 Bingo! Community Matters, 3 o'clock, Brock, here on the given Monday. Monday is so exciting. It wakes us up after the soporific weekend, as you will. We have a special guest today here on ThinkTech. Let's see, what are we doing? This is Community Matters, right? And we have Nicole Brody, who's the Executive Director of Kanu, Hawaii. Kanu is a very important organization interested in public policy, interested in forming the public, a 501C3 that counts, talking about raising awareness, just like ThinkTech. Raising awareness. Welcome again to the show, Nicole. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to have you. Now, you have this very interesting game, and we must talk about it because it relates to the election. The election is only a couple of weeks away, so people ought to know about it, if at all, right now. Yes. What is it called? So, just a little bit. Kanu is a sustainability organization. We feel that civic engagement is a critical piece of sustainability. You can't be a sustainable community if people don't engage and talk with one another and aren't aware of what's happening. And so, we've tried to figure out what's the best way to engage people around the elections, and it's not enough to register voters, which we also do thanks to our work with the Office of Elections, but it's important to make sure that people are educated once they already may have that ballot in their hands and they have an idea of who they want to vote for. So, we have created a game that anonymizes responses to a survey. So, basically, no names, no pictures, no parties. You don't know who said what. You just have to choose. I like this answer more. I like that answer more. And at the end, it will tell you which candidate you agreed with the most. Very interesting game. And if I may say so, it's... what's the word? It's seductive. You get in there and you really must know because it'll tell you things about a candidate. You just... You know, when you read all their rhetoric, you know, it's rhetoric, sorry. But when you read their rhetoric as against their competition, against their, you know, opponent, then all of a sudden it takes on another meaning. Right. And that's what this game does. It actually compares and it forces you. Yeah, which rhetoric speaks more to you. And so, Kanyu is not taking a position on any candidates or any stance. It's really just presenting the two or three candidates or however many candidates are in your particular race against each other. And like you said, you just compare between them. Well, before we go into the game, because we got it all set up, we're going to play the game right here. We're going to play the game right here. You're going to see. You're going to really enjoy this. But how did this game get established? How did you set this up? Well, this actually was started in 2012 when I was not yet working with Kanyu. But we have some amazing tech genius and Olin Lagann, who has been working with us for years, and he was able to set this up. And I assume it was the brainchild of Olin and James together, but I'm not positive on that. James Koshiba, the previous executive director, that they wanted to create something that would inform people, but it was rather than just creating a voter guide, they wanted it to be interactive and fun, and they found a way to sort of gamify it. And so a voter guide that's interactive, and you can still learn, but still have fun. Yeah. And then this year we wanted to make it a little more fun. We found that people are really disengaging from the process we found this year. I think you could be disengaging. Yeah, they're not paying attention quite as much. Can we dwell on that for a moment? Yeah. I'm not an expert. I can't say that I know exactly why this is happening. Why do you think they're disengaging? Some of my theories is that this election season started way longer than most election seasons have in the past. I think there is so much constant noise with the presidential election that I think a lot of people are just kind of sick. Had enough. Yeah, they're just done. Election fatigue. I think they were ready for the elections months ago. And so, yeah, I think it's just a lot of overwhelming information on the national level. And I think it's drowning out the local scale, which is what this game focuses on. It's all races except presidential. We really want to get back to the local issues of Hawaii. But I think that, yeah, people are just kind of sick of the election stuff. And so it's been hard to get people to engage. And so we wanted to come up with, we shortened how many questions we had, the number of questions, the length of the responses. We also tried to mix it up a little bit and have some questions that are a little surprising or offbeat. Like we asked, what's your favorite local snack? Right? So it's just a little... I want to know that about my kidneys. So it's not necessarily like it's hugely important or like super relevant, but it's something that's fun and will hopefully be like a stepping stone back into the process to kind of lure people like, look, it's fun. It's not the tedious rhetoric. It seems like you're a simpatico with someone. That's what it is. Yeah, just like an interesting answer. You