or you have them in house votes, and they say, you know, we believe in six genders or something like that. And then all of a sudden they come out and say, no, no, no, I, I misspoke. You misunderstood me. That's not really what I said.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, our philosophy is what they do is more important than what they say they're going to do. So if, if they do that, the, the actions get more weight. Really? That's what we'll believe. Is that what you're going to do?
Kevin Freeman This is the mom coming out. Actions speak louder than words.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, and I would even tell you a story. You know, the candidate gets to quality control. Their voter guide used to be they could see their rating when they quality controlled it. Candidate came back to us, to the state lead and said, I don't like my rating. He didn't like the rating. He said, didn't I tell you everything you wanted to hear?
Kevin Freeman Oh, yeah. And isn't that what candidates are known for?
Debbie Wuthnow It is. And we told him, well, you did, but you voted this way or you did this action wise. So we're going to grade you on your actions, less on you. I mean, sometimes all you have is rhetoric, especially for challenges. Challengers first, people to run. So that is helpful, but we'd rather see the actions.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, no, it makes all the difference. And we all know of politicians who promise this one thing, then they get in and do something very different. My friend Ron, Trowbridge used to work at Hillsdale College and he said, politicians campaign as if Washington is a cesspool. And then when they get there, they find out it's a hot tub and they get in and enjoy it.
Debbie Wuthnow There's also the, how do you know a politician is lying? His lips are moving.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, so. So unfortunately there's a lot of truth in that. So how many candidates, for example, are you covering this, in this past election?
Debbie Wuthnow So just in November, I did account and it's about 8,500 candidates just in November across federal races, statewide, state, and local school boards. I think we've got like 6, 700 school board candidates in November. This year alone will be about 15,000. We do that about every election cycle. So I would guess we're over 100,000 candidates we've researched. Wow.
Kevin Freeman And how many states are you?
Debbie Wuthnow We're in all 50 states at the federal level, 42 states at the state level, 32 at the state legislative level.
Kevin Freeman I voterguide.com We've not. We just barely scratched the surface of what they do. We'll cover more of this when we come back, right after this break with Debbie Blackmailer.
The Importance of School Board Elections and Troubling Texas Trans Guide
Mike Carter Welcome to Pirate Money Radio with your host Kevan Freeman, helping you unpack the economic headlines. And providing real money solutions.
Kevin Freeman welcome back. I'm Kevan Freeman with Debbie Wathnow of iVoterGuide. Debbie, your organization, AFA Action, also commissioned a national survey this year, and two numbers jumped out to me. 36% of likely voters named school board as a race where they felt unable or unwilling to vote because they didn't have enough information. And 38% said a voter guide from a group would make them much more likely to vote in those lower races. Why do you think school board is the one people feel less least capable?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, you know, we talked about, they're the new candidates, right? They haven't done much. They've been moms, they've been businessmen, they've done whatever. So there's not a lot of information about them. But the biggest factor, I think, is that it's nonpartisan. So you don't have the guide of a, of a Republican or Democrat or even Greene Party label to help you understand what platform they align with. So they'll just come out and say, I'm, I'm for the kids. I'm conservative. I'm going to fight for your children. But we don't know how they're going to fight and what they're going to fight for. So that's why they're confused.
Kevin Freeman So this brings to my attention Texas Trans and LGBTQ Student Resource Guide that was mailed to every family I know in Texas. And you just read this. It's harrowing.
Debbie Wuthnow It's shocking.
Kevin Freeman It is unbelievable. Talking about, how do you emancipate yourself from your family? It says, basically, it says you may not feel that you're trans, but you might want to explore or think about it. And your parents aren't supportive. Why? Because you're probably going to church or whatever, any family. And here's how you can emancipate yourself. Here's how to, basically lie to your parents and show up with a trusted teacher, counselor, relative, therapist, youth organization staff member. Can I go out of state for care? Here's good places to start. There's websites, there's everything. There's free T shirts and
Debbie Wuthnow candy.
Kevin Freeman It is literally candy in a van pulled over to the side. And yet this is being sent to. And then you wonder, school boards, teachers, they're encouraging this and you don't want your kid. And maybe you can't afford to send your kid to private school,
Debbie Wuthnow right? No, it's, it's, that's why you need to be engaged in school boards. Honestly, you need to know what they're talking about and what they're doing. I was shocked. I live in Austin and you know, it's not the most conservative area of Texas, but yet we found an article of 10,000 school districts across the nation that were hiding from parents if their kids were using different pronouns that very beginning of it. But they were, you know, they would literally not tell the parents. And my school district was on that list. And it shocked me that as Texas school district, we do. And that's just the drop in the bucket. This is as far as they've, I mean, this is two years later, they've gotten so brazen and so public that we really need to know who we're electing for school boards that are allowing these things.
Kevin Freeman And schooling is mandatory, it's required by law. Ah. And therefore you have to subject your kids to this. And they're hiding it from parents. So there's no opt out going on here because they're telling them how to get around and hide. And then they went to take school down to, well, you know, we need to have mandatory kindergarten. Well, yeah, we should have mandatory preschool. And, and all of this is coming out politically.
Debbie Wuthnow Yes.
Kevin Freeman So if you want to know why you need to be involved in politics, this is why. And yet it happens not at the top of the ticket, it happens down. Explain down ballot. Down
Debbie Wuthnow ballot. So if you picture, you know, it's a list, it's a scroll, you start at the top and it's either president or governor or senator. And it'll start with the federal races and then you'll go to the statewide races, which, you know, at the top of that is governor. You have information on that. But then you might have comptroller or treasurer or mine, commissioner or, you know, those are considered down ballot. There's judicial races that are considered down ballot because it's not at the top. Then you've got local municipal elections, you've got school board elections, you've got ballot measures. That's all, you know, as you scroll down. That's why it's the down ballot.
Kevin Freeman And they're the offices and positions that are most likely to impact you on a daily basis, more so than the, I mean, the president, massive debates over to change tax policies or things like that. The big issues, those are out in the open and everybody hears about them. But what the school board decides, very few people. Well,
Debbie Wuthnow you know, I remember as a kid watching the local news, right, you might see a 30 minute national news and then a 30 minute local news. Now we are like almost 100% national news. Everybody's podcasting, they're streaming, they're going to cable news, cnn, Fox News, whatever. We've lost the local information, but yet that's who's going to impact your family and your children. The curriculum for your kids, the tax rate that you're paying for school taxes, property taxes, all of that. It happens closer. You know, your DAs are producing, prosecuting crime. It's the local things that impact you that we need to care more about. Even the state legislature that's passing laws, we don't pay as much attention to that. I know you guys are doing great stuff there, but that's what impacts you. That's where you need the information and that's where it's harder to find.
Kevin Freeman So we talk about the four horsemen of the American apocalypse and our six trials by fire and how these really is, are existential issues for our nation, our culture. Culture or cohesion. But you think about who those four horsemen are and you realize they're all trying to infiltrate at the lowest, at that down ballot races. I mean we're not talking dog catcher here. we are talking about school board and has the Chinese Communist Party tried to infiltrate school boards? Yes. How about the Muslim Brotherhood?
Debbie Wuthnow How about the dsa?
Kevin Freeman How about the dsa? Yes. These are all examples where literally the next generation, if we don't take care of the school board, the next generation is lost.
Debbie Wuthnow It is. And you have to think another way is it's the farm team, really, it's where they start. Very rare. People will run for president as their first elected office. Our current one being exempt. Right. But most people will start at mayor, city council, school board, and then move to state legislature. State legislators move to state senators. State senators run for congress, Congressmen run for senate. It kind of bubbles up. We need a stronger farm team. We need to make sure that people with biblical values are serving in our local offices to build them up so they can and rise up the ladder.
Kevin Freeman There's no question. That's where Barack Obama 100% he was state senator and then all of a sudden he was a senator. He's a community organizer. He was a community organization. Yes. And that would have been caught, by the way. In a voter guide. Yes, it would. And you would have explained because what does community organizer mean?
Debbie Wuthnow I wonder, did you want to plan parties? Block parties? No, it's different. It's politically organizing and activists, which is actually part of the curriculum they're teaching is social justice in the school system, which is. They're teaching them to do that.
Asking Critical Questions About Money, Debt, and Political Promises
They're indoctrinating them to leftist activists.
Kevin Freeman Now, give us some examples of some questions, because the ones I want to ask are, do you believe in honest money or dishonest money? And that's a tough question because people say, what's dishonest money? Well, according to the Bible, an honest weight and measure is one that's universal. And so if I'm paying for something with an ounce of gold, I know that I'm getting an ounce of gold. But with paper money, they print as much as you want, and they've run up to a $40 trillion plus, national debt. What kind of questions do you ask?
