 Today to talk about an incredibly relevant topic as it's midterm election times in the United States I'm Gwen Young and I'm the director of the global women's leadership initiative and the women public service project at the Wilson Center and I'm honored to to moderate today's session and Presentation of the research done by Saskia Brunch and Mocker am I right on did I get your name right? I forgot to ask you before I got up here But I'm delighted to welcome you all here today on the topic of closing the gender gap in US politics lessons from Europe the way today is gonna flow is Saskia is going to present research on a paper that she's done Then we are going to sit down and I will moderate a discussion between Saskia Cynthia and Michelle We'll introduce them in a moment and we will have some Q&A from the audience And so I encourage you to be thinking about some of the really interesting topics that are raised in the paper and other pressing topics that you Have on your mind Saskia Breckenmacher, which is now will now be your name is an associate fellow in Carnegie's democracy and rule of law program and Are reached research focuses on gender conflict and governance as well as trends in civil activism and civil society repression Prior to joining Carnegie Saskia worked as a researcher at the world peace foundation and the Institute for Human Security in Boston Breckenmacher is a graduate of Carnegie's James C. Gayther junior fellows program and gain experience at the Carnegie Europe in Brussels The Friedrich Ebert Stifting in London and your I don't know Europe whom Institute for the European policy and Prague So she's got both the US but mainly a European perspective, which is lovely and on our panel today We have Cynthia Richie Terrell founder of represent women in fair vote And she served as board member in charitable organizations and Quaker institutions including the Americans Friends Service Committee and the Sandy Spring Friends School Cynthia's worked in the area of systems reform in this country and abroad Traveling in 1993 to New Zealand to support that country's successful referendum to adopt a proportional voting system And no doubt is responsible for the fact that the prime minister of New Zealand today as a woman Yes, that is you're about it in 1993 And our other panelists today is Michelle Whitaker and she's a communication strategist with over 15 years of experience in foreign and nonprofit Communications and your expertise is in strategic messaging constituent engagement and media outreach So we're welcome and honored to have you here Michelle, and I'm going to turn it over to you Saskia Related research, so thank you Thank you Gwen for that kind introduction and thank thank you for coming and joining us here today for what will hopefully be an interesting discussion I'll try to keep the presentation relatively short because I want to make sure we have time to delve into some of the policy implications And also discussion of the current focal moment both among our wonderful panelists, but also with all of you So I look forward to your question Before I start I wanted to give a bit of background on the paper itself and where this project came from our Program here at Carnegie where foreign policy think tank and our program the democracy program as traditionally looked at democratic change abroad and Efforts by international actors to support democratic change abroad So this is a little bit new territory for us, but for the past several years We've been thinking that the distinction between Democratic challenges abroad and at home doesn't really make that much sense anymore given that we're seeing a convergence Many parts of the world democracies are suffering from similar challenges and it increasingly makes sense to look at them in a more Comparative perspective, and that's what we've been trying to do And that's also what we think is our comparative advantage as a foreign policy think tank is to try and introduce a bit more of a comparative perspective to current challenges and A democratic problems experience in the United States So this paper on women's representation in the US is really part of a broader series of analysis that we've been working on Trying to introduce both European perspectives, but also broader comparative Perspectives on issues like political party reform election meddling and other issues Now to go back to the paper that we're discussing here today Many of you will know that when it comes to women's representation in politics This is really one area where the US has fallen behind in international rankings In 1997 the US ranked 41st in the world when it comes to representation of women in Parliament now It's a hundred and first so that's quite a significant drop From an already not so great starting point. I Won't spend too much time talking about the statistics as many of you will be familiar with them It's enough to say that they're currently only around 20% of women in Congress Senate and House combined Around 25% in state legislators and the picture is not much better at the local level when we look at governors either And what's particularly striking is that the pace of change has been very slow over the past several years When I looked at the number for state legislators What was striking that the 20% threshold was already crossed in 1993 But now we're still in 2018 at 25% that just hasn't been that much progress Now many of you will have been following the headlines of the past several months that there are many more women running for office now and the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election that's certainly an exciting development and But what I say my paper is that we still have their reasons to remain cautious And that even though it's an encouraging trend It may not be enough to really end the fundamental gender imbalance that we face in US politics and there's several reasons for this First it's not only women who've been politely energized There are a lot of more men running for office, too And that's something that maybe hasn't been reported on as much as it's not as much of a new trend But that means that overall women still don't make up the majority of new candidates and then secondly a Lot of women running in difficult districts against incumbents And we know that in the US incumbents have a very high electoral advantage and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit So it's not impossible to defeat them But it is certainly going to be difficult and then lastly any gains in women's representation are likely to accrue primarily to Democrats And while that's not necessary problem, it won't help address the much more or the bigger Agenda imbalance on the Republican side Now when we look to Europe the picture looks quite different And I don't mean to overstate Positive change. There's still a long way to go even in European democracies I myself am from Germany and Germany's made a lot of progress of the past several years But then in the last election we've seen the number of women in parliament go down again So the battle is not over and gender parity definitely has not been reached But we do see that a number of Western and northern European democracies have been much more successful than the United States The Nordic countries often get pointed to as the main examples like Iceland and Norway and Sweden But also countries like Belgium, like Denmark, Spain, the UK, France have all made significant progress and have come close to crossing that 40% barrier or threshold Similarly in the European Parliament as well Now what's striking when you look at debates around women's representation in Europe that the debate is often quite a different one from the one People are having or women's organizations are having in the United States Here it strikes me that the debate has very much focused on the lack of women running that there aren't enough There's still this big gap between men and women that there are much fewer women than men who make the jump and actually decide to run And that is causing the imbalance that we're seeing in politics When you look at Europe that really hasn't been the focus of the debate In fact, it's been quite difficult for me to find data on so the gap in poor Conviction as it's often called between women and men across different European Democracies as most of the advocacy has focused much more on institutional reforms How can we change political parties and parliaments and institutional incentives to make sure more women get elected? independently from any gap in poor Conviction between women and men there's institutional reasons for that and I'll go into that in a little bit But I think that was quite a striking difference Compared to the debate that is happening here Which has also given rise to a large number of civil society organizations are trying to get more women to run the training candidates Trying to raise funding for them, etc And the argument that I'm making the paper is that those efforts are absolute essential and crucial But they may not be enough that other changes may be needed given the obstacles that women currently face That are not just individual nature, but also more institutional and structural and Specifically I did identify four areas where your US reformers could potentially learn from Reforms and institutional changes that have happened in Europe and this isn't to say that you can simply transplant Transplanned those reforms from Europe to the United States Obviously, there are differences in political culture and institutions that would make that very difficult But they're nevertheless, I think outside perspectives that can be useful to try and identify Potential reform initiatives that might actually work in the US and for which there's already a precedent Particularly at the local level and we'll talk more about that in our discussion So the four areas I highlight in the paper are first of all the electoral system Second party recruitment and the role of political parties third campaign finance and Fourth reforms to make political institutions themselves more gender sensitive and I'll explain a little bit more what I mean by that But first it's worth taking a step back and just briefly recapping what are some of the barriers that women face in US politics Now already mentioned that there's this individual level gap that there just fewer women running for office And there's a whole bunch of research on why that is the case and the socialization role and gender roles and how that all Impacts why women are potentially less likely to see themselves as qualified. I won't go into that But we can if you're interested we can always talk about that in the discussion But I think what's important to highlight is that that's not the only factor They're also certain institutional reasons why it's been more