Transcripts For CSPAN2 Electoral Reform 20170922

And has been very active since then and hes been a friend of mine for about 37 years. Wesley show is a fellow of the en Route Institute of politics and working on a Nonpartisan Initiative democracy project which focuses on Electoral Reform with. She worked as a white house staffer white house staffer at the man hattan institute for policy research. Pete peterson is that dean and senior fellow at Pepperdine University school of Public Policy that he was the 2014 republican candidate for california secretary of state andy ran in another state he might have succeeded. Trevor potter the former chairman of United States federal election commission, the former attorney for senator john mccain and president george h. W. Bush. I assume not at the same time. Founder president general counter of council of the Campaign Legal center working in Political Committee case embedded this superb comoderator who is the Vice President of Unruh Associates our Student Group. Its a standalone Student Group but we are very proud to be associated with him. Hes a senior at the university of Southern California and hes going to kick off with the first question which all of you can take a whack at. First off, thank you for being here. We all appreciate as students hearing from you guys and hearing your Expert Opinions and thoughts on such an important issue. What im interested in is the fact that we tried to reform the Electoral College for over 60 years. We propose they think over 700 amendments and they have all failed. Is this tenable . Can we reform the college . What are your thoughts . Who wants to go first . I will take the initial at it. First of all i do want to thank everybody involved for the extraordinary opportunity they think all of us are trying to figure out ways to address the extreme partisanship and the extreme polarization unfortunately in this country right now. This first question is related to that. Theres no question theres a strong bipartisan majority that wants to do something about the Electoral College. The problem is and the last time there was a significant effort to abolish the Electoral College and have a direct vote and there were two president ial candidates in favor of this and bipartisan majorities of the house and the senate. The problem is our checks and balances in the filibuster proof and it takes twothirds of both houses3 4 of the states. Thats a virtual impossibility on any issue that i can think of right now in the United States, passing that kind of constitutional amendment. That does not mean however that we cant try to reform the Electoral College and a sense of how the electors vote and there are many ways of looking at this. I dont want to filibuster it but many of us would like a direct vote that they cant get it. We can do maybe the National Vote contact which 11 states have already adopted. 165 electoral votes. What they are saying is they are passing a law in the states that if there is a candidate and there will be that has the most votes they will commit their electors to that candidate who has the most votes. Thats it the electoral scare either state. It exactly and what to get to 270 there state law becomes active because of course 270 is the Electoral College. There are other ways of doing this. For example proportion representation and a lot of us feel very strongly. That would be a great way to go so if you get 45 of president ial candidates in a particular state you get 45 of the electorate. The problem with that and it would increase Voter Participation. Think you would strike partisanship that it can be gamed. For example california was proportional representation and 45 , 55 whatever it might be that texas decides not to do it and all of the votes in texas go to a particular candidate. The democrats in this case would be but you could turn it around. The democrats in california are at a disadvantage those those are two ways that but others will be discussed that he should continue to talk about reform of how these select jars come about and there have to be ways and i think there are several ways when i discuss them to what i talked about. Im very hopeful despite all of the efforts that have gone unsuccessfully in the past. I think then you end up with a fifth election where the popular vote in the Electoral College dont meet, perhaps the climate is right. People will be ready to make a change. I agree with ralph the constitutional amendment is just not realistic or feasible that the states can do something. All the power with what happens to the Electoral College votes are in the hands of the state. Most of the states have turned it over to their political party. Back i tried to call both parties to get a list of who voted on my behalf in the state of california and i got put on hold and transferred around and back to the secretary of state. I said thats fine but you pick these electors. I would just like to see a list of names of people who voted on my behalf. I could not get that list except from wikipedia. I couldnt get it from the state party. The Republican Party does have a posted but when i asked who are they they did not answer my question. If the voters are educated enough to realize they have ceded all of their power in their electoral vote to the Political Parties on their behalf i think they can take that power back and passed Ballot Initiatives and there are reforms that would make that in their state more representative. Think the power is ours. We are americans and we can change your destiny so im very hopeful. Having been involved in this i have to know they can tell you who these people are. These people are people that you are absolutely certain will be faithful and will vote the way you want them to vote if you happen to carry the state. I know who they are. I just did it as a test is if i were your