 I think we can get going. So I'm Ann-Marie Slaughter, the president and CEO of New America, and I'm delighted to be hosting this event and to be welcoming all of you as a former law professor. The Brandeis Laboratories of Democracy, quote, was one we pulled out on a regular basis for various briefs or articles. And it is a lovely image. It is not an easy image to make a reality, in the sense there are 50 states, and they range widely in their data and their responsiveness to wanting that data. And so what today is about is taking that rhetoric and the framework of progressive federalism. And Lennyman Donsar, our board chair, is here. He's been doing a lot of writing on progressive federalism with Laura Tyson. And the whole idea of federalism as laboratories of democracy, taking that rhetoric and making it a reality around fixing our democracy. So my tweet for today is, you want to fix our democracy? Start here, because it needs to be done state by state, and it needs to be done on the basis of what's actually happening, what's actually working, what's not working, because that's part of collecting data. So we've had a number of people working very hard on putting together this database, turning those streams of data into something that you can see and use. And our job going forward is going to be working with states to make sure that people are using it, and that we're cross-fertilizing it, and that we are renewing our democracy, which is I emailed recently with Larry Lessig, known to many of you, as somebody who's been very actively engaged in working on political reform. And he sent me back a little note that said, FD first. And because we were writing about something that needed to change, and I wrote back to him, and I said, what's FD first? And he said, fix democracy first. So that is where we are. And welcome to all of you. I'm going to turn it over to Mark Schmitt, who will introduce our panel. But it's a day that represents a lot of work and a lot of promise. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ann Marie. I appreciate that. I'm Mark Schmitt around the political reform program here at New America. And what we're going to be talking about today is a project that's a part of a much larger initiative, which we'll talk more about, to really connect people who are doing FD, as it were, primarily from the state and local level, and do that across a range of issues, not just campaign finance reform, not just redistricting, but a whole range of issues. So we're going to do two things today, which is we're going to unveil and talk about this web resource that we've developed. And we're also going to talk more broadly about the concept of federalism as a path forward. And we're releasing a paper by Lenny Madoza and Laura Tyson on that topic at the same time. So we're going to touch on a couple of different areas. I'll do quick biointroductions of people as we get in a little bit. I won't do my own, but I will start with a bit of a personal story of how I feel I got here. And it goes back two decades. I was working on Capitol Hill for former Senator Bill Bradley from New Jersey. And I was working on it. I worked on a very small staff. So I had a million issues that I worked on, welfare reform and urban policy and labor and a bunch of other things. I said, actually what I really want to get into is really fundamental issues about democracy. And the senator was really interested in doing something about campaign finance issues at the time, very different climate. People talked about things like soft money back then. Now we talk about dark money. So it was a different era. And we had a kind of tried and true method for getting there, find a big idea, and try to build on it. Not very different from how we approach issues and challenges at New America. And so I said, I really want to do that. Nobody was really doing it. I was like, I really want to take up this issue. I really want to find something significant that can be a marker for getting involved in this issue. And I dug into it. And the whole issue was it was like World War I. It was like a total stalemate, skirmishes over an acre of territory. Any time you got into a conversation with somebody, you'd hear about something that happened in the Carter administration where somebody betrayed somebody and everything went south. It would make you run away. And as I dug into it, I realized, actually, you don't want anything to do with this Washington fight. But there's really interesting things starting to happen in the states. And this was 1996. You had Maine doing people organizing in Maine around the Clean Elections Initiative. The first of those, second one came in Arizona a couple years later. Massachusetts actually did an initiative like that, although it was basically destroyed by the legislature. You started to have activity in states. So it was like, OK, instead of our big federal thing, let's get some of these people from states into DC and make sure that people know about this and know that this activity is going on. And that was a great way to start. And that's kind of where my journey here started. And I feel like I'm still at the point of saying sometimes to people, there's this incredible stuff happening in states. And you really ought to know about it. A couple years ago, I testified at the Federal Election Commission. And I talked about some of the interesting things that states and local governments were doing with small donor democracy and whatever. And I remember one of the commissioners said, you know, what I'm hearing today is just the most unfamiliar and bizarre thing I've ever, I've never heard about any of this. And, you know, so I feel like we constantly have to do that. And I think, you know, as I got into it and for a while, I worked at a foundation that was supporting a lot of this work. There was kind of a theory of change at that time that went kind of like this. First, you can just ignore right off the legislatures. Politicians aren't going to fix democracy, do everything by, you know, use ballot initiatives where you can, and win. And then you'll get momentum, we'll build momentum, we'll build momentum, and eventually that will lead to change at the federal level. And that was a theory. And then when those initiatives didn't some were undermined by legislatures, as I mentioned, and they didn't actually lead up to it. There wasn't quite the same level of momentum. They didn't lead to natural change. There was a kind of disappointment about that and a kind of lack of investment in some of these projects and a bit of a setback. But I think the problem with that was seeing states largely in those instrumental terms as a way of getting to a DC thing. Instead of seeing states as, you know, an end in themselves. States are where people live their lives. Democracy starts at the local and state level. It's where people begin their political careers and pick up the habits and assumptions and ethics of their future. And it's where the issues that voters really most directly care about are decided, education, crime, housing, and so forth. So we, it was really valuable to, in rethinking this, in this era, I think we really need to begin to think about states as really ends in themselves. They are 50, 51, add territories, you can go further. Real democratic entities in themselves that have their own problems and need fixing. And the other thing about that earlier wave is it really didn't take the idea of experimentation very seriously. Most advocates thought they had a model of what they thought the right answer would be and they were gonna pitch that everywhere they could and you know, not enough recognition that each of these procedural changes will play out differently in a different political culture or climate. States are different and you're not actually letting people draw or build solutions for themselves where they live. And so I hope in this new era where we're beginning to see tremendous experimentation across a range of democracy and non-democracy related issues, we really should take this seriously. One of the interesting things as we were working on this project and thinking about the best name for it, my colleague Lee Drutman suggested Laboratories of Democracy and we all liked that idea immediately and I asked Elena Soros who's done a lot of the work on this to just poke around the web a little bit and find out are there other organizations using this term or are there other sites using this term and there were surprisingly few and one thing she came back with that was really interesting was really a paper from a few years ago by Michael Grava who's a conservative legal scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and his paper complained that when people used that Brandeis quote which is from a case called State Ice where Oklahoma wanted to license ice companies and Brandeis thought they should be able to but Grava basically said you know people don't mean Laboratories of Democracy when they say this, they mean bigger government, they wanna see it ratcheted up, if it was experiments with restricting labor unions Brandeis wouldn't have been into it so people don't really take that idea seriously and it's actually really, it's an interesting paper an interesting point, I think the historical question is for historians but I think for us I think we wanna say, we do wanna take that concept seriously we think it's extremely important that we mean it that we know that there are things that we're gonna try that might fail there are things that are gonna try that succeed beyond anyone's imagination and you could see a lot of those things they're little things that you wouldn't think would make such a big difference like automatic voter registration that sometimes make a huge difference so you know we want successful initiatives to be improved and refined and we want people to be unafraid to acknowledge that promising ideas have shortcomings and I think that's very often we're in an advocacy mode and you don't wanna hear it that there's some unintended consequence or some way in which a reform might leave people out but it's really important to be as open-minded as possible about what those things are so some of what we're gonna try to do with this website and we'll show you is make sure that we're coupling information about what's going on with as much analysis as possible from people like the Campaign Finance Institute Michael Malvin is here and academics and journalists about what works and what doesn't and that's partly so that when people are looking for what can I do in my state that might improve democracy there's a resource but even as people are looking at initiatives they're improving and one thing that I've observed over these decades that I've been on the margins of these reforms is that the characteristic of the most successful reforms is that they're actually always trying to improve themselves so I've always been very enthusiastic about New York City's Campaign Finance System which provides a six to one match for small donors allows a lot of people to run who wouldn't otherwise be able to run small donors play a much bigger role. Really I think what's the secret sauce to that is that they have by law a review after every election