first my name is recovered and i'd like to say welcome to a conversation about the state of our democracy as we get going there are a few things to cover first thanks for  coming partly because this issue that we're going to talk about tonight is really important and we're going to do tonight we're going to sort of consider what is the state of our democracy are we doing we're going to analyze the problem we're going to see to what extent you think we've got a problem now there are plenty of people out there that think we've got one but we're here to get your views  so we're going to talk about that we're going to talk about the parts of the problem the things that may be detracting from proper representation in our country today that have been a dental side by scholars and people across the country and then we're going to talk about what parts of those need be put together in the solution if we actually want to fix it and not just make another incremental change that never gets us to the point where it ever really get fixed along the way will we'll talk about the risks to our democracy could we lose it and finally once we've got an idea of the pieces and you will each time we'll go through you will collectively decide these issues and then at the end we will talk about the best way strategically if we're actually going to get this done is it reasonable to expect it from congress or can we get it all done from the supreme court or if we can't do we have to go the route our founders provided in case because they were convinced that there might be a set of circumstances where congress would refuse to act we have to go that route in order to get a complete fix and what is the best strategy now i have to say that in all the years i've been watching over this issue and it's out forty to fifty because i'm older than most of you except for a couple of people  i have been on the national board of common cause for half a dozen years and some other organizations that i participate with today no organization has ever that when i've been around asked their board of directors to go through and do this an s think about that so you are charting a very you know not tested very often ground and it's your responses that are interesting enough frankly i'm quite curious to see  because it's really important and we all bring our backgrounds and preferences and our biases to this conversation i have a bias in my bias is that i strongly believe that government ought to work to provide proper representation for all of its citizens in terms of the way we structure and finance our political system and since i'm now retired i'm putting effort in various ways whatever i think's most effective to peck away at that issue in concert with others around the country and other organizations and people that are picking mostly they're picking a pieces of the problem not the whole problem so in order to get through this whole presentation and this is my my fault and i apologize for it i asked  library the best time to start this back about a month and a half ago before i had finished the presentation i now know that we really need about two hours to get through this and have time for questions and answers and we've got an hour and a half so i'm going to hustle along the conversation that we're going to have is going to be mostly me trying to act as a fairly neutral presenter and i'll try and give pros and cons on the pieces it'll be quick these are more not totally informed responses you'll be giving the kind of gut reactions but they're still telling and so you will then register your response through the east click or the i clickers each have a power button a little orange one and when you press it once the green light comes on it will go out after a certain period of minutes so if you start to press it and it doesn't seem to be registering check the power but you have to have a green light before it will register it will only register your response once once you click it by either the a b or c button they have two more we're not going to use them tonight in response to a question that i will pose that will present here on the screen and then i have to open it up for the voting by pressing a button you then have time to vote the sooner we  sooner i can close it and then present your collective answer to the question on what piece we're talking about so if we have time at the end we'll open it up for questions but since they're going to kick us out of here at eight o'clock we may be you hustling right out at the end so let us go ahead and get going so we founded our country julie over the issue of improper representation think boston tea party taxation without representation we fought a war against great britain thankfully we won and eventually some years later we gathered in philadelphia an eighteen or seventeen eighty seven to put our constitution together and after debating it all eventually we adopted that and we adopted it to do the job of governing us better our declaration of independence a shot through with examples of the grievances that we had about representation with great britain and when our founders were putting together the constitution they were very adamant clear  in the federalist papers in madison that we want this government and the people we are selecting to represent us to be dependent on the people and the people alone now for honest about it that's the people that were getting elected to the house of representatives the good old boys were kind of hanging on to the way we elected the senate and it took us a while to get to the point where we popularly elected the senators but they clearly put our government together to provide better representation and given that it's fair to say as we look at congress how we've been doing so i'd like you to think about the last two or three decades think about how congress has been acting or not acting in response to the most pressing issues of our time that come up all the time how are they doing in handling issues related to health care nationally how are they doing in handling issues related to the environment and climate change how are they doing in relation to making fiscally responsible decisions that allow us not to go too far into debt for future generations and shove the burden off on them how are they doing in providing protections so for so that we have some confidence that the food we eat is safe or that we know the good the pros and cons same thing for things we come in contact chemical wise and go on and on just think of the range of issues and ask yourself and here's the question in recent decades has congress been properly representing the common common broad interest of most americans and here are the possible responses if you think the answer to that is yes you would press a if you think the answer to that is no you press a b and if you're not sure where you have no opinion or you damn well don't want to share with the rest the press see and so i've opened up the voting so go ahead and pick your yes check make sure that you've got a green light fifteen sixteen seventeen you can see it's registering the number of people that are voting it's everybody only registers once so it's everybody can i close it all right i'll close the voting and now bill is it possible to drop the lighting here a little bit further somehow so let's present the answers what have you voted eighty two percent of you said no congress is not doing a good job that's a little too much a little more than that i need a little more light up here ok ok let's let's go on to the next so how do we finance our federal system today for the first thing to remember hoops sally what happened the light just came away on the first thing to remember is that ninety eight percent of all americans do not give a dime directly or indirectly directly to any political party or political candidate in order to finance our federal political process it's an astounding figure ninety eight percent of the two percent of those who give something i'm one of those probably several people in the audience are two thirds of the money that comes in to finance our entire federal political process over a two y cycle comes from two tenths of one percent of american and there is plenty of evidence out there that because money is so essential to the way our i'll call it dysfunctional political process works at the moment that congress in order to get the money in outcomes of law or regulation and policy is leaning to the green in the way they are deciding those issues in ways that prioritize not the broad citizen interests but that's what the broad citizen interests are what we founded our country over so even though many people allege there's evidence for that you get to decide these questions  addition to that if we say ok for the last go around in two thousand and fifteen sixteen for the end tire federal election cycle this is winners and losers for the senate the house of representatives president the party conventions the whole nine yards the total amount of money in the past two years amounted to just about six point five billion dollars now that may sound like a lot of money