Transcripts For CSPAN Texas Tribune Festival 20240714

[captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [laughter] [applause] thank you. [applause] lets get the show started. I think youre clapping for the governor. Im the Senior Editor at politico in washington, d. C. I think you might be able to hear me now . Lets check this thing on the side. Any better now . Ok, lets do it. Hows that now . Better . Good. Good. We are going to do it. Feedback,for the thats the sort of participation we want over the next 80 minutes, you might be able to tell from my accent im not from around here. We are looking at how we can solve problems and fix americas political system, apparently it is still broken and they need an australian here. But we have just meant to tell us how to fix us its governor steve bullock. And we have a panel of distinguished guests and we will go into the details of working in pieinthesky ideas of how we are going to fix american politics. As an outsider, before we get started, feel free to try some innovations like not talking about impeachment for 20 minutes. We are going to talk about some real ideas over the course of the next 80 minutes. And we would love your fest19ipation, use trib if you would like to throw some ideas my way. And i want to thank our sponsors politicolitical tent. Lets get into the discussion governor. You are the governor from montana, also a president ial candidate for 2020. You contributed an idea to our Politico Magazine issue around the idea of campaign finance, if you were elected president , from day one you would issue an executive order that required anyone wanting to do business with the federal government to disclose all of their corporate donations. And he would push for a disclose act and bring all dark money out into the open. That is something you have had a long track record working on, including on the Citizens United case from your time in politics in montana. So it sounds like you want some big structural changes. Tell us about that, and is this the sort of structural change we see from your competitors like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren . Thank you. and thank you for having me, its not because its knowing in montana that im happy to be here. When you look at the challenges we have in this country, it comes back to money. I thought you were already giving me the beloff it comes back to money in politics. When Lindsey Graham says we have to get this tax cut through to make donors happy, 44 of americans would not have 400 in their pocket in case of an emergency. We payoff the prescription drugs of any other country in the world and they are pretty active. Generations of workers are placed by independent con tractors and Union Membership is half of what it was in the 1980s. Companies are doing well, the republican can party is the only Major Political party in the world that no longer acknowledges that Climate Change is real. We have to take steps if we are african to get washington, d. C. To work again, to at least kick the dark money out of our system. Itor to Citizens United, equated money with speech and corporations with people. 2 of the spending of outside groups were from groups that dont disclose their donors. This last Midterm Election it was over half. At the end of the day this is what drives the political system. I was in attorney general before i was a governor and i wrote the brief that the majority of saying itned on, should not be corporations behind these, because montana has this long history that we may or may not get into, it ought to be about people. We took the case to the u. S. Supreme court, taking on Citizens United and we lost on a 54 decision, right now it taught me to never underestimate what one justice can do. But also something about not giving up on something important. We pass this law, with a two thirds Republican Legislature that says i dont care if you call yourself americans for america for americans whatever it is, for the last 90 days you have to disclose all of your spending in our elections. 2016, for reelection in the Koch Brothers did such a good job and they even showed up and they said are you really that much of a creep . And on day 90 it stopped. We kicked them out of montana, you ought to be able to kick them out of texas. Lets followup there. You kicked the Koch Brothers out and foreign donors out of montana. What was the actual effect of that . Effect,lock the actual if theres one day every two years where we are all equal, and thats on election day. And more more people are not participating because they think their vote doesnt matter. What it did is that it made it much more about the candidate than theampaigns outside spending groups who arent disclosing their money. And as the only state in the country, until we can get rid of Citizens United i cannot necessarily change that. But heres something simple. If you want to contract with the state of montana i cannot tell you you cannot spend in our election but you have to disclose every single way that you are contributing to influence our election. Think of the federal government did that. The every in company in this country is contracting with the federal government. We ought to know who is do the sponsoring. Youre on the frontlines of the president ial campaign, what is something you would change about the system if you could rewrite the culture or the rules. As an australian, im looking at a two year Long Election Campaign compared to six weeks and i think thats nuts. What would you do. Gov. Bullock i think thats nuts. But its also awesome because of the recognition, a poll came out , 9 of the people in the country have made up their mind who they will vote for on the democratic side. Away,s still four months the early states always take a big deal and make it small. 80 of the folks said they are not committed. So i dont think the unending campaign does anything constructive for Representative Democracy. Its difficult in ways to limit that, we will talk about that in the upcoming weeks, but it is one where elections still are about a connection with people and people talking to people. I was the only democrat in the country to get reelected where trump won. He took montana by 20 and i won by four. 25 to 30 of my voters voted for donald trump and is not because i, god forbid, acted like trump. People believe that i listened to them, i respected them, they might not agree with me on all issues but i would be doing the job. ,ou look at these debates whats really coming out of it . Its more trying to get your moment. The next round of debates in october, 12 candidates it looks like on stage, that sounds like a version of hell. Are you sad to be missing that debate or do you want to be on that stage . Gov. Bullock for the continued National Exposure i would love to be on it. Mayd not get in until because i still had a job to do. My legislature was meeting we had to get Medicaid Expansion reauthorize. I think the dncs intentions were well, they want to make sure that we are not the party of big donors. But by putting in the stoner threshold requirement candidates are spending 60 in 60 to 80 percent of their dollars on google ads to get a one dollar donor. Are you doing that or did you decide to skip that . Gov. Bullock i decided it was more important to invest in places like iowa with field staff than to play the dnc debate game. I think its a sad state of affairs when we are less inclusive when it comes to debates than the Republican Party ever was, and if our premium is chasing donors is more important for then saving health care, something is wrong. But we are a long way from the election. Everyone is