Debbie Wuthnow So I happen to be looking at the, the Senate survey. So our questions are different based on the office, because every different office and level of office have different authorities over them. Right. So this is Federal Senate. so. And usually there is a statement they agree or disagree to, and then they can add text. So, here's the statement. People who can afford to pay more taxes should do so in order to provide relief for working families. So you want to tax the working people. government should cut spending in order to reduce the national debt. List your priorities for government waste and free enterprise and private property are essential elements of a productive economic system.
Kevin Freeman You know what, you've said this before. Politicians are going to tell you what they want you to hear. And Alexander Fraser Tytler said 250 years ago, and I'm paraphrasing, but basically, democracies fail when people figure out that they can vote people in who will give them stuff.
Debbie Wuthnow Right.
Kevin Freeman And unfortunately, we're here, and that's a bipartisan issue, by the way. I mean, if you vote for me and President Trump, love him or hate him, he literally said, if you vote for me and we get all elected, everybody gets $5,000 dividend. Well, I remember George McGovern m said, if you vote for me, everybody gets $1,000. So that's the inflation. And I love a lot of Trump policies. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we ought to be promising people stuff. You vote for me. I think we ought to be promising opportunity. We will give you opportunity rather than we will give you free stuff.
Debbie Wuthnow It's not equality of outcome, it's equality of opportunity.
Kevin Freeman If you give me my own money back in a tax cut, I'm okay with that. Just let me keep my money. M Right, Yeah. No, these are big, important issues, and your money is going to be determined by this. Whether or not you have a job may be determined by this. Whether or not your kids leave you and never speak to you again or go off to college or go different places are gonna be determined in large part on the ballot that you vote. Now, the good news is you get a vote, you absolutely get a choice. And ivoterguide shows you what that choice means, how to vote, and so forth. The bad news is, is that if you don't take responsibility here, then you may not get a vote in the future. And I really feel that that's a risk
Debbie Wuthnow 100%. We use a Bill Federer quote to sum up why we do what we do. And he said, the most important thing is to lead. The second most important thing is to preserve the freedom to do the most important thing.
Kevin Freeman I love that. Yeah. Bill Federer has been on this program. He's a great friend. Charlie Kirk stole that quote from him and used it, but he gave him credit repeatedly.
Debbie Wuthnow Richard asked Bill for can we use that? Because it's so sums up what we do.
Kevin Freeman It does. So this matters to your family, it matters to your future, it matters to your kids and future generations, but it also matters to your money. And we talk about money a lot here. full disclosure, one of the things we brought to the state legislature has to do with solutions for transactional gold and silver. And support for this program comes from Glint. It's a financial technology service offering with a debit card and mobile app that enables users to access their own gold holdings for everyday purchases. With Glint, users maintain ownership of allocated physical gold, which is stored in a managed vault. And at the time of transaction, gold is sold in real time to cover the purchase amount in local currency. And Glint offers an alternative way to store and use the value. Combining gold and silver with modern payment infrastructure, Glint clients can monitor their goal balance, view transaction history, manage their account through the Glint app, available on major mobile platforms. More details about how vaulted physical gold can be used as money are [email protected] Gold247. All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll read a real candidate profile together and ask Ask Debbie what happens when her team might get something wrong. We'll be right back.
Mike Carter Welcome back to Pirate Money Radio with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman And I'm joined by Debbie what Now of ivoterguide. Debbie is an incredible lady, got an incredible background, has an amazing team that we've got to meet out here at Liberty Hawk Ranch. All right, Debbie, when someone opens a candidate profile, what should they read before they look at the rating?
Debbie Wuthnow what should they read? I think they just need to read it all. The rating is there as your easy guide for the average voter. The soccer mom who doesn't want to read the data. Most political act. I have many team members who are like the rating is the hardest thing we do. Can we just not rate them and let everybody read the data but the average person.
Kevin Freeman I want the rating. Yeah,
Debbie Wuthnow thank you for saying
Kevin Freeman that. That's very helpful.
Debbie Wuthnow I think so too. But, so, but all the. The rating is backed up by what's on the data. So if you question the rating, go look at what we found because we've. Everything we've factored into that rating is available for you to see for yourself. It's not a trust, but, you know, just you can see it, you can verify. We give you all the sources. We let you see all the donors on both sides of every candidate. You know, both the liberal and conservative donors. We let you see endorsements from liberal and conservative organizations. We gather all the endorsements. We've got their questionnaire answers. In fact, Kevan, we even have a comparison feature from that main page. Like if you've ever been to Best Buy and been shopping for a computer, you want to see them side by side. Check the little box next to two candidates and click compare. And that way you can see, their endorsement side by side. See their vote writing side by side. Their questionnaire side by side.
Kevin Freeman So maybe you find the right Dan Sullivan as an example in Alaska because there's more than one Dan Sullivan we've covered but
Debbie Wuthnow now there's only two. They tried to have more than two.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, they tried to have more than two to confuse things. And I've got a friend in Oklahoma named Dan Sullivan too. So it gets very. I didn't know Dan had moved to Alaska. I guess it's a common politician. It's a good politician
Debbie Wuthnow name. Well, in Alaska and they're trivia. Alaska had a guy who changed his name to Santa Claus was and lived in North Pole Alaska and ran for their state legislature. I, wonder
Kevin Freeman what his. What
Debbie Wuthnow were his policies? What do you guess?
Kevin Freeman Free toys,
Debbie Wuthnow huh? Give everybody a toy.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. All right, so here, I looked at. There was a candidate for South Carolina House who objected to a question that combined two issues and explained his answer in his own words. The same profile carries a note that one of his answers was entered wrong with his correction. What does that tell a reason reader?
Debbie Wuthnow that tells a reader that when the candidate answered the questionnaire, remember we're gathering the candidates or their campaign's email address. They're answering it in their own words. We have logs of everything they do and enter. We have deadlines for when these. These things end. And his answer was final at that time. We then use that to start rating the candidates. When the candidates see it, sometimes somebody will then ask him, why'd you say that? And, oh, I didn't mean to say that. They will email us and let us know. I really should have said something different. Maybe they're consulting, told them so they will notify us. But we have on record that they answered it a certain way.
Kevin Freeman And she just put the whole truth out.
Debbie Wuthnow So we put the whole truth. Don't you see? The whole thing. He answered it this way, but then he let us know he meant to say this instead of us just changing the original.
Kevin Freeman Now, I rarely give politicians any type of break whatsoever, but I've looked at some of these, like, issues that you're voting on, the propositions, and they're worded the exact opposite of what they actually mean. And so sometimes it does get confusing, and your job is just to sort through and get the truth. But if somebody says, hey, that's not what I meant, then you let them.
Debbie Wuthnow our goal is truth and clarity. So for ballot measures, actually what we do is because, I've been in the same place, you step in and you read that and you go, I don't know what my vote does. So we have a team researching ballot measures the same way we do legislators, but slightly different. They will let you know a yes vote is conservative or a no vote is conservative. They'll let you know not only what the ballot's going to read, but they say, this is what it means. A yes will do this, this a noble do this. And here's all the arguments on both sides with the sources. Go check it out for yourself. We follow the money. We even look at the PACs that are supporting those things and summarize who's giving to the PACs.
The Effort Behind iVoterGuide and Its Role in Wise Voting
Clarity and accuracy and information is what we seek to give voters.
Kevin Freeman This, I think, is one of the most incredible things, because you've got to figure out who you're going to vote for, what your vote means, and. And we're all busy. You were the soccer mom, you understand, so it's got to be clear. But it's not simple.
Debbie Wuthnow No, it's not. We spend, on average, about four hours on each candidate that we evaluate. And between our staff and our volunteers.
Kevin Freeman How many candidates did you say you've covered?
Debbie Wuthnow thousands. I mean, just this election, 8,500 candidates this year, 15,000. So between our volunteers, which we have an army of panelists that are volunteers who help us look, we have a pretty fabulously large staff that I'm pleased that helps us in that deep dive. And our goal is I don't have four hours per candidate. Are you kidding me? You know, I have maybe 30 minutes to get ready to go to the balance. So I go to ivoterguide.com first enter my address. That's where I start my research and that gives me frees up my time to look down ballot where I voter guide hasn't reached enough of my down ballot races so I can dig deeper there.
Kevin Freeman and what you're getting is an evaluation, not an endorsement. Correct. Verify conservative. Leans moderate. Leans liberal. Verified liberal. And it's built on stated biblical conservative framework. This is ivoterguide.com I want you to stay with us because the election may be behind us when you hear this, but we're going to ask Debbie what a voter can do with all this research now and what she tells someone. Getting ready for the next one. We'll be right back.
Mike Carter M Pirate money radio helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security and values. Welcome back with your host Kevan, Freeman.
