John Pudner on Taking Back Our Republic [11-14-19]

This is Larry Lussig. This is the third season of the podcast Another Way. The subtitle for the season POTUS 1. Our effort to frame a commitment to fundamental reform and to get the candidates to accept it. Today, I'm incredibly happy to have a chance to speak with a real hero of mine, even though we share practically no substantive views about policy at all. John Pudner is the executive director of Take Back Our Republic, the most important force among conservatives for reform in this nation, save perhaps good conscience. Pudner was the campaign manager for David Brat, who you might remember surprised the world when he defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014 in the Republican primary on an anti corruption platform. Since then, he has been building an extraordinary organization of thoughtful and principled conservatives and Republicans who believe that we need a democracy that actually works for the people we believe. They say on their website that the way in which we elect our officials is not a partisan issue. It is an American issue. But it is an issue that far too many people feel is beyond their control, that far too people feel engaged in, and that far too often lacks solutions consistent with. With conservative principles. Well, whether they're consistent with conservative principles or not, I think that everyone should be able to agree with the first part of what I just read. And that's why I'm so excited to have a chance to talk to John Pudner. Because, as you know, if you've listened to these podcasts, I agree that the way we elect our representatives should not be a partisan issue. And in this episode, we'll explore just how much agreement we can find and where we can't find agreement we'll see the devil in their soul. Okay, that was a joke. You get it, right? No, that's my point. We need to find a way to engage with people we disagree with honestly and with integrity. Because if we can't find that, then we're lost. And so consider this my offering to the cause of engaging with people I disagree with honestly and with integrity. Because this conversation, I think, is going to be enormously productive in finding common ground. Welcome, John Putner. I'm so grateful that you would agree to be on our podcast, and even more exciting that you're here in person. Usually I have to stare into the distance to imagine the person I'm talking to, but here you are in person. You're incredibly tall, John Putner. I feel guilty that this chair just seems too short for you here. No, it's good.

The good news is I'm down 35 pounds from last week's taller. I've been doing basketball at 6aM for about six months.

Well, we're here to talk about mapping, really, where we might agree. The sports thing. We're not going to agree with. No, I know you're obsessed with sports and I'm just totally not. It's really a bad thing. But anyway, so we're going to have a conversation about the idea of reform. As I've said in the introduction, you know, obviously you've done an extraordinary job pulling together an organization, Take Back Our Republic, which is trying to rally people on the right to the idea of fundamental reform. And so our objective is to see how much common ground we can find this question about how to fix this republic. I want to talk just once about the president because I really think that these issues are so much bigger than the current office of the presidency. But you've written this really extraordinarily interesting piece which just came out today, the case for pro Trump opposition to Ukrainian influence, which I think is spot on and exactly right. But I'd love you to explain the basic context in which you can write a pro Trump piece about the Trump issue and the Ukrainian influence.

Sure. Well, I think Trump supporters should be able to agree with Trump haters on one thing, which is we don't want overseas deciding our elections. I mean, if we can agree on that as a tenet, you know, from there you can have plenty of arguments over who has the greater sin and who's done what. But, you know, the ability of the Chinese to weigh in is many fold what we've seen so far. So let's just say the Chinese got in. Well, whose side are they on? Well, I don't know. My point is I don't want them on anyone's side as far as putting money in and the loose campaign finance laws we have. So if we at least say our elections are our own, we'll fight it out, maybe at some point, get back to the day after we actually live with the results and move on, but at least let them know it's our election again.

And is there any controversy about that? I mean, do you actually meet people who say, you know, it's a good idea that the Russians get to weigh in about what their view on the election should be.

It's the uncommon one. There are some pure libertarians I'll run into who are way out there who just say, who cares? You know, it's all paying for messaging and that's being produced and who cares? You know, But I think that's the exception to the rule, the more common is, oh, well, what they're doing is worse than what's helped us, so they're more at fault.

Yeah, so. But I mean, it's not just libertarian. The liberal view on free speech would say, this is speech, and if you don't like the speech, just have more speech, just have counterspeech. So the Russians want to weigh in. If the Ukrainians want to weigh in, then have at it. That's just the way democracy works. But I know that there's a strong resistance to that in your work and in the work of your former board member, Richard Painter. So what is the anti free speech argument here?

Oh, the anti free speech. Well, I mean, the free speech argument they're making, you know, just, they're going back to simple logic, is money is speech. Speech is protected by the First Amendment, therefore money is protected. Okay, fine. Even given that it's not unlimited speech, Unlimited speech is not protected. There are limits on it. So why does that mean there are no limits on money? That's the part where I just can't make the connection.

But in the context of the foreign speech, why should we be concerned that the Russians or the Ukrainians or the Chinese are trying to persuade us to support President Trump or to support Hillary Clinton or whatever?

Because in a republic, I think the assumption is that they're competing interests, but they're all American. That unions versus corporate have competing interests, but I think they both think they're doing what's best for the country. An issue, someone will be wrong, someone will be right, or any kind of other issue. You know, there may be pro business arguments that clash with environmental arguments, but in the end, the assumption is everyone's looking out for the best of Americans, whether that's clean air and water or, no, we need this money to drive more jobs. But once you get into the Russians having a vested interest in who's elected president, or the Chinese feeling like, well, gosh, I feel like the Russians helped elect a friendly one, maybe we can elect the next one. I mean, that's the very cynical view where Americans interests are actually being traded, and that's where we've lost control of the government.

So this seems a very solid ground that we should be able to rally people to. What's been the reaction to your call for pro Trump supporters to stand up for the principle in the context of this investigation?

Well, generally on foreign influence in general, I'd say, look, just replace the word Russia with China and think about this. So at least that gets you through that the part that really puzzled me, first of all, was when some people were supporting, were backing Paul Manafort, saying, why are you attacking him? I mean, the guy took foreign money, he hid it overseas. I mean, just go through the list and say, what about this is okay to you? And I have my doubts. I have a, as I say in the opinion piece, whether or not he was really trying that hard to even elect President Trump, this seemed like another money making scheme. So this visceral reaction that kind of, well, anyone who's being attacked, this is also attack on the president, who I'm defending, and therefore I'm against this. And these two new Ukrainians. I mean, I just don't see how you can back. Obviously, everyone's innocent until proven guilty. But the case looks pretty solid now. And I think what the feds have laid out, that looks pretty damning. I just don't see how Republicans feel compelled to defend them.

Yeah, I mean, you put this very nicely in the piece where you say, look, this is yet another example of people trying to make money off of Donald Trump. So why are you interested in supporting them? Because, you know, if you support the President, you shouldn't be supporting people who are exploiting the president.

Absolutely.

Okay. Now, this president was elected by a significant number of people who believed the thing he would do was drain the swamp. And we can argue about whether he has or not. But I want to understand what, what people on the right mean when they say, let's drain the swamp. Like, what is it that people imagined would happen? Bracketing again, whether in fact it's happened.

