 Hello, wow. It's, wow, my mind has been blown all weekend. Nantucket is a crazy place. I got to get back into whaling, I guess. Really excited to be here. Yeah, so one of the things that Josh and I have really been excited about is the theme for this weekend. Another world is possible. We love that because Josh and I believe that. I think we can all agree that politics right now is fucked. I certainly don't need to tell you this, but America is ridiculously polarized, more than we have been in literally generations. And you know this because we can't even talk to each other as humans anymore, although we've seen here that it is still possible. To this day, to this very day, misinformed, radicalized American extremists are calling election officials with death threats. And they're calling them with death threats because they want them to resign. That's what's happening in America right now. Why is this happening? Is it because of social media and all the misinformation and polarization and crazy algorithms that are tearing us apart? Well, yes, yes, that's part of it. Is it because we have a past president who will not accept a legitimate election and is trashing norms left and right? Yeah, that too. Is it because a lot of mainstream media is too corporate, too cynical, and too partisan? Yes, but there is something else going on that is way more fundamental, and that is what we want to talk about tonight. That thing is actually the political system itself. Our political system is actually in and of itself making things worse for all of us. Chances are you're feeling a lot like this, right? We're all feeling like that in some way. We're gonna get to the bottom of why. And to do it, we're gonna show you four lines, and those four lines are gonna underscore what's causing the dysfunction on all of these issues we care about. It's gonna underscore how we, together, conservatives and progressives can work together to fix it, and most importantly, we're gonna show you how you can be part of it. We're also gonna have three pictures of Ed Helms that I found on the internet today. Yeah, excuse me. It's gonna be great. Okay. It's gonna be awesome. Well, here we go. The first line, picture your issues sitting on this line. This purple line comes from a Princeton University study of 1,800 public opinion polls over a 20-year period, and the goal was to learn how public opinion correlates with the actual laws that are getting passed in Congress. On the x-axis, we have public support for an idea. On the y-axis, the likelihood of that idea actually becoming a law. And here's what's interesting. When you plot the data that they looked at for the average American, you get that purple line we just showed you. And here's how it works. If there is an issue that has zero public support, zero, there is approximately a 30% chance that Congress will pass a law based on this idea. Incredibly, if there is 100% support for an idea, you math majors know where this is going, there's still a 30% chance that Congress will pass a law based on that idea. Why are you laughing? It's, this is tragic. It gets dark right now, actually. The key finding of the study is the following. The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy. And Ed was joking that you're laughing. And what I'm gonna say is, if you have any question about how you should be feeling, hearing that, here's my guidance. Okay, well, hopefully in addition to feeling shock and rage, like Andy Bernard, you're hopefully asking, well, how did this happen? Politicians spend up to 70% of their time in office fundraising for the next election. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. It's just how it works. It's perfectly legal, and it's also insanely corrupt. The two-party duopoly that we are locked into, where you, as a voter, you get to vote for a Democrat or a Republican, or you can just throw away your vote. Studies show that half of the people in each party don't really wanna be there. It's just the only choice they have. To make matters even worse, we have gerrymandered congressional districts like this, where politicians are using digital surgical tools to cut voters out of the next election if they voted the wrong way in this one. I, can we freeze for a second on this? This slide is really worth a close look, because what it is, somebody has created a font of every letter of the alphabet with real congressional districts. I don't know if you are on the same page as me, but congressional districts should not look like letters of the alphabet. Look at the letter A. Kinda looks like Nantucket, doesn't it? Right? There's a big hole in the middle. Well, there's a big hole in the middle of Nantucket because there's a giant bay. There's a big hole in the middle of this voting district because those are voters they don't like. That means we know who's gonna win the election before the election even happens. And that means that the election is meaningless. It's just a ritual, a quaint nod to the past. It has no value or meaning in our process. And there's a really crazy side effect to all of this. We're gonna look at our second line. It comes from a very simple chart that actually shows how our primary process combined with gerrymandering is causing the extremism. It's actually causing it. 17% of voters participate in primaries. It's a very small amount. And of those 17% from each party, they tend to be the most extreme or polarized voters from each side that are motivated to show up. And so here's what happens. In a Republican safe district where there's no competition at all in the general, you have the most extreme voters choosing the more extreme candidate who wins the primary basically skips the general and represents us in Congress. And then in a Democrat safe district, you have the same thing happening from the other side, a minority of voters choosing a candidate that almost goes straight to Congress to represent us. We the people have a near zero impact on public