difficult In the United States and first of all as I mentioned the electoral system plays a huge role Comparative research shows repeatedly that women do much better in proportional representation systems and in multi-member districts Then in first past the vote first past the post voting systems like the one that exists in the United States Second incumbents as I mentioned have a much higher electoral advantage in the US than in other Majoritarian systems and definitely much more than in PR systems As a result, there are very few open seats in each election And it's difficult for women to enter the polka system given that most incumbents are male and Then third the American elections obviously a self-finance. It depends heavily on candidates stepping forward themselves and raising money Themselves specifically to make it through the primary stage. That's also quite unusual. It's very different from how the European systems work And while women tend to raise similar amounts of money as men They do face some gender-specific fundraising hurdles, and I'll also come back to that in a little bit So coming back to those four areas first of all electoral reform Most European democracies use proportional representation rules and multi-member districts And a number of European countries actually use mixed electoral systems So they combine some elements of proportional representation with Majoritarian elements as well Germany is one of those countries and what's interesting that is that time and time again You see more women entering the German parliament through the party lists and the PR system Then through the first past the post voting. So this is the difference We see across countries and even within countries where you can hold other factors constant What is this? Why is this the case? So what is it about PR systems? We can get into a complicated discussion of electoral system design And I think we'll leave some of that for discussion as well as we have people here on the panel who are much more expert than I am But we can briefly say that what the research shows is that in multi-member districts and proportional representation systems Parties have just very different incentives than they have for example in the US Because often you will first of all put forward a list of candidates You have an incentive to try and balance the candidates on that list You won't put it forward a list of all men because you're trying to appeal to a broad electorate And then the second issue is also that voters themselves can balance that ticket. They're voting for multiple candidates They don't have to choose between them. So again, they can vote for female as well as male candidates So it's just a fundamentally different system Compared to a US system where the party it's much more decentralized The party in it in so far as it plays a role It really is trying to get the best candidate for a particular district who's most likely to win Rather than thinking about oh, how many candidates how many women with his men are we running across the state of the country? That's just doesn't factor into the equation very much So what does that mean for the US? It's very unlikely that the US will completely abandon its current electoral system switch to proportional representation But what some US reformers have advocated for is potentially Introducing more ranked choice voting in the United States Some of you may already be familiar with that But basically it is a system to try and introduce more proportionality into the US electoral system as it currently exists Without having to switch to a party list system like it exists in some European Democracy so you would maintain elements of the current US electoral system particularly focus on individual candidates and the ties candidates or representatives have to their constituencies while still allowing First of all voters to choose multiple candidates per district potentially But also changing the incentives of parties because in a ranked choice voting system as the name suggests Voters can rank all the candidates in orders of preference and those get aggregated in various ways So that parties in fact have an incentive to run candidates that have broad majority support and appeal to as Much of the electorate possible because you're not just trying to get the first votes, but also the second and third votes of other constituency so It would fundamentally shift the way we think about winning elections And they're already examples of the system functioning in the US at the municipal level There's various cities across the US that have adopted it and there's some evidence to suggest that it benefits women candidates also minority candidates and has other positive effects for example increasing stability in political discourse Also reducing costs of elections because you avoid runoffs So we can discuss more how the mechanics of it work, but I just wanted to lay it out as one way The US electoral system could be changed in a way that kind of mirrors some of the incentives that currently exist in a lot of European democracies The second main area is concerns the role of parties So electoral system design is not the solution to all her problems And we see this because obviously electoral systems often haven't changed over many years And yet we see rapid increases in representation of women over time and a lot of time the reason for that is the adoption of Gender targets or quotas by political parties And most of you will be familiar with the idea of gender targets or quotas. They tend to be quite controversial But often also discussions around them are not necessarily based on evidence or a lot of in-depth knowledge of what they actually look like in practice So in the paper I go into some case studies, especially the UK and Sweden to explain how Quotas were adopted by different parties in those countries and how they played out over time And the effects they've had But here I'll just summarize a few key points that I think are important to know or to remember The first is that in Europe the most common form of quotas are really party-level quotas So they're not national quotas that are forced on all parties It is parties themselves choosing to adopt a quota due to internal or external pressure Second in a lot of cases they started out as voluntary targets often in the 70s and 80s as the women's movement was gaining strength and member women members of political parties were really frustrated that they made up The rank and file of political parties, but they weren't seeing any gains and representation so they started pushing parties to adopt at least some soft quota some soft commitments of running more more Female candidates in future elections, but then often what you see is that there's a strengthening of these quotas over time As women continue to mobilize and also as there's a diffusion effect across parties What happened in a number of European countries is that you had left-wing parties green parties that emerged in the 70s and 80s That adopted more radical quota measures Because they were trying to make a point. We're the party for gender equality We're the ones that are defending women voters and trying to get women into politics And then suddenly that put a lot of pressure on centrist parties for example But suddenly the social Democrats couldn't really claim that they were the ones who were really Helping women get into politics that they were the ones defending women's interests And so you saw a diffusion effect where then suddenly the Social Democratic Party saw an electoral Strategic interests and also adopting some quota measures and you see this even on the conservative side And I think that's quite interesting a lot of right-wing parties in Europe have been very reluctant to adopt gender quotas because similarly this year It doesn't really fit the sort of key ideological premises of a lot of conservative parties But what has nevertheless happened is that as other parties have adopted these measures and the representation of women in these parties has Radically increased they've increasingly been forced to take other measures at least to prove that they don't even need quotas so Trying to put more effort on examining their own recruitment practices Creating other structures that try and get more women into leadership positions because otherwise again There's a sphere of losing female members and losing women voters and you see that dynamic playing out in countries like Sweden the UK Germany and others Then I think the last thing to mention about quotas is that yes, not all quotas are effective There's a lot of variation in design whether they fit with the existing poll constitutions. How much leadership commitment is there really? So it's not the case that you can just implement some sort of soft target and suddenly it will lead to rapid increases in women's representation, but I Never less suggest in the paper that setting some sort of recruitment target On the side of political parties may nevertheless be an important first step as such targets currently don't really exist And when we look at both US main US political parties We see that initiatives party initiatives to recruit more women have been fairly fractured and relatively poorly institutionalized and poorly resourced so there have been various efforts in the In the Democratic Party since the late 1990s and Republican Party a bit more recent But for the most part, they're not very well known People don't know about them It's not clear is not a lot of evidence that a lot of candidates have been recruited through these initiatives And they've not been very well resourced either So perhaps setting a target potentially at multiple levels Would be a first step toward then also developing some sort of more strategic plan about how these targets are supposed to be met Which would probably mean investing more resources into a more institutionalized Initiative to try and develop a strong pipeline of female candidates The third area I discussed in the papers the area of campaign finance This is obviously a hugely contentious issue that's been on the table for a long time in the United States When we look at Europe the picture looks just fundamentally different given that most elections are much more heavily publicly Subsidized and that election costs in general are much lower due to various factors including caps on spending As a result candidates don't have as big of a fundraising burden It's not the case that there are no financial hurdles at all There's quite a bit of evidence that even in Europe women candidates have a harder time raising money and finances can play a role Particularly for women from less socioeconomically advantage background So it does play a role, but it's just not comparable to the role finance plays in US elections In addition a number of European