average voter and i wanted to know. I got put on hold an awful lot. I agree with ralph that also is a virtual impossibility that you would have a constitutional amendment to overturn the Electoral College but i think its also important to take a step back and say why do we have the Electoral College . The many checks and balances understand that we are not america, we are the United States of america and if we are the United States of america there will be parts of the system where two senators per state or the Electoral College really are not democratic in the pure sense of that term. There are filters by which small states, smaller states in being part of this larger compact of the United States of america, this constitution are seeking somewhat equal representation. I think there is something to be said for the proportional vision but to your point there would have to be a compact in those terms. I would not support a compact related to what is known as the National Popular vote in the sense that you might have a state and its electors whose side differently than its voters did even if thats different than the National Vote but if you are able to pass something of a compact in proportional representation i could foresee if you set the limits to say you are going to get to 45 or 40 states that are going to sign onto it in certain states whether it be california and texas would sign on to it, you could have something there that i think would be more representative. I think there are two things to note. One is the Electoral College bears absolutely no resemblance in its functioning to what the founders intended. They did not sign what we are using. They had i believe elections we had the first two for George Washington and the second for john adams were at work as intended which is to say the leading citizens of every state selected by the legislature got together and decided who they thought ought to be president aside from the legislature, a site for many boats by citizens. The point was it was an outside group that would select the president. That stopped after the third election and we ended up with Political Parties. You had jefferson and adams and from then on you had a totally different system which is now one where the elect doors are selected depending on the popular vote in every state. Im not saying thats wrong but im saying its important to remember that what we have was designed for a different system and a different country than where we are. 2, i agree despite that everyone is now sufficiently invested in what we have. Other reasons have arisen to retain the small states who feel that they are overrepresented in the college compared to what it would be if it was the popular vote. You also have country is polarized on many issues. One of them has become the Electoral College versus the popular vote because there was nobody in the 20th century who was elected without winning by the Electoral College without winning the popular vote. We head to in the 21st century, george w. Bush and donald trump. One effect of that is that republicans support for the Electoral College has risen and because they like that result and ac an attack on it as an attack on the legitimacy of those elections. So i think i agree with the view that says we are not going to be able to get rid of the Electoral College by constitutional amendment. We are sufficiently polarized but that does not have a chance however i believe we can still fix the Electoral College and their there are two things i would do to fix fix it. Think those could be by constitutional amendment because i dont believe either would he controversial or seen as partisan. One is we have the problem referred to earlier what is called a faithless electors which means the state goes for candidate x, the electors pledged to candidate x vote and one of them doesnt vote for x. There was pressure this time on trump electors not to vote for trump. In the past there have been electors to cast protest votes or voted for a thirdparty candidate and thats clearly ironically is what the constitution says because it goes back to the ideal that the electors would be citizens but is not the way it works now and we would be outraged as a country if faithless electors were to tip an election to the other side. My proposal would be to get rid of the electoral rolls. Theres no reason to have whatever it is 50 some people from california actually casting votes. You could simply say california has x number of votes the Electoral College and they shall automatically be considered cast for the winner of the popular vote in that state. You could do it statebystate. You dont have to have physical electors there who are time bomb waiting to go off. The other which i personally think would be sufficiently supported by both parties to work is the idea or portion of representation where you say the votes cast by a state will be in proportion to the citizens vote in that state and i dont think it works for compact because you run into these problems that would have some states join it and some dont. Its not something thats easy to enforce but if you had a constitutional amendment that said that you suddenly put all the states into play and california and texas get treated equally. The democrats get votes out of texas and the republicans get votes out of california, it seems to me that might be something that would solve and undermine political problems while still leaving the smaller states with the representation we have so i think that might be looking at. Ralph is a brief comment he has told me and i have a quick followup. One point i want to underscore talking about someone who does not get a majority for the boys photos and get it. The other point we want to maximize system dissipation and we want candidates to campaign in all 50 states or as many as possible. As i was studying for this event i came across a startling statistic. In the 2016 president ial election, the general election donald trump and Hillary Clinton , 70 of their Campaign Appearances were in six states. 