Good morning, everyone. We are on cspan. We are also Live Streaming on the making every vote count facebook page. So i want you all to behave. The Electoral College is a disaster for democracy. Now, thats not me speaking. Thats donald trump. Where it was donald trump before he changed his mind a few times. He also said this. I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million and you win. Now i quoted not for irony but because, a, hes right, and, b, his affinity for the popular vote may reflect his instinct that a president who was elected without winning a majority is perhaps not so legitimate. Think of all the factors that have contributed to voters cynicism and alienation of all the measures that we could institute to help restore confidence and democracy. This is the one that can be easily and quickly remedied and have an enormous impact. Suddenly, everyones vote would count the same. Truly one person, one vote. Voters all over the country not just in florida, michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania would determine the outcome of the election. Now, americans are very close right now to changing the system. To having a popular vote for president. But how would such a system change american political campaigns . Thats why were here. So welcome to a conference called when every vote counts, im jim glassman, im a member of the board of directors of making every vote counts, a Nonprofit Organization whose aim is to educate american itself about their electoral system. This is a nonpartisan effort. Im a registered republican. I served as under secretary of state in the george w. Bush administration i headed president bushs policy institute thats a part of the president ial library in dallas. We have republicans and democrats and independents on our board all concerned about the future of democracy under our current electoral system. In five elections, two of them since 2000, we have elected president s who were defeated in the popular vote. And if donald trump wins again, its highly likely that his election will be the sixth. And the third in six elections. Americans by an overwhelming majority reject the Current System. We know that from polling that stretches back for decades. The latest survey in july found that 71 of voters nationally say that the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide should be the president. And only 21 oppose the idea. Among republicans, there is a majority of 61 to 32. Thats a 21 majority nearly. And whether we should change the rules, that phrase, change the rules, which a lot of people dont like, so that the candidate who wins the most votes becomes the president. U. S. Voters agree by a margin of 65 to 26. Again with a majority of republicans agreeing. And Andrew Glasser has polled many states, as have others, including bright red ones and gotten similar results. For example, north dakota. There arent too many redder states than north dakota and they are 64 of likely voters, including 55 of republicans agree the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide should become the president. We also found that a majority of north dakota voters polled would vote yes in a Ballot Initiative that said thatter that electo t votes would go to the winner of the 2020 election, as long as a blue state with the same number of electoral votes also approved such a measure. Think about that for a second. We know that the Current System is not how we should approve our leaders, should choose our leaders. Millions dont understand it and it deprives millions more of a meaningful vote. In fact, 100 million americans dont vote for a president at all. But can you blame them . When just a dozen or maybe just four or five will determine who that person will be. We choose all of our other elected officials the same way. Whoever gets the most votes wins and every person has an equal vote. Why dont we choose president s that way . Mainly because the framers could not agree. So they punted. They left the choice to the states. Article 2, section 1 of the constitution says, each state shall appoint if such manner as the legislature therefore may direct a number of elect tores, et cetera. The constitution does not specify the criteria for that appointment and in the early years of the republic, many state legislators, themselves, did the appointing, not the voters. Now every state but two chooses elect tores the same way with the winner of a vote within the state taking all the eelectors. Over the past several decade, red voters and blue voters have become more and more concentrated by state. Few states are purple, in contention, candidates focus only on those states and when president s get elected, they shower those states with attention and in many cases money. We see this over and over. In 2016, there were 399 Public Campaign events. Some 94 of them were in just 12 states. The other states had three or fewer events. The majority of states had zero events. Theres several ways to reform the method of electing a president. The number of Democratic Candidates for president have said that they prefer a constitutional amendment. Maine has enacted rank Choice Voting for the 2020 general election. Under a recent tenth Circuit Court decision, electors can decide without regard to the wishes of the voters who they want to be present. And 15 states plus the district of colombia have passed the National Popular vote interstate exact, which goes into effect when it is law in states that account for 270 electoral votes. So far, the total is 196. This change in the way we vote backed by a solid majority of americans in surveys is close to becoming reality. It is now a matter of only a few years until in every race the person who gets the most votes will be found president. So we decide it was time to take a look, not at the merits of the popular vote. But