gonna pay attention, but voters will just start tuning and now. What would be a fair system, in your mind, or a fair set of criteria for who is going to have a chance to revise that. Gov. Bullock on the one hand, the only governor left in this ace, the one who has one in trump state and has taken on dark money, that stage is missing something by not having me on it. The republicans, all the way into 2016, there threshold was a 1 polling threshold. Thats probably much more reasonable. It should not be National Parties and stuff that actually take a big field and make it smaller. If its notmned voters who do that. You know how to win an trump country, lets poke into that. Obviously her strengths are your governing experience, and theres an argument about electability. I want to ask whats the difference between what works and montana in terms of Winning People over in the center, and in the suburbs of milwaukee and detroit and tampa because those are not the same places and people dont all have the same concerns. How are you going to win those counties . Gov. Bullock they dont have the same concerns. But a couple things, this election is really about math. We have to get 270 electoral votes. We could run up the numbers in california by 3 million, if we cant win in michigan, wisconsin, or pennsylvania, we will not win. The way i have one in montana, the fourthlargest data in the country, i dont have the luxury of going to those pockets of lou. I have to go across states, listen, engage, and hear what people want and make them believe that government can impact those ways. I begin from the base presumption, whether you or someone from milwaukee or montana, the values that most people have, we have these great political divides, but the values people have, most lives are too frantic and busy to care about politics but they want a safe community, a roof over their head, decent jobs, clean air and clean water, good public schools. Generation after you can do better than your generation. When 60 of people have not had a real pay increase in 40 years, two thirds of the counties in this country lost business over the last decade, they are saying those values that i hold are not being reflected by washington, d. C. Certainly not reflect by the Republican Party. Theres even a disconnect in the democrat party. What would you say distinguishes you from some of the other candidates in the field . We hear a lot about people being in certain lanes are being very liberal and moderate. Is it about the promises you are making, where you think youre promises really can be kept versus others that are more elaborate . Or some other distinction . Gov. Bullock a couple of things. At the core of the word progressive is making progress. I put my record on health care, education, kicking dark money out of elections, against anybody in this field. As a governor you bring in a different perspective. You have to get stuff done. I have 13 elections in a red state as a prochoice, prounion, populist democrat. I think washington has become a place where talking has become the substitute of doing. Being off the coast helps. Hearing you are in texas, we have 22 states in the country that are controlled both state byses and the governors republicans. If we cannot compete across texas, just like this country, theres a longterm viability that we are improving health care, improving education, making sure that theres a quality and it becomes more challenging. Heres a leadership test we love test that politico one test is in an electrical electoral system that rewards parties and candidates playing to their base, telling voters what they want to hear, rather than what we need to hear, my challenge to you is to name one thing that you believe in personally that you know is not popular nationally that you think needs to be issued. Of x you are on the side but it does not have a 60 rating nationally. Saying we need to do this and im going to bring on the journey. Gov. Bullock the way i have done thing in montana is to think about whats best in the long term. Lets talk about Climate Change. We have to address Climate Change. Recognize that our seat fire season is 78 days longer. But often you have people who have spent their whole life powering this country. People in the fossil fuel industry and so on, democrat sound like they are part of the problem. We cannot leave communities behind along the way. We have to let science guided this. There are times when i have stood up and said lets figure out the best way to make sure we have universal prek for everyone. Not everyone in my party even agrees with the way that i get there. But i think the test of leadership is trying to say we have to bridge these divides. I think the greatest issue confronting us today, the biggest problem we have is actually ourselves. When we are united as a country, we can deal with anything. But its really the deep political divisions forget about twitter and facebook, think about thanksgiving dinners where politics divide us, i think we have to find more commonality. Hopefully this question is not seem impertinent, gov. Bullock i do like how you say impertinent. On paper you look like the perfect candidate, all those points about you winning an trump country, you had this experience and you are pulling in single digits, what does that say about how politics is being disruptive and how jarring does that feel knowing that you take the boxes but its a struggle to get the campaign to the point where you are gov. Bullock i would much rather be higher at this point, but its also telling that im the only governor left in the field. In part i think that was the d c debate rules. That we are nationalizing i just got done of being the chair of the National Governors association p i spent 10 years in Political Office avoiding cable television, because its about conflict. But we really are nationalizing all of this. Barack obama is the first term of senator, the last senator that we nominated before that was john f. Kennedy. Because governors have to govern and get stuff done. Its a challenge in the system right now, but i think its also that its now politics is bloodsport and a 24 hour engagement. If you watch anything on ofevision, and at the end the day, what continues to give me hope is that it is still long timeits still a away from now before we are even dealing with most of our primary states. I think we have learned this week that a week is a long time. So lets turn to the inevitable impeachment inquiry. Do you support the impeachment inquiry knowing what we now know about trumps dealings with ukraine. Gov. Bullock prior to this past week i said no, because i dont want to make the next 14 months about donald trump. And it struck me that in 60 some meat and greets meet and brought upowa, they health care, no one raised any questions about impeachment. The ideaek the of withholding foreign money and sang to a president that you have to do us a favor, directing the ukrainian president to start ag and aith the personal lawyer, trying to cover this up. Necessarilyk its good politics but for the good of our country i think we have to do it. So as a lawyer in addition to being a candidate gov. Bullock we have to do it. And theres a third of this country that will just look at this and say, no matter what, this is just something to take down trump. What we have to do, we have to be judicious in going forward. How we do this impeachment proceeding and how we run this race, at some point we have to deal with the fact of how fractured this country is, and we cannot feed into that through this process. I guess thats an argument to say effectively that if trump came in at the