- Welcome to "Inland Edition," where we have conversations with people who make decisions affecting our everyday lives.

My name is Joe Richardson.

I'm an Inland Empire resident, an attorney, and your host.

And today, we're going to chat with California's secretary of state.

Born to sharecroppers in Hope, Arkansas becoming a professor at San Diego State University at age 23 and receiving her doctorate at age 26, [background music] Shirley Nash Weber, PhD, grew up in California and is the first African American to serve as our secretary of state.

Driven by her family's experience in the segregationist Jim Crow South, she has fought to secure and expand civil rights, including voting rights for all Californians.

She's driven, she's determined, and an absolute trailblazer, and I can't wait for you to meet her.

[gentle upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ - [Joe] Well, I am thrilled to welcome Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber.

Dr. Weber, thank you for being here.

- Thanks for the invitation.

It's quite an honor to be here.

- We're absolutely thrilled to be here.

Hey, listen.

We've always got room for a trailblazer to come through, okay?

- That sounds good!

(both chuckling) - So, tell us about... You've got such a wonderful personal story and deep in public service.

Was there a particular moment that says this is the aha moment where the clouds open up and the sun comes out, and this is how you know you're supposed to be in public service?

Or, was it just a series of things?

- I think probably it was a series of things because my mother was always involved in something going on, and we lived in a community of tremendous need.

So, there's always space for people to do things.

And, my church at that time had such a focus on young people, that we could do things.

And, when I did some things that I thought were pretty significant-?

Like, this huge church that never had a Thanksgiving dinner for the community.

They did not do that kind of community work.

And, being community oriented as a student in high school, as well as at UCLA, I went to them and said, "We need to do a Thanksgiving dinner."

Now, here I am probably 15, 16 at the time.

And, they didn't think we could do it, but they said okay.

And so, the young folks got together, and we gave this fabulous dinner, Thanksgiving dinner, and the church members were so excited.

Some of them actually donated their dinner turkey to this dinner.

- Wow.

- And so, I had forgotten about it until someone told me the other day, "You've always been active.

"Remember?

You did the very first public dinner at this church and brought everybody in."

And, we were just kids orchestrating things.

I learned then that you could really do things.

You could take things and build on it.

I took a crew of us when we-- I used to sing and made an album- - Wow.

- and I took a crew of them to Chicago.

Now I was 21, and their parents let them go with us.

Everybody was in their 19s, and 20-year-olds.

And, we went all the way to Chicago to do a concert and to Oklahoma, and it took two cars.

We raised the money and we did this fabulous thing going across country.

So, doing these things that were-- that people didn't think young people did at that time was really quite exciting.

And, I realized that when you really focus on something, you can do a lot, and that I live in a community that's so grateful when you do it, that they celebrate you.

- So, Secretary of State?

Here's my confession!

Somehow I was always interested in political offices and things.

And, back when we used to have encyclopedias, I'd look up states and presidents, and this person was secretary of state, this person was the secretary of defense.

So, I knew in the '80s that Ronald Reagan's first secretary of state left and was replaced by somebody else.

But, at that time I did not know that California had a secretary of state.

(she chuckles) So, tell us about what the California secretary of state does.

- Well, it's kind of interesting because most folks think of the secretary of state, and they think of traveling around the world and fighting wars and solving problems at that level.

The secretary of states within the states, particularly in California, they're considered constitutional officers.

They're, like, the third ranking individual in the state of California.

There's the governor, the lieutenant governor, and then there's the secretary of state.

And, that's how you ascend up to become governor in case something were to happen.

But, the secretary of state are known across the nation for basically elections.

We are the official election officer for the state of California.

And, that's significant in California because there are 40 million people who live here, and about 28 million of them are eligible to vote.

And so, it's a big-- We have the largest voting base.

But, in addition to that, being able to secure the election, making sure that the laws passed by the state are actually implemented in the counties, those kinds of things, so we don't have any horrible things happening during the election process, the secretary of state has that as a responsibility to work with those 58 counties.

But, in addition to that, California's secretary of state, one of the few, has really an archive.

We are the keepers of the archive for the state of California and the state seal.

And, in our building is an amazing collection of hundreds of thousands of articles and artifacts with regards to California's history, videos and things.

You can go on our website and you can pull up some-- even some more recent videos of women who've done some great things in California, as well as Native Americans and African Americans, because we've diversified our archives.