Yeah. Benji Singer for MSNBC actually did the best job of this. I give him credit. During the campaign, he went out to Trump rally and wrote a great piece saying, I thought I was going to hear about immigrants coming over the border. I thought I was going to. He kind of went through all the liberal stereotypes of what happens at a Trump rally. And he said, all I heard was, yeah, the guy's got his quirks, but at least he's tough enough to break up the inside deals that are happening. So there's this sense of transactional political giving, and I use that term transactional conservative groups, and they all nod. I have noticed these are progressive groups and that's just not really the term. Their campaign finance framework is different, but just that idea that you can trade an amount of campaign money to win business and win deals. And that's where you get into your crony capitalism argument that I don't want that I don't want to have A government affairs team. I want to run my business and try to win in the merit of actual capitalism.

Yeah, One of your. I don't know if he's a board member or he's an advisory board member. Peter Schweitzer wrote a really fantastic book about, really thinking about this as a matter of extortion. Right. Because the basic frame is in a world where members of Congress are so dependent on private funding to get elected or to get their party back into power, they become really good at extorting private business to get them to help fund the campaign. So you've got a bigger government, a more invasive government, a more regulating government, simply because that's the most effective way to produce campaign funds. And it seems to me that's completely right. And that's gotta be part of the swamp that the Donald Trump people thought they would dream.

It absolutely is. And the history here is longer than people think. I mean Microsoft Gates resisted having any government affairs person ever until DOJ tried to break the company into three. Then he said well I better weigh in heavy. Walmart, same thing. They happen to just lose a big battle to the banks on putting things in their stores. 20 years ago had not had any interest in government affairs spending politically. And they got Lott, the story leaked out, went to them, said look, this is why you're getting screwed. This is why you're irrelevant on Capitol Hill. And so yes, a lot of businesses don't want to do this, they want to stay out.

Yeah. And we would love it if business would focus their energy in the old fashioned way of like how to innovate and produce products that people want as opposed to how to innovate and get the legislation passed that gives them a huge return because they've got some special tax quirk or some special protection or some special trade benefits. This should be common ground. Right. I mean which liberal should be against this type of reform?

Yes. And the distinction I'll make is conservatives would love to see businesses weigh in on general themes that they believe help pro business. So an overall tax argument. Yes, if they think that creates more jobs, etc. A we're getting a tax loophole that's screwing the competitor so that I can beat them. That's the problem that even conservatives would I think share progressives concerns.

Yeah. Now it's hard though to resist doing the second thing if you've built a few huge infrastructure to do the first thing. I mean, you know, the reality of the wage Congress has changed or Washington has changed I think is missed on Many people, including many people in Congress who were never there except in the current kind of climate. But you know, before Newt Gingrich became speaker, it was a radically different place. You can like the politics or not, but, you know, it was a place where they would govern for maybe a year or a year and a half, and then they would politic for half a year as they tried to get reelected. They weren't full time fundraisers. There was a well established infrastructure for providing congresspeople with information about, like, what their regulations would do. And since 95, we've seen these norms and institutions radically change. So Newt Gingrich totally blew up the infrastructure of information for members of Congress, making them incredibly dependent on lobbyists to get the information. Or these so called think tanks, which are really just more fancy, academic like lobbyists to give them their information. And they turned members of Congress into permanent fundraisers. So they spend 30 to 70% of their time. I interviewed John Delaney yesterday and he said people are spending all of their time, he said, literally 40 hours a week on the telephone raising money so that they no longer are congresspeople, they're just poorly paid fundraisers and they are even more dependent on the lobbyists. So if you've got the system where the lobbyists are not only providing the information, but the lobbyists are providing the funding or channeling the funding, is it any surprise that the lobbyists can get these special crony capitalist deals inside of Washington?

No, no. And you're right, and I would say, I think there was a good part to get rich and a bad part along the side. I mean, his good part was you took out the outside money so at least the politicians could, while in office, go out and also do other things that got them huge money. So that was a positive.

That's right.

But you're right on the negative. By nationalizing the election so much and almost taking away the chance there would ever be kind of swing votes because everyone was going to be counting to 218, it became perpetual fundraising. You're just here to get to 218, which cheapens the candidate themselves.

Yeah. Okay. So draining the swamp is to deal with the lobbyist problem, to deal with the self enrichment problem. You talk about an interesting concept. I'd love you to explain a little bit. Scam packs, which is an increasingly common feature of Washington. How do scam packs work?

Yes. So a scam pack would be if I went out and said, you know, you can raise a bunch of money on Donald Trump's name, not to thought the Name argument or anyone, take anyone Adam Schiff's name. So I'm going to create a pack and I'm going to raise money and I'm going to run ads showing one of those two, whoever I'm champion or whoever the bad guy is, give money this pac. Well, one problem with the no coordination on these things is really knowing the candidate can't tell me to stop. And so for example, you had Wesley Clark, another love him or hate him guy in Wisconsin. Well, people were running PACs saying Clark for U.S. senate. And he kept saying, I have no interest in running for U.S. senate. They were just making money and it goes to consulting fees. And so interestingly, the person who ran Citizens United who got us this decision were coping with, you know, he had a falling out with Trump recently because he had one of these PACs going. I think it was called the Presidential PAC. He's on TV defending Trump all the time. He takes in $18 million, spends half a million on politics, period.

Wow.

This is pure enrichment. Another point in which why would anyone support that person? They're stealing from your candidate. And people who think they're giving to your candidate are in fact giving to a consultant.

Wow. Has there been any effort to kind of study the percent? You know, with ordinary charities, we have lots of rating organizations that this charity is spending too much of its money on infrastructure or salaries and this charity is really efficient. Do we have a similar thing with pacs? Are we able to look at which pacts are basically just consultant enrichment enterprises versus which are trying to actually do something in the world, whether good or bad?

Well, they don't get the focus of watchdogs because they're not dealing with tax free money and therefore there's not that extra legal issue involved. So they don't generally falls on the candidate to call them out. And obviously that's a very imperfect system. But yeah, you're right. It would be great if someone had an index and inventory going, at least saying, hey, if you want to help your candidate, go here first. If it were just complete nonpartisan, just look up these packs, I think would be a great way to go.

It's a great thing for Open Secrets to do. Maybe we should talk to them about that because it would be really effective. So. Okay, that's great. Okay, so this is the drain, the swamp. You run an organization called Take Back Our Republic. I want to make sure everybody understands the organization. You start at the very beginning of your webpage and you say what we believe. Even on this issue, you say the Website says there is room for disagreement among friends. However, the core principles we consistently articulate are that, number one, there is a problem and the American people deserve a real conversation followed by real solutions. Number two, empowering individuals to get involved is the best way to solve this problem. While new solutions must be considered, we must enforce existing law and end the cycle of special interest being allowed to consistently bend and break the rules. And number four, which was what we have spoken about so much here, foreign individuals and governments have no place in our political process, and it is essential we keep foreign money out of our campaign. Okay, so those principles I don't think anybody on my side of the debate would disagree with. They sound exactly right and common sense and the sort of thing every American should agree on. But let's drill down a little bit and think about how particular issues that we've been talking about might or might not also form the basis of common ground. So the general method I want to follow here is I want to articulate a principle and then think about the application and see how much agreement or disagreement there would be on the particular application. So let's start with how campaigns are funded. I take it we all agree that the funding of campaigns, which importantly, is different from whether people are allowed to buy ads on television saying they support drilling in Alaska or not. But the funding of campaigns is a problem right now because it is so concentrated in the tiny, tiny few who are funding campaigns. And most Americans have nothing to do with the funding of campaigns. So as a principle that says we should decentralize or deconcentrate the funding of campaigns to make it more democratic, it seems to me a principle that we should be able to agree on. Can we agree on that?