ballot box he would prefer him to be removed at the ballot box. Gov. Bullock i absolutely would, but this has been a great 240 year experiment called Representative Democracy and i dont wanted to be completely dismantled by the abuse of power and what he is normalizing. A few final questions because we have a great panel, would you like to get your hands on the transcript of these conversations with the Saudi Crown Prince and putin . Good from the perspective to know exactly what all else hes either been promising or suggesting to other countries. Really giuliani be prosecutor, knowing what we know about his involvement . Gov. Bullock we have to finish of the inquiry to know what he has done, but this is one where nobody should be immune from prosecution or the law. Governor bullock, thank you for your time. Gov. Bullock thank you. [applause] for part two i would like to welcome onto the stage are. Anelists, we have four let these guys get seated before we do our introductions. What we are doing at Politico Magazine that brought this panel into existence. And the point i want to make is that we are freethinkers at politico, i hope you can still hear me. Is that better . Good. Contrarian,tle more bolder than some outlets, and we are specifically nonpartisan. That feels like a novelty in 2019, and our panelists come from a group of around 80 who have contributive ideas on how to fix american politics. A hundred uput there on politico. Com they range from mandatory Civics Education to making the house of Congress Virtual and we have arguments for and against raising the salaries of politicians. Theres a lot to chew through. And for what its worth, im from two countries, australia and belgium, both with compulsory voting. You have more than 90 of people turning out to vote. In australia you could be fined for not voting. It sounds extreme but one of the effects is that it forces all of the candidates to appeal to all voters, they cannot just appeal to the most partisan people in the system. Lets introduce our panelists, im going to turn to you for questions as well. We have a microphone in this session. Ellen weintraub is the chair of the u. S. Federal Election Commission, we had the codirector of Duke Universitys center on law, race, and politics, next to me is margaret , the education secretary in the george w. Bush administration and now running texas 2036, and i did not mean to skip over you, i just wrote out differently. Localce president for initiatives that new america with the domestic but was the domestic policy director in the obama administration. Around of applause for the panel. [applause] alan, im going to you first, im going to pick on you and im sorry about that. But its your job to help american democracy and elections exist on a fair and level Playing Field and to make sure that things are healthy on that front. One of your big ideas is that we need to go back to bases basics, and overturn a ruling from 1976 that was supercharged by the Citizens United ruling, its about how do we get a lot of the money out of politics. That, buthear about its also access issues as well. Fec, thatl, at the you have the resources and the tools and the people you need, even the commissioners, to actually discharge her duties and to enforce against people who are breaking the rules. Is this working, am i on . We have a big problem at the fec right now, we dont have enough commissioners. This is basic. We have a decent budget, we could use more, i would like to have more money for enforcement because i dont think we are doing a vigorous job or as timely a job as we need to of enforcing the law and we need more bodies in our Enforcement Division so we can move those quicker. But the biggest problem right now is by law most decisions have to be made by a vote of four commissioners and we have three. So we cant do much of anything in terms of making decisions on whether people have violated the law, offering advice if somebody has a great new idea on how they want to run their campaign or make sure that they understand that its ok under the law, we cannot answer questions right now. We cant write galatians write new regulations. Has beenaking process stalled due to my colleagues and willingness to actually bring it home that would get better information to the American People about the information you are getting online. And advertising you are seeing on the internet. We need better and stronger rules and bring rules uptodate for the digital age because right now there are statutes that apply to broadcast ads but not digital ads. Theres a lot more we could do if we had actual commissioners on board. Right now we dont. A quick followup, if you have not followed ellen on twitter, she went viral in the last 24 hours. Its a little hard to slain in detail but maybe i just need you to go online and look at that. But one of your republican but youoner politics are operating in this great and innd its helpful, an effort to block the sharing of that information about Foreign Nationals and whats prohibited in relations to their involvement in election and they just kind of blew out the scene, is this really what you are reduced to now, that you have to go on twitter in order to share. His information last week i put out a draft policy, if we had enough commissioners we could have done that. It clearly summarize what the fec said over the years about the Foreign National intervention and what is a thing of value. This is an area where some guidance would be really useful and would help inform the public debate. I know that we cannot adopt it right now, but i thought the summary would be useful. The normal thing we do every week is that we put out a digest of whats going on at the fec and it includes the commissioners statements. And my colleague said not that one, you cannot put that in the digest. What do you mean i cannot put that in the digest i dont need your permission to put out a statement. So i said ok, fine, if you dont want me to put it in the digest im going to tweet the digest myself because youre blocking the information from getting out there. So i tweeted out the digest, with the story of why i had to do that, because my colleague was trying to block me from putting out a policy statement. A lot of people picked it up on twitter. [applause] its all about transparency and free speech, right . We love innovation and politics. Toand the idea you proposed us was to confer a positive constitutional right to vote. And your point, if i understood it correctly was that while there are some voting protections in the constitution, theres nothing absolute and something theres nothing clear cut and that space means people have the margins to institute hurdles and other limits on how voting can take place. The one that we are most familiar with, the id laws, or the clothing closing of polling stations, but my question is where that amendment related her the people that want to put in limits and how much will it take to get the ball rolling on the constitutional amendment . Guyuriel let me read a statement to you. Provides, every adult citizen has the right to vote in elections for any legislative body. If you were to guess that that statement was part of the south african constitution, you would be correct. There is no equivalent to the u. S. Constitution that says if you are a citizen, you are entitled to vote. Our constitutional structure depends on the states to enact voting protections in their constitutions, and to carry out the process of voting, which is one reason why when we go to ise the voting process conducted by many people who are not professionals engaged in the active voting. One a result