 I'm Janice Perriket. I'm VP of Development and represent us. I am so pleased to have you with us today for our national strategy call on democracy in the time of COVID. I've got with us our two co-founders, Josh Silver and Joshua Graham Lynn. Okay, Joshua, let's share your screen, please. All right, well, this is the awkward part of the presentation where I have to click a bunch of buttons in the right. Here we go. All right, democracy in the time of COVID. It was really wonderful to do such a warm introduction, especially because the first slide in my deck is this one that I'm sure many of us have seen recently. And it's, it's horrible and shocking to look at what's happening in the rest of the world versus how our country is responding to COVID. And we all know it, but they have to just say it. That's not just a chart, right? That is people's lives. And we have the embarrassment of being the country in the world with the most coronavirus deaths. And lest you think, hey, baby, I'll just move to Europe. Well, sorry, they're not even letting us in anymore because America is behaving so badly. Meanwhile, amidst that crisis, we're trying to run an election. And of course, that's gotten really messy. This photo is from Wisconsin. And so what we're going to do is spend the next 20 minutes or so just trying to make sense of this mess. And I'm going to break it down to three areas with Josh's help. The first one is the big picture, our failed response to coronavirus and other things. What's really going on there? Number two, the short-term crisis of the 2020 election. We're going to talk to you what we're doing about that. And then number three, the bigger strategy of how we can actually solve all of it. So starting off with the first one, our failed response on coronavirus. I'm going to show you two numbers. The top one, I'm sure you're familiar with, it's 128,000. That's the number of people in the United States that have died from coronavirus, a huge percentage of which are a result of our failed policies as a country. Now, 282, that's the number in the country of South Korea, the whole country that have died from coronavirus. And when we look at what's happening there, I'm going to draw your attention to the subhead of this article. It says that the South Korean government's approach to combating the coronavirus, quote, makes the American one look absurd. And lest you think that's about our government that we happen to have today. Let me show you this from political. They look back over three administrations to find that lessons had been lost, programs were canceled, budgets were defunded. And when you start to piece that together, maybe you start to believe that our failure on coronavirus is actually exhibit a of a much bigger failure of our political symptom of our political system. And like so many of these other issues we care about, they are all symptoms of the bigger political system failure, regardless of what it is you care about. The response to COVID-19 is so similar to our response on so many of these other things. They're all traced back to the political system failure. Now to be clear, when I say political system failure, it's not Donald Trump. It's not Nancy Pelosi. In fact, we don't point fingers at any individual in Congress or even the body of Congress itself. And we certainly don't say that it's all about Americans inability to even talk to each other anymore which is certainly a huge problem. It's not really what this is. And to explain that, I want to talk to you about this quick Princeton study they found that in fact, there is statistically near zero impact upon public policy for average Americans. A more recent study published in Harvard Business Review found virtually no correlation, none between an elected official serving the will of the people and then getting reelected. And with that whole thing together, you see that it's actually a much bigger system failure that we're talking about here and that's what represent us was founded to address the system failure. How can we solve America's political crisis. Now since our founding we have quickly become America's leading fiercely nonpartisan organization for democracy. We're here to fix the system and what does that mean. It means that instead of no impact, we the people average Americans would have meaningful impact on public policy we would have a direct correlation between an elected leader serving us and getting reelected. Now for those of you that have been with us for many years, working on these issues you know the areas that we work with I'm going to do a very quick review just to set the table here so this comes down to ending gerrymandering with independent commissions and the like. Introducing ranked choice voting to reduce the spoiler effect give voters more control and more voice and where they vote automatic voter registration and vote by mail which we will talk about later. And of course campaign finance and ethics reforms. Now I'm not going to get into the details here but what I want you to think about is that each of these reforms fundamentally shifts the incentives within our system. Our leaders are incentivized to serve us again and not incentivize to keep the system in place the way it is. If you'd like to do a deeper policy dive. I invite you to go to anti corruption act.org anti corruption act.org. You can read all about the policies and how impactful they are there. Another focus on today is actually how do we make change and so I want to let you know that since 2012 this movement, thanks to many of the people on this call has racked up more than 120 wins to fix politics since 2012. In fact, in 