I want to welcome you all to a discussion about the possibilities of ranked Choice Voting, potentially solving a bunch of different challenges. This is an event in a series of events for new americas 20th anniversary. It was founded in 1999. We are creating a home for new generation of people and ideas across a wide range of Public Policy questions. I am kind of an of the oldtimers, although i was not here in 1999, although i knew the founders and saw the creation of it. Thefundamental ideas about political system had been part of the dna of this organization from the beginning, as my colleague reminded me that ranked voting was in the book that the founders wrote called the radical center. It was one of the ideas that they promoted. That book is not viable for what we do, but it is part of it. Informn i came back to the Political Reform Program in 2014, and our founding idea is that we introduce fresh and getting into the conversation about reforming american democracy and getting beyond some stale solutions. Have have evolved, we found that ideas around ranked Choice Voting and Electoral Reform have really taken on a more salience and attack attracted new constituencies and have begun to seem like a viable solution both when we look at it from the top down, and we see communities turning to the set of ideas as they look for themselves for how to strengthen democracy in their communities. We thought we would pull together a panel of people who are working both at the big level, and in the field on talking to people about these ideas in promoting these ideas, and helping understand the problems that it would and would not solve. We approach all of these things one thing i always say is no reform is a super magic bullet. There is a great essay that came out that said we are no there are no silver bullets and political reform. There are a set ideas that have to work together. Any kind of reform idea gets refracted to the culture and demographics of a community, and we want to touch on some of those ideas. Without wasting more of your time, let me introduce the panelists. I will start with one question and get us going. Will havewe discussion. And then we will open it up. Immediate right is grace ramsey. She is working with a lot of communities who have worked a long time with the Organization Fair vote. Evan mcmullen is the cofounder and executive director of standup republic. He has from utah where there is a lot of interest in these ideas as well. Lamarrright, christopher s Legal Counsel of the Campaign Legal center. That is founded around the time of this one, and i have had a long connection to Campaign Legal center and they are helping a lot of communities figure out not just political but the legal challenges facing these reforms. , who is aeague, lee senior fellow. He is the author of a book coming out in january called breaking the two Party Doom Loop the case for multiparty democracy in america. What i want to do for you you in the room and the cspan audience, i want to make sure we have clarity about what we are talking about. I will start by asking grace not to talk about when you are out in a community and people are curious about the idea and have not heard much about it, how do you describe it . I will let you do that and then we will do the rest of the panel. Grace for a little bit of context, i came to this work in 2013 and minneapolis where they use ranked Choice Voting. They had passed it into thousand six and had used it in 2009, none of the races have been competitive. In 2013 there was an open seat for mayor, and plenty of Competitive City Council races. They came in a Voter Education campaign to make sure the first time it was going to factor into the results that the voters were aware of the system being used and how their vote was going to work. In that case, if i was talking to a voter planning to vote, i would say ranked Choice Voting while it may be a new term is what it sounds like. Voters rank their choices in order of preference. He would say the first choice is the candidate you love, the second choice is a candidate you like, and the third choice is a candidate you can stand. Votes, yount those only take the votes for the favorite candidates to make an accurate view of where the voters stand. Where it differs is that if no one gets a majority. When you are electing one seat you want to elect an account i candidate with a majority. If no one reaches the threshold we eliminate that voter with the fewest votes and the voters who selected that candidate, their vote goes to their second choice. This continues until a candidate has a majority. For different cities and different systems who use it to elect, there are different ways you can apply it. For the voter, the basis is that you will rank the candidates in order of choice. Mark when you are talking to people about it, you say when people talk about it and say what problem are you solving . Grace one thing to be frank that i found is that if you talk about politics people will provide you that the problems that they see quickly. I have not come across a voter who says that everything is great, let us not change everything. In different circumstances eight can apply differently. In minneapolis the situation we saw was that there was in august primary that narrowed the field to two. 5 ,aw turnout from 15 to the students were not back yet. This is a large cost to the city to open up the polls and do all of this, but it is not an accurate view of the voters. You are having 15 narrow the field and there is disproportionate power. So the city decided to eliminate that primary election and have one general election using ranked Choice Voting, essentially having the same conversation when more voters were present. Mark you are talking about nonpartisan. So, instead