Recent Developments in Democracy Reform [12-20-19]

Welcome to Another Way, the podcast of Equal Citizens. I am Jason Harrow, the chief counsel and Executive director of Equal Citizens and I am pleased to be joined live and in person by Adam Eichen, our campaigns manager. Hey Adam.

Hey Jason. How's it going?

Going great. It's great to have you here in LA in our west coast studio today we've got the first of a couple kind of year end episodes we're gonna do. We're gonna recap the state of some recent democracy reforms today. Talk about some of the things that happened at the ballot box in 2019. Of course we do this all because once a year, well more than once a year, but in the fall and November they're usually among the most important elections and we just had a wave and there were some really interesting developments on the democracy reform stage. So we wanna talk about that and, and then we'll also have a kind of year end recap and awards show coming at you. So I'm excited for that one that will be in your feed later. Speaking of your feed, before we get started, you can find us at equalcitizens us anotherway and we have a Patreon page if you want to support this free no Ads podcast. Patreon.comEventCitizens is where you can make a small donation and help us offset some of the costs of this podcast. We, we promise there will be special episodes coming. Also the folks here at Equal Citizens, including our founder Larry Lessig, has been on a crazy travel schedule, but we promise he wants to get to some ask me anything episodes. We wanna do those, we wanna bring you those and you will get access to those first if you are a patreon supporter@patreon.com/citizens okay, so Adam, you came out here to Los Angeles for something called the MOFA Awards. Why don't we talk about that? Because there was a really interesting discussion of some democracy related issues and then we'll update a couple of our cases and dive into what happened in November on the democracy reform front. So Adam, why are you here in la?

Well, we were invited to present, not the awards, but we were invited to educate attendees at an award show here in Los Angeles. About to Democracy Dollars, the program in Seattle, the public financing system that has been so successful there in which Every voter gets $25 vouchers to give to eligible candidates. But taking it back a bit, the award show was really quite something, Jason, wasn't it? It was an award show, but not exactly a traditional award show. It was an event that was presenting awards for the worst people in the United States in terms of the environment and other issues. So among the recipients were Exxon, I believe Exxon won an Award, and BlackRock and ALEC, the American legislative Exchange Council, for different themes for different parts of US Policy that they've been passing, you know, bad laws in regards to. So, Jason, I don't know if there are any in particular you want to highlight, but, you know, I will just say for our listeners, the funniest part of it is obviously, you know, Exxon didn't come in and accept the award, so they had comedians come in and impersonate the award winners. And it was quite funny.

Yeah. And we're a PG 13 or PG, I should say rated podcast here. So I won't say the name of the award show. It's called the MOFAs or the mother Effer Awards is another way of putting it. And the idea was exactly to give awards to the people who are doing sort of the least for Mother Earth. And so it was Environmental Focus. But my takeaway, Adam, was that people are starting to connect environmental issues to campaign finance and to money in politics. That's why we were there. That's why we were featured. That's why Larry Lessig, the founder of Equal Citizens, gave the lifetime achievement award to Mitch McConnell. Because as the comedian spoofing Mitch McConnell got up and basically said, he said, look, here's the reason why we're here. I don't care what you all in the audience think, right. I have turned over the legislation to corporations. And why? Because that's who I raise money from and how I get reelected. So that made the point in a really unique and funny way. It was really a thrill to be honored. It was great to see Larry up on the big stage introducing this award to Mitch McConnell in his tuxedo by video. So thanks to the folks who did that, and I'm sure that these awards will continue because there are certainly some folks who are not taking environmental policy seriously. But the more we can both highlight that issue, but also link it to the problems of our democracy, I think that was really, really encouraging. Right.

And a couple things, Jason, that I want to add is one, I mean, the award show, it was packed. I mean, it was a smallish theater, but There were probably 300 people there. And people really got into it. They really understood it. And the second point I want to make is that the organizers of the event, the ones who did the scripts and did the little videos before the presentation of each awards, I mean, they really took due diligence to make the connections from the issues or the lack of progress on environmental issues to money in politics. Geo Group won, for example, for their work promoting detention centers on the border. And the video introducing the award made it very clear that money in politics is a huge driver of some of the policies on the border in terms of private prisons. And the audience got it. I mean, it wasn't so opaque that people understood that part of the problems in making U.S. policy right now is because corporate interests and billionaires profit from those policies and spend massive campaign contributions, spend money on lobbying. The NRA was another winner. And clearly that link is pretty obvious. And so that was really cool that the people who put on the award show really made that explicit. And that was really the reason why we were there is because at the very end, at the after party we had the booth and where we actually had physical copies of the democracy vouchers that Seattle used in 2017 and 2019. And we were there to kind of show people that, yeah, everything you heard there was depressing. And yes, money and politics plays a huge role in the shaping of legislation in our country, but we have solutions to actually fix this problem or at least mitigate it. That if you give every voter a chance to be a donor, that, that, that can democratize influence and really change the game.

