Speaker 1: Hey there, I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu Season three,
Speaker 1: Formula six. How prohibitions war on alcohol went so off
Speaker 1: the rails the government wound up poisoning its own people.
Speaker 1: This is a bonus episode, and as you may recall,
Speaker 1: I like to bring in guests for these bonus episodes
Speaker 1: and try to learn something a little bit new or
Speaker 1: different about the subject. So we know prohibition was obviously
Speaker 1: a colossal government snafo and a fascinating story in its
Speaker 1: own right. But what are the nitty gritty lessons or
Speaker 1: insights we can walk away with this season? I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to someone who could help us zoom out,
Speaker 1: someone who thinks deeply about how power, corruption, and unintended
Speaker 1: consequences shape our world.
Speaker 2: So I called up.
Speaker 1: Josh Graham Linn, the co founder of represent Us, an
Speaker 1: organization dedicated to fighting political corruption and making our democracy
Speaker 1: work better unlike say, a democracy that poisons its own citizens.
Speaker 1: Josh helped us dig into big questions that inform our
Speaker 1: understanding not only a Formula six but also it's lingering
Speaker 1: echoes into the present. How do we break free of
Speaker 1: political influence and lobbyists? How do we bring power back
Speaker 1: to voters and ultimately, how do we strengthen democracy for
Speaker 1: future generations. Turns out the tangled mess of bad decisions
Speaker 1: behind prohibition isn't just a history lesson, it's a warning.
Speaker 1: So here it is my fascinating conversation with Josh Graham Lin. Hello,
Speaker 1: Josh Graham LN.
Speaker 3: Hello Ed Heckenweiler helms close.
Speaker 1: Well, Hey, so I'm so excited to have you on
Speaker 1: our SNAPO podcast, and I'm just going to throw a
Speaker 1: couple of disclaimer slash context bits out there.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 1: The first disclaimer is that I know you very well
Speaker 1: and I don't like you at all. No, that's not true.
Speaker 1: We're very good friends. You are a very good friend
Speaker 1: of mine, and the reason we know each other well
Speaker 1: is because you run an organization called represent Us, and
Speaker 1: I have been very active with that organization because I
Speaker 1: really believe in its mission. So with that out of
Speaker 1: the way, tell us a little bit about represent Us
Speaker 1: and your involvement, how it got started and how you
Speaker 1: got roped in.
Speaker 3: Well, what a nice introduction.
Speaker 4: I thought it was going to be some scary disclaimer,
Speaker 4: but the fact that we're friends and buddies I think
Speaker 4: makes it all the better. Right, So, represent us is
Speaker 4: pretty straightforward. The idea here is that the American government
Speaker 4: should work an answer, to work for an answer to
Speaker 4: the American people out ages. It's just it's a foreign.
Speaker 2: Thought, right.
Speaker 4: Because of the influence of big money and special interests
Speaker 4: and the two political parties that we have in their
Speaker 4: grip on the system, the American government does not work
Speaker 4: for the American people. And so represent us is all
Speaker 4: about building a movement of folks from across the political
Speaker 4: spectrum to make the government work for we the people.
Speaker 4: And we do that by going city by city, state
Speaker 4: by state across the country, passing laws that actually make
Speaker 4: the government answer to the people.
Speaker 2: Right on, right on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, every time I hear that, I just get all
Speaker 1: excited about Reporence.
Speaker 3: I never get tired of saying it.
Speaker 4: It's one of those it's like saying to somebody like hey,
Speaker 4: do you want free candy, or like yeah, It's like
Speaker 4: everybody likes it.
Speaker 1: And I think there is just a very pervasive sense
Speaker 1: in America right now that things are feeling a little broken.
Speaker 1: No matter what side you're on, if your team won
Speaker 1: or your team loss, there's still this sense that like, well,
Speaker 1: still a lot of people are feeling kind of screwed
Speaker 1: and unheard. And that's really what represent us is trying
Speaker 1: to fix. How did it get started? What's kind of
Speaker 1: the origin story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's interesting to hear you say people feel
Speaker 4: like the government isn't working for them.
Speaker 3: That's we know, that's true. Lots of people feel that way.
Speaker 4: I think what a lot of people don't know is
Speaker 4: that scientific studies, one after the other.
Speaker 3: After the other, prove that to be true.
Speaker 4: So in the aftermath of Citizens United, which was in
Speaker 4: twenty twelve, and for those who don't know, Citizens United
Speaker 4: is a Supreme Court ruling that essentially said that special interests, corporations,
Speaker 4: private entities can spend almost unlimited amounts of money to
Speaker 4: make political contributions aka by politicians and elections.
Speaker 1: And this is because political donations are considered a form
Speaker 1: of speech under free speech.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to make everybody go to sleep,
Speaker 4: But like, there's other Supreme Court rulings like Speech Now
Speaker 4: that had to do with all this. But the short
Speaker 4: version is we call it Citizens United a bunch of
Speaker 4: rulings that stick together. And in the wake of that ruling,
Speaker 4: it was very clear that the influence of money in
Speaker 4: politics was going to get out of control quickly, and
Speaker 4: as a result of that, we thought, well, if the
Speaker 4: system is captured by big money, we the people are
Speaker 4: probably going to lose faith in our institutions and the
Speaker 4: whole thing may start to crumble. And that was back
Speaker 4: in twenty twelve, and I would say that a lot
Speaker 4: of the fears that we had have started to ring
Speaker 4: true where political spending has gotten out of control. This
Speaker 4: was once again the most expensive election we've ever seen,
Speaker 4: and the one thing that hasn't changed in all those
Speaker 4: twelve years is that big money still has a death
Speaker 4: grip on the system and we the people are paying
Speaker 4: the price for it.