if you because it's a two year cycle you divide it in half and you get about three point three billion so hang on to that figure because we're going to come back and use that as a reference point if you take that three point three billion and divide it by the number of registered voters in america it's only under less than forty five dollars and i'm a registered voter so it depends on how you look at the problem how have how many people have heard of martin princeton and his book affluence and influence ok he is a researcher a political scientist who back a few years ago four or five published a book based on research he did used a lot of graduate students and what he did was go back and through polling data going back in largely he did about a run of one thousand years most of it from two thousand and one through excuse me from one thousand nine hundred ninety one through two thousand and two but then he did four years a little earlier than that and he did two years a little later than the mid two thousand that he added to the data and he looked at all the issues that congress made decisions about and in the polling district data he could say what are the public's preferences on this range of issues and how do actions of congress line up with the public's preferences and he was able to use income data to divide the public's preferences by dest tense of based on the level of income people and a pattern emerge and his conclusion was that over this almost twenty year period it divided into ninety percent of us and ten percent appears now he's working in because that's the only data he could get in fact the top wealthiest ten percent of us really is probably driven by the top less than one percent of us but he had to work with ten percent data by desa and the conclusion was that whenever the preferences of the ninety percent of us differed from the preferences of the top ten percent of its over this end tire almost twenty year period actions by congress had zero statistically insignificant correlation with the preferences of the ninety percent of us it's a very damning conclusion the only time the ninety preferences of the ninety percent were ever taken into account is when the agreed with the preferences of the ten percent so let's move on a little bit now the next thing is how is congress responded to these kind of bits of information data research now this tall very top heavy maybe it'll topple over a pile of books here is just my own personal collection of books that speak specifically to this problem and it's only a fraction of what i you know what's really out there you want to nobel laureate it's in there you want to distinguish harvard professor or a princeton researcher it's in there you want  x members of the senate or house when they're not in any way involved in the political process anymore in commenting on it it's in there and congress has effectively simply dismissed it all it doesn't move them into hasn't it hasn't pushed change yet and so the one thing congress did do is back this issue  been in the news and people in organizations have been pushing in the seventy's in the eighty's in the ninety's in the two thousand and we're still pushing the one thing congress to do of note is that back in two thousand and two it passed the mccain that was the bill that chased the so soft money out of the political process soft money is money from corporations that can be given directly to a political party for party building but not directly to an individual candidate and it was deemed to have too much influence and so congress made a decision to ban it and they also did a couple of other things that were overturned by the supreme court so i'll skip that but soft money stayed and out of the two thousand total amount over two years to run our federal election system then it was a total two years of three point one so divided in half about one fifteen percent really fourteen to fifteen percent of the money from the political process so ask yourself you know was the system was the system broken before this and when they banned it did that fix it and that leads us to the question which is did the mccain feingold law that banned that money it did it stop the improper representation that was going on by congress and here are the potential answers and open it up for boating so if you think it did stop and everything was ok press eight if you think there were problems before and after press be impressed see if you would are unsure no opinion and let's see when we get up to everybody here and be there ok i will go ahead and close it and present the results who look at that so ninety four percent of us think it did not solve the problem now that's telling because that's the only thing congress is done now let's move on to the next thing that's happened in this and talk about the supreme court so let me get rid of this and move on whips excuse me push the press the wrong button so the supreme court during this time had a long line of cases that started way back in the seventy's where basically they attributed and conflated money and dollar money in speech together and there's a whole line of cases i won't go into the details and i said this briefly before but in doing this there's no way we can spend the time to go into all the detail to properly answer these questions so we're doing it what can dirty and hopefully it gets us thinking when we walk out of here and we are prompted to do a little more thinking about the best way to get more basically in which the supreme court said corporations can now we're overturning mccain feingold and corporations can now give soft money directly to parties and they can give and this corporations includes nonprofits includes labor unions it includes all the big organizations in america and they can also give money indirectly to five a one  organizations that allow money to be collected without explaining where the donors are coming from and who's giving and that money can then be used it's not supposed to be tied to a candidate but there's been a lot of cases where people have alleged pretty close collaboration despite that but it can be used to tip election outcomes in that in the way it advertises and so forth and so it's pretty clear and generally agreed that citizens united opened the floodgates and most people are aware of that but the question is before citizens united if we roll things back to two thousand and ten was everything fine if we fix the problem if we do that and that's where we're going with this question and so i'm going to open it up so you can vote and the question is if you think it fixed the problem and everything was fine after that press say if you think it did not press b and if you're not sure press everybody in anybody still to go i think that's about our number ok i will close the voting and present your answers eighty five percent think that overturning citizens united is not going to solve the problem now this is significant because if you think about it there are hundreds of organisations today out common cause the end c p public citizen it goes on and on some are conservative some are liberal everyone the main thing they're doing is trying to overturn citizens united so you have to ask yourself is it going to be effective and it raises that question based on the way you just voted so let's close this out and go a little bit further now let's dig into three outcomes of just the process on legislation and i picked big ones i warn you  advance but there are hundreds out there that are listed in major part but not totally in those books that cover all kinds of things i just picked three so i will tell you in advance that if you take the total amount of money to run the whole political system for two years each of these examples seated by huge amounts the first one if you overturn you could finance the entire political process of america for forty six years into the future that's a one time or the second one if you overturn the boat that congress gave you could finance the entire political process of america federally for thirteen years into the future but this isn't every year when you get that new over and over and over and the third one is so much bigger than the first two that it's almost incalculable but it isn't clear on the third one whether we would completely of avoided the result or whether we would have got a lesser result and so you can't really come up with a fair answer when i get to it but now i'll go through with the three of these are the first one is switching from analog digital broadcasting remember that now c b s used to come in on an analog well it was presented to us through analog technology  realized we could switch to digital technology in the same amount of the public airwaves and congress through the federal communications commission regulates them on our behalf because if we didn't regulate them there'd be chaos out there with everybody competing against everybody using the same frequency so it has to be but they they do it austin simply for us in our name and it brings in huge amounts of money because in order to use it people bid it to use for cell phone frequencies