know, something surprising. It's like, I want to learn more about this candidate. You know, who knew that they ate raw liver poke? You know, stuff like that. Just kind of random stuff. And so I guess it can be sort of an entry point back into engaging, back into learning about our candidates. Now you're in it with OHA. Yes, yeah. What's the deal there? So OHA is also very interested in having voters be educated on who the candidates are. And so they helped us come up with some questions for the state race. So they worked with us. There are, I believe, five short answer questions and four multiple choice questions. And so they helped us, you know, come up with those questions and what those were going to be for the state house and state senate. And then Kanu came up with the rest of the questions for the rest of the races. Now when you go out, I guess you write an email to a given candidate and you say, here's some questions and if you want to be included in our voting game, then answer the questions and you give them what, word limits or something? Yes. About what you want from them. Yes, speaking of which, if there are any candidates who have not yet responded, we are still taking responses. Yeah, you heard that. Yes, please search your emails for Kanu Hawaii. We have sent out multiple emails in the past week to candidates with the link to the survey. And as of the time I left my house, I've since responses are coming in regularly. So I think another one came in before I got here. But when I left my house, we had about 68% of all candidates responding. So more than half, but we still have a ways to go. And that's been our biggest feedback point from people who take in the game is, oh, I wish my candidate responded. So we really want candidates, all of them, to respond. And like I said, there's still time, so hopefully they do. They might lose if they don't respond. If... By default, they might lose. Depending on how many people play our game, that could be a risk. Yes, there's only one voice being heard. Then, yeah, maybe people just decide... But you originally set a deadline, I'm sure, on them getting back to you. Yes, we did. We did. But we know that this is a very busy time for them. They have a lot of candidate surveys to respond to. But as we are hoping to get 25,000 voters participating with this game, we hope that they'll prioritize hours. And like I said, there's not that many questions. It doesn't take that long to respond to. No. So hopefully they just take a few minutes to... What's the word limit on an answer? 100 words. That's all. Okay. That means you really have to craft your answer. Yeah, I guess it does take a little bit time in that way that you have to make sure it's not too long, which is also hard to find that balance. We want to ask policy questions, but we don't want it to be too complex that it requires a longer answer, where we say limit your very complex response to 100 words. It just isn't fair. So it was a difficult balance to strike. This is really interesting. So, gee, I have so many questions about this. I do want to get to the actual game. So you're covering all state offices, including Oha. Yes. You're covering federal offices, but not the presidential race. Correct. Yes. You're covering federal amendments to city charter of Honolulu and also covering that. That's complicated. We are not. We are not. I wasn't really sure how to do that. Plus, there were 20 in Honolulu alone, and so it would have just been a massive undertaking to figure out how do we gamify that and make sure that people are educated enough. Cheer up. If you go to the League of Women Voters, which is a possible, you know, a partnership for you later on, I think, they have arguments in favor, arguments against... Oh. ...for all the state and city council. Yeah, and there are a lot of other voter guides out there that we encourage people to check out to learn about their candidates. You know, like I said, ours is just sort of this fun entry point where hopefully people will want to learn more and then explore those other options. So League of Women Voters is a really great place to go as well. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is good. I think it's a great public service that you do this. Thank you. So $25,000, but I'd rather see $100,000. Yeah. How are you going to get there? Well, first of all, this show, of course, is a good way to do that. We encourage, as people play it, to share it. We think it's a useful resource. And so, you know, share it with your friends and family. Let them know that this game exists and that there is a way when they're staring at their ballot and they have no idea who to vote for, for, you know, their county representative or their DA, that at least there's something that provides a little bit of information. You know, in large part, the success of a candidate in a game like this is how well the candidate writes that 100 words. And some candidates have more trouble writing 100 words than others. I mean, maybe they bounce against the limit or maybe they just can't write very well. That could be. Yeah. And so, I mean, we wouldn't want to penalize people for that, but I think that also plays to, if they understand where their