 So thank you to everyone for being here. I'm really excited. I think this is going to be a fun event. If you don't know me, my name is Caitlin Pena. I'm the Director of Operations and Programs here for the Center for Election Science. In case you are new to the Center for Election Science, we are a nonpartisan nonprofit, and we are dedicated to empowering voters with a better way to vote. So what we mainly advocate for is called approval voting, and approval voting is super simple. It just allows you to vote for as many candidates as you like, and then the candidate with the most votes wins. And so I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about approval voting today. Michael will probably discuss some about approval voting and how it can interact with the environmental movement and be a boon for reform. So without further ado, I will go ahead and introduce our guests. So we have Christine Warshetti here. She's going to be our interviewer. Christine earned her PhD in applied mathematics and worked for 30 years in the area of seismic data processing and depth imaging for ExxonMobil. Now she's retired and she volunteers as the group leader for the San Diego County North Inland chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby, and she also volunteers for us at the Center for Election Science. And then we've also got Michael Wrzynski. Christine will be interviewing Michael. He is the Vice Chair of the Center for Election Science Board of Directors. He's also an actor and a former software engineer. And alongside voting method reform, Michael is active in and passionate about the environmental movement. So I will go ahead and hand it off to you all. If anybody has questions, feel free to type them in the chat. And towards the end of the event, we'll have a Q&A session. I'll go through and pick out your questions for Christine and Michael to answer. If you'd rather be able to actually ask your question out loud, you can click on the participants button at the bottom of the screen. There's a raise hand feature. So click on that, and then I will unmute you. That way you can ask your question. And if you can't find the raise hand feature, just type in the chat. Say, I want to ask a question. I'll unmute you that way. So take it away, Christine. Oh, thank you. Well, Caitlin, you already answered my first question, but I'm going to ask Michael anyway, because I thought it would be an easy way to start. Michael, tell us again. What is approval voting? Hi. Hi, everybody. Hi, Christine. Good to be here. So approval voting is, as Caitlin said, it's very simple. I can give you a little bit of background just really briefly on the Center for Election Science. It was founded about 10 years ago by a bunch of election science nerds who recognized as many of us do that the voting system that we use is highly problematic. We tend to have spoilers. It tends to not really measure what people want very well. It doesn't work when there's more than two candidates. So it tends to only offer us two choices. And they went in agnostic as to what kind of voting method would be best to replace it with. And they looked at everything and they came up with a clear winner, which was approval voting. Approval voting is one of the best voting methods out there as far as allowing voters to say what they want to say, measuring what voters actually want. And it is also hands down the easiest to implement in that it is basically almost exactly the same as the voting method we have now. It's just one tiny tweak. But basically, you don't have to change the hardware. You don't change the ballot. You could implement it tomorrow without any real cost. A city could a state could a country could. So and the way it works is so currently now our current voting method, which is empirically according to the voting nerds, one of the is empirically the worst possible voting method out there. Approval voting is at the other end of the scale is one of the best. The way it works now is you have a list of candidates candidates have checkboxes next to their names you check one of the boxes. And you add up all the checked boxes and the candidate who has the most checkboxes wins approval voting is exactly the same thing, except that you take away the restriction that you're only allowed to support one candidate. So now a voter sees the same list of candidates sees the checkboxes can check one box can check two boxes can check three boxes depending on how many candidates there are. You can check as many boxes as you want, and then everything else is the same you add up all the votes you add up all the checked boxes the candidate with the most votes wins. And this is a very, very tiny change that has huge ramifications just amazing amazing. It's like, it's like spending a dollar and getting a house. It's, it's an incredible improvement for a very small change. Yeah, so that's what so that's what approval voting is. Okay, thanks. I think I covered that you think I covered the important times. That was great. I think we can go home now that was it great. But my next question, it's going to be for myself. So we're talking about approval voting and environmental causes. So my question for myself. I won't do this throughout but is who is an environmentalist. And I've seen Catherine Hayhoe speak on this she's a climate scientist from Texas Tech University and she's an excellent speaker. She's also a person of faith who's very strongly Christian and feels that that's a part of herself. And she said she googled environmentalist and the first whatever eight pictures that came up were basically almost all men, almost all dead. One of them had a big beard, and she said this is just not the right answer. So she talked for a while and came up with the fact that an environmentalist is a human being who lives on planet Earth. And think that's really important to understand. I mean, if you go up to anybody in the street and you say, do you want clean air to breathe, and they'll say yes, do you want clean water to drink and they'll say yes. They don't want to not have the danger of a wildfire or a flood in your community and they always say yes. The difference is some people will say yes, but I don't want to ruin the economy or yes but blah blah blah. Some other reason that they don't want to do anything about it. And then other people will say yes and we need to put a climate tax we need to use cap and trade we need to put regulations we need to stop doing this or start doing that. So there's a wide variety of answers but there isn't anyone who doesn't care about the environment and they think that's a very important thing to think about. And it leads into my biggest question for Michael which is considering that everyone cares about the environment. And it's a really top priority. Well, maybe they don't think it's a top priority but I think it should be a top priority. Why hasn't our government acting aggressively to tackle, you know, to keep the environment safe and to tackle climate change. Excellent question. I can guess is what I can do. And I should probably do just a bit of a disclaimer here and say that. So I'm on the board of the directors of the Center for Elections Science. I don't, I'm not a spokesperson for the organization I don't speak for the organization. So we are a nonpartisan nonprofit and what that means to me is that we advocate for better systems better democracy that allows more ideas