Good evening. Welcome to new america. I am the director of the Reform Program in new america. To ant to welcome you all discussion about the possibilities of ranked choice that can an approach revive our democracy in various ways, potentially solving a bunch of different challenges. Ofs is an event and series events for our 20th anniversary. We were founded in 1999 with the idea of creating a home for a new generation of people and ideas across a wide range of policy questions. I am one of the oldtimers although i was not here in 1999. I knew the founders and saw the creation of it. Ideas about reforming the political system have been part of the dna of this organization from the beginning. It waseague reminded me in the book that the founders wrote called the radical center, ranked Choice Voting was one of the ideas they promoted. It is not a bible for what we do but it is part of it. Back to thecame political Reform Program in 2014. Our finding founding ideas like introducing fresh thinking about reforming american democracy, getting past Steel Solutions as we have evolved we have seen ideas around ranked Choice Voting and Electoral Reform have taken on a more salience of attracting new constituencies. We have gotten to seem like a when weolution both look at it from the top down and you can see communities turning to the set of ideas as they look to themselves for how strengthen democracy. We thought we would pull together a panel of people who are working both at the big level and in the field on talking to people about these ideas, promoting, helping them understand the problems they would solve and not solve. We approach all of these. One thing about our approach to political reform public solving is no reform is a super magic bullets. There is a great essay by nick tenement, there are no Silver Bullets. Ou have to Work Together this can be one of them. Any reform idea gets reflected through the culture and demographics of a community. I think we want to touch on some of those. Without wasting more time, let me introduce the panelists. I will start with one question, get us going and then we will have discussion here and open it up. My immediate right, grace ramsey. She is a consultant on Electoral Reform issues. Mcmullenrace, evan from standup republic. He was a candidate for president utah16 and he is from where there is interest in these ideas. ,o his right christopher lamarr Legal Counsel at the Campaign Legal center. Another organization founded around the time of this one. I have had a lot of connection to Campaign Legal center and they are hoping communities figure out not just political but legal challenges facing these reforms. Druckman, the author of a book coming out in january called breaking the , democracy in america. She had a more expensive vision with what is possible expansive vision for what is possible. So i want to make sure we have some clarity on what we are talking about. Grace toart by asking talk about when you are out in a community and people are curious about this but have not heard much, how do you describe it . I will let you do it and then the rest of them. I came to this work for the first time in 2013 in minneapolis where they use ranked Choice Voting. 2006 and hadt in used it in 2009 but none of the races have been competitive. In 2013 there was an open seat for mayor and plenty of Competitive City Council races. I can to this work to make sure the first time the range of Choice Voting was going to factor into results, the voters were aware of the system being used and how it will work. In that case if i was talking to a voter planning on voting in the Mayoral Election i would say right Choice Voting is what it sounds like. You can rank choice is a preference. The first choice is the candidate you love, the second choice is the one you can like in the third is the one you can stand. Choices. Just first you take votes for the favorite candidates under sure we have an view. Te accurate no one gets a majority. When you are electing one seat, you want a majority in the system, 50 plus one. We limited the candidate with the fewest votes. Eliminate the candidate with the fewest votes. This process continues until one of the candidates reaches the threshold of 50 . It is the basics. For different cities there are different systems. Ity council, mayor, whatever may be, there are different choices. For the voter the basics are you will ranked in order of choice. Mark do you say, here is a problem . What problem are you solving . Frank, if thing to be you have if you talk about politics, people will provide you with problems they see quickly. I have not come across a voter this is everything is great. Voter that says everything is great. In minneapolis we saw we had an august primary that narrowed the field to two. We would see turnout from 15 to 5 . Students were not back yet. It is a large cost to the city to open up the polls and do all of this but it is not an accurate view of the voters. You have 15 narrow the field. There is a disproportion of power. The city decided to eliminate that election and have one general election using rate choice ranked Choice Voting. Mark the primary would have been you are talking about nonpartisan . Instead of two rounds you have one . Grace there are other situations, cities that had a runoff. The problem is on the other end of the general election. Heardace i have discussion and not seen Much Movement is primaries. There is several examples we have seen where there have been fierce partisan primaries with several candidates. Youre seeing vote splitting or a large field, you can get outcomes that are not intuitive like people getting through with 25 when a majority did not approve them have a candidate as a candidate. If