 Hello and welcome to American Democracy Summit. I'm Josh Lin, the co-founder and CEO of Represent Us and I am very excited to welcome you to tonight's presentation. I also wanna shout out a quick happy new year to everybody observing Yom Kippur this evening. Thanks all for being here. I'm gonna start off with a brief presentation to give you a rundown of what we're looking at tonight and put some of the work in context. Tonight's event is called On the Ballot, Better Choices and Better Representation. And we're gonna be talking to some campaign leaders from some of the most important campaigns that you may or may not have heard of that are happening across the country this November. These are campaigns that actually put more power in the hands of voters. They crack down on special interests. They actually give us our democracy back and that's what we're all here for. Joining me in just a little while, along with my colleague, On Lin, will be Joe Bresni from Yes On 3 Nevada, the campaign manager there, Bonnie Miller from Protect AR Constitution, Ashley Morris from the Oakland for Fair Elections Act, Yes On Measure W campaign, and Melanie Billings-Yoon from Portland United for Change. And we'll bring them up in just a few minutes. I wanna give you a little context. Those four campaigns, plus me, plus you, plus everybody here is all part of what we call the American democracy movement. And what's so important about that is that each of these campaigns stands for something on their own. They have the capacity to make major change for the state or the city where each of these campaigns are happening. There's also something bigger happening. And that is a movement of Americans from across the political spectrum coming together to reclaim our democracy, to make it work for the people again, to really be of, by, and for the people. And I would ask you, shouldn't America be the world's strongest democracy? Isn't that what we all want? Isn't that what we believe? Right now, we're 26th in the world. So we've got a lot of work to do and these four campaigns are starting to get us there. Ultimately, we know that the system is broken. We're living with it every single day. And if I could ask you to just think about it for a moment, think about any issue that you really care about, an issue that's close to your heart. Maybe it's the reason you donate or volunteer or you're on a board somewhere. What's standing in the way of progress on your issue is the same thing standing in the way of the progress on every single person's issue who's watching tonight. We all share this in common. It is our broken, corrupt political system, our failing democracy that is preventing the progress on all of the issues we care about. And we refer to it as a system failure. Because we have a systemic problem, because we have system failure, we need campaigns that actually fix the system. And not only that, but we need to protect the democracy that we have. This slide right here that says, and we're gonna hang you. This is a direct quote from the same kind of people that stormed the Capitol on January 6th and the insurrection, threatening an election worker with their life. So not only do we need to protect what we have now, but we need to strengthen it with the systemic reforms that we're about to talk about this evening. We need to be able to do both at the same time, short-term and long-term together. We have to fight back against the gerrymandering. It has to stop or we will never have the system we want. We have to stop the extremism. We have to be able to fight back against the corruption and change the system from what it is today. And really importantly, that's what tonight is about, is actually winning on these ideas. Because so many people think that it's absolutely impossible to fix any of the things that I just mentioned, but we're here tonight to talk about the fact that it is possible and we're already winning. The reason we know this works is because it's been done before. This map shows you the states that gave women the right to vote from left to right. The left-hand side is 1890, all the way up to 1920, states passing laws before in 1920 on the right-hand side, that became federal law. Here it is again for interracial marriage. A whole bunch of states made interracial marriage possible before in 1967, it finally became federal victory. And here we see it one more time with marriage equality, one that many of us live through. The fight went all the way up to 2016 with states paving the way. And so that is to say, the campaigns that you're seeing tonight be state campaigns. Like I said before, they are making major change in their own locality. They're also part of something much bigger, which is creating a map of America, just like the campaigns that came before us following in their successful footsteps to start changing the country city by city, state by state. What you see on this map is about a dozen cities and half a dozen states that are actively pursuing change this year, changes like rank choice voting, open primaries, expanding voter access, anti-corruption and ethics laws and protecting our elections from attacks on the ballot measure process and attacks from our election workers, attacks on our election workers. Now, this is just this year's map. And if you have any questions about whether or not any of these campaigns really matter, let me point you to one of our recent victories, which was Alaska. We all saw the success of the recent special election in Alaska, showing what the people of Alaska really wanted, but also making it possible for two Republicans to run on the same ballot without splitting the vote. This gave the voters better choices, better representation and a better ability to elect somebody that represents a true majority of Alaskans. We are seeing that replicated here. We'll be talking a lot about it tonight. There's one other thing that I wanna show you about the impact of what we're all doing here. So this is this year's map, 2022. This is the map of what our movement has been able to accomplish over the last decade. Look at what we're doing. Ethics reforms, voter registration, vote by mail, anti-jerrymandering, money in politics, rank choice voting, it's happening all across the country. That is what a movement looks like. That is what a fight for real change looks like and that is what momentum looks like. And so with this in mind, with this idea that each