 elections in America. After all, we're going to have an election in a few days, a major election, unprecedented in its complexity, its risk, its threat. So we might as well talk about where it's been over the last couple of hundred years. History is here to help. I'm Jay Fidel. And the handsome young man is Peter Hoppenberg. He's a professor of history at UH Manoa. So a free and fair election, Peter, is a beautiful thing, but it seems to be slipping through our fingers lately. And I wonder if you could give us a handle on where it's been. You know, elections are not the only symbol of democracy. If you want to have a democracy, representative government and free and fair elections are not the only thing. You have to have multiple branches of government. You have to have a balance of power. And you have to have them working together. Of course, you have to have good faith. But it's not just elections. On the other hand, I think it's really worthwhile for us to study elections, especially if you are the elections coming soon. So you've taken a look at this. How have elections fared in this country over the past couple of hundred years? Well, let me first agree with you entirely that democracy, both politically and socially, is more than elections. But I think we can agree that's sort of the poster child, whether we like it or not. That's generally also generally how the world evaluates the democracy. Are there elections in the Congo or not, for example? So in this case, I think we just have to take it as the Israelis and Palestinians would say it's a fact on the ground. And so saying that, I think you've also hinted at elections require trust. So one of the ways to think about the success or not of elections is to see how if you were in the Pew organization in the 19th century, how much trust is in there. So I would say there are two lines. Open and fair elections, yes, along with general trust. I think probably, since we only have a few minutes, that Europeans and others have always thought of American elections as somewhat of a model. When DeTaupeville visited, he was impressed that people read, that people got together, that people voted. But there has always been a fight. Like we always quote Baldwin, America's in the making. Well, free and fair elections are also in the making. So while people observed, for those who could vote, there was generally free and fair elections. And notice the qualifier, those who could vote. So I would say the history of elections in the US are generally free and open for those who by law can vote. And that's a big qualification. So the history has always been, and your viewers know, that citizenship, when extended, is supposed to extend to the right to vote. It's part of the various constitutional amendments. So we get to the question of, are we willing to extend citizenship to people? OK, that's a long-winded existentialist answer. The short answer is that there's always been some corruption, Tammany Hall, et cetera. That's not new. But this wholesale invalidation of elections, pre-election right, because of the possibility of corruption, I don't think I've seen that before. Like, you could hate Lincoln. But the South said, Lincoln won, so we're going to succeed. They didn't contest the election. They contested the results in the most dramatic case. And otherwise, like Bush v. Gore, it did go to the Supreme Court. But in that case, it was very specific. It wasn't this overall systematic complaint about corruption. It was particular hanging jads in a particular area, which could have changed the election. So the idea of a president calling up and asking for 11,000 vote changes. I don't really think in American history that's ever happened. What has happened is we know. It's African-Americans face poll taxes, et cetera. There was little organization of agricultural laborers, even if they were citizens. So let's say imperfect, if that's a fair answer. But I do think we're dealing with an unprecedented situation today. Part of that is really one entire part of our political and social system simply doesn't trust. They don't trust the institutions. And in that case, I'm not sure whether the outcome of an election will be followed. I mean, part of free and open elections, as you vote, you collect the ballots, the majority candidate wins, and you have what the British call a loyal opposition. If labor loses the election, no, they don't say the election is fraud and corrupt. They sit on the other side of parliament, and they do their best right to defeat the Tories for the next election. But it's this concept of a loyal opposition. And we've kind of lost that. It's so partisan now. Yeah, well, query, we have miles to go and so many questions about this. But query with the unprecedented risk of this election in the way it's conducted, in the way people see it, in the trust they have for it, in the landmines that the Republicans have set up in various legislatures and so forth. Will voting continue in this country? I mean, one, what's his name? Yuval Noah Harari last said that he thought this would be the last election, and that elections would have to go away. And of course, that also means that democracy goes away. Representative government goes away. All those checks and balances go away. But query, can we continue to have elections when we have so many putfalls that are established for this one? I think with all due respect, it was intentionally being overly dramatic intentionally, especially since Israel has come through its fifth election and Israel continues to have elections and they're as fraught as ours and