So, we're in charge of that.

And, we're also in charge of all of our businesses.

All businesses are registered that are profit and non-profit businesses that are registered in the state of California.

And then, we deal with a-- We have huge IT things that we do in terms of technology.

So, it's a large organization.

About 600 Californians work in the secretary of state's office.

(whistles amazement) And so, it's a major responsibility.

And, most folks know us as elections, which is because everybody's gonna interact with that at some point.

But, we have all these other things.

We interact with all of our businesses, small, large businesses.

Everybody's registered in the state of California.

- At the risk of asking something that a lot of us ought to know, tell us who can vote in California and how we register.

- Well, first of all, anyone who's a citizen and resident in California, and over the age of 18 can vote.

And, we-- And, there are-- there's only one exception to a person who cannot vote, who meets that citizenship requirement and age requirement is that you cannot be sitting in a state or federal prison.

But, everyone else can vote.

If you've committed a felony in the past, you can vote.

If you are on probation, you can vote.

If you're on parole now in California as a result of Prop 17, you can vote.

The only person in California who cannot vote, who is a citizen is someone who's been physically sitting in a state or federal prison and has committed a felony.

So, everyone else that's walking around here talking about, "I would vote, but I don't have-?"

They can, okay?

And so, we've been registering and we've been pushing that because so often people had always thought, "well, if I've committed a felony, I'm a felon; I can't vote."

That has not been the case in California even before many of the changes that we've done.

When I ran for the Assembly, it was interesting.

There was a young man who worked really hard on my campaign in 2012, and he was a friend of an older lady.

He'd come by after work and he'd work on it and he'd stand on the sign-- out in the streets with a sign about voting for Weber.

And, he said to me one day, as we were rounding out the campaign, he said, "This is the first time in my life I really wish I could vote, 'cause I know you."

And, I thought, "why can't you vote?"

And, he whispered, "I'm an ex-felon."

I said, "What does that have to do with California's voting?"

He had no idea.

He'd been out of prison.

He'd committed this felony maybe 20 years ago.

He had no idea that he had the right to vote.

So, we registered him immediately, and he voted in his first election.

And, that said to me at that point, "there're an awful lot of people who don't know this."

And so, when I got to the Assembly, some of the first bills I authored was about informing ex-felons and so forth and so on that they can vote.

And then, like I said, more recently, we allowed those on parole to vote.

So, all of the Californians sitting out there wanting to vote, you probably can if you're a citizen in California.

If you're not in a prison, and you're looking at me from your home or wherever you are, at Starbucks, drinking coffee, doing whatever you're doing, you can register and you can vote.

- California in so many ways leads the way, right?

And often, you can pick the subject, technology, whatever else.

Often we create a template that the rest of the country is looking at.

Talk about the ways that California innovates as it pertains to election-related things and some of the next frontiers that you see coming along.

We've got another presidential election.

Theoretically, presidential elections tend to be higher turnout elections- - Yes.

- et cetera.

We've got another one coming up.

Talk about some of the things that are, that are on the cusp of happening and the things that you're excited about, your office being able to continue to do and to do further.

- Well, you're absolutely correct when you say California leads, because so often we will be the ones who will step out and do things that others won't do or they're not going to do.

Also, California has a large voting base and a large party voting base.

So, that makes it sometimes easier on certain issues to legislate and to get things done.

We're looking forward to the time when we will be in a position where we will have every Californian registered to vote.

And, that's taking a lot of work from our outreach teams getting into communities.

We've gone in communities where no one's ever gone before, way out in deserts and places to get people to understand that their vote is important and seeing their numbers increase in terms of registration and engagement.

So, we're pushing that particular issue.

We're also being asked to take a look at a different thing, which is 100% voting, which means that every person in California would be automatically registered to vote.

- Wow.

- And, the only way you couldn't vote, you'd have to take your name off the rolls.

So, this would be a positive thing that everyone would be registered to vote.

And so, we're working with that.

There's a community group that's working to get 100% registration in California.

It happens in Colorado and other places.

And, as a result, their turnout oftentimes is in the 80th and 90th percentile in those who are registered.

So, California wants to do that, and we're looking forward to that.

We've got a community group that's pushing it along, hoping, working with DMV and some others to make that happen.

So, that's important.