to get out there allows people to say how they feel about those ideas actually measures this you know how how much support those ideas have or don't have. And so we don't we don't take, we're a nonpartisan, we don't take a particular political position unless unless making the world better for everybody through having a better democracy as a political position. That said, I firmly believe, as I'm sure a lot of people do here on this call that as a species personally I believe as a species we have an obligation to protect the planet. And not destroy it. And I believe we are failing in that obligation. And so I'm excited to answer your question and talk about what, what, having a better voting method might, how that might help us to make the planet a better place for all the creatures that live on it including our grandchildren and their grandchildren and their grandchildren. So, would you repeat your question please. Why hasn't the government acting decisively to tackle climate change. Yes, exactly why haven't they right. So we have a so that's the thing right. We have something that is is pretty clearly something that most people would support which is not destroying the planet. And I'm sure you have better CCL probably has better metrics of that but but it, the majority of Americans want our government to do a lot more than it's doing on climate change I believe is a fair thing to say. So we have people that the voters who want something, the majority of them want something they elect representatives to represent them. The representatives aren't doing that thing. Why, I would argue that it's not necessarily that the representatives aren't responsive to the voters is that they're much more responsive to other things. No, I would argue that it's not that it's they are they aren't responsive to the voters and they are instead responsive to say large multinational corporations and there's been lots of research on this. That shows that the the desires of large multinational corporations and the desires of really wealthy individuals tend to align with what what legislators do, and the desires everybody else pretty much doesn't. Why is it that, why is it that vote that our representatives aren't responsive to us why, why does, why do we need to write letters to the editor what do we need to so CCL you have 100,000 or more members constantly advocating for better legislative solutions to climate change and going to Washington and lobbying every single member of Congress, and still they don't do it. Yeah, I mean it's a really good question and I would and I would, I would put it down to the voting method. I think that as we talk about the voting method we can see that using something like approval voting would really really change the dynamic, and that it would get more voices in there and more competition for the, the two parties who, while they they talk a very different game about the climate. Neither party seems to really actually be willing to do it I mean you still have to go lobby the Democrats, and the differences that when you lobby the Democrats instead of them saying oh no climate change isn't real they say oh yeah climate change is real and we wish we could do something about it I mean it's. Sorry. I think it is changing think we're moving but we're moving very slowly and I also think the reason it's changing is mother nature, maybe not the voters, but I want to help you out to I want to talk about I read a list for myself of characteristics of climate change that make this a difficult issue to tackle with the government. And I think the reason I want to say this is that it's not just the environment and climate change that we aren't. Our government isn't addressing even though there's a large majority that care about it. So one thing I mean one thing about climate change it's so complex. It's it covers everything it has to do with the food we eat and the water we need and our housing supplies and for us and oceans and just our comfort and beauty of the of the planet so it's very complex. So it's sort of dispersed our interests are dispersed in that it has fallen into very strangely this culture war or partisan divide. And I don't understand that at all and I think a little later we're going to talk about sort of the political landscape but I don't want to go into that too much right now. But there seems to be this right versus left and and when an issue falls that it's on one side or the other. Suddenly, the people on the other can't can't talk about it and can't agree on it, and they have to be against it. So I think a lot of what approval voting might change is people being for something instead of being against something all the time. But the other thing is it's a very long term issue. At least we think so where we did think so far away in space affecting other people which isn't probably true but that's what we think, and coming in the future, much farther than our election cycle, although that's not as true as it used to be either. The other thing is that it's hard to make this the top voting priority for the majority of people. And we're going to, we'll talk about that again later too. So I just sort of want to get those things out there because any other issue that has some of those characteristics is going to have the same problems that climate change has had with the government reaction. We have this, we have this idea that there's there's two sides, which is something an idea that really really bothers me that people talk about there's only there's always two sides to everything. No, no, there's way more than two sides to everything. And there's way more than and when you sort of narrow your, your existence down to two political parties and the only thing that matters is how they differ. You lose track of how they're the same and what else could be out there and what other ways there could be of doing things. Yeah, the search for common ground is really narrowed. Yeah, go ahead. So the other thing about climate change that a lot of people don't think about and is that there's no clear villain, or at least we don't want there to be a clear villain because it would be us. And so that makes it hard to attack it. Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there too. How does a cancer that is destroying the body, stop itself? How do we, how do we as individuals, how do we, how do we all work together to change what we are and what we're doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty hard for people to tackle something that they feel a little bit responsible for but they'd rather blame somebody else. It's a big narrative that it's all about personal responsibility and I think that's a narrative that's pushed by, by the people that don't want to, don't want the government to do something about it. I do, I do strongly feel that the way, usually the most efficient way for, for us to decide what is ethical and to, and to behave ethically and to create the structures that support being ethical is through the government. We do need, I don't think climate change is going to be solved by everyone deciding individually whether or not they're going to be ethical and how they're going to do that. We do have to, there are, there are ways that we have to work together, and therefore we need the government to legislate as it does for ethics. I mean, it says the government comes in and says you can't kill somebody. That's wrong. We