and so forth and it brings in billions and billions of dollars and every billion that comes in is a billion you and i don't pay into our federal treasury in taxes and keeping in mind that it's about three point three instead of charging for another broadcasters had a big interest in this and they showered a lot of money and campaign contributions on congress and congressmen don't like to upset the broadcasting industry because we need them and we're going to get elected that played into it probably and so the bottom line is that the congress gave away for free with the federal election commission and several independent bodies themselves were on record as saying would bring in seventy billion dollars if we put it out to bid that seventy billion we wouldn't have to make up in our budget and it's a one timer because and so if you used it digitally what's interesting is that on the same amount of frequency six meg of her digitally instead of one c b s you can have up to six so it's like you could have c b s number two and three and four and five and six depending on how you used the spectrum that was tremendously valuable if you're a broadcaster you don't have to pay to get on the airwaves to do that all you got to do is you do have expenses you've got to gear up for equipment you have to gear up for staff and you have to gear up for programming but not to pay the big bucks to get the use of the digital frequency and so congress gave that away for free and so if you simply went back and had congress say hey folks you're going to have to bid on this that isn't worth anything it wouldn't have brought in any money but everybody knew it was phenomenally valuable but congress chose to override that yet c c staff was recommending they do that so the question it poses is did congress prioritize broad citizen interest in providing us with access to digital technology instead of analog because there is an advantage did they prioritize our interest over the broadcaster interests or vice versa so if you think they prioritized our interest press a and if you think it is broadcast or interest be and press see if you're unsure or no opinion i think we're there everybody in ok i will close it off to present your results sixty three percent say that it was favoring broadcaster interests twenty percent twenty eight percent are unsure and nine percent said no ok so let's move on  to the next example which is protecting americans from bad drugs now back in the eighty's well pharmaceutical companies can sell at high prices in america because of patent protection as long as the drug is under patent and back in the eighty's in the reagan years congress for extended the length of time the patents applied by three and a half to five years depending on some of legislation and it was called the prescription drug marketing act now here's what it was designed to do and then here's what many allege it was really doing it was designed to protect americans from bad drugs coming across our borders that's a fair issue you know sometimes people are cutting drugs and not delivering them in the quantities we want but a huge percentage of the pharmaceuticals are made in america manufacture many of them used to be manufactured in puerto rico for some tax reasons and they're sold in the states and they were sold abroad at anything over manufactured cost and that the pharmaceutical companies could negotiate with various countries and so around the world today and then you can buy the same drugs same package exactly same drugs we have in america thirty to forty percent less on average now what really was going on is that up until one thousand nine hundred seven it used to be legal when pharmaceutical companies made them here and sold them let's say for example into canada for a wholesale pharmaceutical company in canada to buy em up in bulk mark them up ten or fifteen percent and sell them back into the united states at lower prices who the pharmaceutical companies didn't like that that lowered prices and they couldn't make as much money so what this legislation actually did this is congress that decided that we should have this outcome that actually closed off the ability to have free trade in pharmaceuticals across borders now most countries that want to deal with that issue a bad drugs set up an inspection testing program and it's nowhere near as expensive as the amount at stake if the total market for pharmaceuticals goes up or down by ten percent or forty percent or whatever it is much less expensive to set that up to congress  they just banned it so today it is illegal although not for for you and me to order a prescription from canada and have it shipped here provided that it's less than ninety days and only for my personal use because they weren't the firms through companies weren't trying to get at that that would get people to upset what they were trying to do is close off the big threat which was wholesalers buying in bulk marking it up the business today is about four hundred forty billion dollars in america total sales if you reverse this one law and even though drugs are priced thirty forty percent less for the same drug around the world on average prices in the american market only drop ten percent on forty four hundred forty billion dollars that is forty four million dollars in citizen pockets compared to the n tire cost of financing our federal election system today at three point three billion a year and it was less it was about one point five billion back when this was passed and you could today finance that thirteen years into the future but every year it would come in again and again and again and so when we talk about pharmaceutical prices today basically being it's high as the pharmaceutical company thinks it can get away with i've got an m d anderson and the way that price it's really congress that has chosen to have that result now you don't hear it expressed that way very often and it's congress that refuses to change it because there are bills in all the time to change this and it never gets anywhere in the bottom line so let's go ahead and present this question did congress prioritize citizen interest over the pharmaceutical interest industry interests and let's post the results and then open it up for a everybody in ok i will close it and present the results ninety one percent think congress was looking after the pharmaceutical industry now think about this in relation to what you hear about now days these are your reactions today so let me close it out and let's go on to the next one this is regulation of wall street and let's go back into the mid eight and everybody knows that under our present political system you've got to have money if you're running for congress big money in order to get the t v ads in the cost of the ads is huge now that everybody needs to raise money and every congressman and sitting senator also they don't talk about it much has to tie to the democratic party or the republican party and that's a big number every month you know it's thousands maybe tens of thousands of dollars average out over the course of a year and the democratic party got caught a few years ago at an introductory meeting for freshman telling them that out of every day they were in want in they are represented they had to spend thirty to forty percent of it dialing for dollars or raising money that's why congress only spends on average three days a week working for us on actual issues they're out of town and they're spending lots of time raising money under the present system right now and so if you go back to the mid eighty's the biggest contributor of money to congressman for campaign contributions comes by industrial sector from banking insurance and finance that's the name of the sector it is far bigger in volume than any other sector out there so it was going in the eighty's a little bit too much to republicans and not to democrats and democrats wanted in so how did what happened remember the rebranding of the democratic party the new democrats were going to be more business friendly in the early mid ninety's bill clinton championed this he got elected using it and it worked the companies give money to the people that are looking after their interests so the democrats said we're willing to look after your interests a little more than we used to be and so they got some money and when clinton was elected and you say what happened with regard to the financial industry basically democrats and republicans teamed up and they chose to go light on the finance industry they did not regulate heavily at all they backed off in various ways in one nine hundred ninety eight or nine they  they undid the so called glass steagall that that was the barrier that said that commercial banks that used our deposits and could invest them in mortgages and and loans to companies and loans to people like they'd been doing but they were not allowed like goldman sachs to trade in risky equity plays in the stock market it removed that barrier and banks jumped in whole heartedly in order to make more money it made sense to see the more money that we've got to play with the more we get invested