 our invite to today's panel. I think this is a conversation I'm really excited to have. We so rarely get an opportunity to get the perspective from the practitioners themselves who take part in our political campaigns and our elections. This panel, including our moderator, are people who live and breathe elections. I'm gonna do a little bit of just my eyes here and then I'll turn it over to Christine who's right in the panel and we can get into the conversation. One note, please submit your questions and thoughts to the chat. At the end, we will pick some of these questions that come into the chat for the panel. So we will have an opportunity to have your questions answered. To the bio. So we have a special group of people here today. As I mentioned, our panel members are, we have Tom Bonner with us. Tom has been involved in democratic campaign politics and political data for more than 20 years. He served in many capacities, including a CEO of Target Spark, which is the preeminent democratic data shop. Tom has also received numerous awards for contributions to political campaigning, redistricting and strategic planning. But we have Joe King with us. Joe is a senior strategist at the strategy group and award-winning political communications strategy firm based in Columbus, Ohio. They primarily work with Republican candidates. In the past, Joe has run state Republican party operations in one of the largest independent expenditure units in the country at the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. We also have Howard Wolfson with us. Howard Wolfson is the education program lead at the Bloomberg Philanthropies. Howard has also served as a political advisor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He's also served as the communications director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008 and also was executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And as a moderator, we have Christine Reeves. Representative Christine Reeves is a member of the Washington State House of Representatives. In 2016, she was the first African-American woman elected to that body in 18 years. She also serves on the CES board and is a former candidate for Congress. So I'm incredibly excited to have this group of folks here to discuss how the state of our political campaigns and how voting method reform can be involved in improving them. On to that note, I will pass it over to you Christine to get the conversation started. Well, thanks so much, Mike. And for folks on this call who may not know Mike, Mike actually works at CES with us. He's an incredible advocate of the cause. It does good work on behalf of our community and our donors. There are a couple other folks on this call that I'm excited to introduce you to. Justine Metz, who is our interim CEO. I think I saw Nina Taylor creep on this call as well, who's our incoming CEO. You'll get to hear more about her in the coming weeks. Chris Raleigh, who's also on our staff. And then I saw a couple of our other board members. So thank you all for joining us. For those of you who are not familiar with CES, I am proud to serve on the board and actually came to the CES board because I ran for Congress in 2020 in a 19-way primary, predominantly among Democratic candidates here in Washington state. So I have a little bit of a strong opinion about how we need to reform our campaign system to ensure that we actually live our values around equity and inclusion and primarily around how we ensure that your voice is your vote and that we're not pitting our Democratic or Republican candidates against each other in tough primaries. So I'm really excited to have a really strong group of professionals with us today to talk more about this exciting topic. I know that Mike gave a little bit of a brief intro of each of you. And while I appreciate brief entries, introductions, I wanna make sure that each of you gets a couple of minutes to tell us what you want us to know about you and the work that you do in the campaign world and the political world. So I'm gonna start with Tom, if you would be so kind as to just tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you'd like us to know about what you bring to this conversation. Yeah, thanks, Christine, and thank you, Mike. I appreciate the opportunity to join you all. It's funny, from that bio, I'm always embarrassed when people read bios, especially because I don't think I've ever actually won an award in politics. I don't even know what those would look like, but somehow that's stuck in there at some point along the way. And every time I think, oh gosh, I've gotta update that. But again, yeah, excited to be here. I've worked in democratic slash progressive politics for actually almost 30 years. So 1994 was when I started an organization called NCEC as an intern where I actually had the opportunity to work with Mike Peele. So I've worked, again, around political data, basically in different forms my entire career. So the sort of notion of electoral and voting reform is something, while I can't profess to be an expert in any of these areas, it's something that I've always been especially interested in sort of having this front seat to see in some of the dysfunctions of our system. So yeah, excited to be here, excited to participate in this conversation. Thanks so much, Tom. Joe, I see you next on my screen. So would love the opportunity to hear more from you on kind of what's exciting to you about the work that you're doing and what are you bringing to the conversation today that you want us to know? Well, I guess I've been working in, so I work on the Republican side almost exclusively. I have been working in Republican politics since the late 1980s. So I just dated myself a little bit. But I've worked on campaigns from the state house to the state Senate, to Congress, to US Senate governors and all the way up to president and so on. And I believe in democracy and I believe in freedom and I believe that the people when informed will make the right decisions based on their values and principles and so forth. And so, but in recent years, there's just been a change in the way our politics presents itself to America. And I think it's gonna be, I think conversations like this are exciting to have, particularly when we can bring