a fellow at the institute and i will be moderating the event today on consent. a few housekeeping items. i'd love to know for the folks joining us we do not have chat available as a feature and no one will be monitoring that however feel encouraged to send any questions to the qb and a feature or you can send an e-mail at events if you have a question we are going to try to get to the question as time permits. we have a few guests joining us today i so the time will be limited and my apologies in advance if your question isn't answered. we are also recording this event. share with your colleagues or take a listen again to hear the discussion once more. finally i'd like to point out that the discussion is based on a recent paper that we released called restoring losers consent unnecessary steps to stabilizing democracy and if you haven't had a chance to take a look at it i would encourage you toem do so. maybe after the event ends but if you're somebody that can do two things at once, a second window can be opened if you scroll through it. i'd like to welcome everyone to the events today entitled losers consent how do we stabilize our democracy. i'm the fellow with the governing program at the institute for those of you unfamiliar with the work, we are a nonpartisan research organization many folks might just call a think tank. we have a mission to engage in outreach to promote free market and limited affected government. we also recognize the process calls for practical responses and current problems and that's why we hold the model free markets, real solutions. within the program where i focus on elections how to make the elections more accessible and secure but also looking at big picture reforms and how it can incentivize behavior from elected officials. today we will be discussing the topic of losers consent over the course of two panels. for those unfamiliar with the work, you can find the policy paper on the website the topic can be summarized like this. democracy relies upon the consent of the losers following an election, members are the ones to rebel against the winning side to keep a stable democracy is imperative that they must value the institution of the government more than they value the control of the government. they must be willing to accept and try again at the next election. i'd like to note they all bring in our own biases which is to say we might perceive ourselves to be the winners or losers in this present moment but if you follow for any amount of time, you're bound to experience victory and deceitth as a member of a coalition and if you wait long enough you will experience both sides over and over again and that's why it's important we have a stable system to consent to the authority of the winning side and this isn't just limited to candidates to concede, it includes all of us as voters and particularly from the entire losing coalition that recognize the authority. with thatrs being said here's wt we look forward to over the next hour we will talk to political scientists and scheduling stores aligned which i think they will also be able to talk to todd donovan each co-authors of the book losers consent elections and democratic legitimacy. we will talk about questions on losers consent and why it's important and where we stand today and follow up with a discussion with on the ground experience with campaigns alongside a sign of the brightest minds in electoral reform and we will hear. with that being said i'd like to introduce the firstd panel that we have with us at the moment, the deanse of the graduate division at the university of california riverside, he distinguished professor and served as a member of the editorial board and ethical studies and general politics does president to the political science association. he focused on the relationship between the institutions and representative democracy and previously co-authored a number of books and articles on the subject including the future is ours, minority politics, behavior and of the limits of electoral reform and responding to public. thank you for joining us. i'd like to start by asking a bit about what inspired you to write to the book on losers consent, 2007 and at the same time if you can touch on what do weg mean when we use a phrase like losers consent. >> [inaudible] a common concern across the democracy [inaudible] the response eluded to that in deciding whether or not it continues for the idea that they lost the election and working across the democracies as perhaps you've already showed me. >> i'd like to ask with that in mind, why is this important and in particular, does it seem important to you now thatt we t a focus on the consent in the current time? >> an example in a number of ways as a consequence of that for example we see a whole set of public opinions that shows how angry people are to accept the result and how willing they are to act on that. there were a lot of people angry about that and so what we see currently is a whole bunch of activity not consenting. one thing i should say about academic literature is [inaudible] >> you mentioned areas that have been covered. my impression of the book it seems almost 15-years-old at this point and was written at a time period in which vice presidentod al gore lost a contentious election to the suprement court and followed the decision with a concession speech that effectively said i don't like the decision that was made, but i'm willing to accept it and i'm going to encourage folks to accept it and as i read through the book, they seemed to take the united states ability to handle loss for granted and things might have changed in that time period. in the paper