at how president ial campaigns would actually be run if the person who gets the most votes nationwide is the one who becomes president. There is a lot of mathology around this question. So what are the political implications . What are the Campaign Mechanics . We have just the right people to do it. So todays agenda, very briefly, we have the first panel coming up in a few minutes, a few seconds, that will examine how will candidates try to win under a National Popular vote . Moderated by my good friend longtime friend steve clemens, editor at harm at the hill. The second panel, how will candidates messages and platforms change because of the popular vote . That will be moderated by bob you can sack, the editorinchief of the hymn. That will be followed by a keynote address by nellie gorbaya the secretary of state of rhode island. We will start with my good friend steve clemens. Plus a. [ applause ] good morning, folks, im steve clemens. Im editor at large of the hymn. Its great to knoll low greg glassman. We have a great panel coming on to talk about how the National Poll lar vote would work, what behaviors it would change, we have wonderful panel, amanda ivano is a senior strategist. Mark penn is president of the Stagwell Group o of mdc partners and author of microgem squared and to the far left, dr. Samuel wong, founder of the Election Consortium. Thank you for joining us. We are going to have fun with this. We will engage in conversation and just you know create some hypotheticals that if our system were to change, what sorts of behaviors will we see . Mark, you and i have done this a couple of times together and i was excited because when we were at the Republican Convention i think we began talking about different flavors of ice cream. You wind up with two flavors, one may be rocky road and others. I said, oh, no, hes moved to fish and chicken. I said well maybe we can talk about varieties of fish and chicken. Maybe we can talk about how people will fish differently. Will they fish in one place or a broader part of the Chesapeake Bay or something. Now i understand you have moved to potatoes. We are excited to hear about the potato analogy. Can you help us set the stage on this topic if we were to deploy a National Popular vote, how would you see candidates and behaviors change . Good, i thought it was most useful to give an overview of the number of the Current System and how it works. And how its been working in recent years and that is kind of to help move the discussion along and look i was always told by president clinton, he always liked to have a story people could relate to so i like food stories. You havent heard when you talk like big macs with him . No, mostly the sandwich strategy. The issue sandwich its not the same as an individual policy or the piece of ham in the middle. But i want to give you another concept and ill just to make sure you can see it, which is, im going to start out with the couch potato voter. Okay. So what is the couch potato voter . Those are the 94 million americans who are eligible to vote but dont vote. And if you look at the biggest problem in the system, the biggest problem in the system is, as that size has grown to be so big, campaigns have Securities Exchange commissioned so that rather than focusing as i did back in the day when i ran a lot of campaigns, for the swing voters, people instead try i to go for the extremes and get just their slice. But if everybody voted, the entire couch would vote and, you know, what would actually happen if the entire couch did vote . Right. And so to do that based on a New York Times analysis or demographic, you wont really be able to see the slide in this room. But what difference would it make if everybody really voted in america and who is left behind . Primarily, now, there are of the 94 million tremendous numbers of latinos obviously who are not in the political system. They probably percentage wise rank as the Number One Group not voting. But you would be surprised at the huge numbers of downscaled voters, particularly downkale whites that dont vote, approximately 60 million. So i dont vote approximately 60 million. So i caution everyone who says they want everyone in america to vote. If everyone in america did vote, if we had not just kind of a change in the Electoral College but like a more australian system where everyone voted you would be surprised by the change and composition of the electorate. Most people on the couch dont like any of the politicians. They making an affirmative choice, a lot of the Latino Community not yet organized as fully as they could be. I think that there are a lot of people those, in the 94 million who simply dont like any of the politicians, so they are highly volatile voters when they come in. So, you know, if you take a look at the system, again, you see this enormous gap that continues between, between approximately 130 million, you know, who vote, and the swing voters in the country who are typically middle aged, suburban, middle class and ive always recorded as about 20 of the country. And then you also have to look at our primary system. Theres a lot of focus well, okay, what about the outcome of the election . Well, it turns out that typically not huge numbers of people have voted in primaries in the past. That an average of about 35 million voters, right. If you take the 130 million general election voters, and the 226 million actually eligible to vote the primary system then is being driven on the basis of about 35 million, or 17. 