Yeah, that's right. And that message certainly resonated. Okay, so we could talk about these really fun awards for a while. We could talk about Seattle Democracy Dollars for a while and we'll get back to that. Indeed. And I know Adam, you're working on a long term project with that too. But in the meantime, let's move on cuz there's a lot to talk about. I want to quickly, before we dive into the results from last month, I want to quickly update some folks who are following one of our topic areas for cases. We have two cases that are now at the Supreme Court about the role of presidential electors and whether they can vote for candidates who did not win the popular vote in that state. Some people may know that there was a movement in December of 2016 to have presidential electors in the Electoral College deny Donald Trump a majority and that would throw the election to the House and perhaps that could have avoided the election of Donald Trump. Whatever folks think of that. There is this interesting and outstanding and important legal issue about whether that's legal or not. And the Supreme Court has two cases that we're involved in on its desk now. There were conflicting decisions from the lower court about this issue of elector freedom. And so we'll do a fuller podcast in January about this. But I just want to let people know those should be considered by the Supreme Court on January 10th, and we should have an answer about whether the Supreme Court will hear them soon is sometime in mid January. So for all of those waiting, I don't think we'll get a Christmas present, a holiday present, and hear that the Supreme Court is definitely taking it. But soon after the holidays and when the Supreme Court justices and their staff get back to work, we should know that. Okay, now onto the perhaps more fun stuff. There were a few, you know, really nice victories. Nothing on the ballot in 2019 was, I don't think, earth shattering for democracy, but the march certainly continues forward. There were some really nice victories, one minor setback. Adam, where do you want to start with what happened for democracy reform at the ballot in 2019?

Well, I actually want to start for a quick second just prefacing this conversation by One of the really encouraging trends in the democracy movement has been the successes at the ballot in the last three years, beginning with 2015, where you have a couple ballot initiatives, Seattle passes the democracy dollars, Maine fixes their public finance system. And in 2016, you have a slew of ballot initiatives, many of which almost all of them passed. And in 2018 as well, I mean, in total, you're looking at dozens in the past three years of ballot initiatives pertaining specifically to democracy reform passing when voters have the chance to weigh in. So that's been a really encouraging sign. And these range from gerrymandering reform to voting rights to money in politics. So this is the trend that this is all contextualized with within the last three years of when voters get to weigh in on democracy issues, they do, and they overwhelmingly generally pass them. So 2019 was no exception to this. There were a handful of, I agree, I mean, nothing earth shattering, but very important incremental reforms that will make our democracy better. And many of them were localized because again, this was a local election cycle. But I mean, a couple of the ones that I wanted to mention was, well, first of all, we had in New York City passed overwhelmingly ranked choice voting for special elections and primary elections. Jason, that's a big victory for the ranked choice voting movement. Over 8 million Americans live in New York City and I think that will more than double the number of people who live in or will eventually live in a jurisdiction with ranked choice voting. So that's a massive increase.

Yeah. And can you just explain a little bit for those that that don't know. We'll assume that many listeners are at least a little familiar with ranked choice voting. That sort of is what it's described as. That is when voters use a ranked choice voting ballot, they get to rank their candidates in order of preference. One first choice, second choice, third choice, and then there's a bunch of instant runoffs to make sure that the ultimate winner gets over 50% support. So that's kind of what's going on there, rather than just getting one choice. But can you say, you mentioned that it was only for special elections and primary elections. You, you know, some people were a little bit bothered by the fact that ultimately during like the final mayoral election, there will not be a ranked choice ballot in New York. I am nonetheless encouraged by it. Why don't you say a little bit about that, that sort of nuance and the fact that primary elections, you know, as you might talk about. Yeah. Adam, you're from New York and live there. I think this is a really big deal. Even if the final general election will not be with used ranked choice voting.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is what happens, or the most inconsequential elections in kind of single party or one party dominated jurisdictions is the primary. And it's in the primary where they're usually heavily contested and where winners often have well below 50%. I mean, you saw this in the. There's a public advocate race primary earlier in the year where the winner had, I think, around 30 something percent. You know, those are the kind of races that are hyper competitive and rightfully so. Primaries should be hyper competitive. You know, they should be competitive. And so, and that's really the ultimate winner from the Democratic primary in New York City is the one who will end up winning almost always in the general election in New York City. So for me, the special election and the primary election were the most important offices to cover with ranked choice voting. So I see this as nothing less than a major success for the ranked choice voting movement.