cycle they have hearings there's funding for that and they make changes all the time to make that law better and that's I think what we can hopefully show and recognize so what you're gonna see here today is not just maps it's a kind of baseline for analysis like when you take those medical exams where the doctor just says we just need a baseline we just need to figure out where you are so that we can begin to see the trajectory of changes so a lot of what you'll see here is that kind of baseline so I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna, we're gonna walk you through the site and Cheyenne Polamedio who's the deputy director of the program will start that and I'll pick that up and then we will turn it over to Lenny Mendoza who's the chair of New America's board co-chair of California Forward which is where this project began and we're deeply indebted to their getting this project going and Lenny's a senior partner emeritus from the Washington DC and San Francisco offices of McKinsey and company where he founded McKinsey's state and local public sector practice and Lenny is a indefatigable connector of all things related to reform and improving the way this country's governed and I have tremendous admiration for it so Lenny will talk about the paper that he and Laura Tyson have written about federalism and then we're gonna do a little, we're gonna do a discussion of that and the discussion will include Lenny, Karen Hobart Flynn who is the president of Common Cause and has been on the staff and leadership positions in Common Cause for 25 years, Common Cause is the quintessential government reform organization going back to the 1970s and one of the few that has a huge network of active state chapters and has always worked in the states and Karen's been senior vice president for programs and strategy at Common Cause and became president a couple years ago and we'll also be joined by Larry Stafford who is the executive director of Progressive Maryland. Larry began his career in public service at 17 with the organization Acorn, fighting against closure of low income apartment complexes in Prince George's County. He's worked on a lot of electoral and issue based campaigns in Maryland and around the country. In 2015 he became executive director of Progressive Maryland which is an organization I've been familiar with for a long time and one of the reasons we wanted to invite Larry is because there's a lot going on in Maryland, there's a lot of activity around campaign reform, there's a lot of activity around voter registration and other means of improving democracy. It's just a very rich state and a lot of people who are really on the national stage talking about these issues whether it's Donna Edwards or Congressman Jamie Raskin or Congressman John Sarbanes, I've been real leaders out of this come out of Maryland. So we're not ranking states here, some people sometimes do rank states. If we were, we'd look highly on Maryland which is not to say that there are tremendous problems there. And after we do that we'll have a bit of a Q and A what I'd like to do is usually those of you who've come to events here know I'm very tough about questions must be questions. We're gonna have an exception here which is like if you're here with an organization that's working in the states on democracy issues please take a couple minutes to tell us what you're doing, whether you have a question or not. But that's a limited exception to our harsh rule. And then wrapping things up, Chris Gates who is somebody I've known for years and years as the president of the National Civic League, the Sunlight Foundation, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement and really the mastermind of this project through its California forward phase and going forward. Chris will talk about kind of the other set of activities that the groups involved in this project which include Common Clause and other organizations will be doing going forward. So that's our plan of action and let's look at this beautiful website which Cheyenne and Elena have devoted hundreds of hours to and as well as our communication staff and we're happy to show it off. Director of our political reform program here in New America and before we run through the website I just wanted to say a few thank yous. The first one is Elena Soros who works with us in the program without her we couldn't have done this. She, you know we were calling states and trying to get legislation and trying to get contribution limits for campaign finance and we literally could not have done this without her. So thank you Elena. The second person I wanna thank is Kirk Jackson who coded all the visuals. So this website only looks as beautiful as it does thanks to him who worked with us and really sat down with us to think about how to how do we show this in a way that's accessible in a way that if you're not an expert on political reform issues you can still learn something and try to figure out what's going on in my state and what can I learn about it. And lastly Katherine Wilson with events and Laura Pratt and Combs who really helped us pull all of this together you know feeding you guys and making all of this happen. So thank you. Now I'll go ahead and talk to you about the database. So Elena if you could scroll up and Elena is in the studio so I'm not just talking to somebody who's in the ether. Elena, so we have divided the database in a few sections. So the first one is registration and voting, electoral systems and campaign finance. And I'll be going through parts one and two and just show you some of the cool features of the database. But we also have some really other cool stuff. We have the state profiles which I'll run through later on and to add to what Mark said we have in appendix one the analysis of reform proposals which was our sort of attempt to provide information for people who wanted to say okay well I see that California has a top two primary but I don't know how I feel about it. Is it a good system? Is it a bad system? So you can go there, click on it and then you can see somebody who will say yeah this is the best idea ever and somebody will say well there are some shortcomings to it. So you can make your own judgment as to you know is this a good reform or is this a bad reform? Elena so let's go to the first one on registration and voting systems. So parts one and two you know were much easier for us to put together thanks to the amazing work that the folks at Fair Vote and Common Cause and the Brennan Center for Justice do and you know cataloging all of this information making it really accessible and much easier for us to sort of you know really gather it and put it in the database. So for the first one Elena could you scroll up a little bit more? Elena? So one of the things that you can do with our map you can play around with it so let's say if you want to see registration online registration so you know green states are the states where you have online registration red states are the states where you don't have it but you can also just click on yes or no just to see which states have it and then you can click on no and then unclick yes just to see which states don't have it. So that's a really cool feature we can for voting you can can you click on voting Elena please? Thank you. So we can see early voting and same thing and no excuse absentee voting and one of the things that we wanted to point out is that a lot of this doesn't necessarily follow a you know blue state red state pattern so it's worth the time to like play around with it if you think that you know oh ex state is really backwards they're not doing anything you know you might be wrong so you know take the time to check it if we keep scrolling down I think we have one more section so another way that we decided to show the data is with the dots which are the states so one of the cool things is you can see you know let's see California has early voting right one of the cool things that you can do is you can click on California and it takes you to the profile of the state. So here you have a snapshot of all things related to California so registration voting electoral systems and campaign finance so if you want to you know if you're from California like our friend Lenny or you know Texas like Elena you can just click on your state profile and get you know a pretty good sense of where things are in relation to those three sections and then we have a drop down menu and you can click on all the other states. I'm not gonna take too much more of your time so we're gonna move on to section two which is on electoral systems and my favorite part about this one is on ranked choice voting and Fairvote does you know amazing work cataloging this and tracking it and saying you know these are localities that are waiting for implementation these are places that have it but haven't implemented it yet same thing here so we have cities are using RCV locally awaiting implementation military and overseas which was which is something that yeah people don't necessarily think about yeah and parties so let's do cities using RCV and you know we have Maine which actually was this close to having it as being the first state using RCV but they're still waiting they might be able to make it happen but they adopted it in 2016 so you can hover over the states and you get like a little snapshot of information sort of when he was implemented where is it based and all of that so that's our electoral systems page and then if we scroll back up Elena we have primaries as well so that's another really cool feature you know and like I said the top two primary you can hover over California and you can see that and then again you can click on California see the profile and if you're not sure if top two primary is the way to go you can always you know go to our analysis section let's go there really really quick Elena just so we can show folks yeah what yeah well you have to hover over the state and then the list of the cities will come up yes so Elena can we go back to the electoral systems sorry about that so let's go yeah so for example if you click if you hover over California and you know this map is still in progress this is something that you know we can do a million things with it you can we can add you know however many layers of information you know ideally next steps would be to have dots for the cities but if you hover over California you will see that Oakland San Francisco San Leandro and Berkeley use our CV to elect all city officials so sorry about that so yeah so this these are sections one and two and like I said these were much easier for us to together thanks to the amazing work that you know our partner organizations do the section that mark is going to cover which is on campaign finance was much much much harder I can't emphasize enough the amount of hours that we spent on this but without further ado I'm gonna let mark come up here thank you guys so much thank you very much Cheyenne and thank you for all your work and leadership on this project I just want to talk about a couple things Elena if you can jump to the campaign finance section again here we we if you scroll down a little bit so we actually get to get to let's start here you know as as