that we have available i noted that there had been a vicious cycle if you look at and even like january 6th, it's i not an isolated incident but it took a series of steps along the way to get there and not necessarily to draw equivalencies but conversations over whether or not the candidates will whether it was donald trump developed as a candidate, hillary clinton making claims that the russians were responsible and perhaps the trump election wasn't legitimate and in the midterm we saw the gubernatorial candidate refuse to concede. much of this kind of paves the way for continued withholding of consent and i wonder is this a vicious cycle problem and should we no longer be taking the subject for granted in the unitedin states? >> it's unusual to see that happen in the u.s. and for generations of political scientists that grew up on the idea and that turned out not to be the case but one of the things that happened while it may mostly be the gop, there is a long history of the past generation with the unwillingnesss to decide. there's a whole series of examples. one of the fallouts they said that theha claim has been something wrong with elections and you can see in the state level repeated examples claims being made which means it does reflect something longer-term that's happened. >> todd donovan is joining us now. to give folks a brief introduction, he is a professor of political science at the universityn where he conducts research on opinions in washington state, and occasionally in australia, canada and great britain. at the co-author of a number of books as well alongside the guest including electoral reform and representation with alternative elections and then the reforming republic. an elected official he serves on the council in washington. thank you for joining us i'd like to give you a chance to mention and reflect on 2007 but i'm wondering in your perspective when all that happened in the intervening 14 or 15 years the book was released was my view the consent was taken for granted in the united states at the time that that was written. do you agree with that characterization and either way do you think it should be taken for granted now? >> thanks for having me. i think the book has a comparative focus in part because a lot of the data that we are working with is available. it didn't quite fit in with that but i don't think it was taken for granted. looking back on the book if we were doing it again and we measured some things in the trust in government satisfaction and how losers have different attitudes on those sorts of things i think what's may be different now is the sort of concern about the d consolidation where the attitudes among people that's not something we are able to get into enough, so that would be an area we would probably want to look at and your point that shawn said about the concerns about the electoral fraud, that goes back. remember in 2000 as democrats were thinking back. all that was going on before we even wrote the book. the mechanics of elections i think as much as that predated that has changed kind of structurally. if we did, those would be some of the things we may want to look at. >> i'm curious looking toward the future if you had thoughts and we will go to each of you acwhat can be done to help ensue the losers consent going forward. my peter outlined a few different options in which i will admit would have varying levels of impact and of the ideas for more representation in having more of an impact in who represents them and as it turns out the mistakes may not feel as dramatic.fe for us moving from one side to the other feeling that at the direction of the policy in the country that goes with it, the consequences are high and that can really add to the resentment of r losing. i look at reducing the partisanship. i point out there's an opportunity to combat misinformation and allegations that don't have anything to back them up for the things that thit everybody just in my view there's an impact on turnout so youwi will see elected officials promoting one reform or another with the intent to hold back the turnout thinking it would have a partisan impact. then the last thing is more of a soft factor it's important for the voters to demand more virtue for the candidates. the candidates need to show humility and defeat and graciousness and victory. i think there is a sore winners and sore losers problem that could happen as well that even if a a voter isn't able to creae a representation system they are responsible for the kind of character traits that they want out of the candidates, so those arare the things as potential solutions and feel free to reflect on those ideas and if you have anything else, we could start with sean this time. >> one of your recommendations was the top four or top five voting systems. one of the books was the limit of reform that would make people better and engaged and there's a lot of uncertainty about all these things and often times they don't deliver in ways that their proponents would sort of but there's a lot of problems not just in terms of how the voters might change their perceptions, but in terms of how the campaigns are conducted and not that they would be less partisan are polarized but for the rivals and supporters. i think there's a little bit of evidence that people perceive less negativity in the campaigns in the voting context so there's some promise there. the nonpartisan election i thought a lot about that. should they be elected or appointed. at the secretary of state is being vetted for the top post at the department ofsh homeland security and she's a republican being appointed by the biden administration so maybe