don't leave it up to individuals to decide whether or not they're going to kill people or how much, you know, or just name them, or, you know, it's wrong. We create a, we create a rule that says you can't kill people and we create, and as far as the environment goes is if we're going to create systems where we can all live on this planet without destroying it, we're going to have to somehow share the burden of working together and making the sacrifices that are necessary in a, in an equitable way. And that, that just can't be done by just people just deciding individually how much they're, they're willing or able to do because, I mean, I can decide, I mean, I'm sure everyone has this problem. I mean, you want to live an ethical life, but you also have to eat. And I go to the grocery store, I don't know what every, every, every, every bite of food that I eat is contributing in some way to, to making the world a worse place because there aren't any, there's no structure in place that helps me to, or that, or that encourages or requires an ethical way of producing food that, that, that is sustainable. And we agree on these things and we're getting, this is fun, but let's get to the, We're getting off topic, off the voting, off the voting at the time. Let's get to details. I, I, I decided we should talk about what I think are the four steps of an election cycle. Well, there's a lot. There is the campaigning and the debating. There is the actual vote. Some, a voter expresses their preference. There is the result of the vote. And there's the analysis of what happened during that election cycle. I think that with plurality voting, the only thing we look at is the result. And I think approval voting has a big advantage in some of the other portions. So I, I was thinking we could talk especially about maybe as Kate as examples, that the Democratic primary and the rip in and the Republican primary in 2016. And then the Democratic primary and for the 2020 election and see if we can find some examples that would really help us understand how approval voting could make a change. Yeah. Great. Let's talk about the campaign and the debating first. And I wanted to ask you, if you remember any discussion of climate change in 2016. No, my sense of things is that it's always an issue that people are always pushing for and saying people they should be talking about this more they should be talking about this more but they don't tend to. And then in 2020, we had one candidate who stepped up and said climate change in the Democratic side and said climate change that's all that is the main part of my candidacy. And let's talk a little about what happened to him Jay Inslee. Okay. So, and how that would have been different if we had approval voting in the primaries. So, for you to what you're saying is Jay Inslee and I don't. So I will say that for the Democratic primary. Oh, I'm sorry I don't want to get too sidetracked. Tell me about Jay Inslee. So he was a candidate who pretty much said there's one issue that's important and that's climate change and I'm running for president to tackle climate change. Right. We don't know how much support he had. We don't know how much support he had. I mean, we know how many we know how many people voted for him which is probably about zero. But we don't know how much support he had or how many people would have liked to have voted for him. Yeah. So my experience with the Democratic primary is this is relevant is, I, there were 20 candidates. And I was, I, I have enough fury in my life and frustration that I could not bring myself to research these candidates because I knew. It's because I knew that was going to come what it was going to come down to on primary night. If I'm voting in the Democratic primary in California is it's going to come down to a choice between who are the two front runners. And it's either going to be it's probably going to be Joe Biden who represents more the one wing of the Democratic Party and it's either going to be Sanders or Warren who represents sort of another wing of the Democratic Party. And it really comes down to a question of which wing are you going to vote for. However, whether I've gotten excited about anybody else Jay Inslee or Andrew Yang or anybody else is irrelevant. So it was very much a disincentive for me to even research people because I was just going to get my hopes up for something that I couldn't express a preference for. So if you vote for Jay Inslee because you want to support the environment, you're basically saying you don't care whether it's Biden or Sanders basically this is what it came down to in California. Yeah, that's right. And also it's very time consuming to look into all of those different people if you aren't going to be able to express a preference for those for any of them, because you know, again, you're going to you want your vote to count. Not whether it shows what you really want, but you want your vote to be for a person who can win. Right, so let's talk about this is one of the clear differences between approval voting and plurality voting with plurality voting you have a single vote, and you can give it to one person. And that's how it works and if you're going to give it to one person you can't give it to somebody else. And if somebody wants to get your vote. They can can they don't necessarily need to convince you to like them they just need to convince you to dislike the other person. And it results in a lot of negative campaigning. With approval voting it's very it's it's a very simple change but it's a very it's a totally conceptually different thing which is that instead of having one vote to give to one candidate, you are now as a voter you get to look at each candidate independently and say thumbs up or thumbs down. So, if you want to say I support the environment, you can vote for Jay Inslee. I don't think he's going to win, because that doesn't prevent you from also making a choice in between war and Sanders Biden, or whoever the front runners are. Right. I'm sorry if I cut you off. No, go ahead. Well, you're not deciding who you like, or they're not trying to convince you to like them, the candidates are trying to convince you not to like the others and I think this negative campaigning that we have with plurality voting is really bad during the campaigns and the debates, and I think it keeps us from investigating a facet of an issue that's important, like the hidden costs of pollution or environmental justice part of climate change, because people might candidate might say, Oh, I want to tackle climate change but they don't go much further, because they don't need to, because they don't want you. They don't want to help somebody else who's really going further than they are in climate change. Right. Yeah, so without getting into like specific examples just with like hypothetical examples so you have two candidates who are running, who are very similar. Under our current voting system there's going to be a huge those two candidates are both hurting each other by being in the race. Right. Exactly, because they're splitting that vote. If you have people that support both of those candidates those people can't can't actually support both of those candidates they have to pick one so therefore the support for that is getting split in half. If those candidates want to want to win and want to get more votes the best place to get votes is from the people who