Kevin Freeman And I'm joined by Debbie wathnow of ivoter guide. And by the time you're Hearing this, the November 3rd election is behind us. So Debbie, once the votes are counted, what can someone do with the voter guide guy?
Debbie Wuthnow They can use it to, kind of hold their legislator accountable. Right. If they
Kevin Freeman said
Debbie Wuthnow one thing. If they said one thing and they do something different. Here's the. You told me you were going to do this. And you know, a lot of times we see even speaker Johnson will get them on record of voting on something. This is on record. Right. Going back and hold them accountable and say, you said you were going to do this. Now show me now do it. we have another feature that will be available after the election. So by the time this airs, hopefully instead of view my voter guide, you can say see who represents me to me. And it will then show you who is representing you and give you their contact information. And even if I voter guide researched and evaluated them, a link to their profile so you can check out who represents you, and contact them. And really they, they need to hear from you. I would say as a Christian, you need to pray for them, but you also need to hold them accountable, to the things that are important to you.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. And that's powerful. But also we may have some special runoffs, special elections. Those always happen. And ivoterguide can be our source to find out. How do I vote in the raw.
Debbie Wuthnow I think I Voter guide is your go to election one stop resource. We are going to be covering all the special, if we covered a race in this November election and there's a special in it, even if it's state legislature, we'll be covering that. I would encourage you to sign up for our email list because you may not even know there's a special election going on. And we will, but we will let you know. We will email you to let you know if. That's why we need your address. So we'll let you know when that election happens. If it's school board, if it's the, you know, congressional or house seat.
Kevin Freeman What if my school board isn't covered in the guide? How do we let you know? Please cover me.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, you can contact us and email us. We have a team who's answering those emails. We're kind of logging where volunteers are. If we're not covering your school board, we do give you resources. We have articles on how to research my school board candidates. We've even written an ebook about what you know, who do, whose side are they on? Really gives you guidelines on what to look for and how to find it to learn what your candidates, school board candidates stand for.
Kevin Freeman Now, what would you tell a mom at home who wants to help but doesn't know where to start?
Debbie Wuthnow I would say sign up for our email list because our emails are educational. You know, it just, they're short, shareable civics education that doesn't get talked about a lot. So they will get you kind of plugged in and thinking about what's going on in the public square. You can listen to the Compass. We have our own radio program that we talk about, you know, faith and truth in. In the public square. we guide you in how to get involved. You can start attending your school board meetings, watching what, see what happens. Just, you don't have to testify. Just listen, learn what's going on. Plug into the pta, attend the school board meetings, connect with other parents to just be involved, just to be aware of what's going on.
Kevin Freeman How about prayer? What can people pray?
Debbie Wuthnow A hundred percent pray for, pray for everybody who's representing you and your children. We have a daily email you can sign up for called Pray for Leaders. On our Take Action page. We'll email you a devotion and a different leader to pray for every day. We're commanded to do that and then go talk to them and say, I am praying for you. Can you give me a prayer request? So connect with your representatives even if you don't align with their values.
Kevin Freeman What I love.
iVoterGuide: A Ministry to Equip the Church for Wise Voting
Debbie, like I said, I've known you for a while and you're really integrated into the biblical truth movement. Whether it is, intercessors for America and praying or whether it's Liberty Pastors or whether it's counteract or whether what you're doing is you're bringing a resource tool that's really powerful and nobody else is doing it.
Debbie Wuthnow I think honestly God created I voter Guide for the church to vote wisely. It was created through multiple weaving tapestries and threads that he wove together for Jim Snaringer and Richard Ford and me and this entire team. And it's to equip the kingdom. So that's our ministry.
Kevin Freeman And you know, the ministry is whether it's America, read the Bible or all of the different things that we see going on. Where you have a one stop shop from a biblical worldview is ivoterguide.com you just type in your street address, you open the full profile. You've got ballots, deadlines, runoffs. You've got ways to hold politicians accountable. That is an incredible resource and it's something you ought to be doing and it's something you ought to be supporting. If people want to support, how do they
Debbie Wuthnow go to ivoterguide.com we've got a big red donate button in the upper right hand corner because this is free to voters because patriots like you and listeners support what we do. It does take money. We are a lean, mean machine. This is our lane. That what we do and then we share it freely with the rest of God's kingdom across America.
Kevin Freeman I can tell you these are terrific people behind it. We've had some personal time here at Liberty Hawk together. They've had their retreat, or their advances like we like to call it. We don't like to retreat here, but these are great people, with I Voter Guide. They really do care about you. They care about America. They care about the kingdom of, of God. All right, so I need to say, thank you to our real life audience. You know, I think you've got some incredible resources [email protected] so I'm going to say to you, stay faithful, stay free. But if you're following on our podcast or afr, stay tuned.
Mike Carter Welcome back to Pirate Money Radio with your host Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman For our American family Radio and the podcast audience. Thank you. Here's where we land. A vote is something you steward. It's a stewardship decision. God's given it to you in this free country of ours. Like any money decision, it deserves homework. Know what the office can do, read the record for yourself and know how any guide reached its conclusion. Debbie's story, Debbie, what Now is with us started with a 4 inch binder and a prayer for an open door. Yours can start with one race you didn't know much about. So, Debbie, we've got just a minute left for our AFR audience. What last thing do you want to get out?
Debbie Wuthnow I would say don't sit at home. It's critical for each listener to get engaged to vote, to go to ivoterguide.com so they can vote wisely. And then if you find it helpful, share it with your friends, your family, your church, your pastor, your deacons. Everybody needs to know. We've got PSAs you can share. We've got emails you can forward in any future election.
Kevin Freeman If people want to reach out and give you thoughts, comments, suggestions, ideas, where do they go?
Debbie Wuthnow They go to ivoter guide.com we have a contact us in the footer and email us. We'd love any questions. You can also send them directly toinfo voter guide.com My we have a team of real people who will read your question and answer that because we really want every to be everybody, to vote wisely.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. And these are real amazing people. really truly amazing because they have that biblical worldview. They've been in your shoes. They have to vote just like you have to vote. And they care about the future of this country. They care about their families, they care about the school board races. Any other final thoughts?
Debbie Wuthnow just thank you to afr. AFR listeners. We wouldn't be here without you. And we're just here as a tool for you. Not telling you who to vote for, but to give you a tool to help you decide for yourself to be a good citizen.
Kevin Freeman I'm going to add this. You came out with afr. Debbie, I've known you since before you were associated. I watched that marriage happen and how beautiful it's been and how well it's worked. But you came out here and that's why we're on AFR right now, by the way, was because, Walker Wildmon came out with. I brought him here. Yes. And we met him and he said, why aren't you on radio? Why isn't there a pirate money radio? That's how we got here. So we owe you a big debt of gratitude. Thank you. To you and your team, and I
Debbie Wuthnow love how it worked out.
Kevin Freeman All right, so let's pray. Father, you give us wisdom generously to all who ask. Give us wisdom as citizens. Teach us how to hear both sides before we judge, to test every claim and to hold on to what is good. Make us honest in what we say about our neighbors and fair to those who we just. Who disagree with us. Bless those who serve in public office, from the school board to the statehouse to Washington, with humility, integrity, and courage. Bless Debbie and her team as they seek what is true and help us to be faithful stewards of every vote, every dollar that you've entrusted to us. In Jesus name, Amen.
Debbie Wuthnow amen.
Kevin Freeman That's a good prayer. That
Debbie Wuthnow was awesome.
Kevin Freeman It's a good prayer to be faithful, though. Thinking of our vote as stewardship, that's a new concept for a lot of people. People,
Debbie Wuthnow I. It's. It really came to me early on. In all of this is the parable of the talents. Are you going to bury your talent, which is your vote, or are you going to multiply? it right, not just voting, but voting the entire ballot and taking other people with you and encouraging them to also be good stewards. It is 100% aligned with what you teach on stewardship of your. Your real money, your gold money, but, of your. Your responsibility as a steward to be salt and light in this country culture by voting wisely.
Kevin Freeman Amen. If you have question, questions, prayer needs or comments, email us@afr piratemoneyradio.com Pray for America. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify and the rest. More about this program is at pirate money radio.com this is Kevan Freeman, joined by Debbie Rothnow for Pirate Money Radio.
Introduction to Pirate Money Radio and Guest Debbie Wathnow's Background
Kevin Freeman Welcome aboard another voyage of Pirate Money Radio, the show that sails against the storms of fiat tyranny, cultural confusion and counterfeit ideas to chart a course toward liberty, security and values built on biblical truth. I'm, your captain, Kevan Freeman, coming to you from the heart of Texas. If you're new to this ship, you can follow this hour on its own. Here's the question we're when you mark a ballot, how do you know what the person you're voting for actually believes and what they've actually done? On this program, we talk about doing your homework before you put your vote or, or your money somewhere. A, vote deserves the same homework that you give to your money. And with me in studio here at Liberty Hawk Ranch is Debbie Wathnow. She's the president of ivoterguide and a vice president of AFA Action. Ivoterguide is a free online voter guide. It's a division of AFA Action. And before any of that, she studied computer science at Princeton and worked as a systems engineer at Bell Labs. Debbie, welcome to Pirate Money Radio.