Yes.

So then how do we do it? So your former board member, my friend Richard Painter, who's famous because he's always on MSNBC as the former Bush ethics czar, Richard Painter has a wonderful book which I think you helped publish. Organization. Helped publish no Taxation Without Representation. I don't know where he got that title from, but okay. And in his book, he talks about vouchers as a solution. So the idea is to give every voter $200 in democracy vouchers, which they could use to help fund campaigns. And his argument, I thought was very powerful was that until I'm actually represented in the system, I shouldn't have to pay taxes in the system. Don't tell the residents of D.C. this, but you shouldn't have to pay taxes in the system and you're not represented, given the way we fund campaigns right now. So here's the solution to change the way we fund campaigns. So we all are funding campaigns and we all then have a stake and can say that we're represented. Is this a solution that you're comfortable with?

No, we're. Richard and I have disagreed a little bit on this and tenure. My problem is in practice having just work campaigns and door to door and all, I think when you just mail vouchers to everyone, it becomes just a sweeping operation. The campaign that has an excellent door to door timed out can often just get things en masse from doors. So I'm concerned it wouldn't get what he's trying at.

So what's the alternative?

What's the. Well, we definitely want to go at least to tax credit. I mean, at least bring that back where someone can take it right off their taxes that used to be up to $200 through Reagan's reelection and kind of got thrown out with a budget deal accidentally. And then on top of that, I think if you match, I think that's something most of our members have been comfortable with, even a five or six times match. And I've gotten that in very conservative audiences. They've liked it. The idea that if you're actually a voter in the district and you give, you get it off your taxes and you also at that point gets matched because there is a real resistance to publicly funding campaigns and it's politically almost untenable because the sound bite ad against it is you're taking money from schools and roads and putting it in politicians pockets. It's very hard to overcome that in a sound bite war.

And so. But matching funds sounds different in that.

Yes, because your voters are more directing it. There isn't the idea that there's a, and I'm talking conservatives like there's a big government that's figuring out the way to dole out public funding. And for example, the commission complaint you'll hear in New York from conservatives is they don't feel like it's an impartial empire. They feel like sometimes a conservative who's running is not getting the funds. And it's a technicality. And I don't know enough to know if that's a fair criticism or not. But there's a concern that a centralized government entity in New York, or at least a point entity, is deciding whether or not you qualify for this public fund.

Okay, so, but then I'm puzzled again about the voucher bit, because the thing about the voucher is it's the least Government directed of everything.

Right.

Because everybody has something and they're deciding. And if, you know, in my first book, Republic Lost, I talked about a $50 voucher. Now Yang is talking about 100. Kirsten Gillibrand talked about 600. So I'm like a conservative in this. But, you know, at a certain level, you could say that the voucher is equal to or less than what all of us are paying into the federal government in taxes of some form. Right. So it's like we're returning the first chunk of money that you've sent to the federal government to enable you to help elect a federal government that better reflects you. Now, the sweeping issue is, I think, something I hadn't really thought about. But could we solve the sweeping problem so that we basically say we're giving you back your money. Like I always say, embrace your inner Tea Party. Like it's your money. They're going to give you your money back. And with that money, you can make sure you get representatives who actually care about you. Because right now they only care about the millionaires or billionaires that they're calling during call time when they're sitting off of Capitol Hill.

Sure. So here's how far I've gone on that. The line I've gone to. We did support these in the Dakotas for one reason. One, they don't have an income tax. So we could not propose our solution, which was a tax deduction, state income tax, obviously. And secondly, I'm not worried at all about people sweeping through the Dakotas.

And door to door, it's hard to go through.

It's hard to do. It partly does become a little partisan at that time because my friends who ran the Democrat flushing operations, turnout votes. It's a complete different methodology to going to doors and going in homes. Now you get absolutely. In Republican suburbs where it's very hard to get something from someone. So I think there would be a huge partisan angst about that. Just from the Republican side.

Interesting. Although I would think Republicans would think, you know, churches, we could say, bring your voucher in on Sunday. Bring it in. Okay. So we're agreed on the principle. We're having some quibble maybe about the particular way. Although, you know, matching funds would be an enormous step forward.

You know, I will throw in one other thing. And this was just. This is the thing about talking. It might be an aspect of geofencing on this that would make it work for everyone.

Yes.

When you said churches, you know, certainly right now you collect everyone who went to. To certain conservative churches you hit their phones and see who was there. And you know, when I do this for Bush, 2000 years ago, we had to get the actual church directory and type them in. I mean, now you just see who's there. So maybe there's an aspect where the collection option would be given there. So it's definitely worth continuing Again, we have been for it in a couple isolated cases, but we haven't gone for it as a universal.

Yeah, okay, well, so this is a good place to continue a conversation. Here's a second place I know that we're in some agreement on. You've been doing a lot of work on gerrymandering. Yes. So gerrymandering obviously is a system where the politicians pick the voters as opposed to the voters picking the politicians. So that's the principle we're agreeing on. What's the particular that you're pushing that you would think is the right answer?

Sure. So there are two things we've actually fought to win. We were involved in both the Ohio and the Michigan referendum last year. So obviously it's nice to do these by a ballot initiative because then the politicians can't decide whether they like it. So Ohio was a compromise. It's one that I like. Some of My Democratic friends in Ohio didn't think it went far enough and told us nothing but that at least shared some power. That said the majority had to give certain spots on the commission to the minority party. They had to be there for public hearings, had input, and a little kicker. The majority could in the end run over the minority if they wanted to. But they only got maps for four years, which is actually not a bad stick. You had to come back. So we got sign off from that on both parties measures on reform on that had failed miserably in Ohio, and this one passed overwhelmingly. So I would like every state to at least do that. And you had more compact districts, there were certain rules, et cetera. I think that's one every state could do. Now we do like going all the way with nonpartisan commissions. We went for that in Michigan, and I definitely got more pushback from some of our Republicans there who were not with that. Some of our members weren't. But overall, I still think nonpartisan commission commissions go. And you know, I've got a colleague, Massachusetts, on this, where we are, hey, if we can do that in Michigan, where Republicans. Massachusetts can too.