campaign you're gonna hear from tonight is a part of something that really will make a difference in the course of history, I'm really excited to pass the mic to my colleague, Anlin, who's gonna introduce you to tonight's campaigns and will be your host for the rest of the evening. Thank you so much for being here. Hi, thanks so much, Josh. That was so informative and it makes me just so excited to hear from these campaigns. So let's get right to it. First of all, my name's Anlin. I'm a research analyst here at Represent Us. I'm excited to moderate this discussion of what is on the ballot this year and how these measures will produce better choices and better representation. Over the next hour, we will hear directly from the leaders themselves on the goals of their campaigns, how they came to be, their path to victory and how you at home can help them get to the finish line on November 8th. So let's meet the campaign leaders first. First, we have Bonnie Miller. She is the campaign manager for Protect Our Constitution and she serves as the executive director of Arkansas's Voters First and she is the president of the League of Women Voters of Arkansas. Hey, Bonnie. She's currently leading a grassroots coalition to oppose a referred amendment that would make passing citizen initiated acts and amendments nearly impossible. So we're excited to dig into that more. Next, we have Ashley Morris. She is the organizing director of the ACLU of Northern California and is a leader with the campaign, Oakland Fair Elections Act. She comes to this work with more than a decade of experience advancing a pro-democracy agenda. So we're really excited you're here joining us. Thank you, Ashley. Next, we have Melanie Billings-Yoon. She is here with Portland United for Change. She's formerly served as the co-chair on the Portland Charter Commission and during her day job, she's an international negotiation consultant and professor at Portland State University and has taught at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Georgetown University. She's also an author of Beyond Dealmaking, Five Steps to Negotiating Profitable Relationships. Melanie, thank you so much for being here. Lastly, we have Joe Brenzy. He is the campaign manager on the Yes on Three Nevada campaign. He's been a political professional in Nevada for more than 20 years and has spent his career serving previously as executive director of the Nevada Republican Party and executive director of the Nevada GOP Senate Caucus. Joe, great to see you. Thank you so much for being here. All right, let's get started with the questions. So first from each of you, we'd love to hear about what the goal of your campaign is, what the policy is and how it got started. We'll start with you, Ashley. Thanks so much for having me. Our campaign started out of concern about the cycle through which economic and political inequality reinforce and perpetuate one another. To an extent, this sort of came in light of the Citizens United decision and a number of other Supreme Court cases over the previous three, four decades that made it really clear that we should be approaching this issue locally and that we needed to develop successful city-based models that could be replicated and create momentum for ultimate state and federal changes that are needed. Money speaks in politics. It impacts not only who has the resources to win an election, but also who's able to even run a campaign in the first place. And once candidates become elected officials, it affects who has access to and influence over those elected officials. And that disparity in access and influence breaks down not only along lines of class and wealth, but also along lines of race, gender, disability, and beyond. So ACLU of Northern California, along with our partners at Common Cause California, Bay Rising and MathLite convened the Bay Area Political Equality Collaborative in 2018 to begin to explore the issue of money and power in local elections. And what we could do to create a more representative government that would make the change that we wanna see on issues like affordable housing, community safety, and quality schools rather than responding to what big money donors and special interests want. Our core coalition has expanded now to also include Asian-Americans advancing justice, Asian law caucus, Oakland Rising, and the leader women voters of Oakland. We explored several models of public financing systems and decided to follow the lead of Seattle's successful voucher program and propose a democracy dollars program that's packaged with a number of other important transparency and accountability provisions that I'll talk about a bit more later. And that will appear on the ballot this November as Measure W, the Open Fair Elections Act. Awesome, thank you so much. Measure W, we are looking out for it. Now to you, Bonnie. Thank you so much for having me. So I am Bonnie Miller and I'm the campaign manager for Protect Our Constitution in Arkansas. And to give you a little bit of background about our campaign, I wanna first give you some context. So we're gonna talk about really quickly how the constitution in Arkansas can be amended. There are two routes and one is through the general assembly and one is through directly through the people, through the ballot initiative process. So every legislative session, our general assembly meets every two years. They convene and they have the right to refer out up to three constitutional amendments for the general election. So during the last legislative session in 2021, the legislature put forth an amendment to change the ballot measure process. And so we started organizing pretty quickly after that because Arkansas is one of the only states in the country that allows voters to propose and vote on issues by the people that are important to us. So we have this process and we've had it for over 112 years. And the legislature, it's no surprise that politicians don't wanna concede any power. And so we have seen them attack the ballot measure process cycle after cycle. And even in 2020, they put forth another measure than it was issue three and voters overwhelmingly defeated it. And so they followed that up, like I said, this last legislative session with yet another measure. And while similar, this is the first amendment that has proposed increasing the amount of votes that are required to pass a constitutional amendment from a simple majority to a super