 For those of you who don't know me, I am Caitlin Pena. I am the Director of Operations and Programs for the Center for Election Science. I'm the one who's probably been sending you emails reminding you to attend this meeting. And here tonight we have Felix Sargent, he is the board chair of the Center for Election Science and he is going to be the one leading the discussion and interviewing Jen Limke, who is one of the founders of Reform Fargo and one of the citizens who led the initiative to get approval voting implemented in Fargo. And then we've also got Andrea Denult, she was our education campaign coordinator in Fargo, so she was hired by CES to make sure that all the Fargo voters knew what approval voting was and why it was going to benefit them. So I'm really excited because it's going to be fun to kind of reminisce about the campaign and then also talk about the super exciting first ever approval voting election in the US. And what Jed and Andrea are thinking about for that because that's coming up in just a few weeks. So with all of that being said, I will hand it off to Felix. Oh, really quick. Let me just lay some ground rules here. If you guys have questions, feel free to stick them in the chat. I can also unmute you selectively if you use the raise your hand feature by clicking on the participants button, but we'll wait until the actual Q&A portion towards the end of the meeting for all of the Q&A. And I know Jed kind of has a hard stop at the top of the hour. So we're going to try to keep be respectful of the time. And those of us with CES and if Andrea has time, we might be able to stay on a little bit later if you guys have more questions. But yeah, with that, I'll hand it to Felix. Hi everyone, I'm Felix Sargent. I'm the chair of the Center for Election Science and I'm very happy that everyone is able to be here and join us for this discussion. Jed, Andrea, it's a pleasure to finally meet you. I am incredibly surprised that we, you know, it's been this long and we've actually never spoken before. So hello, it's really an honor and thank you for all the work that you've done in order to be able to move not only in this, you know, do the work you have in Fargo, but to help the Center for Election Science and honestly to help the country. If I, you know, don't sound a little bit too flag wavy there. Yeah, you bet. Nice to meet you too. I wanted to start off first kind of going over the timeline for Fargo just for everyone who may not be necessarily familiar with the intimate details. This all started off in 2015 after Tony Garrick won with 21.8% of voter support. And then, you know, has taken up until 2018, 2019 in order for it to actually happen. And then, you know, now we're finally having the election. It's a good five years. What were you doing in 2015? And did you anticipate that this would take this long and this would be the path that it would go down? Yeah, um, yeah. So I'm a software engineer. And I just I remember, I remember when he was elected and it's nothing against Tony. But I remember when he was elected and he did say something about having a mandate of the people when he's elected and I don't think the mandate of the people makes any sense when four out of five people didn't vote for you. And I thought, oh, that that's kind of ridiculous. And then the following year, we had a regular election. So Tony was elected in the special election after the death of our mayor. And there's some shuffling around of commissioners. And I made a regular election following year. And the two commissioners who were elected who incidentally are running for reelection this year. They were both elected with basically the same situation four out of five people didn't vote for them, basically. And that doesn't mean that they didn't necessarily get that support or support or more people but citizens weren't able to really, they didn't have a flexible method to show that they could support all these candidates necessarily. So after that election, there was local pressure from not only the citizenry but the local paper and there was a push to do something about it. So the city commission itself formed an elections and governance task force. And as soon as they said they're forming that I thought to myself, well, I need to be on that thing or at least try. So I looked through the list of commissioners and I picked one that I figured might be receptive to having a nobody call them and pastor them and then maybe end up on this thing. And lo and behold, I was appointed to the task force, me along with a whole bunch of current and former politicians and local, you know, business leaders, and then just little old me. And yeah, we went through the process we talked about lots of things in the city we talked about increasing the number of commissioners we had we talked about changing the structure entirely for those who don't know Fargo itself is a city commission. And what that means is that we have four commissioners who are all elected at large two at a time, and then we have a mayor who's elected at large. And in the end we looked at all this stuff and the task force recommended switching the city of Fargo over to approval voting for future elections and increasing the size of the commission by two. So then that went to the city commission and the city commission basically sat on it for a year and then killed it in December of 2017. And I was frustrated. And then, then we started, and then we said, Well, we have the ballot initiative process not only in North Dakota but in the city of Fargo. So we started to organize and learn more about what we could do. And we gathered signatures. And pretty soon we gathered only, you know, 2000 signatures but that's, you know, well more than what we needed in order to get on the ballot. And yeah, the fall came, or during the course of us collecting signatures as well. We had another election where four out of five people didn't vote for the winners. And that just went to reinforce our point. And yeah, then we had the general November election for everything but city offices, city offices are decided in June. And we were on the ballot and we won with two out of three people voting for us instead. So quite the switch from how the commissioners are getting elected like we had something that was actually, you know, the majority was in favor, which was nice. So yeah, and now we're here preparing for an election in just a few weeks. And hopefully it goes well we anticipate that it will. It's very exciting. I do want to check in with you a little bit. Your camera has turned offline and we're seeing like a logoy thing. Okay. Well I sounded good I hope. Yeah, you sounded great. I sounded great. Okay. Crystal clear. Let's just start. Hey, there we go. Hey, perfect. I exist again, maybe at least for a minute. Hey, that explains what I was seeing. And so I've got a question for Andrea to pull her in Andrea, you know, tell me how you got involved with with the campaign and what you think some of the unique challenges or maybe even advantages were to educating people about the campaign and and now that you've won the campaign. How do you plan on educating people about how to actually vote in an approval voting election. So many questions rolled into one. That's okay. Everything about you. So, you know, Jet had been working on approval voting, I think for like two years before I had ever even heard about it but I was working as a lobbyist at the state Capitol and Bismarck. And I remember seeing an event page for some presentation about a new voting method. And I think for most people that wouldn't be enough to excite them enough to drive the three hours to go see this presentation but at that time is when that was in Fargo so you had to drive from Bismarck to Fargo. Yeah. Wow. At that time was when ranked choice voting was getting a lot of press and so I, you know, like everyone was familiar with range choice voting had never heard of approval voting in my life. So I went and saw Jed, he gave a presentation at the Sons of Norway. It was the first time I'd ever met him. And yeah, I was