Yeah, me too. And I think one point is worth emphasizing also that of course, we at Equal Citizens really think that ranked choice voting would make a difference everywhere. But I think this result in New York highlights that in many ways ranked choice voting is a better fit for primaries in the American system. Right. Because with a few exceptions, the general election mostly features a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate who are overwhelmingly likely to win. And then some other minor or third parties that are often get portrayed to act as spoilers and just given the realities, often have very little chance of prevailing. And so there's sort of only a top two choice anyway in the general election. But primaries, as you mentioned, Adam, often have up to a dozen viable candidates in some races. And so having voters really prioritize them can totally change the way the campaign is running. It can change who is running for them, and then it can change the way voters feel about the race. I think that can be really transformative. So I'm super encouraged by that.

And to be clear.

Right.

I mean, in the general election, it's imperative too. You know, Maine, you see in the second Congressional District, once Maine passed ranked choice voting for good in 2018, it went into effect and changed the results in a more Democratic, small de. Democratic way for Maine's 2nd congressional district, where, sure, there were two main party candidates running, but. But two other additional kind of independent candidates. And they did. They were the, you know, they took about 8% of the vote. And when those votes were reallocated, the ultimate winner was the Democrat congressman, now Congressman golden, and he won once those votes were reallocated. So I mean, it works for all elections. But I agree in many jurisdictions, especially my state, right. You know, home state right now of Massachusetts, where there's a real effort to try and pass ranked choice voting, it would be much more consequential for the primary elections because indeed, that is where a lot of the competition, the important competition is. So nonetheless, big victory. A couple other more minor ones. San Francisco, Jason passed a ballot question that increased transparency in elections and had a couple more campaign finance restrictions. Obviously great development for those elections. East Hampton, Massachusetts, passed ranked choice voting. So another ranked choice voting win this election cycle. Syracuse, New York, passed an independent redistricting commission. So that's taking the power to draw the lines of the districts in that municipality away from politicians and into the hands of independent committee. We at equal citizens, at equal citizens like that model the best way to draw the lines, apart from something like the Fair Representation act, which is a little more extreme in terms of a reform reform, is to just to take the power to draw the lines out of the hands of politicians. So we love to see that. Jason, I know you want to talk a little bit about what Maine did, which was an interesting question of access to signature gathering, which may seem really small, but opens up some very interesting questions about the reform community and all the different ways we can increase the ability of people to participate in our democracy.

Yeah. You know, I like this one a lot. This is a ballot measure that amended the Maine state constitution because the state constitution currently requires people to sign petitions for ballot measures with original signatures. And because that's directly in the constitution, it's essentially impossible for the legislature to do anything to assist people who cannot get give original signatures or signatures that would be considered original signatures because they have disabilities or otherwise unable physically to put pen to paper. And so what this ballot measure did was that it authorized the state legislature to eventually pass a law, and I'm sure they will do so quickly. It will be uncontroversial. And it got 75% support at the ballot to permit people with disabilities to do electronic signatures or some form of alternative signature so that they don't need to give an original signature. And I think this highlights some of the vexing parts of our democracy. But why paying attention to both the big and small of democracy reform is important because obviously that kind of provision in a state constitution seems innocuous at first glance, but that locks people in in a way that can have unintended consequences and that can really have downstream effects for citizen participation. And sometimes we have very inefficient systems. Right. You would. As this ballot measure shows, it's common sense to enable people who cannot physically sign to have an alternative mechanism for signing. But it turns out it requires a ballot measure, requires money to. To put forth a campaign. It requires lawyers to get it on the ballot. It requires people to gather signatures from people who don't even have potentially are unable to do it, to get enough of those just to put it on the ballot. So what I like about it, though, is that ultimately, even these obstacles can be surmounted. Right? And they can be surmounted at a reasonable cost and with a focused effort. And so I just want to give some kudos to the folks who were in support of Maine Question 2, and good for them for fixing their constitution. I'm sure there are many constitutional provisions in the 50 various state constitutions that have little quirks like this that are just sitting there that are making lives more difficult for people. And to the extent we can find them and efficiently and economically correct them through the democratic process, you know that that's a win for everyone, right?

