Would address the equality in the system. The third dimension is that we allow within our system plainly intentionally discriminate as the center determine the view of the election. If youre an African American in ohio, its harder for you to vote. Ohio got 3 billion for new voting machines. In white districts they got more voting machines. This is a decision driven not by race necessarily, driven by politics which, of course, correlates with politics. This place is a burden which again an unfair and unequal burden when you have to wait 30 minutes to vote, if youre a rich person with a nanny and an iphone, that might be a problem. For most americans thats something you cant afford to take. What the campaign tried to say, look, we have a corrupted congress, it cannot address any of the issues it needs to address, corruption is the disease but equality would be the cure. If we could embrace a principle of equalitiy, political equalitiy. Im not equality other than political, that equality would break up the mechanisms of corruption that make it so hard for this institution to then find. It has solutions that speak to them. The way we suppress the vote unequally is addressed in the equality act. We didnt write any new statutes. We took proposals that were out there with dealing with each of these separately and wrapped them together and said, look, the principle here is as old as this republic even though never recognized, perfected in this republican preub preub principle of equality. Now it sounds like hillary and bernie and perhaps the others as well, its possibly even helpful for them to run against congress. Congress is not very popular right now. This is one of the kind of deep corruptions that i had no clue of till i got in the middle of it. The primary process is winning over Party Members to support the campaign. Who are those powerful Party Members . Theyre members of congress. If youre going to go out there as candidate running for president in primaries and successful with these people, its not an effective technique to stand up there and say the problem with american democracy is you guys, congress. Those have been trying to win over. Some of those people, you know, actually agree with that, many of them, they are great leaders in congress. Absolutely, congress has become the broken institution but not many of them like to think of themselves or institution as the broken institution of american government. Its not a great strategy. Whats striking is, i studied these debates that i was not allowed to be part of but i studied them carefully, theres no point at which any of the candidates ever talk trash about congress, never say anything about congress. How about the Campaign Finance system . They do, but this is whats frustrating, even as the issue is being surface, its being surfaced of which candidates is or is not. We just had a president who is not corrupted we would have a democracy that worked. Barack obama didnt back away from the public option in obamacare because he had been bought up for the insurance companies. He backed off from the public option because congress was in u place that it realized it couldnt survive. Democrats couldnt survive because of the money that would come in and elect the elections of congress. The corrupted institution is congress but even right now in democratic debates everybody is speaking as if the question is who is the vituest one. In my view it doesnt really matter anymore. Whether youre hillary or bernie, the issue is if theres a congress that can do anything for you and thats only going to be addressed or achieved if we actually direct the energy of this campaign towards fixing this corrupted which is why you saw referendum candidacy as the crucial element. Right. In the wake of whats happened, whats moving this forward 2. 0 look like . What does that look like . Yeah, thats hard. People have taken the inequality act. Im all in favor of that. I support it as much as i can, but i think, you know, we as citizens have to step back and recognize theres a kind of missing part to our democracy. You know, if the president goes nuts or starts misbehaving theres an institution that can do something about it, congress can impeach the president. If the Supreme Court start going Crazy Congress can pack the court or give president the power to pack the court. But theres no mechanism in our system with dealing with a broken congress. Congress isnt going to fix itself. The president doesnt have an incentive to take on congress, if youre taking on congress you take on your own party, you pretty much guaranty theres nothing that you get fixed, if nothing gets passed youre a oneterm president. Congress is not going to take it on. Who is going to take it on . Presumably the voters wont be reached by the message by voters dont elect congress. They elect members of congress. If you look at the system and you say voters help us overthrow corrupted congress, they have to vote for a democrat, they have to vote for republican, these people are just as bad whether theyre democrats or republican, theres no reform really possible there. Its not going to combo tom up or top down, its not going to come from the side or courts, theres an interesting moment to the history of the constitution when two days before the constitution was published the American People didnt a way to amend the constitution is exclusively through congress. George maces stands up and says what if congress is the problem, then we are stuck and, you know, a fist time there was a moment in the history of american politics, they said, yeah, thats right and they created a convention claws to give the states the power to call in a convention. Article 5. Article 5 to have a convention to propose amendments of the constitution. Thats a mechanism. Most americans are terrified about the idea of a convention. Thats what drove you in this very room. Yeah, we had this conversation here, thats right. About the article 5 convention. Conocon. Constitution convention congress. The idea that we are going to have an article 5 convention to deal with Congress Strikes most people. Here we are. I think most people see theres a problem. This is an institution that bounces around singledigit approval ratings, its