really, really impressed. I, I'm not going to lie. I wasn't totally sold because I like many people already was sold on the idea of ranked choice voting. And so I've been kind of like reflecting on it tonight and thinking, you know, all throughout the campaign. One thing that that we struggled with is getting it through to people that approval voting is literally so simple. You cannot wrap your head around it like it really confuses people because it's just too simple. Right. And I think that I was one of those people, you know, Jed gave a, I'm guessing a full hour presentation. That first time that I had seen him present on it and you know, I have ADHD. I could have got lost somewhere in the weeds. I'm not really sure. I didn't write it off. But, you know, I was intrigued. And so, yeah, I don't know what it was, maybe it, sorry. No, I was just going to say, yeah, I mean, it's so simple, you can explain it in about 15 seconds, but explaining why it's so, you know, why you need it. That's, that's the problem. That's the hour. That's a, and then just dealing with the questions and the confusion with, well, I've heard of rank choice. This is that. No, no. Yeah. Why do we need this? Yeah. And so that radicalized you and this was when the campaign, you know, the, this was when they were already preparing to do a campaign. This wasn't just in front of the commission. Was that right? I'm not sure at that stage where you were, Jed, as far as, like, no, was reform far to even established at the point at which he did that. So the Norway presentation or, um, were you just doing out of the hobby. Okay, yes, yes. Yeah, officially we didn't form the C4 until 2018. And this would have been in 2017 when you would have seen this. So it was more of a. We had presented our findings to so that the task force I was on presented findings to the city commission on Valentine's Day of 27. I distinctly remember this. And then they said, All right, well, we'll look at it next week at their regular meeting. And then they didn't, you know, like, I, you know, rallied some supporters, let's go, let's go there and be there for this. And then they said, Oh, well, we'll defer it for two weeks from now. After a month of this, they stopped even pretending to defer it. And it's not because all the commissioners were against it by any means, either. But, you know, to make things happen, you got to get seconds and you got to do all this stuff. And yeah, so somewhere in there, I said, Well, dig on it. I'm going to do something about it. And I, you know, made a Facebook page and made a website. And then I was able to get in with the Sons of Norway to do a presentation, which would have been for the legal women voters, I think just on civic issues to try to help drum up more pressure. And I think that's where you would have seen it. Great. Yeah, so I think that I got like, I'm going to, I'm going to wager to guess that I may have gotten like top wonk status in the state of North Dakota that day for making that drive to come here presentation about voting methods. I could be wrong, but I was very intrigued and I want to learn more. And yeah, I think that you and I like were briefly introduced after the event, but a bunch of people had questions for you so I didn't really get to talk to you very much. And then, yeah, so I don't know what it was six months later a year later, like, you guys called and we're like, Hey, heard you were a good organizer, do you want to organize for approval of loading and I was like, Maybe, but can you explain it to me again. And I remember you being very patient with me on the phone. And me, you know, finally kind of like in that moment like wrapping my head around the simplicity. And then, yeah, you know, doing a little bit more research on my own. Pretty, you know, fully on board after that. I will say I forgot to grab this as a visual. But I remember as I was leaving my previous job, you know, to come like organize this approval voting campaign. Aaron Hamlin sent me a PDF handbook on how approval voting works. You guys have read this handbook, but I'm pretty sure it's at least 1000 pages like, and I printed it out at my previous job, not paying attention to the size of the document that I left the room and came back. I felt like maybe I owe my employer some money because whoops. And I was like, I'm never going to read this anyway, you know, it's had like, mathematical equations isn't there that I was not prepared to to deal with and I was like, You know, I mean, I, like you want to get into the droop quota with a few people and diverges a lot but no we don't actually want to do that at all, but you can help it when you're on the street. So, oh yeah. Yeah. That's one of the things that's actually the most exciting and impressive about about Fargo is that it wasn't just that you organized and you moved forward but you managed to create a campaign that used amazing visual design in order to keep everything very simple. You didn't, you know, you talked about approval voting but you talked also so much more about about the impacts of approval voting you didn't get into the, the theory or the mathematics of it you did a really good job, keeping it as simple as it needed to be, if not simpler. You know how much these campaigns are built fundamentally on on the people and once you knew that you needed to be able to go out and gather signatures. You know, how much did you feel that you were relying on, I don't know the design more in order to be able to help convert people and have them, you know, respond, as opposed to just simply the mathematics of the system. I think that the design was absolutely important. When we started this thing, aside from a handful of, you know, diagrams and a, and a huge explainer video that CES had already, there really wasn't a lot of stuff out there so that's why we, like, we had to do it all from scratch. There's no choice, like, we need to be able to communicate this and yeah, so absolutely it was really important, I think, to do it. When we were gathering signatures we had, like, a handful of different designs that we had plastered to the backs of our clipboards. So like, different people every day when I'd hand out clipboards or however we do it, they'd have different examples that they could show and if we were paired up on a street corner, we made sure that the two of us would have different ones so we could be like, well, this is, you know, this is how this works and look at how much people really love hamburgers instead of pizza or something. Like some sort of simple, you know, explainer like that or a sample ballot, you know, talking about how if you split the vote then Lex Luthor becomes mayor, you know, and we just want to try to fight that. So yeah, I think that the graphics are really important and just trying to keep everything as simple as we could all the time. And that's why if you've seen our design then you can see we just very Spartan and minimalist but bright like we wanted it to be noticed and then we didn't want it to be too complicated and that's what we went for. Do you find any particular argument was most effective at converting someone to give their signature. Yeah, I mean, when we point out when we remind people, especially older voters that they've been in the situation of having to choose between the lesser two evils. And then, you know, begrudgingly voting for someone before that was a particularly compelling argument for many people up here with the election equipment that we had. It wasn't compatible with any other type of reform aside from this basically so we could point out that this is cost effective it was my least favorite argument to use but it definitely would, you know, sway some people. And then just reminding people again and again you know four out of five people didn't vote for the winners of these elections and you say that enough to people like that. And I think that that is an argument that you could make in every municipality in this country, I'm pretty sure you could say most people didn't vote for who won this is, you know, if there's a contested