the more we can make so we don't need that big capital equity cushion let's reduce that and they reduced it and that let them invest more and they could make more money that allowed managers to meet their bonus targets they got bigger and bigger bonuses out of that the problem is the government wasn't keeping very close track on what was actually going and as new financial products appeared collateral debt obligations and credit default swaps derivatives things like that the government made a conscious choice ruben and greenspan all pressured bill clinton who agreed that we're not going to we're not going to regulate and push these people let them do what business knows how to do so we didn't know and they actually were really nasty to a woman named brooksley born who was in charge of the commodities future commission at the time and believed there was huge risk here and we should know in you don't get the information you can't even quantify how big the risk is and so you can tell  gently react and she got chased out of there and she lost her argument and so this all led to less regulation which in turn led to two thousand to ten two thousand and eight and the m and when that meltdown occur it happened big time and the amount of money that was lost hoops excuse me in that meltdown was huge seven point four trillion disappeared in equity in stocks alone from your pension my you know if you if you've got money and stocks it disappeared it took you years to build back up while it was building back up you didn't have the use of that money to earn interest  returns so you were penalized in addition to that home values lost three point four trillion dollars another huge chunk we lost five and a half million jobs and the amount of income that disappeared from our g d p over what it would have been is estimated if you divide it back by the number of households in america to have cost an average of fifty five thousand eight hundred bucks of income last year all over america on the average i understand some more some lost more others less but the results were huge and then all people argue about what were the exact cause of this was it just that we p do too many home loans and let people into high that was a piece that sort of started it but the big risk in most all the commentators agree is that what really was going on is that we didn't regulate why didn't we regulate properly because of the way we finance the political process and look at what would cost us that amount of money it's tens of trillions of dollars the end tire productive capacity of america that year in two thousand and eight was about fourteen point one trillion dollars and we're talking almost the whole amount that disappeared because of decisions congress m and so that raises the question when congress was doing this where they prioritizing broad citizen interest over financial industry interests or are they looking after our interests and so on to the choice is all open up the voting go ahead ok i think we're there and we get an extra vote this time thirty four ok now a present the results here we have hit one hundred percent now i want you to think about this in relation to the amount of money it takes to finance our entire political system suppose it got finance differently in a way that gave congress incentive to put more citizen trust first and we'll talk about that later ok let's move on so now we're going to get into what most effective reform include and there are about ten factors that have been a den of fide that have adversely in some people's opinions affected representation in congress providing good representation but you don't have to agree with those people you get to decide yourselves so let's dig in and i'm going to try and go through these pretty fast because it's ten after seven and we got to be out of here by eight the first one though is should voting be a right and effectively right now the constitution provides no explicit right to vote the states decide that now we have fifty states there are more than three thousand counties and then within those counties are it's thirteen thousand separate voting districts and because states make their own decisions about all kinds of rules as to who gets to vote when and how and under what circumstances we get off kinds of different policies applying to the same act of citizen voting depending on where we happen to be and it makes a big difference member of the hanging chads in florida in the gore election that gets into ballot design which is all over the l whether or not you have a paper trail when you use electronic voting all over the lot what if you are poor and minority what are the barriers that are put up as to whether you can vote we used to have a poll tax that's been done the way but there are all kinds of contradictory policies if you're a student and you're away from home do you get to vote in the town you're in not always arizona got beaten back they were trying actively to prevent all students from voting in arizona when they were away at school but some states do it they don't let you vote it varies all over the lot in addition to that soldiers are treated differently it's very difficult to get the boat back the procedures all differ a little bit state by state when they do get back there often counted but in some counties if the boat's not close and in what people locally vote they don't they haven't their stories out that we don't even count the soldier votes unless we think it would make a difference five a bit i'd sort of like them to count whether it made a difference or not and so we have all kinds of this if you go to felony convictions that's the main reason we deny the right to vote it can be anything from actual murder but it can be in much bigger numbers your kids your neighbor's kid someone you know that had bought too much marijuana and got over the felony limit which isn't that high or maybe they bought it from the wrong person and they got caught for selling or buying and so they've gone too often they've gone to  jail to prison they paid their dues they're out this skin many states follow them and they can't vote for a lifetime six million people are affected by that so the question this poses is if we're trying to improve representation for americans what do we want to do about this and all of a sudden this isn't working i'm not sure wh let's see if it will go back excuse me let's try again oh dear we're in trouble not work no no this is working i have to start it all over and reference it but bring me up a couple of batteries sally from another blue thing and i will substitute them and see if that makes a difference i apologized ye just one just probably we may have to if this takes too long let's see if we can get batteries out of this i haven't even looked to see how that happens oh dear just know it's done  differently i didn't say this i meant to at the beginning this is the first time i've given the presentation so this is get first run guinea pig run for me and for you we will try over time to improve it and get better so i apologise ok let's see if this does anything ok maybe what i've got to do we're going to take a break briefly here is go back and i've got to end the show and restart it and i apologize for this let's see  we've got the rate clicker here it in say that that relates the instructor to the show and that should theoretically work yes finally ok so let's back you know ok so here's the question should our constitution provide all citizens of voting age with an explicit right to vote and i need to go back and use the slide show present interview  here and since i've restarted this i have to do something else all over again that i did at the beginning of this before you want to in this has to slide way over to the right hoo there ok and then when we open this up ok fine so the now i can finally post the question so if you think that our constitution should provide citizens of voting age with an explicit right to vote to strengthen proper representation and the flipside of what we talked about is that you know some states say hey we want to be tougher we don't want those then people vote so which way do we come down on this what serves our interests in strengthening our democracy so i will open it up so you can vote now you have to start from there ok close it off present the results ninety one percent say yes that so effectively we're saying that should be a piece of that that could should be a piece of the solution and so let's eliminate this and move on should we strengthen federal and state election commissions now in the federal level we have the federal election commission on the state level that it's all over help some states  put that responsibility in the secretary of state other states set up election commissions of one sort or another of their states put the responsibility somewhere else and so the question is should we have a more consistent uniform system now with respect to the federal election commission it's congress that has set up the federal election commission to operate the way it does it is responsible for being the policem for whether or not all or federal