of two rounds you are going to one round. Grace there are some other several other situations where cities adopted this because they had a runoff election. One place where i have heard a lot of discussion and we have not Seen Movement is primaries generally even if they are partisan. There are several examples where there have been fears partisan primaries with several candidate fierce partisan primaries with several candidates. You can get outcomes that are not intuitive, like people getting through with 25 when a majority did not approve of them as a candidate. This can be a way to work this, and for party unity, you can build to rather than having a knockdown fight before you have gone up against the other party. To take it up . Evan how i talk about it . Grace you can talk about mark you can talk about it and how it relates to your experience . Evan the way we view life is through a prism of what we have already experienced and, not to get all philosophical, i spent over 10 years with the Central Intelligence agency, so i often see a lot of the challenges the country faces from a National Security frame. This is one of them. I look at the country and the Political Polarization that we are experiencing that is not my own assessment, pew has great data that they have collected movingow our parties are towards extremes or at least away from each other. The more that happens, the harder it becomes for us to govern ourselves. We are in this grand experiment of selfgovernance but we are failing to govern ourselves. The world is so dynamic now, whether it is changes in industry, changes in climate, it is the way changes the way we communicate with each other, the way information flows, opportunities and risks that are associated. We live in a very dynamic world, and, especially now, we have got to be able to have a functioning government, but we do not pass budgets, we do not appropriate appropriately. We do not have solutions for infrastructure issues. Health care, information worth warfare threats and so many other things. I look at that and see a National Security threat, we are failing to govern ourselves because our parties are so divided, and our adversaries abroad are seeing this and exploiting that. Politicians are exploiting the divisions and the result is that we cannot govern ourselves and that his rise to fear and more extreme leaders that will come to power capitalizing those divisions and that lack of effective governance. I am one that believes that we have got to change the incentive that shapes the way our leaders lead. My idea is that ranked Choice Voting is a couple of reforms that offer the best opportunity to change those incentives, so that leaders are more incentive vibes to find Common Ground with their rivals and them and straight the Common Ground to build on it. How does that impact policy . It impacts it by their grace and i are running against each other and she has strong supporters that will never support me as a first pick, but i had the opportunity to show Common Ground and hopefully win second choice, and may be the same is true in return, and that can give way to ways forward on even the most divisive policy challenges that the country faces. And so, that is what motivates me and why i am so passionate about this. I think the country is facing a real weakness associated with Political Polarization and that ranked Choice Voting can change the incentives or do a lot to nj to change the incentives to remedy that. See chris, how do you ranked Choice Voting evolving . Chris almost piggybacking off view. Ns philosophical the thing i am really concerned about is the responsiveness of politicians to voters. With ranked Choice Voting, one of the things that you see is that instead of having to choose between two candidates who are sort of on the polar opposites of the very end of the spectrums in terms of political positions that are maybe not actually that popular within the electorate, with range Choice Voting the thing that you see is the politicians coming back into the center and talking about ideas that are actually very popular amongst the electorate. Again, getting into policy isitions is one of the things am really concerned about. You will see elections where if something is hyper polarized you will see politicians saying i want to make sure that the 15 people who vote for me, i want to make sure that those 15 of people come out and vote for me instead of making sure that i do not care less about the 15 of my group and focusing on the remainder of the city that i am trying to get their elections from. That is my main concern. Mark in a way, there is a problem that elections are primarily about mobilization and create a different tone than elections about persuasion of undecided voters. Chris i have heard stories of people talking about campaigns when they are going doortodoor where not going to door and say who are you voting for in this election . Someday already has their first choice. Normally, the door slams in your face and you go into the next one. But, with range choice avoiding voting you could have your second and third choice. That is the way to keep the conversation going. Things that wee have not discussed is the challenge in certain places that in addition to mobilization you could have a winner without a majority. Which is what led people to the idea, which is another potential. It is interesting that none of you described that as part of the problem to be addressed. Hasassure that the winner some kind of support. Do you want to talk about it . I think you kind of have a bigger ambition for where all of this could go. Agree. Ll, i i think we have a large consensus on the panel that we are at this moment of really destructive hyper partisanship that is a fundamental threat to our