practitioners from both sides of the aisle to have a productive conversation about, where our country is headed beyond just our partisan interests. So I'm excited to be here today. Well, thank you for joining us. And so that leads us to our third panelist, Howard. I can't see you on my screen, but I thought I saw you here a minute ago. So if you are able to come off camera, there you are, perfect. Would love to just offer you the opportunity to share a little bit more about who you are and what you're bringing into the conversation today that you'd like our audience to know. Sure, well, thanks for having me and giving me the opportunity. Like Tom and Joe, I've been in and around politics for a while. I got my start in the early 90s working for democratic members of the house and then stayed in democratic politics and democratic elections up until going to work for Mike Bloomberg as his deputy mayor in New York City in his third mayoral term. And at that time, Mike was an independent who was very invested in trying to find solutions to the gridlock and some of the dysfunction in our politics. We have spent a lot of time looking at and supporting the various efforts to change some of our election laws that seem to empower the extremes and discourage voting participation with some varying degrees of success and failure which we can talk about. And so looking forward to a conversation about any and all of that. I love it. Well, you guys are the perfect people to have in the room. And as for our audience, you can see the Center for Election Science is a nonpartisan organization that is focused on better elections and alternative voting methods. So for folks in the room who maybe don't know what alternative voting methods are available are being discussed right now, we predominantly talk about approval voting or what I like to call the choose all you like method. And then rank choice voting is an alternative. I believe there's a couple others that our colleagues on the call may discuss. But I think we really kind of want to stick to the top two right now, which are approval voting and rank choice voting as alternative voting methods. So to set up that conversation gentlemen, I think what I'd like to kind of, I've heard you all frame it as kind of, there's dysfunction in politics right now. And my guess is there's a lot of people on this call and a lot of people across the country who fundamentally just believe that the system is broken and that it's not really working the way that we kind of envision in the promise of the Constitution and kind of one voice, one vote that when you vote at your vote matters. And so as we talk about alternative voting methods and we talk about the dysfunction happening in American politics right now, what I'd love to understand from each of your perspectives is how do you see alternative voting methods like approval voting or even rank choice voting potentially changing the system for the better to put the voter back at the center of the conversation. And I always hate when I'm on a call like this and everybody's like, let me see who's gonna go first. So if you guys don't mind, I would love to just kind of call on you so that you guys don't have to fight over each other to share your thoughts. Is that okay? Yeah, I think that works. Okay, great. Well, then Joe, I'm gonna start with you and then go to Tom and then Howard. Yeah, well, I think, as I said on the front end, I believe in democracy but I'm also intrigued by alternative voting methods that force candidates to have to appeal to a wider swath of voters. We can't ultimately dictate what the outcome of an election is based on a system. A system is only as good or as bad as the people who run it, right? So, but when thinking about alternative voting methods the idea here is to look at ways to be sure that even within the party structure that the candidates that are chosen have the widest support among that particular party's base and therefore give the voters in the general election the opportunity to at least choose between a candidate that is most representative of those party's values. And principles. That's great. Joe, Tom? Yeah, I guess from my perspective there are sort of two broad crises in this country from a political system perspective. One, participation to polarization that I think are both closely related. And when we think of how few competitive elections there truly are in this country and this isn't to go down the rabbit hole of gerrymandering because I think there's a systemic element to this too but most elections are decided in primaries and most primaries, you know the average primary turnout depending I'm not talking about presidential races now I'm talking about congressional races downward. It's not unusual to have turnout below 20% sometimes below 10% of the population participating in these elections. Yet the outcomes of those elections generally will be determinative of the outcomes of the general election. Whoever wins the primary in most districts whether it's a legislative district congressional district will go on to win that race without question. And so I think what most voters are left with is the feeling like they don't have choices they don't have a voice in the process and that leads to a level of alienation. And I think we're reaping what we have sown in terms of an alienated electorate. You're seeing that in the polling now you're seeing that in the presidential results. You know a lot of people are talking about New York Times survey that was released today and seeing a lot of that polarization on display specifically from the Democrats perspective seeing younger voters and voters of color who are just showing more unrest and unease with the current situation. And I think part of that has to do with the feeling just of a lack of empowerment and connection to the system. And so I think any system that can make a vote matter more and lead to higher engagement, higher participation and then potentially less polarization is potentially important. And certainly I know the devil is very much into details and there is no perfect system. But I think when we're looking at what we've been dealing with so far and what we're left with to look at it and think that it's working just fine is something that I can't relate to. Well