majority of 60%. And it's important to note that this also applies to acts. So it would also increase the threshold for passage for laws. And so we, as soon as this was referred out by the General Assembly, there were a lot of in-state groups and it's truly a bipartisan coalition. We're working with Republicans, with Democrats, with elected officials, with non-partisan groups who just immediately knew that this was something that we had to defend. We have to defend this process and keep power with the people. And in fact, the state is, that our state's motto is reg not populace. And that means the people rule. And this is something that is extremely unpopular with our Kansans. And so we have been organizing for quite a while and we are an anti-campaign. So we are in defense mode. So we are opposing this and it is issue two as it will be on our ballot. And so that's a bit of our history of how we got started and what we are opposing. That's really fascinating. Thank you so much for that. Yeah, it's crazy to think that if issue two isn't defeated that it'll be harder for voters to pass their own initiatives and it would be for them to elect politicians that serve them. And that's just shouldn't be the way it is. Anyways, let's hear now from Melanie, what's going on in Portland. Okay, I should make clear that's Portland, Oregon because I think there's some interesting things going on in Portland, Maine too. But let's stick with us. We're coming at it from a somewhat different direction. It's within the Portland city charter that every 10 years there is an independent commission that looks at the city charter and how it can be amended. Historically, that group has talked to the city council about how do you want to change things. We took a very different direction. I should say that the Portland city charter dates back to 1913 and has left us with this commission form of government that I'm not even gonna go into right now because it's so ludicrous. It has, it has not used any longer in any major city in the United States in which very basically our city council people represent direct the bureaus like the fire department, the police department and so forth. We only have four city councilors. They are all elected at large through a primary and a general election. But instead of starting by saying, what do we wanna fix? We actually did a deep dive into talking to Portlanders. We wanted this to be built from the ground up. We held 26 public listening sessions with over 580 people. We conducted 4,000 surveys. We sent out monthly updates to thousands of people, received 1,700 public comments. We worked on this for one and a half years. And unlike in previous years, instead of instead of going to the city council and saying, do you like these ideas? We actually came up with solutions that were based on what we heard from Portlanders. And when I say Portlanders, we did a particularly strong outreach in terms of looking at people who are traditionally left out. You may know that Oregon has a pretty bad reputation. It was started as a white only state. And as a result, it has never righted itself in terms of racial equality, but we also have very strong income inequality and so forth. One of the first things we found out when talking to Portlanders was that only one quarter of the city feel that they are well represented. 13% say the city is on the right track. This is a city that is in a lot of trouble. So we developed a policy that will go to the voters, measure 26228, based on what we heard from Portlanders. There's three basic parts to it. The first is that for the first time, we will have district representation and we're going to have four districts with three person multi-member representation, which will be voted by rank choice voting or in this case, single transferable vote. In addition, the role of the city council will be taken away from running bureaus and be a legislative and representative body. Right now there is no local representation. We will have 12 counselors, which is far more appropriate for a city of 650,000 than four, which is what we've had ever since 1913. And we will, as I said, be electing those counselors through rank choice voting. A lot of opposition has sprung up, but I will have to say that opposition, although loud, is extraordinarily narrow. What it consists of are current people in the city council, people who are running for city council and people who were previously in the city council. The problems that we are facing right now are that they have a very big voice with the press and that there's a very strong and unfortunate disinformation campaign going on meant to frighten Portlanders that the kind of things that we are proposing are in the words of one of the major opponents at current city council person, things never tried anywhere else on the globe, which is patently untrue, but when you say a lie enough times, people begin to believe it. So that is where we are right now. And I'm very happy to talk to you in a little while about why this is an essential thing that we need now. Wow, thank you so much for that. Yeah, rank choice voting in multi-member districts. That is truly one of the gold standards of representation. So I'm really excited about Joe's campaign. Lastly, we have Joe. Joe Brunzi is with Yes On 3, Nevada. Welcome, Joe. Tell us about what y'all are working on. Yeah, we've got question three in Nevada. And that's sprung out of the fact that the largest voting block of voters, the largest block of voters in the state of Nevada has slowly moved to being the independence. And so about a year and a half ago, the independence surpassed the Democratic Party here. And so now other Republicans are in third. And the largest voting block are folks not affiliated with a major party. And so that has, that combined with a closed primary system has made it so that there's increasing voter discontent because the largest voting group in the state isn't picking the folks that they get to choose from in November. And so we've had an increasing sense of picking between the lesser of two evils. So the thing that's made that worse also is that the manipulation of the closed primaries has increased cycle by cycle. And has reached kind of a fever pitch where the parties are engaging in the opposite post primaries because of the low turnout and working very hard to get the least qualified person through. And in some cases, both sides are achieving