you know under really since the Buckley Vallejo decision in 1974 the primary tool for campaign finance has been limits on contributions because limits on total spending in campaigns have not been allowed so you see a tremendous variation in the rules on contribution limits and on contribution limits you'll see at the top very different different categories individuals political action committees corporations in terms of what they can contribute to campaigns there's a whole other world of course as we know of of independent spending and dark money spending some of which some of which we can be found in some of which can't but this is primarily involves rules governing contributions to campaigns and you see you know variations variations that range from pretty pretty modest limits a thousand dollars or less if you hover you'll see the actual number I don't know Elena you'll know this better than I watch the you know where you sort of where you have the lowest limits Kansas that's a union you go back to the individual donor category and then you know pick a state that has relatively low limits some of them are some of them get pretty low and then a lot of them the darkest states are are unlimited donation so again tremendous variation tremendous you know here Texas almost almost everything's unlimited and but again it doesn't follow any real it doesn't follow any red blue pattern and some of these are some of these are laws that states have adopted relatively recently and some of them have a have a longer history one of the things that the campaign finance institute will have some data like this and what's great about it is they have some of the historical depth of how these laws came to be which to me is really fascinating I mean there's really a lot of there's a lot of 1970s laws and then their 1990s laws and some of the 1970s laws are rusty and people in a sense don't want to fix them you know you realize I was writing in the subway the other day with a friend who's a lawyer who does compliance for corporations and how they have to adhere to pay-to-play rules and so forth in various states which are limitations on specific limitations on firms that do business with the state typically financial firms and I started talking about this project and he started reeling off about the difficulty of you know how many people in his firm and how hard it is for them to figure out what the rules are what they have to comply with in various states so sometimes complexity is accidental and sometimes complexity is very intentional why don't we scroll down a little bit just to show a little more of what's here Elena it's like if you did like Siri or whatever you actually have to say it even though there is an actual person this is basically disclosure requirements disclosure has kind of been the other tool in addition to contribution limits that can be used to to manage the role of money in politics and as you see those rules vary greatly and then of course everything that is disclosed can be found together at the National Institute of Money in State Politics which is followthemoney.org another you know an organization that's also part of this larger enterprise and then let's go down because I want to keep things moving let's you see different kinds of things that are required to be disclosed again that's on the map but let's jump to the public financing piece of this Elena because this is really I think you know in a post-citizens united world where a lot of things are operating outside of that outside of that limited system really candidates still need money to be heard that get their message across and there's really only you know you're not going to you're not going to use limits to to make to you know entirely to end corruption but public financing remains one of the best solutions for doing a couple different things one is make it easier for people to run and be heard but also encouraging people to participate in the system and usually in a public financing system almost always people agree to spending limits in addition to as a condition of receiving public financing now you know I said at the beginning that we had you know there's public finance full public financing in Maine was kind of where I my journey here got started and that the momentum that you know that it didn't move as quickly as people hoped at that time and you see a surprising number of states here that have something and that's a couple that there's a couple different characteristics here that you see when you go into this in depth one is just as we did with our rank choice voting we did decide to include some states on this map where the public financing is in cities not in the state of the whole so New York state you know has a lot of problems at the state level and again campaign finances to research has been exerting on that but the public financing in New York is really fantastic so we have that on the map the other things that you that you'll see sometimes are states where the public financing is for a pretty limited set of offices like New Mexico I believe it's for the public utility commission or judicial as well and that's an unusual and then they have some some municipal public financing but they don't have it statewide although sometimes those those commissions are super powerful that's some of what you're seeing there and then you're also seeing some places where you have kind of much older systems that really aren't used very much so there's a mix there in terms of what you can see in public financing but I think the overall picture there is there's a lot of hope there's a lot of promise there's a lot of states that are really embracing this idea and I think there's a tendency to say nobody's going to go for that it's welfare for politicians that there's no way that's any kind of solution the reality is I think if you look at a map like this is that there you know one of these things is these systems do survive Arizona for example which enacted it's law in 1998 there's a lot of grumbling about it and there are it's had a lot of it hasn't made the state a perfect democracy and there's been waves of fairly vicious anti-immigration politics but the basic rules of the system have been broadly supported they're politically sustainable it's often easy to kill these things and a couple have been killed like in Massachusetts but at the same time where they take hold people get used to them and I think one of the valuable things is that we'll have not to talk not to fall into that trap of talking about states instrumentally but we will have you know elected officials who've come up through these systems who'll have people who started their careers on the New York City Council moving up to the state representative level potentially moving to Washington you'll have people there's going to be significant change in Arizona you'll have people who've come up through this system who are used to it who can say to their colleagues you know what there is an alternative to sitting in that room for six hours every day and calling up rich people there is an alternative and it can work and so I think we're gonna we're gonna see that and I think it's really exciting to be able to you know just show in one place where this progress occurs and then Elena I just want to show one other thing because I didn't even know this was happening until yesterday which is Elena that the page that Cheyenne created that has all the resources you created that has resources from all the states like the guidebook we should bring Elena out so we have sources for everything and often those will have deeper you know what I'm thinking of Elena is the one page that has the you know we don't have to see it take my word for it there is a page here where you can go to basically we've pulled together all the here it is the guides for candidates on how to operate any of how to operate within any of these systems one of the things that we have a little you know it's like when you get an email from a lawyer and it says nothing in this email should be construed as legal advice that's a general disclaimer on this site as well like if you want to run for state legislature in Oklahoma don't rely entirely on the information here but we do have access to the information that you would need if you were to do that so that's I think the state of the database we will be continually refining it I think we would like to you know show more of an indication of where reforms are municipal or not we will build in more of a means to make sure that people can see where initiatives are coming up people are organizing things are starting to happen but again in terms of the baseline to use that word again this is a really good snapshot of the state of American democracy where people live in American democracy so with that I'd like to you know we'll have time for questions and I hope we have a lot of them but I want to turn it over to Lenny really talk more broadly about federalism and its promise and limitations then we'll have a broader discussion on that so thank you Mark and thank you in particular to your team Cheyenne, Elena and everyone for as you can tell this is an enormous amount of work to get this information to be in a place where it's clean clear accessible and useful to those of us who are in the field trying to figure out what's actually going on and what might you do with it and so I just want to once again express my appreciation both as the the chair of New America and as the co-chair of California Forward that tried to get this up and running my appreciation for Mark and his team this is an extraordinarily rich database and a source of information and ongoing understanding for the field that's invaluable so thank you again very much Mark I would like to very quickly describe a little bit of the context about why I think this endeavor is so important and I want to place it a little bit more of a a broader historical context about how reform has happened in the country and the today as Mark said we released a paper that's on the website called the new era of progressive federalism it's written by my friend and colleague Laura Tyson who could not be here today but is deeply engaged in this who was in the head of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Clinton is now at the Haas School of Berkeley as well as substantial support from former New York Times writer Ed Andrews have written a lot of pieces over the last couple of years on the the topic that we call progressive federalism and we did not make up this term it's something that has been in the literature for a while in particular there's some really interesting writing on progressive federalism from a legal standpoint by the the head of Yale Law School Heather Gherkin who is extensively talking about the legal precedent for it it's also been something that has been written a lot about in the Journal of Democracy from Andre Cherney and others but we decided to explore the topic about what is the possibility that we can create an era of change by leveraging these laboratories of democracy and if you look that just even the brief overview that Mark and Cheyenne did of the database that they showed you see that there is in fact an enormous amount of experimentation it