said Tom Howard. So I'm not sure that I'm gonna be able to improve much on what Tom just said. You know I think he is exactly right that we have two problems. One is a problem of participation and the other is a problem of polarization. And from what I have seen voting reforms around either ranked choice or let's say open primaries I think have done a credible job of addressing the subject of polarization. I think that in many instances you have candidates coming out of a reformed primary process. Again, whether ranked choice or open primaries you have a candidate who is more rather than less moderate coming out of that process in a way that that probably would not you would not get that outcome in a closed primary. It's not clear to me yet whether or not we have cracked the code on participation. You know there may be some modest participatory gains in primaries that are using a reformed system but if they're gains they are pretty modest. Certainly here in New York I think it's fair to say that the ranked choice voting system in our last mayoral election which is the first time we ran a mayoral election using ranked choice it did result in a more moderate outcome. A mayor Adams was one of the more moderate candidates in the race. Catherine Garcia who for any second was also a more moderate candidate. So I think if a goal is to empower moderates and somewhat disempower the far left and the far right it did achieve that goal. It did not in any way shape or form achieve the goal of greater participation. Actually we did not have a lot of people actually participating and now maybe participation is a lagging lag behind some of the other indicators and as people see that you can create an outcome that feels more reasonable to them they will be more likely to participate but it would certainly be a goal I think of many of us if not all of us to help create a politics in which people felt a greater desire to participate and were feeling less polarized from their fellow American. Well I think that's an important distinction that you all have highlighted that it sounds like two of the key variables in kind of the dysfunction if you will that we're talking about is that kind of polarization and that participation or lack thereof. And so I'm curious to understand if there would be other factors beyond participation and polarization or even sub variables of those two factors that you believe contribute more to the dysfunction that we are seeing whether it's at the congressional level or at the state level I serve in a state legislature and can very clearly see on the ground how when Congress is not working communities, advocates, lobbyists, others are all looking to the states to help solve some of the dysfunction that's not happened or some of the dysfunction that's happening in Congress but what we're not seeing is then a corollary participation level at the state level in voting. In fact, we're seeing participation decline in voting. So are there other factors that you think are contributing to this dysfunctional system that we're dealing with and how do you think that alternative voting methods could change that? So here I would love to channel my friend Bradley Tusk who some people are familiar with, somebody who also worked for Mike Bloomberg and he is a tremendous advocate of mobile voting. I have somewhat mixed feelings about it but I think it is fair to say that many people find voting to be somewhat onerous and that's not everybody but it is certainly some people and I think younger people in particular are used to doing everything now on their phones in a mobile environment. And so one argument that he makes for mobile voting is that it would make it easier for people to vote and if you make it easier, they will do it. More people will vote if they have it at their fingertips and they don't have to go to the polling booth or even fill out something and send it back in. So I think there are some technological barriers that some people face to the actual exercise of the franchise that if you subscribe to the idea of mobile voting, mobile voting could certainly begin to address. Tom, Joe, that sound right to you or thoughts? Well, I think there's a, you know, I'm probably a long way off from supporting something like that because I still believe that the integrity of the vote has to be maintained and, you know, that just seemed to open up a lot of questions for me. But aside from that, you know, I think participation, you know, as I've said a lot many times, you know, right now, there just doesn't seem to be a market for the middle. And so you don't have a lot of political candidates appealing to the middle. You have a lot of candidates appealing to the wings of their party and so forth. And so quite frankly, it's not just candidates, it's journalism and a lot of other, just communications tools in general. And so, you know, the definition of the middle typically is people who don't read about politics, pay attention to politics and talk about politics all the time, like a lot of us who are really interested in these subject matters do. And so it's harder to engage with folks that just have a lower interest in politics in general. And so, but a lot of that has to do too with, you know, voters just feeling like, you know, their voice isn't being heard. And so like, why even bother, you know, all the politicians are the same. They're all corrupt. They're all, you know, you can see it in polls all the time. There's just a general feeling that the whole thing is rigged and it's not for me, you know. So part of it is, you know, whenever we're considering reforms, those reforms have to lead to a place where voters feel like, okay, now their voice matters. Now what, you know, now paying attention matters, politicians are reacting to what they're saying and so forth. And so having informed people who are paying more attention leads to a better outcome by getting people to pay attention and being informed. You know, they have to believe that somewhere along the way, the system is paying attention to them as well. And so I think when we get to that place, you'll see participation go up. And that's gonna force, you know, it's amazing how political figures tend to follow where the people go. It's usually not the way around. And so the more