system of government, which demands a high level of take. Mise, and give and the way our two party system is currently operating is everything is about destroying the other party for an electoral gain. We are having this Panel Discussion as the storm clouds have of impeachment cover this town. It is amazing to see what republicans are doing right now to support donald trump despite the stream of revelations of offenses that he has committed. That is a function of this thaty hyper partisanship republicans in congress cannot break with trump because there is no other party for them to run, except for the democrats and a lot of them are not going to run as democrats for obvious reasons. If there was another party, a centerright party, a ranked Choice Voting system that created space for third parties, who would not be treated as spoilers because voting for a third or fourth party in a range Choice Voting system is not wasting your vote it is expressing your voice. I think you would see a lot of republicans breaking with the president and may be running as forming a new party. I have a book coming out in january called breaking the two a case forloop multiparty democracy, in which i advocate for ranked Choice Voting and multiwinner choice policy and it would allow districts were maybe five representatives go to congress and the top five after a ranked Choice Voting process and that creates space for multiple parties. One of the things, when we look in parity comparatively around the world. The u. S. Is rare and strange with a two party system. It is not that americans wants two parties, it is because we have electoral institutions that make it hard for third parties to compete. We have winner take all, plurality, Electoral Systems. Multiparty democracys allow for more flexibility, more fluidity, voter choice and engagement, because voters are more likely to find a candidate and party that represents them. And, every election is competitive. System,inner take all we have 90 of congressional districts that are not even competitive because when partisan voting is high it is clear who is going to win. Ranked Choice Voting, multimember districts, that would be less certain. Parties compete and voters have an opportunity to express their voice. Although, it is not a silver bullet, because there is no fixing politics, i think ranked Choice Voting and multi winner form will bring us to proportion representation and would fundamentally solve a lot of the in ours that are really democracy this moment. To me, is the most important reform that has a chance of happening in the next five to 10 years. Envisioninge almost the mechanism of ranked Choice Voting as opening the door to the possibility of multimember districts and multi winner systems, and multiparty democracy. I assume, like grace, and you are talking to the people in the community and most of the people who are potentially supporters are democrats or republicans as they start out, that might not be the best starting point. That peoplelution are looking for . Yet . I am just curious. I am curious if any of you have have had that vision work . Chris grace the easy answer is not quite. I think a few things are true. Since the 2016 election, for whatever reason, people on both sides of the aisle are awake, whether they are motivated or scared, whatever their reasoning is. I have seen that across the country. We have seen turn out up in municipal elections which we have not seen in 20 years. We are seeing more activity than we have. One thing we have realized, i think for a long time you do not think to question the status quo. These were systems that you were raised to believe were always around and we do not think about hung how young the mocker see is and if the system was right for us. We were not taught to reconsider those unless you are talking about redistricting. Redistricting. People thee you give opportunity to think about it, i have seen a positive sponsor. One thing that has been interesting, this work has largely been in and educational space. Once you introduce people to the ideas and say this is a problem that you are seeing and this is the solution that i am providing you, education is what is necessary to sate this is a system that exists and this can be changed. People are welcoming to that conversation, it is a matter of presenting it and in a way that people can digest. I do not use first past the post very often, or plurality. You use it in a language that people will understand and make something where it doesnt feel the reticle, but very real. People are open to changing. Mark we have this audience in the cspan audience. Let us define these. It is not hard to do. Just so we are clear. First past the post is a nickname, it comes from horse that whoever is ahead gets the most votes wins. Now, that does not necessarily mean a majority. You can get 30 of the votes and when if the other candidates get less than 30 . Innovation1430 coming from the british countryside and it replaced consensus voting which turned out to be difficult. The framers, who were debating a lot of things in 1787 did not debate Electoral Systems because there is only one at the time, it was a candidate based, whoever gets the most votes wins. That was what elections were. And, it was not until the mid19th century that Electoral Reformers started innovating and coming up with different ideas. Ranked Choice Voting wasnt innovation in the early 19th century. Tremendous was a proponent of it. Earlyhe course of the 20th century a lot of the systems caught on. Australia has used it, ireland has used it. That was probably more than you bargained for. Mark it definitely was. I said anyone could do it. But, not like that. Let us pull back to that Bigger Picture that we were talking about of what is the potential