In the GUI Wallet, click Settings and scroll down to see log. You can try to find out what is the problem from messages there.
If there is no clue, close the wallet and try to find peers.dat file (it is in \resources\app\VoteCoin\peers.dat)
Erase this file and start the wallet again. Could help.
Sorry, I should have mentioned that the buttons on the left side of the GUI are unclickable. The mouse changes to the hand with the index finger pointing out when I scroll over them, but nothing happens when I click on them. As for the peers.dat file, there is none. The only files inside of \resources\app\VoteCoin are .lock, debug.log, and votecoin.conf. I used file explorers search function to further search for peers.dat in all of the votecoin folders, but no luck.
Please post in the #help section in votecoin discord, someone maybe able to help you sort out your issues.