people feel like they're empowered, the more they participate, the more they participate, the more candidates have to deal with them, talk to them, appeal to them and so forth. And what happens ultimately is you get a system that is, you know, where political figures feel like they have to work harder to appeal to a wider swath of voters. Yeah, that's great. Tom, thoughts? Yeah, I mean, back to the mobile voting thing, I'm a fan of the idea. You know, I can do banking on my phone. I don't know why I couldn't do voting. And I think when you think about one of the great successes of the 2020 election, this incredible challenge that was facing election officials around the country and to be able to come out of that with one of the greatest liberalizations of voting access we've seen in this country resulting in the highest turnout as a percent of eligible population we've seen in 60 years, that's something that I think is positive. And, you know, ideally we would be seeking to go even further in that direction. Unfortunately, as we know a lot of states actually then regressed since then. You know, the other thing that comes to mind for me is, again, the notion, and Joe and Howard have both touched on this, but the notion of having a choice and having to say, Christine, you talked about your experience in running in what a 19 candidate field. I think too often voters think maybe too strategically about elections. And part of that's just how they're forced to, is to think of, you know, what say do they really have? We worked with the New York Times on the piece they ran, I think last week, that looked at the presidential level looked at how many voters will actually decide this presidential race. If you narrow down to the states that truly could swing one way or another, and then the voters who are truly swingable in that state, in those states, you're talking about maybe a couple million voters out of, you know, 300 plus million Americans who actually decides outcome of the elections. And so it's not surprising that people do think strategically or perhaps have a defeatist perspective. And so having a system where you aren't penalized for voting for a candidate who you like, and not thinking like, oh, I'm throwing my vote away if in this primer I vote for this candidate who I think, you know, maybe the polls are telling me that they don't have a chance, but I'm gonna vote for them because I support their ideas. I think there's something very positive of that. The other thing that has struck me is thinking about the potential for voting reform and what these systems might look like is, you know, one of my biggest pet peeves is the horse race coverage. It's really poll driven and that is, you know, looking at the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate and acting as if it's a sporting event that we're watching and who's up, who's down. And I just think if you implemented a system like approval voting, preference voting, rank choice voting, it would be a nightmare to poll in a lot of ways. And that actually might be a really good thing. Well, and that's a really fascinating variable, right? That we, I think you brought up the system, right? We operate in a system where the indicators of success, particularly in primaries, and I'll speak to the congressional level, but I can say it happens at the state level, is really around how much money can you raise and are you kind of known, are you a known quantity within the establishment? And so to your point, I think it kind of feeds that narrative. Well, why should I take a chance on that unknown candidate when everybody's telling me, this person's got it locked up because they've got the most money and they've got all the endorsements and the institutional support. And so I'd love to kind of just get your guys's thoughts around as we've framed the problem around polarization and kind of participation and to some extent process, barriers in the process, I'd love to get your guys's perspective on narrowing it specifically to political primaries and what you think the current state of the world of primaries really is as it feeds into that polarization idea, et cetera. And then whether they're actually producing the options that we want as a voting informed or even uninformed public. And I'm gonna start with you, Tom, and then I'm gonna go to Joe and then Howard. Yeah, I mean, I think to my first answer, focusing on the participation element, I think our primary system doesn't get nearly the attention that it deserves. And in a lot of ways it's probably more responsible than any other element of our electoral system for a lot of the dysfunction that we face. Understanding that I say our primary system that it's different depending on where you are and what level of the ballot we're talking about. And I do think the perception of lack of choice and therefore lack of franchise is at the root of it. That most primaries are not competitive. Whether it's an incumbent, certainly for incumbents, it's incredibly rare that incumbents lose ever and even more so in primary elections. And so I think there's a strategic element to that as well. And so again, I don't know, I can't predict the extent to which implementing either of these systems that we're talking about would change that, I have to believe it would. Again, I have less experience with that than you all do. But yeah, I mean, from my perspective, I think that's the most challenging element is actually providing not just the perception of choice, but the reality that people can vote for the candidates whom they actually like and support and also vote strategically if they so choose. I think that's a great opportunity. And to a point that Howard made earlier in terms of participation, certainly we haven't seen that sort of big, it's not like we have a great example to point to and say when we've put our CV in place, you see this massive surge in turnout. And I wonder how much of that is just, the people need to live it and experience it and get used to it for a while. Would we see more increases along the way after people get a little bit used to it? I see Joe nodding his head, curiously. I think, as I said, I think you're spot on there, Tom. I think that if people live this long enough and start to feel like, oh my gosh, I've got