of the process that we have are flaws in that have been historically enacted, some for race reasons, some for partisan reasons, some because people want to give a disadvantage in order to minimize participation by some groups, some members of a demographic group, as are the others. People want to win. There is nothing in the constitution that says voting is a fundamental right, and when your government tries to make it harder, it is a problem. Similar to when the government tries to restrict speech under the First Amendment. The government tries to restrict your speech commute can file a lawsuit under the First Amendment to say, that is a fundamental right, you cannot restrict my speech. We do not have that equivalent with voting, so my idea is, lets begin with the basics. Lets begin with the basics or the ground rules of the game, where we can all agree and we should agree, that every citizen ought to have a basic right to vote in the same way that every citizen has a basic right to the First Amendment freespeech. If we were to have that, that would make it so much easier for citizens to protect their rights, and for the government to pass laws, like voter id laws or other types of registration barriers that makes it harder for citizens to vote. Yes, i think that could be effective, but it is going to take a longterm process. First, people need to be educated about what is and is not in the constitution, and second, they must get on board to get there governments, state governments and congress, to begin to think about voting as a fundamental right and not a privilege. Ryan i have a tricky followup for you. So having an automatic right to vote, would that require an automatic right to representation . Let me explain. We have a situation that i think is strange, you have about 5 million american citizens who do not really have the right to representation in congress. That is bound up with other issues about, we do expand the number of senators, the number of congresspeople and so on, but would you also mean any american citizen would be entitled to representation as well, once they have the right to vote . Guy if we were to amend the constitution, just to be clear on what we are talking about, if you live in washington, d. C. , or puerto rico, you are an american citizen but you do not have the same Voting Rights that other people who live in the mainland or live in other parts of the country, which is a very strange and bizarre situation. Now, the reason is is because we have a constitution that was whichd a long time ago in voting participation was a thought about differently. We had at the time property qualifications, gender qualifications, literacy poll taxes and, the Different Things that restricted voting to a small group of people. Currently, we have different ideas about voting and present to shipping and participation, but we are stuck with a 17thcentury model. Dothe question for us is how we bring our constitutional structure in line with our modern conception of voting and political purchase patient . That would mean amending the constitution to lecture assur e all citizens have rights to purchase or pay at the very least international elections. In national elections. Ryan the last time the constitution was amended was a 1992, it was the result of an undergrad at ut who wrote a paper in the early 1980s about a constitutional amendment, one opposed in 1789, and it does not have much effect but it is about limiting the right of congress to vote for a pay increase. He got the ball rolling. And at the 38 states ratified it. And then the 27th mm it was adopted. Amendment was adopted. One of you could be the generator of the next constitutional amendment, it would make guy happy. Cecilia, you also had a bridge is a patient idea for the magazine. And i think it was about making policy more user generated and learning from the tech world about how they have been so successful in engaging young people, who do not have the strongest relationship with their federal government. Cecilia exactly. I worked for a democratic president , but my idea is not a partisan idea. If we ever have to interact with our government to say, like do something simple like replacing Social Security card, you approach the process with the dread because the government is not effective at delivering what it needs to deliver. It is easier to buy a pair of shoes on your phone then it is to do most government processes, and there is no reason for that to be true. In the u. S. , we invented the in the silicons valley use get inside our heads, to engage with us, because they want us to be using the things they invent. They are figuring out the things none of us can live without in a couple weeks. By engaging their users in the design of their products. My idea, the thing i work at in an organization in washington, is the use those processes to make sure that government delivers more effectively. Even the most effective policy that we have all agreed on, that has bipartisan support and already in the law, like the earned income tax credit, one of the most effective ways to lift people out of poverty, but when he percent of the people who are eligible for this do not use it. We have been treating that as an outreach problem forever. And it is not just an outreach problem, it is a design problem. Paid leave in california, we won that bottle battle in california, but less than half of the people who are eligible for paid leave take advantage of the law. That is not just an outreach problem. My organization is working with new jersey, they just passed a paid leave law, and they are doing a tech oriented deep dive with it the people who we want accessing paid leave, to engage them in designing how the law will function, how they will access it, so that we have fewer barrel craddock processes and more streamlined processes. Will keepthings that faith in the democracy is the big intervention, the big policy interventions, that we agree upon and get enacted that we do our utmost to make sure they deliver at maximum for the American People. Ryan my followup is, having had worked in europe, the European Union really struggles to engage citizens, citizens feel like it is so far removed from their daily lives and today struggle to have that ongoing relationship with citizens. It strikes me that the things you are talking about standing better chance of working at the local and state level, where it is easier to build a community and have feedback, or maybe it is going to work for a specific service delivery, but in the broader policy topics, like the big existential challenge of Climate Change, do you feel like these processes and techniques can work on those big levels . Cecilia some of the most effective policies started as a local initiatives. My ceo is a big believer in what she calls american renewal. That we forget that they are good people all across the country solving our public problems all the time, not in a partisan way, but in a common sense, we have a problem and we need to fix it kind of way. One of the ideas is the big policy interventions we will fight the political fight over, that they should start as local initiatives. We should test them and prove they work. Then start small and it local and then build up from there and we ultimately stand a chance of being much more effective. When we work with a network of folks working on homelessness, for example, they started in communities where instead of trying to change big systems, they decided to make a list of the Homeless People and then work the list to make sure that individual by individual they were getting what they needed in order to get out of homelessness. Down