candidates are raising money the proper way spending it within the proper limits if they spend it wrong and they do something that arguably tilts the outcome it's up to the federal election commission to police that and to stop them because otherwise if we if it tips the outcome of an election it can affect the way we wanted it to turn out as citizens and they are widely regarded as a joke in academic circles they have put three republicans and three democrats on that and most of the time it does not do any of the policing and it's really well known and often badly maligned by scholars they simply said it's better that we don't go after your side if you don't go after our side who wins and then who loses but that's situation we have today and that's a situation that is main been maintained because congress has chosen to maintain it that way they could fix this now california in regard to citizen redistricting not setting up an election commission has come up with a different approach they've said enough of this we're going to put some independent citizens in the middle of this and we're going to require we're going to have republicans and democrats on this committee but they're not going to control it and we're going to have a chunk of citizens in the middle and we're going to make sure as much as we can in this is difficult that we have independent citizens that are looking after citizen interests and in the legislation we are going to mandate that all of them are required to put citizen interests first and they are not to set up anything in a way that gives more advantage to one party or another and so they have an application process you apply and it takes a while you know they have an a group that then sift through they pick an independent body in their state in california they pick the auditor because the auditors supposed to be fairly neutral they go through and interview the applicants and they went out the ones they feel are qualified and then you get a big pool of people like university political science professor and researchers and people like that that are qualified way in excess of the number of commissioners of citizens they need they then put it into a pool and by random selection they pick a small percentage of the ideas so that you don't bias the result and we could do something like that federally now it's unlikely that we're going to ask congress to do it for us but we could mandated if we were just putting together a proposal that fixed it so that's one way that some states have begun there are few other states that are beginning to move in this way but there's a real problem with the federal election commission and another thing that goes on relates back to congress is if you're a congressman and you're running and a representative you're peter welch or you're bernie or you're pat and you're required points in the election cycle to submit reports that explain to citizens how you're raising your money and how you are spending it and it's up to the c to enable and promote that process now peter welch fills out his report and they get filed electronically and bam instantly they're available to you and me but  leahy and bernie fill out their report and they get electronically sent to the u s senate which then prints a mountain paper and sends them over to the f e c why do they do that because once they get to the f e c somebody has got to take this paper and they've got to laboriously keep punch and put in all this data before and finally after a delay it is available to the public often that lags beyond the election and it's done deliberately mitch mcconnell has a big hand in this on the rules committee and he's been involvement rules committee for a well over a decade and it's well known and it doesn't get fixed despite all of this kind of talk all the people in those books that talk about it it doesn't get fixed so it just goes on so if you wanted to have more uniformity you would have to probably go constitutionally to mandate it and then it would be up to maybe it to be implemented by the u s senate but you'd have a standard to hold them to him whether they did it and then it would be up to the federal election commission or the citizen's election commission to implement it and enforce it and that could be carried down so that it followed through on oh i was supposed to at the beginning of this ask you about that sorry that follows down to the states and within the states the states on the state level police their own people within the states they can do everything to implement what goes on in the state provided it would stay within federal uniform bounds so it depends on whether we value the uniformity or not and it depends on how much preference we want to to citizen interests and so that raises the question should we mandate more nonpartisan incidence and focused election commissions would it strengthen democracy or not and open up the voting so if you think we should p and i think that's everybody all close it off and present the results seventy nine percent say we should three percent say no and fifteen percent need more time or unsure ok that's fairly telling that's usually what most people would expect would be one of the more controversial things because it's a radical change from what we've been doing so let's go to the next one and  the next improvement is related to election financing now we could have started with this one obviously but we've already talked about the supreme court linking money with speech at the expense of proper representation how else could we finance the process if we don't want to finance it the way we're doing it now well one approach that's been advanced since we need to raise three point three billion dollars a year is to take that money right out of the public treasury from our taxes that we've paid and give it back to each registered voter in the form of like your or a prepaid credit card that could only be used to allocate funds to candidates in the election based on the positions in appeal of their positions so that one hundred percent of the people get to vote for which candidates properly are best serving their interests as opposed to right now where two percent or really less than that get to and i can hear some of you in the audience saying right now i don't want my good money to go to that bad candidate why would you want to do that anybody doing that you don't have to fess up but the question is given the examples we've seen we've seen you know in the broadcasting pharmaceuticals if this gave our elected representatives a different incentive as to who they had to pay attention in order to get the money to run their campaigns would they make decisions in a way that better represents all our interests that's the power in this idea so it's a fair question we don't have that yet there it does exist in certain cities around the country now it's being played with a little bit but we certainly don't have it nationally but it leads to the question of what would financing elections this way improve representation over the present system so what is your initial reaction to that and i will open up  thirty one we need thirty three i think we got it ok ok we're a little more divided but not much seventy three percent think it's a good idea and twenty seven percent are unsure undecided need more time and we are going awful fast on this stuff so that's fair but that's telling given what's actually happening or more likely not happening out there today in the real world so let's move from there and move on to the next and get into gerrymandering now our founders believed that we citizens should have a big hand in  selecting our own representatives whether it's in the primaries or in general congressman in madison's words felt that representatives at least in the house of representatives should be dependent on the people alone as i said earlier so so therefore should exert the important judgment on who we want to represent us with gerrymandering today we're a political party in charge that has a majority in the legislature they set the lines in all kinds of ways not to preserve the integrity of south burlington of the city or burlington but to basically pick their own voters so that they can have a majority republican or majority democrat if the situation is reversed how does that sort of broad citizen interest our interest and again if you wanted to fix it  the way to fix it is the way i started to describe for california if you were looking for an alternate they set up a citizens election commission and they did this because citizen in california can buy petition put something on the ballot we're not allowed to do that for a month but they can and so they did they put it on the ballot and they moved to put citizens in the middle of how they set up the redistricting and they want and so now  the districts are set up in a much different basis than they were before and basically it was because voters citizens not the politicians that initiated this it was forced by citizens so the question is would that be an improvement and i will go forward and push that here's the question should we mandate something