 Hello, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Caitlin Peña. I am the Director of Operations and Programs for the Center for Election Science. If this is your first election science event, if you are unfamiliar with our work, we are a non-partisan nonprofit that is dedicated to empowering people with voting methods that strengthen democracy. And so the main voting method that we advocate for is approval voting. I think hopefully, probably most of you know about approval voting if you're here. But just in case if you don't, approval voting allows you to vote for all the candidates you like, and then the candidate with the most votes wins. And we worked with activists on the ground in both Fargo and St. Louis to help get it implemented in those cities. And so here tonight we have folks from five different areas across the country who are trying to get approval voting efforts off the ground where they live. Last year for the first time we opened up this call for proposals so that people, we could give grants to people who were looking to get approval voting efforts off the ground. And so all of the panelists that you're going to hear from on the call tonight submitted plans to us. They went through a review process and they were chosen to receive grants from CES to aid them in their efforts. So I'm really looking forward to chatting with them and giving you all the opportunity to chat with them as well. As as you know this is a town hall so I'm going to get things started off I'm going to introduce everyone and I will. I'll kind of ask a starter question and then we're going to turn it over to all of you for your questions. So before we get started, I am going to go ahead and introduce all of the folks on the call. So first we have Pat Dixon he's with Austin approves. He's the chair of the Libertarian Party of Texas from 2004 to 2014. His book primary screen out details the experience of ballot access election reform for third party and independent candidates. He was twice elected the city council and logo vista Texas. We've also got Troy Davis he is with Seattle approves. He's been raised in Seattle and he witnessed the city's growth and evolution. He's created simple opt out calm which is a public service that has helped tens of thousands of people prevent misuse of their personal information. He also maintained the nonprofit Seattle internet exchange and the region's largest internet exchange point in its early days. Nate Allen, he's with Utah approves. Nate was a volunteer leader for the Yang 2020 campaign and he became invested in alternative voting method shortly after that. He started Utah approves last year, and along with many other volunteers got very close to passing a bill to allow approval voting in Utah. That effort will continue next year as they are working to further establish connections with representatives and educate the public. We've got Jeff Justice he is with the San Francisco Bay Area approves and Jeff is a retired software engineer and entrepreneur, and he's also a CES board member. He submitted an RFP along with two other Bay Area supporters. Last but not least we have Ben Singer of Show Me Integrity. Ben is the executive director at Show Me Integrity across partisan campaign for effective government of by and for Missourians. He was also on the steering committee for STL approves, which is the organization that led the successful campaign to bring approval voting to St. Louis in 2020. So we're very well acquainted with Ben, we worked very closely with him last year on that St. Louis campaign. Oops, you know what, I just realized I never made Allison a host. There we go. So those those are our panelists. And so before I kick it to them, I'm just going to set out a few little ground rules and reminders for both the panelists and and you all as the audience. So I'm going to kick us off with a question for the panelists and then after that. And then Sardinas she is also with CES she is going to be taking questions from you all in the audience. So if you would like to ask a question of a panelist, just please put a summary of your question in the chat. And then once we get to that point and when it's your turn, we will unmute you, and we'll ask you and allow you to ask your question allowed to the group. If there is a specific panelist you want to answer your question just to indicate that in your chat message. And then for our panelists, obviously remember there's five of you, we've got lots of folks with questions, and just a little bit of time so let's try to keep our responses to about two to three minutes, and I'll give you all a 30 second warning to keep you on track. And then I know that Benj actually has to hop off a little bit early at the top of the hour so I'm going to try to let him answer the first audience question before he has to jump jump off. So, with that, I am going to get this started. And so for the panelists, I would like everybody to kind of answer this question. Tell us a little bit about what are the problems that you're seeing where you live in your community, and how do you feel like approval voting would help why is this such an important reform for you. And again, I will just start with Benj here. I'm unmuted you want me to go ahead. Yes. All right, thanks Caitlin and thanks everyone for being here, if not for the support of the Center for Election Science, including all of you here. We wouldn't have had such a successful new approval voting system in the city of St. Louis so thank you for that. So again, I'm Benjamin singer I'm the executive director of show me integrity. We are a cross partisan organization of Republicans Democrats and independence and others, working