race, so, which many of them are. And, you know, so just bringing that up again and again. We get it through and sometimes, you know, you get into arguments, you know, I mean, discussions, spirited discussions with people and and explain, you know, get a little bit deeper pretty soon, you know, I remember asking a handful of different people with a campaign pointing out that, you know, according to the world's smallest political quiz, you know, something like 40 some percent of Americans are libertarian, according to this quiz yet, or maybe it was only 30%. But the point was, you know, how many libertarians are in the Senate, how many libertarians are in the House, they're not making it and it's because of how this method works and I could say that for, you know, the Green Party as well is as far as that goes. I mean, you can make these arguments and point out, you know, something is not lining up here. Obviously, people have disagreements with or upset with how these elections are shaking out, but they just keep thinking that, oh, it's something to do with the candidates and it's not. You know, you point out to them, no, actually the same that you've been overlooking for years is really important. Another part of why it was so hard sometimes to explain to people that it needed to change, because when they think about voting to them, it was, well, I go in and I fill in an oval or I push a button on the screen somewhere, and then it's over. They never thought about why they only got to push one button before and getting people to get that click and it's always satisfying when someone had come to them and that it makes sense and you'd see it start to turn. And then they realize, oh, there are ways to make decisions, especially by pointing out, you know, when you make a decision with a group of friends about where to go eat and like four of them named different burger places and two of them both say, let's go to Pizza Hut. And then you say, well, we're going to Pizza Hut because that's, you know, plurality rules or whatever. And then, you know, they realize, yeah, you're right, we don't make decisions like that in real life. And they ask them, then why are we doing that for these important ones? These are supposed to be important. They're in charge of our taxes and our roads and, and, you know, everything else that's important to us in our local government. Why are we using the worst method ever to do that? And it worked after a while. It's really great hearing the conversations that you've, no, don't apologize for anything like hearing the conversations that you've had with people who actually, you know, get a chance to go out and change this. One of the things that I'm really excited for. So there are two commissioners that their obligations expire in June 2020, just before the election. And then there are seven candidates who are running for the election. Yeah. The, and two of them are the, you know, so two of them are running for their same spots. So they're five candidates. One of the things that's very interesting is that this is still an at large election. The top two will get their seats. Is that correct? That's right. Yes. And that was, you know, I am not necessarily the most pragmatic person on the planet, but there is certainly an argument to be made that you're not going to be able to walk in and say, well, not only do we need to switch to approval voting for the first time in the nation, but we need to switch to some sort of proportional system or something because we're lucky to at a time. And like I said before, Fargo is at large. We don't have wards. Again, we didn't want to come up and say, well, we got to switch towards and switch our voting system. That's just going to be a kitchen sink of a thing and it's not going to work. Or it's likely to fail because someone's going to take on bridge with one or both parts. So, yeah, we did what we could basically in the end. Yeah. And we have, we have six people or seven people running for office. Technically, one of them did drop out officially, but their name will still be on the ballot. You know, come June here, but yes, it's the top two who will win. That's block style approval voting. Even Dr. Stephen Brahms, one of the main advocates, not the co-inventor or inventor of approval voting or these modern approval voting. He even wrote a letter in support to point out that yes, this is still okay, especially for an executive body like this, like it's fine. We're electing two people at a time. It's fine. All right. When, sorry, I lost my turn. I thought the one of the, I think the biggest question that that we're getting in, in the comments is why not R.C.V.? Why, why did R.C.V. not really pass muster with the, not, not the commission, the task force, the task force. Okay. So R.C.V. was number one. R.C.V. is better than what we have normally. Well, not here, but as far as I'm concerned, but the rest of the country. Yes, I agree. R.C.V. is still better, but it didn't make it to the task force for a handful of reasons. Well, the argument I hated the most, but still the one to sway people a lot was that our election equipment just didn't support range choice. There's no way to do it. Yeah, our municipality didn't have that equipment. Interesting side fact, the entire state of North Dakota uses the exact same model of election equipment. And we just upgraded the whole state to a new model of election equipment entirely. They don't piecemeal it. It's not like many other states where different municipalities have different devices. We're all the same thing for, there's a standardization there for better and for worse. But anyway, so R.C.V. it did. Definitely we talked about, we talked about ranking and everything along those lines. But there are a handful of problems with R.C.V. Number one, like I said, our equipment didn't support it. So it was kind of dead in the water in the first place because there was no convincing or it was not worth trying to convince as far as I was concerned. You know, the citizens of Fargo that we need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on new election equipment, just so we can change how our elections work in this case when there are other options out there. So, secondly, I think that approval was just so much simpler than R.C.V. And there's great arguments for it because many people think about, you know, like, well, I have a personal ranking of what I like the best or which candidates is first in my mind and second and third. But I did what I could after studying all these methods and arguing in favor of R.C.V. a bit, but also arguing in favor of approval. I did what I could to explain that when you're making a decision yourself, yes, there are lots of different ways, lots of different hierarchies you can have in your head, rankings or whatever of how you evaluate these candidates. But when a group makes a decision, which is what an election is, those don't always translate in a simple way. There's lots of little niggling little details that come in there that can really distort what the group wants. And when we look at, you know, favorite betrayal, you know, that occurs in R.C.V., that's pretty depicts. I mean, we can see that if you want to rank somebody really high in R.C.V., they better be really strong so they can survive kind of those rounds that occur to get to the end. Or they better be weak and get the heck out of the way so someone else that you like, but ranked lower on your ballot still has a shot. Otherwise, they can still split one another's votes and you yourself for voting the way you did can end up with a worse winner than you would have been in, frankly, a better method out there. Yep. Did you ever find that there were, you know, when you were canvassing and going out there that people will, you know, use R.C.V. as a way to not endorse it? Did you find the people who were like, well, what about R.C.V.? Did they say, no, I only want R.C.V. or did you find that they were like, well, this is like R.C.V. and it's sort of the system we have, let's sign it. Because oftentimes there's a tribalism that's currently