We're also really going into areas that people hadn't thought about.

In the next few days, I'm gonna go into an Indian reservation, and we're gonna actually set up a voting center in a reservation.

One would think that we had plenty of those, but we don't.

This will be the first in the nation that we'll do in a couple days to actually have a voting center in an Indian reservation, - Amazing.

- to validate the role of our Native Americans in the voting process and the selection process.

So, you would think that everybody does that.

But, this is exciting for me and for others to talk about us moving into those areas that we haven't been before.

So, we're looking forward to that.

We're looking forward to expanding our engagement with community groups.

I met with some ministers last night.

We've been in and out of the churches.

We're trying to get them to take the lead as well, to say, "My congregation's gonna be 100% voting."

- Yes.

- That will be important.

So, we're doing that.

California has already decided that it's going to pre-register 16-year-olds to vote.

And, we've done more than a million preregistrations of 16-year-olds.

- Wow.

Amazing.

- And, what happens is when they, when they're preregistered to vote, we then invite them to work at the polls.

We pay them $140 a day or something to work at the polls to get young people, high school students engaged to see that they're a part of this process.

And, it doesn't just start with voting.

It starts with everything.

Those students then, who register to vote, who pre-registered to vote rather, then are pushed forward when it comes to the election time.

They get letters from me saying, "Now is your moment; now is your time.

"You're becoming 18.

Be sure to vote."

So, we follow them through the process to make sure they're involved in it.

We also have an amazing program with our college students.

Every University of California has a voting box on its campus.

We have an agreement we made with the university to make sure they put those boxes there, that they're accessible to every student.

And then, we have competitions on our campuses.

Stanford won last year- some others have won- where the students are basically seeing who can register the most students, who has the largest voter turnout, who has the most innovative way of reaching students, all those things.

So, we want our young people engaged, and those college students are just fired up about it.

They meet periodically to discuss what they're doing on their campus.

We give them assistance.

We have staff that works with them.

We give them assistance.

We go to their campuses for different activities.

So, we're trying to say to California, "this is not something you wait to do when you're 18.

"This is something you do as a part of your life.

"That as you become an adult, "you learn the importance of voting.

"And, you learn that your vote counts and you learn how to participate in the process."

So, we've had a lot of young people who've been registered to vote, who's gotten involved in political things, either volunteering in their community, working with their local official.

When we go to high schools, the mayor shows up, the city council shows up, the board of supervisors show up to encourage our young people in high school to pre-register to vote and to meet their elected officials.

So, we wanna make this a culture, voting as an important culture in California.

Because, this is our young people and they need to understand the relationship that they have to voting and why they need to vote and what an impact it has on their life, as well as the life of their families.

Many kids who've pre-registered to vote have then registered their parents 'cause their parents weren't voting and for various reasons.

And so, we try to get into all the communities.

We've tried to go into the areas that's hard to reach, go in communities that have been left behind and try to get them to register and get them active in voting.

We help them find people to work in their polls.

Sometimes they can't find people that are willing to work.

We have a registry.

We try to get people to go to different areas to register to vote.

We wanna make Voting Day a really important day in California.

And so, we're working hard on those issues to get us to 100% registration.

- Talk about representation, not only being a representative, which you've been in so many capacities, but the notion of representation.

You as a trailblazer, fifth African American state constitutional officer in history.

And, that's a long history in the state of California.

First African American secretary of state.

Talk about the responsibilities that come with not only being a representative of everyone, but the notion of representation because of what you exemplify and because of the example and the possibilities that you being where you are presents.

- It's really, really important that we have representatives that come from every community and every walk of life.

Because if you have to be in a room where people are making decisions, you hope those people will have people in there that understand your world and can speak for your world.

And, if not, then they make very bad decisions.

I remember when I first got on the school board, one of the first meetings I attended, we were talking about increasing salaries for cafeteria workers.

And, it was minuscule.

And, I had one member say to me, "Well, I don't think we should give them raises because these are non-thinking positions," the person said.

And, this was a school board member.

And so, she had a very low opinion of cafeteria workers who greet our children every day- - Wow.

- when they come in for something to drink or whatever they're gonna do.

And, she was-- and everybody was listening to her, and I had to speak up and say, "you know?

"My mother was a cafeteria worker "part-time at my elementary school, "and she went in at 11 o'clock or whatever it was, "and stayed for two hours to make sure we all had lunch.