governments have also institutionalized certain types of initiatives by the penalized or incentivized Parties to recruit more female candidates Ireland for example I think has now a rule that if you don't have 30% of your candidates if not 30% of the candidates aren't Or if you don't meet 30% threshold for female candidates and your public subsidies will be cut by Up to 50% so it's quite significant Again, what does this mean for the US? I think there are various potential Implications, I'll just go through them briefly One could envision more party level initiatives to incentivize local level recruitment and also to support women particularly at the primary stage One could imagine Fundraising or funding targets for PACs which play a hugely important role in the current campaign finance world And which the research shows currently underfund women candidates in open-seat races. So this is a Troubling trend given that those are the races that women are most likely to win and then lastly a shift to local Public financing schemes may also be one avenue to incentivize first of all more women to run because surveys show that women feel like They would be more likely to run if elections were publicly financed But also we see from existing states and cities that have some sort of public financing scheme That there tends to be an uptick in the number of female candidates and also candidates from other underrepresented groups That might be another avenue forward even though it is somewhat limited given the limits on campaign finance reform right now at the federal level and Then the last issue I'll address is this question of how do we make our political institutions themselves more gender sensitive? And I think this is something that gets talked about a bit less Then some of the other reforms I mentioned even though it is hugely important and over the past several years several months We've seen all these discussions of sexual harassment for example in legislatures In Congress but also in state legislatures in the US Same issue in Europe where they've been a whole range of scandals of affecting both staffers But also female legislators themselves, but I think this is only a small part of a much broader range of issues Because if we think back, I mean parliaments were not set up for or by women So they tend to be in their structure in this setup fairly patriarchal Institutions and the fact that you now have more women entering these institutions hasn't necessarily changed the way they function And we see this in very basic things like how easy is it actually for Parliamentarians to also have caregiving roles to combine their political careers with family life We think of legislators in Congress as very privileged individuals, but there's so many officeholders across the US in state legislatures at the local level For whom it is quite difficult to combine caregiving roles with local careers unless there are changes in the ways these in the ways These institutions are set up But there are other issues for example How many women actually make it into leadership roles and what are the processes for selecting leaders of important committees For making sure women actually have the power within these legislators legislatures to make a real difference and Then as I mentioned, there's issues of work culture sexual harassment sexism, etc so None of these issues have been solved in European parliaments. They're extremely prevalent and still big issues But they're nevertheless a number of initiatives that I think are interesting and could potentially also be applicable to a US political context First there's a number of parliaments in Europe that have taken steps to for example change their working hours And sure that there's no voting at midnight on Fridays, for example on important legislation, but instead have more limited working hours And making sure plenary sessions end at a certain time have parental leave and childcare options for Parliamentarians who also have families are raising children Some have initiated kind of more comprehensive efforts to just measure and quantify somehow the experiences of female legislators So both the Swedish and the Finnish Parliament have instituted comprehensive studies where they actually surveyed female and male legislators to understand how gender structures they Experiences in these political institutions And that is just the kind of data collection effort that we haven't really seen in the US Neither at the federal nor at the state level to get a better sense of what are the actual barriers and what could be done which really is a first step to then developing more comprehensive plans or Setting up working groups or committees that are really focused on these internal gender equality issues and Related to that a number of European parliaments have set up specific structures that regularly monitor progress that set commitments that hold The institution accountable to its progress So I think I'll end here on this a note and I think we can delve further into any of these issues in our discussion Wonderful Thank you, Saskia, and I love the way we laid it out into this of these four categories And you probably saw a lot of us here nodding because we work in those those categories And sustain the theme that you talked about is really this is about institutions and systems, right? This is you know what I think we really want to talk about today is Let's all assume that that the women are there that they want to be there, right? Let's look at these system signs and they're sort of keeping Keeping keeping this gap alive So I want to start a little bit with the role of the parties, you know specifically and Michelle Maybe I'll turn it to you and and Cynthia to follow to this just the feedback and some of what Saskia said, you know What role and how much of an influence do these parties in the United States play on women's decision to run for office And their chances of success will sort of dive deep a little bit into the role of the party You mentioned quotas and I think one of the things people don't know a lot about quotas is to realize a lot of the quotas in Europe Were party quotas they weren't sort of part of the Constitution or part of the national piece of legislation So Michelle, you know in your experience, what you know, how much what how important is the party? Yeah, so first, thank you everyone for this is a wonderful opportunity to discuss really how we Look and improve our our election system and really envision a 21st century democracy That has women included and as equal members of making decisions and helping to set the Policies that impact all of us. I think when we're looking at Parties and how their their role there's both the recruitment piece So how are they looking at the bench? And I know in some cases it's more, you know Less of them being involved because of the primary system more like, you know Whoever steps up, but there are roles to be played either within the defined party structure or Just in making sure that there are opportunities to train Folks to understand like how do you you know, how do you file for office? How do you get involved when is the primary happening so that they actually know like this is a an option for them? I think it is it's really interesting to think about how the targets within parties can help to Create that additional incentive for other parties to take that action We I think we've seen that both with the Democratic and Republican parties as they've you know seen them institute some Parity measures and in their leadership structure not in recruitment structure And that's kind of fed into them doing that at least when you when you look at some of the leadership coming out But when we're talking about candidates actually being Recruited to run I think they take a step back, you know and in that process But I think that there's an opportunity to say how are we creating a system that actually gives them an opportunity to? to participate gives women an opportunity to know and How to run with what the opportunities are to run and what systems are available and having access to data about what? races are really Competitive and opportunities for women to succeed well and it's not just you know It's about recognizing if we are falling short in one area We need to take action to help to to lift up all all folks and have you know that equal representation So Cynthia what are some of the best practices you've seen and we'll come back to some as ask is research in terms of these parties of what? they can do to really you know bring women in ensure their chances of success right and Yeah, I think that the research on this has been pretty spotty in the United States Frankly, and that's something that that a number of roots and coalition are trying to figure out how to document better What are best practices and and what are some of the things that are replicable models that people can share across? Level state party to federal party, etc. There's certainly a rich history picking up on a thread from what Michelle said in the United States of parties in fact the Republican Party led the way in the teens talking about the idea of Gender quotas for the internal party members, and I'm not sure when the conversation about convention delegates happened I think that was later on the Democrats actually I think picked that up In the 20s and then both parties have expanded the use of gender quotas for their local-level Political leadership for their state parties for their national committees and for their convention delegates So it is an interesting kind of paradox that they get the the internal decision-making Somehow there has been leadership in that area that was pretty impressive I think to say we we acknowledge that gender representation is important and we're gonna figure out rules to institute it we work with a with Hogan levels who's a great pro bono legal team and they Created for us this hundred page document of every quote of rule that every party has adopted in the history of the country It's a mammoth thing my colleague Tony and I are just trying to figure out How do we make this accessible to people practitioners who want to download it and know what can work anyway? So there is this rich legacy in the United States of parties doing that There's certainly an opportunity For party leaders to take on more of a rule role in this and I'm reminded of the Rooney rule in national football where if you're hiring a Coach there's got to be a diverse panel of people you're considering and I think there's a role And now Chuck Schumer has taken that up in the US Senate to say look when we are looking at hiring staffs We're gonna be as We're gonna be intentional around race and I believe We need to do the same thing on gender and I we've everybody has heard me Wonder what can we call that