happening in our community. And I want to see whether, when the rubber hits the road and you need to sign something which says, you know what, I approve of approval voting, you know, whether people will make that trade off. Yeah. So when, to use your phrase, when the rubber meets the road, for the most part, people were happy to see us moving away from prison posts. So they're in our community as people who are, you know, passionate about, you know, voting methods and actually have used the word voting method when speaking with their friends and family. We have a different opinion on how important these things are. The public at large who isn't familiar with the fact that there are different ways to elect people, they don't, they're much more swayable, really. And I understand that you're asking about people who've already heard of R.C.V. and they're on that train, but they're on that train because they recognize that there are problems out here. Let me point out to them that, yes, there's actually more than one solution to how to do this. And this is not only attainable, but it's ridiculously simple. And you've used it a lot more in your personal life than you've ever used R.C.V. We're making group decisions. That sways a lot of people. I mean, who is sitting here going, well, gosh, where should we eat tonight? I'm going to rank every restaurant in town and let's go through the process and have a runoff. I mean, it's ridiculous. That's not how people make decisions. So, you know, approval just, it's so much simpler. And the simplistic argument really helped with many of the doubters out there. And yeah, are there people who did not vote for this because it's R.C.V. or bust? Absolutely. And there are plenty of people who didn't vote for it because it was first pass and poster bust. But, you know, two out of three Fargo voters voted for this because they wanted to see something better. And truly, I mean, I'm in Fargo, North Dakota. There are lots of communities that are like us across the nation that have the same people with the same questions and making the same arguments. And, you know, it's doable. We've proven that it's doable in a place that I'm pretty sure most people would not have expected this to happen ever. And we did it here. Tell me about what you see for the future. I mean, we're going to have the election. There's going to be a win. Well, there's going to be two winners. You know, like, do you have any like total back of the envelope, like they're going to win with X percent of the ballot in your in your mind? You know, to pick out which candidates, just what do you think they're going to win by and then, you know, where is there going to be another campaign in order to get approval voting elsewhere? Yeah, so I'm really hopeful that not only, I mean, obviously the plurality winners will win, but really hopeful that we'll get some clean majorities winning here. It's not guaranteed, as I had to point out to every reporter I ever spoke to, because they would always report and they'd say something about, well, then this has a majority. It's like, no, no, not necessarily. We're hoping. We're hoping that I'll get there, but we can't promise that. That's when I start to dive into the weeds and make a reporter's eyes glaze over. But we, I am hopeful that we will see candidates winning win in the 50s and 60s percent and in a six-way race, even for two seats that just hasn't ever happened here that I know of. It's not possible really. Yeah, it's really not. I mean, yeah, you'd have to be running against. You'd have to do a lot of clowns. Yeah, you'd have to be running against a dream slate of loads of people in order to even remotely get there. So that's just not going to happen. So I'm hopeful that we'll get there. Maybe the realistic approach as I really hedge here is that we'll get some people in their 40s, but I'm hopeful that we will see 50s and 60s out of this. You feel like I've been working. No, I like other people to run like, like, like people from a different area or a moderate that would. So of the people running of the six who are still actively running, but we'll just say the seven. Three of them have served in public office before, but the other four had. For our last election, I believe when I can't remember how many ran, was it 10 or 11 or something like that. Over half of them were incumbents. I'm going to say about nine apparently ran, but yeah, I think it was five or six of them had run before they weren't incumbents, but they had run before they were incumbents at the time two of them were. And so right now we have more people running. Now I'm not going to say that. Well, it's because I went and stood on the corner of Broadway and first with the clipboard for a summer. And that's why these candidates decided to run. But I will say that we're hopeful that it's going to continue to help make office accessible for people who would not traditionally have even considered running given that there are political machines out there. Even in this town, even if they're disorganized political machines, they do exist. And it's tough to get into those rooms sometimes. Yeah. So I'm hopeful, but you asked about the future and the pandemic is a real pain in the butt. So I think that that also limited hampered how many candidates we have running, frankly, it hit here, you know, a month and a half before the cutoff for for signing up to run or collecting signatures and there's just no time also it's cold. I don't know if you all know, but Fargo is cold. I mean, it snowed two days ago here. It's obnoxious. It should not be doing that in May, but whatever. So people aren't gathering signatures for that aren't necessarily sure they're ever going to run yet. I mean, commonly we have people who decide within the last week. I mean, as you should, I think, honestly, like, I mean, I don't want people make last second decisions, but I want people to take their time to make decisions before they run. It's a big responsibility to serve an office or even try to do so. And if this thing hit, and I mean, this is the lowest candidate count that we've had in a decade, I think. So I'm hopeful that it will help in the future. But yeah, who knows about, you know, how the pandemic will affect things, but I'm confident that it's going to help in the future. And then, yeah, maybe we get to take this to a county government or a neighboring government or who knows, we'll go statewide and then we'll storm the White House or something. I don't know. I supposed to do a Howard Dean, right? So I don't know what they're called, or something like that. But, you know, like, maybe they'll be coming. Maybe I'll call them and try to get them out here to campaign for us or something. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, the nice thing about seeing this and doing what I think everyone thought was impossible is that you just really do think that everything is possible at this point. I mean, like, are you, so it sounds like you don't have any, like, specific plans of like, okay, we're going to do this city next or, you know, let's go for statewide. Is there a question of, like, how it plays out in the media, or do you think it's just a question of focusing on? There's a question of some of that, like, there's definitely a focus. But I, you know, after the campaign, you know, I definitely took a break. But during the campaign, Fargo is sandwiched, it's the largest community, but a sandwich between two other, you know, significant communities on either side. And then a handful, you know, stuck in. I mean, Fargo itself would feel like a suburb to most people in the United States, but we've got suburbs too. So it's suburbs all the way down. And there are lots of communities here, but the conversations I've had with those elected officials and activists and just citizens in those cities. Far more conversations with citizens than elected officials and activists is that they want it. But, you know, there's a little bit of hesitation like, oh, how's it going to work out? How's it going to work out in Fargo? But after one, I mean, I