Speaker 1: So why are we talking to you in the context
Speaker 1: of season three of Snaffoo, which is all about early
Speaker 1: twentieth century Prohibition. Well, it's one of the first big
Speaker 1: sort of conflagrations of values in twentieth century America. Of course,
Speaker 1: culture wars go back centuries, and before we go further,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to I think it'd be cool
Speaker 1: to actually read a definition of culture war, because Wikipedia
Speaker 1: some up quite nicely. So a culture war is a
Speaker 1: form of cultural conflict, a metaphorical war between different social
Speaker 1: groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology, moral beliefs,
Speaker 1: humane virtues, religious practices, etc. Upon mainstream society or upon
Speaker 1: the other. In political usage, the term culture war is
Speaker 1: a metaphor for hot button politics about values and ideologies
Speaker 1: realized with intentionally adversarial social narratives meant to provoke political
Speaker 1: polarization among the mainstream of society over economic matters of
Speaker 1: public policy and of consumption. So one of the really
Speaker 1: interesting things about culture wars and prohibition is a perfect
Speaker 1: example of this is how laws get passed with very
Speaker 1: little actual support from the general public. So in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century we had organizations like the Women's Christian
Speaker 1: Temperance Union in the Anti Saloon League, and they made
Speaker 1: a lot of noise, and they also preyed upon a
Speaker 1: lot of broader cultural fears, associating alcohol and drunkenness with
Speaker 1: immigrants and big cities and crime. Temperance, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: was portrayed as an expression of the sort of pure
Speaker 1: and lily white, lovely, small town, old fashioned American values.
Speaker 1: But even so, broadly speaking, the general population did not
Speaker 1: support a national ban on alcohol at all, and yet
Speaker 1: it passed. So this is where I'm getting back to
Speaker 1: where you were starting to jump to in the beginning.
Speaker 1: You often talk about a famous Princeton study that demonstrates
Speaker 1: this phenomenon. Tell us about that study and some of
Speaker 1: its real world implications in contemporary policy.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So it's just fascinating to me as we sit
Speaker 4: here and talk about this, that prohibition has become such
Speaker 4: a pivotal moment in the American story, the American history. Like,
Speaker 4: I love that you're doing a whole season on this.
Speaker 4: So the Princeton University study that you're referencing, without being
Speaker 4: able to show the graphics for it, it might be
Speaker 4: a little hard to visualize. But the upshot is that
Speaker 4: the folks at Princeton, they worked with Northeastern. They found
Speaker 4: that the American people, average American income earners, amongst American people,
Speaker 4: appear to have a minuscule, near zero, statistically non significant
Speaker 4: impact upon public policy. I will summarize that again. The
Speaker 4: American people heard that zero impact on public policy.
Speaker 1: It's literally the opposite of what we all think and
Speaker 1: it's and it's the opposite of how we think our
Speaker 1: government was structured to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, it's nuts.
Speaker 4: So the way they figured this out is They looked
Speaker 4: at public opinion polls over a twenty year period, so
Speaker 4: there's a longitudinal study of twenty years of looking at
Speaker 4: public opinion polls. And they compared those public opinion polls
Speaker 4: to the laws that Congress did or didn't pass. And again,
Speaker 4: the upshot of that is that for the average American
Speaker 4: income earner, there's zero impact at all. Now, when they
Speaker 4: looked at the same data for folks who can afford
Speaker 4: lobbyists and those and sort of the higher echelons the
Speaker 4: control government, they found that there wasn't a direct correlation.
Speaker 4: But if those special interest groups didn't like something, they
Speaker 4: had almost a total ability to block it.
Speaker 3: So if they didn't want it wouldn't happen.
Speaker 1: What are some contemporary policy examples of this of how
Speaker 1: this is taking effect?
Speaker 4: Yea, I think there's a lot, actually, and some of
Speaker 4: them are very, you know, very It's arguably every policy.
Speaker 3: Really, I mean, it really is.
Speaker 4: So we'll start with the easy ones, right, like economic policy.
Speaker 4: Like most Americans when they think about how economic distribution
Speaker 4: should happen, it's actually nowhere near what economic distribution really
Speaker 4: looks like. Our inequality in this country is a thousand
Speaker 4: fold worse than most people think.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of an.
Speaker 4: Easy issue for us all to agree on. And then
Speaker 4: there's the harder ones like guns and abortion. Sure, and
Speaker 4: the truth is most of the American people want common
Speaker 4: sense solutions that are best for the most of us
Speaker 4: on these issues, and instead what we get are, as
Speaker 4: you said, ideological hot button divisive rhetoric and then divisive
Speaker 4: policy getting passed. And part of the reason for that
Speaker 4: is that it's actually better for those in power to
Speaker 4: have arguments about policy. It helps them fundraise in their elections,
Speaker 4: It actually helps drive the political industrial complex forward.
Speaker 1: And it is so interesting that so much of what
Speaker 1: we hear surrounding these issues is triggering, right, And that's intentional.
Speaker 1: It's just trying to get emotional responses out of us
Speaker 1: because that clouds our judgment. And also that, like creating
Speaker 1: more polarization and adversarial dispositions among the general population, makes
Speaker 1: it easier to control the general population.