2018, we helped win the most in American history. These are pro democracy anti corruption reforms in 2019. There were 19 more which was the most in history for an odd year. And to be clear, these are happening in red states, blue states and purple states all across the country. Now, coming into 2020 we saw tons of momentum across the movement. There are now 17 campaigns to fix the crisis. This was a much higher number pre COVID, but because the legislators are now overwhelmed and it is so hard to collect ballot signatures. We're finding that there's a smaller number of campaigns that are still on track to win, but even in the face of this that is a very big number. So you get the policies we've worked on, you've seen how we've won. Let's talk about the short term crisis. The question that's on everybody's mind, of course, is how are we going to vote? Right. And so in order to address this, I want to start with a 60 second story from American history. And I want to share this with you because I think sometimes if we look at history, it can give us perspective. And in this case, the perspective is, there is opportunity within the crisis. Okay, our story begins in 1864. The Civil War is raging. President Lincoln and the Republicans are up for reelection. And as part of this, they wanted to make sure that the Union soldiers who are on the battlefield could vote because the Union soldiers, the time supported the Republicans. The Republicans wanted to make sure they could vote. Now, as you'd imagine, the Democrats screamed fraud. They said, and this is a direct quote, it is a scheme by the Republicans to quote, gain some great advantage to their party. Ultimately, the Republicans prevailed. And this was the birth of the absentee ballot, otherwise known today as vote by mail. Even more interesting vote by mail didn't just happen magically across the whole country, it started in just one state. And that state was Wisconsin. Now I want you to in your mind, fast forward from the 1800s to April 2020 and recall if you will the photo that I showed you earlier from the streets of Wisconsin. The Guardian put it, the state where absentee voting was born is now the state where American democracy went to die. And of course, this was just the first of many troubled primaries that we would see across the country. We saw long lines, a shortage of poll workers, you get New York and DC where people didn't get their ballots in time. You have Georgia where there were new voting machines and untrained poll workers and it didn't work and even worse in Atlanta where the majority of Georgia's black population lives, they were extremely long lines and people couldn't even vote. We look at Kentucky, where they did a little bit better because there was some partisan working behind the scenes between the governor and the secretaries of state to ensure that early voting could happen. Mail-in ballots were at record numbers. All of this was better and even so we saw long lines in Lexington and Louisville. And so add this all up. And what you get is a canary in the coal mine. This is all a big warning that if we don't act right now, the 2020 general election is under threat, because we cannot vote safely. But once again, there is opportunity within this crisis. And once again, the opportunity is vote by mail. And I want to be really clear, we use the term opportunity because vote by mail sits at this special intersection of policy impact and political viability. What does that mean? If you pass it, it really changes things. The policy is impactful. And we know that it's winnable. It represents, we think it's really important to fight for policies that sit at this intersection because you don't want to pass things that don't really change anything. And you don't really want to work so hard to pass something that could be tremendous, but is just not doable. So right at the intersection of impact and viability. And I'm going to break it down for you. But first, one little note. When I say vote by mail or when I say absentee, it is basically the same thing. The elections use different terms, but we're talking about the same thing here. Okay, so first viability. Most people don't know this. But in 2016, one in four Americans voted by mail 25% of us. There are five states that already use a comprehensive 100% vote by mail system, plus California is now phasing it in to make six. And again, not just blue states, not just red states. Vote by mail is incredibly popular amongst Americans. And you'll see there's a bit of a gap between the Democrats and the GOP here. We're going to talk about that later. Josh is going to fill you in. But overall, lots of support. So let's talk about the impact. And in order to do that, I want to tell you about the state of Colorado, and how they implemented their comprehensive 100% vote by mail system. Here's how it works. First, you get a ballot mailed to you. Then you can fill it out and mail it back. Or if that's not for you, you can put it in a secure dropbox. Or if that's not for you, you can actually bring it with you on election day to a professionally staffed location where you can hand in your filled out ballot, or you can vote in person by getting your ballot there. It's overseen by judges. They're barcoded. They're signature matched. Add it all up. People love it. And it costs 40% less to administer than the average state across the country spends on their elections. A recent Stanford study found that there is no partisan effect of vote by mail. In other words, it does not benefit one party or the other. Regardless of what we hear in the news or who's spreading lies, it does not benefit one party. Vote