94 of their Campaign Appearances were in 12 states. That means about 40 states were ignored by a president ial candidate in the general election. Thats not the thing we want to continue. We want to have them out there in as many states as possible and getting as many citizens as possible involved in voting. A quick followup and i dont want to spend a lot of time on it. Its occurred to me when i thought about this electoral compact and if you had 270 people signing up to it they will vote for the winner of the popular vote, would you then, to make sure you dont have people fooling around with the voting processes in various states and a close election wouldnt you have to have some kind of uniform federal standard in voting for president . Otherwise you will have an election like 2000 where Everybody Knows its going to be very close and theres a huge incentive for people to try to cheat. That was what was supposed to happen with the act was supposed to standardize that im what you found an as is the former secretary of state candidate is the california for example was the last state not to have a statewide voter roll. The implementation which was intended to get much more standardized on voting equipment, the condition of voter rolls in those kinds of things was really not well enforced. So you would agree that you would have to have Something Like that on a National Level in order to make sure that the votes were honestly cast and counted . I wouldnt agree it was necessary to do that. I would support it because its right. All i would say is i think for whatever the 12 states in place now there is a huge incentive already to play with those numbers. I dont think that is occurring. I think our election system is by and large not subject to fraud. It may be subject to incompetence as we found in florida in 2000 and i agree that i think congress has worked since then to try to improve the Voting System at least. I would also say on this note one of three republicans that lives in santa monica, one of i think the positive externalities that looking at this whether its proportional representation or the areas of the Electoral College is an president ial election cycles my vote doesnt really count. The impact of that, what happens in the races that are underneath that president ial ticket i think we dont yet know what that would be. What would it mean for democrats in texas to understand that you know what actually you may have an impact and now you are going in and he got 15 other things to vote for break out to going to impact that im one of the things here in california that i think really is worth observing is how do we have a larger conversation about what is it take to get more people to turn out x. In a lot of these landslide states which if you look at the 2016 election all the landslide states had the lowest voter turnout because people like me understood that quite frankly there was really no purpose to casting a vote for president if im voting for the democratic nominee. Thats the proportional idea of splitting the electoral votes really radically changes that. I think quite interesting for example hispanic turnout in texas is pretty low. Democrats dont put as much effort in as they might to get the turnout because they dont think they are going to carry texas though that may change over the next eight years. If every vote counted people would put a lot our effort in turning those votes. Speaking of every vote being counted and every voter being able to vote. Im wondering if we need federal protections to encourage people to be allowed to vote . Is there any prospect that a law like that could be passed and ennis peterson partisan, hyperpartisan era . We had votes in the 60s to ensure that people can vote regardless because that was the original issue and the 60s were states attempting to discourage or prevent i nor days from voting and of course thats an open battle today and many people say that is whats happening in some of the Southern States that have adopted these draconian onesided voter i. D. Measures where in texas for instance you have to have photo i. D. To vote and this is a list of whats an acceptable photo idea and if the legislature in his wisdom that a concealed weapon carry permit was a permissible voter i. D. But a photo i. D. Issued by the state of texas to its University Students was not, that is designed i think to make sure that students vote at a lower rate and people who are nra members vote at a higher rate. Thats a problem. Photo i. D. Per se but the system that is designed to discourage some blocs of voters from voting those are in the federal courts now and they have been struck down a number places so the answer to the question is we have lost that should ensure that people are treated equally. We just need to make sure we enforce those. Ralphie orenthal forever and the Voting Rights act. I remember working with you on it. What do you think of back . Do we need a stronger Voting Rights act, a restored Voting Rights act . That was the first issue that you and i worked on with senator Edward Kennedy in 1981 and 1982 and thanks to kennedy there was strong support to the Voting Rights act was extended for 25 years. A strong Voting Rights act. What happened however and trevor did reference this a bit with respect to the Shelby County case in 2013 and chief Justice John Roberts who was fighting is it that time when he was in the department of justice on the Voting Rights act basically gutted the section of the Voting Rights act with respect to the department of justice jurisdiction over states who were covered because of their past history of discrimination against africanamericans and