together for a more effective ethical government of buy and for the people. So to answer your question Caitlin what problems are we facing here in Missouri, and how will approval voting help. So Missouri, as some of you may have seen recently is ground zero for a lot of polarization, divisive partisan claims, and, frankly, unrepresentative election outcomes in a government that is not working for the people. We also have a very accessible ballot initiative process that's a good thing. And historically voters and the media here have a history of being very supportive of cleaning up our broken and corrupt political system to create a brighter future for our state. And whether it's healthcare poverty, the rural urban divide and broadband access. There's so many issues where the government is not working for the people and these divisive partisan games are getting in the way of addressing the needs of the people of Missouri. Let me give one example, our disgraced former governor Eric writings are not our current governor but our last one. He actually won the 2016 Republican governors primary by securing 34.5% of the vote. Again, our last governor became governor because he won the Republican primary with 34.5% of the vote statewide. Over businessman John Brunner with 25% Peter Kinder with 21% and Catherine Hannaway with 20%. And again he went on to win narrowly in the general election but then resigned in disgrace after a court ordered that his dark money donors had to be revealed so he resigned rather than have to reveal his dark money donors. So these are the kind of games. This is the kind of corruption that we're facing in Missouri, and imagine what would happen, you know, right now we have our US Senator Roy blunt, saying that he is not going to run again, and there is a huge free for all in the primary again to decide who's going to represent us in the US Senate, imagine what it would be like in the US Senate if Missouri and other states but starting here in Missouri elected our senators with the way that we're doing it now in St. John partisan approval voting primary with a top two right off. Imagine the kind of broad support and accountability and consensus building we would see, not only here in our state but in the US Senate, if we were to take these reforms statewide. So I'm really excited about the positive change that approval voting could mean for Missouri for our state residents and our representation in our state and for the country as a whole, if we're able to apply these to all statewide elections including including the US Senate. Thanks, Caitlin. Got it. Love it Bench. I think we will go to Troy next he's, he's next on my screen so. Okay. Sadly, I'm not at the pike place market, but I wish I was. And actually I wish it was open right now. So, those of you who haven't been to Seattle or haven't been to Washington. We have a pretty forward thinking election. And I'll give you an example, Washington State actually standardized on mail in ballots. There's no registration for a mail in ballot. There's no excuse or, or, you know, necessity that you have to provide. By default, you will receive a ballot in the mail. You can do your research online, you could read the voters pamphlet and then mail in your ballot it works fantastic. So, we have a history of, of adopting forward thinking collection methods. And one of those locally in Seattle is called democracy vouchers for people not in Seattle democracy vouchers are going to seem like like an alien invention. Every voter in Seattle receives from the city for $425 vouchers that they can give to any candidate citywide. So you can give your candidate, your favorite candidate $100 or spread it out for candidates to, you know, $25 a piece, a piece. And what that does is create a much more representative slate of candidates. It's now feasible for a serious candidate to be entirely supported by the voters and not need to depend on pack money or outside interests. What that does though is leave us with a very crowded slate of candidates. You could say we have a fantastic problem. Our city council races now they have seven a 10 candidates like 10 serious candidates is not uncommon in our city council races. And what that means, especially because Seattle is a fairly left leading city. So, you know, our set of opinions in the continuum. If you looked at it nationally would be maybe 30 or 40% of the continuum. A right leaning candidate would not be elected in Seattle. So we end up with with eight or 10 candidates sharing about 30% of that election, you know opinion continuum. And as a result, almost every voter can find some alignment with more than one candidate. And that's why approval of voting stands out to me is, you know, if you thought of a traditional race as four candidates spread across the entire continuum. We're eight or 10 candidates in a pretty narrow dense space, and most people can find more than one candidate that they support and approval voting is what will let them cast that ballot. It seems like Seattle has everything it needs for a for a great election system, except for approval funding. So hopefully you can you can succeed there. We're 90% there. Yeah. All right, well Pat is next on my screen so take it away Pat from Austin. Hello there. I think I share a lot of commonality with the other cities we maybe were the Seattle of Texas or the San Francisco of Texas because you had to point to one thing that motive it would motivate people to support approval voting in Austin, it's runoffs in 2014 that for city council in Austin, there were 11 places on the ballot, a mayor and 10 precincts. So there were 11 seats up for election. Only two of them did