you have this large field you can build to consensus with this. Evan how i talk about it . Mark you can talk about how you see it as it relates to your area. Evan the way we view life is through a prism of what we have experienced. Not to get philosophical off of years atbut i spent the Central Intelligence agency. I see a lot of challenges the country faces from a National Security frame. This is one of them. I look at the country and the Political Polarization that we are experiencing that is not my own assessment. Great thingas a that shows the parties moving away from each other and more extreme. The more that happens the harder it becomes for us to govern ourselves. We are in a ground Brand Experience of selfgovernance but we are failing. The world is so dynamic. Whether it is changes in , the way climate changes in the way we communicate with each other, information, opportunities and risks associated with that. We live in a dynamic world. Especially now we have got to be able to have a functioning government. We dont. We dont appropriate appropriately. We dont have solutions for infrastructure, health care, information warfare, threats, so many other things. Is, i look at that and see a National Security threat, we are failing to govern ourselves because our parties are so divided and our adversaries abroad are exploding that. Opportunistic politicians exploding divisions. We cant govern ourselves and that gives rise to even more extreme leaders that will come to power, capitalize and exploit the divisions and lack of effective evidence. I believe we have got to change the incentives that shape the way our leaders lead. Ranked Choice Voting is one of a couple of reforms i think offer the best opportunity to change those incentives so leaders are more incentivized to find Common Ground with their arrival and demonstrate that, build on that. How does that impact policy . If we are running against each they creates strong supporters that will never support me as a first pick. If i have the opportunity to show Common Ground and then when her voters, second choice and when the same is returned, that can give way to ways forward on even the most divisive policy challenges the country faces. That is what motivates me and why i am so passionate is i think the country is facing a weakness associated with the polarization and ranked Choice Voting can change the incentives to remedy that. How do you see ranked Choice Voting . Evan,opher going off of the philosophical quote about the way you see things, working at a nonpartisan organization, the thing i am can turn about is the responsiveness of politicians to voters. With rank Choice Voting one of the things you see is instead of having to choose between maybe two candidates who are on the polar opposites of the end of the spectrum with respect to political positions, which are not that popular within the electorate, with ranked Choice Voting, you see the politicians coming back into the center. Talking about ideas which are very popular amongst the electorate. Positions,o policy if one of the things i am concerned about is you will see elections where if something is hyper polarized, it is a get out , politiciansaign want to make sure if it is 15 of the people who vote, they want to make sure those people come out and vote instead of making sure that i dont care less about the 15 of my group and focusing on the remainder of a ity i am trying to get that is my main concern. Mark there is an implicit problem that elections are primarily about mobilization and create a different tone than those about persuasion. I have heard stories about people talking about campaigns when they are going doortodoor. You knock on the door and say for, and ifvoting for someone already has their first choice, but normally this door slams on and with ranked Choice Voting you can say who is your third and fourth choice . Mark it keeps the conversation going. One of the things that we have problem ised as a the challenges in certain places that in addition to mobilization, you can have a winner who doesnt have a majority. That is what led people to the idea of ranking. Another potential. It is interesting none of you kind of described that as part of the problem to be addressed. Majorityr at least has lee, you want to . Biggere some ways a ambition. Lee i agree. We have a large degree of consensus on the panel in this moment of really just destructive hyper partisanship which is a threat to our system of government which demands a high level of compromise and give and take. Operating, system is everything is about destroying the other party for the electoral gig. We were having this Panel Discussion at the storm clouds of impeachment cover this town. It is amazing to see what republicans are doing now to support donald trump despite the stream of revelations of events. Offenses he has committed that is a function of the binary hyper partisanship, republicans cant break with trump because there is no other party for them run as but a lot of them and a lot of them will not run as democrats. If there were another party, center right or ranked Choice Voting that created space for a third, it would not be treated as spoilers because voting for a third party or fourth party is vote. Sting your it is expressing your voice. I think you would see a lot of republicans breaking with the president , maybe running and forming a new party. I have a book coming out called breaking the two party loop, where i advocate for ranked Choice Voting and for the multiwinner choice which would create multiwinner districts and allow districts where maybe five representatives go to congress, the top five through ranked Choice Voting. It would create space for multiple parties. When we look around the world, most democracies are multiparty democracies. The u. S. Is a rare and strange partyty system two system. We have electoral institutions which make it hard for third parties. We have winner take all Electoral Systems. Multiparty democracy has allowed flexibility, fluidity, Voter Engagement because they are more likely to find a candidate and party that represents that. And it is competitive. 