latinos and others. There is legislation in the house and the senate. Unfortunately im pretty sure lisa murkowski, republican from alaska, might be the only republican in the senate and representative Jim Sensenbrenner who is in absolute hero in 1981 in 1982 are the sponsors. You cannot pass legislation these days are anytime really with two public sponsors who vote for it. Im not optimistic with respect to federal legislation at this time to overturn a Supreme Court decision. Will it happen someday . I hope that the dynamics will have to change and we will have to do work on that. So not in the short term. Anybody else . I have a bit of an offthewall question i want to ask you. Theres something called ranked Choice Voting. Could you explain what it is . Do you think its a good idea . Ranked Choice Voting which is now in about 10 cities across the country affecting about 2 million voters is getting traction and in the state of maine with respect to congressional races. Ranked Choice Voting essentially what it is voters get to rank their candidates in order of their preference so lets just say there are four candidates in the general election and you rate them one, two, three, four. Once someone of those four gets a majority off the firstplace votes that person is the winner. A majority vote which is something i think most of us. You get to majority by having second and third preferences. This is exactly how it works. What happens if its not a majority the person to finish last is eliminated and that persons secondplace votes are redistributed to the other three candidates and if you have a majority winner then thats it but the process continues of eliminating lastplace finisher and redistributing votes. Thats how you get to someone is that the majority of the votes and gets those elect doors. What is important about it is it encourages the candidates to be civil to one another, to reach out not just to your base but youve got to be civil and much less negative advertising because you want to be the second choice of those people who vote for another candidate. It encourages pragmatic elected officials and people who are going to reach out to an expanded taste. Its more civil. It costs less. Theres a lot to be said about it. We have not taken that position leslie but we are positioning ourselves around a vigorous debate and my guess is there will be lots of support as more people find out about this because it helps eliminate the Political Polarization extreme partisanship. I think we are both looking forward to that. I would just jump in. Its an interesting notion and it can be very confusing to the voter. It is confusing by the way. Ill just throw that out there. That is a concern. You want to plan this very clear easy to understand. To make you or tell them into the had to cast a vote for donald trump . Perhaps somebody like bloomberg may be more people would have picked him as number two. I think the positive aspect is you are voting for someone as opposed to against them which would be the positive way to look at it. The question is is it just too overwhelming for the voter . They interviewed people coming out and they said it wasnt so bad. I would love to see a physical ballot and see how it really looks out of the voting booth but this notion that you are voting for someone is a positive idea as opposed to voting against, so those are the pluses and minuses but i do think it takes a lot of explaining. It does and i would just add we have a lot of Electoral Forum issues. Their things were he to make a decision because you believe is right thing to do in the most representative of an election result and other things you are doing so flea increase participation in the least what we have seen thus far in the cities that abuse it is we are not seeing a great uptick in participation. We are talking about cities like oakland and others that quite frankly you are still looking at 20, 25, 30 in may or races. Now the question becomes how far down the ballot do you go . Im lucky if i know three of the five judicial appointments that i have to vote on every cycle. It has been i think confusing but i do see it as something thats gaining momentum and we will see other municipality sign on to experiment with it. Trevor do you want to Say Something on that . We have another question that i think adam is going to ask you. The question about it is looking forward to hearing the explanation because im still trying to understand it is what do you do in the race where there is a republican and a democratic candidate and thats it . You dont use it then i take it . And effect you would not have to. One of them is going to get a majority. The more likely thing for example is that situation could encourage other people to run. Michael bloomberg for example and 2016 ranked Choice Voting. In this audience among the panelists it addresses the spoiler issue. You can vote for who you want to vote and not feel by casting a vote for bloomberg or some mother and a normal election they were having the possibility of someone you really oppose being the beneficiary of your vote. This is the spoiler effect. This eliminates because in the end there will be one person who gets the majority of the votes and there are no spoilers. Adam has a question for trevor. We are going to change the topic little bit. Directed to you trevor. We see the super pacs spending numbers and as a layman im interested, it said that about thing that so much money is in politics these days . With all due respect i will actually say i think thats the wrong question because it costs money to run, costs money to communicate, it costs money to buy whether its facebook ads or television timer consultant so yes we are spending a huge amount of money on elections. Its much more than we used to spend. Republicans who oppose Campaign Finance reform will say yes but we spent