are voting for the other one. And the way you get votes is to convince it so it causes this huge divide where if I'm similar to someone I'm just furious that they're in the race, because they're hurting my chances. And they're likewise furious that I'm in the race because I'm hurting their chances. And so we hate each other and we tear each other apart and we talk about, you know, we try and find any way to tear each other down to convince our people to vote for just one of us. Whereas, if voters were allowed to look at each candidate independently and say, I like you, I like you, I don't like you, I don't like you, I like you. And I admit that I'm that I am similar to I don't need to go to that person's voters and say, don't vote for them. They're bad but you vote for me instead. I go to their voters and say, they're great. I love them. I'm just like I support everything they support you can vote for me too. It's a totally different potentially a totally different way of campaigning because what you're looking for is broad support. You're not looking to divide and conquer. For example, the Republican primaries of 2016. So there's a lot of candidates and Trump, and all he had to do was be different and get them to attack each other. Because people had to choose between Jeff Bush and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and they might have been very similar in so many ways, but they had to choose between them. But Trump was so different. He could have just had a very minority of support, but everybody else was split. And he did in most early on, I think, and in and in all previous attempts to run for president. Trump is the only Trump. Whereas there were lots of 17 candidates in that in that primary 17, you know, there were a lot of them that were probably could be lumped together as regular mainstream Republicans. And instead of supporting each other, they were attacking each other. And the thing is, if it had just been between Trump and Jeb Bush, I don't think there's any question that Jeb Bush would have would have wiped the floor with Trump. I mean, any of them would have probably. But somehow he leveraged the situation by getting all the by getting enough support early on because all the other support was split between all the other non Trump people. And I think that he managed to, you know, then people start dropping out because they don't have enough support and then he gets this. Yeah, I'm certain that he would not have won the Trump would not have won the very. Yeah, I went into Caitlyn there are people with raised hands you want to let them ask questions now are you going to wait. Wait until the end that way you could get through most of your questions but if, if, if you prefer, I can go ahead and let Emily ask her question. Okay. Fine with me. All right, just a second Emily let me get you unmuted. There you go. So I just wanted to jump in to mention that Congress is responsive to the public but we haven't been participating at the degree that we would need to Republican offices say they need 100 phone calls from constituents on climate change to make that a top priority for them. There are not near that for the two thirds of districts that we would need so we still have a lot of work to do, but it would probably be true that we would need fewer than 100 if we were using approval voting, because a majority of Republican voters support action on climate and it's just the far right that doesn't. But the far right is more likely to vote in primaries and first pass the post to elect more partisan candidates. So, the far right is more rewarded under the system so if we were using approval voting. Trump would not have won the Republican primary. And we probably would have had Rubio from where I saw so then he used to be in favor of cap and trade. So I think that's his proclivity. Anyway, I think, I think if either of the main parties used approval voting we would be in a better situation or if we used it in general elections. We would be in a much better position. But we either have to pass approval voting or we need way more volunteers actively calling about climate change and voting on climate change. I absolutely agree with you that approval voting is something that would would would change things for the better I do want to challenge a little bit I mean I think that I mean yes there. We could be doing more. We could be calling more. But my question is why do we have to be calling it all. We all have jobs we have children we have, you know, we elect people to make decisions in the best interest of the voters and not to it just frustrates frustrates me how much effort people already put into trying to get their representatives to do what they got to do, and they still don't do it. So, I mean, right. Yeah, I think we would still want to communicate our priorities to lawmakers because that's another tool in our toolbox and corporations are going to be doing that, whether we do it or not. So we, we do have to communicate to some extent but it shouldn't be this difficult to pass something that 70% of the public supports. So many things. We've been mixing up a little bit the the the campaigning and debating part and the actual vote. There's one other part of the vote. Well, two other things I want to mention about the voting itself. And one is why I first started looking at approval voting a long time ago. And that was because I was generally wanting to vote for a minority candidate, but that would be a spoiler vote. And it was a very hard decision to do you vote for a third party candidate that you really really like, or the one who's closest to them. And if you vote for the one you really like you're hurting the one who's closest to what you really want. And that is so strange. So that's another part about the vote that there's another thing about approval voting Steve challenged me on that what is the negative of it. And we talked about that a little bit. But what I forgot to tell him the other day was that it is true with approval voting you don't get to express your full preference you don't get to say, I like this person a lot better than that person and a little better than that person. To me that isn't mean it is it is true I'd like to express my preference more, but I don't think most people care, or have studied enough. And I think in the after everybody votes that probably doesn't matter much, and you giving up a lot of simplicity. So what what do you think about that. That's a, that's a great point I mean one of the one of the few, I would say few legitimate criticisms of approval voting is this too simple. You don't get to so for something like range voting which is also a really really good evaluative system where you get to look at each candidate independently and instead of being thumbs up thumbs down you give them like on a scale of one to five or one to 10 or so that gives you more flexibility to say what you want to say. On the other hand, there are a lot of advantages to me that I think with approval voting in that it creates a very clear measure of how much support candidates have it's just how many people said thumbs up. And also as far as the flexibility to express what she went to express I think you still have that with approval voting, because to just have like create a really simple example say there's four candidates running, and you love one, you like one you dislike one and you hate one. Just put them