I know, I completely agree. I mean, Michigan, we had Katie Fahey on this podcast. I mean, she's the hero who started that movement in Michigan. And that's an extraordinary story, because what she did was insist on a principle of nonpartisanship in that organization. You weren't allowed to say, we're doing this because it'll help the Democrats or we're going to help the Republicans. It was complete nonpartisanship, which unleashed, as she described to me, an extraordinary amount of energy where people felt like they were just working for the Republic, they weren't working for the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And that was really exciting. But I completely agree, here in Massachusetts, it's just as bad as anywhere, because. And what you see inside of the party now is inside of the Democratic Party, you've got, you know, real reformers, like people who are thinking about how to make Massachusetts better. And then you have the old guard politician who might have a D in front of his name but is just as corrupt as, you know, we D's think ours are. So it's a terrible, terrible reality. And a million people voted for Republicans in 2016 here. And of course, no member of Congress. And not a single. We're going to get to this. Not a single vote for Donald Trump in the Electoral College, even though a million people had voted for him. Okay, so that one we're agreed on. The other one that's really interesting and exciting is you call it instant runoff voting. We talk about it as ranked choice voting. So we've talked about it on this podcast a bit. Let's just make sure we understand a little bit more clearly. So in the context of presidential elections, Maine has just adopted this. And what this means is that in Maine, in the general election, if there's a third party candidate, which of course there will be, but whether it's Justin Amash or. People are talking about Tulsi Gabbard, though she told me she's not going to do that. But whoever it might be, you might have your candidate who you really want to vote for. So in 2000, there were people who really wanted to vote for Ralph Nader in Florida so they could vote for that person you really want to vote for. But then tell us who your number two choice is or number three choices. And then if your number one choice doesn't win, then we look at your number two choice, and then we count that vote for the number two choice. If your number two choice doesn't win, then we look at number three choice. But the point is, we can work down to the person in that state who a majority actually like, as opposed to the person who just happens to win a plurality when you've got Two or three really competitive candidates. And the reason Maine did it was that the governor in Maine who had been a Tea Party candidate, won in a three person race and then was reelected in a three person race. Never got a majority, never was liked in the state. And finally people thought this is just crazy that we can't get somebody that at least unites us. Now in principle, this is something you're pushing as well, right?

Yes, there's a slight difference in how we'd play it out. But we're pushing this in Georgia right now. We've had good conversations, very red state. A state that not many Democrats like. The people we're talking to, Governor Camp and others, and I'll give you an example now, the resistance up here, I will tell you among the more conservatives we had center right at least is that Maine's next door and that Maine race on the old system would have gone Republican. It went Democrat. To which my answer is the Republican candidate campaigned telling people not to pick him as a second choice. So if you're going to do that, that's on you. That's not on the system. But still it's legitimate. Have to bring it up. But I encourage people in New England conservatives center right to look at Middlesex 19, the state legislative race. That is a 51% Republican district in Massachusetts. Yes, there are a few of them. I mean Trump actually got 51% there. So what did they do? The Democrats recruited a candidate to run as the pro life candidate. That was your third all she campaigned on pro life, obviously Massachusetts, you know, Catholic. There's an element of pro life in most districts. So she goes out and gets 8%. Now this math is very simple. Guess what? The Republican got 43, 51. Trump minus 8 loses 47, 43. To which I say there's no way those people weren't going Republican. Second. I mean maybe some tiny percentage. So she's a complete spoiler, I think clearly funded by a Democrat. She is at the Democrat victory party election night hugging the winner. I mean this is complete. So that's my counter to Maine. Like these wouldn't happen and look for a Democrat. Yes, there are place Republicans have supported Green party candidates. You know, obviously this plays both ways, but why not just take out that whole spoiler and this does not discourage third party because it can help a legitimate third party come in, get second. Now the little I'll just tell you implementation what I'm finding talking to George and other places. When you talk about a seven person race and the seventh drops and then there's six, and six people get very suspicious. So we're floating. The reason we say is runoff going top two right away and then whoever's highest of your two. So we may end up cutting out a couple of steps that I think more academic would like. But it's the same goal at least.

Yeah. I mean, it's a question of this implementation, especially in a state like Georgia. You need to do it in a way everybody feels completely confident of. Now, some people have done that by releasing, you know, you can release all the ballots. You can like just produce the. And let anybody take that same data and run it through their own calculation and confirm or not the actual. So I think that's the way we should ultimately go with this. But I completely agree with you that it's. It actually helps third party candidates because, you know, think about the Democratic primary right now. I think Andrew Yang has been talking about a lot of really creative, innovative ideas. He's talking about issues we need to be talking about, like what will the future of work look like when automation is, you know, an order of magnitude more intelligent than it is right now. He supports vouchers, but, you know, obviously the way the polling looks right now, he's not likely to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. Now, if we had a rank choice voting system for selecting the Democratic nominee, every other Democrat would be eager to at least engage Andrew Yang about his ideas and to talk about his ideas so that, you know, if you're Elizabeth Warren, you can be thinking, how do I get Andrew Yang's number two votes to make sure that they're with me. And the way you do that is that you least treat the ideas that he's talking about as ideas to be engaged with respectfully. And so then people, when third party, you know, people with crazy ideas or new ideas or different ideas have a reason to get involved because they, at low, at least their ideas matter. And that's what we want politics to do, to bring new ideas into the party.

Yes. And I know some people cringe when I use a convention analogy because of course, some of you view that as so exclusive. But forget the exclusivity for a second. I ran 21 conventions where the convention actually nominated, it replaced a primary, and you see it play out beautifully there. He has seven candidates and everyone's looking to be the second choice. First thing I would tell my field staffs is we're getting in this race late. Try to be everyone's second choice. Just get that as soon as they tell you, oh, my Best friend Jim is running. I'm sorry. Oh, great. Can I be your second choice? No one wants to say no. No, you're not my second either. So I think the first place candidate in those 21 actually won five times because there was a consensus. And normally the first one was the slash and burn. Rip people out the way you win now and it doesn't work. So there's actually a good lesson from conventions. If we just take this to the general populace.

I can't remember whether it's two or three, but Lincoln went into the 1860 convention. His team, obviously he wasn't there, but his team went to the 1860 convention aiming to be everybody's third choice. I think it's third. It might be second, but third, I think. And it's for exactly the same reason. They knew that these leaders were going to, you know, kill each other as they fight out the number one and number two. But after that was finished, they would see Lincoln as the obvious person left standing. Okay, so now the question is whether there's something we might imagine getting done before this next election. Because whether you support Trump or not, I think all of us should feel that it will be really terrible if we choose a president because of the effect of a spoiler candidate flipping the electoral votes from one state to another. And the person who wins either is just a plurality candidate or is not even the plurality candidate. Right. So Maine has done it. And Maine is a pretty swing state like place. Georgia, I mean, Georgia is swinger. Is getting more like a swing state, even though it's solid red. I'm not sure what it'll look like then, but is it possible to imagine moving in other swing states and trying to get some agreements that whether you're a Republican or Democrat, we ought to be able to count votes in a way that count the majority?

I think it would be real tough for next year, just with the backdrop of everything we're not talking about today, but people are so suspicious of any move being purely calculated to affect the presidential. I just think it's made it tough. I think these things. I think we have a chance in Georgia this year. But even if we did, that would say starting in 2021, we can't. I just don't think we could put it on with the questions to be asked. National will be coming in from both sides. What's this about? And I think they can see it. The ones we're talking to can see the benefit. This is less than a 50. 50. It could happen, but it would not be for next year.

Okay, but what if there were two third party candidates? So what if there were somebody on the right in a really credible libertarian candidate and then somebody on the left and so the Democrats and the Republicans both look at this and say this is a nightmare. Then it seems in that moment you might have people willing to at least, least entertain fixing it for 2020. Because if you have, I mean, that's the standard story about what happened in Florida. Everybody focuses on Nader, but you also have to focus on Buchanan. Right. So both of those were in play. And who knows what the net net would have been there. But the idea that we don't know what the net net would have been there is what's so frustrating. And if we had had ranked choice voting, then at least we would be clear what the people in, I mean, forget the hanging chads, but the people in Florida would have cared about. Okay, so again, seems like we're agreed in principle. Let's talk a little bit about voter suppression or voter and entitlement things. Let's first start at the level of principle. I think I should be able to get you to agree that if an incumbent party adopts rules that are obviously designed to make it hard for the opponents to compete, there's something wrong with that. Like if Democrats adopt rules. So, you know, if you've got a Democratic district where the Republicans are primarily older than 60 and you have polling places on the fifth floor of buildings that have no elevator, you could say in one sense that's fair because it's equal rules for everybody. But we know the reason for that is to make it harder for Republicans to vote so the Democrats win. And we should be able to say that that's just not right.