85 , they are not even competitive because when it isan voting is high, clear who is going to win. Ranked Choice Voting, districts, it becomes less certain. Parties compete everywhere and voters have a real opportunity to express their voice. It is not a Silver Bullet because there is no fixing politics. Ranked Choice Voting, multiwinner forum which brings us to a modest look at representation which would solve a lot of the problems that are boiling our democracy at this moment. To me it is the most important oform that has a chance happening in the next five to 10 years. Mark you are almost envisioning the mechanism of ranked Choice Voting as opening the door to the possibility of multimember districts, multiwinner systems and multiparty when you are talking to people in a community and most of the people who are supporters of this idea, many are democrats or republicans as they start out, that might not be the best starting point, is that the solution that people are looking for . I dont want to take from his idea because he is my colleague and friend. [laughter] mark i am just curious if any of you, if that vision kind of works . I think the easy answer is not quite but things are true. Since the 2016 election for whatever reason people on both sides are awake in a way a lot of them were not. Whether they are motivated or scared. Whatever the reasoning is, i have seen that across the country. We have seen turnout in municipal elections which we have not seen in 20 years. We are seeing more activity. One thing we have realized is for a long time you dont think to question the status quo. These are systems you were raised to believe and have always and around. You dont think about how young our democracy is and that the systems we created were right at the time but we were not taught to reconsider those on a regular basis except redistricting. The systems are still in place. I think when you give people the opportunity to think about it, i have seen largely a positive response. The entire time i have been doing this work it has been in a i am a sling mainly advocating. Is a problem this in the community, this is a solution, education is mostly what is necessary, to say this is a system that exists and here is how we think it can be changed. People are welcoming to that conversation. It is a matter of presenting that in a way people can digest. Path post, iirst dont use plurality. You use it in a liquid people understand and it doesnt feel theoretical. People are open to changing. We have this audience and cspan, defines us. Define this. Post is aast the nickname which comes from a horse racing. Whoever is ahead get the most votes wins. Doesnt necessarily mean a majority. You could get 30 of the votes and win if the other candidates , it was than 30 and is a 1430 it was a 1430 innovation and replaced consensus voting which turned out to be difficult. The framers who were debating a lot of things in 1787 did not debate Electoral Systems because there was only one electoral system. It was a candidate based whoever gets the most votes wins. That is what elections were. It was not until the mid19th century Electoral Reformers started innovating and coming up with different ideas, ranked Choice Voting was an innovation in the early 19th century. Tocqueville were proponents. Earlyhe course of the 20th century, these systems caught on. Australia has used it for 100 years, ireland has. More than you bargained for. Ark more than i knew i said anybody could do this. Lets pull back to the Bigger Picture we were talking about, what is the potential of a rvc in place . What becomes possible . For me it is the next rent of policies the majority of voters agree with. It is as simple as that in terms of what the goal is, for me anyway. Seeing politicians who are responsive to the things voters want and politicians in acting things voters want. [laughter] realize there are politicians who as a matter of political strategy try to divide us. Some of them are very visible, some of them less, but it astounds you to think about it. Our leaders, in order to gain more power for themselves, are trying to divide us as a strategy for them to gain and hold on to power. It used to be this would have happened in deep red or deep blue districts where you only had to worry about your primary. But we have gone beyond that. You can see moderate republicans in the house for example, and i could name names but i dont want to shame them in this moment. Even republicans in the house for thought of as responsible and more forward thinking and moderate, still conservatives but more moderate, even they now are adopting an approach, divisive approach. They are abandoning the strategy of, i will do what i need to do to get through the primary and then turn at least then to a unifying campaign. They are abandoning, and they werent they could win on that in the past but they are changing. You watch rhetoric now and it is not that. They find a way to get on board with more senior divisive leaders and their message including i will say the president in my view. Fact. S a very alarming it is something which should concern us all. Our leaders should work to unite us. T seems so basic we are a weaker country. Our system of selfgovernance fails when we are so divided. It doesnt mean we have to agree on everything. We should have vibrant debates