Speaker 4: I think there is a truth that for many on
Speaker 4: some of these issues, it's not just the rhetoric, right,
Speaker 4: like that when we talk about guns in abortion, there's
Speaker 4: a real world implication there. And so I don't want
Speaker 4: to minimize like it's not just about the rhetoric, right,
Speaker 4: It's not just that we are talking about it in
Speaker 4: an inflammatory way. It actually has a very real impact
Speaker 4: on people's lives. I think, where when we're talking about
Speaker 4: the government working on behalf of the people, it's the
Speaker 4: fact that the laws that get passed and the way
Speaker 4: that government operates is actually wildly out of step with
Speaker 4: what most of us would consider reasonable or common sense.
Speaker 4: And we never have that conversation, like because that's the
Speaker 4: conversation that gets lost in the nuance, because it doesn't
Speaker 4: get people fired up, it's not hot button, it doesn't
Speaker 4: fuel the culture war, right, And so I think both
Speaker 4: of those things can be true, Like, on one hand,
Speaker 4: this has real world implications on a lot of people's lives,
Speaker 4: and on the other hand, we could get a lot
Speaker 4: better at talking about it through a political lens without
Speaker 4: getting so fired up about the personal impact. It's like,
Speaker 4: the ability to hold both of those things could get
Speaker 4: us much better outcomes if only our government were designed
Speaker 4: to do so.
Speaker 3: And it's just not.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So we've established that public policy as it is generated
Speaker 1: by Congress has a statistically non existent connection to the
Speaker 1: desires of the public. Why what are the primary. What
Speaker 1: are sort of the underpinning reasons for that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the simplest answer is follow the money. Right,
Speaker 4: Running for office costs a lot of money, and so
Speaker 4: in order to win office, you have to have a
Speaker 4: big pot of money to spend. And where do you
Speaker 4: go get that money? Well, you can fundraise from lots
Speaker 4: of five dollars donations, which some people do, or you
Speaker 4: can go to special interests and the people who have
Speaker 4: lots of money and ask for big chunks at a time.
Speaker 4: And that's actually a lot more efficient, right that you
Speaker 4: can raise a lot more money a lot more quickly
Speaker 4: if you get it in big chunks. And I think
Speaker 4: everybody kind of knows that part of it. But part
Speaker 4: of what people don't know is that both the Democratic
Speaker 4: Party and the Republican Party also do a ton of
Speaker 4: fundraising that they then spend on elections. And when you're
Speaker 4: in Congress, let's say you want to move a bill forward.
Speaker 4: You have a great idea, you want to move it forward.
Speaker 4: In order to move that bill forward, you have to
Speaker 4: be on a committee that works on that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: So in order to get on a committee, you actually
Speaker 4: have to fundraise for your political party. That's how committee
Speaker 4: appointments end up working. But if you really want to
Speaker 4: move something forward, if you want to have control over
Speaker 4: whether or not the committee moves your wonderful idea to
Speaker 4: the floor of Congress, you have to be the committee chair.
Speaker 4: And so in order to be the committee chair, you
Speaker 4: might have to fundraise another two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 4: dollars on top of what you've already fundraised to get
Speaker 4: into office, to get into the committee. That is not
Speaker 4: like a maybe thing. That's actually how committee appointments work.
Speaker 4: There are fundraising goals that are put in place. The
Speaker 4: New York Times recently did this incredible exit interview with
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of people leaving Congress, and they just
Speaker 4: talked about this. They were like, that's how it works.
Speaker 4: It's business as usual, and it's so corrupt. Right, it's
Speaker 4: corrupt and legal. Right, it's corrupt and baked into the
Speaker 4: system that we have. By some accounts, members of Congress
Speaker 4: when they get into office have to spend up to
Speaker 4: seventy percent of their time fundraising for reelection. And I
Speaker 4: don't want to paint a picture that these are bad people.
Speaker 4: It's just that's the reality of the system. So it
Speaker 4: could be ed Helm's runs for Congress and contrary to
Speaker 4: popular belief, is a really good guy who wants to
Speaker 4: do really good things.
Speaker 3: And yet you.
Speaker 4: Can't do good things because you have to spend your
Speaker 4: time fundraising if you want to do those good things.
Speaker 4: And so it's a trap. And like all systems, this
Speaker 4: one exists to protect itself.
Speaker 2: And it feels like it's such a cliche to say,
Speaker 2: like it's the system.
Speaker 1: We're going to put the system on trial, but that
Speaker 1: kind of is the deal, Like that's exactly.
Speaker 2: What we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: It's with our political system right now.
Speaker 3: It's totally the deal.
Speaker 4: And you know, unfortunately, most of us don't think that
Speaker 4: it's our job to change that system.
Speaker 2: It is. It's up to us, you and me, Josh.
Speaker 4: That has to be Yeah, most of the two of
Speaker 4: us that are here do think it's our job to
Speaker 4: change that system.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of reasons that we feel polarized
Speaker 1: as a country right now, and you know, we can
Speaker 1: point to the obvious wedge issues. We can point to
Speaker 1: the information silos, the social media and all of these things,
Speaker 1: and those are very real. And there, you know, are
Speaker 1: cable news, which is very corporate and cynical, and these
Speaker 1: are very real factors, but there are also a number
Speaker 1: of structural factors that are wedging us, things built into
Speaker 1: the political system, engineered to polarize us even further. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about those more structural issues.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Sure. I think very often.
Speaker 4: It's so easy to point to the media environment, and
Speaker 4: of course we should, because it's a huge part of
Speaker 4: the problem, but it's not the whole problem, and it
Speaker 4: is getting to this other piece that we don't think of.