not have runoffs. So it's very typical. In that year district three had 12 candidates. So we typically have well more than two candidates in 2018, half of the city council places had runoffs. So I think that's a big motivator for change in Austin. Another thing I think we have going for us is we have a very good team. SAS is listening in from Austin on this broadcast rock Howard, we have a pretty good team assembled so I think there is a lot going for us here in Austin to make this happen. Love it. And I like your Miami shirt Pat I that's my alma mater, which Miami, Miami University of Ohio, that's the good one. Yep, yep. I always said Miami was a university when Florida still belong to Spain. That's correct. Yeah. All right, next on my list I see Nate from Utah. Yeah, all right so there's a couple things I wanted to talk about with Utah. So one of the largest problems that we face is majority being mistaken as consensus here. We of course have a mammoth consolidated voting block here, just given our demographics, but that doesn't mean that the candidates that that group elects through a first pass the post system is even best for that group and very unlikely to consensus. And so one of the things I love so much about approval voting is that it's, it allows for people to express the candidate they would approve of holding the office. And by doing that, it upholds one of the oldest values in the country, which is a safer majority and minority. And so instead of favoring just one of those groups approval voting allows for those groups to find common ground. But also for people to not fear supporting the candidates that sound truly appealing to them. And so in Utah the terms minority and majority are very different than most other places. And even knowing about our demographics you still wouldn't know what that looked like until you came here. And I think that's why Utah is such a great place for approval voting because we have a very strong majority and minority dynamic and so we'll really be able to see how approval voting helps that. And then another thing I wanted to mention is that land preservation is a big value here in Utah. So we have a lot of beautiful nature here with every type of terrain so desert mountain forest marsh you name it just pick a direction and you'll find a different type of terrain. And so people here in Utah really care about preserving that and that's an issue that doesn't fall along partisan lines at all here in the state, but it is a losing battle that we seem to be fighting. And so I really think that accurate representation would help fix the obstacles in the legislature to protecting the land so those are the two biggest things. Thank you, Nate. And last but not least, we will give it over to Jeff Justice and the San Francisco Bay Area. We have all the same problems that have been discussed but I want to highlight one that came to my mind this week because I'm working on the campaign of a guy that's running for Congress, he's a Democrat. He's 48 years old and our existing Congress lady is 78 years old and has been in Congress for 18 years. And basically the my candidate the 48 year old doesn't have a chance, because he's viewed as a spoiler. And the Democratic Party doesn't want to support anyone that could spoil the election and throw it to the Republicans. And not only that but he can run and he won't even get. I'll have no idea what his real support is because people shy away from him. So this is why the average age of Congress people is in their 70s. Our California state senators 87 years old now newcomers just don't have a chance because they're viewed as spoilers approval voting would fix that problem. Absolutely. Thank you Jeff. Okay, well that that was kind of my my starting question to give everybody an idea of what what's going on in these different areas. Oh, you know what I probably need to replace the spotlight. Okay, there we go. So Allison, I'm not sure if there are how many questions there have been in the chat but do you want to go ahead and start picking from there. Sure, and kind of serendipitously. The first question we have is for Ben. Can I see if I can find the person here, and also in the chat if you would like me to ask the question, or if you would like to ask the question specifically if you could indicate that, and because we're open to to both. We have a question here from siren. It looks like I'm sorry if I'm butchering your name. Or here and you would like to ask a question. That's fine. I don't, I don't see them. So the question for bench was, why did you go with an approval slash runoff model rather than a straight approval model. And, and in addition to that, don't you worry about people trying to gain the system by withholding approval to get their favorite into the runoff. Thanks for the question. Thanks for the question and blame. So, we really like the approval voting primary, followed by a top two runoff for a few reasons. One of the top reasons is actually to avoid any games and to encourage people to use approval voting, because when you have some incentive to ensure your, you know, that there might be multiple candidates that you like in the runoff. You're more incentivized to want to select at least two to approve at least that's our theory. The other was something that you all might be familiar with with some of the academic concerns about approval voting. Bullet voting, things like that. And so, you know, allowing for creating a runoff. You know, based on our conversations with election experts around the country pretty much gets rid of that concern that people will gain the system by bullet voting because again it incentivizes you to actually try to