receive phone calls from people in every city with a population of over 20,000 within a 500 mile radius, basically. So like, there's interest around here. It's just they want to see how this thing works out. And I'm hopeful that it will be clear that not only did it did it function, but that it worked. And they will want us to do it too. We bind it a seed. I'm hoping that it will flourish. That's great. That's very, very exciting. One of the questions I was excited to ask is, now that you've done this, what advice would you go back and give yourself if you go back in time? Oh, gosh, man. I'd love to hear what Andrea might say about this as well. Yeah, thank you. I know I've been monopolizing and Andrea, please, please jump in. Yeah. Sure. So I, you know, my background in organizing prior to this was in human rights. And so, you know, those issues for me were relatively, you know, kind of easy to campaign for, because, you know, for better or worse, they're easier for people to understand. They can wrap their head around, you know, whatever it is you're talking about. And, yeah, trying to go in with different loading campaign is this sort of like nebulous blob of like, how do you, how do you like, yeah, like generate interest for the thing that like no one has heard of, much less like get people to help you to, you know, talk about the thing that no one has heard of it. In the beginning it felt very challenging but one story I've been reflecting on a lot today was, you know, because of my background in human rights and working for other nonprofits that has like no money and no budget. And just, yeah, I was used to just not having any money to work with but kind of like just focusing on like emotional appeals and just getting people to do the right thing because it's the right thing. Whereas, you know, with this campaign I actually had a budget and I was like, this is amazing. This is going to make my job so much easier. I remember just being totally defeated like one of the first times I walked into a Fargo ad agency thinking that I had tons of money to work with and I was so excited to, you know, to talk about, you know, content for like a commercial and you know, like newspaper ads and stuff like that. They literally laughed in my face and they were like, Howdy High Camp and Kevin Craver both just spent $25 million on their ad campaigns and those were two people running for Congress at the time, and it was the most expensive race in North Dakota history. It was so crazy. It was a big deal. Yeah. And so I think from there, you know, I was really defeated because I was like, Oh man, like I thought I had a lot of money but as it turns out like it's not enough and like, you know, we're going to have to run just a straight round game, you know. And so that's what we did and I like just was amazed that it worked out. I just saw that like Dakota joined the call. Dakota was like our first pretty like heavy hitter volunteer in so far as I like she literally quit her job so that she could come hand out flyers on the streets with us like she just threw herself all in and so Yeah, we built up a huge volunteer base and you know, I guess like just kind of going back to that, you know, not only competing for like media attention, you know, from this extremely contentious congressional race happening in our state. That that means that we were also competing for like political attention from our own community. Because as far as anyone here was concerned, at that point the city commission race was already over and so to try to get people excited about a municipal vote for an election that you know had just passed. Or excuse me to get people excited about a municipal ballot initiative. When there's so much in the news every single day about, you know, this big congressional race. Yeah, that was a huge challenge but I think that the way that Jed and I work together and the way that Dakota and I work together like we really just brought such like complimentary, thank God like such complimentary skill sets to the campaign. Jed literally had to teach me how to make spreadsheets like on one of the first nights that we hung out. Dakota and I both like have worked in restaurants most of our lives I mean I did have a background in organizing but you know I bartended well into my 30s. You know, and so for us, you know like Dakota and I it was more about like just hustling the way that we knew how to hustle which is, you know to be as charming as possible and like, you know, we've made our decision to try to, you know, charm people to get a buck and so I think that we just sort of like used that same tactic in terms of winning the election, but also like getting people to care enough about this to volunteer for it and Yeah, I was really really excited when I found out because I had meetings with with all of the political parties in North Dakota I met with the State Director for the Republicans and I met with the Democrats I even met with the Party Socialist Libertarians like I met with all the people and yeah like it was it was interesting because the people I found out who were like least likely to endorse were politicians from like almost across the spectrum and eventually I realized it was because like oh a lot of them actually benefit from vote splitting and they didn't want to lose the possibility for that advantage. But I think that like once you know like regular people just citizens, you know realize that this this actually like makes your voice stronger and your vote stronger in your opinion, more powerful. It was a pretty easy sell and so. Yeah, Jed was just, you know he's just like a monster he's he's a total workforce I asked him earlier today. I was like I was like do you remember who the major like signature getters were you know besides so and so and so and so and he goes well let me look. And he gives me this list of like, you know six people or five people who are like you know these everyone here got like around 100 or less. And then next to his name he wrote 900. Wow. You know and he was doing this all on top of his like. Full time job. So he's like out pounding the pavement every day. And yeah, working with him was just, it was a blast and it was an honor and yeah he's just a riot. But, but yeah as far as like what he could do versus you know like what I could do and what Dakota could do is just totally different but but complimentary contributions and I think that you know for me. I just really wanted to like humanize the campaign and so I always joke like if you go back to the reform Vargo website and go back through all their pictures there's like a certain like divide where you can tell the moment where I got access to reform Vargos like administrative you know their Facebook admin role. Because it went from like all graphics that like Jed had designed to suddenly like all these cute pictures of like all of our adorable volunteers and like, don't you want to come join the approval voting army come make history. You know. We didn't start with any volunteers repeat sake. We didn't have any volunteers when I started for Pete sake to be fair. Yeah, we had so many really like built that base by you know kind of like promising people that they were going to be, you know, a part of like making history. And yeah, like I said I just tried really hard to you know humanize the campaign and show everybody else. So in Fargo, that this is something that supported by, you know, literally dozens and dozens of other people. So much so that here we are volunteering, you know for months and months on end. And I you know I think that's ultimately, you know what did it is that we, we were able to literally physically demonstrate to people how much support this had in the community. Despite like not ever being able to afford a commercial or like any like significant amount of ad space on any platform. I think like organically we actually had quite a reach. And yeah, I think that also speaks to the fact that like good ideas sell themselves. Yeah, you know, this came up in Fargo because we already knew that there was a need for it. Yeah, but