that move more in that would that help and they're the choices if you believe it would help press yes if you believe it wouldn't press no and see for unsure and i will open up the voting and if you voted once before i opened it up you may have to we're up to twenty eight we need thirty three i think i mean nine and you know thirty two getting there ok i will close it off and i will present the answers and ninety seven percent think that would be improved now we don't have that information that's not the way we do in vermont legislature makes those decisions one of the characteristics is that we have the way we have six us or six vermont senators and the county jim leddy being one of them in the old age that wouldn't pass muster in terms of one person one vote standards around the country  d and yet we have it i have been told that when you look at the mechanics behind the scenes in vermont that if you adjusted it should mean county would pick up a seventh person if you had each district picking up something and and that would come from up in the northeast kingdom and so the republicans don't want to give it up and so we don't change the system joanna did you have something ok maybe we take this up at the end because if we start this will never get through the presentation if we have time at the end can we come back to that because otherwise we won't get through and i have to make a decision but it's a fair question so thanks for raising it  so let's move on and now we get into who should select candidates for the general election well in civics class you know those of us who have a civics class in the old days i think that's isn't that supposed to be our he wanted to have a political he wanted candidates that were elected to work with him because he was pullin a lot of money off the top for various corrupt graft kind of things and so he had a famous saying i don't care who does the elect and so long as i get to do the nominate i think about that he would as long as he knew because he had control in the back rooms of who got to get on the ballot if he could have people on the bow each one of which would work with him he didn't care who won he could work with any audio that elected as long as he knew they cooperate with now fast forward to the way the political process runs now the democratic party was in the news a lot this year were they trying to tip an outcome did they believe that hillary was much better known and bernie or any of the other candidates and if they reduced the number of debates and they gave less exposure in the debates and had a few fewer viewers by pairing them next to football games and things that would lead off viewers maybe hillary would emerge at the end of it and people wouldn't hurt as much as  have and maybe hillary would emerge and she'd have an advantage and bernie broke through that pretty much but lawrence lessig did they completely kept him from getting into the debates even though he had more morse money support and number support than half the republican candidates than either jim webb or john chafee and then the d n c changed the rules on him without getting into the details to make sure that even though the people who'd heard of him said hey this guy's not so bad he would not was not given the opportunity to the rest of us across the country to hear about him and make up our own minds independently they skewed the answer they then went to court because bernie sued him and they made the argument in court through their lawyers that the d n c is a private group and we don't have to do we don't have to provide a system that's equal for everybody we can do what we want and that argument won in th and the court dismissed bernie's suit and he didn't push it beyond that that's the way they are the republican party did something similar back in two thousand and twelve that kept buddy roemer out of the debates bu you know you're you're a governor he was talking on this issue and they didn't want him less it was to actually and so why do you don't have enough percentage of the vote that knows about you in the polls so but he did what he could do we went to new hampshire went to every little burg and lo and behold his poll numbers picked up two two three seven percent went back come on let me into the debate no nobody you weren't you didn't have poll numbers to get into the first debate we can't let you into any of the other debates whose job is it to pick our candidate your it's mine somebody else's so the question is if you wanted to get around that in this is a biggie and i should have explained it excuse me i get that by mistake california has tried to get around this because in the primaries right now a tiny fraction so all the electorate vote in the republican primary the democratic primary ten to fifteen percent across the country average of all the registered voters get to vote if you're a candidate you've got to get through the primary and get elected who do you appeal to the views and preferences of one hundred percent of the voters for the purposes of the ten to fifteen percent are most likely to vote in the primary that you've got to get through and so small percentages of voters are picking the candidates that come out the end of that that everybody else in the general election gets to gets to choose among and the candidates that are voting on the republican or the democratic side tend to be a little more excited interested involved ideologically maybe a little stronger and a little more in opposition and it's part of what drives our political process further and further apart and makes it less easy for people to collaborate and cooperate in congress at least that's what a lot of researchers have concluded so california decided to hell with this and so they put together something that they call a nonpartisan blanket primary and that means we don't have a republican or a democratic primary we just have a primary and everybody that wants to run if they have enough support to get on the ballot and get above the threshold because you have to have that cut there on the ballot one ballot and one hundred percent of the voters get to vote no party affiliation whatsoever and they pick in california the top two highest vote getters if you have too many people can we come back to that at the end because of the time we've only got twenty one minutes to get out of here and  they pick they pick it by the top vote getter but if you have a lot of candidates that can reduce the amount of percentage that any candidate at the top is getting there's a way around that if you have  rank voting where everybody ranks the candidates and you go through and without explaining the details of the process you get above a majority for the people that you end up selecting and so it comes down to  you know does that provide you with better representation if you have one hundred percent of the people picking the people that in the general election we're going to vote and choose between and so i will move forward and open up the voting so that we can ask the question would it improve representation if we mandated non partisan blanket primaries so all registered voters can p no i don't think you can ok let's close it and present the results eighty one percent say that's a good idea sixteen percent want more information and three percent saying no i don't think so ok let's move on so the next is do we strengthen our democracy if we have all candidates that win with a majority of support as opposed to a  now first past the post whatever gets the highest in a plurality in vermont in international elections they win but would it be stronger if we had a process that took a little longer but required us to end up with half of a supporting who emerges there are two ways to get there one you have a runoff election and secondly you do it with the same rank choice voting but either one ends up with having a majority of people behind whoever it is that then is elected whether it's in the primary or in the general election you can even use and so the question is and by the way if you did this and you went with  majority we pretty much negated the need for the electoral college but might have had a little detail about how that played out but it would be a step towards doing away with the electoral college so let's pose the question should we mandate it would it improve representation and here the possibility you think yes press a no press be unsure no opinion press c and i'll open it up for the voting who are we going to get to thirty seven or eight thirty one ok i'll close it off and present the answers a little closer on this one two thirds of you think it's a good idea one third on so if she were three percent say no ok let's move on and  next should we use our public care wiser ways better during the election process now we don't have to have elections that go on for two years in our system it is so hard because of the way we structure the process for a candidate to get known that they have to start way in advance especially if they're not they don't have good name recognition it gives a huge advantage to somebody who has name recognition and so other