weaknesses might be, then they surround themselves with people who can manage those weaknesses. And so maybe they have a staffer or someone who they trust and can help them craft exactly what they're thinking to translate that into 100 words. Maybe they have someone nearby who can do that for them. I would hold against them though if they couldn't write 100 words. Really, I mean, they've got to articulate their position. If they can articulate their position, then I'm not going to vote for them. I have to know what they're thinking. Right. No, I think it is important. Like I said, it doesn't even have to, even if it's not them as individuals, hopefully they have someone on their team who is able to articulate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So interesting. I mean, because what you're talking about is a microcosm of all the rhetoric that goes on for months, you're putting it in one place. Well, that's the thing. I can't say this is the be-all-end-all. This covers all the different policy positions. There's so much information out there. It might be, actually. But it's a place where people can go and maybe have a little fun, learn about their candidates a little bit, and it's something, right? I think a lot of people look at their ballots and vote by whose name sounds better or maybe share as an ethnicity with them or that person that they saw sign-waving. So we say go beyond the shaka. There has to be more to electing somebody than the fact that they stood in the rain waving a sign and... Going beyond the shaka. We had enough of that. What was his name? He'll come back to me. There was one politician who did the thing with the shaka. The sign-holding. It'll come back to me. I'll think of his name. But this caught on like wildfire. And before you know it, everybody's standing on the street. And it's meaningless. It doesn't mean anything. Well, unfortunately, the number one reason why people vote for a candidate is name recognition. And so it actually is not meaningless. That is how to get voted for. Oh, yeah, I remember that person. They might sell them in the corners. I see him with 27 people standing around him holding the signs. You know, then you think he's got a lot of support. And I heard from a candidate that they actually like standing out in the rain and they actually tell volunteers, don't come with me. I'll look particularly pitiful and I'll get a pity vote. Right, the pity vote. I love it. Okay, well, this is not the pity vote. This is the intellectual now. And when we come back from this break, we're going to go through exactly how you play it, which is very interesting and will be provocative for everyone who is going to vote and helpful. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Chris Lethem here with Think Tech Hawaii. And I invite you to watch my show, The Economy and You, each Wednesday at three o'clock here in Hawaii on OC 16. We look forward to seeing you. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart, Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. We livestream every Tuesday from noon to 12.30. You get a chance to hear what people are doing about sustainability in Hawaii and what the issues are impacting all of us in all the islands. Join us, please. Please join us at Think Tech Hawaii. My program is Asia in Review. My next program is on November 17, Thursday, 11 a.m. This is Johnson Choi, your host. Aloha, everyone. I hope you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii. But I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you. Mahalo. Okay, we're back. We're live. We're in an election season. It's so important that people vote. And as Nicole said at the outset, or somebody else said it, maybe not you, we don't want stupid votes. You said that. Oh, okay, I'll say it. We don't want stupid votes. If you're going to vote smart, be vote educated. Don't just throw it on the wall or, for that matter, go on name recognition. Try to understand what they're saying, what they're going to do in office, how they get help in our community, how they can be sustainable and make us sustainable. That's what it's all about. That's what you care about. So this helps you be smart and you're voting. So let's take a whack at it. So we're going to get on the machine now. Nicole is going to run this for us. All right, so if you go to HawaiiCandidates.info, you can find the website. Or just go to konuhuaide.org and go to the very top. And so then here we're just going to start with an example. So this is the list of races. And so District 13, if you happen to be in District 13 for the State Senate, then you click this button here that says candidate game. So all three of the candidates have responded to the survey. That's great. You can see here in red, and we'll start the game. Okay, wow. Okay, this happens to be my district. And so here we have the three responses. It says what is the most pressing issue facing your district? What will you do to address it? And then there's the three answers. And you don't know who said what, and we randomize their location every time. And you can see the extended answer. Can I vote? Would you mind if I voted? Okay, so I take the one on the right. Okay, you like the high cost of housing? I