Andrew, the penny in the jar demonstration like we definitely swayed a lot of people at that. I'm not even joking too hard like definitely I'm telling you. Good ideas. Do you want to explain the penny in the jar experiment. Not really, but I will. So there were jars. So we tabled at a whole bunch of civic events around the farmers markets and fairs and things. Yeah, and we we took some jars and with big base jars and we flocked them black so you can see inside them. And we went with drew $50 worth of pennies, which is a lot of pennies. Let me tell you. And then we, we would hand people a penny and say, All right, over here vote for and we'd have some sort of question of the day. And we'd ask, so who's the like most legendary musical artist and they have these choices and they drop penny in and then we said, All right, now do it again. But here's many pennies as you need one max one per jar and I do the same thing. And the results would, you know, we'd ask purposefully we would choose artists. We'd be like, All right, here's a handful similar ones than one that is different, which is frankly the way lots of political campaigns are lots of races are. And it was astounding because you'd see obvious vote splitting on the first pass the post side and then on the other side, you'd see. Oh, no, people do like, you know, rock more than bubblegum pop, maybe today, or they like, you know, cheap curds more than french fries, even though we had 10 kinds of cheese curds plus french fries at the state fair, or excuse me, the county fair, when we did it on the first pass post side. And yeah, so it was just, it was interesting how that all worked out, but we had so many volunteers I mean just signature gathers alone we had 20 people who gathered signatures. And every signature was important, which was a big thing that we would point out and then for the door knocking, we had all of them plus more people knocking doors, so it was a big deal. We only got one endorsement officially from another group by the end of the whole thing, which was our, our local firefighters 642. And they, yeah, they endorsed us. And we got, we got more endorsements than that. Did we did we get a second one I know you remember the league. I know, I know for sure that the ACLU is one of them. That's right, the ACLU of North Dakota endorsed us. That's right. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, so sorry, sorry out there ACLU of Andy, I forgot. There were others. Yeah, I felt like I met with the firefighters a lot. But yeah, it was just, yeah. And that was another thing. I mean it was important to meet with these people because these are also, you know, civic leaders in their own way and they, they know people too. It's really important to be willing to try to get out of your comfort zone. I'm not a public speaker. I am not a political, you know, organizer or whatever. This is the first time I've been involved in something like this. I wasn't someone like, yes, I know who Howard Dean is, but I'm not someone who, you know, can tell you about, you know, politics really growing up more than I like I vaguely knew who my parents voted for on the way up. This is just something there was a problem that needed to be solved. I want to ask a little bit of a self serving question just since, since we've got a lot of donors and subscribers from the Center for Election Science on the call. You know, how has the relationship with the Center for Election Science been and, you know, any advice for us as we as we go to to support more campaigns and, you know, like, how, how have we been able to support you. Um, so you've been, you've been great. Um, you know, Aaron Hamler, Hamlin. Yeah. Sorry, forgive me. I'm tied today. Aaron Hamler. No, Aaron Hamlin has been not only an excellent resource, but Yes, Aaron Hamlin has been an excellent resource and he's been just a wonderfully kind and open guy to be able to talk with and you'll ask questions to he's made himself available. So I think, you know, CES has really done a good job in having him around to to help, you know, answer these questions and helps to support us when we need things and CES has been instrumental in, you know, helping, you know, giving us grants, you know, we applied for them, but you were kind enough to disperse grants on on our behalf to help fund these grants because grassroots efforts are really important and we can do a lot with volunteers, but having a little bit of cash does help. And it's unfortunate, but it's the truth. I remember when we got the our initial grant, we disclosed it even though legally we actually didn't have to at the time. But we said no for transparency. That's what we believe in as an organization. We're going to disclose this. And oh boy, that that hit the papers that created a store. No one's ever spent $25,000 in a local election. And I went on the radio and said, Well, actually, we don't only have $25,000, we have another $25,000 coming in two weeks. And we just leaned into it hard and just pointed out, guess what, it's expensive to do this. And we are thankful that people care enough across the country about this issue to help support us. I can walk into a room and I can say abortion, everybody has an opinion they know what it is they know what their opinion is on it. But you walk into room you say election method and nobody has a clue what you're talking about. And it takes time, and it takes effort. And it takes, frankly, it does take some money in order to help let a lot of people know that this issue is important and that we need to do something about it. And so we just, you know, we'd lean in on that and we're just very thankful to see us was there to help us not only form the organization in the first place, but be willing to take a call. When we call frustrated on a Thursday night with part of the campaign and help us figure out how we're going to proceed, but to bounce ideas off of but at the same time, CS has been very hands off in the actual not only the day to day, but how we necessarily would spend the money that we were generously granted, and allowing us to maintain our kind of our local control over these decisions. And that's really important to then thankful that's the way it's gone so far. We're glad that we are trusted that we know the area better than CES as I've heard of horror stories from, you know, other nonprofits and groups and they say, oh, this work didn't you know this work to New Jersey we're going to come here and we're going to set up like this to do this thing. And you know, the country, while I believe that approval voting would be a great fit across the entire country. How you get there is definitely not a one size fits all solution and CES is a great job of ensuring that they don't try to rigidly enforce some sort of one size fits all conditions on how they help they help when they need to and they don't help when they don't. And they're there if we need them. It's great to hear. Thank you that's a wonderful ring endorsement. I know that you have a hard stop it's at. I suppose this is a seven o'clock your time. I also want to make sure we can talk a few more minutes is okay. I want to make sure that I get some questions from the audience and I'm going to hand it over to Caitlin who's been watching the chat. Sure. So anybody who has questions for Jed feel free to go ahead and stick them in the chat. So far, I've got two questions I think both from Colin weaver one is for Andrea one is for Jed. So Jed this is this is a pretty straightforward question. Colin asks why did the commission at the time, kill the recommendation in 2017 was it approval voting changing the commission size or both. It was both they. Yeah. I don't want to throw the commissioners under the bus here, but I'm going to throw them under the bus a little bit. They. There was hesitance to have change. And there was the fact that they've all gotten in there with the current system. And that's like this harkens back to what Andrea was saying earlier about how local political operatives local politicians are kind of the most resistant for the most part believe it