tove homelessness functional zero in nine communities. None of the problems that we face are retractable problems. We have innovators moet have the capacity to solve these problems and we are doing it all the time, but we need innovations and we need to make sure we measure them, test them, engage people in designing them, then take it to scale. Ryan Margaret Camara local voice on the panel so margaret, our local voice on the panel, you are running an organization on longterm thinking and i think that would butt up against our shortterm cycles. And you are looking at marrying those conversations. Margaret that is the point. We at texas 2036, it is the 200th birthday of the republic of texas, it is our bicentennial. And we believe that our policymakers often, you know, often responsibly, because they are dealing with a hurricane or whatever, they deal with the tyranny of the urgent and are not thinking longterm about those most important things. We do not have the right planning or the right kind of is of data that cecilia talking about, so that we can set priorities and deploy resources that are databased, interactive with our people, and charting a course over a long time. That is what we have done at texas 2036 and i commend our database to you. We have curated public datasets and we are the laboratories of democracy and we are absolutely in the era of local control. I am not looking to the federal government much these days to help us solve our problems, whether it is education, homelessness or you name it. Ryan i just came from new york city, where the United Nations was having its annual general meetings, and what struck me now is the level of local activity toward these big global goals that the United Nations has a set. I was speaking with the International Affairs commissioner for new york, and she said, new york city alone is bigger than 141 of the countries that are in the United Nations. So we are not sort of activating toward these things if we are not mobilizing what we have is a community, then those bigger things are never going to be achieved. Or if we wait for the federal government, it will not work. I guess there is a big voluntary movement here on that as well. Margaret what we are doing, and if i had to put it on a Bumper Sticker i would say we are trying to put sensible folks together to think longterm about the most important things. I commend colleagues and friends and all of these various you know, abortions, guns, this and that, because they have built demand from policymakers to respond to those issues right now. And recently, leaders have failed to big build that demand to think longterm about those important issues of natural resources, education, health and so on, so we are putting Civic Leaders and others together to help us build that demand. Ryan it is time to turn to some questions in the audience. The gentleman here in the beautiful tiedyed tshirt. We will bring a microphone to you. Yes. A lady coming down from the end, hang on a second. We heard youtio could move election day to veterans day, so that there would be an easier engagement for people who are working, people stuck in the snow and so on when it comes to the president ial election. I point out force you to stick your hand up to say yes or no, but any reactions to that idea . I am happy to stick my hand up for that. We are unique amongst the world in having our elections on a working day. Everywhere else, they have elections on the weekend, when people are not working, so they can go to the polls. We have this historical artifact that we do it on a workday. The move to move it to veterans day, we would not need to add an extra federal holiday. Take one in the same neighborhood and use it for election day, that is a great idea. Guy what i would say is i think it is a good idea, but i will add automatic voter registration. That would make a huge deal. And we know that in states in which voters are automatically registered, the participation is higher. Ryan linking it to your drivers license or another state id. Guy that is right. If we combine these ideas, we can make it easier for people to vote. Would love to become the country where we are pulling out all stops to make sure that people are participating, rather than enacting policies and acting in ways to keep people away from the ballot box. Ryan it was republican women that first proposed this idea and now Mitch Mcconnell defines it as a power grab, what is your take . Margaret i will not comment on Mitch Mcconnell, i am all about the state of texas. 41 of registered voters turned out in our last election in a general election, so anything we can do. As a University President , i know about the struggles we have with getting polling places on college campuses. Guy, to the point you were making, it is real. People are trying to thwart this stuff. We should be beyond that. Ryan we have the microphone over here to this young man. If you are you are, representing anyone . And we all want that shirt. My name is caleb. I have been in texas my whole life. My question is directed toward ellen about election funding. At the last debate, if you washed the democratic debate, andrew yang proposed a democracy dollar idea, giving out free money in theory to americans to put the money toward whatever elections they support and it would be a way to flood out some of the corrupt money coming into politics. What with the opinion beyond democracy dollars, is that a valid concept to give people the ability to donate to campaigns they want to, public funding for campaigns i guess . Ellen i am in favor of public funding. I do not want to comment on any particular candidates program, but there is a program in seattle where the local level they give every seattlean 100 to divide amongst which candidates they want. The advantage is it completely shifts the incentives of the candidates, whereas before they may not have an incentive to go into certain neighborhoods and campaign there and try to reach out and figure out what those people want, because they either did not have money to give, or they were not high turnout voters. Now they have the incentive to appeal to everything a person in the jurisdiction. It has been working really well. And i think it is a great idea. I have a followup. On every single persons tax return, i do taxes for a living, there is a little checkbox, it is three dollars for a campaign phone. Nine out of 10 people do not know about it, and the one out of 10 might decide no, it is not making or taking any tax money, it is just applying it to a find. Can we tell people we have that thing, and people do not use it, or what would be your thoughts on that . Ellen the problem with the president ial funding system is the candidates are not using it anymore because it has not been updated in decades. It is a caret and stick approach. The idea was you take public funding and in return for which you accept spending limits. If you only take private money, you do not have the spending limits. The way things are going, candidates are able to raise so much more money than they could get out of the public funding system that they would be foolish to opt into it. What we need to do, and there are proposals, is to modernize our public funding system, not only to make it so that more people know about it in the general population, but make it more appealing to candidates, probably something that would not come with spending limits, may be something modeled after new york city and what they do with i think it is a six to one match. To make it more incentivized for candidates to get out and talk to everybody, not just rich donors. In the 2018 election, of