countries don't do it that way they use their public airwaves they have a chunk of time that is available free and they use it to have debates and to have conversations equally with all the candidates it gets rid of an awful lot of negative advertising you want to throw mud at your opponent you throw it when the opponent is on the stage next to you and they're going to get to respond after you throw the mud and what happens is again it tends to bring things in away from the extremes more towards the center more towards you know it makes it a little bit more able to collaborate and work together if you use that kind of approach it would also shorten the election process big time if we chose to do it that way however if we did that you know there's a whole crew whole line of thought that says that money will speech and if i've got enough money i should be able to spend it any way i want and it's a first amendment right and if i have more money than you do i get to have a bigger megaphone and i can amplify use that to amplify me my speech repeated over and over in the national media and effectively drown out your speech if you're not as well funded and that's a first amendment right the a c l u supports that and there was a big fight me a c l u back about twenty years ago and every former executive director and board member said that that was wrong and they went back twenty years every one of them except one in the government and they wrote a long letter and they disagreed with the group the change approach that i support the a c l u but that's one of the things we have a mix in an organization that's one of the things that happened so the question is if you did this broadcasters would scream bloody murder you're taking away our right to make money using that three airway that you gave us their response to that is ok it's a public airway you have certain obligations that can go along with that if it was mandated its citizens put together the approach we used you have to live with it if we took five percent of the total time during a shortened election period you would have to affect and it's going to be prime time so i would have a higher value for than other you know late night times but maybe it's ten fifteen percent difference in the income to the company they would have to raise their rates and the advertiser if that were advertising would bear that and you have to decide whether that would be a public benefit on balance to make that happen or not and that basically raises the question should we mandate the use for moderated debates and discussion among all qualifying candidates so we all got an equal shot at hearing from each candidate we're not going to like them all and then we could make our own decision  on which one we like better with based on roughly equal information from each in a short period and so it's there the possibilities and i will open up the  i see jim looking at his watch we get fifteen minutes slide through these so we can get to the strategic part pretty fast the next one is should election cycles be shorter what we've talked about what you'd need to do in order to make it shorter if you can easily make it shorter without it being unfair if you kept our present system but if we couple that with other improvements should we mandate shorter election cycles and let's open up the voting ok close it off present the results seventy nine percent think yes fifteen percent not sure three percent no ok should we improve disclosure right now we talked about we talked about the senate and the way they play with disclosure trumps tax returns or a lack of tax returns have been should we mandate through arse citizen election commissions more uniform required standards so that we learn more about the candidate would it be a good idea and would it strengthen our representation on balance the other side of that argument is that hey i've got a first amendment right to my own privacy and i'm damned if i'm going to share with you elect me without knowing and so which one is in citizen's interest in terms of better representation and so here are the here's the question should we mandate prompt an open disclosure and there the choices for yes be for no c for unsure in the voting is ok i'm going to close it off and present the results ninety three percent yes seven percent not sure no ok and on to the next now should we make changes to improve voter participation there are a variety of things you could do if citizens have more confidence in the process more will participate if you had if you change the way we financed it you'd give people more incentive to participate because if you got to make a decision on now how to allocate fifty bucks in a voucher you've got to learn enough about candidates to make that decision you've got fifty hotbox sitting there so that would probably motivate some people to spend more time thinking about it if you had a process that allowed us to learn more evenly about candidates that would help should we have broader more equal standards means more federalizing and less states rights if you did that would that would that basically be a positive development and so there's the question should we mandate that sort of thing in order to achieve those goals and he the answers attentional answers oh i forgot to open the voting and i apologize other countries have lost their democracy germany lost its democracy in the early thirties when the nazis came in and they didn't get it back till after the end of the war and forty five and we've all heard stories about how that played out russia got its democracy for the first time in decades i mean in centuries back in the mid one nine hundred ninety s and it was a fledgling democracy they didn't have a strong court system an independent judiciary and today it's widely acknowledged russia doesn't have a democracy they got to not talk or see now there is no debate among political parties or site that you're not given an opportunity if you disagree to raise your raise your opinion and they've slid backwards and it happened in the last ninety six to now eleven years so the question is what about us and here are some of the factors that have helped other countries slide and lose their democracy by the way as benjamin franklin exit it the convention in seven hundred eighty seven a group of people stopped him on the street and said hey what kind of a government have you chosen forest and his answer was a republic if you can keep it so here are the factors there negative indicators first citizens are denied proper representation when you've already answered that one the very reason we founded our country second one party rule is established so just think out loud how we're doing on that front third political leaders deny objective truth in favor of glorious basically they stop using fact base for their arguments for slowly but surely people are marginalised newspaper or courts certain laws certain organizations certain groups certain individuals are denigrate first and then they're isolated and they're diminished and when all that happens and you could come up with more criteria in this when all that happens and you get to the end it all turns on how citizens respond to that if majorities of citizen choose to comply i don't want to say that that's wrong in the way they're handling that closet class of people because they might turn against me if enough people sit on the sidelines and are silent that's what leads to losing the democracy if too many people sit on the sidelines it goes so the question it leads to are we on track to diminish or to lose our democracy and there are the possible responses no open up the voting ok i think where there are closer present the results seventy three percent say yes twenty one percent say not sure three percent say no ok on to the next now how do we this is a strategic part and well we've got seven minutes for her supposed to be out here so there are three ways we could fix this one is congress could fix it in initiating propose either through statute but they could have done that for the last forty or fifty years and they haven't or through amendments that they vote out but if congress does that and it's normally congress that does f they voted out every amendment that we've used so far but it takes two thirds of both houses of congress that's four hundred thirty five in the house and one hundred in the senate two thirds of those those are all democrats and they're not all republicans neither side can either side can block the other right now so we don't get anything at the present the question is and we haven't you've seen what's happened we've talked about what's happened or not happened over the last forty or fifty years so there are bills that are produced there's a bill right now in the house and a companion in the senate that would propose a h j rez in this house and s j h in the senate basically it would make some it would give congress the right to make some improvements doesn't mandate they they haven't decided to do it says instead of the supreme court deciding this will give congress a chance but even that you say how much support does it have