And you may think, well, this only applies to a handful of people. But, you know, as a democracy reform organization, you know, our job is to fight to make sure every vote matters, Whether that's because of the color of your skin, your gender, or disability status. I mean, these are all things that there are many different barriers to exercising the franchise, and every single one of them is important and can be overcome with a little bit of grassroots effort, efforts and so, Jason, let's talk a little bit about Albuquerque, because this is the one real mixed bag of the night. So Albuquerque had two ballot questions. The first improved the current public financing system. That one passed. This is a marginal increase to make it more viable. But the second one was the more novel, which was to implement a system of democracy dollars, democracy vouchers, just like we were talking about that they have in Seattle, where every resident in Seattle gets four $25 vouchers. This proposal wasn't quite as robust as Seattle's. Instead, it would just create democracy vouchers in which every voter gets one $25 voucher. That one barely failed by a sliver. Obviously, that is sad. Jason, what do you make of that?

Well, I think it's sad and, you know, it's funny that. And perhaps totally unpredictable that Albuquerque, which was, you know, kind of recently rose to prominence, I guess, as the site of Breaking Bad, has become something of a testing ground for the democracy reform movement. Right. So we have seen fights over ranked choice voting there and a very narrow loss by folks in Albuquerque to get ranked choice voting adopted for this municipal election. I think their neighbors in Santa Fe used ranked choice voting. Is that Adam or. Right. Adam. Or recently passed it. And now we have this kind of mixed bag on increasing the efficacy of the current public financing program with a very narrow defeat. I think they lost 51, 49. Right. On democracy dollars. And I guess it just shows that the focused attention can make a difference. But people do think of these things differently, and they need to be educated about different types of solutions to money in politics, to ranked choice voting, to polarization. And it's hard to be first. Right? It's hard to be first. Seattle went first, and so far, they're basically only. And so getting that second jurisdiction, getting over 50%, getting from 49 to 50 and over to 51 is going to be tough. Even in a city that had an electorate, the results show there were just a certain percentage of people who said, yes, I want to improve the current public financing system, but I don't want to go. The additional step of something novel like a democracy dollar and novelty is tough, but I still think it's encouraging. It got 49%. And the more people see that public financing can be successful, the more people hear about their neighbors in Santa Fe using ranked choice voting. I think these things build on themselves. So it was just a first shot, but that's my takeaway. Right.

I completely agree with that. And I think one of the things is that the actual Campaign window for this was quite short. I don't know all the details, but I know it got on the ballot late and that there, you know, there was a strong, robust effort, but it was a short effort and it wasn't, you know, a years long campaigning season. And so I agree, I think a lot of this is iterative, especially when it comes to something like vouchers. You know, I want to bring it back to what we were doing at the awards ceremony. As I said that we went to this award ceremony in Los Angeles and the reason we were there is because we wanted to educate people about these vouchers and we had the physical vouchers and when you and I were talking to attendees about it, you know, it took about 90 seconds to maybe three minutes before you could visibly see the light turn on. You could see their eyes light up. And, you know, people got it, people got the importance of it. But it took a little bit of time before it was totally salient about why you would be giving democracy vouchers and what that means in terms of political power and pooling those vouchers together. And so it takes these campaigns, these novel democracy campaigns take time and a lot of organizing to really make the point salient of how this would increase your voice as a voter, as someone who's not a max out donor in the political process. And so I don't, yeah, this is a loss, but it's one that I don't see as fatal to the movement by any means because I think with more organizing, this really amazing model of public financing is going to spread. And I know, Jason, that, you know, I'm working on a project now with a colleague of mine, Nick Neihardt, who has long been in the money and politics space with a focus on public financing. And we're going through the data and it's very encouraging from Seattle. I mean, Seattle's experimented. Vouchers has been really, really promising. And, and that system will likely be fixed. And I'll do a deeper dive on a future podcast on that. But, you know, as the idea becomes more and more salient, we have four presidential candidates currently supporting vouchers, and formerly Kirsten Gillibrand did as well. I see this idea as, you know, it's going to expand. And just like with ranked choice voting, as you were saying, Maine became the first statewide jurisdiction to do it. And that's why, for example, Massachusetts passing it potentially on the ballot in 2020 will be so critical because the, the first one is super hard, but the second state, the Second jurisdiction to go after it is equally important in some respects because that's what builds the momentum to make it a broader reform.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And so we'll just kind of watch the space for what the movement for democracy vouchers do. We'll have a role as we can and we'll try and make sure that listeners, you're aware of what's going on so you can help out wherever it's needed.