rule and I've tried you know is that the Patsy mink rule or the Kathleen Matthews rule I'm trying to convince her But that same sense of urgency and agency from party leaders to say We are gonna look at this whole spectrum of choices we make through a gender lens and being intentional about that and I'll Give a quick example of an opportunity for a specific reform some countries have what's called a replacement mandate where if Somebody is sitting in office. They commit to making sure somebody is recruited to fill their spot We just saw with Tad Cochran in Mississippi appointed a woman that if I happen to have written and not that telling him to do so the week Earlier, I'm not sure Fingers crossed maybe he was responding somehow But that's the kind of demonstration that gender matters that elected officials can take to say look Right now for example. I also have been pushing Senator Leahy and Senator Sanders to take to make a commitment the public to say we're gonna make sure a woman is recruited to run Not that she wins, but that she's recruited to run when we step down from the US Senate So I think there's leadership at that level as well We talked a little bit about sort of this political will piece of it and says guy want to drill down a little bit on sort of the Consequences, you know in Europe specifically if you don't present this list of candidates I was with an Albanian parliamentarian this week He was saying the parties would just rather pay the fine But a lack of the female candidate than to actually put them there So yeah, your thoughts a little bit more on some of that. Yeah, that's definitely been the case in a number of countries France it's been an issue as well where there are fines if you don't meet a certain threshold and repeatedly parties have preferred to pay The fine which is partly An indication that maybe the sanction isn't high enough, you know And that it's not working very well in the but it also shows the lack of leadership commitment on the side of the party Right, and that's one of the again one of the themes we see time and time again. It's not necessarily Getting the target or the recruitment target of the code as kind of the first step and in all European countries That's been the result of a lot of mobilization on the side of women or you know Them working with partners and party leadership or in the government But it's usually been the first step and then you have to continue advocating for better implementation For making sure it fits institutional context when you see things like that happening and also making sure there's continued leadership Commitment so I I think that's one of the key lessons We see across Europe is that it's not the case that you can just have these targets and then the work is done But you see continued mobilization around them But they're a useful tool for restarting the conversation around each election. Why are these targets not being met? And I think yes, Cynthia and I talk a lot when we talk about it kind of in the US context We try to say it's just part of you know one tool that needs these whole other things with it, right? Yes, is that how we talk about it? Which is great and I want to go to the next the next mechanism because I think this is interesting in terms of the rank choice voting and the Proportional representation and I'm going to start with using this time because you've got brought up the rank choice voting and give Give the audience a sense of you know, what that means? Where is that happening? What states are adopting that? What you know, what does success look like for them? Yeah, it's a fascinating as probably this audience knows we have a system of voting that's based on winner-take-all and That's a relatively Antiquated system at this point given the the rest of the world most countries use some kind of a proportional representation System and that is varied as Sasuke pointed out that can be a mixture of a Geographic-based system and a party-based system some countries have a Straight preferential vote like the Australian Senate in Ireland and Malta, etc. Not to go into too much detail right now happy to answer questions, but the the thing that fair vote and The my my husband who's director of that and I've been working on for a number of years now is this idea that We don't have to settle for that in the United States We don't have to settle for that winner-take-all binary choice zero-sum game Voting system that really incentivizes Insubility that costs a lot of money because of that negative campaigning that leads to plurality winners Meaning somebody who gets elected with only 38% of the vote or 45% of the vote who's clearly not the candidate of the choice of the majority of voters and that Reality has led to a number of jurisdictions adopting ranked choice voting main Notably is the first state to use it They're going to be using it in the June primary and that was because of this history in part of the governor The last I think nine or the last ten gubernatorial candidates or winners that were one with a plurality of the vote Meaning that the majority of people in Maine did not vote for the candidate who took that office, which I think has the We don't have to explain why that's a problem in democracy. So now there are 12 cities or so that use it some use it for mayor some use it for their city councils and what we're seeing is Sasuke pointed out an increase in civility in fact, there was a the Santa Fe New Mexico use it just this month and there was a funny op-ed saying like the most Unheralded civility we've ever seen in this country has happened in this race It was almost alarming that people were trying to see consensus and if we were all running I'd be trying to find out ways in which because I want Michelle's voters to rank me second if I'm running against Michelle Or Glenn's voters to rank me third. So there's a built-in Incentive and it's all about incentives to behave in a more civil way Running civil grassroots campaigns Tends to attract women to the process because that's something that many of us excel at in any case and for outsiders to the political process That's a way in that doesn't require this old boys network and then the the The fact that sometimes as you said primaries and generals are combined means that it costs less to one so Perhaps a lower income woman who wants to run in Oakland, California Which uses ranked choice voting is more likely to run in the first place because she sees that that hurdle is just one election instead Of two elections spanned out over nine months And then the flip side of that is that it fixes the problem with runoffs in a number of states that have these low turnout runoffs after the fact where there's a there's an election and then Some much smaller subset of the population comes back in December or even in January To decide the winner. So Ranked choice voting addresses the spoiler effect in our elections. It addresses the insubility which we I think can all attest to the fact There's in civility now it opens the door for different kinds of candidates because of those things and because of the lower cost and the track record so far is that And of course, there are lots of other causal relationships for this but women make up about 50% of the Elected officials on city councils will drink first voting and the national average is about 25% so that's a that's a pretty different story Sasuke you did talk about the proportional representation You talked about it benefiting women want to go down a little bit sort of building on on Cynthia's comments sort of all candidates like how How does proportional representation and you're looking at Europe, you know, assuming that it's it's similar to the ranked choice There's differences, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's differences in different I mean, there's different types of proportional representation systems Especially differences in how party lists get constructed with sometimes voters being the ones who are actually determined the ranking and sometimes it's set by the parties and There's some evidence showing that the closed list as they called where really this is a party internal process tend to be the ones that most benefit women Yeah, we can talk about why that is but Generally, I think the consensus is that close party less than proportional representation system with large districts tend to benefit women most I think South Africa is often used as an example where that's been incredibly effective Because yeah, if you are a party putting forward a list of candidates, I mean, maybe 40 years ago It was acceptable to have 10 women on that list, but nowadays it's no longer acceptable You'll face a lot of pressure particularly in a multi-party system when you're competing against parties that may be doing a much better job So even if you are ideologically opposed to quota as you still have some incentives to try and balance not just to get women on that list But also just in general kind of try to reflect the population There are obviously issues with these lists and what happens in a lot of countries is that women get to the bottom of the list And they're not ranked in the top positions That creates problems and that's also why multi large districts tend to benefit women most because then you go deeper into the list But that's also something that these quota measures have tried to address By trying for example, Sweden now has a zipper system for the Social Democratic Party where they alternate female and male candidates on the list So you don't end up having this problem where all the women are somehow magically at the bottom of the list Or you know or at least making a commitment that a certain number of the top 10 candidates will be women there's various ways of doing it but to ensure that Actually that translates into actual representation in Parliament in the end I think it's interesting and and I think because as you brought it up in terms of the quotas both Party quotas in the United States starting with the Republican Party and sort of pulling in the conservatives In Europe, which are arguably not the same parties, right? But I'm going to start with Cynthia and Michelle. We're going to pull you into the You know the trend this year these these women that are running for office And it's not just the trend that I think it's the trend on sort of the who's in office tends to be this democratic surge Right, and I think when you look back over over history in the US It's a fair amount of democratic women, you know, what what it what it explains that imbalance We are good Like I wish we you know we had a week to spend just talking about that there was certainly a time We just did a chart in fact that looks at the whole span of 1917 1916 to 2018 and Women's representation the first woman elected of course was a Republican from a