Debbie Wuthnow Great to be with you, Kevan.
Kevin Freeman You know, Debbie, I've known you a while. This is the first time I realized that you were a systems engineer. That's exciting.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, you know, somebody's got to do it.
Debbie Wathnow's Journey from Systems Engineer to Director of iVoterGuide
Kevin Freeman Yeah, but Bell Labs, I mean, all this modern technology and everything, that they were one of the true innovators.
Debbie Wuthnow Oh, it was exciting. The building I worked at was in Holmdel, NewSong Jersey. And that's how I learned what a trans. What's a, transistor looked like. It was a transistorist
Kevin Freeman translator.
Debbie Wuthnow Careful. But the transistor was invented at the building I worked at, so their water tower was shaped like a transistor because of it.
Kevin Freeman Wow. And then you left from that very, very important job to do something even more important?
Debbie Wuthnow Best job ever. I was a stay at home mom for 20 years raising my kids.
Kevin Freeman Raised your kids? How? How do you go from doing those two important occupations to now providing a voter guide that literally covers the entire country?
Debbie Wuthnow it's really a God story. It was never my plan, but it was God's plan. So every, you know, you look back at the footprints of your life and you can see how God orchestrated the whole thing. And that's how I ended up at Bell. That's how I ended up at Princeton. That's where I met my husband. And then, you know, I Wanted to be able to raise my kids. So we, we actually met and married. NewSong Jersey, moved to St. Louis on God's directions. He opened the doors and he opens the paths. And, I did discipleship studies and knew that God had a plan for my life. I'm not a sit still person. I don't know if you noticed that about me. I can talk kind of fast. I like to get a lot done. I don't rest well. And when my daughter started college, I knew that, I was an empty nest thing on my horizon. And I thought, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do with an empty nest? Because I was the room mom, I was the PTA mom, I ran the gymnastics meets, M. I was the coordinator of Bible study, I ran vbs, all of that. And so I said, God, you're going to have to show me what to do. And it was my Bible study teaching director was, I asked her to be a job reference. She came back a week later and said, you know, my husband programs this online voter guide and he's been complaining at the dinner table that he needs somebody to help him with it. I know you have a background in computer science. I know you haven't used it in 20 years, but are you interested? He said, he can train you in working for him. So I wasn't even going to look for a job until September. This was in January 2011. And by March, I had a. I had a job. So I sat at my kitchen table and he taught me how to do website stuff. And it was really. I saw it as God's provision and God's calling. And three years later, they named me director of operations, which was kind of like being the mom. Ah, it was my comfort zone. Right? Just make sure everything's working right and everybody's doing what they need to do is set up processes for this. And I still remember where I was standing. Richard Ford called me and said, the board's named you executive director. And I had an aha, ah, talk to God moment, because it wasn't a would you. It was, they have named you. And, in some prayer time, God said to me, you know, I called you to do this. I said, yeah, I was very clear. I prayed for the open window you gave it. He says, you do know that I equip those I call. Yes, I am confident of that. He says, and Debbie, you represent the target audience of ivoterguide. It's not the political activist who needs the research that I VoterGuide does. It's the soccer mom. It's the person raising their kids just trying to raise a good family that needs the information to vote wisely. So that's how I ended up here. Never was my plan, but it was, obviously God's plan. And he didn't use me to create ivoterguide, but he did use me to grow. To grow it. To get it to where it is today from where it was when I joined.
Kevin Freeman Oh, yeah. No. And I remember when I voter guides first started. And I started as voter guides and not online and so forth. I remember all of these things. Cause I was working with Kelly Shackelford and First Liberty and Richard Ford there. But, I'll tell you, it's kind of amazing. You've pulled so much together in one very, brief, response. You've got Christian. You've got engineer. Uh-huh. You've got mom. Uh-huh. You've got very social individual, because you like to connect people. And PTA and all of that. That's an unusual packaging. But
Debbie Wuthnow I'm actually an introvert. So the social part's the one that kind of stretches me the most. This. This public Persona and is stretching me out of my comfort zone. I'd rather sit in the back
Kevin Freeman and make sure it works. Engineer going. Because I've got a family. my sister family is all engineers. And so I understand that the family, the engineer. I like to solve problems, but I can go and do it by myself. I don't need a whole lot of people around.
Debbie Wuthnow But it's gotten so big. I'm so blessed that we have a great team@ivoterguide. That, that's what brings us here, is to bring my team here for some respite.
Kevin Freeman That's what you're here at Liberty Hawk. So I just want to hit this. Where did. When did you come to Christ? Where did that come from?
Debbie Wuthnow Oh, gosh. I was 16 years old in high school, and it was through my debate partner when my mom had been diagnosed with cancer and I was struggling.
Kevin Freeman Debate partner. Yeah. All right, I want to hit that. And then I want to talk about your mom for a second. But the debate partner, because debate was my thing in high school, I was big into that.
Debbie Wuthnow I did speech and debate in high school, and I did oratory and extemporaneous. So the extent has come in very handy in this current role of, you know, you get a topic and 30 minutes later, you have to give it an eight minute speech.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, I'm not going to ascribe. I know what the topics were. In my day. And I'm. We're just going to. I remember the seven
Debbie Wuthnow divot. Yeah. The ten digit mail code was one of them. Should we go from five? Yeah,
Kevin Freeman yeah. No. We talked about energy, we talked about health care. We talked and none of those things have been solved.
Debbie Wuthnow No. True, true. And then I did do debate, partner debate. So you had to be able to argue either
Kevin Freeman side of the case. National Forensic League. Yeah,
Debbie Wuthnow I'm a double Ruby. Yeah.
Kevin Freeman me too. Double Ruby. Congratulations. And that was where in NewSong Jersey.
Debbie Wuthnow Kickapoo High School, Springfield, Missouri. Brad Pitt was the year behind me in my class.
Kevin Freeman Brad Pitt. Yes. Wow. So that is behind me because Brad's younger than me and by, by a good mark. You
Debbie Wuthnow didn't need to say
Kevin Freeman that. But honestly that those were very formative years. So that prepared you because you have to see both sides of an argument.
Debbie Wuthnow You do. And you have to think logically, which as an engineer that comes very naturally to me. Logic is, is actually second nature.
Kevin Freeman And your. Mine was all pre computer, so we, we drug around boxes of files and
Debbie Wuthnow big file cabinets. I actually got gouged by one getting it under the bus for a tournament.
Kevin Freeman So. Yeah, I remember all, all of those back in the day. That's interesting. We'll have to have long conversations here at Liberty Hawk about that.
How iVoterGuide Empowers Voters with Objective Information
But all right, so, so I see that. I see how it all comes together and you know, introvert, but forced into public speaking, which is great. I think it's great training and I recommend that for everybody. Get your kids to, to do that. But then seeing both sides, and that's what you kind of do with, with I voter guide. You put both sides out there.
Debbie Wuthnow Right. We're not telling people which way to vote or who to vote for. We're really just giving them the tools, the research, the information so they can decide for themselves. Because it's nonpartisan. It's not an endorsement list of people to vote for. It's not Republican, it's not Democrat. It's just information from both sides of the spectrum. I call, I look, I describe it as computer ah, science. It's pixels. We gather data points which I think are the, you know, the pixels. The more pixels we get, the better picture we get of, each candidate.
Kevin Freeman And yet I, see in the current election, I see a lot of candidates that don't want to really show where they stand on things. They want to obscure it, they want to hide it. And your job is to ferret it out through very incite. Again, that's a debate technique. You got to get your opponent to, to admit who they are, where they stand. Yes.
Debbie Wuthnow Right. Ask the right question, phrase things. Yes, that's right. So I mean the questionnaire that we have, we spend hours to probably 20 to 30 hours in, when we get that questionnaire ready to try to get at each nuance of part positions and values for the candidates.
Kevin Freeman This is incredible public service because you walk in and you get a 30 second ad on television and they're going to do one or two things, talk about how great they are or how terrible their opponent is. They're not really going to tell you anything about what they intend on doing.
Debbie Wuthnow They don't really want to. And in fact we've seen evidence that they tell you what they think you want to hear to vote for them. They don't tell you exactly what they're going to do.
Kevin Freeman And then no wonder you ever feel that you go vote for somebody and you think they're going to do one thing and then they get in office and they do completely the opposite of what you thought.