they continue to vote. Let me... Is that what you mean they are not fraudulent? Is that what you're saying? Well, in Israel they're not particularly fraudulent. I don't think anybody says in Israel they're fraudulent. They're just a split society. And the parallel is whether or not Palestinians and Arabs who can vote will vote. But that's a different issue, right? That's not saying you can't pass water out in line if they're not armed settlers around ballot boxes. I mean, the US is really in an unprecedented area. I don't think that means no future elections. I think it means a lot of what we've talked about that things are going to break down according to states and they're gonna break down according to municipalities. So the question really isn't whether democracy survives. It's whether a sense of the nation survives, right? Where there's political uniformity. So I think in some areas, if the state legislatures get their way, then it's hard to see somebody getting elected with the electorate so constricted. But you look at California, for example, of Massachusetts or New York, these things are not happening. So I think what you have is more... I agree with it that in some areas elections might become meaningless. But in other areas I think they'll probably be stronger. I mean, you can kind of call this the California effect. Everything that Florida and Trump do, Newsom does the opposite. And that's to present California, I mean, obviously for its own political interests as well, but built into California and New York and Massachusetts and other places. So I think the answer is that for some places, elections will be pro-forma. Look, if you restrict the electorate so much, right? It's just a rubber stamp. I mean, I think that probably will happen in some areas. As usual, where our conversation ends, it's up to the court to defend the constitution. No, well, and that's sometimes the court meaning the Supreme Court, which is off the side lately. So you can't really trust them. But if this were to work, including a democracy, if it were to work, as you mentioned at the outset, the separation of powers would ensure, particularly for the judiciary, that the executive and Congress don't at least intention. I think one of the difficulties is that the court doesn't appreciate effect. So they seem to be bending over backwards, even the spoting rights thing, you know? They don't, I don't think that there's a comprehension of what could be the effect. And in fact, what has been the effect? And you saw that with Katachi Brown as we'll talk about in two weeks. And so the question would be what would be the effect of this and the effect would continue partisanship, bifurcation, right, those states? Well, it's an interesting question as to if you lose trust, whether that encourages people to, you know, double down and willfully increase their efforts to stand in line and to vote and to be responsible citizens voting, or whether it encourages them to stay at home and watch a football game. That's a tough call. I mean, statistically, you could also say that, you know, drilling down has enhanced violence, right, it's enhanced those. That too, that too. I mean, the two extremes are probably what statisticians would say, indifference. East Germans used to say, you vote with your feet. In this case, vote with your tushies. And the opposite of indifference, right? Very focused antagonism. So you're left with what everybody's always said in democracy, ever since Paris, right? It's, you know, it's up to the middle. Is the middle going to stand up? And the middle going to say, you know, the laws should be to allow the most people possible to vote most free. We're not having that. That's not nuclear science. That's the fundamental nature of a democracy. And so anything which is done to impinge or prohibit that, you take, for example, not allowing a polling booths to be open Sunday afternoons or Sunday evenings. Now, it's quite possible that the reason for that is not racist, but the effect is racist. Among the most significant places for African-Americans in the US to meet is church. And what do you do after church? You often vote it. So in effect at least. And, but that's again, as we talked about every week, it's up to the Supreme Court, right? As the arbiter to say that violates the post civil war constitutional amendments, which is basically saying, we're going to go back to originalism and not even pay attention to the amendments. And presumably the amendments, right? Were amendments on the originalist intent, knowing the originalist intent was either wrong or incomplete. Or both. So I traveled in China, maybe 15 years ago on one trip. And I talked to a woman there in China. And I asked, she was a tour guide. And I asked her if she voted. At the time, China was in a period of enlightenment of sorts, or at least that's the way we saw it. Liberalization, right. Liberalization. And I asked her if she voted. And she said, no, and she was educated. Interestingly enough, she went to school a number of times. She would make some money, go back to school. After she ran out of money, she'd go make some more money, then go back to school, which is really dedication. This is an educated woman. She said, no, I don't vote. I said, why don't you vote? She says, because I'm at the bottom of the heap. And I vote for an official who in turn votes for another official and up like 10 levels. And I have nothing to do with the Politburo. I have nothing to do with the chairman. I just vote for this local guide. It doesn't mean anything. And neither me nor any of my friends vote. And