the money we know about, not the dark money, but disclose the money there were 126 individuals or couples who gave over 1 million. There were 12 or 13 individuals or couples that gave over 10 million. There was one couple that gave over 100 million. Who do you think politicians are going to pick up the phone and talk to when you have people who are playing in that field, giving millions of dollars, and even the dark money donors, the politicians know who they are. Money drives policy. The money drives who gets elected and what gets enacted. That is why we need to go back to basics and rethink our money and politics system, it is not the way that most countries do it. [applause] ryan is that in congress, where the problem in updating the public funding needs to be . Ellen it is a congressional problem, but there are bills in Congress Ryan are they just sitting there . Ellen some have been voted on in the house, but they cannot go through the senate. Ryan we have a lady in the front. Thank you for your time. Ryan we will bring the microphone here. I apologize about my range of view. I am being biased to those in front of me. I am kathy. Minnesota had this. When you look at the check offs at the beginning, there is a high rate of participation, but then over time it falls off, so i think that early on these are great devices for including more people, but fundamentally we may have to rethink what we do with public funding of campaigns, because it starts out relatively high, but then there are quick dropoffs over time. Fory question, i have one the professor and one for ellen. Professor, the equal rights amendment needs to be passed. Is there anyway you can write your proposal into the equal rights amendment and sweep it in . And then for ellen, can you explain why to the audience you cannot get that fourth commissioner . We would like you to vocalize why you cannot get that fourth commissioner . Guy one of the drawbacks to my proposal, this was alluded to earlier, is it is extremely difficult to amend the constitution. So part of the purpose of what i am trying to do is not just practically thing about amending the constitution, but to really begin a conversation about the importance of voting and political participation for it to become a part of our national culture. So there are a couple ways of having change in the american system, obviously one way is through amending the document that is hard to amend, but also changes the culture. I think that the goal around voting, and we are seeing that we see people carrying more about voting and political participation than we ever did and we are beginning to change the culture, that is one reason i am optimistic about the future, even though my proposal may get stalled. In the same way that the dra got stalled. Ryan margaret . Margaret that is why these database approaches like we are doing in texas, we need to call that out. People do not know that there are dozens of unfilled vacancies in the Senate Approved roles. The machinery of government is stalling out because a lot of jobs have not been filled. When that happens, and we will do this in texas, we need to tell people about it. Ellen the federal Election Commission is supposed to have six members, no more than three of any one political party. A couple years ago, one of my democratic colleagues resigned and that spot is still not filled. A year and a half ago, one of my republican colleagues resigned and that spot was not filled. One month ago, and i had less of a weeks notice and that this would happen, another republican colleagues resigned and then we got down under four. Why have they not been replaced . I do not know. The commissioner has to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate and it has not happened. We have seen that the wto as well. I need to do the fact check as a journalist. They have been starving the appellate judges from that body so it does not function, so i cannot speak to the motivation, but i can see a pattern. The gentleman in the green shirt. Hi. My name is zach and i am a sophomore at american university. What is the number one thing that the federal, state admin is a bull governments can do to ensure Election Security in the 2020 election . Ryan i will give cecelia the first chance to respond. You do not have to commitment you do not have to come up but you have a right to refuse. Cecilia i want to hear what ellen has to say. Ellen i do not know what the first thing is, but i believe are elections elections managed at the state and local level, so we do not have authority over how they are, like how the ballots get tabulated or people get registered, that is happening at the state and local level. It is my understanding that the state and local officials are working with Homeland Security in order to try to prevent cyber attacks, which is a huge concern. I think we do not have enough resources, congress should allocate more resources in order to protect themselves. That would probably be my number justsk in congress, they allocated another 250 million, but it is a drop in the bucket. We have local communities, county governments, who are going up against the Russian Secret Service in terms of trying to prevent the hacking of their systems. It is not a fair fight. Cecilia there are models and estates that have taken these on. And there are models on how to do it. It is not just a question of money. It is also a question of will. I would build on the answer to say that the most difficult thing that we have to do at every level is make sure we are ensuring the integrity of elections, and there are steps that can be taken, but it requires saying out loud that we recognize it is a problem and we have something we need to protect ourselves against. Ellen let me add one other thought. We need to make sure that at the state and local level that there are enough locations for people to vote, that they are spread out so every community has the same opportunity and we do not see a lot of polling stations in one neighborhood and not so many in other neighborhoods. This needs to be a fairly administered election, every single one. the first thing is to think of it as a National Security matter, but National Security. Ellen said elections are very decentralized. Not only that, but they are also sometimes partisanly administered. There is unevenness with respective expertise. So we have a structure in place, again we have a structure in place that is from the 18th century that is trying to deal with 21st century problems. The question is, how can we move to respond to 21st century concerns, cyber attacks, in a decentralized world with partisan administration of some elections and low expertise . The key, to underscore the comments, is to think of elections as a National Security problem and not just a question of state administration. Margaret i think that there is bipartisan agreement around the integrity of the ballot box. And if we cannot Work Together on that, even as a coalition of state and local officials, notwithstanding the resource issue, woe to us. Guy to throw in some global context. Ryan you have upsides and downsides to the system in the u. S. Compared to australia, the federal Election Commission does everything related to the elections. The ballot paper looks the same, except for the name of the candidates, whatever constituency you are going in. I can walk into any ballot station around australia and get the one from my constituency, if i am traveling that day. So on some level it is very functional when you have this overarching centralized system. At the same time, it is easier to hack a single system, where as in the European Union for