"And, she thought every day, so she had a thinking position.

"So, I'm offended when you denigrate cafeteria workers "who are some of the lowest paid people, "and yet some of the most significant people in the lives of our children."

That shut the whole room up.

- They did?

- They never talked about cafeteria workers again!

(Shirley laughs) They gave them their raise.

But, if I had not been there, people would've just kind of, oh, they maybe wouldn't have said that, but this woman made this statement.

And, so opposed to cafeteria workers, and so-?

And, with no idea that my mother had been a cafeteria worker in my elementary school.

It is important that we have people in those rooms, in those places, in those spaces who not only have the desire and the strength and the courage to speak up, but have the experience to go with it so that it's not all the same folks making the same decision.

One of my friends who was a congressman said, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu."

And, that is true.

And, the people there are not paying you a whole lot attention.

And so, I think it's important.

I take my responsibilities very seriously.

Because, even when I was at the university, there would always be someone who'd come to me five and six years later and said, "You know, when you said so-and-so", whatever it was, "you inspired me to go to college.

You inspired me to do this or do that."

And, sometimes you are totally unaware that there's a person out there that has a message from you that's really, really important.

So, when you're a representative, people come to me and want me to meet their daughters, want me to take pictures with their daughters.

"You're the highest ranking Black woman in California," one of those kinds of things.

It is important that they see me as them, - Of course.

- not some highfalutin woman who speaks with big-lettered words, but someone who actually came from a space that they were in and had support and put in great effort and hard work and could basically define what she wanted to do with her life.

It's important that we have those representatives that people can see.

And, we see that significance in women.

We see it in people of color.

We see it in those who traditionally been left out and locked out, that somebody has opened the door and figured out how to get in and now has a responsibility- I believe I do- to keep that door open.

When I was an Assembly member from San Diego, I discovered, and I didn't pay much attention, that I was the first African American to ever serve in any state position in California.

And, in terms of constitutional officers, I'm only the second constitutional officer who's ever occupied a constitutional position in the 170 years history of California and San Diego, (whistles amazement) that the only other constitutional officer in San Diego has been Governor Pete Wilson.

That's it.

So, we've not occupied any of those positions before.

So, it is important that people know that they exist, that there are opportunities to do that, and that, that person in that position is going to always be trying to open up another door for another group of people to make it easier for people who have hard lives to really climb that ladder.

And so, when I discovered I was the first African American, I said, "I may be the first, but I won't be the last."

- That's right.

- And, that was my goal.

And so far, we've added more Black women and Latina women to the whole pool of folks being elected for the first time from areas that we've never had before.

And, we have a number of African Americans who've never-- who are in positions now that had never in the state had anyone African American serve in those positions in the legislature.

So, we're expanding; we're growing.

And, I think when we do that, we end up with better vision, better legislation, better opportunities, and a view of the world that expands everyone's horizon.

Because they know you, they know who you are, and they can then begin to say, "you know what?

"I can call on this person to do certain things.

"I'm going into this area.

Let me see if she can help me get there."

That's extremely important that you have those hookups and those opportunities, as well as they want to be an elected official or they want to be on a commission or a board or whatever it may be.

So, it is an awesome responsibility.

I've had it many times when I was at the university, and the only Black female who was chair of a department or whatever it was.

You understand that you have a responsibility to represent and to represent well and to educate the others who are not African-Americans about what African-Americans can do, will do and must do for the whole state.

- Wow.

Fantastic.

Maybe this is the easiest part of the interview!

I'm gonna ask the teacher to give us some homework, (Shirley laughs) and we want to follow up.

How do we find out more?

How do viewers find out more about the secretary of state's office, your function, et cetera.

Maybe local offices, or however.

How do people follow up with the secretary of state?

- Well, you can always go onto our website and sign up.

We have lots of folks who sign up to get all of our information that's there.

That's extremely important.

My staff makes an effort to put my schedule out because I'm up and down the state and most things I can come to.

We're often invited to places to be there.

And, that's important to us, that we try to be everywhere we can.

Either me or my staff, one of us will do that.

It's important also for people to decide what they want to contribute to the state of California.

You know?

People trying to sit back and wait.

Even though, like I said, I was asked to do these things, asked to run for this or that, I had done so many things before.