vote your at least favorite to ensure that the ultimate result of the election has very clear voter intent, because when you have a really clean top two runoff, whoever wins that, you can't say, oh, everyone voted for, you know, this guy with this funny name because they thought, you know, he won again and they all approved of him and look now he's our US senator. To us we like the idea of having the runoff because there's no one can argue that whoever wins has a strong mandate to lead. And, you know, we want to ensure that there's more consensus building and that people are incentivized regardless of gerrymandering, or whatever the nature is of the state or their district that that they have that mandate to lead and that they have that broad accountability There was one related question in here. But I can't. It was, it was very similar I have it right here if you wanted to kind of expand on what you were saying that the question was is there a particular motivation behind using a non partisan approval primary with a runoff versus simply using approval in the general. And the other part of that question which might be one of the things you would like to dig into is, is it simply more feasible for it to get implemented, if it's more flexible. Yeah, I think, you know, the system is more familiar to people in non partisan top two runoff, or just general runoffs are things that people are familiar with so it's a nice way, you know, in St. People are like well only one place has ever implemented approval voting far go. Obviously we talked about how approval voting has been around the world for a long time and use very successfully, but it was also helpful for us to be able to point to many other cities around America and say, lots of places use non partisan top two runoffs. People like familiarity, even if they know the status quo is broken it's a very weird dynamic. And to answer one other person's question, I would be most excited to see this in the US Senate for that race. But of course we'd love to see this for every race in the country or sorry, well sure in the country but also in our state. And someone else asked about like does the conflict between our CV and approval voting mess with this. I don't think so I think we're all here to create better voting methods, I would take either system over our current partisan plurality system. So I think the more that people are familiar with new systems, the better. We're really excited about approval voting. Thank you. Awesome thanks Benj and I know that you have to hop off here in like four minutes or maybe even now I'm not even sure but thanks for joining us we appreciate it. And this question goes to all the panelists. So if you all are either comfortable doing that the popcorn method or I can just go next. We'll start with Jeff with this one. This is from Tracy and Tracy asked if the panelists can clarify in which election, either the primary or general in which office, they are trying to get approval voting passed. No, we're, we'll actually take it anywhere. We'll leave that up to the, to the local city to decide that. I think Lewis made one decision, but we won't force that on any city or state or, or any school district. So, we'll take whatever the city wants if they don't want any, any run offs or any, any primaries and that's fine with us you can do that with approval voting too. We can go to Nate next. So here in Utah, some of you may be familiar with the ranked choice voting progress that's been made here so there's a pilot program for ranked choice voting which allows cities and municipalities to opt into elections using ranked choice voting. So the bill that we're currently championing is an effort to get approval voting just added to that pilot program. So that's just for municipal primary elections across the state and that's what we're focused on right now the in the spirit of Jeff sensor we're also looking to get it anywhere any, any way we can eventually if we can get it statewide and eventually nationwide out and agree. How about you Troy. There we go. I'm live. But Washington has a unique circumstance, Washington State, our laws actually require a top two general. So it doesn't specify what should happen in the primary basically says that most municipalities can decide how to operate a primary, as long as it produces two candidates for a general election. So in Washington, and specifically right now in Seattle, we are looking at just changing the primaries. And for Seattle that would mean the city council and the mayor are our primary goals. That's also the places where we see the largest candidate slates. So it's the places where it would have the largest impact. All right, and then Pat. So our focus is Austin municipal elections we want approval voting in Austin municipal elections in the state of Texas municipal elections are non partisan. So there is no primary we want 3812 however many people running for a city council position and using approval voting without needing runoffs. And we have a really interesting questions goes to anyone who wants to answer. This is coming from Breck, and they ask, are there inherent hazards and confusing voters by following a strategy, whereby rank choice is used in a way to introduce voters to alternative voting methods or winter take all while hopefully aiming to eventually eventually champion approval. There's no way to do it, because to do rank choice you've got to change a lot of voting machines and educate the citizens on how to fill out large spreadsheets quite often. So you could do it that way but it'd be so much easier just go to go directly to approval voting. Okay, I would say the same exact thing. I think it's not