is a set of laboratories that are occurring across this country there is wide degrees of difference about what's going on but they are in fact doing what our representative democracy was designed to do to create a platform for change and experimentation and learn what works and what we argue is that that is actually the mechanism by which democracy renews itself and that we're in an era now of the potential for that to be something that isn't just a nice academic exercise it's happening episodically in places around the country that aren't relevant but is in fact how change happens at a substantial scale in the United States. So we start with a few sentences about some circumstances and I'm going to read this because it leads into our paper. Markets are soaring and wealth is growing most of the gains flow to the people at the top. Technology is transforming daily life but is also fostering deep anxiety about the loss of jobs and in fact entire occupations. Cities are thriving as magnets for the wealthy and the ambitious but rural Americans often feel left behind and resentful. Hostility towards immigrants have become intense and sometimes violent. Disillusion with government is high and many citizens are convinced that wealthy interests are hijacking democracy itself. Amid all the dysfunction however new plutocrats have stepped up as philanthropists to underwrite social reform. Does that sound familiar? Well it was actually taken out of the language of what was described over a century ago when the progressive era started at the end of the 20th century the beginning of the 20th century. So this is not like these things have ever happened before have never happened before. And we're not obviously saying that history is going to repeat itself but as often attributed to Mark Twain history often rhymes. We think there's some lessons from that that the roots of what change could be is already underway. And we argue that there's this opportunity for a new era of reform called progressive federalism. I should start with by progressive I don't mean the current depiction of how that's word is used in the last election cycle. I'm not trying to argue that we should all be Bernie Sanders. Some of you I'm sure are but that's not progressive. Progressive I mean in the same terminology that was used over a century ago. It doesn't mean left or right Democrat or Republican. It meets progress towards goals that the vast majority of Americans agree with and both parties ascribed to. In fact one of the original American progressive Teddy Roosevelt then in the U.S. Republican Party and later in the U.S. Progressive Party declared that he always believed that wise progressivism and wise conservatism go hand in hand. This is not a political perspective. It's more a question about how do we continue to ensure progress. And what we will argue in this paper is that there is a lot of evidence that these things are in fact happening around the country. And what we need to do is try and connect and accelerate them which is what the beginnings of that this work on the database that Mark showed can do. If you want to get a little bit more about what happened in that era the progressive movement in a very short time achieved some remarkable successes that are still in place today. Among them an independent Federal Reserve to set up monetary policy, the Clayton Antitrust Act to break up monopolies and promote competition, the nation's first income tax, new regulations over modern transportation including interstate commerce commission, food and drug administration for food safety and child labor regulations. Many of those, particularly those on labor conditions began in the states, particularly in New York, was also an important time for education innovation and importantly relevant to the conversation we're having today was really instrumental in reforms and politics that were quite transformational at the time. The 17th Amendment to the Constitution established the direct election of senators. The 19th Amendment established the right of women to vote. Also inspired a whole set of changes that citizens more direct control over their governments and ability to circumvent some of the systems that people felt were dominated by party bosses and special interests including things like the initiative process which and reform processes which were imported from Switzerland but first practice in Oregon. So there wasn't like this never happened before and it was also something that felt like in the long sweep of history it was a very short time period and just something like 20 years these sets of reforms started in different states around the country became learning laboratories that what actually worked and then scaled to much larger things including constitutional amendments to the U.S. Constitution. So we think there is some historical precedent there. Progressivism is important historical antecedent. Federalism is a second part of it which is what we're talking about today in addition. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution says powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. Embedded in our Constitution is basically an escape valve that says we use these laboratories, the states, and below that cities and citizens to be places where experimentation can happen and we learn and also where we have opportunities to scale what's working and importantly as Mark said stop what's not working as opposed to waiting for big grand solutions that only happen within the Beltway there is that opportunity for experimentation and learning that can then scale. So we're in the paper describe a number of arenas outside of political reform where we see that occurring both as offensive progressive federalism as well as resistance political progressive federalism in areas as wide as health care to air quality to education there is enormous experimentation going on where a lot of the activity actually occurs at the state and city level that influences and informs federal policy but as Mark said not just inform federal policy because California if it were an independent country would be the fifth or sixth largest institution in the world. To think of it as just it's an instrument of the federal government is not the way the system actually works. So thinking about these things as opportunities for scaled change that can then replicate is where we're thinking. I have my own views and again to be clear the views in this paper are not those of New America or anyone else other than Laura and me but we do think there is a really interesting opportunity for political reform in particular to catch fire. And one of the things that I'm sure we'll see as Mark's database and the work going forward points out is these are not just little isolated things that are happening and not changing. That map is going to be a very different colorful map with all kinds of different colors in the next few years. And we encourage that but what if you if you want to have laboratories be not just experiments but experiments that have impact they have to connect to each other somehow. So if there's something more than individual isolated outposts hubs can replicate networks connect those so they can scale. And what we want to do with this database and the opportunity to connect reformers more fully around the country is have them learn from different experiments know and learn each other know and learn from each other and then take things that felt like they were in an old era would have taken decades to happen to happen much more quickly. I'm not naive about this. We're not polyannish or ridiculously optimistic that these things can happen. We do believe however that this system was designed for experimentation and change. And we think there's an opportunity with the laboratories of democracy mindset particularly enabled by the kinds of soft infrastructure support that we're describing today creates an opportunity for much more rapid change that's good for democracy good for the United States and something that can regain confidence of those who are doing this work to say you're not just out there and outposts doing something that's irrelevant you're actually part of how change happens. So I am delighted to be here today to talk about this encourage you to read our paper and look forward to talking about it some more as we go forward. So thank you. Now hopefully you remember all the introductions from before. And we'll just assume you do. And I'd kind of like to start with Larry if you don't mind because I think we've been talking in pretty big picture terms. And if you could just give us a little bit of a sense of what gets people excited in Maryland how has your and you've worked outside of Maryland also as you know what's how does this feel on the ground. So everybody. So in Maryland I think what gets people excited to start with that is the opportunity to actually have an impact on the policy discourse that can change their lives and change the lives of people in their community. And it depends on which part of the state and who you talk to because we definitely so our organization Progressive Maryland when we work in Montgomery County in some sense there probably many people in this room from Montgomery County actually too. Look at that. There we go. So like people who can see it from an academic sense in a very real tangible sense in their community like what policy change means and then where I'm from in Prince George's County you have a bit different of a dynamic in which like when we talk about a small dollar matching program we had a community meeting in a part of the county where it was a new concept more so it's not a place in Prince George's where folks are just running around looking for ideas about small dollar matching systems but when it's explained in a way as to this is how you can make your elected officials be more accountable to you to ensure that more people have access and opportunity to be able to run for office and to change the ultimate policy outcomes that's when people get excited and we had I think it was a whole hour or two to really like just dive deep into that where there are pockets in this country and there are pockets in Maryland for sure where people have lost faith and trust in local government and federal government and the institutions of this country and so it's been important for us to have something to provide as a light at the end of the tunnel to say that there is another way of doing things there is another way that we can get to the goal of change in our communities together so people are excited about change more so than the specific the promise the promise that they can be part of I think there are certain people who like love small dollar matching programs in Montgomery County because this is something they've always thought of as like, yeah, we got to make sure that democracy is more vibrant and a theoretical concept perhaps and let's get big money out and an activist kind of concept like there are always those people but when I talk to folks that think a bit differently who wake up in the morning thinking about how are they gonna put bread on their table at the end of the day they wanna know if this works and is this actually going to make people