5 million on either side. Now weve had some really contested primaries, and you can see kind of bumps up so that the total gets, can get into the 50s, right, and that would still give you like 25 million on each side. Right . So, when you think about that, when you look at politics by the numbers, we have about 321 Million People in the country, last time i did this slide, might be 330 by now. We have about 226 Million People eligible to vote. Meaning they meet all the qualifications for voting. We have about 94 million who actually dont vote and, therefore, are eligible, the couch potato voters. We have 130 million, approximately, could be 140 million in a higher turn out scenario. About 35 million who vote in a primary. About 17 and a half million who vote on each side, which means that in the primary system it takes about 10 million voters to get the nominee. So that actually about 20 million voters actually are the ones who determine the future of the other 321 million voters when you look at the entire system. So i dont lay this out for a partisan reason other than you should always look at how the system is working, right, and who is voting, where does it count, and where is the biggest gap between who votes and the decisions that are made. Thank you. Mark, thanks so much. I want to say hello to you in the audience but we have cspan here. Im sure they will tick the tires on your numbers and you will get lots of numbers on whether they think you are right or wrong. Ayman darks before i jump to dr. Wang, you and i discussed this previously if you had a shift in the National Popular vote you would imagine that the playbook for running an election would be different. Im interested in what behaviors you would see. I want to mention another donald trump quote, the president says, he said, President Trump said if you go with the Electoral College thats a very different race, much different race than running a popular vote. Its like the 100 yard dash versus the mile. I stole this from a reed hunt article. Hes looking the at the different muscles, the different training you would use. Given what mark said about the couch potato voter, about others that might be brought in, what would you see as some of the Campaign Strategy differences that you would employ. I think because youre talking about a much greater geography, much greater audience size the campaign would need to talk to, it would cost a lot more for a campaign and campaigns would then we know it costs more from a polling standpoint. You have to poll in california and new york regularly. Cost more from a staff standpoint and advertising, above everything else. Given the hard dollar fundraising limits, i dont think campaigns should focus at all on broadcast ads. Let the super p. A. C. S take over that part of the campaign and campaigns would look moreno deling. At wpa were seeing more candidates on all levels is that a good thing . I think so. You can get more individualized, issuing models, figure out what individuals really care about and then the candidates can talk to those individuals on the issues that they care about and mobilize them either to get out the vote tore persuade them on those issues. Right now in north dakota which was case that jim glassman raised in terms of the 64 , jim, is that the number of people that support this, how would you suspect that a campaign right now theres not much play in that state. Its not a battleground state. Give me a story that you might see unfold as to how a voter there would weigh more in the next election with National Popular vote than we have today . I think candidates would actually be look to poll them, a model what they care about. They know a voter in north dakota cares about health care in the same way that a voter in ohio or florida does. They can direct those ads to those individuals. And then those voters would hear from a candidate about the issues that they really care about. Dr. Wang, let me jump to you. I know you have a few graphs to show us as well, looking at this time of close elections, and looking at different simulated scenarios of how they get resolved in the future. Im interested in how you see the impact of a National Popular vote compact coming on board . First, i should say in addition to founding the Election Consortium im a Laboratory Scientist and a scientist should not be involved in this but democracy has got egotten complicated. I want to show unanticipated weaknesses. And its cspan so we get to show slides. Very exciting for an academic to show visuals. I teach at princeton university. I run a research laboratory. I just want to show some real and mythical flaws in the Electoral College. The bug is wearing my tie. Thats right. I have a cicadia. They come to princeton every 17 years. I want to show you so therefore we like to show cicadias. I want to show some flaws and replace some false beliefs. First i want to say the reason we care so much about the tlrl college this is a graph of the popular margin of whoever became president going back to john quincy adams. The reason we care about this, below that black horizontal line theres a time we had in the 19th century we had racial divisions, technological disruption, increasing inequality and deep partisanship. That time perhaps sounds familiar to us we have today racial divisions, technological disruption, increased inequality and deep partisanship and in two of the last five elections the person who got the most votes didnt become president of the United States. Theres a lot of interest in that. Really i want to show you now on the next slide in close elections theres a one in three chance that the popular vote winner will not become president. This can go in either direction. This is not friendly for television, if you want to read more about it, you can read about it at electio election. Princeton. Com. Theres a one in three chance the popular vote winner will not become president of the United States. This is a risk that can go in both directs. Injohn kerry pulled out a win in ohio he would have become president in 2004. Our conversation would have had a slightly different tenor today. The risk can go in either direction. Its a large risk. So t