by mail increases what we call voter IQ. And I think this one's really important. So I want you to look at this picture. Here's somebody voting. What do we see? They have their ballot, the voter guide, the information booklet and the internet in front of them, and they have time to make an informed decision about their choices. They're not just voting down the party line and turning in their ballot. That's really important. We want people to make informed choices when they vote. Voting by mail is more safe and more secure than standard voting. Look at this. Again, at the subhead, Colorado has done nearly everything experts urged to stave off Russian hackers from 2016. In fact, vote by mail experiences a .00, 00, 1, 2% rate of fraud. That breaks down like this. National vote at home did a study in Oregon. They looked at 100 million mailed out ballots and only 12 cases of fraud. And all 12 of those cases were prosecuted. Vote by mail lastly and very importantly increases turnout as much as 14% amongst registered voters. So again, what we see here is an incredibly impactful policy. It really changes things if we can implement it. And it's highly viable. People want this. It's easy to pass if you get it done. And so of course the question is, why is it Congress doing this? Why is it that even amongst the coronavirus stimulus package, they wouldn't allocate enough money to make it happen? Well, as we talked about before, the incentives are not there to force Congress to act. So we the people need to step up. And in fact, we need a plan that lets us go around Congress. For that, I'm going to turn it over to Josh, not Joshua, but Josh Silver, my esteemed colleague and partner, and he'll take it from here. Thank you, Graham. And stick around for one second. I have a quick question for you. I'm going to do the same exercise as I get my computer to work here. And you should be able to see my screen here in a second. So I'm going to talk about how we can, what we can do about it. But I have a real question for you, Graham. In this picture, what is with the bowl of like, what is that food? What a great question. You don't always have chili with you when you vote. That's not chili. That is disgusting. I've just seen that secure a bunch of times and I just had to flag it. Okay, I'm going to get back into it. Thanks for thanks for the help. If you've been working with us at all over the years, you know that represent us was founded on this truism that when difficult to sort of entrenched issues are in Washington DC and going nowhere like democracy has been for decades really since 1974 after Watergate, that it's really the states that take the least. In fact, the states passing laws in the states is what leads to national victory. If you look at women's suffrage back in 1890, the women's right to vote passed in Wyoming and then a bunch more states and then more states and more states and it got to this yellow line, and eventually a ton of states kind of flowed in and federal passage from 1787 to 1767, 180 years interracial marriage a few states more and more, you get to that yellow line and then it becomes a snowball effect. And with marriage equality from 2004 to 2016 just a shorter window of about 14 years, 12 years, you saw it start in Iowa and Massachusetts yellow line, and then goes on to federal victory that the conclusion of the Bloomberg News study was that a key event, often a court decision or a grassroots campaign reaching maturity triggers triggers a rush of state activity that ultimately leads to a change in federal law. Simply put, what we are doing is replicate replicating their success. By passing democracy reforms all across the country from coast to coast. In this case, in 2020, ensuring that every voter in every state can vote safely. Now, what that means is a few things one, we have to make sure that we secure the funding from Congress for the money that's needed for the states to make vote by mail available and make polling places safe. We have to reduce those barriers to mail and voting, and it has to be both we have to have safe polling locations because it is physically impossible to create a 100% vote by mail system like they have in the five and a half states that Graham mentioned, and we have to do both at the same time walk and chew gum and here is exactly how we are accomplishing that right now in an effort that really launched in earnest in March when the covid crisis struck. First, we have to lobby the states because the states control election law, and that means applying political pressure which comes in lots of different forms. In some states, in order to get what we're after, it's the governors who have executive power. In some, it's the secretary of state. In other states, it's local election officials or city councils or legislatures or the courts. And now the second way you do it is you have to get that money from Congress as I mentioned. The third is through the courts and we're seeing that you see these headlines from from time to time. We've had a few victories protecting safe voting and we've had some defeats like we saw in Texas last week. And then the fourth is public education. This is sort of the ecosystem of the things that have to happen in order to protect safe voting. Here's the good news. Since March, we've seen this huge influx of advocacy in those four areas from literally dozens of organizations, local and national. They are lobbying in 36 states. We're helping in a few, but there's a big ecosystem. There's legal capacity. There's amazing groups like Brennan Center and Camping Legal Center and others. There's great voter education being done by a whole