more accountable to them and in certain places there are officials that are controlled by moneyed interests at the local level it's developers or builders or whomever and sometimes their decisions are totally disconnected from like the ground and people might have seen that case after case after case especially if they pay attention to local politics and so they need to know that anything that we're doing is actually going to mean something different in terms of a policy outcome or else it's less meaningful it's just decoration it's just something that makes us feel good perhaps but doesn't get it done and how does it feel when you're talking about these issues in Cumberland or the eastern shore or the other parts of the state that are a little further away from where we are right now yeah so yeah get now in Maryland like Maryland's like a microcosm of the country to a degree because some people think of Maryland as like the DC region or just Baltimore City is like cosmopolitan in some kind of way but Maryland is also Alabama it's rural there are very conservative parts of the state and I had the benefit of having worked for a candidate in 2014 who ran for governor using the public matching system and so we did a fair number of events all over the state and where we found actually our most surprising pockets of support were in places like the eastern shore western Maryland the rural corridors of Maryland were where there were people who were just hungry for something hungry to be engaged and when they found out that this is a candidate who's not accepting PAC money who's not accepting money from corporations and is in fact, you know able to help amplify their small donations because in a lot of senses there's the rural poverty is in many ways similar economically to inner city poverty in terms of like dollar for dollar so folks were happy to see that they could have a donation of $10 that would be amplified and have an impact so yeah, so it's all over the state I think just like when you showed the map like how there's southern states with certain systems people want effective accountable government that's transparent and that's actually gonna deliver something from the end of the day so, great, thank you very much Karen, you know, you probably everything you saw is probably all in your head you know, because you do have a very a wide perspective because Common Clause works on the full range of democracy issues and works all across the country so, you know, reflecting on Larry's experience how do you see you know, it's interesting when we talk about some of this I think of also the moment we're in Common Clause has 1.1 million members we have a network of state organizations and 30 states and we have seen a groundswell of interest in both an alarm about what people are seeing at the federal level so there is some element of resistance what can we do how do we fight back rallies and other things but what's been interesting to me is that this activism has pivoted to focus on what can I do at the state and local level around transparency to prevent rigging of district lines so on redistricting on money and politics and people want real tools for how to engage and so we have been working on more trainings not just for places where we have state staff who can work with activists but actually in places where we don't and so there's a real hunger for a democracy that does listen and I worked at the state level for more than a decade in Connecticut and actually was one of 50 organizations but really helped to lead an effort to move small donor reform in Connecticut and I used to lobby before it was in place then I lobbied after it was in place and I was just up there testifying about a couple of weeks ago and I delighted in how it transformed the legislature newly elected members of the legislature who had never run under the old system treated the powerful lobbyist who owned the you know who basically owned the agenda worked by giving large sums of money to leadership and they could kill a measure and also they worked with leadership to move measures and these were Democrats leaders those newly elected did not know who those lobbyists were and treated them like there were any other person who had information and from our perspective information is fine but when you tie that with money it has a different kind of power and it isn't just how they legislate but we have seen a number of reforms move that you never could have gotten before environmental reforms getting rid of payday lending there has been paid sick leave in Connecticut it is both how they govern and also that they run and they run by going back to their district and talking to their constituents so their priorities change and if you talk to legislators there they will say you know my legislator my constituents care about that if a child in a classroom misbehaves it's criminalized and we have this prison pipeline starting with misbehavior in school and we want to look at juvenile justice or we want to end the death penalty so for me those are the kinds of things that appeal to people so it's not just oppositional although we'll see some of that as well you know the fact that the FCC is moving against net neutrality rules we are seeing 25 different states introducing legislation to create those net neutrality rules in their state or doing it by executive action so we're seeing some of that opposition but also real interest and engagement from groups that are not affiliated in divisibles and others with how can we create this at our state or local level Lenny I was in the example of net neutrality and you and Anne-Marie wrote a great piece about the role of states in net neutrality it's a pretty good example I think of the kind of federalism that you're talking about and also where in that case you might have a defacto national stand companies that want to operate in multiple states are going to wind up in at least one that would have the net neutrality rule so it becomes in a way like the California emissions standards so that's one model but how do we make sure that we have that as opposed to that's a model where federalism becomes defacto national but there's another model where you almost have like two countries and how do we avoid coastal progressive federalism and the rest of the country being kind of left behind so I'd say a couple of things to that question one is we need to acknowledge that experiments and laboratories are messing and so this isn't going to be a really clean, simple you know I went into my lab in Eureka I discovered the ultimate solution to everything and here's how it's going to roll that's not the way it works so you are going to have experiments and some of them are not going to work and some of them it doesn't make sense to have 50 different regulatory structures around cybersecurity you kind of like to have the whole country protected that way so but thinking about individual components and saying sometimes the best thing on areas where you're at the leading edge of how how parts of the economy, parts of the country are moving it's actually better to have some experiments before you lock everything in stone so you can never move it again so an example of that was one that you mentioned around standards for use of electricity or energy emission standards that it'd be great if we had national aspirations around that but it's also true that parts of the country can establish those then if they're large enough or there are health set standards for other parts of the country they become a de facto national standard so you can't basically sell a car in the United States that doesn't adhere to California's emission standards because it's too big a market to ignore and you don't want to produce 35 different models of cars with different emission standards around the country that also works in the other direction where you want to be able to sell textbooks you probably want to make sure they're actually relevant in Texas because it's a very large marketplace and so there's some of those things that have to be controlled exactly so I there are things that should not be delegated or completely different around the country many of those are enshrined in our constitution and are things that are protected by the judicial system so to be clear when we're talking about federalism I'm not talking about a new era of states' rights where states can choose to adhere to things that have already been litigated and agreed to at the federal level that's not what I'm talking about what I'm talking about is experimentation that are to be established that then there will be standards established I'm curious maybe Larry and Karen both of you what I mean we we're all I've always been really enthusiastic about small donor public financing systems but what are some of the other democracy reforms that kind of catch people's attention you know is it different things in different states is just redistricting how that power what's like what can people kind of get their heads around and get excited about in your experience I'd say in my experience in Maryland particularly redistricting definitely gets people excited especially when they like they they have a handle of what it what it means for them it's one of those issues that I've even seen like just organic energy build around like a reform on multiple perspectives you of course have the more conservative folks in Maryland Republicans in Maryland you know they're totally you know screwed over in many ways about a redistricting uh... in Maryland they don't have the power to control anything uh... and then you even have amongst you know my community in Prince George's in Baltimore City people that see how like communities of color being like used in many ways to prop up other politicians so folks think that that system is unfair when it's like controlled by politicians who in some cases are drawing lines so distinctly around someone's house in in examples in Maryland just to get someone out of competing with them and choosing their own voters uh... so when we talk about redistricting in Maryland like there is a lot of energy you know anything where you see incumbents rigging rules in ways that silence people's voices so another that we are seeing and redistricting is one where there's a lot of energy uh... is around voting reforms we've seen a wave of measures coming at the state legislature since two thousand ten with photo ID citizenship in other ways that make it difficult for people to to vote and uh... over the last couple years we have seen more bills moving uh... in state legislatures that open up the process so online voter registration automatic registration i know that we had worked to leave the effort in Oregon with many other groups uh... and when Oregon passed automatic registration california and many other states looked at it and the other interesting thing about that is we brought together and so have other groups election officials to share their experiences of that so there's a learning and you're also seeing these jurisdictions uh... moving and expanding you know the databases that they could use to bring people in so in california besides using dmv they're looking at public universities so you register for class you're