that. And when both sides get the least qualified person through, it doesn't leave us in a very good place. And so that has gotten the discontent and the dysfunction of the legislature to a level where Nevadans are really hungry for change. And so what happened was the Institute for Political Innovation came to Nevada about a year and a half ago and they did a year long survey with the locals and checked the landscape, talked to all of the political institutions here, talked to the majority of the major industries here, the majority of the grassroots organizations here and found that this was someplace that was ripe for change and where there was enough voter frustration that we would be a good choice to look at an open primary and ranked choice voting bill. And so here for a constitutional amendment, well here to make changes in the voting system, we actually have to change the constitution and to do a constitutional amendment, we actually have to be on the ballot twice. So we have to win 35 days from now and then we also have to win again in two years in 2024. And at that point, the constitution would be amended to allow for a single open primary where everyone can just choose, everyone shows up, Democrats, Republicans, non-partisans, finer party and they can all choose. And then the top five go to the general election where we would use ranked choice voting to select the winner. The campaign, after the year long survey, the campaign launched in February, that's when I came on. We gathered 266,000 signatures. We needed 140,000 signatures of the eight ballot measures that we're attempting to qualify in Nevada. We were the only one that made it. It is exceptionally difficult to qualify a measure here because of the number of signatures that you have to have and the fact that you have to have them in each of the four congressional districts. But we are qualified and on the ballot and now we are on a path to win. And so that is how we ended up here and happy to answer any questions about our path to victory or where we go from here and what we're doing in the interim once we win in 35 days. That's awesome. Thank you so much, Joe. Yeah, passing a constitutional amendment twice through the general, oh my gosh, that is a really laborious process. Okay, well, as our next question, Josh discussed at the top how our political system is broken on a foundational level. So can each of you speak to what's at stake with your campaign? Why victory is vital and needed right now in 2022? And I'll start with Bonnie this time. Thank you so much. I love this question. And to Joe, that is wild. I didn't realize that Nevada's process was so complicated. So this is so important right now in Arkansas because, I mean, this is on the ballot. So if this passes, this is really the end of direct democracy as we know it in our state. So we're not in a position where we can say, where we're trying to qualify for the ballot and say, if we don't do it this year, we can try again in two years, no. We have had one citizen initiated an amendment in the last 20 years that passed at over 60% one. We already have one of the most owners processes for ballot measures in the country. And as I mentioned earlier, the legislature already tried to restrict the process in 2020 with a different kind of amendment that we defeated. But when that didn't work, when they came into session, they passed another law to make the process even more difficult. So we are already dealing with a process that is almost impossible. And now they want to increase the amount of votes that are required. And I will also mention that they're not increasing the amount of votes required to pass laws for the legislature. So it is absolutely crucial. We cannot wait. We don't have another opportunity to save this process in Arkansas. And if you think that Arkansas is a red state, we might be right now, but historically we have been a purple state. You might remember someone by the name of Bill Clinton. The Democrats reigned for a very long time and during that period, conservatives used the ballot measure process. And so it's something that is truly a bipartisan issue. Our Kansans feel very strongly about this and we have five weeks. We have five weeks. And it's absolutely crucial. Yeah, it's really important. Coming from a state I live in Texas, we don't have that process. So it's really, really crucial that places that do have that process do everything they can to keep it and keep it working as well as it can. I'll ask the question now to Melanie. Tell us what is at stake? Why is victory vital right now in 2022? I think a lot of you have probably seen in the news that Portland right now is pretty much a mess. There have been demonstrations, riots and so forth. In our talk with Portlanders, it becomes clear that much of that is because people feel utterly helpless, utterly unrepresented. Just looking at it, this city has been run since for the past 30 years. Our city council has been made up of 75% white men from a very narrow area near the downtown. Only two have been from the eastern part of our city, which is by far the most popular part of our city. Only nine women have ever been on the city council and two of them are only from the past three years and only five people of color ever ever. The opposition that we are facing is entirely made up or almost entirely made up of older white men who are privileged and do not want to lose that privilege. When we began this system, as I said, we talked to Portlanders. More importantly, we listened to Portlanders and we aligned ourselves with 20 community groups so they could reach out to communities that are normally ignored or underserved. They were led by the coalition of communities of color, but there were other groups that might represent LGBT or renters or people who were just normally ignored within this system. And what we heard in meeting after meeting was just intense frustration, an intense sense that nobody is there to listen to them, nobody represents them. They have no voice in the system and no wonder as a result that we see large numbers of protests because these people feel rightly that they are ignored by our city. The biggest demands that we heard were for representation and for accountability, that when there was a problem, there was someone out there who would answer the phone when they called and that those problems would be solved. This city right now is run by an old guard and