Speaker 4: You just started talking about it our primary system or jerrymandering,
Speaker 4: So we'll start with jerrymandering. I think most people know
Speaker 4: the word jerrymandering at this point, and they understand that
Speaker 4: it's bad because it cuts people out of elections that
Speaker 4: they should otherwise be able to vote in. And the
Speaker 4: problem with jerrymandering is that in some eighty seven percent
Speaker 4: of racists for the US House, we already know which
Speaker 4: party is going to win the election before it even starts,
Speaker 4: because the districts have been drawn to protect the party
Speaker 4: that's already in power. And the reason that that happens
Speaker 4: is that when you're part of wins elections, you get
Speaker 4: to be the one to redraw the district for the
Speaker 4: next election. It would be like a Super Bowl winning
Speaker 4: football team getting to set all of the rules for
Speaker 4: the coming season to favor themselves. This is politics, not
Speaker 4: a game. But like, you can see how it happens
Speaker 4: if instead of having politicians draw district lines, you gave
Speaker 4: the power to let's say, voters from across the political spectrum.
Speaker 4: I'm using a number that is real. Here in the
Speaker 4: state of Michigan and also in Washington, they use nine Democrats,
Speaker 4: nine Republicans, and nine independents overseen by judges following rules
Speaker 4: to draw their new maps, and as a result, they
Speaker 4: draw districts that are much more competitive, much more fair,
Speaker 4: much more reflective of the population.
Speaker 1: You said, much more competitive. What are the numbers on
Speaker 1: how jerry mandering has affected the competitiveness of congressional elections.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this year the number might have been eighty
Speaker 4: three percent, but it's always between eighty three and eighty
Speaker 4: seven percent of congressional elections have no competition at all.
Speaker 4: And that's kind of an abstract concept, right, Like, what
Speaker 4: does that even mean? No competition? And it's in the
Speaker 4: primaries we get to vote for. Like, if you're a Democrat,
Speaker 4: you vote for Democrats. If you're a Republican, you vote
Speaker 4: for Republicans. I'll come back to that in a second.
Speaker 4: If you have a Gerrymander district where you know the
Speaker 4: Democrat is going to win, then all the only thing
Speaker 4: that matters is that primary. And then by the time
Speaker 4: you get to the general election, yes, sure there's a
Speaker 4: Democrat and a Republican voting, but the districts have been
Speaker 4: cut up in such a way that only the Democrat
Speaker 4: can win in that district. And of course the same
Speaker 4: thing happens on the other side too. I'm just ticking
Speaker 4: on Democrats here, So let's just talk about primaries for
Speaker 4: one second.
Speaker 1: Well, I I just want to put an exclamation point
Speaker 1: on that because it still blows my mind. Over eighty
Speaker 1: percent of congressional elections are non competitive, right, And what
Speaker 1: that means fundamentally is that they aren't really elections, Like
Speaker 1: they're not they're just kind of a rubber stamping ritual,
Speaker 1: a process, a kind of like a quaint nod to
Speaker 1: the past, but it isn't it's not an actual election.
Speaker 4: Well, and the result of that is that we as
Speaker 4: the people don't actually have the power to hold politicians
Speaker 4: accountable because there's no threat for them. They get into
Speaker 4: power and they know they're going to be able to
Speaker 4: keep their power. Even though it feels like we might
Speaker 4: be able to vote them out.
Speaker 1: We're actually can dance. We were doing the song and
Speaker 1: dance of putting a Republican and a Democrat against each other.
Speaker 1: But eighty percent of districts one will always win.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: And so you asked before about like the divisiveness of this,
Speaker 4: What ends up happening is that because there's no competition
Speaker 4: in the general election, the primary election is actually where
Speaker 4: we choose the candidate who's ultimately going to go on
Speaker 4: to win. And in the primaries you only have Republicans
Speaker 4: running against Republicans and Democrats running against Democrats. And we've
Speaker 4: all heard the term like so and so got primaried
Speaker 4: and so they lost. And that's because in the primaries
Speaker 4: there's a much narrower group of voters who are voting,
Speaker 4: and so the party tends to be more extreme with
Speaker 4: their rhetoric, tends to elect more extreme candidates because you've
Speaker 4: got such a narrow amount of voters making their voices heard,
Speaker 4: and just to put that in numbers. What ends up
Speaker 4: happening is that five to eight percent of total voters
Speaker 4: in any given place end up choosing the candidate who's
Speaker 4: going to ultimately win, which is again it's like, it's
Speaker 4: crazy to think about five to eight percent of voters
Speaker 4: choosing the candidate who then breezes through the general election
Speaker 4: and wins.
Speaker 1: And we know that generally the voters that participate in
Speaker 1: primaries are the most sort of extreme voters of that group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the party base, right, We've all heard that term
Speaker 1: a thousand times, Right, they've got to play to their
Speaker 1: base voters. Those are the base voters ones that show up.
Speaker 1: And this is why we see so many politicians emerge
Speaker 1: that everyone's kind of shaking their heads, like how did
Speaker 1: this guy get nominated? How did this how did this
Speaker 1: lady get there? Like that seems crazy. Well, it's because
Speaker 1: like the most hardcore, fervent partisans are the ones nominating
Speaker 1: those people.
Speaker 4: So you brought up before this sort of question about
Speaker 4: the media environment. Yeah, and I I still think it
Speaker 4: can be hard to visualize really, like why is it
Speaker 4: that this structural or systemic problem.