that's a question of trust that you vote will have an effect. And I'm really curious to see what the turnout is on Tuesday. Because it just as it could go one way, it could go that way, just the same way. Well, her comment, I think it's also important because it's a suggestion that whatever really happens locally that you can vote for doesn't really matter. Because one of the responses to her is to say, yes, at the Politburo, but what about the local council? What about the local mayor? So that's sort of a sad indictment, right? That whatever happens locally has no autonomy and no sovereignty. And it's all based upon some hierarchical. Well, I guess what she was saying is she really cares how the country in general goes. That was more important to her, but she had, you know, was frustrated. But I wanna go back to voting in general. You know, it's like we always talk about, you know, the American democracy and voting here and how important it is. But voting has existed, has it not in various governments in Europe? I don't know about Asia, but... Outside of Europe as well. I mean, voting as far as some governments meeting in some way, right, the tangible affirmation of its power other than putting a sword to somebody's chest, it's existed in many, I mean, in all societies one way or another. Probably what folks are thinking about though, and it's reasonable to think about is the idea of a multi-party ballot, multiple levels and the ability to vote privately. And the ability to vote privately is a relatively, it's often called the Australian ballot. It's really a product of the late 19th century. So that is pretty new, right? In long history of voting, the idea that you have a right protected by the state to go in, vote as you would like, and not only vote as you would like, but not be targeted, right? Because somebody knows how you vote. Those I think we could all, I think we all or at least most people would agree would be essential. So... So this happened in the classical times? So there were votes, sure, there were lots. Dr. Schwartz could tell you about Rome and there were lots about the Senate, et cetera. But the idea of the people voting, that's a modern concept as well. So when you voted in Rome, you generally voted as a senator, for example. And you got to be a senator for wealth and other reasons. But the idea, so I think we need to think about the process of voting, right? Looking at a ballot, seeing lots of different candidates, multiple parties and being able to be informed if you want to be and be able to vote privately. Those are kind of sacred principles. Those really are modern, if in particularly we add the idea that everybody who is a citizen can vote and citizenship is not restricted by gender or race. What has usually been restricted by in world history is property. So according to democracy, right? The poorest person in the land should not only be able to vote, but should be able to sit in office. And that was an idea born really of 17th century England among a group called the levelers. Just like women's suffrage, I'm sure some of our audience, it's one thing for women to vote, very, very importantly. But if women can vote, but there are no women on the ballot, right? You're restricting. And that was a big thing with the working class in Europe. I get to vote, but you know what? I also get to put a worker or union rep on the ballot. So we're talking about, right, is transparency. We're talking about depth. We're talking about breadth. And we're talking about privacy. And those are all in one way or another under attack now. I think you mentioned more, you inferred the whole thing about that you should have good behavior in your life. And if you were a convicted felon, for example, in Florida, you were not permitted to vote. And that is, I guess, some controversy now you have to pay some amount of money. Right. To stay in Florida. Right. I think if you ask the average American, I'm sorry if we presumptuous here, because neither of you are the average, but I think if you ask the average person, they would say probably if you're convicted of a crime, you should have your vote withheld for a certain amount of time. I think most Americans would say that. The difficulty is, right, if you commit a crime, should that be a lifetime ban from voting? That seems, I mean, to me, that seems a bit extreme. As part of a punishment, sort of a community service. It's almost like a community disservice. But some bloke in jail for 40 years, never being able to vote, we're clearly, right? Clearly how he is living in that prison is a consequence of how other people are voting, right? They're determining budgets, they're determining how it's run. So I guess the real question is, if you commit a crime, are you no longer a citizen? And that's as old as, you know, young kid poor in the scapegoats, sending the vote into the desert because of community crimes and which individual is responsible. That's kind of a political death, life death sentence, right? There's one fair approach would be if he's paid his debt to society, he should be able to re-enter society with clean slate. The other thing, and you mentioned it earlier, is I have a recollection that early on in the American experience, you couldn't vote unless you had some kind of wealth, land, money, something. And if you were just an ordinary worker or I don't wanna say slave, but you know, just an ordinary person, you couldn't vote, you didn't qualify. So was there anything like that? I would have to talk more deeply with that. Marcus Daniel was a story of that period. When Europeans visited, they