Debbie Wuthnow We have a new name for that, the Spam Burger, because that's what Spamberger in Virginia ran for governor saying, I'm this moderate Democrat, I'm not going to do these things the minute she's elected. Day one signs abortion to birth. just all kinds of liberal policies. So that's the whole bait and switch. It's now called you're Spam Burgered.
Kevin Freeman Yep. All right, so we're going to talk about this. And there's a lot of money behind it. And there are only three things you can do with your money. You can give it, you can spend it, or you can invest it. Here at Pirate Money Radio, we work to explain solutions that support all three areas in a way that promotes liberty, security and values. Patriot Mobile, it's a mobile phone company. They support the Pirate Money radio program. Patriot Mobile uses US carriers including AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile, and operates on both Apple and Android phones. More information about the economic war room. Patriot Mobile is [email protected] AFR Debbie, we've got like 15 seconds. Where do people find I voter guide?
Debbie Wuthnow Go to ivoterguide.com Enter your personalized address. Get your personalized voter guide.
Kevin Freeman All right, we're going to be talking with Debbie. What now? About I voter Guide. She's got a fascinating background and it's a way that you can learn who you should vote for that aligns with your values. We'll cover this and more when we come back after this break.
Mike Carter Welcome back to Pirate Money Radio with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. And we're joined by Debbie Wath now from I Voter Guide. She's got a fascinating story. She's a wonderful Christian lady I've known for a number of years, and she really does have that solution. When you're facing an election, how do you know who you're voting for? Are they really the people they claim to be? All right, so Debbie, walk us through this. Imagine I'm here with my laptop. And I'm going to type in. And I'm going to go to I Voter Guide. where do I go? What do I type in?
Debbie Wuthnow You type in I, the letter I voterguide.com
Kevin Freeman ivoterguide.com Then
Debbie Wuthnow you'll see a video.
Kevin Freeman Okay, walk me through it.
Debbie Wuthnow Okay, so, our goal, as you can see, is to help you vote wisely. It has that text. We are grounded in guiding, rooted in research. But what you do is in that little white box, it says physical address. Type in your physical address into that white box and then click the gold button that says View my Voter Guide.
Kevin Freeman Okay.
Debbie Wuthnow And we'll pull up the personalized ballot for Kevan and Marnie Freeman based upon your districts. So it's only going to include the races on your ballot that I Voter Guide is researching as far down as we go in your area. So you don't need to know I'm in congressional district 23 and state senate district four. And what school. Even school districts as we cover them, it's all based on your address. So it's not to
Kevin Freeman the full address though. Not just the zip code.
Debbie Wuthnow Not just the zip code. Because as we started going further down, ballot for school districts, zip codes have multiple districts. We just, we really need to be precise and have that voting address. We're not going to follow up and ping you on anything really. It's, it's to provide you the personalized ballot. And we do that for every address in America.
Kevin Freeman And it's got a gauge there from liberal to conservative.
Debbie Wuthnow It does.
Kevin Freeman What should I click after I see it?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, say, the, the gauge is based upon the data that we got gathered on a candidate. If you want to see the data we gathered on that candidate, click anywhere on that tile or the gold button that says View Candidate Prof. And that will take you to the profile page for that candidate. We've created them just in this election for 8,500 candidates that we have evaluated. And on that page we can talk you through what you, what we found on each candidate. Did you click in? Kevan, are you ready?
Kevin Freeman Yeah. No. Give me an example of what someone might find if you want. Well,
Debbie Wuthnow I'm going to go to one myself. So I'm going to go to my personalized ballot.
Kevin Freeman Okay.
Debbie Wuthnow And load that up. So at the top of mine, I'm in Texas, as are you. And we start with. So at the top of the page where the ballot was, I'm going to just let you know there's voting information at the top. So if you don't know when early voting is going on in your state, it's pretty much. It started everywhere at this point in the nation.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. Now, this is going to air after the election has run. Okay. We recorded in advance, but it's going to air on Saturday after. Right after the election. So, for a lot of people, this is preparation for the next election. And just
Debbie Wuthnow also a way to check who won, because I Voter Guide will be updating your personalized ballot with who's who won. We'll add a winner banner so you can go there to find out who won. A lot of times it's hard to find out who wins. Down ballot. Yes. Right. So I Voter Guide can be your source for finding your election winners as well with your personalized winner list. So at the top of there, it's got a link to find your polling place before your next election or special election or school board. blue buttons there that let you know the levels of races that we cover. You can use those to navigate. But if you click in, I'm going to pick a Senate candidate and click into the Republican candidate for Senate in Texas. View the profile. Up at the top, you'll notice some little tiny icons, and those are the websites for that candidate, their social media, their LinkedIn, their website. We have the gauge and then we have all the data points. The most important data points are at the top, and then we scroll down. So the first data point are the scorecards. If that legisl. If that person has ever been a legislator. like, for example, Ken Paxton was a state House representative. So we have scorecards for when he served in the House and how he voted on bills. Talrico was also in the House. We have scorecards on him. So you can kind of compare those side by side. and because those are, you know, how they voted on legislation or passed legislation.
Kevin Freeman Well, on Tuesday, you may have been elated or you may have been disappointed. We don't know where you are based on that, but I want to tell you this is, you cannot put politics away once the election is over because it started right up again immediately. And you will see billions of dollars being spent. Influence you, control you, manipulate you. And I Voter Guide is a way that you can actually get real information to find out what lines up with your values. Now, this is a Christian radio program, and so we, like, we want people to align their biblical values, biblical values with their votes. And that's an important service that you're offering.
Debbie Wuthnow Huge. Our value is objective truth. Our goal is to find the truth about candidates. Because what you're on the radio, the cards that you get in the mail that you, you know, shuffle on your heart on your kitchen table to decide who to vote for, that doesn't tell you what they're going to do with power. It doesn't tell what they've done. It's what they want you to hear. We want the truth.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, I voterguy.com you type a street address, then you open up the full profile. It's as easy as it possibly could be. All right, we're gonna have to take a break. When we come back, I want to talk with you, Debbie, about what's behind a rating. Who reads all those records? What happens when a candidate says, you got me wrong? Because I'm sure candidates complain about it, but they need to help, and we need to know the truth. And the truth shall set us free. We'll be right back.
Mike Carter Pirate Money Radio, helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security, and values. Welcome back with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman Yes, and I'm joined by Debbie. What now, Debbie? Take us through the whole process. Imagine, a candidate says, I'm throwing my hat into the ring, and I want to be there. What happens from the day they file to the day the profile goes live and who touches all those points?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, it actually begins before that, so I'll lay some of the foundation. So we are downloading campaign finance reports and all the data from the Federal Election Commission, as well as every state where we go down ballot. So we've got the entire database from all of those organizations. We then, are looking for ideological organizations that either support candidates or oppose candidates. And we're matching those entities in campaign finance because following the money, as you know, tells us a lot about candidates. as candidates, file. And even as scorecards come out, which is in different timelines, we're entering scorecards for all the incumbents. We're always tracking the incumbents and entering scorecards that as they come out from liberal and conservative groups on their votes and just having that ready for when they file. Now, when candidate filing ends is when we're creating the initial profile for those challengers. Incumbents are already in the system. Obviously they ran before. So we're creating the profile. We're looking for the contact information, we're verifying that with them, and, starting to build the data points in. That's when we start matching that candidate to their campaign finance reports or to the data that's in the database so we can identify not just who's supporting their campaign, but who they, as an individual, have given money to.
Kevin Freeman So all this is the groundwork before, before you even send a questionnaire.
Debbie Wuthnow We have a huge, huge, millions and millions of records database on all of these. I mean, we started in 2011 doing this. That was one of my first roles, was writing the campaign finance system. So we're building all of that in there. and then we have a state lead for every state that is entering those candidates and putting in the contact information. They will send the candidates via email, a questionnaire invitation. And the. And the candidate does that online. They answer all of our questions in their own words or not or, you know, on the questions. we're, we're vetting panelists to get ready to score the candidates. We're gathering, you know, their sub, their websites and their social media. We have an endorsements team that is, then searching for endorsements and verifying that they are, you know, in this election for this candidate,
Kevin Freeman for this office,
Debbie Wuthnow huge. Those are people who do the deep dive, maybe even interview candidates to choose, especially in a party primary, who's the candidate they say is the best one for the job. So it's a great data point. It would be endorsements. Campaign finance would be next important then endorsements. We do independent research. If we find, you know, somebody wrote an, article or a book or was on an interview or something, we will add that to another information bucket. And then we have the questionnaire. And once we have all of that gathered, we actually have the candidate quality control it and look at it and make sure this looks right. Did you really give money to ACLU or did you give money to this? Or vice versa?