we had some people in our corner. Politically, but are these willing to, you know, like support us. But they saw it. These many of these incumbents they saw it as they're playing a sport politics is a game apparently they're playing a sport and these people want to come in and change the rules of health works and right now we are all star athletes in the way that it works we do not want to change you know how this works. And, frankly, that's what helped us a lot too, because that's one argument I forgot to bring up the ignoring approval voting we could also point out I got so many. I got so many signatures I'm sure I got 10% I'm sure I got 100 signatures, like from someone who wasn't going to sign by, as they were backing recoiling away from me, I would say, you know, the City Commission sat on this recommendation, their own recommendation from their own board that they appointed for over a year, and then killed it without even daring to put it in front of the public for a vote, because they are scared of how this will turn out. And that got some signatures to super interesting. Yeah, I think all of the learning more about the tactics and the things that you were able to say to get people to understand the importance of it is super interesting. I could talk to you about that all day probably. And then Colin also wanted to know from Andrea. What did you initially find abrasive about approval voting and what made you change your mind. I'm sorry, what did I initially find, what was the question. He asked what did you initially find abrasive about approval voting and what made you change your mind. So I wouldn't say that I found it abrasive at all. I think, you know, like I said earlier, I was just someone who had just become familiar with the concepts that there was even more than one way to vote. Period. And the only other alternative method I had heard of at that time was race choice voting which I had become very excited about so when I learned about approval voting. I think it threw me a little bit because like I said it was, it was, it was too simple that I didn't get it, which was the case, trying to explain it to people over and over. Yeah, I mean we got our pitch down eventually but it takes giving that pitch a lot of times. I finally realized, you know, the quickest way you can possibly express this to someone. I was also going to say I'm sorry, I totally lost my train of thought because I was going back and forth between my phone and my computer but when I was talking about the parties earlier. And in talking to the leaders of both parties. I was really happy when I found out that we like our volunteer base was actually larger than both major political parties during that same campaign season. Which I just thought was amazing. Yeah, in our area at least. In the city of Fargo. Yeah, like not statewide definitely. So, yeah, I was just kind of trying to drive the point home that like that's how much it was needed and that's how much people were excited about it, you know, as interesting as like, you know, big congressional races can be. People really were invested in like just making their town better. So, yeah, but that's where I was going with that and I lost track of, yeah. Yeah, local races are just so important I mean the effect they affect the stuff right outside your house and your house most of the time, or wherever you live your apartment or whatnot. It's so important and people would understand that as we would go and Andrea mentioned yeah pitches gosh I mean we, it took some time but we all kind of refined, refined, refined. Yeah, refined is the right word we all refined our pitches over time. I figure it out like one of my favorites was you get to say thumbs up or thumbs down to every candidate and said just one or two done. Yeah, like I'm wearing the shirt with the thumb. I remember this was like a sort of a hotly contested debate during the campaign was like, is this a copyright infringement like is this the Facebook thumb are we co-opting the Facebook was not. It was not. Like the thumb really was like, I think kind of a brilliant symbol for us because that that did kind of end up being our quickest possible pitch you know it's using the body language it is a literal thumbs up or a thumbs down on each candidate you can thumbs up as many people as you want. So, yeah, I think that got the basics across to people in a pretty quick way. I have been voting for so long and I will use that because it explains it far more than like pick many it's just thumbs up thumbs down on every candidate. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. I actually stole that as well like Chris and I have used it at when we've been talking to people at booths and stuff at events because it just. We're going to get all the royalties. I know we've got to give you the copyright. Yeah. But it does it makes it so much easier because you tell people, you know, you can vote for as many candidates as you want, but they just don't get it until they either do it or you say it in another way. Yeah. And so the thumbs up and thumbs down really helps a lot. Yeah, so thank you for that for figuring that that trick out to get through to people. Yeah, so to all the other cities get yourself some thumb t shirts and exercise the thumb pitch, because it was a statement I never thought I'd hear. The thumb pitch sounds like the worst way to like throw a baseball. What's what's been your relationship so far with St. Louis. Have you have you worked with them at all. Yeah. Yeah, they called me before they even really started and we had a lot of conversations about not only, you know, like the branding and thumbs up thumbs down to that type of stuff. But just, you know, just what our strategy was and how we organized and yeah, it's been great and I haven't called them to bug them to catch up on it because I know what it's like when you're in the middle of this thing and the last thing you want to do is take another call from a lookie Lou out there trying to see how it goes but Yes, we have a good relationship with them and we absolutely wish them the best we're really excited that they will be the number two city in the United States to get approval of on it. So, yeah, we wish them the best for sure. Super exciting. I do see that we have a participant with their hand up. It's Marcus so Marcus you can go ahead you've been on music if you want to ask your question. Yeah. How much more difficult do you think it would have been to get through more complicated voting methods such as proportional voting schemes such as STV. Yeah, so I think it definitely would have been more complicated because there's certain beauty and being able to say you know thumbs up thumbs down everybody most votes wins where if I need to talk about STV or you know one of my personal favorites you know like sequential proportional. There's a lot to it because you have to explain well kind of goes into a black box in a sense, you know, because most people don't understand, or want to take the time to understand, you know, how the, you know, how the votes actually get tallied and how we merge together the preferences of all these people into something coherent. So I do think it would have been more difficult, but I absolutely don't think that it's impossible to do that, especially if the method itself the end point that the input method for the voters is still simple. We're not asked. We're not changing to something that's asking them to you know write an essay about every candidate and then we'll have them graded by retired elementary school teachers, you know in order to determine who wins or something like that. But it definitely there's it would definitely be I think more difficult, but that just comes down to if you want to do that you got to make sure that you can explain it in some type of, you know, under a minute pitch, something that's going to be clear to them and it and ideally is not going to be a black box like I said earlier. Ideally, it's not going to be something where you have to say, well, we hand wave all this away. No, you need to be able to explain