Speaker 3: That we were just talking about leads to.
Speaker 4: The extremism because it's still right, like, can't the media
Speaker 4: just shut that down? Can't we just like, isn't it
Speaker 4: all a social media problem? And so just a thought experiment, like,
Speaker 4: imagine if the majority of Congress and the Senate and
Speaker 4: the Presidency were filled with people that had won in
Speaker 4: really competitive elections where they had to answer to a
Speaker 4: majority of voters across the country. They would be talking
Speaker 4: to Democrats and Republicans and independent because in order to
Speaker 4: get beyond fifty percent a majority, you have to do that. Now,
Speaker 4: you put any random congress person on the news, and
Speaker 4: instead of saying crazy stuff about the other side, you've
Speaker 4: got someone in there who is actually a rational, thoughtful
Speaker 4: I don't even wanted to use the term moderate, because
Speaker 4: it's not about moderating the politics. It's just about being
Speaker 4: representative of the people who are supposed to put you there.
Speaker 4: And so you would be putting people into the media
Speaker 4: who have enormous megaphones, who really do define our culture,
Speaker 4: like our politicians tell us how to be very often.
Speaker 4: And so the power of changing the system way upstream
Speaker 4: primaries jerrymandering is that you elect people who then become
Speaker 4: spokespeople for our culture. And reflect back to us something
Speaker 4: that's much more positive, much more nuanced, and much more thoughtful.
Speaker 4: And I think that gets lost in this conversation.
Speaker 1: Somehow You're saying that more level headed people will reach
Speaker 1: higher levels of government, and they will be the mouthpieces
Speaker 1: that we see on the media, and that more measured
Speaker 1: kind of dialogue will have a cultural impact on all
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I'll just add one thing to it, which is,
Speaker 4: like we already established in our conversation about primaries and gerrymandering,
Speaker 4: that end it with money in politics, like the incentive
Speaker 4: if you're running for office, you are incentivized to be
Speaker 4: more radical because that's how you win. You are incentivized
Speaker 4: to be a better fundraiser.
Speaker 3: Because that's how you win.
Speaker 4: If you change those structures so that you are incentivized
Speaker 4: to be more responsive to the people, less of an egomaniac,
Speaker 4: more more interested in representing a diverse coalition of voters,
Speaker 4: if that's the incentive that actually helps you win office,
Speaker 4: then you will likely elect people who fit that description.
Speaker 2: How do you change those incentives?
Speaker 3: It's really easy. I can't believe we haven't done it already.
Speaker 3: So it comes down to policy.
Speaker 4: I like to just boil it down to the simplest
Speaker 4: language that I know, which is like, you just have
Speaker 4: to change the rules of the system that we're in.
Speaker 4: So we talked about the rules, rules like who gets
Speaker 4: to draw district maps? In order to fix jerrymander and
Speaker 4: you give the power to voters instead of politicians. Now
Speaker 4: you have voters drawing maps that are more representative. And
Speaker 4: this already happens across the country in a few states,
Speaker 4: and they do work better.
Speaker 2: And when you say voters, commission of jury duty.
Speaker 4: Right, So you know jury duty, you get called in
Speaker 4: and you said, on a jury This is similar in
Speaker 4: that you join a commission that is responsible for drawing
Speaker 4: those district maps, right.
Speaker 2: And that's one of those things like.
Speaker 1: That is such a no brainer, right, And yet we're
Speaker 1: in this feedback loop where the people that are making
Speaker 1: those rules are the people that benefit from the existence
Speaker 1: of jerrymandering, So they and so so, So what then
Speaker 1: becomes the way that citizens can make those changes or
Speaker 1: force our representatives in government to make those changes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the ballot initiative process is actually one of
Speaker 4: our best tools. It's not the only tool, but it's
Speaker 4: certainly one of our best and so in some states,
Speaker 4: citizens can get together and propose a initiative to put
Speaker 4: on their ballot to be voted on, and that just
Speaker 4: that requires collecting a bunch of signatures. It usually requires
Speaker 4: fundraising to do so. And you know, lawyers and political strategists,
Speaker 4: it's it's work, but it's totally doable, and it can
Speaker 4: be led by thoughtful, committed citizens.
Speaker 3: It really can.
Speaker 4: And then you know, you run a political campaign, you
Speaker 4: win your valid initiative, and you have changed the law
Speaker 4: in your state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I don't.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't realize like how
Speaker 1: much power citizens can have in that way, that what
Speaker 1: ballot initiatives can do, and that they're really they are
Speaker 1: really just initiatives from the citizenry. They're not it's not
Speaker 1: a that doesn't have it's not a political process. It's
Speaker 1: something that goes citizens initiate and it goes before voters.
Speaker 1: And so things like jerry mandering, which no politician is incentivized.
Speaker 1: Some might have the sort of moral backbone to back
Speaker 1: it up, but they're not incentivized to fix jerry mandering
Speaker 1: because they're all benefiting from it. So yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: it is it is up to us and represent us.
Speaker 1: As seen a lot of success with ballot initiatives, Yeah, we.
Speaker 4: Absolutely have, and I don't want to understate the necessity
Speaker 4: to also put pressure on politicians at the state level. Yes,
Speaker 4: so bad initiatives give us the chance to do direct democracy,
Speaker 4: but America is a republic, not a direct democracy, and
Speaker 4: so very often we need to elect people into power
Speaker 4: and then hold them accountable and responsible. And so one
Speaker 4: of the things that we've started to see is that
Speaker 4: the more our movement builds power, the more that we
Speaker 4: were able to actually use that power to tell politicians,
Speaker 4: if you don't start fixing things, we're going to vote
Speaker 4: you out.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Of course that's not going to.