raft of organizations. It's in this context that the question that needs to be asked by us and it needs to be asked by you is what's missing. Because that is the central question to making sure that we actually win. And that is really the answer to like what our role is because the reason it's imperative that you and we ask that and answer it is because too often, almost in every field, public policy advocates do gooders tend to be a little bit too much like kindergartners playing soccer. And if you've ever watched kindergartners playing soccer, they all run after the ball. There's nobody look back there's nobody playing goal. There's nobody playing up the wing. There's nobody playing fullback. And what happens is all the positions don't get covered. And that's why public interest efforts often fail. That is the role of represent us is to fill those gaps and with protecting the 2020 vote. There are three major gaps that represent us is filling and I'm going to go through them quickly. First is moderate and conserve air cover. What does that mean. Okay, so you got over 8000 election administrators all across the country who are trying to most of them trying to do the right thing despite the rhetoric that you're that you hear from some people. Most administrators want to do right thing they're Republican they're Democrat. And when you have stuff like this when you've got red state legislature is trying to pass laws to curb mail and voting when you've got President Trump lying to the public saying that you know vote by mail is fraudulent and that it hurt it benefits Democrats, both of which are not true. So untrue in fact that it's the first time this issue was the first time in 17,000 tweets that Twitter actually fact check the president first time this issue because the lies were so obvious and so damaging his allegations ring right back to the 18 hundreds of fraud of scheme and it's in this environment that we have to have a counter punch. Absolutely critical and the counter punch is what we have created to fill a gap number one, which is communications cover to push back against the president and his proxies who are lying to the American people. It is a strictly non partisan website and campaign. We have sitting Republican secretaries of states from Georgia and Washington state we have Democratic secretaries of state from from Colorado and and Michigan, and they're behind this simple principle that all states should ensure voters have secure safe voting and that Congress should appropriate funds as required to do so. Governor Tom Ridge, the first homeland secretary and a very respected Republican is the chair of the effort. And what we've seen is in the last two months, Governor Ridge has literally been all over the press. Every day, you see Governor Tom Ridge if you just Google it after this presentation on Fox News on CNN on MSNBC in every major newspaper in the paper in the country, every time there's an allegation of fraud, rather than having Nancy Pelosi or a Democrat or a liberal who can just be easily dismissed. It is a credible conservative who is debunking the lies and pushing back. It is a credible conservative saying no, this is not just, you know, a hoax this is not just a proxy for the Democrats or proxy Republicans. This is real and we're also spinning up vote safe in important states like Michigan vote safe Pennsylvania and vote safe Wisconsin to make sure that every vote counts and people are safe in those and other states. That's gap number one gap number two is non-person accountability. What does that mean? Well, in 2018, when Michigan moved a ballot initiative to end gerrymandering, these guys tried to file a lawsuit there with the Michigan Chamber of Commerce to knock it off the ballot. He turned these guys into what they were at the time, which were villains, trying to disrupt the will of the people and let voters pick politicians instead of vice versa, or rather, letting politicians pick voters instead of vice versa. We pushed back so much that we were able to win that court case, which was highly politicized by four. It went to the ballot demonstrated at the headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce. And that measure went on to win with over 60% of the vote and gerrymandering is ended in the state of Michigan as a result. That's number two. We're going to kick the bad guys in the teeth this year between now and November 3 when they try to prevent safe voting. And the third is the long game as Graham said, there's an opportunity amidst the crisis, especially with the pandemic. And in this case, it's comprehensive voted Homer vote by mail. And what we're after is the third piece of this puzzle, which is utterly vital, which is to pass 100% vote by mail laws in at least 15 state legislatures next year when they reconvene while the dark cloud of COVID is still hanging over the country. Remember, with this increased spike in COVID, which is terrible. It's also providing a ton of political pressure for state legislatures to act decisively in January when they reconvene. And we are making sure they do that we have to start now with an effort that scale, it has to be well resourced. And if we win, we increase voter participation dramatically we increase voter IQ, we increase voter security. In fact, we have 14 states targeted, we're still adding some more, but you can see the light purple are the states where we are currently working to set up full vote by mail wins in 2021. But I want to also mention, there's a really important other story that's happening at the same time. And that is, while we do that, we're also making sure that the campaigns that were