Kevin Freeman What if they're deceptive? I mean, they say one thing and you've got them in public speeches or you have them in house votes, and they say, you know, we believe in six genders or something like that. And then all of a sudden they come out and say, no, no, no, I, I misspoke. You misunderstood me. That's not really what I said.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, our philosophy is what they do is more important than what they say they're going to do. So if, if they do that, the, the actions get more weight. Really? That's what we'll believe. Is that what you're going to do?
Kevin Freeman This is the mom coming out. Actions speak louder than words.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, and I would even tell you a story. You know, the candidate gets to quality control. Their voter guide used to be they could see their rating when they quality controlled it. Candidate came back to us, to the state lead and said, I don't like my rating. He didn't like the rating. He said, didn't I tell you everything you wanted to hear?
Kevin Freeman Oh, yeah. And isn't that what candidates are known for?
Debbie Wuthnow It is. And we told him, well, you did, but you voted this way or you did this action wise. So we're going to grade you on your actions, less on you. I mean, sometimes all you have is rhetoric, especially for challenges. Challengers first, people to run. So that is helpful, but we'd rather see the actions.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, no, it makes all the difference. And we all know of politicians who promise this one thing, then they get in and do something very different. My friend Ron, Trowbridge used to work at Hillsdale College and he said, politicians campaign as if Washington is a cesspool. And then when they get there, they find out it's a hot tub and they get in and enjoy it.
Debbie Wuthnow There's also the, how do you know a politician is lying? His lips are moving.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, so. So unfortunately there's a lot of truth in that. So how many candidates, for example, are you covering this, in this past election?
Debbie Wuthnow So just in November, I did account and it's about 8,500 candidates just in November across federal races, statewide, state, and local school boards. I think we've got like 6, 700 school board candidates in November. This year alone will be about 15,000. We do that about every election cycle. So I would guess we're over 100,000 candidates we've researched. Wow.
Kevin Freeman And how many states are you?
Debbie Wuthnow We're in all 50 states at the federal level, 42 states at the state level, 32 at the state legislative level.
Kevin Freeman I voterguide.com We've not. We just barely scratched the surface of what they do. We'll cover more of this when we come back, right after this break with Debbie Blackmailer.
The Importance of School Board Elections and Troubling Texas Trans Guide
Mike Carter Welcome to Pirate Money Radio with your host Kevan Freeman, helping you unpack the economic headlines. And providing real money solutions.
Kevin Freeman welcome back. I'm Kevan Freeman with Debbie Wathnow of iVoterGuide. Debbie, your organization, AFA Action, also commissioned a national survey this year, and two numbers jumped out to me. 36% of likely voters named school board as a race where they felt unable or unwilling to vote because they didn't have enough information. And 38% said a voter guide from a group would make them much more likely to vote in those lower races. Why do you think school board is the one people feel less least capable?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, you know, we talked about, they're the new candidates, right? They haven't done much. They've been moms, they've been businessmen, they've done whatever. So there's not a lot of information about them. But the biggest factor, I think, is that it's nonpartisan. So you don't have the guide of a, of a Republican or Democrat or even Greene Party label to help you understand what platform they align with. So they'll just come out and say, I'm, I'm for the kids. I'm conservative. I'm going to fight for your children. But we don't know how they're going to fight and what they're going to fight for. So that's why they're confused.
Kevin Freeman So this brings to my attention Texas Trans and LGBTQ Student Resource Guide that was mailed to every family I know in Texas. And you just read this. It's harrowing.
Debbie Wuthnow It's shocking.
Kevin Freeman It is unbelievable. Talking about, how do you emancipate yourself from your family? It says, basically, it says you may not feel that you're trans, but you might want to explore or think about it. And your parents aren't supportive. Why? Because you're probably going to church or whatever, any family. And here's how you can emancipate yourself. Here's how to, basically lie to your parents and show up with a trusted teacher, counselor, relative, therapist, youth organization staff member. Can I go out of state for care? Here's good places to start. There's websites, there's everything. There's free T shirts and
Debbie Wuthnow candy.
Kevin Freeman It is literally candy in a van pulled over to the side. And yet this is being sent to. And then you wonder, school boards, teachers, they're encouraging this and you don't want your kid. And maybe you can't afford to send your kid to private school,
Debbie Wuthnow right? No, it's, it's, that's why you need to be engaged in school boards. Honestly, you need to know what they're talking about and what they're doing. I was shocked. I live in Austin and you know, it's not the most conservative area of Texas, but yet we found an article of 10,000 school districts across the nation that were hiding from parents if their kids were using different pronouns that very beginning of it. But they were, you know, they would literally not tell the parents. And my school district was on that list. And it shocked me that as Texas school district, we do. And that's just the drop in the bucket. This is as far as they've, I mean, this is two years later, they've gotten so brazen and so public that we really need to know who we're electing for school boards that are allowing these things.
Kevin Freeman And schooling is mandatory, it's required by law. Ah. And therefore you have to subject your kids to this. And they're hiding it from parents. So there's no opt out going on here because they're telling them how to get around and hide. And then they went to take school down to, well, you know, we need to have mandatory kindergarten. Well, yeah, we should have mandatory preschool. And, and all of this is coming out politically.
Debbie Wuthnow Yes.
Kevin Freeman So if you want to know why you need to be involved in politics, this is why. And yet it happens not at the top of the ticket, it happens down. Explain down ballot. Down
Debbie Wuthnow ballot. So if you picture, you know, it's a list, it's a scroll, you start at the top and it's either president or governor or senator. And it'll start with the federal races and then you'll go to the statewide races, which, you know, at the top of that is governor. You have information on that. But then you might have comptroller or treasurer or mine, commissioner or, you know, those are considered down ballot. There's judicial races that are considered down ballot because it's not at the top. Then you've got local municipal elections, you've got school board elections, you've got ballot measures. That's all, you know, as you scroll down. That's why it's the down ballot.
Kevin Freeman And they're the offices and positions that are most likely to impact you on a daily basis, more so than the, I mean, the president, massive debates over to change tax policies or things like that. The big issues, those are out in the open and everybody hears about them. But what the school board decides, very few people. Well,
Debbie Wuthnow you know, I remember as a kid watching the local news, right, you might see a 30 minute national news and then a 30 minute local news. Now we are like almost 100% national news. Everybody's podcasting, they're streaming, they're going to cable news, cnn, Fox News, whatever. We've lost the local information, but yet that's who's going to impact your family and your children. The curriculum for your kids, the tax rate that you're paying for school taxes, property taxes, all of that. It happens closer. You know, your DAs are producing, prosecuting crime. It's the local things that impact you that we need to care more about. Even the state legislature that's passing laws, we don't pay as much attention to that. I know you guys are doing great stuff there, but that's what impacts you. That's where you need the information and that's where it's harder to find.
Kevin Freeman So we talk about the four horsemen of the American apocalypse and our six trials by fire and how these really is, are existential issues for our nation, our culture. Culture or cohesion. But you think about who those four horsemen are and you realize they're all trying to infiltrate at the lowest, at that down ballot races. I mean we're not talking dog catcher here. we are talking about school board and has the Chinese Communist Party tried to infiltrate school boards? Yes. How about the Muslim Brotherhood?
Debbie Wuthnow How about the dsa?
Kevin Freeman How about the dsa? Yes. These are all examples where literally the next generation, if we don't take care of the school board, the next generation is lost.
Debbie Wuthnow It is. And you have to think another way is it's the farm team, really, it's where they start. Very rare. People will run for president as their first elected office. Our current one being exempt. Right. But most people will start at mayor, city council, school board, and then move to state legislature. State legislators move to state senators. State senators run for congress, Congressmen run for senate. It kind of bubbles up. We need a stronger farm team. We need to make sure that people with biblical values are serving in our local offices to build them up so they can and rise up the ladder.
Kevin Freeman There's no question. That's where Barack Obama 100% he was state senator and then all of a sudden he was a senator. He's a community organizer. He was a community organization. Yes. And that would have been caught, by the way. In a voter guide. Yes, it would. And you would have explained because what does community organizer mean?
Debbie Wuthnow I wonder, did you want to plan parties? Block parties? No, it's different. It's politically organizing and activists, which is actually part of the curriculum they're teaching is social justice in the school system, which is. They're teaching them to do that.
Asking Critical Questions About Money, Debt, and Political Promises
They're indoctrinating them to leftist activists.
Kevin Freeman Now, give us some examples of some questions, because the ones I want to ask are, do you believe in honest money or dishonest money? And that's a tough question because people say, what's dishonest money? Well, according to the Bible, an honest weight and measure is one that's universal. And so if I'm paying for something with an ounce of gold, I know that I'm getting an ounce of gold. But with paper money, they print as much as you want, and they've run up to a $40 trillion plus, national debt. What kind of questions do you ask?