multi-seat district I might add in Montana, which was heavily Democratic the Democrats were like oh my god We can't have a Republican woman getting elected So they gerrymandered her out while she was in office Switch back to single-member districts and she wasn't able to win again, which is true Well, that's the challenge that Republican women face in many respects today. So for the long arc of history through the 1900s women women from both parties occupied about the same percentage of seats There was a sudden change in about 1970 where Democrats I think in large part due to the Virginia feminist movement and a greater sense of women's role and importance and representation and sense of equity around politics the Democratic Party probably was more open and took more measures to advancing women's representation and the Voting Rights Act helped a lot a lot of the black majority districts in the south and elsewhere where women were encouraged to run for those and Have been successful in those offices and then we saw In that you know that that that year way back then in the last century the year of the woman that happened and somehow We still we might be back Year two It was that right after a Census and of the district in process so more Democratic women were elected in large part of is a response to the political climate of that era and then of course we've seen this Increase in the support structure emerged and Emily's list and many many state groups that mobilized women to run on the Democratic side and there hasn't been for some of the reasons that I think sarski had touched on that in terms of the Like the intellectual frame for the Republican Party that has it hasn't been part of that frame to say we're gonna elevate women Specifically because they're women they may be elevated because they are good leaders or Like the chair of the Republican Party right now as a woman So it's not as though they haven't made some strides in that arena But there's nothing like the emphasis on it on the Republican side as there is on the Democratic side And coupled with that is this problem of winner-take-all primaries in this country That not only of course in terms of status quo incumbents win and when you know there can be a lot of great Candidates running as there are now, but when the rate of incumbency is 98% It's super hard to see any turnover and maybe the rate of incumbency now will only be 85% but that still means that the people who are in office This year are gonna be in office next year no matter what so the incumbent in fact right and then our Current zero-sum game winner-take-all politics makes it hard for moderate women to win those Republican primaries and so there's very little wiggle room for them to be successful either at the federal level or the state legislative level I think sadly and I think I agree with Cynthia on that and I particularly on like the current political Moment that we're in and how that's motivated More Democrats to obviously run in kind of response to the current administration and other things that are going on But if you take a step back, it's really not There's part of it that yes is about like the current administration, but it's also a Question of what kind of democracy do we actually want and if you're looking at You know members of Congress who are meeting to discuss health care and it's all men Talking about it. How as a woman? Do you know if you're if it needs that you have are actually going to be addressed or they're going to be? You know cut out of the process. I mean, you know, it's often said in Organizing and when you're working in terms of helping to get a seat at the table that if you're not at the table You're on the menu So oftentimes if we're looking at this and we're saying, you know The people who are making these decisions aren't maybe there for our interest or have our interests in mind We have to question that and that's what that's ultimately what it is It's like if we're seeing that happening on health care. We're seeing that happening on a living wage people are Demanding that they have representatives who are actually about working for their interests not the interests of you know Corporate or big money and so you have to change that dynamic and that's why you start looking at reforms Like rank choice voting or public financing, which I will talk a little bit Soon but like those things are about How do we address this the sense that you have what you're seeing in terms of who's making the decisions and whether or not those decisions are actually related or Working for my best interest as well as the interests of my community and that motivates people to be like this reform Has the potential to address one of those issues But I also want to just stress that we can't look at reforms in a singular way Because if we look at that you're we're not really addressing the Systemic issues that are impacting our democracy if you were injured in an accident and you broke your your arm and your leg You wouldn't be happy if the doctor just mended your your arm and said you can leave it's like I can't walk anywhere I can't go right but oftentimes what we've and sometimes when we've looked at reforms. We've gone with one reform and People think like okay We'll just do that one form and they haven't looked at the larger vision like we have to make sure that we're addressing the systemic issues within Political structures. We need to create public financing systems. We need to have ranked-choice voting so that that Everyone's vote counts and it and it matters on an equal level like Instituting all of those and we're seeing them that that kind of holistic view of reforms happening in Washington They they passed a suite of reforms on voting rights recently We see that in New Jersey They're also considering that and that's all related to the fact that we can't we can't look at this as a single reform issue in terms of addressing Women's representation issues and at larger like making sure that we have a voice on the issues that matter in most in our communities It's about creating that holistic vision of democracy I want to pick up on that thread real quick and start with you just getting the theme of when you said a couple really good things I mean first this is a holistic it's sort of systems reform as we were talking about the second is The notion of your government actually looking like the people Right. Also the notion of the the government's delivering policies and systems that benefit the communities Arguably not just the US but across the globe in the past 18 months or two years these Elections everyone's going wait. We missed somebody, you know, we missed a group of people or how did how did this happen? How did breads it happen? You know, how did Italy happen? How did the United States happen to ask you what were you finding in terms of sort of this discussion about sort of changing the systems and Relation to sort of feeling like we may have missed the middle or whatever the the phrases are that people are using Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean I think when I mean the first question is kind of like why does this even matter like all of this? Why do we worry about having women in government? And yeah, as you say, it's not just I see it as very much interlinked It's not just about getting more women in government That's one aspect of a broader problem of representation that we're facing and that affects People of color that affects people from that are not super rich and mega wealthy in the United States, for example, right? So there's all sorts of problems of underrepresentation of which the underrepresentation of women is one aspect and has some Specific drivers, but it is also linked to these other issues. So I think looking at it holistically We may see some commonalities We wouldn't think that for example the sort of surge in right-wing movements Movements in Europe is linked to the representation of women. It might even be a backlash in some ways, right? But in a way they speak to a broader problem of like who of who are the people in government? Who do they represent and do people feel a connection to them and what are we missing? When we don't have more of those linkages and when we don't when people don't view themselves as represented I think there's a lot of interesting research out there What it actually what both sort of just the descriptive representation does in terms of people's Political participation, which is quite interesting that yes, it does matter to see yourself represented. You're more likely to be engaged in politics You know to to follow those debates if you feel like they're led by people who are like you have similar experiences to you And then there's obviously more Specific effects when we look at what why does it matter to have women in government? You mentioned the health care debate There are certain legislative priorities that we tend to see women advancing Now in maybe a hundred years that won't be the case anymore because those would be Priorities for everyone, but at the moment there's still certain issues like gender equality like Parental leave like childcare that women tend to advance and that tend to get left out of the discussion If you don't have the women women in government and in a broader level It's also about kind of do you even have people who think about the gendered impact of legislation? Even if it's foreign policy or national security increasingly we see that we miss a whole lot of Important information if we look at it in a gender-blind way rather than thinking about okay How is not only how does this affect women as a group? But also how does it affect men as a group and how does it affect gender relations? And I think that's when we also miss a lot of this resentment that's happening among some Male communities in the US for example if we don't have a gender lens and don't understand these developments Both among women and men and relations between women and men. We miss a whole lot of what is happening I think that goes to your fourth point about the institutions being gender sensitive and you see that with the Swedish feminist foreign policy You see that with Canada and Trudeau in the trade You're only just one that the indigenous rights and sort of the equitable inclusive economic growth argument So let's come to the the thing that we've all been sort of talking about and bringing up in each of us is the financing mechanisms and what are You know, what are some of the you know, what are the best practices? What are some of these sort of financing? You know, there's a huge disparity in the United States and Europe generally right which I think seska you brought out incredibly well What what are some of the best practices to solving the cost and Michelle may they'll start with you or what you know Yeah, what would be