that old guard is very unhappy at what we're doing. So the biggest threat we're facing right now is that one of those city commissioners just came out yesterday with his counter-proposal. Now, mind you, he has changed his counter-proposal many times, but it came out in full yesterday in which he basically is supporting some of the things that we have said, like changing the commission form of government, but he has taken away the rank choice voting, he has taken away the multi-member districts, he has reduced 12 counselors, which is the right number for about 600,000 people to seven because then they won't lose as much power as they would and they have absolutely taken away proportional representation. I don't believe even that the so-called measure is real because it will not be in the ballot in November. I think it's there to be a diversion to make and in fact, their slogan is vote no for a better yes, but there is absolutely no sign that that better yes will only happen. We listened to what Portlanders told us. The council man that I'm talking about now said, this is what I feel Portlanders want, he's wrong. Wow, yeah, and it sounds like you guys were very thorough in your process and who knows how he came up with his recommendations. So that's, there's a lot at stake. How about you, Joe, tell us about what's at stake for Nevada if this doesn't win and why is this policy so needed in 2022? Well, I guess in 2024 when it eventually does get to pass. Yeah, well, two reasons. The first is it's a fundamental right to vote and it's a fundamental issue of fairness to be able to participate in the governmental functions that we pay for. And right now I'm a nonpartisan voter and I pay for a state sponsored prom night for two private organizations because when I show up to vote in the primary, I literally have four justices of the piece and a board of education member. That's it. That's the only primary that I get to vote in because unless it's a nonpartisan race, I don't get to choose. And what's happened, and I can't understate this next part and it's actually kind of evil what the other side, what the parties in power have been doing by meddling in the opposition's primaries and lowering the bar for all of us and making it so that you have less qualified candidates on the ballot. You have several races this year where your choices are like trying to choose between being poisoned and shot. It's just there's several statewide races that I'm looking at that I honestly will likely not vote in because I know these people. Like I know the people running because we're such a small state and I can't vote for either of them. I can't vote for the incumbent and I can't vote for the challenger because neither is qualified. And that's because cycle after cycle, the two major parties have worked very hard to deny choices because that's what the current system incentivizes. The current system provides an incentive to make the other person look bad so that the bar is lower for your person because we're in this duopoly, me versus them team competition and the people that are suffering from this are the Nevada voters. And so there's the two issues. The first is just the lack of access by the largest voting block in the state. And then the second is the fact that once we get through that primary we're handed two bad choices. A lot of the time because that's what the current system incentivizes. And so if we want better representatives here we have to change the system. If we want better government here we have to change the system. And so that's what's so critical is Nevadans are losing faith in this and our government is getting worse and worse. Our legislature is really the epicenter of this. It's completely dysfunctional. We have legislative leaders of the same party in the Senate and the Assembly who don't speak to each other for the entire legislative session. We're an old Wild West state. Our legislative session is 120 days every other year. That's it. That's the only time that we're doing the people's business and your leaders can't even talk to each other for four months. And so the parties here are rotting from the ground up and it's gotten to the legislature. And so that's why if you look at our team the weird thing about our campaign finance report is it's a bunch? I think we've lost some connection with Joe a little bit but I'm just sensing a theme here of parties in power doing everything they can to keep power. Sure, all right. We've got real estate agents. We've got people who don't normally play in the same sandbox and they're all united to pass this. They're all united for this cause. And so when you have a group of people who don't generally get along all rowing in the same direction you're probably onto something good. Definitely, definitely. I think that I can even see that among this group of folks right here. Like I said, we're definitely sensing a theme that the voters are paying for the politicians to just keep their power. And these measures really do make the difference. Ashley, last to you, what is at stake in your campaign? Why is victory vital? The pandemic has really weighed bare the deep economic inequality in the Bay Area and Oakland in particular. You see luxury apartment buildings going up in downtown Oakland while many families continue to face houselessness and housing insecurity. Maybe wondering, well, Ashley, why don't you work on houselessness and housing? But it's really hard, if not impossible to get city government to make the changes that the community wants to see when millions of dollars are rolling in from outside Oakland and even outside of the state to elect school board members and city council members who are amenable to those outside interests. I recently moved out of Oakland, but I lived there for 14 years and I still lived there during the 2020 election cycle. And I really noticed an increase in the paid political ads that I saw in the form of the signs, the billboards, the mail I was receiving. And it turns out that over a million dollars in independent expenditures were spent on the school board race. And that was thanks to contributions from billionaires, literal billionaires. And a report from the Oakland Public Ethics Commission found that most of the donations that came from within Oakland came from wealthy white residents in the more affluent neighborhoods of Oakland. In 2021, our coalition commissioned our own survey of voters and we