underway before the pandemic for ranked choice voting for anti gerrymandering for open primaries for campaign finance reform for vote by mail and automatic red voter registration that were already underway. And we continue a pace in this map, you can see the yellow is anti gerrymandering purples ranked choice voting of oranges open primaries. Just yesterday, two states Arkansas and North Dakota, qualified for the ballot with a sufficient number of signatures for comprehensive laws. And this is really important that go beyond the noble work of vote by mail, which is to make sure people can participate in the system but represent us was created to do more than just get people to participate in a broken political system. Represent us was created to make sure that we transform the system itself the incentives that Graham described, so that politicians stop acting like assholes, so that they're incentivized to actually represent we, the people so our unique role, recapping modern conservative support with vote save kicking them in the teeth with accountability and the long game to make sure these transformative reforms happen this November and in 2021 and 22 and beyond. Think about this. This is a little depressing. All of the democracy reform work done by our organization and all the other groups that work on this issue is still less than $150 million a year. What we're trying to do is at least double the movement but think about this in the United States last year charitable giving philanthropy education was $60 billion or 59 human services 50 billion health 38 billion these are all with a be not not an environment and animal rights roughly 12 billion. So you look at that and you compare it to the 150 million. But you consider the fact that the democracy issue affects every issue that the outcome of virtually every issue in consideration in this country, climate poverty education you name it hinges on our success. It hinges it determines how government spends $4.6 trillion annually in priorities. So as I close I'm going to ask you to ask yourself, what happens when we wake up the day after election day this year. And we don't act. What happens if we don't take action now to protect the 2020 election and protect our democracy going forward. So you will look like this this is April 7 in Wisconsin. This November 3 will continue to look like this as cases spike, and many legislators continue to do the wrong thing without intervention. We have a saying here that says if you do nothing nothing changes but if you do something, then we can and we will fix this we will win the way you can help now. You can donate, you can invite people to the next time we do an event like this we have not nailed down the next days but we will and we will send you an email. You can join a phone banking training. And what we're going to do is after this presentation, you can check your email and an email we send you will give you all the instructions on how to donate, how to invite people to the next event, and how to join a phone bank training. We have created a 2020 emergency fund here. It's represent us forward slash save 2020 you can also donate through zoom with the donate button on your screen. We have to raise $2 million. You can do it by joining the Commonwealth where you give any amount per month on a monthly basis it could be a dollar amount that month it doesn't matter, but if everybody does it and we already have over 10,000 people who do. If we get to 20,000 people who do will actually fund this so chip in, be part of it. And with that, I want to thank you if you have questions you can email me at silver at represent dot us. What I'm going to do is before we go to Alex to to moderate I'm going to ask Ed Helms who's on our board of directors, and is also you you might know him from the many movies he's been in and he's on a bad internet connection but he's going to try to just take a moment, and just share with you all about why of all the issues that he's been asked to help with with his very limited time. He chose this one Eddie out there. Can you hear me. Yeah, perfect. All right. Great, great job. Josh and Joshua. That was, yeah. I mean, every time I've heard this, all of these messages, probably 200 times now. And every single time it gets my heart racing it gets my, my dander up I get, I get sort of like mad again and again all the right ways. I hope everyone on this call was affected by this presentation because it is just so important and I'll just sort of reemphasize something that Josh said towards the end of end of his remarks. And these structural issues addresses so many of the other issues that we are facing as a country, whether it's poverty or education or the environment or social justice or prison reform. So these things are so brutally stymied by this broken system and and so I what I love about represent us and the reason that I'm very focused on it is that it as an organization is laser focused on that on that one. I really believe that, that if represent us and like minded organizations and efforts around the country can get the job done. Then the finger comes out of the dyke, and there is just a flood of amazing reform ahead of us so that's my two cents. I also have a question can I can I weigh in with a question that I already talked too long. No, you're perfect perfect. Okay. So, you know, a lot of the criticism of of mail in voting is, is that it's ripe for fraud and you and you made a very astute point about what a just infinitesimal percentage of mail in voting has historically been fraudulent and that they've in fact all been prosecuted. So, my follow up question to that is how secure