automatically registered you can opt out if you want to but it's bringing a wider swath of people in the other thing about these reforms redistricting and voting reforms is we're moving these with bipartisan support there are republicans that believe you know this is cost effective it can uh... get rid of challenges that appear you know dead people on the list uh... and that it's technology and progress and so and on the redistricting side democrats do it in maryland and republicans do it in north carolina wisconsin and pennsylvania and so we're also seeing courts becoming much more responsive uh... to litigation around some of the redistricting that we're seeing too i'd love to see you know that even like in maryland i i live i live just inside the dc line uh... from from maryland and if i drive up like through fredrick or something like that it just blows my mind the same person who represents the district kind of across the street from me also represents this completely very different part of the state for no reason for no reason and i wish i'm surprised politicians aren't more agitated about that like it would be a lot easier to represent a community then like a slice of this community and a slice of another they are safe right right i mean they they have one that they have won they trade off one advantage for for what would hopefully be another and i think it is interesting can i vote whenever i've been around that community of election officials you know we hear about very high-profile people like chris coback in kansas actively want people to not vote but you get in the room with you know ninety percent of the people in a room of elected election officials secretary of state and so forth want people to vote and they work in that way sometimes i like we could translate this culture actually to some of the other areas around democracy that's that's a in some ways kind of a mission statement lennie do you want to add to this or ask any other questions before we open it up don't want to say that i've seen more experimentation around primary process reform california implemented open primary that underappreciated how it changed the dynamics of elections that's not the only mechanism the excitement enthusiasm around rank-choice voting palpable in different parts of the country one of those examples that uh... it's a little complicated explain in the first instance and but once people understand it start to use it is actually a much better approach elect people and actually harder to do in the first place in larger states because it's it is a big change but that's where even thinking below states the city and understand what's working and how you scale from there is i think a really interesting phenomena i'm sure we'll talk about that later but that's one that i'm i'm really intrigued by i think there's a lot of us uh... leader up in our program and may have also you know we've just moved rapidly towards it much greater appreciation of the merits of uh... of actually you know back at the long history on used to be called instant runoff voting and it could be a slightly different model but we're doing more and more on it and uh... and these articles about main two weeks ago in our or a week ago in our blog on box dot com covered a lot of that group is a really really great ballot initiative in main and it actually is a great complement to the the small donor public financing system one of the challenges they had were third-party candidates were uh... becoming spoilers in the election and so it it decreased interest in the public financing program particularly at the statewide level and so when you couple those then you don't have uh... third-party candidates playing that spoiler effect uh... by virtue of that reform and so it can be a reform that enhances other that's a super important topic and i think one of the things that we that we that we want to be able to do with this database on the map is be able to see where these things fitting together and then you can dig in and see how those two things relate to each other and you know some are positive and some are not i was for example i was never a big fan of term limits on you know on just democratic principle i think people should be able to vote for who they want to but there's no arguing that term limits made a big difference in making the new york city campaign finance system work because you kind of cleared the decks started you know basically started over with a new system additional changes to the power of of the city council that's something i think we really want to such a problem with the people sticking around for decades uh... and a corrupt leadership that makes it really hard not necessarily addressing term limits but i'm just just isn't a good example of how how things work together phrase that always struck in my mind when we were first launching the predecessor laboratories of democracy was co-chair by leon panetta and one of the phrase that he always said is all of what we're trying to do is make good governing good politics you know why can't those be the same thing and helping align activities so these different elements of reform actually get people to govern in a way is what most people want to do when they're governing it's actually do a good job and that shouldn't be bad politics, it should be good politics a simple phrase for a very large ambition just when forty nine percent of people in congress come from the state legislative level uh... they can bring those ideas with them i remember in nineteen ninety nine chris murphy uh... was a freshman house member whipping our votes on on in the inside on a small donor public financing program and now he's in the senate, u.s. senate and is a huge fan of the program let's open it up to questions, i'll reiterate if you're part of one of the groups that's part of the larger partnership here please don't hesitate to say ninety seconds or so about what you're doing and what's exciting doesn't necessarily have to be in the front of the question but if you're not, please put your remarks in front of the question and uh... christian knows that we'll bring you the uh... hi friends uh... my name is Reuben Lebron and i work with fair vote uh... and like folks here we're talking about we work to advocate and implement uh... rank choice voting in cities states and the national level so if anyone here is interested in knowing more about rank choice voting or introducing our organizations we can do the dc thing uh... exchange cars and grab coffee later uh... besides that uh... i'm super excited my internet uh... about uh... new map so thank you so much for everyone that uh... did an amazing job on this hi uh... marcia johnson i work with arlington dumps uh... among other things uh... i just had a question i know that rank choice what i'm californian originally uh... rank choice voting is lauded by many and is uh... i also know that on a party level there are people who really hate it so because it causes parties have to compete against themselves in primaries and things so i'm curious on your and what you guys believe rank choice voting may do to parties i mean there are founding fathers who are very much against parties as uh... something that was not a great thing for republic so i'm curious what you think rank choice voting would do to the party system well i think one thing it is allow allow new parties to form or new parties to form the compressor that have an ability to pressure existing parties i think of for example working families party in new york and several other states which is not whole and and there they have the advantage of uh... of of fusion which is to say they don't have to run candidate they don't have to run their own candidate for every position they can cross indoors uh... where where they want to but they have a a ballot line that enables them to do that and they could choose to be a spoiler or not be a spoiler and a rank choice voting system can do the same thing a candidate can say you know i'm not too far from the republican party but i think we can do better than what this party producing and that and that will play out now sometimes that may actually turn into a third party i think a system and lee's written eloquently about this a system there's there is uh... you know we call it duverger's law duverger's law that democracy leads to two parties it's not a law but we've created some groundwork conditions that make it very very difficult for any kind of other party to emerge and there's a lot of value in having some fluidity in how those parties and candidates emerge so we see all these you know earnest columns that say you know people are really going to this time there's really going to be a third party and well there's not unless you have a system that that that makes it possible to get started without being a spoiler right away so that's that's where i see the value of it and yes if i was a chair of a democratic party i probably wouldn't be a big fan of it but that's not my job but the the question the question there makes me think about also the interest that i believe parties should have in like broader like election reforms in some ways especially or after citizen united where like now like we're moving further and further into a place in which parties have less and less meaning uh... as outside organizations can spend in unlimited ways and take the place of of parties in the way of like the coke network so i hope that at some point party c the interest of you know reforms around money in politics particularly thanks i'm michael malibu campaign finance institute thanks for really great job that you've done chian uh... and also for mentioning us i want you to know what the campaign finances who will have by april and can be integrated with what you're doing give some slight indication of what you can do with it so we've created a database with about five hundred variables per state per year and for every two years from nineteen ninety six twenty sixteen and before the fall election that will go to twenty eighteen uh... and about ten percent of them are in a very fancy really fun kind of graphic that's covers the kinds of things you cover but let's use sort and let you uh... by by variable right the states in any given year see how things change and so forth and so on and then you can also download what you see either what you see or the entire database or part of the database what's the importance uh... the importance goes to lennie's comment if you really wanted not just look but you want to understand what works then you want to be able to look at not only do states differ but uh... but to be able to lump together together the states in different years different times see the ones that have one kind of policy versus another kind of policy and then to go to your to link them with policy output with the national institute of money state politics to link it with uh... patterns of people participating or donating and that's all going to be unlocked by by having this and by having the national institute of money state politics unique uh... donor identifiers that what what's going on here and what you're enabling by pulling people together is that we can finally begin to say what do we know about what works