a bankrupt institution but what is the solution to that problem, and so as i was pushing this idea forward of a referendum, to referendum candidacy and people were constant i will saying to me, thats crazy. Whats your solution to the problem . Yeah, youre right. Its a bad plan. Whats your plan . That was me. [laughter] things turned out very well. Were no, we dont know that yet. [laughter] wait a minute. Is your campaign dead . [laughter] youll have to wait for the next season to know. Wow. [laughter] it could come back. We will see. Hu . There are microphones. Feel free to go up to it and it sounds as if questions about the campaign, speculation about the next season of game of thrones or ideas on if you accept larrys version of both the problem, the potential substantive solution about which academic can write a book but theres still a question about the mechanics of doing that. Feel free to tell us who you are. I would be curious to know why the courts cant do anything . Well, of course, the courts could fix the problem that gave rise to super pacs and they should, but an important part of, you know, my view of the problem is that thats not enough. The courts dont have the power to Order Congress to pass public funding of campaigns. Its not within their intent. The courts dont have the power according to jurisprudence to Tell Congress the way it draws districts. It might come to a place where it challenges districts, but thats not enough. So it takes leadership. Its part of my view of where we liberals have made a big mistake. The history of the last 40 years, 50 years, maybe of liberal jurisprudence, whenever theres a problem lets raise to five courts as oppose to go to the American People of what the right answer is and get the democratic branches to give us the right answer. I think here is both because its necessary and its only the way it sticks. We have to go to the people and say to the people this problem is something youve got to get your congress to fix and theyre the ones that have to fix it. Im a student at business school. I want to ask you if you have an action, i think we all pretty much agree that Campaign Finances define political system, so i dont know if you have any specific items that you think people here could do. Yeah, i appreciate that. Theres lots of particulars that i can point you to. System for equality is the site. But beyond particular organizations weve got to find a way to change the discourse about this issue, right, so to make it urgent that people focus on the need to fix this democratic first, and that means really pressing candidates. Whenever any candidates talks, its not just about them saying, here is what the right answer is, its also about explaining how theyre going to bring that answer about. Not once has any candidate mentioned the word public funding of elections. Not once. That is the only solution within the horizon of the Supreme Court changing or amendment of the constitution that can make any difference here. That this issue is not at the center and because its not at the center most people dont recognize that there is a solution which actually they could do something if we created the pressure. And just for those who havent been living and breathing this, multimember districts are not just some innovation and some other country, they were part of the original republic. Is it done in the presidency races . Every president between nixon and obama was elected with public funding. Nobody benefited from it more than ronald regan who ran three national campaigns. There would have never been ronald regan had there been not public funding. The most striking thing about that history is that when ronald regan ran for reelection he attended eight fundraisers. Ben when barack obama he ran 200 fundraisers. I think this is, you know, putting aside the question of how you run the most difficult job in the country while attending 225 fundraisers. I think i want some of the money back for the salary here. But the point is its completely distorting from the perspective of who these people are talking to. 225 fundraisers were not ron comely americans, 220 fundraisers with the tiniest slice of 1 . Outside money, i gather, obama opted out of public funding . Obama opted out, thats what ended presidency, reagan ushered it in and reagan we have obama to curse. Weird times, yes, sir. If i was a pastor i would be really excited about vouchers. One hundred dollars to throw fundraiser right there for canned candidate. Racial Justice Groups or anyone who has people but not money, why havent we surfaced democracy vouchers as solution which seems much more exciting for Campaign Reform. This would be a test of candidate. Can you explain democracy vouchers . Its a form of public funding. In fact, seattle just passed a voucher proposal given everybody 100 worth of vouchers. For city elections, and so what this is, when i described it in my book, lets take the first 50 of everybodys tacks and taxes and rebait it in the form of a voucher and help candidates that agree to take vouchers and small contributions. Youre right, it has enormous potential to rally people around an alternative to the way we fund campaigns right now but requires candidates to talk about. The first thing they say to you, or something called public funding, is that, you know, this will kill you, politically kill you. And the truth is i think for most of the last 50 years that might have been the case. But i think we are finally at a place where americans are so deeply frustrated with the system and thats why what happened in seattle is so important. One one the premise of the question was that both the left and the right who dont agree on anything, i might like to play this game rather than the chickenpecking game. On the outside rightwing organizers and leftwing organizers love this idea of people funding elections. Theres a guy who is richard, take back the republic, rightwing organizers trying to organize public funding at this level. Richard has taxation without representation act. This is the real tea party. People are being taxed without being represented because the only represented are the people running campaigns. Everybody should get a 200dollar voucher. This is a very