learned that the only reason why many Oakland residents weren't donating to the candidates who excited them was because they simply couldn't afford to make those political contributions. So we decided to proceed with our proposal this year after we secured the necessary support from the Oakland Public Ethics Commission and the city council members who referred it to the ballot. And just quickly, the components of the measure include increased transparency of who's funding independent expenditures, a limit on the ability of former elected officials to become lobbyists, lower contribution limits to kind of help level the playing field. And then we equip every eligible Oakland resident with four $25 vouchers to donate to the eligible candidate or candidates of their choice. And that's to make candidates and elected officials more accessible and more responsive to everyday Oakland residents so that Oaklanders can exercise their own power to influence officials and make the positive policy changes the community wants to see. Gotcha. Thank you so much for that. I know folks on the call right now are really interested to hear not only about your campaigns but how are you going to win? You guys are the hope for a lot of very disengaged and disappointed voters. So I would love to hear from each of you. One, what is your strategy to victory? And two, what can the folks watching at home do to help? So I'll start with Melanie on that one. Okay. Well, you know, we're facing a pretty serious campaign. I am very, very proud of our campaign. We put forth our proposal at the end of June. We have already gotten over 50 organizational endorsements and another 50 political and citizen and business endorsements. Just to give you an idea of the breadth of the endorsements that we have gotten, they include unions, League of Women Voters, City Club, Portland Association of Teachers, Coalition of Communities of Color, NAACP, Urban League, Latino Network, Asian Pacific American Network, Native American Chamber of Commerce. All of the people who here too far have felt completely left out of this system. The opposition only has some individuals who, as I've said, are in the government, want to be in the government or have been in the government. So they're way behind us. As a result, they have launched a very serious disinformation campaign. And it's pretty depressing. If you must know, the kind of things that are being said, there was a tweet that came out today, vote no on this proposal because it's a racist, sexist proposal. I go into debates and listen to the other side just lie and it has become very, very difficult. But we have had a tremendous outreach campaign. We outreach through neighborhood talks. I myself have given over a hundred of these. We do personal outreach. I will schlep and the other members of our team, we have maybe a team of about 50 people. We'll schlep signs out to everybody. We are reaching out through doorknocks, through social media, through mailers, through yard signs, and through phone banks. This is an all hands on deck proposal. On the good side, the latest poll just showed that we are 63% of the population says that they're gonna vote yes on this, but we can't let go because this disinformation campaign has just bumped up quite extremely in this last week. And as I've said, the press tends to be a little bit more favorable to those people who are already in the government. So this is gonna be a fight to the end, but it's a fight that we know Portlanders want and it's a fight that we believe Portlanders are going to win. And what can the folks at home do to support your campaign? If they're in Portland, maybe if they're calling in from out of state or something, how can they help? Anyone from anywhere can donate. I think that you have a slide that shows the site that you go to, PortlandUnitedForChange.com. You can spread the word on social media. If you follow this on social media, please start correcting the nonsense that is out there. And by the way, that nonsense is pretty darn racist. We need people to counter this misinformation. And if you're willing, we have virtual phone banks and you can take part in those on Tuesdays from 5.30 to 7.30 again, wherever you are. We don't have maybe the influence of the popular, of the politicians, but we have the people behind us and we need you behind us. Awesome, thank you so much for that info and we will be sharing all of those links in a slide at the end. All right, Joe, can you tell us what is the path to victory here and how can folks at home get involved? Yes, so we're actually positioned pretty well. The nice thing about this campaign is that we have the truth on our side. So our opposition is unfortunately tasked with defending the current system. It is very different. The current system is working for a handful of people, literally a handful of people who are the puppet masters of the system and it's not working for anyone else. And so the polling strong, we came in at 60% and that's been consistent. We see drop off normally with ballot measures in Nevada because if people don't understand a ballot measure they'll generally vote no. Those break usually two to one, but we still should be comfortably over 50%. We've had a very successful quarter for fundraising and we will be starting our television campaign this weekend and we will have a saturation on TV and digital for the final weeks of the campaign. And so we're people, we've secured larger donations for the media and we paid for our overhead, but if anyone can go to yeson3nv.com, that's our website, yeson3nv.com, there's two things that you could do to help there. The first is the donate button with small dollar donations. We've earmarked all of those for our grassroots team. So instead of having your money go to someone's salary or to one 15th of a TV spot, that's going to be used by our volunteers. So we've got volunteers that have been trying to get this passed for six years here and we use that for tabling fees. We use that for admittance fees to the party conventions because we're tabling at their conventions and pushing back with them. And then we use that to support the volunteer kind of your donations. Goals would go to them and they would have the discretion of using that for boots on the ground grassroots activity. The second thing that you can do is what are grassroots people are doing if you know anyone in Nevada, talk with them, get in touch with anyone you know in Nevada and explain the measure to them, explain that what open primaries and ranked choice voting will do and how that will change their access and their power as voters and how it takes away power from you and gives it back to the people. And if we could have help with those two things, we're seeing a lot of success. This has really been a grassroots campaign that has had a professional back-end added. And so we act in keeping that personal outreach to educate folks on how ranked choice voting works and how the ballot measure will change things for the better would really be a great help to us. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Ashley, what about you? How can folks help and how are you planning to win? Well, our polling shows broad support for all of the elements of our proposal. So we feel really confident, but democracy dollars are a somewhat novel concept. I didn't know about them until I started working on this campaign a few years back. So it's really important that we emphasize both the political reforms that our campaign is gonna institute, which are easy for most people to support, while also explaining how democracy dollars are really important to reduce the power of big money interests and corporations while building a fully engaged participatory community-driven democracy. So as far as our actual campaign tactics, we're layering our tactics by sending mail and digital ads to a broad universe of voters. So they'll get multiple mail pieces and get targeted by digital. Then we'll be talking to a subset of those voters at the doors through Oakland Rising's door-to-door program that they do every year. They have a very robust civic engagement and voter engagement program. We'll be texting everybody on our target list who has a cell phone and then we'll be phone banking everyone with landlines first and then moving on to phone banking the cell phones as well if we complete the landline list. So that's what we're working on on the field and organizing side. We're making sure to create printed materials in English as well as Spanish and Chinese. And then we're outreaching also to a range of media outlets for earned media coverage in language. And then finally, we've been securing endorsements from elected officials, candidates, labor, our county democratic party and organizations like the Sierra Club who have a broad base of support in Oakland and can help us get the word out to their members. But what we really need support with is our phone banks. Our upcoming phone banks are on October 11th, 17th and 24th. You can sign up for those at fairelectionsokeland.org slash volunteer. It's really important that we talk directly to voters about this measure and answer any questions they may have. We've done a lot of text banking already. It's much easier to get people to sign up for virtual text banks than virtual phone banks. So there are also some other text banking opportunities but I would really love if today we could get 10 signups from the representatives community for each of those three upcoming phone banks that would really help us meet our voter contact goals. Here that folks, we need 10 brave volunteers. You guys need to get onto Ashley's website and sign up. Last for Bonnie, how are you guys going to win and what can folks at home do to help? Right, so we know that the voters are with us. We have a bipartisan coalition. We're holding our campaign strategy right now. It's still just quite close to the chest because we are in defense mode. But please, please follow us. This is something you do and you will know more. We will be releasing news very soon. So follow our campaign on Facebook. We'll protect our constitution on Twitter. We are a vote against two. So definitely stay tuned. But money, money, money, money, money always helps. Arkansas has two metropolitan areas in the state but we are very rural and we have a low population density. And so we need resources to help reach those voters who are difficult to reach. And I cannot overstate how important this election will be. We live in a very hyperpartisan climate and I think a lot of people want to write off the South. The majority of legislative chambers in the South are dominated by one political party. And so there is not a lot of opportunity to pass democracy reform in the South. But Arkansas is one of, I think two states. I think Florida might have access through the ballot measure process to the constitution. Although if somebody knows differently, they can correct me. But so if you are thinking about where democracy reform can take place in the country in the South, think Arkansas. Don't write us off. In 2020, our state overwhelmingly supported open primaries and rank choice voting and independent redistricting commission. They didn't qualify for the ballot because of these super hyper technical reasons but they had overwhelming support of our Kansans. These are decent people in a historically purple state and we are where you can make a huge change where your dollars will make a very big impact. So please check us out. We are at aragainst2.org and I know the good folks running the show will give you that information. But that is how you can make the biggest impact. Got it. Thank you so much for that. Yeah, as someone who's also from the South and a lot of these states are ground zero for these fights against democracy. So really, really important. All right, we've got a little bit of time here for a Q&A from the audience. Folks have been eagerly submitting questions for y'all. The first one, and I would take any volunteer of any of you who wants to answer this, how can I, this is from somebody who's in the chat, how can I, what advice do you have? Sorry, what advice do you have for people who want to pass pro voter laws like this in their hometown or state? Does anybody wanna take a first swing at that one? I can kick it off. I would say that the most important thing to do first is start by building out your coalition, make sure that you really understand the landscape in your community and how the current system is impacting different communities within your city or town or county or state. In our campaign, our early and broad coalition was really essential to moving our campaign forward. The other thing that was really critical for us was having a very close relationship with the folks that ran a successful democracy dollars program in Seattle. They were instrumental