example, they just had parliament elections, 28 countries voted at the same time, but they had 28 different systems. It would be harder for russia or any others to get into 28 different systems all at once. The fact there is a patchwork is not necessarily bad, but at the same time i also had a great experiment at a conference last year where i hacked a u. S. Voting machine. I was given five minutes to solve a hacking problem. It was not in an election, i would not do that, i am a good guy. I am not a skilled person. I did some computer classes in grade school and if i can figure it out, i do not think it takes much for the Russian Secret Service to figure it out. Margaret do you think the Trump Administration should take over our elections . Ryan i do not advocate as a journalist. My ceo is laughing. Make policyld not recommendations as a journalist, but i think that you need to know the pluses and minuses. It is surprising as an outsider that there is such a patchwork. Withould imagine that these organizations, there could be more best practice guidance, there could be more collaborating with a network to kind of, i guess, rise while i believe that this is a matter of bipartisan concern and that is absolutely true and heartfelt, it has to be said that in congress this is not the way it is approached. It has become a partisan issue and the majority leader of the senate is resisting moving legislation that could help us move forward. Cecilia that is shameful. And i think it undercuts the truth of what you say, which is that people from every political persuasion, especially in a democracy this diverse, largely agree and really must agree that we should be making these decisions together in an honest way. And putting your thumb on the scale by making it harder for puttingo vote or by not resources on the table to protect our elections is unacceptable. Ryan i think we have time to cover [applause] ryan two more ideas and we will come back to other questions in the audience. One is to get your thoughts on occurs, theing drawing of boundaries. No one will solve that in the next eight or nine minutes, but that is one example whereas in a lot of other countries there are independent commissions and in the u. S. Is an outlier in that situation. Now some states are doing in the u. S. As well. To give a statistic, even in what is known as the wave elections, what we had for the midterms and 2018, nine out of 10 districts stay in the same hands of the same party, even if the name changes, so there is not a lot of turnover in the u. S. System compared to other systems. Any ideas or wishes on how we can make these elections more competitive and the districts more independently drawn . I think we should move to independent redistricting commissions here, because the way it works now, the districts are designed along such partisan lines that there is no reason to appeal to the middle. Not only is there no reason to appeal to the middle or people on the other side of the aisle, but if you deviate from the most extreme views you are likely to get primaried by somebody further to the extreme than you are. And we end up with a more polarized government where the folks who are elected only come from the extreme, not exclusively, but many of them come from the extreme ends of their parties and it is the only way for them to get elected. And there is no Common Ground between them and folks on the other side and that is why we cannot get anything done in washington. [applause] two things. One to underscore what was said, we have not agreed on the ground rules of the game. That is the fundamental problem. But increasingly, we are beginning to agree on the ground rules of the game and we are increasingly beginning to say, it is wrong and unfair for a party to draw the line in a way that minimizes political participation and outcomes by the other side. So think of it as a basketball game, and if you have homecourt advantage it means you get to guy the referees buy the referees. We would all agree that is unfair. Even though the Supreme Court said, the constitution does not say anything about this they are wrong about that, by the way we see the states moving in that direction. So we are seeing greater commonality here, and my guess is in five or 10 years that the independent redistricting commissions will be more than norman the u. S. Than the exception. Think it i agree and i is foundational to why we are where we are now, and why everybody is scratching their head and saying, dont we have better choices on either side of the aisle . No. Cecilia it is cynical on either side of the aisle when it happens. You tell me that the president i work for and the president you work for would agree on the point that we should have a debate on the basis of ideas and compete on the basis of ideas and not try to rig the system. Ryan i want to introduce, i guess i would gently describe it as the most out of their idea we came across in this collection of ideas for politico, and that was the idea that you would return the ratio of representatives to citizens back to george washington, back in the late 1700s, and that was about 30,000 people per representative. If you were to do that, you would have a congress of 10,900 members today, and it would keep growing. It would have to be et al. A pretty tall be portable. To then you would make the house virtual. And you could do that without changing the constitution. I have not read enough on that, maybe guy can weigh in. I want to know if you guys think that is on planet mars in terms of how we could operate the congress, or whether it might inject a new range of diversity, backgrounds of people, not just in terms of race or religion but in terms of, you know, all terms of life experience, or what the other ups and downs of that sort of really pieinthesky idea might be. Worked on issues of technology and i know and i love ethan so, i think the idea of increasing the number of folks in congress so that they have a smaller pool of people than they represent right now is interesting and important and we should have this conversation. Things kind of changed up over 250 years and we should not be afraid to do that. Cecilia my hesitation on making a ritual is that we do not have a level Playing Field with respect to access to technology, so until we get there it is not a foregone conclusion, to me, that this would democratize. I think we must be very careful, and i think we have learned some tough lessons about this, but even when a technology is new and we understand it to have an influence, it is also true once we get our hands around how we use it and how it is used by folks other than us, that there are some unintended consequences. That is what facebook was supposed to be, democratize income and now we are having a conversation on how it may have undermined our democracy. So i think we have to be, this is why actually engagement or what techworld would call the user, relationships with users is important. It is important we bake in inequities when we are actually trying to bust them up. Margaret you saw it and governor bullet. Politics is a people business, a relationship business and a leader business. How are we going to relate to the leader of 30000 and who picks and whatnot . We need to rally around congressional leaders, governors and mayors. I worry that is left on the cutting room floor when we are not in direct conversations with our leaders. Ellen one thing that a lot of folks who have been around washington for a long time have bemoaned is the fact people do not sit down and break bread together anymore. I do not talk to people across the aisle anymore. There is less socializing