Yes, for us it is just that balance between integrity and suppression. So if it's a pure suppression, there's no integrity angle to it. Yes. Then that's clear cut.

Okay, so then how do we know whether there's an integrity angle? The standard response that people who've been upset with techniques in Georgia, for example, have said is that it's one thing to argue for measures to solve a problem, problem you've established is a real problem. It's another thing to argue for measures that address a problem that there's no evidence is a problem. Right. So do we need to actually believe, for example, that there's a substantial amount of, quote, voting fraud in order to justify measures that we know will make it harder for real voters to be able to vote? Is that something at least conceptually we should have to believe.

Yes, but I'm not accepting one of your premises there because I hear this all the time. There is no evidence basically anywhere for voter fraud. And I say I only saw one study done on this in the last election. It was Old Dominion University which actually did surveying, did a scientific study and it was particularly on undocumented workers voting and said Trump saying a few million is way off. We calculate 850,000 illegal aliens voted this race. That's self admitted. That's people saying in surveys and extrapolating, oh yes, no, I'm not documented. Yes, I did vote in the presidential. So when I get this there's no evidence, I say, well look, that's almost a million. So there's something going on.

Okay, well we can argue about like the studies because there's actually more than one study, but let's not. That's not interesting for us right here. But if we do agree that you've got to establish the need for the problem, I mean, you've got to establish that there's a problem that's calling for a solution as the first step. That's a good way to filter out whether it's suppression or integrity, right?

Yes.

So then we should be asking at least what's your evidence in the particular case and then what's the method you're adopting to deal with the evidence. So for example, in Texas if you have a rule that says, well, your gun club ID is an ID but your student ID is not an id. Right. What exactly explains that difference except the decision that while students are not the sort of people we want to be able to vote, but you know, gum club members are.

Yes, no, no, that's a fair one. I know. That is one. While I generally don't agree with much the aclu, that is a fair point. They've raised in a couple things that that would seem to be. Now it could be you want to do some extra vetting on a student as to whether or not they're voting another state or something. But yes, as a basic premise, yes, you shouldn't be excluding. And I think the other part that is the legitimate just to give you one, I haven't seen the fifth floor thing, but I've certainly seen where the voting place is suddenly further away from a Democratic stronghold. And I would consider that kind of softer modern suppression because you do have travel, you do have transportation issues in some of these communities or when you

shrink the voting times or shrink the number of booths at certain places and not at other places.

Yes. If not at others now, I think. But when you get in just the shrinking spending time, I think that does get into the integrity verse. There can be arguments for not having wide open voting. One of the first forums I went on with this, they said, why don't we just say that people can go online anytime in the last six months and vote? Are you insane? One FRAUD two You can now ambush someone with a crazy ad four months out, get a bunch of clicks and win. So yes, I think the expansion of contraction. But to your point, yes, if, if it's isolated to areas Democratic strongholds, of course everyone should be under the same rules, at least.

The other thing that's striking about the voter suppression debate is that obviously given the Voting Rights act of 1965 and the incredible history of suppression on the basis of race, which is obvious and

incredibly, the Democratic poll taxes were terrible. I remind people, Republicans never had a poll tax in the history of this country. It was all different Democrats. Just to get.

The history is absolutely clear. I mean, you know, I think that the Republicans in the 19th century really worked hard, despite the overwhelming resistance, to try to make the 15th Amendment work. And it finally stopped after the Democrats gained control of both the House and the Senate in 1892 and then swept away the voting rights protection. So, absolutely. I mean, we talk about the old Democratic Party, the new Democratic. I don't really care about party as much as the principle here. But I think what's striking is the debate gets set up as if it's just a debate about race. And no doubt it could be a debate about race. It could be that people are trying to suppress the vote of people because they don't like the color of their skin. But I'm convinced that often it's not about race, it's about party. Like, it's just, it's a game to make sure that your side wins and the other side loses. And I wonder whether it wouldn't be better for us to talk about it as equality that we all should have on the basis of party, because at least then I don't have to call you a racist. If I'm saying that what you're doing is making it harder for certain people to vote. If I'm saying we all agree we should have equal freedom to vote and you're making it harder for your opponents to vote, then that's wrong. That should be wrong enough. And indeed, under the Constitution, I think Article 1, Section 4 gives Congress really much more clear power to deal with that problem on the basis of partisan than this Supreme Court has allowed them to deal with on the basis of race.

And perfect example, I think the Florida felons voter registration this year. So had all these Republicans from my past life of campaigns all concerned, oh my gosh, a million votes in Florida. How will a Republican ever win? And my response was, Sid, I don't have the numbers to crunch it deeply, but do you know how many angry white guys have felons on their record? There are plenty of Trump supporters. And I actually just doing some rough math said this might help Democrats by 5 or 10,000. But you know, you're pretty evenly distributed, playing into the stereotype, you know, oh, this is a black guy who committed a felony. I mean the old, you know, so yeah, so I didn't see it as a game changer anyway. I thought it was a justice issue and just people are so hyper on it, so concerned.

I mean that was a very interesting victory because you know, obviously I think they got 61% for that and no Democrat in that state got more than 50% vote. So it was obvious that there were a bunch of Republicans, a bunch of independents and a bunch of Democrats who got together and say as a matter of justice, these people should be able to vote. And even though I think you're probably right, you're the man who knows the politics and the numbers of the politics better than I. Certainly most people thought that this was benefiting Democrats. But even if it did benefit Democrats, this is the point, this is the Katie Fahey point. When you engage citizens at the level of what's right and what's wrong, they are not going to say, well it's right because it helps my party. They're going to say it's right or it's wrong. And I think that's the place that we've got to appeal. And I think a lot of the work of Take Back Our Republic, obviously you're not just dealing at the federal level, you're doing a lot of stuff at the state level. But there too, I think if you're frame the way you're framing it, it can inspire people beyond just how do we make sure the Republican party or the conservative party happens to win in this district.

I will tell you one funny postscript on that. I kind of ran through that math with someone who was involved in the race. We weren't. I just, I supported it, but I wasn't. We didn't do anything as a group. And they actually said they went and told one of the donors involved and they were very disappointed because they had given thinking this was the biggest Democratic trump cards. It kind of cut both ways.

Okay, then let's talk about something I don't. I genuinely don't know. You know, a lawyer's never supposed to ask a question that you don't know the answer. Or. So I'm making a mistake here, but I don't know where you're on this. What do we think about the Electoral College?

Yeah.