more popcorn or potato chips or something. Thats why think you get sidetracked on the issue of is there too much money or too little and then you say well who is the government to tell you how much you can spend and so forth . You end up been a productive conversation. Seems to me the conversation needs a couple of things. Where is this money coming from and how do officeholders, what do they have to do to get it . Decisions including the Supreme Court citizens united, you ended up instead of having contribution limits on what can be given to candidates we have a world with contribution limits to super packs which are funded literally by a handful of people. If you look in the last election 70 , 80 of the money to the super pacs came from 100 americans and those become the major players. It seems to me what we need to be looking at is how they diverse of 5 the funding, how to make officeholders, candidates, but really officeholders, less reliant on the whims of a couple rich people and instead find a way to finance those elections from a much broader base and provide alternative sources of money to compete with the millionaires. Trevors point where the money comes from, i remember when i was running for business in 14, someone who never ran for office before, one thing that was so surprising was the difference between individual contributions and associations and packs that were involved. At one point we had a graphic up during the general election cycle in which we were able to show about 80 of our funding had come from individuals and 20 from associations whereas my opponent, 80 was from associations and packs and those kinds of organized fundraising groups, 20 from individuals. If we were to have this conversation before the 16 cycle it would be different, trump everybody probably knows to the penny what the exact average donation was to Bernie Sanderss campaign, right . 27. Nobody had any qualms am i certainly didnt, with Bernie Sanders raising tens of millions of dollars but they were coming in 27 snippets was once i proposed was even if we were to just report during the campaign, that with every fundraising total they would put how much came from individuals and how much from associations or packs, we would have a little bit better awareness where this money was coming from. I am sure most of the people in this room are not fiddling with something called the third house. If you are in california, it dominates the fundraising and Campaign Cash for any california legislative or gubernatorial candidate and if you dont know that that is where the money is coming from you dont have a sense who is pulling levers politically in the state of california. There are things we can do from a transparency and reporting perspective that people wouldnt care if a candidate raised 100 billion if it was in 27 amounts versus one candidate getting 80 million from a shadow we super pac and much smaller amount from individuals. Any prospect for campaignfinance reform . There is a prospect at the National Level and state level. These transparency and disclosure laws if those would go into effect, it would be enormously consequential and enforcement of existing laws. As the former chair would be the first to not only acknowledge but got to enforce the laws, the other thing is how do you get the 27 average donors . There are some good proposals whether it is tax credits, rebates, matching funds, a lot at the state level that would facilitate the little person, the average person getting involved in a more significant way in the Bernie Sanders campaign, we could have the local, state, National Leaders doing that. If i could add on the disclosure side that is important, what changed in these elections, we now have significant sums of money, hundreds of millions of dollars of money being spent without disclosure. Ever since the 1970s, the one guarantee is the money will be disclosed at the state level, the federal level. We now have groups that are not disclosing their donors because we are not Political Committees so we dont have to. They are able to step in without anyone knowing who is doing the spending, they dont tell anyone they are paying for these ads so you see the ads paid for by better america. The latest iterations that came out this weekend is very californiabased is the facebook scandal, the discovery by facebook that they were selling advertisements to russian front entities and they have announced they have found todays announcement was it is not just advertising but all sorts of meet up groups that were able to use the facebook apparatus to come up with protests and other issues, foreign money is illegal in us elections but what we are now told us there is no disclosure of it. Facebook isnt telling us any of the details. The ads were paid for and watched, the estimate was up to 70 million americans would have seen these ads we are now being told we cant see. This whole disclosure issue is a really important one. I want to turn this over to the audience in a minute but i want to go over one other issue. Redistricting in the form of gerrymandering seems to profoundly influence representation, balance of power, the electoral process. There is a case challenging the gerrymandering before the Supreme Court, comes out of wisconsin. What is the argument here, is the case likely to be decided on a, quote, Party Line Vote of the Supreme Court justices . If the court doesnt do anything is it likely more and more states might try to politicize redistricting as Arnold Schwarzenegger did in california . Short answer on the wisconsin case, brought by my group, we argued it in wisconsin and we will argue it in the court next month, that is a challenge to overly partisan gerrymandering, drying lines to Favor One Party and make sure the other doesnt get a majority. It has been illegal for some time to district lines, to hurt