It's why people asked me.

- Right.

- You see?

That I decided that we were gonna do a African program at San Diego State and take Black students and communities to South Africa every year.

Those are the kinds of things, doing a program on Du Bois with the NAACP on weekends to give kids the culture that they needed.

Everyone needs to decide how they're going to make their world better.

And, one of the ways to do that is obviously through elections, through secretaries of state, through the programs that we have in our archives.

You wanna be involved with that, you can contact us at any level and be a part of our Friends of the Archives, Friends of the Museum.

All of those things are extremely important in every community.

I tell folks, if you wanna change the life of a person, you need to pick a person whose life you wanna change.

You can talk about changing the world, and that's a big task.

And then, as a friend used to always say, "but the world can't hold you accountable."

- Mm hm.

- When you say you're gonna change the world, everybody's changing the world, but who came up to you and said, "Hey, what happened to the cookie you was supposed to bring to the party?"

(Joe laughs) Whatever it is, no one's holding you accountable!

So, I had in my life-- what I've done is I've made it my business to identify a person whose life I can change.

And, it's been amazing over the last 40 years, 50 years of being an educator that there's so many of those that I have, and then they've gone and changed some other people's lives.

But, it's important for us to realize that we have the power and the ability to change the world in which we live.

We're not a victim of the world.

We are actually those who are architects of this world.

And, as a result, we need to make sure that the space where we sit, the place where we work, wherever we shop, that we have the ability to be powerful individuals who can help those around us, who can help us become better.

Normally, when I finish with something, most folks will come as the lecture-- I was doing the White House fellow recently, and ask me, could I be their mentor.

And, I said, "Well, what do you expect?"

And, they say, "I just want a person I can call "periodically when I run into these difficult challenges, and who could listen to me and maybe give me some advice."

So, I said, "Sure, I'll be your mentor in that sense."

Because that's what it means to have the resources that you have, the knowledge you have, the influence you have to help somebody else navigate the world as you navigate it.

I've always had a mentor in my life.

I've always had a couple of them who were ahead of me in terms of activities, and that I could call to and honestly discuss frustration, discuss ideas, those kinds of things, and they've helped me to become the person that I am.

And, I think my longest standing mentor that I had in university was Dr. Molefi Asante out of Temple University.

And, to this day, it doesn't matter what's happening, Asante's gonna call me if I won the election.

If I'm running for something, if I've been appointed to something, he's gonna call and leave a message for me.

While I'm driving down the street, I'm gonna get a message and a call from Asante.

It is important that we recognize the power that we have as individuals to change people's lives.

And, I tell everyone as secretary of state, "you're frustrated by elections?

"Go out and register a couple of people.

- Yeah.

- You know?

"Make sure that everybody in your household is registered."

I always tell parents, "don't feed your kids if they don't register to vote and don't vote."

And, everybody laughs about that.

I said, "But, that's the truth."

If you've got adult kids who don't vote, don't be feeding them.

Don't be giving them good stuff because they're not helping themselves.

- Right.

- Because, voting is just that critical.

So, we encourage folks to register to vote.

I tell everybody, if you don't know anything you need to do, you can find out by simply going on our website or going on your registrar voter website.

You can register online now.

People can register to vote online, and they will send you the card and information that you need.

So, it's really important that we take control of ourselves.

If you're frustrated with the world, take control of it.

Make your world better.

Let us know in the secretary of state that you wanna work on elections the day of elections, that you wanna do something on the day of the polls.

Maybe you wanna be one of the persons that we send around to check off and make sure everything is going well.

We always need lots of folks to help us.

And, being one of those persons to love elections and want to see our state better, take advantage of it.

But, equally important, make sure that you know someone every day for a year that you have changed their life.

And, you'll be surprised how grateful it will be for you to actually touch the life of somebody that you've not, that you see.

- Well?

From one South Central native to another, Dr. Weber, Madam Secretary, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here.

Thank you so much.

- I've enjoyed it.

Thank you so much.

- And, I wanna thank each and every one of you for following us, checking us out on the "Inland Edition."

If you missed it or if you need to tell your friend that missed it, you can always check it out on YouTube and keep joining us as we walk down the road and have conversations that help change us for the better, just one at a time.

We'll see ya.

[uplifting music and vocals] ♪ ♪ ♪ [music fades]