not nonpartisan, but cost partisan in the administration. but at the end of o the day, the signals people send in office or probably the most important in terms of how people perceive the legitimacy and how they are conducted. soab the secretary of state of georgia or washington, that they, you know, whatever their party is, they have to be sort of in the position of transparencyan and something people perceive and not just secretaries of state with local officials, so that is how you get that virtue that you are talking about. we have all of these kind of procedural reforms that will may be solving some of the presumptions about elections being less than legitimate, but at the end ofle the day what are the winners and losers saying to their supporters. >> shaun? >> one of the things that strikes me is the incentives. there is a lot of money to be made. there's a lot of campaigns to be bought. there's a lot of people out there interested in the idea. willing to take his money and people ought to recognize there's a lot of different things you could take. furthering the reform might be helpful because right now we need to moderate [inaudible] at the end of the day it does depend upon recognizing we have a disregard but that isn't helpful. i do think we have to be able to incentivize and what that means is it takes action to be able to do this. it breaks apart this idea and those are helpful, representation, those kind of things will help. >> that is a great point and as we start to approachar the bottm of the hour if folks have questions they can feel encouraged to reach out by e-mail and for those of us on zoom i believe the q-and-a function is live. i have another question and this might be q the last one given te amount of time we have available to us i don't want to spin you with recent polling data that you might not have seen but there was a release last week looking at democracy and internationally it included the united states as part of its research and whether or not folks felt satisfied with the way democracy is working in their country and the results wereul not optimistic for the united states. luckily 60% of americans were not satisfied with the way democracy was working here but at the same time something like 85% of them believed that there is an opportunity for reform and that things do need to be reformed, so i'm curious in your viewpoint are the american people ready for reform or are we still inar a place in the present moment we need to ben holding tight and kind of waiting for the tides to turn? i don't expect any of us necessarily have a crystal ball but if you could give a bit of your take on whether or not the american people have an appetite for the reforms and i will start with shaun on this one. >> two things, i'm just sort of free reading as we go through here. it's not surprising. we are just coming out of the epidemic. there's all kinds of things that went wrong and especially of similar events across. there's a lot of events and people processing and a lot of people ready for things to change. in terms for example of marriage, local government [inaudible] as well as what is the government doing so it's not surprising batista for reform or changing things. i'm sometimes hesitant reform is to make things better as opposed to changing it. the response to changing it rather than making it a better i think though the key thing depends on politicians having to take the reform that benefits the system and doesn't just benefit them. there's not a lot of evidence of that. there's not a lot of evidence the political class is ready. >> to be honest, not a lot of incentive for them to see things that way. >> i think so. >> todd, the last word as we approach the bottom of the hour and switch the panel. >> there was a similar one that is 60% of americans take the fundamental structural changes are needed in the political system and a majority of republicans or near majority of republicans and democrats also found people thought they were working okay but whether we are talking about finance reform or redistricting or some of the reforms we talked about here that people do seem [inaudible] how do you get that to happen if people in office are the ones controlling the changing rules some of these things get done through initiatives, the redistricting initiatives a lot of states were adopted what do we think of term limits. or that might be the way we plan to get the representation, write choice voting and that's not the whole country, so i think the appetite is there. advocacy groups educating what some of these reforms are and then kind of the opportunity whether you can get that on the ballot and those that don't have tdirect democracy, that is much harder because then you are counting on people under the current rules to change the current rules but i'm optimistic. >> i appreciate ending on the note of optimism here because it seems like often conversations we have around of the electrical structure and politics in the united states can be a bit to sour so thank you for the note of optimism and thank you both for joining we will start to transition to the second panel. you're welcome to stick around. feel free to keep your camera off and microphone on mute as we bring the next panel and if you are part of the next you are welcome to turn your microphones and cameras on and take a moment to provide introductions to the forego view and give folks a reminder if they are joining partway through, we are talking about losers consent and the idea that it's important not just for losing candidates but also the voters and the coalition to recognize the winners and their authority for holding an election which is difficult inct a number of incentives against doing that but largely i know losers is a harsh term, but the losing side of an election leads to value the institution of government more than they value control of the government and in certain circumstances that can be asking a lot so moving forward to the second half of the panel i'd like to bring on the long time public affairs strategist with more than a decade of national experience in communications marketing political operations and management. her work includes campaigns and more than a dozen states and among them like arizona, florida, pennsylvania. a speechwriter or has been for former u.s. department of commerce secretary wilbur ross and the republican national convention. for the business executives, political candidates and elected officials that the term. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> i will introduce next the executive director. sarah is a policy specialist that oversees all secure democracy state and federal legislative work and partnership management. prior to joining, she served in the state government and held various roles in the government relations and is an expert on thee legislative issues. sarah speaks with of the media as a source of information and has been quoted in "the new york times," politico, business insider, the houston chronicle, the constitution, the tampa bay times, public integrity, and many more outlets. too many to name at one time but thank you for joining us. >> thank you so much for having me. >> next, jason roberts is professor specializing in american political institutions with an emphasis in the u.s. congress. right now serving as a professor of political science at the university of north carolina chapelel hill. he earned his bachelors from the university of north alabama and his masters from perdue and phd from the washington university in st. louis. prior to joining the faculty, he was assistant professor of political science at the university of minnesota and he's researching parties and procedures in the congress and congressional elections and currently working on a project that explores the role of the competitiveness of elections in the united states. tthank you for joining us. >> it is my pleasure. >> the fourth panelist, arthur davis is a former united states representative for alabama's seventh congressional district where he served from 2003 to 2011. while successful in multiple campaigns for congress he provides the perspectives today as someone that has participated in hard-fought elections in alabama and then in the city and in the context of the conversation today. priorrs to his political career heis earned a bachelors degree from harvard where he graduated respectively. following his career as an official he returned to the practice of law and works in the field of workplace nadiscrimination. thank you for joining us. >> i'd like to start with you if ing can with a question. you have on the ground experience both as a successful candidate and someone who's campaigns didn't turn out the way you wanted them to. i wonder if you can speak to us about what it's like, i might be picking a scabby year, but what it's like to still be willing to try again in the future. >> a great politician a long time ago once said if you lose [inaudible] most of us that have been through that experience would say that's bed on. what i've learned over time [inaudible] in the late 1990s first of all we are in a culture today with lines across any sort of party lines those are perspective and if that perspective which donald trump fed into and folks on the left feet into as well [inaudible] someone who loses today is and during that experience in the midst of the identification of losing with a lack o of ability, and winning with skill, fortitude, determination so if you refuse to lose, losing is not an option, where does this basis come from. the theory that if you have the will and the determination you will be successful. [inaudible] significant losses in their political career. what we are dealing with today is when the previous panel touched on. the struggle and you find the opposition is evil so to lose now is to lose to corrupt sources and that's what feeds this notion. i imagine the success on the other side and it also creates winners in the phenomenon because now it means i've beaten the sources on the other side. that enforces the society and entertainment and business so how do we think about winning and losing politics. >> i think that's right and i appreciate that you come from alabama. as a team that is known for winningg and that is living in that shadow i think it permeates across the culture more than just politics and it can be a dangerous mindset as it helps to enable that activity in the name of a good cause. i apologize that we don't have too much time as we have quite a few t panelists so i will come back i think to the point that you were making but i want to give meredith a chance to chip in here. as i understand you served as a campaign staffer and a specialist in communications and talking to average people and talking to them about politics or wondering if you can share for us what it's like convincing voters to remain engaged particularly if you are picking up at a moment they might have just gone through an electoral defeat and now as the candidate if you can look to it as someone that maybe understands the communication towards voters. >> sure. there are no winners without losers but also because many were at one time losers and that's true whether you've engaged as a candidate or elected official, staffel person or as o a volunteer you think inabout how many