What should we be doing or thinking about it going forward? And let's just put on the table. You know, I'm in the middle of litigation, which is trying to resolve the question whether electors are actually free to vote their conscience, which was an issue that came up in 2016. I learned I hadn't known this before. We had a conference at Harvard, and Jesse Wegman, who is on the editorial board of the New York Times, told me a story where apparently in 2000, the Bushies thought that he was going to win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College. So they had a plan to convince electors to vote their conscience, and that was leaked. And then, of course, the Gore people came out and said this would be outrageous. You can't possibly do something like that. So that plan was quashed. And then, of course, Gore couldn't argue for it once the reverse had happened. But I just wonder how you think about this issue.

Yeah, no, you've got a lot of momentum on your side on this issue. But I don't agree. I think the Electoral College is important. And if you look at the basis a lot of people, their basic argument is, no, we need pure democracy in everything. Whoever has one more vote should win. And my response to that is you're then throwing out judicial review. Okay, is Roe v. Wade not legit? Should one more vote win on heartbeat and brain waves? I mean, that could get a 50%. A lot of, you know, you go through. So I think it's one of the many things that's built in that has made us the longest surviving democracy, that it's not pure. And right now, I think people talk about being near civil war. I wish they wouldn't use that term, but. But the middle of the country now, not seeing the prosperity on the coast, I think the rebellion you'd have if they. I think they viewed Electoral College as the one way where they have a chance. And look, I think right now, I think Trump would lose. So this isn't a firewall for them where they're just in control. But I think it's a very important thing that's built in. And I think if you didn't have the Electoral College, the other thing you'd be saying is Hillary's approach was actually right. Hang out in New York and California, never visit the Midwest. I'd much rather see what happened, which is the Democrats saying we better do our convention in Wisconsin this year. We obviously lost touch with some working class, and it looks like they're winning the upper Midwest now. But it made them focus. And I just think those regions have to have that little extra clout. I think that was how the system was set up.

So a little extra clout is what's important there. Okay, but then let's think about this a little bit more. What we know is that the election turns on the swing states. In 2016, 95% of candidate appearances and 99% of campaign spending was in 14 states. Hillary Clinton might have been in New York or in California, but she was only there to raise money. She wasn't campaigning in Rock, California. Okay, so the swing states we know don't represent America. They're older, they're whiter, their industry as kind of 19th century industries. So as I've. I've given this statistic on this podcast before, but let me say it again. There are seven and a half times the number of people working in solar energy in America as mined coal. But you never hear about solar energy in a presidential campaign because those people come from Texas and from California. You hear about coal mining, because that's right in the swing states. So from my perspective, the really important problem here is we have a president elected who doesn't actually represent America. And there's this great book by Kriiner and Reeves called the Particularistic President, where they do an incredible empirical analysis to demonstrate the way presidents bend spending and bend regulations to benefit these swing states, especially in re elections, because that's where they know they have to win in order to be reelected. Okay, so if you accept with me, that's a problem. The critical point to connect with you is to recognize the swing states are not the small states states. I mean, there is New Hampshire and Iowa, which, depending on population, you might call swing. But Pennsylvania, Michigan, you know, these are not Ohio. Maybe Ohio is no longer a swing state, but Wisconsin. These are not small states. They happen to be, in some cases, New Hampshire and Iowa, small lure, but it's not, you know, Montana or Wyoming or West Virginia. So that's number one. But number two, what if you had a system where instead of winner take all, and of course it's winner take all, that Makes it so that instead you said, let's allocate the electors proportionally at a fractional level so a Democrat could get 1.4327 votes out of Montana. So if that were the system, then every single state would be in play in the sense that candidates would have an interest to go to Montana, to Texas, to New York, to California, it doesn't matter. Wherever I can get votes, I'll try to get votes. But you still build in the thing that you say is important, which is that there's an extra plug for Montana or Wyoming or West Virginia relative to New York, Wisconsin or California. So why resist that as an alternative?

Well, let me hone in on something you said. So Hillary spent all her time in California and New York, but not campaigning, raising money. My argument is that that's an argument for this. The money is already getting undue influence on the coast, so she's there. The only thing that's an incentive to balance it is not having a popular vote that you can just ring up New York and California and win. So I actually think that one plays to the argument for Electoral College.

Okay, but we're not arguing against the Electoral College right now. We're just arguing about the rules within the Electoral College. Of course, the framers and the Constitution said nothing about winner take all. And in fact, they didn't expect it would be winner take all. And when it began to be winner take all, Jefferson wrote about how terrible it is that it's winner take all. And in the 19th century, there's a big push to get either district allocation of electors. And then when people recognized how gerrymandered that system was, they tried to get proportional allocation of electors. But so if we're accepting, as I am right here, that we keep the Electoral College and we accept, except that small states get an advantage. So Wyoming has three electors, even though the population of Wyoming wouldn't qualify them for one representative in Congress. Then that's accepting the part that you've said is important. But what it's adding to it is the fact that every state now matters to the President. Not just the rich states, New York and California and the swing states, but every state. So Oklahoma matters, Texas matters. Why wouldn't that be consistent with the ideals you might have about representative. Not a pure democracy, a representative democracy. Right.

But it doesn't really matter as much because the time and expense you spend flying to the coast and a couple huge population centers still overwhelms the time you would have going through these states. And while, yes, you're right. You don't get to every state, but you have to go to North Carolina, which has kind of Southern views. You have to, as we learned this time, go to Michigan or Wisconsin or before that, Ohio for Midwestern views. You get these different regional views that now have clout. And I think.

But wouldn't that be the same with what I'm talking about? With what I'm talking about right now, New York and California go for the Democrat. They have all those electors. If you had what I'm talking about, a Republican might have a reason to try to persuade California Republicans and California and New York Republicans. Right. So that change would actually make it so that a wider range of interests in the Republican Party would have voice. I mean, imagine if the Republican Party had to care about Republicans from New York or Republicans from California, because those are different Republicans from the Republicans in Oklahoma. Right. So I'm not sure I'm seeing how we've changed the dynamic against the interest of small states or even more of the country, because already on the default right now, those two extremes, New York and California get just as much representation as anybody.

Well, they do, but they get more influence if you break it down. And if New York and California wanted to break down theirs by congressional district, I'd be fine with that. Of course it would.

Talking about the principal in general.

But you're asking states to give up something they have now which gives them some attention from the President of the whole country.

Right. But why isn't that the right thing to ask them to do if, in fact they're getting more attention than their population or demographics demand they do? I mean, there's small number of states, 14 states.

Right.

Which means 36 states, or 37 including the District, don't have that attention. Don't. The President doesn't care about them. Right. So when President Trump announced his end to the offshore drilling ban, Florida got an exemption from that almost overnight, but New Jersey can't even get a hearing. Right. What's the difference between New Jersey and Florida? It's that Florida is the critical state to win if you're running for a president and a Republican. But New Jersey doesn't matter to anybody. Right. So. So how can you defend a system where the majority of states don't matter to the president? Not because the framers said it, but because the states have just gotten into this system where that's just the consequence.

Because I want presidential candidates to land their planes somewhere between New York, Miami, fine. Los Angeles. There's no incentive.

We're Agreeing on that objective. No, no, no, we're agreeing on that

objective, but I'm saying it takes it to the other extreme. If you take away the Electoral College, there's no incentive to go into those other states.