than there used to be. And my experience, as much as i love twitter, si it is not it is not always tweeting at people, having conversations that are not facetoface, it is not always the best way to have the most civil and engaged and thoughtful conversation. So i think there is something that could get lost in a virtual congress. Ryan we have a gentleman in the back, if we could bring the microphone to him. I think it is our last question. A question about the information infrastructure beyond the voting of a structure. Facebook shut down a group, i love america, that was the ukrainian and prorussian group, it had more traffic than buzz feed and usa today. So the 2016 meddling and disinformation has not stopped, so how can the major Tech Companies, what should they be doing and what are they doing . Doing morethey are than they used to and not as much as they should be. Right . I had a conference on disinformation a couple weeks ago. We had great speakers and other Tech Companies came, but most were not willing to speak out loud in public about what they are doing. There is a problem just in terms of them getting enough moderators who speak all the languages of the world, because this is a global problem. We are seeing disinformation spread across the globe, and in some places it is inciting violence, so it is a huge problem. We try to tackle just the tiniest slice of it, just in terms of Getting Better disclosure on information, who is behind what youre seeing online. I could not even bring that home, because we could not get consensus on that, which was kind of sad. But i think that this is an area that calls for regulation. I think there have been some bills introduced that would be helpful. I think the number one thing that would be helpful are strong sections. Congress must adopt strong sanctions so other countries will be afraid to interfere with our elections, because they will be afraid of what will happen to them. And i think that might be a better route than trying to plug all the holes in the diet, because dike, because every time you come up with a solution you are fighting last years battle. Guy there is a tech problem, but also an old media problem i think we want to think about, because part of the question is where are we going to get reliable information from . Especially to vet what we worry about as unreliable information. I think it is important on the incumbents, politico, the new york times, the Washington Post a plot of our old media, to really be arbiters of integrity, so when they are putting out information we can say it has been vetted, it is nonpartisan. This is information we can rely upon. Because we actually need to figure out who are the people we can trust. And with respect to information, you have to trust somebody. I think there is a new media problem that may or may not be able to be solved, but i also think there is an old media question that should not be ignored as well. Cecilia i think all those things are true, but i also believe we should not let new media off the hook. The conversation started way too late. While the Tech Companies are taking steps, i believe they should be much more aggressive. I agree that the time has come for there to be a regulatory framework, and i read just this week in the news that at least one of the Tech Companies is proposing a draft of its own regulations, and i am not sure we should be letting them do the deciding here. Margaret i think there is a role for texas 2036, the academy, trusted sources about our nonmedia to elevate the debate and the narrative around what the truth is. Ryan i have one thought to add, the is when you get around thanksgiving table and you are talking to different members of your family, and it was a surprise for me to learn in the aftermath of some of those big in 2016,2016 votes that younger generations really do not understand what i as a journalist went through. So they really do not understand, if i want something to be published on the website for politico or in print, two editors have to go through that. I need to be able to explain if those resources, if they are not named, who are those people. It is not something where you hear something in the hallway and you click send. It is a proper vetting process. And there is a generation of people who have not grown up in a media environment where they understand that there are gatekeepers. And it is not that young people are not able to smell bs when they see it, but we overestimate our ability to detect misinformation or whatever it might be. We think we are smarter than we are in judging this stuff. It is only when you slow down and you have a vetting process that you have an appropriate filter for this stuff. One question, the gentleman in the blue shirt. We will be quick with the question and answers. You wont need water. Thank you for being patient. Will need water. Thank you for being patient. My name is paul. Margaret, my wife, she says hello. I am a former chief of staff on capitol hill. Things we always seem to have to face is outside disruptor groups, where they are the ones running against the people we are trying to work with or ourselves, they are running people to the left or right of us. For example, we had a number of pieces of legislation working with the other side and we got 80 of the way there and an outside group comes to them and they pull out, or vice versa. You may get a group doing that to you. So can you talk about the disruptor groups and what you think we can do about them . I am a specialist in immigration policy and that is a reason why we had about 85 consensus on how to fix the system, but we have not been able to pass an immigration line 20 years. That has to do with folks with real intensity of feeling about some aspects of this issue who are in a distinct minority, but they throw off the legislative process. Despite the fact we got a bill through in 2013, and we had more than 218 votes in the house, we could not get the speaker to bring up a bill because of that phenomenon. It is incredibly disruptive to getting things done when we have a consensus in the country. Ryan where are the legitimate lines . When does it become not constructive . Margaret you get these outliers, these groups, and they are piling in influential because of the electoral dynamic. Ellen it is a money issue, they are funded by they claim to be americans for america, but if it is a Health Care Issue they are funded by the pharmaceutical industry, sometimes they are funded by wealthy ideologues who are out there trying to push an agenda on the country. And i think if we had better disclosure of who is behind the groups, at least people would be able to hold elected officials accountable and you could say, why are you taking orders from this billionaire instead of the people in your district . [applause] opportunity for a final word. From you guy stronger parties might help. Ryan ok. On that note, we have to wrap up. It has been a very productive hour. This is one of the things i love about america, you can have these intense discussions and democracy is still functioning at the very least at that level. I appreciate you for joining us at this session. And it you to our panelists and thank you to our panelists. [applause] [chatter] announcer our live coverage continues at 3 45 p. M. With a discussion on the 2020 election and the u. S. Mexico border. Until then, here is a conversation on domestic terrorism from yesterdays coverage of the Texas Tribune festival. Thank you. Thanks for being here. This is titled from within, a panel on domestic terrorism. Sponsored by the university of texas. Some quick reminders. This will be 60 minutbu