policy. A near zero impact. Ed, it's not a good look. It is not a good look. It is not cool that high school yearbooks are online now. I know, you guys can Google it very easily. These are structural problems. These are structural problems. And when you have a structural problem, you need a structural solution. And we have to stop the corruption. There's just not a silver bullet on this issue, but there are three areas that we can focus on most. The first, independent commissions. This fights gerrymandering. Ask Katie Fahey, who is here from Michigan. Yes, give her a round of applause. She led a campaign to fix gerrymandering in Michigan and her new districts, like all districts drawn by independent commissions, are more fair and more representative. We can pass ranked choice voting and nonpartisan primaries to eliminate that spoiler effect that I talked about before. When you pass these, third parties in independence can run and win in elections. We can pass tough anti-corruption ethics campaign finance laws to fight back against the pay to play corruption. This is all winnable and we can combine it with all of the pro voter policies that we know are so important, voting rights, automatic voter registration, vote by mail. So we're actually creating a better system and then bringing more people into that system. And it may shock you to know that it's possible. Of course it's shocking, like waking up with a tattoo on your face. Yeah. I mean, think about it, Congress can't get anything done. Right? Let alone challenge the fundamental power structures of Washington at this point. And that brings us to our third line and I love this line. This line comes from a Bloomberg news report and it shows how throughout American history, passing laws at the state level can build to a tipping point and result in massive federal change so much faster than you think. This map shows states giving women the right to vote over time from left to right on the right hand side of the chart is when this became federal policy or a federal victory. Here it is again for interracial marriage. Watch as states pass laws, they build up and at the very end there's an acceleration followed by federal victory. We're gonna look one more time for marriage equality. States pass the laws, we hit this yellow line and then at the end there's federal victory. That yellow line is a key event, often a court decision or a grassroots campaign reaching maturity that triggers a rush of state activity that ultimately leads to a change in federal law. It has happened again and again and again throughout history. When you have about 3.5% of the population actively participating, it almost ensures serious political change. What we need to do is replicate the success of the movements that have come before us. And that's exactly what represent us is designed to do and it's what represent us is doing since 2012. We've had over 160 victories and these victories are in blue states, red states, purple states, because they're part of the momentum to that tipping point but they're also incredibly cool on their own. Represent us along with myriad partners and most importantly folks in Alaska in 2018 passed a crackdown on lobbyist gifts, ethics reform and transparency. In 2020 that same coalition was able to come back together and pass nonpartisan primaries and ranked choice voting and what's really cool for Alaska is half of the voters in Alaska are independents and with this law passed for the first time in 30 years those independents can actually participate in primaries in the state of Alaska which is amazing for Alaska. This was an election in which two Republicans could run against each other and not steal votes from each other. They did not split the vote. What ended up happening is after all of the ranking was done it just turned out that more than half of Alaskans actually wanted Pultola to be their representative and they elected the first woman and the first native to Alaska's representation in Congress. And what I want you to get from this is that's just one state. This is the map that our movement, not just my organization, but our movement has been able to win in the past decade. But it's not just about the map. It's about American culture as well. This is so important. We need to inspire the country to get involved. We pair breakout creative with Hollywood celebrities. We take real people on the ground and get them inspired. We bring folks together from across the political spectrum because that's what it takes to win. Using this strategy, you guys should watch our videos. They're really fun. Using this strategy, we've had 160 victories. We've had billions of social media views, 160 million video views. This right here is the beginning of a movement that can actually solve the democracy crisis. These are the seeds, but we actually have to superpower and supercharge this movement for it to succeed. That is the work ahead of us. And that brings us to our last line. It's just this little one right down here. Yeah, this little guy comes from this chart which shows U.S. charitable giving in a few categories. Education, human services, health, the environment. You can see it ranges from about $12 billion to $60 billion. That's billion with a B. And then that little tiny line, well, that's charitable giving to democracy. It's $200 million, million with an M. And it's insane because fixing democracy fixes those other things. It unlocks all of the gridlock. A functioning Congress unlocks the $4.6 trillion federal budget to actually go towards these issues. A winning cross-partisan movement to save American democracy is underway, and you can be a part of that because it works. We're up here because we care about the next generation, because we care about so many of these other issues, and because we really believe that an other world is not just possible. But if you cross this line and join us, I believe that another world is actually inevitable. So please be part of it.