Speaker 4: Work in Congress yet, that's a ways off, but in
Speaker 4: cities and in states, it is the next frontier of
Speaker 4: how we create change.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah. What are some others?
Speaker 4: Oh, the most exciting one of all has got to
Speaker 4: be ranked choice voting.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 4: Everybody tells me that everybody gets pumped when we say
Speaker 4: ranked choice voting. I know it sounds so boring, but
Speaker 4: I gotta say. I was at a gathering of some
Speaker 4: people a couple of days ago, and somebody in the
Speaker 4: corner of the room was like, you know, the problem
Speaker 4: is that ranked choice voting is so confusing and it's
Speaker 4: really hard to explain to people. And somebody across the
Speaker 4: room was about to speak up and.
Speaker 3: Say, like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 4: You're just ranking things like what's your favorite, what's your
Speaker 4: second favorite, what's your third.
Speaker 3: It's not that hard.
Speaker 4: But instead of that, this guy from Australia was like,
Speaker 4: excuse me, I could just speak up for a moment.
Speaker 3: We've only ever used ranked choice voting.
Speaker 4: It's what we always do and every single one of
Speaker 4: our elections is run that way, and it just like
Speaker 4: it just makes sense, and like, how could you possibly
Speaker 4: think it's confusing, You're just it was fantastic to actually have.
Speaker 3: Somebody from a country.
Speaker 4: And then there was somebody from Ireland who said, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, we've been using it forever as well, and
Speaker 4: it's just a better system than what you guys use
Speaker 4: here in the US.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I will is that right.
Speaker 1: Australia has used ranked choice voting in all of their
Speaker 1: major political.
Speaker 3: That's just how they do it. Yeah, I didn't realize that.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like eight.
Speaker 4: Countries around the world that use that mostly use ranked
Speaker 4: choice voting. There's cities across the US that use it
Speaker 4: in a handful of states as well.
Speaker 1: Now, so it's really interesting the amount of misinformation and
Speaker 1: disinformation that's out there about ranked choice voting because a
Speaker 1: lot of entrenched power on both sides of the political
Speaker 1: spectrum realize that it's a shakeup for them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so of course the people that are saying it's
Speaker 4: terrible are the ones that have the most to lose,
Speaker 4: so the established party interests. The reason it's amazing is
Speaker 4: that in our current system, you very rarely see folks
Speaker 4: winning with more than fifty percent of the vote, especially
Speaker 4: if there's a third party running for election or in
Speaker 4: a primary that you know multiple people winning. You can
Speaker 4: if there's four let's say there's four candidates running in
Speaker 4: a primary, you can win with twenty six percent of
Speaker 4: the vote. You just need your little portion plus one, right,
Speaker 4: which is kind of bonkers, it's nuts, right, it's really. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so like twenty six percent of the vote, So it
Speaker 4: sounds reasonable like shouldn't the person with the most votes win? Yes,
Speaker 4: of course they should, which is really different than shouldn't
Speaker 4: somebody who got support from a majority of the public win.
Speaker 4: And what's so important about when you use ranked choice
Speaker 4: voting is that you actually require a candidate to have
Speaker 4: more than fifty percent support amongst their constituents in order
Speaker 4: to win. Makes sense, you need more than fifty percent support,
Speaker 4: And so that's the most important thing here, And I
Speaker 4: want to just harp on it for a second, like,
Speaker 4: instead of if it was you and me and two
Speaker 4: other people running for office, I would only need to
Speaker 4: find my twenty six percent in order to win. And
Speaker 4: that might just be like only the you know, only
Speaker 4: the dog lovers, or only the crazies, or like whatever
Speaker 4: you want to say, only the people who think that
Speaker 4: the roads should all be painted blue. Right, that's my
Speaker 4: twenty six percent. But if I have to get more
Speaker 4: than fifty percent to win, then I have to speak
Speaker 4: to a majority of the electorate. And to put that
Speaker 4: in real terms, progressives are usually about twenty five percent
Speaker 4: of the electorate, Conservatives are somewhere around thirty and the
Speaker 4: rest are anywhere in the middle. And so you can't
Speaker 4: win with either just conservatives or just progressives. You have
Speaker 4: to start broadening your base. So when we talk about incentives,
Speaker 4: if I have an incentive to reach a bigger.
Speaker 3: Base to win office.
Speaker 4: I'm going to have to do that, and then once
Speaker 4: I get into office, I have to answer to those
Speaker 4: people ranks voting.
Speaker 1: Me, and you're so your incentive is to temper your
Speaker 1: message and not cater to the extremes totally. I mean,
Speaker 1: how much more chill would our world be?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And how much elected officials felt a need to speak
Speaker 1: to a larger audience.
Speaker 4: And not only speak to them, but then be accountable
Speaker 4: to that audience once they get into office, because because
Speaker 4: then you're kicking them out. But I do want to
Speaker 4: answer the quest. I know people are going to be
Speaker 4: listening and thinking like, yeah, but you haven't said how
Speaker 4: it works or what it is. It's really simple. You
Speaker 4: choose your first candidate that you think is the best,
Speaker 4: and then you rank the other ones in order. So
Speaker 4: number one, Ed, number two, Josh, number three, Jane Doe,
Speaker 4: et cetera. It's it's literally, that's the whole entire thing.