John. I'm not saying take away the Electoral College. I'm saying keep the Electoral College. The only difference between the current system and my system is that in each state, you take the electors and you divide them proportionally. So there still is an Electoral College. It's still. You got to get to 270. But the point is, you get to 270 by arguing in each state to try to get people to support it, as opposed to just the national popular vote, which I'm not endorsing. I'm not telling you you should endorse here. I don't see how you can resist the idea that each voter in each state should matter just as much to the counting of the President, given it's counted within the Electoral College system. I'm not saying one person won't vote. I'm saying you and Montana have more power than me. In New York, that's fine, but at least in New York, if I'm a Republican, my votes matter, and at least if I'm a Democrat in Montana, my votes matter. And under this system right now that's not true.

But in essence, what you're saying is each congressional district becomes a vote.

No, no, no. Because it's proportional at the state level.

State.

So if you say 60% go for the Republican and 40% for the Democrat, then 60% of the electoral votes go for the Republican and 40% go to the Democrat.

Right, but that's basically a popular vote in effect.

No, because.

Not constitutionally, but in effect of running a campaign. Because if the only thing I'm doing from going to Michigan is possibly moving one electoral vote, it's not worth the extra trip.

No, no, but that's why. Right, I agree with you with that. But that's why I'm saying you do it at a fractional level. So every single vote actually gives you a reward. Right. And it's not the popular vote, because again, the popular vote would say Wyoming is worth 500,000 votes, which it is. That's as many. Well, that's the population. And so you wouldn't waste your time on Wyoming at all. But the point is they get three electors in Wyoming, and, you know, it takes 700,000 people to get even one congressperson, but they get three electors. So this is not the popular vote because it's accepting the thing you think is important, which is a thumb on the scale for the smaller states, but because it's fractional, you really do want to make sure you're going into every state. Because, you know, anything I get out of Montana or out of Texas or out of West Virginia or out of Pennsylvania helps my campaign. So every state matters. And every state matters in some sense, not equally, because again, Montana has more power than New York does. But it matters more than it does right now because we know Montana and Wyoming and West Virginia and Oklahoma and Texas and New York and California and Alaska and Hawaii and every other state except the 14 swing states don't matter. So how can you be against that?

Because all you're doing in going into one of those states now is trying to change, in essence, one electoral vote. Frank. But I'm saying you're never going to change a state enough to what you can do right now, which is win the state. You're still talking an incremental. Am I going to to get 6 of 13 or 7 of 13? Okay. That's not enough incentive to leave the big money pockets. It's not cost effective. The logistics and travel and getting out and actually interacting people.

But you can't win with it. You can't win with the big money pockets.

But you're going to get your six anyway just on advertising.

From where? What do you mean? I don't get it.

You're going to get, if you're going to get about 6 of 13 electoral votes in a state under your system, you might campaign hard enough to get 7 of 13, you might ignore it and get 5 of 13. It's not worth the trip.

But it's the same story in California. You start out in California, you're going to as a Republican, you're going to get 40% of the vote. If you work hard, you might get 41% of the vote or 42% of the vote. So on the margin, you're just getting a tiny number of additional Republicans out of California.

No, no, no, you're not, because you're on Los Angeles TV and it's an event affecting so many more Californians that you can swing several electoral votes by camping out in the states. The media markets. If 18 million people are watching on the New York TV market versus Cheyenne or whoever has a TV market out there, you're not going to move the needle. It's just not logistically worth the trip. You're talking about remote airports. I mean, just logistics of getting out and talking to people, people and working A county fair. These things that I think are actually healthy for candidates to do, you just can't incrementally if there's not enough incentive.

Okay, but the county fair is different from the Los Angeles media market. You can get as many votes in a county fair in Wyoming or in Iowa as you can in California. Right, because county fairs are county fairs. You're talking about the media market. But then what's interesting here is you're telling me we need to set up the electoral system based on the media markets or based on the principle that everybody should be equally citizens and have an equal shot at electing their president. You know, here we are in Massachusetts. A million people tried to express their support for Donald Trump. They didn't matter. Donald Trump doesn't give a damn about Republicans in Massachusetts or in New York or in California.

Why?

Because they can never matter to his election or any other Republican's election. Now what's the principled reason to accept a system which tells voters they don't matter simply because they happen to be living in a state where more people from the other party are in that state too?

But candidates do come to big rich states because they raise money. Republicans go to California because they raise money.

What do we mean?

The electoral College is balancing off, getting, getting them to also go places, but

they can't raise the economy. But here's the. Let's just not. I mean, let's. If it's true, which I would happily support the evidence with statistics, but if it's true that in fact 95% of the places they went were not the big states, I mean, we're not California, New York, they were the swing states and 99% of campaign spending were the swing states. Does that trouble you? Because it's not what you're saying. It's not that they're actually spending all their time in New York and, and California and then these other states are balancing it off, they're not spending their time in New York and California. They're not campaigning in New York and California. They don't give a damn about.

They're going to fundraisers.

They're going to fundraisers and they're talking to rich people. That's all they're doing. But if you had a system where they actually had to engage with people from all across the country, then you would have people, Democrats going to Montana, not just Obama, to kind of show he was trying to run a 50 state campaign, but you know, real candidates going everywhere because every vote would matter. Now, how can you, in Principle, not support a system consistent with the Electoral College. Not getting rid of the Electoral College, not even getting rid of the benefit that small states have under the Electoral College. That would just give more people a chance to matter.

They would never set foot in Montana. You've flown into Montana airports. I mean, the logistics of going in and getting some the days you lose.

Okay, but what about this? What about this? They would care about the Republican Party in Montana and they would care about the Democratic Party in Montana. So whether they go there or not, they would care to make sure to support that party, to make sure that that party turned people out. Right now the Democratic Party doesn't care about Montana. The Republican Party doesn't care Montana, because they got it. They got it regardless. Right? So this is, I mean, it's almost like gerrymandering, isn't it? Right. It's basically the media markets are the gerrymanderer here. And you're saying that we should accept a system where not every vote matters the same merely because of the effect of the gerrymander.

No, I'm just saying it's so much more cost efficient whether you go proportional, electoral college or popular vote. It's so much more cost efficient to stay where the people are condensed and where there's lots of money. That's just any campaign planning, that's just how you're going to do it.

Okay, so let's just at least say that here's where we agree and here's where we disagree. I agree with you. There's a question about what the right strategy is. If we just had national popular vote, some people think they just stay on the coasts. I've seen lots of good data to say that's just not the way it would work. But I agree that could be an issue. And if you had electors nationally set out proportionally, that would be the same question as national popular vote. But what I'm saying, and we haven't yet had an agreement on this, but let's at least identify this as the disagreement. I'm saying that if you accept the Electoral College as it is, everybody gets the number of electors that we have right now, and you allocate those electors proportionally to the fractional level. So it's not like you get one electorate, you could get 1.47. Then the incentive is not just to go to the coasts. Then the incentive is to worry about how we get votes in every part of the country. Now assume with me for a second that's true. I mean, you say it's not True. And I don't mean to get you to say it's true. I'm just saying assume it's true. If that's true, if what I'm saying is true about how in fact campaigns would work, would you have a reason to oppose it then?

Well, no, I'm still back to that central. You're making every state. Okay, let's just say some states did this for a second. Then what you're saying is my state is worth one electoral vote because you're never going to swing it more than. Than one.

Remember, John, we're talking about fractions here, right?