into two buckets, yes and no. As a voter, I get to decide what's most important to me so if the most important to me thing to me is to give the candidate I love the best chance of winning, I can just vote for that candidate and not the other three. That's, that's a legitimate thing for me to do or if I want to say well I want to most most important to me is end up with some way that I'm at least okay with. So let's vote for the top two let's vote for the one I like and the one I love and not for the other two. Or there could be a candidate running that candidate that I hate, who is a threat to the world and democracy and the most important thing is to prevent that candidate from ever being anywhere near the White House hypothetical situation. In which case, I'm going to vote for everybody else. There's a huge amount of flexibility, and no one is telling me you have to vote for one, you have to vote for three you have to vote for two. I make that choice based on what's most important to me as a voter. And so I get to walk out of that voting booth having chosen what I wanted to express and gotten to express what I wanted to express as opposed to now when you walk into the voting booth and you're like well. I mean, you're not happy no matter what you do you can either vote for the person you love and know that you've probably helped elect the person you hate. Or you can vote for the person you dislike and feel crappy about it and come out and be like I wish I hadn't didn't have to do that but I guess you got to be practical. Those are, those are, those are lousy choices. And with approval voting, you have the option to, to say what you want to say. So whether it's whatever that is you don't get to say you know this person's a one this person's a two this person's a five. But you can absolutely choose between what is the most important thing for you and to say exactly the thing that is the most important thing for you to say in that moment in that time. You can vote for every candidate who said I care about the climate, or every candidate who said I want to put a carbon tax on, or every climate who said, I want the green new deal, or you could vote for all the women. And, or you could vote for everybody except old white men. I mean, there's a lot of ways you could split it up so you still do have quite a bit of preference. It's not as much as some people might want. You want to say you get to you get the flexibility to decide what's important to you how you're going to split and remembering that you're not the only voter. Everybody else is voting to so you're really strong preference versus a really strong like versus alike probably doesn't matter in the scheme of things maybe it matters to you. I'm going to go back to well not back to when I'm going to bring up ranked choice voting where you get to put people in order you're still looking to say I like this one a lot better but you can get to go 123. You can't put ties, and you, and most of your votes don't even count. Most of your what you express on the ballot is never looked at. Yeah, can we can we actually talk about ranked choice for a second and because I think that's the that's the that's the voting method that most people who are interested in reform have heard of and we're most likely to have heard of our CV ranked choice voting or IRV instant runoff voting. Same thing. It is so our stand on that is that it's basically like every voting method it's better than what we have now. What I believe about ranked choices that it's this it's the sort of thing where it appeals to people because you think that it's going to be really great but there's a lot of problems with it that you don't realize it's basically it's not as good as you think it is. One huge disadvantage to me for ranked choice voting is that, and I think you actually experienced you, I want to hear your story about the Green Party if there's time. But the, for me that the problem with ranked choice is that it produces a winner, but it's a black box, like it doesn't tell you why that person won one it doesn't tell you how much support that person had even the winner and it doesn't tell you how much support anybody else had. The wonderful thing for me about approval voting is at the end of the day. You know, not just who won, but you know why they won you know how much support they had this person won with this much percent of the vote, and everybody else on that ballot, you know exactly how much support, all of those people had as well. So next election cycle, when I'm considering running for office, I can look back and say well that person had 30% support so it wasn't enough to win but clearly their ideas have some traction perhaps I should be I should be considering, you know, taking some of those positions for myself because those have some sort of support. And if there's some on the other hand if there's a if there's a position that has you know very little support, you can't blame that on the fact that the people couldn't vote for you people everyone looked at that candidate and said, No. And you have a clear, clear message that is not a position that that people like. At the time, the Green Party, we had, we're using an instant runoff method. And we decided we try that and we had looked at approval voting and we decided to vote it both ways. No, first we did approval. I don't know, instant runoff voting. And we were all involved in the counting to because we wanted to see first step, second step, third step what happens. So everyone got to put first, second, third person they liked. There was a person who was very, very popular and everybody assumed he was going to win, but everybody made him their second choice second choice. And, and then the first, and then what happened was whoever got first choice with, you know, more first choices than anybody else, which wasn't very many. One, and everybody was upset, the whole everybody who voted was upset. And we all got to see it because we were going through this as an exercise to see how what happens at the first stage. If you didn't get voted for first place, you didn't get enough first place votes, you get dropped out and then your second place vote counts, but he was already he was the one that dropped out because he didn't have any first place votes. Right. So what, so so didn't count for anybody. Right. So what rank choice does is it will, it has a tendency to elect a polarizing winner with a lot of support from one side. Whereas what approval voting is going to tend to do is elect the candidate with the broadest support the consensus candidate. So exactly like what you're talking about this is this is a perfect example of how rank choice voting fails is if you have a split a polarized electorate and they've each got you know it's a and B, and they've each got their candidate that they love and they hate the other one because everybody loves a candidate and the B people love candidate B and they they both hate the other one, but there's a candidate C, who is everybody's second choice and every both sides are like, yeah, this person's fine. They're my second choice but I'd be I'd be okay with this person. I'd much prefer this person to the other side, but they're not my first choice. I would argue that's the person you should win and it sounds like this is a situation where you expected that person to win because it was the candidate that most people were okay with. And that person