Speaker 4: You just rank your candidates in order rather than choosing one,
Speaker 4: and then as the votes are calculated, they're able to
Speaker 4: figure out who has a majority support.
Speaker 1: Another term for ranked choice voting is instant runoff, right
Speaker 1: is that a phrase that that kind of I think
Speaker 1: I like that phrase because it helps me understand that
Speaker 1: it's sort of a Then the vote counting is a
Speaker 1: is a sort of multi step process. Yeah, can you
Speaker 1: walk us through that a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, The application of that is really simple. If let's
Speaker 4: say there were four people running for office, and let's
Speaker 4: say I'm gonna use you as an example. Again, let's
Speaker 4: say Ed gets fifty one percent of the vote. Like
Speaker 4: the first choice votes, the election is over. Ed has
Speaker 4: won because you got more than fifty percent of the vote.
Speaker 4: But let's say you only got forty nine percent, and
Speaker 4: then there's three of us who are splitting up all
Speaker 4: the rest of that other fifty one percent. If that
Speaker 4: were the case, the vote tabulators would then look at
Speaker 4: everyone's second choice votes and apply those until somebody reaches
Speaker 4: more than fifty one percent. And since you were already
Speaker 4: at forty nine, it's very likely that people who voted
Speaker 4: for me number one may be voted for you second,
Speaker 4: and so you got my votes and you won. Sometimes
Speaker 4: what happens, though, is that instead of somebody getting fifty
Speaker 4: it's really spread out. It's twenty six, twenty four, twenty five,
Speaker 4: twenty five, and so those second choice votes actually can move.
Speaker 4: It can make it kind of like a horse race,
Speaker 4: or someone's ahead and then someone else gets ahead. But
Speaker 4: it's just the same as the runoff elections that they
Speaker 4: currently use in Georgia, where if nobody gets more than
Speaker 4: fifty percent, you have a second election.
Speaker 3: Right, but you've already cast your votes for your second election,
Speaker 3: so you don't need to come back to the polls. Right.
Speaker 1: You say, the ranking is your sort of second round
Speaker 1: of Yeah, exactly, of the votes. It is so elegant,
Speaker 1: it's so simple, and it's so intrinsically fair.
Speaker 3: No wonder we don't use it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no wonder we don't use it. Exactly.
Speaker 1: There's another really interesting bit of represent A strategy that
Speaker 1: has echoes in prohibition. The volt said Act Prohibition was overturned.
Speaker 2: In sort of a.
Speaker 1: Movement that grew state by state, And it turns out
Speaker 1: this is part of a larger trend of laws that
Speaker 1: have passed in this same kind of incremental way. Tell
Speaker 1: us about how that factors into represent us strategy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's actually a core piece of our strategy is
Speaker 4: to follow in the footsteps of the prohibitionists, the anti prohibitionists,
Speaker 4: and learn that throughout American history, passing state laws is
Speaker 4: ultimately what often leads to a federal victory. And it's
Speaker 4: not just prohibition. We've seen the same thing with interracial marriage,
Speaker 4: which took two hundred years of effort, about sixty four
Speaker 4: losses before they finally got their first victory. Sixty four
Speaker 4: years of losses, I should say before they got their
Speaker 4: first victory. But those of us alive today might be
Speaker 4: more familiar with the legalization of same sex marriage, which
Speaker 4: actually only took about twelve years from its first victory
Speaker 4: to becoming a federal policy. And so what we see
Speaker 4: is if we're going to change the government, if you're
Speaker 4: going to change some big societal issue, the path that
Speaker 4: has been used very often in the US is to
Speaker 4: win law in the states as you build a movement,
Speaker 4: as you shift the culture around those laws, so city
Speaker 4: by city, state by state, we fix things and then
Speaker 4: move on to making it federal. But I think what's
Speaker 4: interesting about this as pertains to the states is you
Speaker 4: might think, well, if we're winning in the states, we're
Speaker 4: not fixing the federal government. But constitutionally, the US states
Speaker 4: have control over the federal elections. That's just how it
Speaker 4: works here in the US. It's how a republic was designed.
Speaker 4: And so when you change a state law, you're not
Speaker 4: only building momentum for that federal change, but you actually
Speaker 4: have the power in many states to directly affect that
Speaker 4: federal election in your state.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't take as much momentum as people might think, right.
Speaker 4: Right, it's those first few victories are often really challenging.
Speaker 4: Marriage equality lost thirty one times before they got their
Speaker 4: first state victory.
Speaker 2: Now you man, that's one of them too, right, Weed's
Speaker 2: killing it?
Speaker 4: Come on, But yeah, it's like once you get to
Speaker 4: a certain number, and there's no magic number. But what
Speaker 4: we've seen happen is that those first few victories are
Speaker 4: slow and they're few and far between. But then eventually
Speaker 4: you get your second, third, fourth, fifth victory and they
Speaker 4: start to pile one.
Speaker 1: These are you're saying, victories, meaning like states building, states
Speaker 1: changing laws like one, two, three, four, five, six, states
Speaker 1: starting to change these.
Speaker 4: Laws, right, And then historically what has happened is that,
Speaker 4: again there's no magic number, but once you get up
Speaker 4: to maybe the six, ten, twelve number, there tends to
Speaker 4: be a real acceleration in states passing that same law, right, right,
Speaker 4: And so we think of it as a tipping point
Speaker 4: where you get to a certain number of states and
Speaker 4: then this acceleration happens where many many more states get
Speaker 4: on board, and then usually after that tipping point, it's
Speaker 4: not very long until federal victory happens.