some power now, I do see participation going up. But like I said before, there are just people who just don't live and breathe politics every day. There's not an interest of theirs. Now they're still gonna do their civic duty and vote in the general election, but oftentimes they don't participate in the primary process. You asked about the primary process. In a multi-candidate primary for either the Democrats or Republicans, you can see candidates with a limited constituency sneak through a primary and become the nominee of that party. And then that may not be good for that party or you ask the question, is it giving us what we want? Well, the voters will get what they want, at least those who participate. But when you've got a multi-candidate primary right now, you can see, like I said, somebody with a limited constituency sneak through the primary. And so in the last election, a couple of years ago, speaking as you know with my Republican hat on for a moment, but the Democrats realized that that was a thing. And so they actually spent money in Republican primaries to try to give us candidates that were unelectable in the general election. And so, and it worked by the way in some cases. So now there's a new tactic out there and we'll see how this next election comes up and now both parties adopt such a thing, but that's not really how our democracy was designed, right? I mean, we want candidates that are representative of the districts from which they come. And so if we've got primary elections that are delivering up candidates that have a small minority of support from either party or both parties in many cases go on to the general election, that's where you get a general election where voters go, I don't like either of these choices. And so, but I gotta pick one. So I guess I'm a Democrat, so I'll pick the Democrat and hold my nose or I'm a Republican. So I guess I'll pick the Republican and hold my nose, but we're not getting somebody who had to go through a robust system where they had to appeal to and gain the support of the majority of that party's base. So already that party's putting up somebody that maybe the majority of those folks aren't even thrown out. And so you get, I've seen polls in certain elections that show 68 to 70% of the voters don't like the choices they're about to be presented. Well, that's how you know there's something, we need to look at something as a change. And therefore now they just stay home and there's decreased participation. So I guess one of my jobs for former Mayor Bloomberg is to give him advice on which political candidates and causes and committees to support. And as a result, I ended up meeting with a lot of candidates during the year, not as much POM as we would have met with when we were at the DCCC, but not a small number either. And when a candidate is running in California, say in the state that has top two or Alaska for that matter, I'm able to assess the race differently than when the person is running in New York or Illinois or lots of other places. And I'm able to sort of be more open to recommending to Mike the key support candidates from those states who are more moderate because my perception is that they have a better chance of being successful. And we look at viability as one of the one lenses as a lens to determine whether we support a candidate or not. And so, I can just speak very practically as somebody who is giving advice to a guy who spends a fair amount of money in politics that the calculus around who to support changes when a person is running in an election that has benefited from some structural reform. Well, and what I'd love to do then is kind of, I think we've done a really good job. You guys have done a great job of framing the overarching conversation. I think you've touched a little bit on what, to Tom's point, we don't have a ton of data yet in terms of the reforms, but I think that there's kind of a hope that alternative voting methods could have a real impact in our electoral system. You are all professional electioneers, if you will. And by that, I mean, you get people elected. That's what you do for a living in the system. I'd love to get a sense from you all and Mike had recommended giving you a scenario, but I'm gonna throw it at you because I think you each are capable of kind of picking your own, but I'd love for you to kind of give us, pick your favorite campaign experience that you've had where you had a multi-way primary, Republican, Democratic, doesn't matter. We're looking back on it if you were able to apply an alternative voting method to the process. Do you think that it would have changed the outcome either for the candidates you were supporting or for the folks that you weren't supporting? How so? And why do you think that that would matter? I see Tom pondering greatly, but it looks like Joe's ready to go. I've got a few, but you know, there's two things that have, there's two things going on here. One is I'll share a story in a moment, but the other thing is what it does on the front end of campaigns like that. So there are really terrific candidates, and this has happened to be on multiple occasions, really terrific candidates who are the kinds of people that I think our founding fathers had in mind when they were making Congress, who just look at the calculus of what's going on right now and say, there's no lane for me there, or there's not a big enough lane. So part of the choices we've been presented are because great candidates are deciding to opt out of running at this point. So that's starters, but you know, I mean, a multi-candidate race and multi-candidate primary, what ends up happening is there's a lot of back and forth and battling for position, and you know, who's gonna lane or bucket or whatever, but they, you know, who's gonna occupy this lane? What lane do you occupy, that kind of thing? And so is that a big enough lane for me to get votes? And then the campaigns start getting ugly and people start attacking each other and so forth, and the voters just get confused and turned off by the process. And it becomes this sort of game of whack-a-mole where, you know, somebody, one candidate sort of, you know, goes down, but it's not like those, like if I'm working for one candidate, you know, one candidate might lose their