gets knocked out in the first round. And you're left with the same fight between a and B as usual and you end up you end up with a winner who half the people love and other half the people hate, instead of a consensus candidate. I know there are places that have implemented ranked choice voting, and then they didn't like it, and they changed. And I think even though I've, I've always thought well let's at least change a change to something. And then we can try for the best one but that might not be a very good path to take, because once you've changed. It's hard to then look and see. Oh, we messed up maybe we should go back to the old one. Do you know what I'm saying. It's also it's a bit of a detour, it would be much simpler to change from plurality to approval, but to change from plurality to rcv and then change from rcv to approval. Yeah. So we've gone over my steps pretty much. We've gone over the campaigning the debates the actual vote with how you get to state your preference we've gone over the results we talked about some of the results, and the analysis at the end which I think is one of the biggest pluses for approval voting, and you would see how many people who really think climate change was important somebody like Jay Inslee you'd see how much support he really did get, even if he didn't win. Exactly. So, let's see. I'm going to throw another one at you. We have this pandemic. And it's another case that's got this partisan divide on what we should do about it apparent partisan divide. And it's also mixed up with some minority who don't think science matters. So, how can approval voting handle something like that gets climate changes had that problem with the climate deniers and people who don't believe the data and don't believe the scientists and listen to a journalist instead. And we have the same thing with somebody talked about wearing mask. Oh no, we don't need to do that. And they don't want to listen to the public health officials or the epidemiologists who have studied it. So, can approval voting somehow help in that kind of a case. I don't know. I mean, it's really hard to. It's so complicated, you know, I feel like we're in a place in our country where we're really polarized and we have this. We have this tendency to dismiss and demean and and and attack to put people on the other side and and and just dismiss them. And I think that that is that is that is something that our current voting method instills. It instills this mentality that it's that it's a versus B, as opposed to because it it it creates. I mean, to take someone like to take someone like Trump. He didn't. He doesn't need to appeal to a broad swath of people to win. He didn't need to appeal to a broad swath of people to win he had to he had to appeal to his base. And as long as everybody else split the vote that was enough to get him elected under approval voting that is not going to work. The person that wins is going to be the person that appeals to the most people. The person that reaches the campaigns everywhere that talks to everybody that takes positions that are broadly supported that doesn't dismiss other people. As far as denying science. I mean, I don't know. I feel like there's a there's this there's this story that's kind of perpetuated in the media about how we what we believe I don't really believe. I don't know. I don't know what to believe about what people really believe. I don't know what people really believe. I suspect that people are a lot more compassionate and reasonable than the narrative would suggest and I think that that narrative is sort of a function of this this awful voting system that we have and if we had a better voting system we would the the compassion that we feel for each other in the ways that we are united and similar would would be rewarded instead of being you know that's actually I mean that's really important because how the discussion and the debate what happens during that time is critical for what happens in the election. And if you're rewarding attack instead of getting along and actually searching for what is your difference mean somebody says I'm for the Green New Deal and somebody says I'm not well let's talk about what do you mean by that what is it that you're actually against what is it that you're actually for instead of just going oh you know she's for the Green New Deal bad bad bad I mean without having to actually get into the details. Yeah and the anti science I think again it's something that would be helped by more discussion of the actuality behind it as opposed to just letting it become a partisan divide and that's the the other thing we were going to talk about was the the political landscape. We think that there's right versus left or liberal conservative and it's a one dimensional thing and every issue that comes up has to fit. It's either on the right side or the left side. And I find that so strange. How do issues fall on a one dimensional line and can approval voting help us understand that there are other dimensions. Well when you when you only have two choices you have a one dimensional scale. The different the thing that you're voting on is how those two people are different and they are different on one on one scale. If you had someone else who was up here then all of a sudden you've got like a two dimensional thing. And if you had someone else over here and someone else over here and over here all of a sudden you've got potentially any number of different scales to be measuring people on. And you can I would argue that that's a better thing because you're seeing more of the ideas that are out there and more of the the things that are worth debating as opposed to just focusing on what these two people are willing to, you know, when you when you focus on how they're different, you're losing track of all the ways that they're similar. And there's no one out there and no one can come in and challenge that under our current system because they would be a spoiler. Right. I'm going to throw out that if somebody wants to look at political compass or they have a two dimensional scale it's it's right versus left mostly on the economy and then libertarian versus authoritarian. And it's interesting they they map common politicians and you can take a test and see where you fall. And at least it's two dimensional that's a step up. It doesn't include things like is the person a horrible person or immoral but at least it has more of the issues. Okay, now I'm going to put you on the spot for a Center for it election science approval voting. We both agreed. It's just wonderful and make a big change. Does the Center for election science look at other issues about elections like the electoral college or other things. Are you supporting other changes or this is what you're focusing on right now approval. So we'll take a stab at that question and Caitlin you can if you feel like you have a better answer please jump in. We, we have decided that focusing on approval voting is the is the thing that we are doing right now. That is not to say that other voting methods aren't good. It's not to say that we shouldn't do a whole bunch of other host of improvements reforms. The thing that we have the momentum for and the skills at and the, if I do say so myself, some huge some incredible successes at is getting approval voting implemented. And I personally think that that is. I can't think of a better thing to be focusing