elected officis haveve lost a race at some point in their political career, what they learn from that experience and whether it again you are a candidate, staff person, volunteer, the feeling of losing a campaign once to know you never want to do it again. there's a process that happens and if you are engaged in a campaign again you've done the work to understand what you need to do differently whereas if you have an attitude if i didn't lose, i want and itac was stolen you are notou taking a hard look at the things you could have done differently and better. i will say having worked on a losing campaign myself, there is nothing more motivating than having gone through that g experience. that's something you take with you when you talk to voters and when you talk to volunteers and inspire them to pick up and work on thehe next campaign. i'm curious based on that experience our voters as willing to jump back into the fray in i the current moment is there a difference, are we seeing a trend or any thoughts along those lines? >> i think the trends will tell. i noticed a lot of folks coming out during the stop the steel movement that had never once volunteered on a campaign so hopefully as disappointing as it may have been for them it might motivatete them to get engaged before the elections happen rather than after when it's too late. >> i think that's a great point and you are right, time will tell. there seems toe be the politicl consultant or lawyer answer, we will see. but i will give you a pass because i think you're right. next i'd like to turn to john, sorry, why did i call you john, jason. if you can talk for the minute i know in your academic career you studied elections in congress and the fact the relationship between the two and how the ballot structures into the rest might impact the way officials act. i am curious for your thoughts and we have about a five minute window to answer the question, and it's a big one do you think it's possible under the current system that we can ensure a consistent consent from electoral losers or do we need to make changes? >> i think we can and we have. there are changes we could make. the point you made that would have the most impact would be to move to a a system where the person administering is not on the ballot you talk about the georgia gubernatorial race it is a clear conflict of interest to have a candidate for an office administering the election. they have the purest intentions it's going to look bad no matter what we do so we could and should probably do more nonpartisan election administrations. we alsoad need to develop better candidates norms. senator romney probably said this best after the january 6 attack. we tell them the truth, that they lost and it's time to move on and you reference the concession speech. i once called up the last 40 or 50 years to show to my students in 2016 then candidate trump was saying that election is rigged and i laid that out to show them throughout history democrats, republicans, landslide elections with a gracious accepting of defeat. we've had that before in the context of the system where elected officials set the rules and they've always done this in a way to try to manage them but we also tempered that with the norm of accept the outcome as it is and then you move on. >> i'm curious then to follow up on that point if candidates historically had this norm to concedeon presumably it's what e dowe so it's what we do or they vviewed that there was an incentive to concede. the public would keep shame upon them if they didn't. it seems to me if that is the case of something changed, do you have a sense of what kind of changed as far as the public's willingness to accept a lack of concession? >> i think we talked about this earlier but effective partisanship it's not so much you care so much about your own side but you think the other side is evil. there is something inherently corrupt about the other side so it becomes easier to delegitimize and dehumanize so it makes that kind of behavior acceptable so you've walked into an illegitimate actor so then if you can view them is not a legitimate actor you yourself don't feel less constrained by the norms of democracy and democratic competition. >> that's unfortunate and again how do we help cure politics without getting into the element behind it and how do we think about us versus them, who comprises us and them and what separates us. i know that your work out a secure democracy is focused on reforming electoral systems to improve access and making sure the results are trustworthy. i'm curious if we can keep the conversation going about the suggestions for particular reforms that canng help ensure losers are willing to consent to the authority of winners follow and again it's a big question and while you take a moment to answer, forhow to the folks joining us, the paper is available on the topic. we have different electoral reforms like proportional voting to give voters a different and perhaps more impactful say in who wins or maybe to reduce the number that might identify as losers. we also look at ensuring nonpartisan election administrations as well as demanding the virtuous behavior from candidates and i will continue to note getting back to you as well about how voters can demand this from their candidates as someone that served as a candidate and congressmen get ready for that question. but i wonder what can we do on a particular reform to help ensure the losers consent? >> i think my first response is one of the things i am most concerned about is what's happening now so it's not necessarily a proactive policy but what i see is happening is we need to stop what's