it. And that's part of where I think, you know, STV, for example, which I think is great. I think, you know, it's still it's complicated to explain them and then as people with a deeper interest in this, the whole time you're explaining something I will tell you if you ever, you know petition for any type of change like this the whole time you're explaining and I will tell you if you have studied it, is that you're going to have all these little like footnotes and asterisks, asterisks, like popping up in your head as you explain something like well there's a caveat about this I should really get into and you get worried and you can get lost in the weeds on some of it and you just you got to keep it simple. Never lie, never obscure, never obfuscate, but just, you know, tell them, you know, this is the basics of how it works. And now, you know, I will get into the weeds with you, we will go together into this place. If you would like, I'm happy to do that with you. But, but here's the basics and just try to keep it simple and straightforward. I mean, I think a lot is possible, but it's scary. I mean, people afraid of these changes. I mean, I look at British Columbia, they, they could have had proportional representation. But last year, I think they had a referendum on it, and then it didn't happen. Sadly, I'm, and I mean, I know the powers that be tried to explain it. They had great provincial money behind videos to explain what the options were to improve their government, and it just didn't happen. And I think, you know, it's just because change is scary. And but it's doable. I do think it's out there. I mean, look at the fact, just the fact that I just said British Columbia just had this referendum. You know, Maine switched over to ranked choice. We have cities across the country who are switching voting methods. We switched to approval. St. Louis is hopefully going to have it soon. That shows that they're not only do we live in the end, we live at a time when people are considering these things. They're willing to look at this stuff. And I think, you know, the winds of change are behind us, and we can do this. It's just, we got to, you know, try to stay focused and try to stay simple, unlike this conversation that I'm having with you right now. Wonderful. I think we're reaching about time. Is that right, Caitlin? All right. Yeah, there aren't any more questions in the chat. Okay, I really want to thank Jed and Andrea and everyone else who was able to to be here today for this discussion. I, you know, I'm so exciting to know that we've, we've done it. And I think it's, it's very strange remembering all of the stress and anxiety that built up through this process and then finally to know that like, oh, this is this the wrap up meeting did we already have the party if we're done. Yeah. And I suppose, you know, it's, it's not done done. We still have to see the election. I'm very excited to see the results. You know, I'm really hoping it's over 60% on on some candidates we'll, we'll see like fingers crossed because I think that that's a really big endorsement both of the method and also of the of the candidate. And, you know, let's, let's hope that St. Louis does really well and I think we're all very excited to see not just how Fargo does but how North Dakota does in leading the nation in efficient and effective voting reform. I have to point out as well that with this being the very first approval voting election we all know how simple it is we've been talking about how simple it is, but we want to make sure that every single voter is able to fill out their ballot and feels comfortable and confident, you know, that ballot says vote for all the candidates you approve of. But this is the first time they're going to see a ballot that says that so they might be confused and they're not going to be voting in person at a polling place where they can ask questions. So that's why CES and reform Fargo are putting together an education campaign just to remind voters, remember on your city commission race you can vote for as many candidates as you approve of this is how it works this is how simple it is. And so that you know that education campaign costs money of course and so if you are willing to $5 even can get a postcard sent to 15 Fargo households just to remind them about how approval voting works. So we would definitely appreciate any contributions that you all might be able to to provide to just make sure that this first ever approval voting election goes smoothly and the voters, you know, understand how how to use approval voting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we're very thankful for the grant that CES gave us. And yeah, and if any of you out there want to donate to us as well, we'd appreciate it. You can find out more at reformfargo.org. I really need to update the website. I'll get that done this week. But right now, I mean, the reason I have a hard stop here is because we are, you know, working on filming stuff for commercial that we're doing right now. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's why yeah, I'm pretty sure one of the commission candidates for this year is actually standing outside that door right now. So I got to go. Take care, Jed. Jed, thank you for all of your work, Andrea. Thank you so much and all of your volunteers in reformfargo. Good luck and Can I, I'm sorry, can I just ask a quick favor? Sure. I see that Dakota is on the line and I as far as I can tell it looks like also our youngest and cutest volunteer might be the backseat. I don't know if Gigi wants to talk about her experience of volunteering with approval voting, but yeah, Gigi went to many. Do you want to mute Dakota, Caitlin? Yeah. Yeah, I'm just coming back from a fishing trip. So she was in the background. They got sick of me doing this. Oh, so now you're alone. Oh, I saw her back there earlier. No, she would have liked to have said hi even though you're all strangers to her, you know, except for them. But yeah, they're gone. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to see you, Dakota. Yeah, you too, Jed. And yeah, we knocked so many doors together. Gash, Dakota and I, Gash, we walked through neighborhoods. I mean, between the two of us, I think, I mean, Dakota, I mean, how many doors must we, I mean, what, $2,500? $5,000? We knocked so many doors. Oh my gosh. You knocked 400 doors with me. So that Gigi did that. Yeah, yeah, Gigi did. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah, so that speaks to just, she wasn't always with us. So yeah, we definitely, Yeah. Yeah. So we can talk about strategy all day, but really it was Gigi, I think that kind of sealed the deal for all of us. Yeah, that's what it was. Well, let's do another event. Let's get Gigi on. Yes. No, I'm entirely serious. We love these calls. We love, you know, having these conversations, but even better, we love inviting, you know, all of the supporters for the Center for Election Science and, you know, like so much of what we're doing is a community because there are so many other places that need us that need this help. And when they see this, when they see the conversations we have, they know it's real and they know that it can be done. So, so thank you. So I'm going to quick haul out the names of all the volunteers we had just collecting signatures. I got to say Andrea Berry, Cheryl Courtney, David Derrick, Aaron Grace, Jack J, Joe John, Julie, Kathy, Kevin, Lydia, Nick, Ron Tyrone, Whitney and Zach, and then me, I guess. And I'm thankful for all of them who worked on this. And that's just signature gathering. That is not all the people who were out there knocking doors with us. And yeah, going to every type of neighborhood in town and making sure that we hit them all. So it's a big deal. All right. Thanks everyone for joining us. I got to go. I got to get it out there. He's gonna shoot me. All right. We'll be putting this on YouTube shortly and thanks everyone for joining us. And don't forget, you can always email us, get involved in the discord and join the newsletter. Thanks very much. All right. Thank you.