like the high cost of housing. Okay, all right. So we just click I like this answer best. And then it moves on to question two. What would you do to improve Hawaii's public education system? And I think this is at random. So I can't tell left to right. Correct. So it's not the answer from the candidate is not going to be in the same location. So it's really just choosing which response you like the best. Why are they? Oh, because there are three of them. So you have three separate. Yeah, in this particular race, there are three candidates. And this is, I believe, Susan Chan-Oakwin, Susan Chan-Oakwin's vacated seat. And so this is a highly contested race. Okay, I'll take the one at the bottom right. Okay. There's a lot of these. Should we just kind of zoom through the rest? Yeah. What should the state legislative and free of public account? You actually want to play this. Yeah, I do. Let me see what they have to say. Yeah. So what should the state legislature do to improve police accountability? For this particular question, we asked folks at a tabling event to put pennies in a jar. They're pennies for their thoughts. Which question they wanted to be asked. And this one was pretty popular. People wanted the answer to this question. And so we made sure to ask it. Let's just look at it. So some of these questions were... Okay. The public helped us come up with these questions. Okay, I'll take the one at the bottom right. All right. That's my favorite geography answer. I like this answer. Okay. All right. So we have five questions to go. Do we want to speed this up or do we want to just keep going? I know you're very excited to actually play. Keep going, keep going. We're going to do this. All right, all right. What do you think is government's biggest barrier to serving the most people and what is one specific policy that will help change that? There's one candidate that looks like... He or she likes the cap slot. Yeah. Yeah, I'll take the one at the bottom right. All right. I don't like caps. All right, we're waiting. This is great. Yeah, and so... Because they're different. They're not the same, you know? Correct, yeah. The answers are all pretty different from each other. Yeah, so we have a little bit of a stall. Oh, looks like we lost internet connection. Okay, all right. You're going to have to go back and play later. Okay. But hopefully that gives people an idea of how to play. So you just get to see the answers. There are 100 words. And you just choose, I like this answer best and then move on. And then when you get to the multiple choice questions in this particular race, since there's three candidates, if two candidates have the same answer, then you can just skip that question. Yeah. It'll skip it for you because it's hard to weigh that, yeah. So at the end, it's going to come up with a percentage. And it's going to... At the end of the game... I don't know if it has a percentage, but it tells you who you agree with the most. But then it shows you the side by side. So you can go back and review what the answers were and which ones you selected. Can you change your selections? Well, I mean, you can do it mentally, yeah. Or you can play it again. But it will show you which one you chose. And as you reread it, you might think, oh, I do like that answer better. But it's nice that it shows you your initial reaction. Because it's like, well, you initially thought you liked this answer. So it kind of questions you, like, are you just changing it now because you want to vote for this person? Or do you actually agree with me? It forces you to be in perspective about your own thinking. Yeah. And I've heard from many people that they're very surprised that they ended up switching party lines or they just found a candidate that they were not expected to agree with. Yeah. So I think we sort of have these biases in our heads already. And this game just takes those away and you just have to go based on purely what they say. It's non-partisan. So you never know if you're voting Republican or Democrat or what. Yeah. You might surprise yourself. But not that we have a lot of Republicans in the state of the way. Well, I mean, there's certainly enough in the general. And so I mean, maybe if enough people played this game, that could change. We realize that we actually do agree with the Republican candidates. And we could have more of a two-party system and a one-party dominated state, which would be good for democracy. Well, you know, the thing that strikes me, I mentioned it to you before we started the show is that this is an automated voting machine in a way. So I don't have to know that it's dokes versus row. I can just vote for positions. And then it'll automatically cast, theoretically, you could do this. It'll automatically cast my ballot for me for the person who agrees, who I agree with, that person. And it's sort of an anonymous vote. Right. Well, as the person who came up with the questions for this game, I feel like that's a lot of pressure on me to come up with just the right questions where I feel like this could determine your vote. Like I said, I see this more as an entry point of a place where people can just at least develop a curiosity and understanding about their