support, but that doesn't mean those votes come to us and you're always trying to figure out, you know, how to, you know, how to keep your lane, I guess it is, but if some of these reforms are implemented, then what that sort of practitioner side of it changes the calculus dramatically because now you're forced, you know, if you've got, you know, you're not just trying to say, hey, okay, if I get, if my vote goal is 28% of the vote, I think I can win with 28% of the vote here, right? So that's your lane. Like what does my lane look like to get 28% of the vote or 32 or whatever it is? You figure, you know, in a multi-candidate race, that might be all you need. And so your entire calculus is, okay, what does my winning coalition look like? Who's in that? How do I get to that 28 to 30% of the vote? Now in a system like, and I only have to appeal to a smaller group of people to get me there, right? Now, you know, if we have something like approval voting or others, now the entire calculus changes because that's not enough to get you home. And so now you have to say, okay, I have to come out of this, not with 28% of the vote supporting me, I have to come out of this with the majority of my party supporting me. And that's a bigger deal because now you've empowered these other folks that sort of occupy different spaces to have a real voice in the outcome of that primary. And so it's not just, you know, it's not just, you know, one wing of the party that wins or loses that race. Now sort of, you know, other, you know, I always, you know, to me the ultimate goal here isn't for me to try to dictate the outcome of an election the way I want it to come out, right? So I don't say, hey, I want more moderate candidates or I want what I really want is more candidates that are representative of the area they come from. That may or may not mean they're moderate, but we get to the point where at least Congress is filled with people that the majority of folks back home said should be there. And that's a big difference from where we are right now. I'm going to kick it from Joe to Howard and give Joe a compliment in making sure that he didn't throw any of his clients under the bus by naming them on a recording. Good job, Joe. Howard, do you want to answer that one? You know, it's funny, I've been pondering it and I think Joe is exactly right. I mean, in the first instance, you have a lot of people who self-select out of even the idea of running because they conclude that they are too moderate or mainstream to win a primary. I mean, that happens a fair amount. I've had any number of conversations with people over the years in which they think about getting into a race on both sides, frankly, both Republicans and Democrats who sort of in the end conclude that in a low turnout primary, the only people who will be voting will be people who are either very liberal or people who are very, very conservative and that they therefore have no chance because they are too moderate. So I think that really from the top to bottom, from beginning of the process to the end of the process, from the beginning of the process of self-selection in terms of who runs and who doesn't to the end of the process in terms of who wins and who doesn't, you would have a pretty significant change if every election in the country was run under some sort of reform banner or process. I mean, I do think, look, one of the challenges candidly for the reform community is that there are lots of different reforms and that people who are invested in reform don't always completely agree on what the nature of the reform should be. I mean, I have an idea about what makes the most sense to me that might not make the most sense to some of the folks that I talked to who are eager to push a different set of reforms. And I think that that is something in my view that it would be helpful for those of us who are invested in some version of reform to come to a bit more of a common cause on because it doesn't really do all that much good for the reformers to be arguing amongst ourselves what the best reform is. I mean, I think that nearly any reform that has been kind of described to me is better than the status quo, right? And at some point it becomes a question of maybe what is most likely to succeed either via referenda or through legislative change. Maybe that's the route that reformers should take. But I do think it's important that there be some consensus because the truth is that for average voters this stuff is kind of confusing. I mean, I know in New York for instance that the ranked choice process was a little confusing to folks. And now interestingly the referenda to approve ranked choice passed overwhelmingly. So it wasn't so confusing that people were unwilling to support the idea of it which is I think kind of telling in one respect I think voters in New York are so fed up with the kind of choices that they had that they were willing to take a flyer if you will on a new process that a lot of them didn't really even probably understand all that well but understood that it would represent a change from the status quo. But as I said, I do think it's important for the reform community to maybe come to a bit more of a consensus about what kinds of reforms ought to be pushed most aggressively. Tom? Yeah, at the risk of incurring the wrath of the audience I'm also not gonna name names but I do have a little bit of a hot take in terms of if I could wave a wand and reform the voting process in any race I'd do it in the Republican presidential primary right now. I think New Hampshire, we've seen some polls out of New Hampshire just in the last few days and we've seen where Nikki Haley is actually apparently gaining ground there has a substantial share of the vote. I think she was at 25 or 30% of the vote. Trump was below 50%. New Hampshire obviously a state that has open primaries at least unaffiliated voters can participate. You don't have to be a registered Republican. And I think there's a strategic element there that perhaps there is a majority of voters who are eligible to vote in New Hampshire in that Republican primary whose primary concern is just not seeing Donald Trump win the nomination, maybe, I don't know. But if you're one of those voters that's challenging do we all have to go and vote