only about confusing voters but also about confusing the legislature so I mean here in Utah when we were trying to get our bill passed we had the issue of the legislature being worried about, you know, adding a method to a pilot program or a method and if two different cities in one county wanted to use methods and stuff like that so I think if you're going to try to pass approval voting, why not just go straight for it it's the simplest to explain anyway and it works great so. And one thing to consider is, we're basically creating a system of incentives here. So, as Nate said, if we do something and then change it two years or five years later, aside from being really difficult to do just implementation wise. So it was essentially moving the goalposts for everybody who's out there, you know people need to be in time, both voters and candidates to internalize what it is they're trying to accomplish, you know how do we best serve the electorate. A few comments on this so I don't have direct experience but my understanding is there's been places that have adopted right choice had a bad experience. So when you try to propose approval voting. I missed it because they think it's the same so that could work against you in the case of Austin. We're in a situation where people who want to adopt rank choice voting run up against the Texas election code. There have been efforts in the past to adopt rank choice for municipal elections, but the Secretary of State says no you can't. You think approval voting won't have that problem. So, there actually is a group in Austin that collected petitions to put rank choice on the ballot. But I think they need to be aware of that problem we don't think we're going to run into that problem. And then no CES is doing some legal research on that. Okay. Then let's move on to the next question. This is actually a really interesting question that I would love to hear everyone's take on. How can we measure the success of approval voting over time after it's put in place, and specifically for everyone in the locales that they're organizing. Any questions or ideas about how to measure the impact on polarization, or on government efficacy. This is again for anyone. Well, speaking for myself in turn. I don't know that I've worked out complete metrics on how to gauge less polarization. I don't know anyone who has and I'd be open to know how you do that kind of research. My understanding from cities who have adopted methods where there is more choice there's encouragement for finding common ground. You see that even if you can't measure it numerically. You know it's happening. Another way obviously people like to look at dollars and cents and if you're saving money on not having to do run offs. That's a cost. And also, just the fact that voter participation is so low in runoff elections. You go through this campaign season, and you have an election, and there's no winner, and you ask people to come back again and vote in a runoff so I think if we see increasing voter turnout, that's a possible way to gauge the success of approval voting. I think it's Seattle one thing we've considered is if we do get this adopted by either the city council, or an initiative about two years later to do sort of a manual version of a thing called the voter satisfaction efficiency. You've never heard of this Google for VSE voter satisfaction efficiency. And it's a model that tries to figure out for a given election method, and a given simulated election. How much utility you know how much happiness would be generated for the voters how good is the election at reading the voters minds. So we were thinking that a few years after approval voting is adopted in Seattle, we could actually do a manual survey, like literally ask people, hey, where are you satisfied with the outcome, not necessarily. You know, it was the perfect election, but are you satisfied with the outcome of the election. And in a sense we are measuring voter satisfaction efficiency. What percentage of the voters are happy with the result. I also want to jump in and talk about how they would measure the success of approval voting and it's a hard question, and also largely theoretical but I could say that first of all CES has a job opening for a person to do that professionally for us. We've been doing it in Fargo and, and now we have a chance to do it in St. Louis. So we have some data. The biggest use of approval voting is the doodle poll and Facebook. Certainly the doodle poll, people keep coming back to it 30 million times a month. So they seem to be satisfied with it. That's a good point Jeff that I think people use approval voting a lot in their daily lives and they just don't think about it they don't realize that it's approval voting right every time you use a doodle. Can I make a comment about that. Austin actually has experience with approval voting and they don't know it. Because in 2014, there was a for years and years Austin was trying to establish precincts, all the people that weren't on City Council were in the same location, and they could never break out of that. But in 2014 there was an effort, and there were two proposals, either have 10 precincts and one mayor, or eight precincts to at large and one mayor. If there were three choices on the ballot and we voted the same way we always do, don't change anything or 10 one or eight to one. There probably would have been no change but instead they put two measures on the ballot and 10 one one. Again, because you didn't have that vote splitting. So, even though it wasn't formally approval voting, it really was and people in Austin kind of didn't even know it was. Thank you for that Pat I think that's