minorities, but it has not been considered unconstitutional to do so to hurt the other party so what you have is people in government ensuring that their party maintains control by choosing their voters rather than the voters choosing the candidates. California has had reform, nonpartisan redistricting, the case out of wisconsin comes from a state legislature, in this case the Republican Party that did it but out of illinois the democrats do exactly the same thing. In my view this is not a partisan issue, this is a basic government right issue, our right to be able to elect representatives without having those districts handpicked and drawn. Short answer in wisconsin is this was a republican gerrymandering, they used computers and came up with the most Republican Legislature they could think of drying these lines and the result in 2012 is that 49 of voters in wisconsin voted for republicans, the legislature that was elected by that 49 was 60 republican so they got a result through gerrymandering they did not get at the polls. It happens the other way in illinois, maryland, massachusetts has not had a republican congressman in 20 years. 30 of the state votes for republicans. This is a problem that needs to be addressed by the Supreme Court. I am hopeful it will not be a partyline vote, Justice Kennedy is the swing justice and he has indicated that he thinks overly partisan gerrymandering is wrong but he has said we need a test so that we are not being subjective when we look at it and our goal in the wisconsin case is to say there is a test, the numbers i have described are an example how you can prove this is overly partisan. This will be argued in october, decided next spring. I am hopeful we will then change the standard nationwide. California Citizens Redistricting Commission shows a way, something i am supportive of. A little modification. It was multipartisan. The members were of every day california citizens, 30,000 of whom are applied to be on the commission were divided by republicans, democrats, Party Preference. There was equal representation even more so than party registration, more equal representation for someone like myself as a republican on that Redistricting Commission then you would find elsewhere, certainly in the legislature. Those processes which were shown, many court challenges, still the maps we are using today, does provide a model for other states. I would add when looking at Electoral Reform in maine and nebraska, Congressional District model begs for more gerrymandering. When you look at various reforms, the Congressional District model, unless the gerrymandering is fixed, will only continue to breed a gaming of the system. Back to eliminating the people in dealing with the numbers you could sidestep gerrymandering and i dont know you will ever completely get away from it but that is one way around it. Point of personal privilege having been a citizen of massachusetts, ralph knows this too, you gave republicans control of the legislature and governorship, they still couldnt gerrymander the state. The republicans tend to be evenly spread across the state. We are looking for bipartisanship, it is important in the last month there has been some significant bipartisanship on automatic Voter Registration which we will talk about in the q and a. In your case it is important for me to acknowledge what you have done with your allies in terms of former republican senators, governors, republican governors and in Congress John mccain, a conservative, nancy pelosi, a liberal, and the chairman of the House Freedom caucus, one of the most conservative members of the house of representatives all signed on to support your position. That is something we should acknowledge and hopefully get more of it. We have a tradition here which will be upheld, we turn this over in the last 15 minutes or so to the audience would anyone have a question . Please raise your hands and because of the lights i cant see very well but someone here has a microphone. Okay. Hi, folks. My question for you as you talk a lot about the rules of how elections are run and inputs into the election. My question is if you do those changes to rules in your fantasy world, the ideal situation you would see, would it change Voter Participation rate from 20 , 30 , 40 to 80 or 90 , and if not, how do you get to 80 or 90 . Are we talking rules or something bigger . How do we address the bigger things . If you get rid of winner take all you will have much more Voter Participation. California is a perfect example. I know Many Democrats who never bothered to go to the polls. A lot of republicans didnt bother. If people thought they had a shot, you had 12 states where neither candidate got 50 but they got 100 of the electoral vote. That is not representative. We have a representative form of government. Anytime somebody doesnt get 50 but they get 100 of the Electoral College, Everybody Knows it is not right. The number one Voter Suppression is winner take all for sure. I would venture to guess people would be fighting tooth and nail to get a chance to vote if they thought it mattered more. I slipped in Voter Registration a few minutes ago hoping that would become a question from the audience. If we have automatic Voter Registration which means when you go to the department of Motor Vehicles you can be automatically registered, federal state agency, 50 million more americans will be registered, automatic Voter Registration, 10 states in the last two years as recently as august, the republican governor of illinois signed into law, passed unanimously automatic Voter Registration, that is number one blues number 2 it would be nice to get tens of millions of americans who are independent able to vote in primaries. We have to figure out how to preserve the party system but get people who are affected by those involved in the primary somehow. How