rightwing appropriate way to talk about the issue and theyre building a huge rightwing support for this at the grassroots level. People on the inside, its not that theyre evil, they dont have time to think about an alternative system when theyre in the middle of a twoyear cycle. We have to build the support, movement to allow them to think differently about this because obviously they have no time. Yes, sir. Thanks for taking the time and being pretty frank today. Two questions, im wonder if you think your candidacy will spur more singleissue referendum candidates both and also wondering, you had mentioned that specially when it comes to primaries you get more to have a far right or far left voting population on that, im wonder if you think there would be a benefit of whether it would be legislating a holiday for primary or National Vote for election day so that you can actually have a more representative population . This idea, bernie has pushed this idea to moving to a holiday for voting. It obviously makes sense to equalize the opportunity to vote. I absolutely support that. With respect to the it wouldnt be a holiday voucher. You have to go to florida to vote. Technically youre right. This was a singleissue campaign in the sense that it was a revolution. So i dont support the idea of, you know, single issue. Im going out there. The only issue i care about is climate change. I dont support that idea. But i do think that when youre at a place when you see the system itself is broken, we have to have a way to talk about how do we fix that system and so, you know, all of the time i would try to talk about it like that and it would be put into this while its a singleissue candidate. I didnt know how to do it, yes, in some sense single issue, but no, its not an insignificant issue. Its the only issue. Unless you fix this issue, we dont get to solve any of the other issues that youre talking about. So the frustrating that i watch people interview candidates on Television Like bernie would be interviewed and people would say, how are you ever going to pay for single payer healthcare, why is that the question. How would you pass healthcare when congress is not going to allow that to happen. Youre never going to break up the banks so long as the largest funders come from wall street. The press would never focus on the really important practical question which was the core, i thought, of this whole campaign which is we dont have a political system thats responsive to what the people want. So we have president ial candidates to pretend theyre run to go get the votes from the people that tell them what they should do without addressing the fact that regardless of what they want to do theyre not going to do any of it because the essential institution in the middle is completely corrupted and destroyed. I see we have at least nine questions pending. Ill talk faster. Thats the solution. [laughter] is there anything that four words cant solve . Yes, sir. We are leaders of wolf pack massachusetts. As you have alluded we are the group that is trying to get convention, first of all, we would like to thank you for your support. Secondly, i would like to make a shape, we have four states to call for convention, five states halfway, we are doing great in massachusetts and we are going to win and change history and professor is support e of us and he will be the god father of our movement and third a question i think that might be how do we get people to look past the glamour of president ial politics and to actually engage in the states where voter turnout is very low and people dont Pay Attention and dont care . Got it. Here is the largest problem of article 5 convention movement. Youre right, i worked with wolf pack. I testified in state legislators to get them to pass the amendments. But that process too has become essentially polarized. Just like right wing calls for convention, balanced budgets, pending all sorts of things that they dont like on the right wing. Basically the one that we participated in that change it had way campaigns are funded. Unless we have a way to call for a convention that is not politically polarized its certain to die. This is why. If the right succeeds in getting 34 states to call for a convention, it would be the biggest gift to the democratic parties fund raising appear pparatus. Oh, my gosh the Tea Party Convention is going to take our rights so we can go fight them. The same thing the other way around, the right would say, oh, my gosh, liberal crazies are going to take over constitution and turn us into socialist republic, democratic socialist republic. But again, it would be about falling into the partisan frame fund raising frame and restroeu the possibility of how we are going to make progress. One of the most important things wolf pack has try to do again and again is frame this to the way thats open and until we can get to a place where people on the right realize the way i think people on the left have that we need to make this as a cross partisan event. Thats what the right cares about. Both of those at the convention. Neither side should care because, you know, it takes 38 states to ratify whatever the convention does which is a large number when you think its basically 13 states. Its not like any crazy rightwing amendment or crazy leftwing amendment is ever going to get threw. We through. The politics of hate where we are focused on how we hate the other side that the idea of working with the other side is working as a constitutional article 5 convention. Got it. They pretty much asked what i was going to ask about wolf pack so i will ask you what can we do to push this issue forward, get money out of politics as citizens because obviously our politicians dont care what we think unless youre part of the superrich which i know im not. [laughter] do you have yeah, i think we have to find a way to push demand that think talk about the solution, its not enough to talk about the problem. Weve got the frame t billionaires have taken over. Everybody gets that. Literally 93 of americans will say they get that. The question is what is the solution. We should be saying that to every single candidate. The republicans get it too. The republicans after donald trump