in helping us develop the policy itself, but also talking to our ethics commission, which will be responsible for actually implementing and overseeing the program and making sure that we had their buy-in, answering technical questions about how the programs implemented in Seattle, and then helping us understand what the actual impacts are of the program once the law is successful. So definitely coalition building and that early organizing is important. And then using the resources that exist among other cities, if you wanna do democracy dollars, hopefully you'll have a successful campaign and open to look at as well. Awesome, you hear that folks? Build your coalition and then also consult the experts in the field who are already doing that work. That is great advice. There was one other question. They said a lot of people or a lot of the leaders on this call are championing a platform of reform. So multiple issues. So how do you decide which ones work together? And I would love to pose that question to Melanie because I know the Portland Charter Commission faced that question pretty much the whole time. How did you figure out what package was needed? Well, it made sense. We were never looking to just fix things at the edges. In fact, when Portlanders were asked whether they wanted small change, no change, small change, big change, or a complete overhaul of the government, we had about 78% that went for complete overhaul. The biggest group. The fact is that the proposal we came through, we came up with, had to be part of one thing. So if we're going to take the job of running bureaus away from the city council, we also have to give that city council the legislative and representative job. And if we wanted them to really be diverse and to achieve the goals that we wanted of a city that was more representative and more accountable, then that had to be combined with ranked choice voting or with proportional representation so that we didn't just get the same people being elected in every single district. If we had taken away, for example, if we had divided it up and the Portlanders voted for the districts but didn't vote for changing the form of government, and in terms of our polling, that's what it looked like the direction it would be, then we'd have people running bureaus. There were also representatives of little neighborhoods all around. So we wanted to come up with something that actually made sense. And we wanted to come up with something that answered the problems that we were consistently hearing. And yes, would it have been easier to divide it up? Yes, it would have been, but it wouldn't have given the answer that Portlanders were asking for. And so we made the decision that this needed to be a single proposal. Gotcha. Yeah, structural change is more complicated than people think and it often involves a lot of moving pieces. So that makes a lot of sense. Well, y'all, that concludes the question and answer segment for our event tonight. I wanna thank all of you, the campaign leaders who volunteered your time to share your work with us here tonight. I wanna go over the calls to action that you issued to our audience tonight. So for folks, the leaders in Nevada want you to support the campaign. Yes, on three, you can donate to the website and that donation will directly support the grassroots team. You can talk to people in your network and explain why question three is so important. There's a great explainer on their website. Check those things out and get in touch with your friends in Nevada. Next, we've got vote against two. So on that website, you can get involved and you can spread the word on the importance of voting no. Again, it's really important to protect the ballot measure process. It's a unique lever of direct democracy. Not every state has it and incredible reforms can be passed this way. So really, really important. You guys need to check that out and tell people in Arkansas to go to that website. Next, we have Yes on W. Check out their website, sign up for a phone bank. Text banks and phone banks are so much more fun and easy than people think and it's really cool to just chat with a stranger about politics. It's something that you think sounds horrible but you would be surprised. So get involved, Yes on W in Oakland. Lastly, we've got, and I know this slide is gonna change. Yep, Portland United for Change. Check out their website here. You can spread the word on social media. You can donate. You can also sign up for a weekly phone bank. Again, these municipal campaigns, it's, you can make a huge difference even if you're not in state. So check those opportunities out. Okay. Lastly, RepUs has a call to action as well. If you like what you've heard today and you wanna get more involved in the democracy movement broadly, you can sign up and volunteer, represent.us forward slash volunteer, join the Action Brigade or join the online community at representus.chat. We have a great time in there. We have optimism for the state of democracy and I know that you don't get that on the news or in your political conversations with your friends. Join us. We are trying to fight and make a difference. All right, I also need to acknowledge there's a couple other folks in the audience who are in campaigns that we are supporting ranked choice voting in Fort Collins and in Evanston, Illinois. I see those campaign leaders in the audience. I just wanted to give y'all a shout out, ranked choice voting's on the ballot in Fort Collins, Colorado and Evanston this November as well. We've also got an action map that has dropped into the chat previously. It gives you a comprehensive view of what we're watching this election day and where you can learn more. Lastly, if you want to donate, power this movement at the national level. When you join our Commonwealth, you are supporting these campaigns directly and it makes a huge impact on our movement. So there's a lot of really exciting ways that y'all can get involved. There's a lot of opportunities to be hopeful for the state of our democracy. So please check out all of those links, send them to your friends in those states and thank you so, so much for joining us tonight. Together, we can win these campaigns and bring us closer to our vision of building the world's strongest democracy. Really excited to see what happens on November 8th and I hope that it's a win for everybody here. Bye y'all, thank you so much again. Join us again.