is it. In other words, how it's reassuring to know that very little fraud has happened. But I guess my question is how much is possible, you know, if there really were bad actors out there. What are the safeguards within the mail in voting system to prevent all the things that Trump and various others are saying could happen. Yeah, I'll start first with just a couple of examples from Colorado and also really nice to have such compliments from our boss right Josh. Yeah, he's on the board technically. So, look, Colorado is again the best example here one of the things that they do is anytime. First of all, any ballot that submitted is on paper, which is fantastic because you can't digitally hack paper, which makes a huge difference. Secondly, there is both digital and human signature matching. Well so when your ballot gets submitted they match your signature on file to the one on your ballot. If there's a problem with that signature, you get a chance to so you can actually fix the record which is fantastic so people's votes aren't just getting thrown out the counting process is actually overseen by judges, which again dramatically reduces fraud. Certainly bad actors will find a way to mess with the system but by and large because of all of those safeguards and a system that's been used since the Civil War. So the opportunity for fraud is just, it's a distraction. Josh, you want to add anything on that. Well, just that you know they use barcodes in some states that's getting very sophisticated. And once you create, you know, absentee regular vote by mail is is safe and there's tiny fractions of incidents of fraud. Once states passed the kind of laws that we're working feverishly to pass next year 100% vote by mail, then the safeguards get even stronger, and where it's it's it's absolutely impossible to hack but good question and I'm going to turn over to Alex Wardlock was going to facilitate the Q&A. Thank you so much Josh and thanks for joining us. So we're going to start with some of the people who raised their hands. Let's have Cheryl grave, and then have Alan deacon on deck. Well Cheryl is getting unmuted. We'll start with one of the questions from the chat. This question is from M Broco, and it's how does represent us feel about the political systems failure to embrace third party candidates and could vote by mail increase visibility for them. Graham, why don't you take this one. I'll certainly start off I think Josh is going to want to add as well. So in terms of third party candidates look we didn't talk a lot about ranked choice voting earlier. So I'm glad you asked because what do you think of it as third party or whether you think of it as simply competition in the system. Right, we are we already know that something like 86% of house races are decided before, like once it gets to the general election you already know which party is going to win. So we have a system where there's not competition. And so when you don't have competition you don't have the threat of accountability on an elected leader. No, if they win the primary they're in. And so because there's no competition you get extremism you get pandering to the extreme side of the party, etc, etc. If we were to implement ranked choice voting, like has been done in Maine, like has been done in cities across the country and countries around the world. You, you reduce that spoiler effect, and you introduce competition back into the system because you're never again forced to throw away your vote because you can only vote for the two major parties. So that would be the number one reform. I think to answer the second part of the question does vote by mail increase the likelihood that third parties can participate. Certainly it does the more participation you get the better for sure across democracy. So that's always a goal but in terms of really shifting the incentives, ranked choice voting, which is currently being fought for in a handful of states even this year is just super important. And it's on the ballot in four states this year, which is a big deal in Massachusetts, Arkansas, North Dakota and Alaska. Cheryl, what's your question. Thank you. My question is what kind of messaging have you found to be most effective in encouraging voters to understand that vote by mail is safe and secure. What kind of message can we use out there regularly to sort of pre bunk and not reinforce the sort of fraud issue was tested. I'm a messaging guru so I'll leave it to him but the short answer is always lead with that message always talk about how this is safe. As it protects you from COVID it is secure there's a point 000018 I believe it was incident of fraud, and they are both proved time tested and proven. Here are the links to the studies you can see that at vote safe dot us. If you go to votes vote safe dot us, you will see links to the facts, and you can share those with your friends but always talk about secure as a key part of how you describe vote by mail. Absolutely and I'm just going to add two quick things Cheryl in the email that we're going to send everybody after this call, you will get a drop box link to a folder full of just fact graphics that you can use on social media. It basically says fact vote by mail is safe and secure and then it has the source underneath it there's a document with all of your sources and the one thing I would say to everybody that I found is a very challenging practice I tend to think of myself as a open person who likes to consider other people's ideas. There are certain times in politics where that attitude actually gets us in trouble, and this is one of them. And so, there is no debate about whether