will it you know you things are introduced all the time do they ever see the light of day the house has out of three four hundred  ever going to make progress so it leads us to the question are we going to get a fix that incorporates the things you have identified tonight realistically out of congress congress likely to do that and here are the possible results and go ahead and vote how you think about that issue it could happen by statute any time over the last forty fifty years or now or it could happen by constitutional amendments that in time hope sorry there we go no not yet there we go here it's done it again now how does that happen boy ok let's do it quick by show of hands and i'll have to use an eye clicker to advance the but we're running out of time just a minute ok how many people that think it's likely that congress will fix this us in a real comprehensive way oh dear it's hard when you have to show hands how many think know how many are unsure ok on to the next supreme court we've talked about what the supreme court has done or not and the question is given what supreme court has done the line of cases the people that make up the supreme court today the likelihood of who's going to be appointed to the supreme court in the future how likely is it and and given what isn't in the constitution because the court only only can decide based on what they're interpreted in within the constitution how likely is it that under the present constitution that supreme court's going to broadly solve this for us i guess we got to do a show of hands i apologize this is how many people think that supreme court can fix it how many people think it they probably aren't going to fix it how many people are undecided ok and so let's go on well if we don't have much coming from either of those two i think about that most organizations today are either knocking on congress's door to fix itself hundreds of nonprofits or they're knocking on the supreme court to fix it and if they're not we're not to in your opinion get progress then we have to go to what's left which is article five in the that's how we amend our constitution and believe it or not our founders had a big debate about this way back in the beginning seventeen eighty seven and basically in draft it said what we know congress in issue eight and a guy raised his hand i'd like to think it was oh shucks from the virginia george mason from virginia and he said i can't support this because i believe that if congress ever gets to the point in the future where they are acting in his words oppressive to the broad interests of th people today we would say congressmen are putting their own reelection interest the interest of their wealth the influential backers campaign backers money backers and the infant influence or the interest of their political party ahead of the broad interests of the voters that congress the founders concluded it won the argument won the day that congress would never properly reform itself so they built in a way citizens could use citizens never used it it's controversial but it's the one way citizens could propose amendments broad enough to fix this and build a movement for support and it requires you to go through our state legislatures it takes two thirds of the legislatures that's thirty thirty three you've got to get over to propose a resolution calling for a convention to me it makes sense that you wouldn't do that until you had a proposal that people were behind that would actually fix it  go forward from there and at the moment there is a group that is using that approach it's a conservative group koch brothers have funded affiliate groups and they are pushing har on their vision of less regulation and a diminished governmental role in our lives and the first thing up is a balanced budget amendment and that would make it harder to respond to things like the financial crisis where you had to spend money ahead of what you were bringing in and they are of got they are well on their way to getting to the thirty three threshold how many are aware that they have already racked up twenty eight states five more to go and they racked up a lot of them in the last few years it's quite likely they're going to get there so what's the response of most organizations if they get there the people that will be selected as delegates or people who think that's a good idea that are passionate about that approach there will not be they will be the only voice in the room there will not be a debate on an alternative approach that would actually more broadly fix this now many of the organizations led by common cause were going to force them to kick us out of here are opposing this the best thing to do is play defense in this regard you know they're too far ahead they've already anticipated rules and they've got legal briefs in their interest paid in all this and they're saying the best thing to do is play defense and not to move forward the counter to that is come on if we're not going to solve this problem with congress or the supreme court the only solution we've got is to go this other route and you know let's play often it's let's fight for what is important to us as a country imagine if we didn't respond when russia put up the first sputnik and they were ahead  us imagine if we didn't respond as a country when the confederate states is seated and we just said oh they're too far let's play defense let's let that's not stand up that's the choice we face there's no reason we've got bright people plenty there's plenty of lawyers there's no reason except the will to do it that citizens couldn't do that and so the final question is if we did that and we did it by building a movement and then present it through citizens to state legislatures given the math because it still takes two thirds can you do it if you only if you don't collaborate across on all ideologies conservatives and liberals and we all have a common interest in making our government work force if we leave the other issues like abortion reform and things that we're never going to agree on off the table and you just focus on the things we're talking about tonight we all have a common interest in that can we do it i can't say for sure but i can say for sure that if we don't try we've you pretty will render judgment on what we're going to face it's more of what we've been talking about more of the problems and so the final question is basically well i guess we'll do it way showa hands and i apologize  if you think that's a good idea raise your hand whoops i apologize i can article five men meant by citizens and state legislatures be adopted without collaboration there are two questions here that's the first one so everybody who thinks that you can do it without collaborating across the lines raise your hand for everybody who thinks that you can't make the math work raise your hand for b and everybody who's unsure or needs more thought and opinion raise your hand for c ok that's that's a one sided approach ok so the next the next one is is it likely that we citizens in our legislatures could propose more comprehensive reform that we have a shot of moving forward by the article five process then we are going to get out of the supreme court and out of congress and again the choices are here if you think the answer is yes raise your hand if you think what i apologize raise your hand if you think no and if you are unsure or a or don't have an opinion raise your hand yet needs more thought ok so what can you do to help there are many things number one as we talked about most organizations today are lobbying congress to reform itself for the forty fifty years we have been making much progress against double a c p isn't making much progress on voting rights common cause it makes making much progress on all lot of reform governments public citizen on a whole host of issues public citizen is pushing and if they're all lobbying congress and they're not getting  results there's a question about whether the board at some point needs to reassess what its role is and whether it's being responsible if it's following a strategy that isn't bearing results so if you think that it makes sense for them to be rethinking this with your letters with your money to the organizations you have an ability to influence that another thing you can do is to walk out and repeat this discussion with friends  you know talk about it think about it vigorous discussion and debate is good for the soul as well as for our nation so you can have some effect that way if you'd like to be kept in the loop i have an email list out there and if you sign up and give me your permission periodic lee and i don't do a lot of social media so i promise i won't beat down the inbox but if i hear of something that looks promising i will try and pass it on for people to consider and once in a while i write something and i pass it up so that's another thing you can do and mostly i know ok so mostly it's time to say thank you for coming and this is really important and thank you for giving it your thought and it rests with us that rests with citizens what happens in the future so thanks very much good night