Debbie Wuthnow So I happen to be looking at the, the Senate survey. So our questions are different based on the office, because every different office and level of office have different authorities over them. Right. So this is Federal Senate. so. And usually there is a statement they agree or disagree to, and then they can add text. So, here's the statement. People who can afford to pay more taxes should do so in order to provide relief for working families. So you want to tax the working people. government should cut spending in order to reduce the national debt. List your priorities for government waste and free enterprise and private property are essential elements of a productive economic system.
Kevin Freeman You know what, you've said this before. Politicians are going to tell you what they want you to hear. And Alexander Fraser Tytler said 250 years ago, and I'm paraphrasing, but basically, democracies fail when people figure out that they can vote people in who will give them stuff.
Debbie Wuthnow Right.
Kevin Freeman And unfortunately, we're here, and that's a bipartisan issue, by the way. I mean, if you vote for me and President Trump, love him or hate him, he literally said, if you vote for me and we get all elected, everybody gets $5,000 dividend. Well, I remember George McGovern m said, if you vote for me, everybody gets $1,000. So that's the inflation. And I love a lot of Trump policies. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we ought to be promising people stuff. You vote for me. I think we ought to be promising opportunity. We will give you opportunity rather than we will give you free stuff.
Debbie Wuthnow It's not equality of outcome, it's equality of opportunity.
Kevin Freeman If you give me my own money back in a tax cut, I'm okay with that. Just let me keep my money. M Right, Yeah. No, these are big, important issues, and your money is going to be determined by this. Whether or not you have a job may be determined by this. Whether or not your kids leave you and never speak to you again or go off to college or go different places are gonna be determined in large part on the ballot that you vote. Now, the good news is you get a vote, you absolutely get a choice. And ivoterguide shows you what that choice means, how to vote, and so forth. The bad news is, is that if you don't take responsibility here, then you may not get a vote in the future. And I really feel that that's a risk
Debbie Wuthnow 100%. We use a Bill Federer quote to sum up why we do what we do. And he said, the most important thing is to lead. The second most important thing is to preserve the freedom to do the most important thing.
Kevin Freeman I love that. Yeah. Bill Federer has been on this program. He's a great friend. Charlie Kirk stole that quote from him and used it, but he gave him credit repeatedly.
Debbie Wuthnow Richard asked Bill for can we use that? Because it's so sums up what we do.
Kevin Freeman It does. So this matters to your family, it matters to your future, it matters to your kids and future generations, but it also matters to your money. And we talk about money a lot here. full disclosure, one of the things we brought to the state legislature has to do with solutions for transactional gold and silver. And support for this program comes from Glint. It's a financial technology service offering with a debit card and mobile app that enables users to access their own gold holdings for everyday purchases. With Glint, users maintain ownership of allocated physical gold, which is stored in a managed vault. And at the time of transaction, gold is sold in real time to cover the purchase amount in local currency. And Glint offers an alternative way to store and use the value. Combining gold and silver with modern payment infrastructure, Glint clients can monitor their goal balance, view transaction history, manage their account through the Glint app, available on major mobile platforms. More details about how vaulted physical gold can be used as money are [email protected] Gold247. All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll read a real candidate profile together and ask Ask Debbie what happens when her team might get something wrong. We'll be right back.
Mike Carter Welcome back to Pirate Money Radio with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman And I'm joined by Debbie what Now of ivoterguide. Debbie is an incredible lady, got an incredible background, has an amazing team that we've got to meet out here at Liberty Hawk Ranch. All right, Debbie, when someone opens a candidate profile, what should they read before they look at the rating?
Debbie Wuthnow what should they read? I think they just need to read it all. The rating is there as your easy guide for the average voter. The soccer mom who doesn't want to read the data. Most political act. I have many team members who are like the rating is the hardest thing we do. Can we just not rate them and let everybody read the data but the average person.
Kevin Freeman I want the rating. Yeah,
Debbie Wuthnow thank you for saying
Kevin Freeman that. That's very helpful.
Debbie Wuthnow I think so too. But, so, but all the. The rating is backed up by what's on the data. So if you question the rating, go look at what we found because we've. Everything we've factored into that rating is available for you to see for yourself. It's not a trust, but, you know, just you can see it, you can verify. We give you all the sources. We let you see all the donors on both sides of every candidate. You know, both the liberal and conservative donors. We let you see endorsements from liberal and conservative organizations. We gather all the endorsements. We've got their questionnaire answers. In fact, Kevan, we even have a comparison feature from that main page. Like if you've ever been to Best Buy and been shopping for a computer, you want to see them side by side. Check the little box next to two candidates and click compare. And that way you can see, their endorsement side by side. See their vote writing side by side. Their questionnaire side by side.
Kevin Freeman So maybe you find the right Dan Sullivan as an example in Alaska because there's more than one Dan Sullivan we've covered but
Debbie Wuthnow now there's only two. They tried to have more than two.
Kevin Freeman Yeah, they tried to have more than two to confuse things. And I've got a friend in Oklahoma named Dan Sullivan too. So it gets very. I didn't know Dan had moved to Alaska. I guess it's a common politician. It's a good politician
Debbie Wuthnow name. Well, in Alaska and they're trivia. Alaska had a guy who changed his name to Santa Claus was and lived in North Pole Alaska and ran for their state legislature. I, wonder
Kevin Freeman what his. What
Debbie Wuthnow were his policies? What do you guess?
Kevin Freeman Free toys,
Debbie Wuthnow huh? Give everybody a toy.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. All right, so here, I looked at. There was a candidate for South Carolina House who objected to a question that combined two issues and explained his answer in his own words. The same profile carries a note that one of his answers was entered wrong with his correction. What does that tell a reason reader?
Debbie Wuthnow that tells a reader that when the candidate answered the questionnaire, remember we're gathering the candidates or their campaign's email address. They're answering it in their own words. We have logs of everything they do and enter. We have deadlines for when these. These things end. And his answer was final at that time. We then use that to start rating the candidates. When the candidates see it, sometimes somebody will then ask him, why'd you say that? And, oh, I didn't mean to say that. They will email us and let us know. I really should have said something different. Maybe they're consulting, told them so they will notify us. But we have on record that they answered it a certain way.
Kevin Freeman And she just put the whole truth out.
Debbie Wuthnow So we put the whole truth. Don't you see? The whole thing. He answered it this way, but then he let us know he meant to say this instead of us just changing the original.
Kevin Freeman Now, I rarely give politicians any type of break whatsoever, but I've looked at some of these, like, issues that you're voting on, the propositions, and they're worded the exact opposite of what they actually mean. And so sometimes it does get confusing, and your job is just to sort through and get the truth. But if somebody says, hey, that's not what I meant, then you let them.
Debbie Wuthnow our goal is truth and clarity. So for ballot measures, actually what we do is because, I've been in the same place, you step in and you read that and you go, I don't know what my vote does. So we have a team researching ballot measures the same way we do legislators, but slightly different. They will let you know a yes vote is conservative or a no vote is conservative. They'll let you know not only what the ballot's going to read, but they say, this is what it means. A yes will do this, this a noble do this. And here's all the arguments on both sides with the sources. Go check it out for yourself. We follow the money. We even look at the PACs that are supporting those things and summarize who's giving to the PACs.
The Effort Behind iVoterGuide and Its Role in Wise Voting
Clarity and accuracy and information is what we seek to give voters.
Kevin Freeman This, I think, is one of the most incredible things, because you've got to figure out who you're going to vote for, what your vote means, and. And we're all busy. You were the soccer mom, you understand, so it's got to be clear. But it's not simple.
Debbie Wuthnow No, it's not. We spend, on average, about four hours on each candidate that we evaluate. And between our staff and our volunteers.
Kevin Freeman How many candidates did you say you've covered?
Debbie Wuthnow thousands. I mean, just this election, 8,500 candidates this year, 15,000. So between our volunteers, which we have an army of panelists that are volunteers who help us look, we have a pretty fabulously large staff that I'm pleased that helps us in that deep dive. And our goal is I don't have four hours per candidate. Are you kidding me? You know, I have maybe 30 minutes to get ready to go to the balance. So I go to ivoterguide.com first enter my address. That's where I start my research and that gives me frees up my time to look down ballot where I voter guide hasn't reached enough of my down ballot races so I can dig deeper there.
Kevin Freeman and what you're getting is an evaluation, not an endorsement. Correct. Verify conservative. Leans moderate. Leans liberal. Verified liberal. And it's built on stated biblical conservative framework. This is ivoterguide.com I want you to stay with us because the election may be behind us when you hear this, but we're going to ask Debbie what a voter can do with all this research now and what she tells someone. Getting ready for the next one. We'll be right back.