on. I can't think of a system a solution that is going to be more effective at solving all the problems that we want to solve. I am so I would say that's what we focus on right now. Okay, thanks. Did I get that right Caitlin. Yeah, I think that's an excellent answer Michael. And it's also important to note like our organization is very small. We have four staff members. We got our first big, you know dose of funding just in 2017, and less than a year later we were. We saw success in Fargo with them implementing approval voting the first city in the US to do so. Thanks largely to support that we were able to provide to citizens in Fargo to do that and now we're working in St. Louis to get approval voting implemented there. I think as far as other voting methods go as Michael stated at the beginning we think that approval voting essentially is the best bang for your buck right. It's simple. It doesn't cost anything. It can be used on any current voting machines that can be used on hand. Handmark paper ballots. It's easy to count. And it has enormous benefit. So that's why we've chosen to put our resources toward approval voting, especially given the limited number of resources we have both as far as staff members and funding. And then of course there are a host of so many different reforms outside of even voting methods that probably need to be implemented to improve our elections. But there are already a lot of other really great organizations out there doing that work. So the work we're focused on is specifically improving the voting method with approval voting. Okay, thanks. And I know that there are some more questions in the chat. Do you, did you have anything else for Michael? Christine. Oh, let's go to the questions. Okay, great. All right, I will go to Steve. You should be unmuted. Okay, hi. I'm going to make some great points here. Two things occur to me. First, approval voting does favor those candidates and those issues that enjoy broad support, even if they don't enjoy passionate support by a large number. What that means is CES is a fantastic opportunity to market approval voting by identifying all the social issues that have broad support, but are not at the top of many people's agendas like climate, because people care about climate are going to support approval voting. I think the same is true for voting rights for causes that are that are very broad. So it's a great opportunity for this organization. The second point I have has to do with CCL citizens climate lobby, which Christine you're so familiar with and Emily you are too and many others. In the world of carbon of environmental solutions. I like to think of CCL as everybody's second choice, if not their first. And the reason is this. Everyone agrees we need to make carbon more expensive. But how do you do it. Some people say we'll put a tax on it. And let's give the money to the military, because we need a stronger defense. Okay, well let's give the money to fair housing for social justice. Some people say let's give it to citizens. Now the people want to give it to the military, definitely don't want it to go to housing. The people the housing definitely don't want to go to the military, but pretty much a lot of people think yeah let's give it back to citizens of the form of dividend and they can do what they want. And I guess CCL has that that broad appeal. It's a perfect strategy approval body is going to favor that broad appeal solution. And I think if the word got out among the CCL supporters of which there were over 100,000, which the set webinars attend you to do it would especially favor that and think about how that would apply to other social issues as well. Absolutely. Oh, you cut him off he was he had more. Michael and and and also Caleb any thoughts about identifying a wide range of social issues that enjoyed broad support and using those as channels to grow my support for approval. That's a good idea the more people hear about it the better. It's great solution to to like I say it's it's it's I feel like it's a solution to everything. It gives us it gives us a responsive government that's going to do the things the government should do whatever that whatever that may be whether it's climate or, you know, justice. It's really interesting that you brought that up Steve because that's something that we've been talking about internally Kirsten I know that you know Kirsten she and I have been trying to kind of think of some ideas and this this webinar actually comes out of that idea. Because we we have seen the polling we know that the broad majority of Americans do back stronger action on and the environment. It's not left or right issue most people agree. And so we thought, hey, we should put together a webinar about approval voting in the environment. So we've been trying to think of some other questions or some other issues there too. And the folks in St. Louis who are currently running a campaign to implement open approval voting primaries, they're doing the same thing in their city they're identifying the really important issues that are facing citizens and they're in their city and they're going to have a series of webinars to talk about those issues and how this new election system can help. So you're definitely on to something there Steve. I also see Marcus has a hand up. You should be on me to know Marcus. Yeah. First I kind of building on what Steve said, better environmental policy is an area in which most Americans want it, but only one political party really wants it. And the same is true for sex that has been mentioned in chat and also some obvious things like guns, but the most that every single example that I come up with off the top of my head. Democrats who are primarily in favor of it. Can you name any such policies where it's the Republicans who are the main ones in support of it? I would first challenge your question. You say the Democrats are in support of these things, but do they actually do anything about them? More than the Republicans. They talk better than the Republicans for sure. And sure, yeah, they do better than the Republicans, but I mean if you had a Green Party candidate there on that scale to compare, how well do the Democrats do on environmental stuff? I just want to challenge that narrative that the Democrats are the ones who are doing everything right and the Republicans are doing it all wrong. I think it's more complicated than that. I can't answer Marcus's question about an issue that Republicans care about that Democrats don't that has broad support, but I would say it's surprising how much support when I maybe two years ago when I was lobbying in Washington D.C. And I was assigned to several conservative Republican House House of Representatives Congress people. They talked to their aides more than to them, but it was very clear that every single one of them wanted to do something about climate change, but every single one of them wanted to know what the guy down the hall was thinking. Because they were so afraid of being the first one and getting knocked out in a primary. So hopefully approval voting can help on that. It was surprising and there are a lot there's a, you know, and CCL has a big effort to find the Republicans who care about climate change and it isn't hard in terms of people, but in the, at the elected representatives elected representatives that's where it's hard. And I think it's a good question. Good