were usually surprised at the type of people who voted, but that type, as you say, probably had some kind of property. So perhaps if folks don't think about a wealth, the way we might think about it, but think about property. So property could include renting something. Property could include a slate, right? If you were white and had a slate. So I think it's a fair conclusion that there always has been this division, right? And that is a real problem for the US and they don't mean to pick on the US. It's not a problem for European societies that have always argued explicitly, you need a stake in society to vote. And that stake in society has almost always been property. So they don't even begin with the proposition that everybody has the right to vote. The difficulty with the US is it begins with this proposition and then chips away at it rather than not having the proposition and adding to it. And that's a problem. That is legally and intellectually a problem. If all men are created equal, how are you gonna decide that some of them, Native Americans and slaves early on, the very poorest, the no property, why are you then saying, okay, they're created equal, but they cannot vote? And I don't mean that in a trite way. It's a very fundamental flaw. Well, you know, it was Animal Farm, wasn't it? All men are created equal, except some men are more equal than others. Right. And then reasons had to come about for nobody, I mean, nobody in a certain group to ever be. And that's the most poisonous, venal element and certainly that's part of racism, right? The people are the way they are and they will never change. And you could link that with their rights to vote, just like with women. There were biological arguments against women voting, right? That all women had certain human biological tendencies and structures that could prevent them from ever being rational voters. So no matter how educated the woman was, she was still biologically women. I mean, that's kind of the evil flowing that you find not a temporary reason, but a permanent reason to exclude. Well, we've gotten past that, right? Temporary is bad enough, don't get me wrong. Temporary is bad enough. But once you institutionalize it as something permanently wrong, like you committed a crime, that's permanent, you never get to vote again. That's the kind of, and that should be counter to America's faith in the possibility to re-identify yourself, to resurrect yourself, right? To always get a second chance. Second chance. You know, that's built into every American sports movie, right? Like the coach who's drunk and hits a player, then goes and finds salvation with a new team. You know, it's the ratio Alger is always in. You know, story, yeah. Yeah. It sounds like the U.S. has opened more doors. It has a lot more people to vote. You know, after the Civil War, for example, and women in the early 20th century. In general, we have become more liberal in terms of race and the categories of people that were excluded. And that's a good thing. If you drew a line, it would be up in the right to vote. Up. On the other hand, lately, it seems to be down in the right to vote, which is a pretty serious problem. And I guess I'm interested in knowing why it's going down now. Why people are so concerned about excluding groups of people from voting. You know, what one thing that enters into it is the wide broad conclusion that they don't know enough to be responsible citizens. They don't know enough to cast a ballot. We can't trust them to be part of the electorate. Therefore, we're going to, I'm not saying this is rational. We're going to exclude them. And so you have also exclusions and sometimes completely dishonest wholesale exclusions. This seems to be inconsistent with everything we know from the constitution and the history of the country. How do they justify that? Several ways. I see we only have a couple of minutes left. So let me give you some justifications that I've read and some of my analysis to try to figure out what's going on. The first, it's not one, two, three. Just they're all of equal power. This is a power grab. And it is an attempt on the part of one party or set of party officials and followers to limit the voting by those that they think will vote against them. I know that's not sophisticated, but if you start looking at it, it's a lot about, and many people, this is not my idea, many people written about this, that it's just a plain power grab. And it's a power grab because one party recognizes it really has become the party of a particular set of identifiers. White, male, conservative Christianity. Now this doesn't cover everybody, but you say, well, Latin voters might also go with this party and their conservative Christianity trumps their race. So one is power, quite clear. Secondly, and we'll talk about this in two weeks, is this, I think, totally fraudulent argument that the old amendments and the old rules are no longer needed. This I put in the realm of absurdity, but it is part of the attack on voting rights. It's part of the attack. We'll talk about two weeks on affirmative action that look, after 30 years, we have a level playing field. These really are not necessary. And that's one argument. And John Roberts has castrated the Voting Rights Act, particularly the provision that said that certain constituencies have to get their redistricting and their electoral rules approved by the judiciary. And his response was, and we'll talk about affirmative action, and even you saw with the abortion debate, that it's just no longer necessary, which is an absurdity, right? But we have