candidates and that, you know, some ability to learn more. For some, it might just be the end. And I think it's still better than just name recognition or party. Oh, absolutely. But I don't, I think people vote for a lot of different reasons. We want to make sure that they explore those. Well, you came up with the questions then. Yeah. What were your parameters? It was not me by myself. Okay. So we had some public input for what the public thought we should ask. We went door to door and asked people what they were concerned about. We asked a professor who works with millennials about, you know, what she thinks her students would be interested in. So we wanted to kind of rope in that group of people also and make sure that their concerns were being addressed because we felt like maybe this election didn't feel relevant. So you went out. You didn't just sit there in a closed room and write these questions. Correct, yeah. I mean, there was a combination. There was some of us, you know, just like a group think and then there was also looking out into the community and asking people what they wanted to learn. For the OHA question, they asked people who are important to the Hawaiian community to come up with those three questions. Yeah. Well, you know, it strikes me that most people, I mean, most people, when they go into the ballot box into the election place or send in their mail ballot, they could not articulate exactly what their chosen candidate stands for. It is largely, you saw them on the street or holding a sign or name recognition or cousin's uncle's aunt kind of thing. Right. They could not tell you. And so this changes the whole focus really for anybody who plays the game of just name recognition versus let's see what this person is saying. And that's the best metric you have about what this person will do. You know, I mean, it can't be perfect because we know that politicians make a statement and then they forget about the statement as soon as they're elected. Right. But, you know, you can't metric that. Right. But this allows for at least more accountability because if enough people say, well, I elected them because of their position on this, then they know why they were elected and people can hold them accountable and said, well, this is why I elected you and you didn't do that. You know, and so hopefully by informing the electorate have people make educated informed decisions and based their vote on that then we can hopefully add more accountability to the entire process. Really? That's what we've got to have. We've got to have smarter elections because I think people have lost, this goes to your point before about why are they not voting, people have lost confidence in the system. Whether it's the cycle or maybe the rhetoric or the PR that is thrown at us, we've seen all those messages over and over and over again and we don't believe it anymore and we don't believe anything we see anymore even if it's on social media which is, you know, for some people more, you know, even if it's... But, you know, and so we're turned off because we don't believe the politicians, we don't believe the messages. We keep hearing that the government is failing this way or that. We see the government is distanced from ourselves, the whole process, it's not ours, it's somebody else's. And so we just turn our backs on it. This is very unhealthy for the Constitution. It is. And, yeah, for our community, for democracy and so, like I said, we're just trying to find some way, some fun way to bring people back and that's why we try not to make it too serious because I think it's, yeah, the rhetoric and the policy is just all overwhelming and so we just try to lighten it with some fun questions and a little gamification and so hopefully it's a good starting point for people. So what you can and it's that info. Is it being done elsewhere? I mean, did you get... Did you guys design this right here at home? We did. We did. By we, I mean, Olin, I had nothing to do with this. Well, you promoted it in any way. Yeah, at least this iteration I helped with. But, yeah, no, it was Kanu Hawaii that came up with this concept. I mean, there are other games that are done nationally. It's another reason we did do the presidential race. There are tools out there. If you're still an undecided voter and you want to know what policies our presidential candidates stand for, you can take a similar... You don't know by now. You can play a similar game. But we've talked to other people who do similar work around the country, other organizations. Darcy just came from a conference and they're very interested in this game. So I think it is something that could be nationalized. We would love to see other states do something like this to have informed voters across the country, where they're choosing on things besides, yeah, name recognition or party lines. Yeah, I think you're at the front end, actually. I mean, I know there are other people working the same thing, but you're at the front end and maybe this is only the beginning of this kind of thing. For example, it occurs to me that... So you have this, people can see the positions. Now somebody wins and it's six months later and you match the positions against the voting