Speaker 2: Very cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just means there's.
Speaker 1: Hope, yeah, right, because people I think people think it's
Speaker 1: so overwhelming to just like change a massive federal law,
Speaker 1: and that does feel over and almost incomprehensible, like how
Speaker 1: do you do that? But it does start small. You
Speaker 1: can start with these state initiatives and then it really
Speaker 1: is a domino kind of momentum thing. And it's cool
Speaker 1: to sort of see that track through history with some
Speaker 1: of these major cultural moments prohibition, marriage equality, and so forth.
Speaker 1: When people are advocating for the American government to work better.
Speaker 1: That is part of a really remarkable legacy of work
Speaker 1: that goes back really to the founding of the country.
Speaker 1: Ever since we got this country going, there's been an
Speaker 1: ongoing effort to just.
Speaker 2: Make it work better.
Speaker 1: Can you speak more to that legacy broadly and what
Speaker 1: it's really looked like over the last two hundred years.
Speaker 4: Since the very beginning of our government, we've been redesigning it.
Speaker 4: It's this idea of a more perfect union, right, And
Speaker 4: maybe it goes without saying, but I need to say
Speaker 4: anyway that our union has always been far from perfect
Speaker 4: and continues to be far from perfect this day.
Speaker 1: I do love that where we talked about more perfect, more,
Speaker 1: let's just make it more perfect, like we're getting there.
Speaker 1: It's always going to be more, like we always have
Speaker 1: to be making adjustments, trimming the sales.
Speaker 4: And we've sort of talked about it like women didn't
Speaker 4: have the right to vote, people of color didn't have
Speaker 4: the right to vote.
Speaker 3: There have been.
Speaker 4: Really big changes and who's allowed to participate in our
Speaker 4: government and how the rules work. But the way I
Speaker 4: like to think about this is we absolutely need everyone's
Speaker 4: voice to be heard. So any restriction of the right
Speaker 4: to vote is an abridgement on someone's freedom and that's
Speaker 4: a problem and it needs to be fixed. And at
Speaker 4: the same time, we have to have a system that
Speaker 4: is responsive and accountable back to the people that put
Speaker 4: our elected officials in power and so represent us. Is
Speaker 4: about taking the ideas of progress and the sort of
Speaker 4: momentum and legacy that has been built by the civil
Speaker 4: rights movement, by the suffragists, and saying, we will continue
Speaker 4: to perfect this union by making it work better for
Speaker 4: the people, more perfect.
Speaker 2: We'll get there.
Speaker 1: What would you say to our listeners out there right now,
Speaker 1: anyone who might be feeling a little disenchanted or like,
Speaker 1: what can I do? How can I be part of
Speaker 1: this process? All of this sounds great, but it's a
Speaker 1: little out of reach for me, and I'm just depressed, Like,
Speaker 1: how what would you say to connect to that person.
Speaker 4: One of the best stories I've ever heard is a
Speaker 4: story to four retired women who called themselves the Badass Grandmas.
Speaker 4: It was two independents, a Democrat and Republican who all
Speaker 4: just decided, you know what, North Dakota's got too much
Speaker 4: corruption and we got to do something about it. And
Speaker 4: so they, working with represent us and working with some
Speaker 4: of our partner organisations, did all of the work necessary
Speaker 4: to get a ballot initiative written, raise the money, get
Speaker 4: the legal advice, build the political team, and they actually won,
Speaker 4: and North Dakota went from having some of the weakest
Speaker 4: transparency and ethics laws in the country to having some
Speaker 4: of the strongest. And as a result of that, there
Speaker 4: were changes in their government, Like, this is real stuff
Speaker 4: that actually matters.
Speaker 3: Isn't that started at a coffee shop?
Speaker 1: Isn't that the state where no politicians had to disclose
Speaker 1: gifts that they got from lobbyists from citizens or Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the lobbyists could just give them anything, and there
Speaker 1: was no transparency at all, right, And these badass grandmas
Speaker 1: were just like, no, that's not a we need to
Speaker 1: see the dirty work. Yeah, if you're going to be dirty,
Speaker 1: we need to know. And then well then we're going to.
Speaker 2: Vote you out.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good for them. Can they can they run for president?
Speaker 3: Or is that a we've actually we've been cloning them?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Good, that sounds good.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 3: Well, just some movements are built in the modern era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks so much for coming on, snap who. I
Speaker 1: really really appreciate it, and I think our listeners will too,
Speaker 1: just hearing a lot of your insight and point of
Speaker 1: view on this stuff. This is a show about history's
Speaker 1: greatest screw ups, and I just want to thank you
Speaker 1: for trying to make our country a little less screwed up.
Speaker 4: It is absolutely my pleasure I have the opportunity to
Speaker 4: have such a thoughtful conversation and to really dig into
Speaker 4: this stuff is amazing and I'm just glad to be
Speaker 4: a part of it.
Speaker 2: So thanks right on, thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio.
Speaker 2: It's executive produced by me.
Speaker 1: Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1: Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Tino. Additional
Speaker 1: production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright. Our
Speaker 1: story editor is nicky Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin
Speaker 1: Calla Poly and A kemedy ekpo Facts checking by Charles Richter.
Speaker 1: Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Our associate producer Torri
Speaker 1: Smith edited this episode, editing music and sound design by
Speaker 1: Ben Chug. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley Andrew
Speaker 1: Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director. Our amazing theme music
Speaker 1: is by Dan Rosatto. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel
Speaker 1: Welsh and Ben Rizak.