for Nikki Haley? Chris Christie in that poll was getting 10 or 11% of the vote, nevermind DeSantis. I think if there's some amount of voting reform there you could potentially see that there is a majority coalition that doesn't wanna see Trump win the nomination. Again, that's maybe a little bit of wishful thinking but I think a different system there would potentially produce a more moderate result. So if I could wave a wand I'd make it happen there. Well, and I appreciate, I'm watching the chat. So I do appreciate friends that we've got quite a few folks who are excited and engaged in the conversation and the dialogue that we're having. And so with the last little bit of time that we have today I'm gonna open it up to a couple of the questions in the chat. I'm gonna go ahead and they're already in the chat. So I'm just gonna verbalize them for the purposes of this panel and feel free to answer them all, all of you can. If one of you wants to take it, that's fine too. I'm gonna start with Scott because I think it actually dovetails Tom well. His question was, I shouldn't say he, I don't actually know that Scott is a he, I apologize. But their question is that what strategies have you seen succeed when bringing alternative voting methods to a leadership body that was elected by, that was elected by less represent, I think it's supposed to say by less than a representative election system. So what have you guys seen? Go ahead Howard. That's an excellent question, right? So it's sort of the implication of the question is it's not so easy to get people who are elected under an existing system to change the rules of the election that elected them. Because of course people are most comfortable with the rules that they know and they've been successful under those rules. One way to go about this is in places that have referenda to put these questions up on the ballot for referenda. And I think referenda increasingly has had some degree of success. It has not been successful everywhere and it's not cheap. But if you believe that politicians are unlikely to reform the rules of the road in which they are currently driving, you need to submit the changes to another group of people and you ask voters to weigh in. There is no way that for instance that the city council of New York would have approved ranked choice voting, but referenda in New York city did deliver that. So I mean, an answer to that question is referenda. Not every state, not every municipality has referenda obviously. And then that becomes a far more complicated process. It's a cheaper process to work through the legislature than it is to run lots of ads on TV and send people mail and do run digital ads that you need to do in a referenda. But I think it is unfortunately a tough ask to expect that people who have been elected under one system are gonna go out and change that system. Happens, but it's tough. Well, thanks for at least putting in a plug for state legislatures being worth something. Howard, I appreciate that. Tom, no, you agree? Yeah, I mean, if I could add- He's not wrong. Yeah, I mean, I've had experience with this in a handful of states, including a state I won't name, but it's not too far from where Howard is sitting or where I imagine Howard is sitting. This was years ago, but we were working on potential election reform packages through the state legislature. And it was the first time naive. That was struck with this, where we're talking about things like election day, registration, things like that, that generally, and again, as a Democrat, you would look at this and say, well, this is home run. This works for us. You have plenty of data. And the notion was from the elected official perspective was that not voting was the same as voting against them from their perspective. The electorate and the rules that put them in office, they don't want to mess with it. And we pulled on it. We showed them plenty of polling, showed them voter file data to show how this would impact. It didn't matter. And eventually this state, this unnamed state did pass election reforms and they got some good things in. It took a lot of hand-holding. It took leadership from an eventual Democratic governor and even then it wasn't everything it could have been. So it's a tough process. And I couldn't agree with Howard Moore. It's the referendum to your best bet. It's just not always an option. Joe, anything you want to add? Probably nothing good I can add to that. They're not wrong. Okay, well then with the last little bit of time we have, I actually want to go back to Catherine's question. First Catherine, there are no stupid questions except the ones you do not ask. So thank you for being willing to put your question in the chat. But Catherine was looking for I think a little bit more clarity on, if I read into your question correctly, a little bit more clarity about how kind of approval voting or alternative voting methods work. I'm happy to let the panelists answer this question but I actually think Mike or Chris might provide better context if the panelists are willing to defer. But unless one of you is like, I really want to dive in to explain alternative voting methods, I'm going to turn to Chris or Mike and ask you guys to answer Catherine's question as our last question for the day before. Go away, Chris. Or Mike. Chris, go ahead and take a seat. I'll only do it since Joe nominated me. So very briefly, you have systems that where you rank in order of preference and then you have systems where like approval voting can pick all the candidates you like. In a rank choice system, ranking, you rank one through let's say 10 and there are subsequent rounds of elimination. So if someone doesn't hit 50%, their second place votes are redistributed to get 50%. That almost always works to nominate one person. The goal is usually to either nominate or elect one person which makes it great for like a primary like how they do it in New York City. For approval voting, but the system is a little bit more flexible. Let's say there's 10 candidates, you're nominated one person, everyone selects all they can say like, the candidate approved by most people wins. Now, what is flexible about it is you can nominate or elect one person or you can nominate or elect two people or three preferably we also