to spend our time trying to figure out absurdities as well, all right? I'm sure he would think I'm absurd. So I don't have a monopoly on that. Thirdly, I think we need to be honest. There's a kind of racism built into this. It's not even party racism necessarily, but the idea that by restricting votes in effect, this is where we might go between the intent and the effect. The effect will be to disproportionately hurt people of color, and probably in this case, more African Americans because the percentage of voting in the African American community has been until recently higher than the Mexican American community or Latin American community. So I mean, you've got power. You've got this idea that somehow it's no longer needed. You've got questions of race. And then, look, you have this attitude that somehow the great liberal society was unconstitution. You saw that, you and I are too old, but look, you saw that with the New Deal, and we all know about FDR's response and eventually the court came along, but the first response for whatever reason, class base, party, et cetera, was what you are doing is unconstitutional. And we really see that the great society which tried to become something. And as you say, the arc of improving our society owes a lot to the legislation of the sixties, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act. It owes a lot to activists. And it owes some part also to members of both parties, right? There were liberal Republicans who went along with the great society, just as well as there were Dixie Crafts, right in the South who went against it. But we didn't have fight this partisan divide over the essentials of the great society. And I think part of this is an attack is people saying, look, the great society is founded upon legislation and court decisions which were either wrongly decided, right? The argument Alito says is that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and they're unconstitutional and no longer needed. That's pretty powerful flame thrower to take on the great society. So I think those are the reasons, among others, that why we're seeing this and part of it is fear, right? I mean, it's a state, it's a party which wants to control the state which fears that if voting is free and open, guess what? They're not gonna get a majority. The other party might get the majority. Which is also really fundamentally racist because you as a white person or non-black are predicting that a black person because they're black will vote Democratic. That in and of itself, right? It's a racist assumption. Now, there may be that most blacks do vote Democrat. That may be, but what you're doing, right? Is saying they're voting that way because they are black. And that's the most fundamental racist category, right? You act the way you act and I can predict the way you're gonna act because you're a member of this racial group, right? It's like Trump taking on, you know, unreal Jews because they won't support him because we all should support Israel, right? It's the same kind of essentialist argument. And it's- Profiling on a demographic basis. But on the demographic basis of race in particular. Yeah. And I would say that and everybody, even when you listen to radio and television and newspapers, nobody's really quite sure what's gonna happen next Tuesday. I was gonna ask you that. Yeah, but even those who know far more, you know, they'll forget in five or five minutes more than I will ever know in my life. If you look, even Steve Grinacchi or whatever, the stat guy on MSNBC, the people really are not sure. I mean, they're sure that Biden's unpopular. Okay, we know that, but is that really gonna affect people voting locally or not? We don't know. We know that some of the limits of voting are gonna go into effect. But for example, will, you know, the minister say, you know what, we're gonna skip the Cospels this Sunday because you know what, we gotta get out and vote. And that's what Jesus will want us to do. So we just, you know, we just don't know. I mean, what we do know is if 50% of the money being put into this campaign went to feeding the poor and housing the homeless, I would like our viewers to end with that thought. There's just an ungodly amount of money. Everybody, I mean, Democrats, Republicans, independents, and that's kind of frightening actually how much money is going into this midterm election. You have to add that campaigns last a lot longer now than any other country in the world. They're basically four years. I mean, once the president is elected, either the president can run for reelection or the party needs a new candidate. And I mean, we hope that power is either transferred or continued, you know, safely and legally. But from over that moment, buying or somebody else's next campaign begins, you saw DeSantis in Florida, he's been running for president for years, right? Well, you know, Trump right after he was inaugurated in 2017, put his papers in or something, announced that he was running in 2020. But that's, you know, and part of that is the Supreme Court's decision, right? That political money is free speech and there shouldn't be any limits on it. And as we talk about every week, that it's relatively inexpensive to advertise through social media, relatively inexpensive, right? You can tweet and meet, and in one way or not, meet millions, which is probably far more efficient than even spending money on a TV app. Well, if you take all that we've been talking about, you know, including the history of the country and that arc that we've been discussing and, you know, the problems that we have