question. Wonder what the answer is. Yeah. Thanks Marcus. Any other questions I just put a last call in the chat in case anybody does have any others. So I'll give you just 30, 30 seconds to type anything or to raise your hand if you want to ask anything. Oh, Emily's got her hand up again so let me get her. I just thought of an answer to Marcus's question about the things that Republicans support that the vast majority of the public supports. And I think that might be things like capitalism, or like, you know, just think of like the fringe, what you think of as fringe left ideas. Like, anything that's fringe on the left is going to be majority public support if you read like Republican news articles. It's like the boogeyman that they talk about are the things that most of the public supports that like the fringe of the left. So the fringe of the left attacks capitalism. Therefore capitalism is probably something that most people support, or the free market. I think, yeah, I think so. I mean, I think in the US I think the vast majority support the free market which is why socialism has been used as like bad word for so many years. So if you're looking for things that Republican support I would say that kind of that kind of thing. That's a great answer. I would say that in years past, there were some things in foreign policy that Republicans supported that I think were very popular. But right now we can't. I don't know things like not going to war, which Democrats talk about it but they always start the wars, things like that. I'm just trying to answer the question. Marcus. Did you did you have another comment about that I just saw you put your hand on. I had another whole question actually, um, I wanted to know how you think the adoption of proportional representation be it through the fair representation act or sequential for personal approval voting something like that what effect do you think that would have on climate policy. I'll take that, I suppose. Proportional representation is great it increases the, the goal is to is to sort of prevent the tyranny of the majority and make sure that everybody has somebody has a voice in the room. And it's absolutely something that we we've talked about and something that is another reform that is sort of separate from approval voting and can easily be implemented alongside approval voting approval voting isn't proportional representation they're not you know they're they're separate but it is another, I think, another great reform that increases the. It increases the ability of everybody to have a voice in the room. Right there there was one final question in the chat from Susan. And I think I need a little bit more clarification from you Susan but she just asks what about vote by mailing getting more people to register. So, um, I'm assuming Susan you're asking. Do we think that, oh, she says I think voting for many will be more of a problem this November than usual and vote by mail is a solution to that. And there are still too many unregistered eligible voters. So, are you also asking how getting getting more people to vote by mail, or getting more people to register might help the environmental movement as well or just just in general, just strengthening democracy. I want to answer that anyway, no matter what the question is. Not the vote by mail part what can we do about that. I know a lot of people that don't vote because they think their vote doesn't count because because of this issue of they really have to vote for either one of the top two candidates or not bother voting. And I think that approval voting would really help push registration, because especially young people who think nobody's listening. I mean, it's a, to me, it's a big thing to say your vote is going to count no matter who you vote for it's going to show the true support. I mean, Andrew Yang, you know, they, they're his actual support would have been shown with approval voting. So that's what I'm thinking it would really help push registration. I talk a lot about how, how bad it is so few people vote how little participation there is. And just so just to point out, in 2016, the two, basically the only two candidates on the ballot as far as, you know, I mean you can you can vote for the green but most people don't because they know the green would be a spoiler or the libertarian the two candidates on the ballot were basically were the most the least liked presidential candidate ever, and the second least liked presidential candidate ever. So, imagine, those are your choices. And imagine how happy you're going to be to participate in that process, as opposed to imagine if there were a lot of people in the ballot, and you got to look at each one, and say what you thought about them. That's a great, great comment. Sorry if you guys can hear the loud noise behind me. But I think it. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. We have one more question, I think, from Kenita. So, Kenita, I just unmuted you if you want to ask your question. And then I think we'll hop off. I think we're asking about an issue that Republicans would support it, the pro life movement, and, you know, that often comes out with the anti abortion planks. So they would be supporting something like that. Thanks, Kenita. And, you know, you would find that they, well, they might with approval voting find how many people supported and didn't support that. And perhaps there's people, there's a lot of people that aren't all at one end of the spectrum. Perhaps it's more complicated than that. And there's a lot of people that are in the middle and some, some ground where everybody, you know, most people are, sorry, motorcycle. Most people are happy. Yeah, it's another case where that kind of issue isn't shouldn't be owned by either Democrats or Republicans since it doesn't really fit on one scale compared to other issues. That's, that's a great point. I think that it's, it's tough when we have these issues that require a lot of nuance, right, our, our choose one voting method is definitely not set up for nuance at all. Well, thank you guys so much for being here and thank you Christine for hosting and interviewing. And thank you to Michael for answering her questions very eloquently. I think everyone really enjoyed this I know I did it was super interesting. Hi everyone on the call I really appreciate you all being here too and thank you so much for supporting our work. As I mentioned we are currently supporting a campaign in St. Louis, Missouri, to get a pro nonpartisan approval voting primaries with a top two runoff implemented there. So that's kind of our big thing right now but we also have a chapter program and we are trying to, you know, foment new campaigns and support grassroots or grassroots organizers in local communities. And so we have a lot of exciting plans coming up in the next year, based on what we're seeing in our chapter program, and in order to do all of these things in order to have campaigns and reach more people. You know that requires funding so if anyone is interested in donating to support our work. I would more than appreciate it. I can stick a link in the chat for you all. But again, we really appreciate you being here appreciate your support. And thank you so much. Hope everybody has a great day. Thanks Caitlyn and thanks for everybody who watched and listened and talked. Hey, thanks Christine. Thanks Caitlyn. Thank you. All right. Bye.