a way to get around that? I think one is publicly find it the publicly funded elections which There are a number of jurisdictions across the country that are using them Both Cynthia and I live in a jurisdiction that Montgomery County where they have introduced public financing and we have a record number of candidates who are running for office and at the county level under that program and A significant number of women who are who are taking that option to run in the program and so, you know, whether it's through a matching system which exists in Montgomery County or a grant system like you have in Connecticut where you each kind of gets a certain amount of funds like there's or vouchers which exists in Seattle, which is a great program Which you know voters actually have these dollars that they're giving to candidates in this in the form of vouchers There's different ways that you can help increase again participation and have voters feel like they have a voice in in setting the agenda in terms of who we want to represent our communities and You see women who are able to run and run on platforms that are about really critical social issues that may not be at the forefront So public financing is a key part of it on the other side of like financing pieces are related to like how we get Packs or institutions involved in this process, and I know Cynthia has done a lot of work and some research on that So I want to pass it on to her Thank you. I'll just say Michelle's The campaign manager for incredible candidate who happens to be her sister also, so She knows a lot about Implementation first-hand experience right yeah, and which I guess I'll say just is a great Example, and I think Sasuke's points about quotas really raised this challenge is that We can talk about ideas we can pass ideas, but then we have to implement them once they are and we have to Create a good communications package around them. We have to make sure that people are actually Fulfilling their pledges and they're accountable to them. We have to measure where they're successful or not So anyway, I think that's tremendously important, but yes the pack Research that we did several years ago looked at all the membership packs and the rate at which they give to female and male candidates and the extent to which I think that one of the lead findings I think that you mentioned was that that There's a discrepancy in the amount of money that goes to women money and open-seat races which are the very races They're most likely to win and that's particularly true for Republican women who are really targeted with the most negative pack money of any group demographic group in the country, so that's another reason the Republican women are done, but one thing that I have been working on and Next time I'm here. I hope we'll report more successfully is Establishing relationships with packs who are willing to take on a commitment to a certain amount of money or person percentage of money that increases over time to make sure that women candidates are getting as much money as male candidates, so There's some national packs that are considering that right now, and I think at that It's one of those tipping point issues where I suspect if if we can convince five to ten of the The leading packs to do something. It's this contagion effect Other packs will feel pressured to do the same and particularly say if the National beer wholesalers association Takes a pledge to be more gender equitable in their giving I would hope that the Sierra Club and some of other packs some of us whole deer would come and do the same Exactly So I think there's a lot of power in To Michelle's point we have to be employing all of the strategies we can all the time as long as they're Pragmatic and that we can test them, but we see the results of public financing And we can see the results of rank choice voting and fingers crossed We'll see the results of this pack target as well. Okay. What do you have to add to that in terms of public financing? in a sort of more Equitable distribution through a pack or a party I suppose of the resources that women get, you know What what more do you want to add to that in terms of innovative ways? Yeah, I think I mean the key points have been made I think it's really important to separate that these bigger issues with campaign finance and money politics, right? That are huge issues and that will continue to be huge issues And there's a wide range of organizations that are working on them and it's really crucial work But then we can also think about yeah What are the most intermediate like sort of intermediate steps that we can take and I think the pack example is a good one where? You know, it's not ideal and but this is one way in which these Organizations that have a lot of influence can use their money more effectively So yeah, I don't think I have much more to add than practical and tangible. Yeah, that's right out We see the results. Yeah, I'll just add one quick thing the party leadership Packs play a huge role in determining who's a viable candidate in the country Yeah, if the if the party leadership packs would agree to some of these targets Then I think that we would begin to see a change at the state level as well And that's that's where that leadership and intent thing this has to be a really exactly and who are the gatekeepers in our community Who gets to say who's running in Montgomery County and and who's a viable candidate and who's not I would also say that you you have an opportunity. We have an opportunity if we're members of some of these organizations that do endorse and and support candidates to To pressure them internally like there's there's internal pressure that we can put on to say there's a demand for this We want to see this from our organization if we're members of that and we have to look at that as well Like if we're we can't leave it up to just saying like let's hope that they do it the leadership comes up with it It's so huge. We have no role exactly I we have a role to play and we can apply a lot of pressure whether it's within our organizations or Democracy as a whole to say like these reforms matter and we want to see them And we want to make sure that we have elected leaders who are going to help make sure that they happen and that there's good implementation Yeah, well on that we've got a lot there that I think I'd love to turn it over to the audience And I think we have microphones if I'm correct We do and why don't we start right back here? And if you could identify yourself and where you come from that also helps us know who's in the audience and I am from Montgomery County, Maryland, and I am frustrated in Montgomery County, Maryland I'm a member of the women's democratic club and while we have public financing I wanted I guess a little clarification on what's considered an incumbent because we often have lots of candidates that are Male that have been in one position and then they go to get elected for the other positions so they have a lot of name recognition so then when a woman tries to come in and Be elected They already have the name recognition like you mentioned one of the candidates We have a woman running for county executive and we've never had a female county executive And we even haven't had a woman run in 30 years and all of the PACs are endorsing male candidates So I don't know how you overcome that do we flood the PACs with women? How do you because even some of the women have like the Sierra Club for example one of their women wrote a bio of how they needed more women in political positions and in leadership and then the Sierra Club Backs predominantly males. So I just I'm very frustrated. So any suggestions would be helpful. Yeah, I mean I would say It I think Montgomery County will be an interesting Study as the public financing continues about, you know, what additional reforms are needed and how PACs like or organizations like Sierra Club, they have were involved in actually implementing Public financing and promoting it in in Montgomery County and across Maryland. There's a big effort to increase Public financing for other offices general assembly and things like that. I think again, it goes to like the pressure Internally within an organization, but also how we hold not only our leaders accountable, but our organization So if if we have organizations who are you know saying that that these are values that they really lift up But when you look at what they're they're doing or who they're endorsing and you're saying that doesn't seem to Match there's an opportunity for all of us to raise our voice and raise our concern because if you don't like they have to I mean, there's an opportunity for them to respond and say why is this and to ask that question and to really say, you know If this isn't going to be reflected in the leaders that you're endorsing How do we achieve gender parity in Montgomery County or Maryland or the country as a whole? And then they have to I mean it's part of them having a responsibility to answer that and say how they're going to live into that that reality or live into the value that they have about It gender and women's representation. So I think like that's I mean, it's a hard piece I'll say my my sister was running. She wrote an equally an op-ed to on On women's representation and how many of the organizations were conducting their endorsement process because we have We're seeing that in terms of the numbers of how many men have qualified for public financing in the system Which is they've qualified at a higher rate than women have qualified You know, we've seen like they're getting more endorsements So there's all these things where we can't again look at one reform and say that that's going to be the solution But we can't we can't also allow within the process to say we're not we're just gonna wait and see what happens We have an active voice to say now like here's how we can start to challenge this and see what what happens and motivate other voters or other members of institutions to take some action and be responsible for how their How they have a real impact on the election. So Thank you very much. My name is Mary Noss. Tim. You're a member of represent women. Thank you for this wonderful gathering and some of the Research that has come out is extremely useful for us. I wanted to ask you if you have you brought up something about Even when there is a penalty associated with not Including people on the list parties are willing to Pay the penalty Why is that? Is it because the penalties are not high enough? What reasons do they give is it because the candidates are not there because that might be useful to know in terms of supporting Or dealing with the issues. It's one question. And then maybe another question that you know Michelle you brought up the the issue with parties being able to