Yeah, but you're never going to turn. Okay, a unbelievably lopsided race. What are you going to change that from 40 to 45% in a state? So if you have 20 electoral votes, that's one vote. I mean, you have almost no impact within a state.

But again, it's the same in California. Right. If you've got 40% Republican supporting California, you might get that to 45%. Yes. So that's gonna be.

But that times the number of electors. You're incentivizing California and New York.

Okay, okay. But again, you're fighting the hypothetical. What I'm saying is hypothetical is that, you know, we sat down with like 10 of the top strategists from five Republicans, five Democrats. They ran the numbers and they'd say, you know, campaigns would be completely different. They wouldn't spend, as they do now, all their time raising money in New York and California. And then just in the swing states, they, in fact, would try to run campaigns in a broad range of America. They would try to appeal to the votes in a wide range of America. If that were true. You don't think it's true. But if that were true, then what would you say against it?

Well, I mean, I guess you could say if I'd never been around a campaign to see how they work. I mean, the time commitment. You can't cover 50 states.

I get it, I get it, I get it.

You can't. So if the hypothetical were. If there were no time constraints and a candidate exists outside of time.

No, no, I didn't say that. All I've said is if you assume that they would change their campaign strategy not to focus just on these swing states and as you've said, California, New York, to raise money, if, in fact, they would be building campaigns that were trying to campaign more broadly, however many places they can go, they still would be trying to recruit votes in Montana and votes in Texas and votes in Wyoming and votes in. Well they already do Pennsylvania but votes in Oklahoma. What's the principal reason to be against that?

Well, I guess I'd agree but I think that consultant would lose. I just don't see how you want to raise doing that.

Well, somebody would win.

Yes.

The person who got the most votes in each state, enough to get to

70 would buy that it made sense to go to all these states under that same system would win because they'd realize I can get much more votes hanging out in the big population centers.

That's interesting. So we'd have. So that's an interesting practical question about whether it amplifies the power because right now of course the power of those centers is zero because you don't spend, I mean you raise money in those centers but you don't spend any money on television in Los Angeles or in New York City or in. That's okay.

I'm not as concerned on where the money's spent on TV. I'm more the interaction. TV's a one way median. That's just I'm blasting this at you to persuade you. I much more like having surrogates out there speaking. It's not just the candidate. You send surrogates out. Where is it worth you investing your field staff time? Where are you hearing things back from people? And my argument there is even though yes you've got centers that are swing states and by the way those can change. Let's not forget what's Virginia was pretty blue not too long ago and flip side and San Francisco was almost a 5050 not that long ago, several decades. So it can change but you can still be in a region and having again my North Carolina example. Yeah you may know you're going to win most of the south if you're a Republican but you come to North Carolina and I think get a southern flavor same as you would the Midwest, that being Ohio in the past and maybe now it's a Wisconsin although again I think upper Midwest probably goes Democrat again but you're going to find that spot.

Yeah. So the question is whether this changes to make the system even worse than it is now.

Right.

That's an empirical question I guess we could think about. But if it in fact makes it so that the incentive for surrogates and for candidates and for campaigning and for actually turning out people to vote is to make it more national so that we have an incentive to make everybody have an interest in voting then you haven't identified. You know, you've said you Wouldn't hire that consultant. But you haven't identified a principled reason why you'd be opposed to that.

Oh, I think states. I think the states having the ability to pull candidates off the coast is important. I think those are places where there's more hurt going on now. There's hurt everywhere.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we're agreeing on the objective. And, you know, I'm conceding you're actually the political expert. But the objective is the same, that we ought to have presidential candidates who care about every state, not just the rich states, not just the coastal states, but every state.

Yeah. So I will give you that. If you had a crystal ball and I could see this change and see candidates actually swooping around the country and that it worked. Yes. Then I'd say, okay, my premise is wrong. Yes, we should do it. I just don't see that.

Okay, you see, this is what's possible when you have people who try hard, as we're trying hard, to engage with integrity and with friendship. Because, you know, above all, I mean, I've known you not for my whole life, but I've known you recently since you had your enormous success in 2014 and then began to be part of this reform movement. I have enormous respect for you, John Butner, and for everything you've done. And someday, when we get a Republican back, a republic back, Republican back. We have enough of those, but we get a republic back. I hope we can celebrate that together, whether it's on the coasts or in the middle of America. We'll have to see.

One quick aside on that. I had one gentleman in New York, much more liberal than me, who actually asked me, give me little checks every year, and during one meeting said, do you wonder why I give you money? Clearly, I disagree with you on 95% of things I said. I have wondered. And he said, because you're a true populist, I can tell you really want people to do well, and I do, too. And so is it. I mean, he support Black Lives Matter. She was clearly left of me. That was another donor of his. So I appreciate that, and I've heard that a couple of times from people.

All right, great. Thank you so much, John Pudner.

Thank you. Appreciate it, Larry.

Okay, so frankly, I think we found more agreement than I thought we would. I was a little passionate at the end trying to persuade him to think about the Electoral College differently. We'll see how that settles over time. But on every other issue, what's important is that we agree on the principle, and we need to argue about the details. And this fact that John Pudner, who is a staunch conservative from Alabama, and I, who not from Alabama, and though I was a conservative as a kid, no longer so can agree on these principles, says something about the potential for this issue in America. If only now our politicians could recognize that. That's the end of this episode of Another Way. These podcasts are produced by equalcitizens.us. you can find us on the web at equalcitizens us and this podcast at equalcitizens us. Every week people send me feedback and ideas. I'm grateful for that. You can find a place to do that on the website and whether or not we convince you, please share these ideas broadly, because we have to find a way to engage a broad range of America if we're going to make these ideas count. Many of the ideas discussed in this season Another Way are discussed in a new book that I'm publishing in just a couple weeks. I was happy to give a copy today to John. They Don't Represent Us. I hope to do an episode on this book, but the they Don't Represent Us is speaking about they both as they the government and they as in we. We don't represent us. And so that mix is something new for my writing. You can find the book easily on Amazon or anyplace else, or you can find it at hc.com as in HarperCollins.com representus this month is our fundraising month. If you're on our email list, you know I practically never ask for money. None of our emails have the big donate button, drowning out any ideas of substance. But every year, once a year, we need to raise the money that makes it so that our budget is possible. We've got an enormous amount going on right now. Cases that will be in the Supreme Court movements to get ranked choice voting in swing states. An effort to get the question of super PACs before this originalist conservative Supreme Court in a way that they might hear the argument on the other side. And of course, the effort to engage candidates to get them to commit to fundamental reform, which is what this whole sees what the podcast is about. We've got a tiny, tiny, tiny staff of extraordinarily talented people. So we have a small budget every year, but we need to raise it now. So if you can support us, especially if you can support us in monthly contributions, think of a third of your monthly cable bill. That would be extremely helpful. We're also beginning to partner with Patreon and if you get this podcast through Patreon and support us at a $10 per month level. Then you'll get a bunch of extras, including a Ask Me Anything episode series and some background to the episodes that we'll be publishing. So however, you can support us, whether through Patreon or directly on our website at Equal Citizens us, I am grateful for your support. So that's all for this week. Stay tuned for the next episode when we continue to push the question, is America ready for fundamental reform? Because we got a lot of candidates talking about it. Thanks very much. This is Larry Lessig.