actually a really good point a lot of people don't recognize that doodle polls are approval voting and almost everyone's done it. And it works. Largely. Troy, you became very popular. We have two questions for you. Back to back. And if you don't mind explaining what this first one means that would be helpful, I think for everyone. And your first question is, have we done any work towards getting approval put back into the local options bill so if you wouldn't, if you wouldn't mind explaining what the local options bill is and the work you've done for that. So, I mentioned that at the state level, the state requires a top two general election, and a primary before that with all of the candidates. There's an effort at the state level to change that to add additional options. So, the additional options would let cities and municipalities choose not necessarily require them to but they could choose to either hold a ranked choice, or a single election. So combine those into a single election with all of the candidates, or a ranked choice primary, and then a top five general election. That focus that started in about 2018. And it actually got got shelved again this year for for the third I think the third time. We're still doing it and talking with the people who are sponsoring it, but it doesn't, it doesn't directly interact with approval voting. We did discuss with them, whether it made sense to try to add approval voting as one of the options that you know this could be that municipalities could choose to do. I think just in simplicity our interest is just getting it done in Seattle as a starting point. The bill was already pretty complicated. So, there wasn't a lot of support for, I mean, especially three years in starting from scratch with with a longer bill for two options. We're lucky that approval voting in its most logical initial adoption. It doesn't require any changes to state law. The problems that the local options bill are trying to solve are mostly specific to either either ranked choice, or to something that wanted to eliminate the primary entirely. And we're neutral on that there's pros and cons to a primary in a general. I think there's a lot of local support for it. That is, you know, city council wants it there because they think it makes it easier for voters, you know, to focus on the top two candidates. So we're not trying to solve that problem we just want to change the primary. So kind of as a follow up to that, I believe it was clay that asked. If you would agree that the way that the top two was written. It makes it questionable whether or not IRV could even be used in the primary. Without sitting in front of the primary sources I wouldn't hazard an opinion. I'm sure clay will follow up. Move on to the next question then, which is for Nate. Nate Utah's convention slash primary system has a lot of controversy surrounding it, especially within the legislature. Do you think a nonpartisan primary is something practical in Utah. Yeah, so that's a really good question. For right now I don't actually think that a nonpartisan primary would be an easy thing to sell here. The primary convention, as you said there's a lot of controversy around it but it's also something that a lot of people in the Republican Party in Utah, like just they want it to exist and they like how that works. So the cool thing about the bill that we're trying to pass here is that it's just for municipal elections and so there's, there's not really any partisan like problems here with those we usually just have, you know, one primary here and then we go to the general. And so, eventually it would be nice maybe to get rid of those and that's something that approval voting might help in the long run, but as for now I don't think that would be something very practical. I wanted to kind of open that up to other folks about what they think. If, if having a primary system that's open would work for you all and or what kind of system would work for you all and why that is for Seattle we have a totally nonpartisan primary that produces whichever two candidates had the best, you know the highest number of votes. But it's amazing. There's no registration for parties. There's, you know, you're just looking at the ballot and deciding which two candidates, or in your case right now what which one candidate unfortunately, you want to vote for. I can totally endorse that as you know if I moved to another state I would miss that. But I can say. California converted to jungle primaries about four years ago. And it was concerned that it was going to hurt the Republican Party since California is mostly Democratic. But about a year and a half ago I went to an analysis put on by the Hoover Institution at Stanford which is considered a very conservative think tank. They said that they had analyzed 50 primaries, and it did not hurt the Republican Party. So they were quite happy with with the jungle primary. It's not perfect but it, it's a step in the right direction. Awesome. So, Pat, do you have any thoughts are good to move on. Well, I guess I'll be a dissenter. And this is just a personal opinion I personally. I've, I'm associated with a libertarian party and we put a priority on ensuring that people who are on the ballot represent our principles. So, I want to ensure that when we're nominating candidates that they are libertarian. So this actually opens up. It's a good segue to this question that that clay asks sort of a follow up to one of his others, which is wouldn't it be approved, wouldn't it be beneficial to get approval voting in some of these partisan races to demonstrate the effect it has on third party success is that part of Can you explain a little bit