happening in the state legislatures currently because to me the losers consent is being jeopardized in the upcoming election as a result of the policiesin passed in the state legislatures and the bills that are being introduced already for the 2022 legislative session. the policies have been ranging from criminalization of elections administrations, administrators which is going to make them less likely to want to keep those roles if they range to civil penalties and rights of action with no burden of proof and then of course perhaps what most concerns me and keeps me up at night are the egregious never ending elections investigations that are spreading like wildfire. i'm sure many people have heard about the bill introduced in texas that has not passed butt i think it shows where we are headed and why these actions need to be stopped in their tracks if we are ever going to get to a point that we can look at t the kind of electoral refos that the state has suggested. the texas bell would have allowed the losing candidates or political party officials to initiate a review of not just a past but future elections even just simply with no evidence of malfeasance or any burden of proof and this is particularly concerning because it would have applied to primaries in addition to generals, so you could imagine the scenario in which on the most extreme elements on both sides and both parties would be challenging primary votes and in the meantime those could be recounted and we are going into a general election creating a system of chaos. but we all know this isn't just happening in texas. it's happening in some states like michigan, wisconsin, utah. these are further developing and promulgating the theory of the information and positions that are being used to weaponize and they are creating a hostile environment. the other thing i would add we are going to restore trust in democratic norms that is critical we not only consider legislative efforts that lay the foundation for the increases. we have to stop these now if we are going to be able to create those collaborations and coalitions needed for the electoral reform and i think there's just two brief points i would make i worry and i guess this is still the unknown but i think that will change who wants towh participate and what the motivations are for participating into the last thing i think we would all do better on electoral forms if we did not only and exclusively focus on the battleground states and perhaps focus on states like alabama,rh mississippi who don't really receive as much attention. >> there is something poetic maybe that's not the right word but i appreciate the idea a better way to restore trust is to do nothing for a bit as far as reforms are concerned, just kind of let things simmer and let the heat turned down a little bit. i want to come back to you around the candidates behavior. wedi have received a question ad the question and answer box regarding what everyday folks can do to have an impact on improving and reforming democracy and it's my take that even if you can't change the law with individual voters they do as part of the collective have an impact on the character of the candidates they can power it is a former candidate yourself what your f thoughts are on the ability of candidates to be held to account for the character and a signal to the voters what kind ofhe character factors are important if you could speak to that issue for me. into many communities around the country the people that count the ballots and one that process were provisionals and hard-core partisans. they are not neutral in any way, shape or form. we are not going to [inaudible] we need a nation of neutral people and political operatives running elections community by community. as far as the capacity to make a change, today if you declined to decline torecognize the legitime other side, you are rewarded for that political base. your political base would say this is a person of courage. we are going to have to change the nature of what people value in politics. one of the last panelists made a point that we've gone from a world that is a highly capable people able to think about issues to a world where to be a star nowav and means you need a loud voice and to project that loud voice. to be an up-and-coming politician now do you have the capacity to project yourself. to change the incentive structure about movingnt to a world where confidence matters and experience matters and a demonstrated track record matters we have too many people running for office whose modification is to care deeply about issues they know nothing about. we've got to move back to a world where people are rated on whether or not they show they can do a job. how the selection where the resumes don't matter and credentials don't matter and if you begin to change that underlining foundation all of this that we talked about today will eventually change. >> i would like to kind of keep this going and give you a chance to respond to what you might have heard from your fellow panelists. any particular thoughts that you might have around some of the best opportunities to ensure greater consent from losing voters? >> one thing that was pointed out earlier something's got to give and todd made a great comment when he said campaigns have to operate appropriately and his question wase how do you instill that virtue in candidates to be able to win or lose graciously. there is a responsibility that in some ways lies with consultantss as well to preparea candidate for the potential of both outcomes. certainly there is a balance there operationally you want to keep your focus is a campaign operative on doing