about a Voter Participation holiday . Maybe veterans day. Every time there is an election, president ial election there is a federal holiday but we dont have to create a new one. Veterans day is in a week or so of the vote. That would mean the convenience of voting, that is what Voter Participation is, how do you make it easy for people, not just Voter Suppression but incentive to be able to vote in giving people the time to vote and making it easy to register . That would make a difference in getting 60 , 70 , 80 as we get more comfortable with it . I agree with you on everything but i have to push back a little. Many of these levers that can improve registration dont improve voter turnout. Those are two different things. Some of the Political Science research, a friend of mine at the Public Policy institute in california did some research in 2014 looking at some of these measures meant to increase registration. Whether it is sameday registration or extending the period for which absentee ballots can be submitted or extending the period back from election day earlier to which votes can be cast and you are looking at 1 , 2 , 3 affect. Some of the bigger issues are what you are talking about, the president ial election years, whether the votes of people in landslide winner take all states have an impact, that can play a role in changing voter turnout but i also think there is a bigger issue being dictated by the number of millennials not registering for either party and registering no Party Preference and in that demographic and overall, no Party Preference voters youre seeing voters the turnout at lower levels than party registered voters and those things together to me speak to a bigger problem of the soul of the voter. I think theres a growing sense our politics are becoming disconnected from the people. When that begins to happen and people think politics is parties and parties are bad and the whole system is corrupt and it is an insider game, that is going to have a much bigger impact on turnout when you are looking at an election that even in the 2016 race, one of the larger turnout of the last two decade 60 of voters, what about the 40 . In a lot of these Voter Registration issues we are looking at 2 , 3 , 4 changes and losing sight of the 40 to 50 large group of eligible voters who in many ways are voting with their feet. Another question . We will take one more. Thank you. My name is michelle. Im proud to serve on the board, my work is to instill the importance of voting to young people when they are still in school and not hearing a lot that is helping but i am thinking about Election Night when we are glued to the tv and results start rolling in and results often come in so loud and strong before us west coasters fold their clothes, then there is hawaii and alaska. Is there any impact on voter turnout . We had a lot of criticism and got pulled in front of congress to discuss that issue because during the Reagan Carter race it was over before californian polls were closed and they called the election. What they do now is put them in a decision room, the doors are closed, no one is supposed to know what their modeling is showing and the district come in. They will never call an election before the last paul has closed in hawaii, that is the rule. However, as the tallies start to come in you set the momentum. A close election when people are waiting in michigan like they were this time around, pennsylvania, other states, more of a cliffhanger, i dont know if that affects the west coast so much but there is very little you can do once the polls close in a state to tell them they cant report those numbers. They will no longer call those elections. In 2000, another issue where florida was called, then pulled back, the decisions are supposed to be kept sequestered from the anchors and so they have done things to try to avoid it but it is difficult to do. Exit polling comes out and those are not supposed to be leaked until the polls close but a lot of that information does get out. I dont know if it suppresses votes necessarily or has people say why bother . It is over. At least not calling it until the last poll is close does help somewhat. I am not sure the hawaii alaska standard another question hopefully from a student. My name is katie, im a student at usc. The comment about the media got me thinking about issues like gerrymandering, got more media coverage, not as sexy or exciting as breaking news alerts and that kind of thing but if they did and people got more invested in these issues and saw the impact this type of Voter Suppression has on daytoday lives do you think that could fuel legislative motion getting ideas into place . I do. I think the media will only Pay Attention if it is noisy and loud. I think voters have to be very noisy and loud. Look at all the free media donald trump has gotten. He didnt have to buy any ads because they go to the noise. I dont mean to disparage my fellow journalists but cnn never made more money in their life than they did, first time they have been in the black in a really long time. It has to be a grassroots effort and, like bernie and a 27 voter, caught everybody by surprise, it was very exciting, there was momentum. It has to start with voters saying they had enough and people are really apathetic and low voter turnout is part of that problem. People have got to get angry. It does demand somebody inside the system pushing the issue. If you look at the history of citizens redistricting in california led by governor schwarzenegger, i remember governor schwarzenegger saying on the campaign trail when he was campaigning for the proposition the past which was we are supposed to be the ones picking up politicians, not politicians picking our voters. He was able to distill what was a very complex ballot measure. If you look at the way the Redistricting Commission