more about that, particularly to you Pat. Oh, I'm sorry. I know you're good. Who you were addressing. I thought it was somebody else. So, in regard to the general election or the partisan elections, we see focusing at the municipal level as a building block first. Certainly in Texas, we feel that we have a very good chance of demonstrating to people at the local level, where you typically have already a lot of candidates, there isn't things like, there aren't the ballot access and primary screen outlaws that keep away candidates. If you have a good selection of candidates, implementing a voting system like this, can educate the public and naturally lead them to. Why can't we do this for state representative Congress, President, etc. Do any of the other panelists have thoughts on how this might affect third parties, or just other people who aren't as represented, because they can get kind of like, each out of the process in in your states or any of the places that you're trying to get approval voting implemented in? Yeah, I think it would do wonders, especially if, like I said earlier, we have this massive consolidated voting block here in Utah. But if we had the ability for people to choose more options within that Republican convention or the Republican primaries, I think that would allow for different types of Republicans or, you know, people who support more like populist issues but just aren't getting voted for because they're not that consensus like Republican candidate here in Utah. So I do think that would be pretty beneficial to get approval voting into that race and just see what comes out of it and see what kind of candidates get the support. And for Seattle, I think a lot more people would feel comfortable voting both their heart and the person who they think is most likely to win that they support. And for a fair number of people, both in Seattle and probably elsewhere, that that vote for their heart would be the third party candidate. So, in as much as the electoral electorate supports a third party candidate, I think that would actually materialize in the results in a way it doesn't. It doesn't today. All right, so I saved my personal favorite question for last, and just a reminder here we have about 10 minutes left. So just keeping that in mind. This question is to all panelists and I would love it if all panelists would answer it's. Is there what what efforts have any of you made either individually or as a group to make this movement diverse and to reach out to diverse groups. And that means, not just ideologically right so in all ways, if all of you wouldn't mind answering that one. Yeah, I'll start with this one. So, one of the first things that we did at Utah proves was consider what other groups are present and making an impact in Utah. So, me being someone who's left leaning, I thought of, you know, sunrise movement for people's party for people's party black lives matter like I reached out to all of these kind of groups to see who'd be interested and partnering and talking to us and we have had some success with that sunrise movement has partnered with us but then we also have a lot of Republican members in our group which I'm super grateful for because I personally didn't know the groups that were active and Utah under that banner and so we actually were able to get a partnership with stand up Republic which is a pretty big group and they have a Utah chapter. So we've been able to get partnerships from both sides of the aisle already which is something that's super exciting to me. I think it's really important to stay non partisan, especially with issues like this that shouldn't be partisan to begin with. Yeah, for Seattle. One challenge we have is so many people have have tried to reform different aspects of our governance system that voters rightly assume that when someone's trying to change something. They're trying to move the goal goalposts closer to you know their own personal preferences that their goal is to get their candidates elected. So, not only do we try to explain hey this is non partisan, this is candidate neutral. We take that a step further, and make sure people understand. This isn't about getting our candidates elected and in fact it's totally possible, maybe even likely that that the candidates that the organizers do not prefer end up performing better in approval that our goal is to get the most representative candidates of the entire electorate possible. And that manifests in a whole bunch of different ways. That means we've reached out to, in one example, there's a city council member who's, who's had both a recall petition, and also a defense a strong lots of donations for for the defense of the recall, we reached out to both of the groups, and offered, they were were accessible if their volunteers want to try to improve the system while they're actually trying to solve that problem. Any thoughts Pat. Oh yeah, I didn't know I could unmute myself. Okay. So, in my 10 years as State Chair of the Libertarian Party I made efforts to reach out to people outside of the Libertarian Party to be speakers at state conventions and events. So, I was able to tap into a network that was more diverse when we started this effort. So we have a pretty good representation. Now if we're awarded the next phase, we do have to diversify further. And in each one of the 10 precincts in Austin, we need to have people who are the champions in those precincts who know those precincts. Some are a bit more conservative and a little bit more progressive, bit more eclectic a little weird, whatever's unique about those precincts, we need to have the people who know them and can make those connections. So we're