right now, including race and some of the mechanical things that have been put into place in various states. I guess the question for me is where is this all going? Can we connect the dots? How does history help inform us on what's going forward? Aside from the condition of democracy in general, which is at great risk, but the notion of elections, you know, may be changing. In other words, for example, people really have a bad time this coming Tuesday. If it doesn't work out, you know, with a sense of trust and fairness and free and fair elections, they may be permanently, talk about permanent, they may be permanently disabused of voting. They may give up on voting, and thus by, you know, by inference, give up on the country. So I mean, yes, voting is the centerpiece of democracy. It's not everything. Checks and balances have to be there. But if the government fails to earn their trust, if the government withdraws rights they thought they had, that affects the institution of elections pretty seriously. Oh, absolutely. And this is where I think that, I mean, when you look at the constitution, and we've all had discussions about this, when I look at the constitution, the single most important political institution is the Senate. And it really is gonna require the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate to stand up and confirm the validity of elections. The House has always been around the room. It's always been around the room, okay? And it was intended, right? To your term, you get both angels and devils, and you have the opportunity to reelect them or not. So I don't, even though the House is more representative, okay, I think everybody, even the founding of others and fathers recognize, it was always gonna be a bit of a circus. But if you look at the power of the Senate constitutionally, including confirming Supreme Court justices, that's really where the power is. And I'm looking at the Senate, and we have deniers in the Senate. Johnson, Corrin in Texas. We're losing Ben Sasse, who has some difficulties, but has told people like Cruz to shut up. I think that's where our attention should be. What happens in the Senate? Who gets elected, right? Deniers get reelected. And if they're not reelected and the Senate is reconstituted, will that Senate, both whoever the majority leader is, it looks like it'll be McConnell, right? It looks like the Republicans will probably take the Senate. Then McConnell really has the public forum as the majority leader of the Senate to say that these elections were fair and free. And even if Republicans win, if the Republicans win fair and free, then the Democrats also, right? They got that. So I guess it's not very profound, but that's where my radar is. I think we're gonna see more violence, yes. But I almost think that unfortunately, that's kind of baked into the political system right now. And again, as we've talked about, that's gonna require local law enforcement and the military not to participate. Like this cop who is conversing with one of the insurgents, an on-duty cop who is tweeting and texting with one of the guys out to kill Pelosi. I mean, that's rotting a state from within. That can't, I mean, you also have to have trust. The reasons the African-American community doesn't trust the police, the reasons for that. But this whole oath keeper thing is another reason for people who have never known somebody to be shot by a cop to really begin to question. And they could be shot by a cop. And that's a problem beyond the fund or from the police. You know, even Adam Smith, right? He said that society needs police and it needs a judicial system. Sometimes we're often to protect the poor who are attacked by people all the time. But if you don't, you know, if you don't trust the guy in the car and he may in fact be conversing with somebody in the Capitol or he may be out on the weekends training to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Oh, sir, that's one of the way that fascism has arisen in societies, paramilitary groups, veterans groups. And this is not to say all of them, of course, because the average veteran and the average policeman or woman doesn't participate. But disproportionately, right? When we read about these attacks, disproportionately there are a number of sheriffs and veterans in active duty people. So it's not to besmirch. And the military is trying to address it but Congress has said they shouldn't spend money investigating extremism in the military, which is a rather shocking conclusion. It is shocking. And that's the way the government works these days. And I'm sure you've seen Rachel Maddow's or listened to Rachel Maddow's ultra where she covers it. I haven't had a chance, but you mentioned it, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to cover one other thing before we go. And that is technology, you know. There have been those over the years that have advocated for voting, you know, electronically on your computer. And we have a certain amount of technology involved in voting now. And of course we have mail voting and even voting in person, it's got a layer of technology on it. Hence the Dominion litigation and all that. But in the future, it seems to me that, well, we have established that technology is okay. It's not unconstitutional or at least nobody has said it is. And I think, you know, as technology improves and security and safety and efficacy in general, using, you know, I don't know, artificial intelligence, what have you, over the years, it'll be better and better and more reliable even. And easier for people. And easier for