represent or putting candidates up Oftentimes what what we hear is that even when we put in candidates and the women are in the position of power We don't have the evidence that the decisions or the policies that are being implemented Have at least in the US. We don't have the data that shows that there's going to be a big difference Is this something that we're doing? We're trying to find we're trying to find the data that shows what happens when there's actually women are more represented in office Because that would be something that would be useful to make a case for a more diverse and fair representation So I would say that we definitely need more research on this and Cynthia They've done research when I used to work at Fair vote and the research we did on the impacts of representation with ranked-toys voting and looking at San Francisco in the Bay Area where they've had ranked-toys rating for over 10 years We see that there's obviously been an increase in the number of women who are actually Holding office and then there I think there needs to be more studies on like what kind of policies do you see if there's a shift in policies using example of public financing one thing that we saw when when public financing was introduced in Connecticut that it was introduced at a time when they were facing some serious crisis around financing and scandal related to that the introduction introduction of that created a flood of new candidates who were running who were More representative of different communities than they both they had before Latinos as well as women who were able to run and Within the I think the first or second year of implementing it those new leaders who came through public financing introduced a bill to cut off a a Package that where all the bottle receipts were going back to the beer distributors and instead said the money collected from that It's actually been going to fund programs in the state. Similarly. They did work on health care reforms and Other legislation around immigrants and making sure that immigrants were welcome in the community So we need to do more research of that in different places to see like what's what kind of correlations? Can we see with this and we're not saying it's a one-to-one or anything with that? but do we see any shifts in how people are one engaging on the issues and What policies are coming out of that? And I think again where you have communities where there's more civil discussion on rank choice with rank choice voting We're having more of a civil discussion It's about the issues and the policies and like how how do we move forward in our community? to create the vision that people really want and that's That's kind of a new dynamic that we need to encourage with all the reforms that we see and you know We do need a lot of more studies because most of them are very We don't have enough data on like what's going on in certain jurisdictions yet, so yeah, I just to amplify what Michelle is saying I it's all we it's To a certain extent I say it's a leap of faith I mean that data just doesn't exist because there's nowhere in the United States that women are a majority of the legislature So we just can't possibly tell we won't know we won't know until we're at that spot. And so I think we need to find other compelling Messaging around the the need to have women in democracy because that's what makes democracy strong period And that's of the intent of you know going back to John Adams having Congress be a portrait of the people in miniature we're not yet a portrait of the people of miniature and So I I I think that in some context The answer to your question is very important And I suspect that they're the data does exist in a more of a bus way in European countries and some of the African countries for example It's very clear that women have had in who have larger majorities and legislatures a profound impact on economic decisions and on security and peace and so forth but at the same time a Map or henseth about needing to have that in the United States because I feel like the Simple message that representative democracy depends upon everybody being represented should be sufficient And so it's a and we don't we don't have anything to measure yet because there's nowhere women have at least 45% of any Legislative body in the United States so that's I guess that's sort of a mixed out garbled answer but I think and I think you know That that representative democracy in and of itself, but I think also you can you can borrow some of these examples from sort of whether It's the 12 to 28 trillion that they Kinsey said in terms of economic growth if women are equally participating Some studies of 6% GDP growth in the governance space You know, I've heard other people say, you know, it is a correlation right not a causation on a one-on-one But have you ever asked that of man, which I think goes back to But that goes back to Michelle's comment about the policies and what you're seeing your government do and one of the things and Saskia turn it over to you on the quotas But one of the things that I've seen in some of my my work in Europe is this trust in government, right? So that the European government in a broad swap have these more progressive policies Whether that's family leave policies are more progressive But there's this notion of the trust in the government and when you have a trust in government There's a lot of other things you ride out better as an economy or in terms of sort of peace and stability When you when your government looks like you and you think it's doing a good job And the minute it doesn't you don't write out some of these bumps along the way And so you sort of pull in the thinking I would argue from other other sectors But it that sort of dovetails nicely with why do people pay the fine versus, you know, put more women there I mean I think you you said it correctly. I think often the argument you hear is oh We just didn't have enough qualified female candidates who couldn't find them women. Just didn't want to run Yeah, I think those arguments the same ones you are sometimes you hear you hear there as well I think the reality is though that I mean in a country of 60 million people or so that just you know You it is surprising that it seems to be more of a problem Maybe up recruitment of Google culture within the party of who gets promoted and who gets to advance within those party structures Then just that you just can't possibly find any women. I mean, yeah part of the problem is probably the fines are maybe not high enough, but it also I mean Fundamentally speaks to a bigger problem, right? It speaks to a lack of commitment on the side of some of the male Leadership and you see still a lot of ideological resistance Among male party members not just in countries like France also in other countries I see this in Germany as well, especially among conservative parties But also more broadly that there's these that this idea that this is not meritocratic That you're sort of putting women ahead of more qualified men or somehow giving them a leg up That it kind of cuts against normal meritocratic practices Now it's a huge assumption that our normal political system is based on meritocratic practices, right? Which it isn't there's all sorts of kind of inequalities and privilege built into it But I can see why it would look to people like why are you giving these women? more of a chance and sort of seeing it as a zero-sum game rather than something where everyone can participate if they're good enough and You know and that where you have to have some mechanisms to address these structural and historical inequalities I think that's often not recognized. It is interesting though that there has been some research I think both in the UK and in Sweden looking at okay Who are these women who gets elected to quotas and consistently they find they're just as qualified if not more Than the non-coda counterparts and I think one study in Sweden, which was quite amusing Even found that the quality of the male candidates increased significantly if you think about quality in terms of qualifications and constituency outreach and things like that because there was more competition for so Seeing it as kind of anti meritocratic. I think that doesn't really correspond to the evidence that we actually see But I think those are still some of the arguments is here Yeah My name is Lynn Olson, I can assure you we have no gatekeepers in Montgomery County or wouldn't have 38 candidates running for four seats But that's what I want to ask you about how would rank choice voting or proportional representation? Effect that race and help the women candidates win For this yeah, so So in Montgomery County for those who don't know like the it's a nine council County council and there's four at-large seats and there are a total of it's 33 Democrats and Five Republicans who are running for that. So we have a Democratic primary that's coming up And so within that that pool of 33 right now the way that we Vote you're voting for your up to four candidates. So again, it's this it's an at-large It's a plurality system that still has the same impact of either having split votes or these Weird outcomes in terms of you're you're still trying to get to 50% But you know with the especially with this size of the field It's it's going to be I think we're gonna see some Crackering in terms of how people are voting and and who they're who they're supporting in the race Ranked choice voting would definitely benefit this race. This is I mean This is the ideal case for it in Montgomery County within Tacoma Park. We have ranked choice voting already. They the county has Been people have asked for this several times and they don't they haven't implemented it I'm hoping that with seeing the Interest in this race that there's going to be more of a discussion about how we can actually implement this in the future if we had the option of ranking the candidates instead of Just voting for the for or or not voting for any at all I think you would actually be able to see how the both the women in the race But other candidates who might be minority candidates who don't have the same record name recognition, but do have a large Support base in what another part of the county East County or up County would actually benefit from having their voice heard because that's the other issues like oftentimes When you're when the outcome seems to reflect only a certain region of the of the county, so that would again really help There's there's also the issue of when you look at it historically Overall at large districts or areas disadvantaged Minority candidates who are running for office and we've seen that that's been challenged and those districts have been changed in the past And so I I'm very curious and I wanted to see how this plays out in our county