rather than here's my opinion and dammit i'm going to stick with it hi i'm jenette sonical with the legal women voters i'm really excited about this some of these folks i've just begun collaborating with and haven't met in person but we work in all fifty states on many of these issues we have about seven hundred affiliates that are working on good government across the country and we're really excited to see how these things do interact with one another and you know one of the things that i think we don't take the time to talk about what we're talking about laboratories and i like this learning uh... theory that we're talking about now is sometimes the biggest lessons are from our failures but since we don't ever want to talk about our failures it's really hard for us to learn from them and i think that you know changing our whole kind of way we approach these issues so that we can take a moment to think through what the failings were so that those lessons can come forward as well because they do help also inform the successes and i think that this is really going to help move some of those pieces forward and i'd love to talk to anybody who wants to chat with me about any of the league's work failure? it doesn't have to be your own it probably shouldn't be a failure well you know we have been we haven't been able to fix it since united anyway right having not or we have allowed uh... choice to be eroded over and over and over again without looking at from our side from at least the league side we believe in choice uh... we have lost and but the other side won and how did they win there's a methodology there that we could actually learn from and i think actually apply to citizens united in an approach and a strategy to helping us win on citizens united so anyways successes and failures who's who's winning and who's losing i think that you know looking at things in a new way it could be really helpful having an initiative process disconnected from a legislative process the recipe for disaster california as an example had a set of budget box balloting that's constrained legislative choice going back over thirty years forty years and that didn't have to happen if those things were aligned it's a really technical change in terms of being able to have the legislature not override citizens choice but have a chance to influence that citizen choice and make it better and then move it forward i think that's an example of something that i i wish we had realigned the calendar we would have never had prop thirteen in california maybe i wouldn't characterize as like a failure maybe we can all share our failures today, that would be real fun my secret plan was to get a therapy set therapy but in mcgummery county where we have the small dollar matching system now in place and this is the first year with fully online and there's an election so i wouldn't characterize this as like a failure necessary but something i've been very disappointed in and like one of our goals as an organization was to ensure that it becomes a more inclusive system and political process in mcgummery county and thus far the filing deadline is not too far from from now but thus far it looks like it hasn't exactly resulted in that now we're very happy with the number of people participating in the system i believe a great majority i can't remember the exact percentage of people participating in the program but the great majority of candidates are using the small dollar matching program which is a resounding success it drew more people to run for office then i think ever before at least in my memory in mcgummery county however like in terms of the diversity of candidates that are successfully leveraging the system it leaves something to be desired so i think it's good for me to hear earlier about like the new york system and the constant refinement and the reflection that's needed as we do things and i think it is important to be honest with ourselves and also to understand like how what other types of reforms and what other types of strategies enable us to get to our goals when these policies are implemented and something that we're thinking about very deeply Lenny your mention of initiatives is a real initiatives play a really complicated and awkward role people put a lot of faith in them this is the way to just get things done without wasting our time with real politics and that's you know that's a little bit dangerous i think we had a couple years ago we had a great session here holly russon gillman here part of our program talking about the idea of citizen initiative review so that you're actually having some some layer of discussion about what the terms are as opposed to just you know some wealthy person writes something up gets into a little lawsuit with the california secretary of state about their ballot language but that's the end of it and that and that that's setting the terms of debate so it is you have citizens voice in the vote but you don't have citizens in determining the terms of what what it is beyond a yes or no uh... and there are a lot of national groups that are convinced that they have solutions they also hire consultants we're gonna come in we're gonna do this those measures fail because they're not implemented because there isn't anybody on the ground who bought in a coalition that sees these reforms as a means to an end for them to achieve the things they want and so all of that money invested and there are many on money politics but many on other issues those that money you know goes right down the drain because there hasn't been infrastructure investment in the groups on the ground the leagues and others that are working on this uh... to protect it and we passed fixes after connecticut and we had a four-year lawsuit uh... that went up to the supreme court luckily they denied sired and we were able to make changes but we passed fixes after two thousand five in two thousand six seven eight nine two fixes in two thousand ten eleven thirteen so and actually that's why was testifying about some other things we need to do uh... democracy is not a destination it's something that you have to continue to work on and and guard and protect and new legal you know there are there are new legal cases that come to the for new practices that you'd yet to continue to monitor connecticut's been a really good example the value of like getting in there working with the legislature to build that seventy percent of u.s. population has access to some form of initiative a referendum democratic either at the state or city level it is a really important lever it needs to be used in the right but i do think it's a very important now especially if it's a consultative and citizen voice that then influences the legislative process i just want to be clear that i am a big fan of a properly designed mechanism for citizen voice we've all seen that you know the national person who comes in and says we did a poll and it gets our initiative gets sixty eight percent even when we test all the opposition's messages and then it gets crushed or not it gets crushed at the ballot box or not i just want to point out one in maryland where uh... polling to do a measure in howard county did not look very strong but engagement of activists and actually i'm not sure if wendy fields and the di is here but the di you know which has a network of sixty groups and forty million activists engage many national allies in that fight you know contact the thirty six thousand activists that made the difference in howard county like it and it's something too like intuition of the people like on the ground and in the community like people like uh... there was like fear of that like welfare for politicians narrative uh... popping up but like when you actually get out there and talk to people and they have access to you know we have an opportunity to vote for something and change something ourselves like they're very excited to get engaged in a process like that actually howard county what we have to do is it was a ballot referendum to like amend the the charter of the county which is like a common practice in maryland and so like i i i think it could lead to even other opportunities uh... to change things uh... at the local level hi uh... good afternoon everyone i'm really excited to be here for this amazing discussion on what is a very gloomy day outside but uh... my name is nicolas massenberg i may gap your student at american university school of professional extended studies and i work in social media over at american forum at the national press building and so i guess in just thinking about the wonderful database you've managed to assemble here on what are some of the physical everyday applications you work hope might be implemented in the everyday policy debate that exists today and then what implications are you hoping something like this existing might have on my own uh... increasingly digital younger generation well i think i think our our hope i i have this little i have this little idea that people across the country wake up every morning different people wake up and say i really actually want to do something about democracy in my community nationally or whatever sometimes we think that and pull the covers over and go back to sleep but sometimes it's activated and i i feel like it's hard for people i mean common cause is invaluable here because it because the name people know in the league is similarly um... in terms of organizations but i think a lot of that energy and passion just dissipate because people don't know they don't know what's a good idea they don't know what other they might have whatever their own capacity they might be civic leaders in their community they might be really great organizers but there there's no there's no way to look around and say what can i organize around that i might make a difference here and hopefully i mean i don't know that you know it will be hard to get the kind of reach for this but but but our operation is to make is to get to the point where that when that person wakes up they can say you know what i'm gonna go online i'm gonna find the state of it i'll see what place they're doing and you know if if i don't maybe my assumption is that nobody will ever support public financing or small donor matching or anything like that but whoa actually there's a lot going on it seems like not unheard of there's other there's places doing it dig a little deeper find out how it works that's why you know that's my uh... my view that the idealize you of what we're trying to do we're gonna have a closing comment from chris gates can talk about where we're going forward with it that will help that more concretely but one of the ways that i think about it is it's a it at a at a minimum is a tool that's useful for journalists researchers and those who are trying to understand what works and what doesn't think of it as like the human genome for democracy it's like core data that's out there how it's utilized is really the next stage that that those who really want to make something happen have to add to that in a way that's useful for you so i think the answer that from my standpoint is love to have your input of what would be most useful to you so should i add her hand up just to add to that