like approval voting that nominates or elects one person but in St. Louis, Missouri where they have approval voting, it's a top two primary. So in a situation like California where there's 40 candidates, theoretically voters can select all they can say like and the most approved top two would go to the general election. So approval voting is very flexible in that way and I'll stop there. And if I might jump in and add one more thing, it's good that you brought up California because alternative methods can have a huge impact on who wins. We just did a poll last week in California that showed that if you use plurality voting, choose one, you would have a situation where Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey advanced to the runoff. But when you use approval voting, you see that what the consensus wants there is our two Democrats running against each other in the general election. So you have a situation where Garvey drops from second to fourth place. And so that's a quick rundown on how this can have an impact. So hopefully that answered your question, Catherine. And thanks for asking it because I'm sure you're not the only person who's joining this call today to learn a little bit more about the work of approval voting or alternative voting methods in general. For those of you who are new, please feel free to go to the CES website. We'd be happy. We have a bunch of information up there that I can share more on the topic. But as we close out today, I'd like to just ask our panelists or invite our panelists just to give us closing thoughts on voting reform, alternative voting methods, or just the current state of politics and why we think alternative voting methods because I feel like that's the one thing we can all agree on is that there needs to be some kind of reform. I'd love to just hear your closing thoughts on this before we thank you all for being here. And I'm gonna go with Howard. Oh, go ahead, Joe. Let's start with Tom. Okay. Tom and Howard, then Joe. Well, I'm no good at dramatic closing thoughts. So I'll just say I really appreciate the opportunity to, first of all, be on this great panel with Howard and Joe and Christine, thank you so much for your moderation and just thank you all, Mike, Chris, and team for the work you all are doing. I believe it's incredibly important and it's great that, you know, on what, Tuesday? It's a Tuesday afternoon and in December, we got this great crowd of people here to participate in this discussion. So I appreciate it and I hope everyone has a good holiday. Second, all of those, thanks. Christine in particular, thank you. You know, this was a very well moderated and thoughtful discussion and credit to you for helping guide us through the conversation. We very much appreciate that. You know, I mean, I'm heartened by the fact that there are so many people who are participating in this Zoom because I think they represent a very large number of Americans who are dissatisfied with the status quo but aren't willing to give up on making change. And, you know, I don't, I don't, I've been in politics long enough to come to the conclusion that change does not come easily or quickly but that people working together who are committed to a common cause can make change. And I do think that there are certainly more municipalities, cities, stage jurisdictions that benefit today from electoral form than did 10 or 20 years ago. That's not by happenstance. A lot of people worked really hard to make that happen. And my hope is that, you know, 10 or 20 years from now, we will be able to say that there are even more jurisdictions that are voting in a different and better way than we have today. So thank you. All right, Joe, take us home. I guess I'll finish by saying this. You know, I've been working in the political world since the late 1980s and worked on hundreds and hundreds of campaigns and when I got my start working in the legislature, campaigns were just as well fought then as, you know, hard fought then as they are now. We would come together after the elections and there would still be some hurt feelings and there would still be some, you know, some healing that had to get done after elections. But, you know, November and December, people would come together and Christmas parties would happen and that kind of thing. And by the time you got to January, there was already some relationships built across party lines and the beginnings of the work to get things done and to solve problems and to find solutions to things that weren't even partisan problems. You know, they were just the things that were, you know, the regular people wanted us to get done. And so, you know, now, you know, it's a lot more difficult for people on either side of the aisle to speak with one another and to find common ground. And so, you know, I am excited to participate in any conversation that will bring Americans with diversion points of view back together to solve the big problems in America. And if a little bit of voting reform along the way might get us closer to that point, I'm all for it. So thank you. And Christine, I thought you did a wonderful job moderating this panel and putting some of these discussions in perspective. And thank you for taking the time to do it. And thanks for having me on. Well, it was absolutely my pleasure. And on behalf of the entire Center for Election Science Board, our staff and our team here, thank you to the three of you for giving us so much of your time the week before a big holiday. We really appreciate it and hope that folks in the audience got something meaningful from the conversation. I know I did. And I think, you know, Joe, I'm gonna say it very seldom do I necessarily agree with Republicans on a lot of things, but I'm gonna say I really agree with you that ultimately we've got to get back to putting problem solving over partisan or hyper partisan politics. And so I appreciate your framing that approval voting alternative voting methods in general can be the path to helping us ensure that our democracy survives and thrives quite frankly. And so thank you all for being here today. Thank you to our audience for joining us and for engaging. And we look forward to catching you at our next event or on the CES website. Thanks so much, everybody. Have a great holiday.