because I think this could be another case to say Like look, this is we have a majority minority County 54 percent minority County Depending on how the outcome of the candidates who come through the primary if it doesn't reflect that we have to seriously ask Questions about the system because we can't say it was like oh there weren't any viable candidates So we didn't hear from them. I'm like you there's there's some really great candidates running not only my sister But they're really great candidates who are running and they're this system is going to disadvantage them the current system that we have Yeah, and it is just a breathtaking example of how having ranked choice voting would do everything that Michelle just said so I think one of the things we're really looking for is energy around change and We've testified in Annapolis. We've testified in Montgomery County and And frankly incumbents Immediately begin to game it and wonder and and the you know the primary opposition is I'm not sure that I could win a majority and it requires me to actually have the majority support So I mean like if that's not a good indication of where incumbents heads are Their fear is that they don't have the support of the majority of voters Well, I would say well if that's your fear then it either may be time to change the way you behave in office and how responsive you are So you can get that support or support the system and let's test out whether you can get a majority Well, that's a that's a Yeah, yeah, well, let's talk afterwards for sure But the they're different software. Yeah, there were 38 candidates for mayor And how many could you rank three? I think three three it's been a hardware and software issue with the Voting equipment up until now. We now we've advanced and Dominion Which owns a large number of the voting machines in the country is Certified to do any number of rankings. So Santa Fe You could rank all of them. I believe I don't know that anyway So that's so that's a rule that would have to be figured out in Montgomery County But it might be possible limited to eight or whatever it is a rank a certain portion which actually forces exactly get along But also then it's right. Yeah, yeah, right scope Yes And I think there's some interesting questions there that I don't know necessarily What the best practices on but after that? Large field in Minneapolis They raised the bar to qualify to be a candidate and I think there's some downsides to that But there may be some upsides to that as well. Well, that and that was partially the filing fee was $50 so it was it was really inexpensive to run and file for the raise And so they did raise the bar on that I think that did have an impact on that Yeah, but you still had a number of candidates who are yeah I wanted to pick up on one thing that Michelle said because I think it's an overlooked part of the problem of the way that people live is that Fortunately, not every there's not intent. There's not Complete segregation in our neighborhood. So there may be Pockets of different communities that are spread out across the county Korean Americans or Vietnamese Americans or Somali Americans or Pro development Democrats or whatever they may be and the the beauty of a ranked system is that allows candidates who share Who represent those voters interest a campaign across a broader area? With no risk that they're gonna spoil a vote but then and let's say in a community Vietnamese Americans make up eight percent but not enough to necessarily win a candidate per se But candidates know that that's a sizable portion of the electorate whom they have to be Responsible to and though that smaller constituency has an opportunity to say if you want our vote You've got to come and listen to what we have to say come to our community and hear our needs and then Candidates going forward once elected know Where their votes came from in essence and that in order to get reelected They have to actually do a good job serving the people who got them in office and it allows I I think and this is perhaps the thing That I like the best, but that scares incumbents the most. It's a more fluid and dynamic situation so that People evolve the interest groups cluster and move and it's not like oh hear those voters Who think this way over here and hear those voters and and I'm gonna take them for granted But these people seem to be on the move so I'm gonna try to sew them up They're really Responding to the interests of the voters and the voters themselves It's I like to talk now about how these are really voter-driven systems voters have the choice and they have powerful powerful Meaningful votes in every election, which is not something we see really at any level in American democracy I was into that notion of sort of reflective democracy of what you're looking at both in terms of people and policies I think we have time for one or two more questions if there are And I'll just say like Cambridge is an example of a the city council they use ranked choice voting for electing their Council members and again, I don't think they've seen a large field like we have right now in Montgomery County But again, they have a very diverse council It's and I think you know again looking at these different systems and as we have more time to Have more data to kind of see the impact of this We're gonna see how combining Public financing ranked choice voting Even some redistricting reform or the components of that help to create what we really want to see in democracy Where we have legislators who are working in our best interest and really engaging with us in the conversation In ways that we haven't seen recently whether you're talking about Republicans or Democrats Is that we have very low voter turnout in the primaries so out of 645,000 voters only 80,000 turned out in the 2014 primary and the average voter was a 60 year old white woman So how do we incentivize more people to come out and vote and do you think rank voting would do that or some of the Other interests that you talked about and I'd like to use that question So sort of kind of come down the panel and that's closing comment raise right because I think that's a little bit of a question Of how can the system engage the voters and talking about circle, Michelle You're talking about you look like your people who people are engaged they vote and can really create that that dialogue So I don't know why don't we start with Cynthia and move down to Saskia? Sure The the numbers show us from the 2017 Minneapolis and St. Paul elections and now from Santa Fe and from Bay Area elections that the rate of turnout has gone up Normal than average in in those jurisdictions and we see that as a very encouraging Trend and from some of the qualitative interviews that we did the voters They felt like they they knew their vote was going to count over 90 percent had a vote that they that led to some sort of representation, which is what keeps a voter engaged in the process. So I think that that's that's a Just week it's demonstrable We can say wow turnout is up in the cities that use ranked choice vote and there's not you know I know the the people who like to Question things would say oh, there are other reasons like well, sorry, you know, it's a good coalition Yeah, I mean participation is key and and with when you're talking about ranked choice voting And then you also have things from like public financing where there's more incentive you you as a voter are now like invested in Multiple candidates. So that investment should translate into you going to the polls and getting your friends to go to the polls and say We need to vote for these candidates. So I think again We need to be if if we have an issue with Participation which we do not only in Montgomery County, but across the United States whether we're talking about primaries or general elections Then we need to be looking at all the strategies that are available to us to increase participation And if we're seeing that Certain communities aren't aren't as engaged. How do we get engaged and evaluate what what isn't working in the system? And really bring forward those reforms and create the demand across the country for reforms like ranked choice voting for public financing for structures and within our system to allow for women and any women and men to have the Caregiving needs or other needs that they need to be able to be effective leaders in their Respective areas we need to be saying that these are the things that we want so that we have that reflective democracy And we have the ability to do that now. There's many reforms to commit now Many that will take a couple years to see but if we start doing that now We're gonna be so amazed in the next four years. What kind of democracy we actually have Maybe the last reflection and then sort of the voter engagement in European. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting I think the turnout question is an interesting one and it connects well to this issue I mean, there are the reasons why I turn out in the US is lower on average than across European democracies Although there have been also some negative trends. It's kind of varied in European Democracy in some countries been going up and some it's been going down. So it's a bit hard to find a general pattern But what we do see is now when turn up goes up like in the last UK elections because young motorists turn out to vote They really carried up to the Brexit road They went out and they mobilized and I think that speaks to the to the question and when young people Voters they want to feel excited about the candidates they're voting for right That's what brings people out to vote is that they feel like they have issues that they care about and they see Canada's are representing these issues. So I think the turnout question to me does connect to also who's running and How excited are the voters about who's running? Obviously, that's not just about the gender It's also about the issues they stand for but it's about having a diversity of Canada's running, right? I think that really is an important tool not the only one but one important school to get people more excited about So this has been a great great discussion about sort of not just the midterm elections, right? And who's going to win but but what democratic participation looks like right what democracy looks like what systems and so forth So I I would like to thank the panelists I would like to encourage all of you to go online your paper is currently online as I understand and and really engage around this Because I think ending on this sort of how do you get more voters and how do you get higher voter turnout? Right to sort of complete that circle of truly engaging with with your democracy and your community is incredibly important Cynthia Michelle saskia. Thank you for your time today