record. And somebody... I'm curious now. I voted and at the end of my voting I signed up to be advised about accountability and whether this candidate did what his position was. Yeah, we would love to include an accountability piece, definitely, to have exactly that candidate say, this is what they stand for and then try to find a way to demonstrate is that what they in fact stood for when they were elected and then let the voters know this is what happened. And we worked on creating something similar to that. We found it was... It's pretty complicated and I think you need a few staff people devoted to that who can really follow the legislature and the way that bills can change from supporting something to opposing something based on the amendments. It ends up getting pretty dicey. So like I said, I think you need some full-time staff people devoted to that to make sure it's really fair. Exactly, to make that analysis. Yeah, exactly. So I just wonder, did you get demographics on the people? I mean, when I sign up, when I come and play the game, are you knowing anything about me? Do you ask my name, whether I'm a millennial? My neighborhood? No. No, I mean, well, we see what district you play the game in and so that helps us see at least geographically. But more than that, no, we don't ask people's names. It's not so much about that. We just want people to play. Which you could. You could, you could say. I suppose we could. Yeah, if people wanted to have the accountability piece, people could offer their email address and we would tell them we would get back to them. So hopefully down the road, that's maybe something we could include. Well, I think this is very positive. I think it's positive not only for what it does right now today and I think you'll have a lot of, hope you'll have a lot of action going forward. But what it could do in terms of accountability, when you get real traction on this whole kind of internet engagement thing, it's a really wonderful idea. But one thing that strikes me, and I'd like to ask you about it, is that we don't have enough people who are running for office. And some of these, I mean, how do you deal in this game with an office that's uncontested and there are quite a few of them? How do you deal with that? And how do you deal with people who play the game but who would never ever run for office? How do you encourage them? I mean, in all good cheer and with, you know, good nature and maybe a joke or two, how do you encourage them to get into the system in Hawaii where everybody knows that politics is a blood sport? How do you get them into it? We never really thought about that. I kind of like that idea of like maybe there's a button that says I could come up with a better answer. And so if you have enough of those, we'll be like, do you want to run? I mean, it's the only way I could see how this game could translate into getting people to run for office. But I mean, that's something that Connie has worked on in the past is how do we encourage people? How do we develop leadership? How do we let people know that it's really not that hard and we need more good people out there running for office? Yeah. There's got to be a grooming game. You know, they have all these things that you hire consultants and managers and coaches to be a candidate and they go out and they find money for you and they tell you what to say, they tell you how to comb your hair, all that stuff. But there could be, maybe there is, a website which says, here's the way you do it. Everybody read the same thing, you're all on the same page and now you will have the advantage of this baseline of information to help you do it. And you'll minimize your risk, you'll maximize your chances, just follow our little rules. Yeah. That would be a real public service, that one too, no? Yeah, and I think there are groups who do that type of stuff. Kuliana Academy is also sort of that grooming, like they provide information on how to run for office. But I think also another good place to start is neighborhood board meetings. I think people just in general should attend those and see how they run, see the issues that they talk about. A lot of times candidates will come and legislators will come to those meetings and so it's a good place to meet people and just kind of get a sense of the landscape locally about the stuff that most likely people care about the most is just in their neighborhood. Local. Yeah, exactly. And then from there kind of spreading their wings to see... Spreading their wings means run for office. Yeah. Because a lot of elected officials in this state come from the neighborhood board system. Yeah. I think they do. Yeah. Well I think it's a very interesting idea and we just leave it here to say that you could have another column in this game. I could come up with a better answer. Same questions. How would you answer this question and then you could... Or just the idea that you're convinced you could do better than... Run for office. Yeah. At the end it says you should run for office. Here's the number to call. Office of elections. Thank you, Nicole. Thanks so much for having me. Great to see you. Great to have this coming. It's wonderful that you joined us. Thank you. Come on.