Mike Carter M Pirate money radio helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security and values. Welcome back with your host Kevan, Freeman.
Kevin Freeman And I'm joined by Debbie wathnow of ivoter guide. And by the time you're Hearing this, the November 3rd election is behind us. So Debbie, once the votes are counted, what can someone do with the voter guide guy?
Debbie Wuthnow They can use it to, kind of hold their legislator accountable. Right. If they
Kevin Freeman said
Debbie Wuthnow one thing. If they said one thing and they do something different. Here's the. You told me you were going to do this. And you know, a lot of times we see even speaker Johnson will get them on record of voting on something. This is on record. Right. Going back and hold them accountable and say, you said you were going to do this. Now show me now do it. we have another feature that will be available after the election. So by the time this airs, hopefully instead of view my voter guide, you can say see who represents me to me. And it will then show you who is representing you and give you their contact information. And even if I voter guide researched and evaluated them, a link to their profile so you can check out who represents you, and contact them. And really they, they need to hear from you. I would say as a Christian, you need to pray for them, but you also need to hold them accountable, to the things that are important to you.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. And that's powerful. But also we may have some special runoffs, special elections. Those always happen. And ivoterguide can be our source to find out. How do I vote in the raw.
Debbie Wuthnow I think I Voter guide is your go to election one stop resource. We are going to be covering all the special, if we covered a race in this November election and there's a special in it, even if it's state legislature, we'll be covering that. I would encourage you to sign up for our email list because you may not even know there's a special election going on. And we will, but we will let you know. We will email you to let you know if. That's why we need your address. So we'll let you know when that election happens. If it's school board, if it's the, you know, congressional or house seat.
Kevin Freeman What if my school board isn't covered in the guide? How do we let you know? Please cover me.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, you can contact us and email us. We have a team who's answering those emails. We're kind of logging where volunteers are. If we're not covering your school board, we do give you resources. We have articles on how to research my school board candidates. We've even written an ebook about what you know, who do, whose side are they on? Really gives you guidelines on what to look for and how to find it to learn what your candidates, school board candidates stand for.
Kevin Freeman Now, what would you tell a mom at home who wants to help but doesn't know where to start?
Debbie Wuthnow I would say sign up for our email list because our emails are educational. You know, it just, they're short, shareable civics education that doesn't get talked about a lot. So they will get you kind of plugged in and thinking about what's going on in the public square. You can listen to the Compass. We have our own radio program that we talk about, you know, faith and truth in. In the public square. we guide you in how to get involved. You can start attending your school board meetings, watching what, see what happens. Just, you don't have to testify. Just listen, learn what's going on. Plug into the pta, attend the school board meetings, connect with other parents to just be involved, just to be aware of what's going on.
Kevin Freeman How about prayer? What can people pray?
Debbie Wuthnow A hundred percent pray for, pray for everybody who's representing you and your children. We have a daily email you can sign up for called Pray for Leaders. On our Take Action page. We'll email you a devotion and a different leader to pray for every day. We're commanded to do that and then go talk to them and say, I am praying for you. Can you give me a prayer request? So connect with your representatives even if you don't align with their values.
Kevin Freeman What I love.
iVoterGuide: A Ministry to Equip the Church for Wise Voting
Debbie, like I said, I've known you for a while and you're really integrated into the biblical truth movement. Whether it is, intercessors for America and praying or whether it's Liberty Pastors or whether it's counteract or whether what you're doing is you're bringing a resource tool that's really powerful and nobody else is doing it.
Debbie Wuthnow I think honestly God created I voter Guide for the church to vote wisely. It was created through multiple weaving tapestries and threads that he wove together for Jim Snaringer and Richard Ford and me and this entire team. And it's to equip the kingdom. So that's our ministry.
Kevin Freeman And you know, the ministry is whether it's America, read the Bible or all of the different things that we see going on. Where you have a one stop shop from a biblical worldview is ivoterguide.com you just type in your street address, you open the full profile. You've got ballots, deadlines, runoffs. You've got ways to hold politicians accountable. That is an incredible resource and it's something you ought to be doing and it's something you ought to be supporting. If people want to support, how do they
Debbie Wuthnow go to ivoterguide.com we've got a big red donate button in the upper right hand corner because this is free to voters because patriots like you and listeners support what we do. It does take money. We are a lean, mean machine. This is our lane. That what we do and then we share it freely with the rest of God's kingdom across America.
Kevin Freeman I can tell you these are terrific people behind it. We've had some personal time here at Liberty Hawk together. They've had their retreat, or their advances like we like to call it. We don't like to retreat here, but these are great people, with I Voter Guide. They really do care about you. They care about America. They care about the kingdom of, of God. All right, so I need to say, thank you to our real life audience. You know, I think you've got some incredible resources [email protected] so I'm going to say to you, stay faithful, stay free. But if you're following on our podcast or afr, stay tuned.
Mike Carter Welcome back to Pirate Money Radio with your host Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman For our American family Radio and the podcast audience. Thank you. Here's where we land. A vote is something you steward. It's a stewardship decision. God's given it to you in this free country of ours. Like any money decision, it deserves homework. Know what the office can do, read the record for yourself and know how any guide reached its conclusion. Debbie's story, Debbie, what Now is with us started with a 4 inch binder and a prayer for an open door. Yours can start with one race you didn't know much about. So, Debbie, we've got just a minute left for our AFR audience. What last thing do you want to get out?
Debbie Wuthnow I would say don't sit at home. It's critical for each listener to get engaged to vote, to go to ivoterguide.com so they can vote wisely. And then if you find it helpful, share it with your friends, your family, your church, your pastor, your deacons. Everybody needs to know. We've got PSAs you can share. We've got emails you can forward in any future election.
Kevin Freeman If people want to reach out and give you thoughts, comments, suggestions, ideas, where do they go?
Debbie Wuthnow They go to ivoter guide.com we have a contact us in the footer and email us. We'd love any questions. You can also send them directly toinfo voter guide.com My we have a team of real people who will read your question and answer that because we really want every to be everybody, to vote wisely.
Kevin Freeman Yeah. And these are real amazing people. really truly amazing because they have that biblical worldview. They've been in your shoes. They have to vote just like you have to vote. And they care about the future of this country. They care about their families, they care about the school board races. Any other final thoughts?
Debbie Wuthnow just thank you to afr. AFR listeners. We wouldn't be here without you. And we're just here as a tool for you. Not telling you who to vote for, but to give you a tool to help you decide for yourself to be a good citizen.
Kevin Freeman I'm going to add this. You came out with afr. Debbie, I've known you since before you were associated. I watched that marriage happen and how beautiful it's been and how well it's worked. But you came out here and that's why we're on AFR right now, by the way, was because, Walker Wildmon came out with. I brought him here. Yes. And we met him and he said, why aren't you on radio? Why isn't there a pirate money radio? That's how we got here. So we owe you a big debt of gratitude. Thank you. To you and your team, and I
Debbie Wuthnow love how it worked out.
Kevin Freeman All right, so let's pray. Father, you give us wisdom generously to all who ask. Give us wisdom as citizens. Teach us how to hear both sides before we judge, to test every claim and to hold on to what is good. Make us honest in what we say about our neighbors and fair to those who we just. Who disagree with us. Bless those who serve in public office, from the school board to the statehouse to Washington, with humility, integrity, and courage. Bless Debbie and her team as they seek what is true and help us to be faithful stewards of every vote, every dollar that you've entrusted to us. In Jesus name, Amen.
Debbie Wuthnow amen.
Kevin Freeman That's a good prayer. That
Debbie Wuthnow was awesome.
Kevin Freeman It's a good prayer to be faithful, though. Thinking of our vote as stewardship, that's a new concept for a lot of people. People,
Debbie Wuthnow I. It's. It really came to me early on. In all of this is the parable of the talents. Are you going to bury your talent, which is your vote, or are you going to multiply? it right, not just voting, but voting the entire ballot and taking other people with you and encouraging them to also be good stewards. It is 100% aligned with what you teach on stewardship of your. Your real money, your gold money, but, of your. Your responsibility as a steward to be salt and light in this country culture by voting wisely.
Kevin Freeman Amen. If you have question, questions, prayer needs or comments, email us@afr piratemoneyradio.com Pray for America. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify and the rest. More about this program is at pirate money radio.com this is Kevan Freeman, joined by Debbie Rothnow for Pirate Money Radio.
How well do you really know the candidates on your ballot? Kevin Freeman welcomes iVoterGuide President Debbie Wuthnow to reveal how a four-inch binder became a nationwide voter research resource. Discover how to investigate candidates, evaluate voting records, understand the issues affecting your family, and make informed decisions at the ballot box. Because every vote deserves the same careful stewardship as every dollar.
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