hoping if we go to the next phase, we will have a very diverse appeal to every precinct. And I have to say I know, and I think this is the case for all of you. I know Nate mentioned it. But Pat, you all have different people already in your coalition, right? You are Libertarian. I know that SAS, one of your partners, is a member of the Movement for People's Party. I think you have a Democrat or two in the mix, like in your core group of organizers. So, it's nice to see that cross-partisan work being done. And Caitlin, that was our last question from the chat, kind of. I think there was one more that I think would be is a really nice question. Brian asks, any advice on how to get things off the ground, sort of so to speak, in a medium-sized capital city in the south? I live in Little Rock, Arkansas. Maybe, you know, you all live all over so we can broaden it. Just what advice would you give to anyone who is looking to get things off the ground in their community? And why don't we start with Troy? I'd start with two ideas. The easiest one is find one other person who thinks this is a problem as well. Literally one. Maybe it's a friend. In my case, I knew someone who had ran for city council a few years ago, and I explained approval voting to him, and he said, oh my, this would be an infinitely better system. How does this not exist today? And he was as flabbergasted as I was. And that was the tiniest little bit of a snowball starting. So that's one thing is, you know, find one person and then go from there. The other is solve the most pressing problem as you see it. And for us, that's the Seattle primaries because there's a huge candidate slate. And it's, you know, a very heated race. But wherever you are, make sure you're coming up with the problem first, and then solving for that, rather than finding a solution and then trying to slot that into a problem. That's a nice. Pat. So I kind of have to defer because we haven't done it yet in Austin and people in Fargo and St. Louis have and CES has the resources. So it seems to me, if you want to get started find out the people who have been successful and find out what they did. Nate, do you want to take or give some advice? My biggest piece of advice is to work with CES. Actually, I've done a lot of work and continue to do work to build up Utah proves but without CES and the network that they've built holding stuff like this and their email list. It's helped us gain volunteers. And I really do think that just like building up the amount of people you have is a really big deal. But aside from that, if you're looking to start your own effort and be an organizer, I would suggest just getting really familiar with free programs like Google forums, Google sheets, Discord, mail subscription systems, stuff like that. Because a lot of organizing is just made easier when you can focus on what you're doing and not fiddling over manually updating spreadsheets and making sure that people get contacted, like when they sign up in a timely matter. So let technology do that kind of work for you. That way you can focus on the work of the effort that you actually want to start. So much, Nate. That was really insightful, I think. And I appreciate all of you giving a shout out to CES. We certainly didn't mean for you to do that. But I do want to mention that Allison, the awesome person who has been taking questions from the chat. For some of you, if you don't know her, she has come on recently as a national campaigns and advocacy coordinator. So something that she is currently working on building is some training sessions, workshops, educational modules to help organizers give them the tools that they need training that they need to get things like this off the ground. So definitely keep your eyes peeled for that because we're we're in the beginning stages of putting these things together but hopefully those will start coming out over the next couple of months. And also, obviously, I would definitely recommend that anybody here. Go ahead and sign up for our chapter program that's how a lot of these folks got connected with other people in their areas. Oops, sorry, I just, I messed up the link a little bit there. The first link should work the second one got chopped in half. But the other thing is our discord. So a lot of these folks also are on the election science discord and, you know, people talk and organize there it's a really nice tool. So I definitely suggest you check that out. Thank you to everyone for attending tonight. Thank you so much to our panelists for giving your time giving your advice and sharing your efforts with everyone. I am always really inspired to see what you all are doing when I'm when we have these events when we meet with you when I see you organizing on the discord and the amazing things that you're doing. I, you guys gave, I think CES, a lot of props and even more props and we deserve because you guys are really the ones who are on the ground doing this work. And we're so glad that we can support you in that work. So speaking, speaking of which it does take money to support these types of things. So if anyone out there. If you're feeling good feeling like you want to support democracy support better elections support these awesome local advocates. Please donate to us at election science dot org slash donate campaigning organizing. Unfortunately, it does take a lot of funding. And that's what we're trying to do here is to provide funding for local people like Troy and Pat and Nate so that they can improve their communities with better elections. Thank you everyone so much for attending. Thank you to our panelists, and we will see you all hopefully at at a future event.