what it takes to win for as long as possible, but if you've done everything right operationally believe it or not it is a pretty slow day in the campaign office. let's be prepared with two speeches in case things don't go our way and let's also be prepared to win or concede graciously. some of the people in the president's circle were afraid to approach the president with that t reality, and ultimately n my opinion that is attributable to what we saw on january 6th. >> that is a good point. as someone that has dabbled a bit from the outside it doesn't seem to be that way. i'm going to give you a bit of an open floor for response to that but i would also like to raise a question brought up in the q-and-a related to what americans can learn from other countries perhaps. in the first half of the discussion today americans are not satisfied with of the statef the democracy. from thehe pew research they fel there's an opportunity for reform and on the other side we have countries that do have broad work and at the moment they are satisfied with the way things are going. i'm curious from your perspective if you have thoughts about what we might learn from other countries. >> it takes thousands and thousands to do thosee kind of things one of my republican colleagues looks over at me as we traced down a missing ballot and she says it would be really hard to commit voter fraud given the processes we have in place. i said that's true we need to make sure that people see that and that's why people get engaged before the election to see how the process works you would feel better about m it and have fewer people questioning the outcome if they would look at the control and quality checks that go into administering an election. i don't want to speak out school of what other countries have done but if we paid more front end wethe would have more confidence in the outcome. >> i will come back to you. we only have a couple of minutes left. since you were the last to go in the first group i want to give you the opportunity to provide a reaction and any closing faults that you might have and i will go very briefly after this if folks want to share about a minute of a closing thought. >> two things quickly. i do agree with professor roberts. helping educate the public about the processes already in place is something we can do to build the trust, but i also want to vebelieve in a positive proactie role. some of the reforms might take longer and the coalition building there are things we can do in the legislature that shouldn'tt be partisan. things like adding ballot tracking so that those can actually see the process, election administrators and then people can see if something has gone wrongpl or the ballot isn't received. every state should have some form of an audit and i also think that we should keep that transparent on thetr secretary's website. there are small steps we can take to start rebuilding the trust in the interim. >> thank you. one thing that attracts me about other countries process the candidates told become a personality unless they when. many european countries for example were even israeli and canadian politics the reality is the party and ideas associated in the various parties on the leballot dominate the process, e personalities less so. this is a country were because of the extended nature of the primarys systems the personalities of the candidates and qualities go on a center centerstage more than other countries. with that house and i'm trusting effect on the discussion today. >> thank you. i hadn't thought of it that way with regards to the way the primary role folks may agree on 99% of the policies instead of their personality differences. that's fascinating. thank you. >> it's really difficult because it's emotional. so it is a reflection of a failure taking place involved in a very personal one. operationally, campaigns are more than a full-time job for many. and when we come into the time, the resources, the money that we need in order to be competitive, a lot of times we wind up losing your family, friends, loved ones in the campaign so there is a lot of personal exposure wrapped up in winning and losing. also, i believe and hope that most, not all but most candidates really understand the weight and responsibilities that they will have to take on to help their constituents. and with that comes the idea that artur pointed out, which is thatt you kind of develop this notion of the very polarized notion of very good versus evil and that's where it makes losing so devastating and also what makes winnings of joyful. about looking at the necessity of the palatability of concession when it's necessary, making sure that candidates are educated about the realities of winning or losing my attitude professor roberts a grade-point educating volunteers and people that engage in the elections process. often times they are just local volunteers, and really engaging them in the process is where we willce start to see positive changes. >> thanks. and i appreciate ending on a note of optimism. i pointed out, the subject can be a little pessimistic because the politics just isn't a forum for happiness and joy at the moment, but it's nice to remember that there are good folks out there working on this and there are positive way as to which the country can come together. and even if we disagree on policy, we can agree on democracy. thank you all for joining us today, and thank the viewers for joining in. a recording will be made available for those interested later and you can find out more on the work we are doing over at our street institute on the website, rstreet.org. and thank you again everyone for joining us.