or not vote by mail is safe it's not there's just no discussion, like it is more safe it is more secure there's study after study and so I would encourage everybody here to be really strong about that to really forcefully make your point and know your facts memorize three or four of them, and don't make it about trying to find common ground on something where there's really nothing to debate in areas where there is debate, please find common ground reach out to the other side work across the aisle that's what this is all about. But on stuff like this it's just the facts in the history are already there and the American traditions are there so use them to your advantage. Couldn't agree more. Alan, what's your question. Can you hear me. Yes, we can. Okay, the first thing I want to say is that was a bowl of fruit in the video. It wasn't chilly. I thought so. I thought so good. Thanks for. Yeah, yeah, it made me hungry. I've talked. I wanted to ask, you talk about rain choice voting. And how what do I do to get it started in my town or county. I live in New York, New York City has it. I'm not going to represent us. I feel, but what is the first thing I can do. So the best thing anybody on this call can do who wants to look into moving a policy locally is just email us at info at represent us and I promise you will get a personalized response to connect you with the right people be it in our organization groups in New York who are leading the charge on rank choice voting. We will put you in touch with them. Can you put that email in the chat, please. Yeah, we'll do that for sure one of our team will info at represent us. Thanks. Thanks for the question. Yeah, so let's have Kyah Foster on deck and while she's getting unmuted we'll take a question from the chat from John Gilbert. How difficult will it be for most states to gear up for absentee voting in time for this November's election. Great question. John hi, we're we're running out of time for changing policy we're also gonna we're getting closer to the end here we live about eight minutes left for the q amp a so folks do stick with us. Hi Jen Jackson and hi Kyah Foster meant to say that some of our volunteers, super volunteers. The window closes in about August john where we're not going to have a lot of opportunity to change policy. It's been a posture roughly six to eight weeks from now in some places it's foreclosing now depending on the state, but then it's a defensive posture, it's like making sure that people are educated on how to vote by mail, how to request absentee votes and pushing you back against policy and legal attacks on vote by mail and safe polling locations efforts to close too many in person polling places like they did in Kentucky, two weeks ago. So, in August, the shift will happen in most places and then we get into sorting a defensive positioning on policy until November 3. That's great. Hi, what's your question for us. Hi, thank you so much for a great presentation and for everything you do it's an honor to be a volunteer leader with represent us. I was kind of confused about the Supreme Court decision that happened this week regarding the electoral college is very sophisticated and it was difficult to know whether the outcome was a win for our movement so I was just wondering what your thoughts are on the outcome of that. So if I take that Graham, really, it's very simple and actually it seemed complicated but it's not the simple premise was, can an elector. So when you, let's say you have a state that has 20 elect electoral college votes, the state typically this year sends 20 humans to the convention, and they vote on behalf of their state and they vote vote on behalf of the result of the election in their state so last election excuse me you had people who went who were designated to vote on behalf of Hillary Clinton or the question put in front of the court was, does that human being who's going to the convention have the right to say, I don't really want to vote for Hillary Clinton, even though that's what I'm supposed to do based on the result of the election. I want to vote for someone else three people did that in 2016 which prompted this case, the Supreme Court unanimously said, No, that human being cannot do that they have to vote, based on the results of the election so that they're actually representing the people of their state so I don't think it's really a big victory it's not a bad thing it clarifies the policy and the law, but I wouldn't call it a big victory. Next question. So let's have show she Oda and I apologize if I mispronounced your name on deck. And in the meantime we'll ask a question from the chat. So we have a question from a lease fuel. I was wondering if you could speak to how and when a full by mail is scaled up, you think this will still be a safe, since it's bigger it might be a bigger target for fraud. Was it how and when we think it's safe. So if it is scaled up to the scale that we're aiming for right so there's an important clarification here and makes it a really smart question. There is of course, all of the work that needs to be done this year to make sure that people can vote safely and that comes in a combination of both sexually three or four things but early in person voting places so that everybody's not lined up with the polls on Election Safe and secure polling places that remain plentiful plentiful on Election Day and so that means having good systems in place. It means more poll workers hopefully younger poll workers so that we're not asking our seniors to work the polls when they're clearly the most at risk for So there's a lot just in the how we vote in person part of