was put together, how people applied and how they were vetted, very complex but when governor schwarzenegger distilled it to that simple populist message, which is are we as voters the ones who get to pick our politicians rather than they choosing us . It really did win the day. Simple, populist message driven by somebody on the inside loud enough to get the presss attention and it can change the way we do things. I would agree, strong, visible leadership on any of these issues is the ticket to success. You cant sit here and say the press should cover this more or that more. Those of us who were in the field spend our days trying to figure out ways to get press attention or explain the story in a way that is not traditional or use nontraditional social media to explain what is at stake and what the issues are but certainly if you are going to try to push for change whether it is Electoral College change or Campaign Finance, you have got to have somebody like governor schwarzenegger, who by the way has been very strong nationally on this issue but you have to have somebody like that in congress or the states to raise it up to a level of visibility so people hear about it. The first shall be last. You have a last comment . I went to make the point not just about nonpartisanship or bipartisanship but what you heard in the last few minutes has got to be in the states. In the beginning it is important to have National Leadership, we have all of us to build an election reform movement, organize in the states, explain what is at stake. I think about the spirit of houston, texas, louisiana the last couple weeks in response to the hurricanes, people of all colors and organizations and creeds working together in a common purpose. That is what we need with respect to an election reform movement. We are a resilient and great nation, we can take on this challenge when people understand our democracy is truly at stake. One last comment in terms of what you were saying, the president one of the networks observed in 2016, donald trump may not be good for america but he is very good for my bottom line. I think these issues of opening up the process, getting more people to vote, will actually, if we can ever get there, give us better results. I dont mean democrat or republican results but better results across the board if more people participate, that is the idea of democracy. I want to thank ralph, leslie, pete, trevor, my comoderator adam and i went to mostly think the students at usc who are engaged, interested, stimulating, terrific people. I like being a teacher here very much. I also want to thank the staff of the honorable institute which does a fabulous job week after week. We will see you here next week to talk about the shrinking middle class. Thanks, everybody. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the conversation continues on the gops efforts to change the Affordable Care act during a Senate Finance Committee Hearing monday. The sponsors of the bill, Lindsey Graham and bill cassidy, will explain their legislation at this hearing. Watch live coverage of the hearing on cspan2 monday afternoon at 2 00 eastern. And tomorrow on cspan, live coverage begins at 10 00 a. M. Of a peace march in washington dc called march for civility. Speakers will include musicians, poets and artists. Cspan will have live coverage saturday at 10 00 am eastern time. That was early on when trump was had just announced, and they were worried that he was going to be bad for them. I thought really . You are worried now, considering how far back they had an antiwoman platform . Reproductive rights, equal pay. Sunday night onq and a Washington Post pulitzer prizewinning editorial cartoonist. Vice president mike pence, i dont remember who did the interview, but he said Something Like he never goes to any washington dinners without his wife. I thought okay, this was a gift. We dont have any problem voting about a persons personal reproductive choices, which is the most personal intimate thing a woman can deal with, but you dont go to dinner where a woman, fully clothed is at the same table. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q and a. Monday on the communicators, comcast Senior Executive Vice President david cohen talks about telecommunication developers, competition and fcc regulations. Mister cohen is interviewed by policy and politics Senior Editor tony ron. What is your take on the Trump Administration and competition . I feel compelled to say Brian Roberts pointed does this out at the Goldman Sachs conference, we love our company. We post at t acquisition and Nbc Universal acquisition, we view ourselves as strategically complete. We are not out there saying we have to find Something Else to buy. Just want to make that clear. On the other hand we have never viewed ourselves being foreclosed from the acquisition marketplace domestically or internationally. Has to be the right deal, has to be something we think enhances the quality of the company, enhances returns to shareholders, enhances shareholder value as a result and no secret that overall this president and this administration is likely less hostile to horizontal growth or even vertical growth in Telecom Space and elsewhere. Watch the communicators monday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan2. Next, a discussion on the future of Us Immigration policy. Former ambassadors discuss whether the us should provide arms to ukraine. After that the Congressional Black Caucus forum on race and education. Now a Brookings Institution policy discussion about how immigration policy may be affected by congress and the Trump Administration. Taking part in the discussion, former Homeland Security secretary janet napolitano. This is about 90 minutes. [inaudible conversations] good morning, everyone. I am elaine kamarck, director of the center for public