people. Easier, right? For most people. That's the point. Yeah, not everybody has access. Well, there's always the wealth gap. You know, the wealth gap is an important thing here. Absolutely. And if you don't have a laptop or you don't have an iPhone, so I agree with you. As long as we also keep the options for those who don't have, we're not technologically able to. So if we have this technology, and if every person, let's assume there is no computer gap, digital gap here for a moment, that we can close that gap somehow, then, you know, I could vote easily. I don't have to necessarily vote for a candidate or for a representative to represent me. I can vote on the issues. You know, it's like when you vote on the, right now in Hawaii, vote on all these provisions of the city charter amendments, you know? And I suggest to you, Peter, that that may be the future. That, you know, you want to have a national ban on abortion or a national permission on abortion, you vote for it. Whole country votes for it. 330 million, I haven't made people are quote, qualified to vote. They all vote with the machines. And it's, you know, reasonably reliable and there's no fraud or fraud is excluded somehow. And they make that decision as a moral legal matter. Isn't that the future of all this? We don't need an electoral college. We don't need representatives who are as dumb as a post. We don't, you know, we need to really find out what the people want. And there is a way to do that now with this technology. Quicker, faster, cheaper, all that. Why isn't, is that coming and why isn't it here? Well, that's a radical democratic idea, which doesn't mean I applaud or thumbs down. We can talk privately. It's a very noble idea. If there are two parts to your question. One is the increasing role of technology. Okay, I think that will be the future. You're seeing a pushback like you've always seen. The second question is what decisions should be made democratically? And that really gets the heart of another conversation, right? The democracy, being a democracy versus being a republic. And I think we should talk about that. And certainly the founding parents were highly suspicious of democracy, less suspicious of a republic. So let's chat about, let's chat about that. Get somebody in poli sci because that's the referendum recall initiative drive, right? And the charter is part of that, which is democracy, as long as everybody has a chance to participate. So let me take a 50 second timeout on that one to talk about it. I think it's a great thing to talk about. How democratic do we really want the United States to be? And that gets back to, it's more than just voting. It's voting not just for representatives, but voting for policies. That's an intriguing idea, like during the Vietnam War, right? If Americans had a chance to vote about whether or not we could should continue dying and killing people and rice paddies. It's fascinating. I think we should talk about it, just a broad discussion with democratic theorists and think about both it philosophically and practically, you know, who then is responsible for implementing and how do those people get to the decision of being the managers? So- And is the public, is the electorate up to it? You don't remember the electorate is vulnerable to- Right, but if you- Infusion and distraction. I know, but if you take democracy, if you believe in democracy, then you have to trust people to vote and accept the way that they vote. That's, I mean, that's a great leap off the mountain. You know, it's what Keats would have called negative capability. It's the ability to jump off a mountain without reaching back. That's what you're doing. You're jumping, you're saying, let people vote and however they decide. And that, you know, we do see that locally, as you say with the charter. Okay, we haven't really thought about that nationally. It's an interesting proposition. And whether or not, in fact, it would hold the nation together or do the opposite. I mean, you could say the election of Lincoln, right? Led to a strong union, but half the country left. So that would be interesting to talk about, very, very interesting. We'll get somebody- Yeah, let's get somebody in political philosophy to talk about it. I mean, I can talk about the mechanics, but let's get somebody well-versed in democratic theory. Okay. Let's talk about it. And soon we're gonna have affirmative action in the next discussion. And a lot of these issues, I think, will be brought up again with a slightly different twist, talking more about the policy of affirmative action rather than elections. But I think you'll see a lot of connections beyond just, you know, are you gonna vote for somebody who supports your position on abortion? That's the obvious. But there are other background issues which are, I think, increasingly important in a broader sense about this current discussion. And if people have the chance, I would encourage them to listen to, it was a six, it was a five to six hour review, which is very long, right, for the Supreme Court to be on one issue, but it was very revealing. So if people have a chance, at least to read a summary, et cetera, particularly Clarence Thomas and social justice Katanti Brown. Very interesting, and then Roberts as well. But I'm happy to talk about it. I'll introduce it for folks who might not have had a chance to listen or read, and I'll introduce as many of the views as I can on this question. All right, next time. Next time on History is here to help. I'm with Peter Haffenberg. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Aloha. kawaii.com. Mahalo.