the 2020 election and then expanding absentee and making it easier to access for 2020 that means using the absentee systems that are already in place in states, but reducing barriers so you don't have to go in person with your license to say I'm not going to be here and I want to vote you don't have to have a witness to say I want to vote you can just get your absentee ballot and return it so that's for 2020 expanding access making the existing systems work better. In 2021 and beyond, we can introduce complete comprehensive vote by mail systems if we start working on them now and even passing them in 21 doesn't mean they'll be implemented right away because as Josh said about Washington. It takes a few years to get it right and the reason for that is that there are a lot of new systems that need to be put in place. The good news is Colorado, Washington, Utah and others have really laid the groundwork for how this is done correctly. So there's no reinventing of the wheel. It's just step by step, following what they've done and putting it in place and if we do those two things. I think again the fraud conversation kind of goes away because you're using existing systems with expanded access right now. And then you're following even more secure systems for 21 and beyond later. It looks like we have time for two more questions. Let's open it up to show she and then have Karen Kelly on deck. So she what's your question. So my question is this and I'm pretty new to this work. So excuse my ignorance. But this year, you know I filled out the census online. And if I was able to do that online, you know going forward this probably won't be actionable in terms of the election fall. Why isn't voting online of viable solution. And the consensus that it is not secure enough yet. And I see what you're saying I completely agree with you but if they can do the census online. That doesn't really make sense because one could argue that there's nearly as much incentive to mess with the census forms as there would be voting but the consensus is, they're working on blockchain technology to make it possible. This is going to be the way we vote at some point in the not too distant future. It's not if it's when, but the common sort of belief is, we're not going to see that happen until probably a decade from now, maybe five years but that's just the consensus opinion that it's not reliable enough but what is reliable right now is voting by mail. Perfect. I care and let's have you take us home with one final question. Well thanks. My experience with this organization has been strictly doing the phoning and of course more and more people don't answer their phone. So I'd appreciate a comment on what that policy is going to change in some way. Yeah, so obviously amidst the crisis the ways that people can get involved are limited. But here's what generally happens with campaign cycles as we get closer to the November election. In a normal year, there become all sorts of ways that volunteers can participate. Now, a lot of that's going to depend on what's happening in your state. So when I talked before about impact and viability. We want to put our resources in the states where we can really pass things that change the game and are also winnable. And so depending on where you are that may or may not be happening near you. So there are ways to get involved digitally, helping spread the truth, like the graphics we're going to send you via email, helping recruit more people, helping spread the word, etc. But there are going to be places across the country where the very best thing that you can do is phone banking and text banking. And I don't want you to overlook the importance of text banking because it actually many, many people do look at their texts. It has one of the highest response and retention rates of any other tactic we use. So it really is powerful and it makes a huge difference. One last thing I'll say on this in New York where they passed New York City where they did pass. They were voting in the last cycle. The text banking that went in from around the country was a huge, huge help hundreds of thousands of texts went to voters are urging them to vote yes, and it was a key ingredient to the wind. So please, please continue and thank you so much for the volunteering that you're already doing this. It is incredible and so appreciated. Thank you again to everyone who took time out of their schedules to join us today. We know that zoom fatigue is very real, and we truly appreciate you being here with us. So as you heard on today's call this work is urgent, it's timely, and there's a lot of ways to get involved. You can donate to the 2020 election emergency fund. Every dollar you give will go towards protecting our election in November and ensuring absentee voting and safe in person polling places for all Americans. And if you give by the end of the month, a generous donor has agreed to match your donation and double your impact. So spread the word on social media. As you heard after the call will share a folder full of graphics that you can use to fight back against disinformation around vote by mail, rank choice voting, and more. And you can also join the many people who are taking action with us. You saw the link to the phone banking training that you can sign up for that's this Sunday. And that will help you to join our volunteer action brigade and get trained up on how to reach out to people. Thank you again for being here. Stay everybody. Thank you so much everybody. This wouldn't be happening without you. You are the lifeblood of this organization in this movement. Thank you. Gratitude. Wonderful. Thanks everyone.