in terms of it being a resource for researchers and journalists it's not up yet we just launched the website today but you will be able to download the data set so you can download the the spreadsheet and then sort of like mess around with it you know you can run some regressions if you want you can do pretty much anything you want uh... if if you want to dig deeper into into that so that's one of the other like cool uh... added features of the of the database will cover the range of instagram to run your own regression and kind of everything everything in between a couple more than i want to know hello my name is case car and i'm on the research team from bluebrook cities and i was wondering if you could speak a little more about the role of cities in rebuilding our democracy and you touched a bit touched on a bit with that new york city example but if you could expand on that that would be great thank you and you know there have been a number of cities that have been moving reforms like creating their own nonpartisan citizens redistricting commissions that are embracing uh... a broad range of ethics reform that are moving small donor public financing like howard county and uh... but also looking to move reforms in new mexico in florida uh... in chicago in uh... places all across the country and uh... so which to us has been really exciting because one it is easier to move uh... at the local level there is more of a culture of uh... city council members and county council members working together it's less polarized and so we see these really exciting developments uh... and and a lot of it is organic it is just happening uh... at the local level it isn't always that there is a league of women voters are a common cause saying we should do this uh... people are seeing this learning more about it and i think a tool like this and some of what we're going to talk about next i think could see more interest in engagement uh... around doing this specific example which i'm which we haven't mentioned before which is the city of seattle and their experiment with vouchers for campaign contributions that have been purely academic idea for decades like what if you gave everybody uh... you know a coupon for fifty dollars that they could donate to country what would happen and that the real really yet find out i mean it could be that people that people say what i do with this and stick it in the drawer and never use it and that could be you can have a bad outcome you could have a great outcome it could evolve over time as people get used to them but unless you ever try it you will never find out seattle taking that lead giving it a try actually work quite well yeah yeah yeah for uh... basically a hundred dollars you can give it all or you could split it up and they had the first election under that system but not including the mayor's right for city council candidates and seem to be pretty effective integral alright great let's um... chris uh... do you want to stand it will stay up here once you stand at the podium and talk about you know the other activities great and uh... thank all of you for being here we really appreciate it uh... so i'm chris gateson and as uh... mark said earlier i've been involved with lennie in this conversation for over two years and before i give you five updates about where we go next with the effort i i just want to give a brief bit of history so that this conversation really started in early twenty sixteen at an organization called california forward uh... and uh... the idea there was that we should try and create a platform that would support and encourage political reform efforts they were happening outside of washington and we want to find ways to tell stories to build networks to create synergy uh... the goal was always to be agnostic about solution that one of the mistakes that we think that the reform community uh... makes on a regular basis is is that they define collaboration is when you agree with my agenda uh... uh... and we actually fully embrace the notion of of uh... using states and cities is modern-day laboratories and trying different things in the seattle example is the perfect example for this that it it it worked there and they could pass it there and we'll see what the result will be but the leaders of the effort there that was it was a has always been a very much a bipartisan effort the democrat was sick secretary leon panetta uh... the republican was then fresno mayor ashley swaring in and the team uh... in california that i know are watching the stream so we just want to say thanks but led by the executive director california for the mayor and then uh... katie maple was the staff person who really drove the development of this for the better part of the year and we couldn't thank them uh... enough so then uh... five announcements about sort of where where we're going to go from here first of all when we started the effort we uh... chose the name the fifty state solution because the the whole notion was that uh... what wasn't working washington was happening in the states become super clear i think everybody in this space in the last year is that it is not limited to states uh... and that cities are there is bundles of awesome experimentation happening at the municipal level of the county level of the city level uh... cities large and small about every asked aspect of democratic practice and so we are definitely expand the focus of this effort from just states to states and cities and so the new name of the effort moving forward will be democracies laboratories reinventing democracy at the state and local level so it's democracies laboratories possessive then plural uh... and and that'll be the moniker of the effort moving forward that the second uh... thing to let everybody know is that we're really excited that the co-chairs of this project are it that this effort is going to be uh... co-led by the folks of here in new america and common cause and so lenny and karen have agreed to serve as the co-chairs of this effort moving forward and we think that's going to be incredibly valuable uh... and and our our model moving forward this is truly a model of collaborative leadership and servant leadership and nobody's trying to own this space we're trying to encourage everybody else who's in this space uh... the third is that in addition to the incredible uh... database and website that we saw mark and his team demo earlier that we're going to find ways to integrate two other sets of data and two other websites uh... michael malvin and the folks at cpi campaign finance institute uh... i will i will tell you i've had a sneak peek at his site and it is it's a truly amazing site incredibly interactive amazingly fun to surf around tons of data in there but it tracks campaign finance flows and laws by year by state by race in a bunch of different and creative ways and so we will definitely be highlighting their work as well and then uh... for those of you who were either at uh... on rigged the uh... system summit in new orleans recently or or followed it uh... there was an announcement there of of another site and another database that we absolutely uh... intend to work with and highlight and that is a site that was developed by wendy and her team at democracy initiative and uh... francis morelipay frankie lipay at the small planet institute and uh... they've developed uh... uh... real-time guide to every reform that's on the ballot in every state and hopefully soon to be every city in the country so that there would be a quick and easy way for people to uh... uh... quickly check to see what was happening state by state issue by issue all around the country uh... uh... they're going to be partnering uh... with dan newman of maplight uh... in california to build that site out and we're really excited about that as well and we think that between those three resources that they will provide really incredible assistance to everybody doing work in this field then the fourth piece is that the project is created an advisory council of folks because again we are fully embracing the notion of shared leadership and shared ownership and and the only point to doing this is to actually serve as a resource is that resource of the people on the ground who are doing this work in states and cities all over the country and so the organizations uh... that have agreed to join the advisory council many of whom are represented here today uh... are the brendan center california forward campaign finance institute the center for popular democracy demos fair vote lawyers committee for civil rights legal voters of u.s and the national institute for money in state politics so we're really excited about working with that group and having them help guide us and we had our first phone meeting the other day and and uh... uh... when they asked us uh... what do you want from us uh... how can we be helpful we said well first of all we hope you'll provide some content because when we build out the final website there will be room for blog posts and a curated news feed and so any content that you can provide would be great but we also said we we just need you to help us brainstorm about how we can be most helpful to help this movement move forward and and so it is truly in an open process in an open uh... conversation and we hope if you guys have ideas that uh... you can share them with us as well and then the last thing to to tell people is that we are in the beginning stages of planning a post november twenty eighteen convening here in dc uh... people who have done state-based reform work this year state and city-based reform work this year we hope that that convening can happen shortly after the election and we hope that that convening will serve both as a celebration of some great successes this fall and some planning for what will come in the next few cycles so we're very excited about the future of this work cited about the partnership with new america incredibly excited about the work that mark and his team have done on this database and i would just finished by saying that uh... if if uh... if the canary in the coal mine for you about how well our democracy is working is washington dc it's really easy to be discouraged and it's easy to be convinced that nothing is working and everything is going to heck in a hand basket but if you change your gaze to what's happening at states and cities all over this country it's actually completely different conversation and i'll finish with a story uh... told to me by a member of our advisory council who couldn't be here today but she works here in washington and she said it's it's actually depressing and for those of you who live here work here you know it's some days can actually just really feel depressing nothing works and people don't communicate and nothing's happening and she was like it's terrible and sometimes i find myself getting really down there was this meeting of of state-based activists in north carolina went to north carolina and i left completely energized and positive and thinking that you know better days were ahead and i think that that's that's the moment that we're trying to tap into uh... in this movement and in this country at this time so thanks very much thank you all for coming