And I just want to say before we wrap up about the elections, I have to give a little bit of a shout out to the other big democracy things. It wasn't a ballot question or ballot initiative, but, you know, the governor's race in Kentucky, the winner was Bashir, the Democrat, who, you know, besides partisan affiliation, you know, partisan affiliation side he ran on restoring voting rights to those convicted of felonies. And in Kentucky, it's one of the few states in which you lose the right to vote forever if you're convicted of felony. And so he's pledged that as governor, as governor elect now he will restore that through the executive power. That's a major victory for voting rights. And of course, you know, the Democrats taking control of Virginia also on the promise of potentially dealing with money in politics and voting rights, we'll see what they do, especially when it comes to gerrymandering. Jason, that will be the thing to watch because now that the Democrats have unified control of a state that was formerly gerrymandered, will they continue their promise to enact independent redistricting commission or. Well, now that they have unified control through the new census, does that mean that they'll forego that commitment to reform so that they can gerrymander the maps next cycle?

Yeah, I mean, giving up the power that you've got is not something politicians are good at. So that pressure has to come. They have to know that they're setting an example. Activists have to be on that. And we've got to watch that space closely for sure because that's, you know, that history shows and just human nature reveals that there are always justifications for doing something tomorrow. Just keep doing it the way you've been doing it. And especially to counteract what I think many Democrats view as Republicans penchant for doing a lot of gerrymandering. The Democrats may say we should do it too. Right. And they probably have a license to do it in some ways with the Supreme Court's decision in Rucho, or at least the Supreme Court's made clear that the federal courts are not going to get involved in resolving any dispute. So does that now unleash the unified Democratic control in Virginia to marginalize the Republicans as much as they can? We shall see.

And there is, Jason, a real amazing effort in Virginia right now to hold those newly elected politicians feet to the fire. So it's not as if there's no effort there. There is if you're in Virginia. Check it out. A lot of great work being done there.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. So we move from the success of local elections or the mostly success yet another year to the mess of the presidential campaign. So we haven't updated the presidential campaign in a few weeks on this podcast, but several candidates have now dropped out since we kind of last checked in. Steve Bullock, who we've talked about before on this podcast, Adam, because he ostensibly ran on an anti corruption platform that kind of boiled down to just we want lots of disclosure and we want to kick the Cokes out of Manhattan or not, man. Not Manhattan listeners. Montana, little bit different. And that message didn't really seem to resonate. Who knows if it was the message or the messenger or the amount of money he had or the fact that he was still actually the governor in Montana and couldn't give it the time necessary. But he dropped out. And it's unfortunate in the sense that he at least put the issue of corruption and money in politics at the forefront of a campaign, even if it wasn't always a message that kind of resonated with us hardcore folks who have been in the movement recently. Also, we have to wave goodbye to Senator Kamala Harris of California. Adam, you have some thoughts on her departure?

Yeah, I mean I, you know, she was always ranked towards the bottom in our POTUS 1 rankings because she never talked about these issues. Her website was pretty barren on the, on these questions of democracy. I mean, there were a couple of, of pretty milquetoast mentions, I mean, Citizens United and some vague language about an election day holiday and I think fighting for automatic voter registration. But she really never centered her campaign around it. And I thought this was so interesting, Jason, and kind of, you know, it really rubbed me the wrong way in terms of, you know, it was only towards the end of her campaign, once she had started running out of money and after, you know, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, once Bloomberg jumped in, the two billionaires really started spending a lot of money in this presidential race that she began talking about these issues, that she began to really attack the campaign finance system that allows for billionaires to self fund their campaigns. And in her Message on medium announcing her withdrawal from the race. She said, and I quote, my campaign for president simply doesn't have the financial resources we need to continue. I am not a billionaire. I can't fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it's become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete. You know, Jason, the solution there is obviously to fight for democracy reforms. It's to fight for public financing so you don't have to be a billionaire, that you don't have to have extensive networks of wealthy individuals to fund your campaign. The answer is to fight for a system in which that is not the right reason to stay or drop out of the race. It's the ideas or the support in the polls. And you'd think that someone who understands that would have really predicated her campaign on an issue like public financing. And my only hope now is now that she's really experienced running a race in which she can't compete financially, that maybe she becomes a champion now for public financing of elections. I know she was a co sponsor of HR1, but that doesn't signal necessarily support for public financing. So we don't really know where she stands. But if there's one lesson for her to take from this, it's that we need campaign finance reform. And her slogan of the solution is just to overturn Citizens United. That's just not enough, Senator, that we need a system that actually empowers voters, not just puts limits on what millionaires and billionaires and corporations can spend in politics.

Yeah, speaking of millionaires and billionaires, there are some new entrants. Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts is in the race. Haven't heard much from him on this issue or heard much really either way since he entered the race. But I think the higher profile candidate is Michael Bloomberg, the former three term mayor of Manhattan and billionaire founder of Bloomberg lp, who is now spending, as the New York Times has reported, probably more money than any presidential candidate has ever spent. And it's only his first week of campaigns.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that he, if I have this correct, I think he spent the largest amount of money on an ad buy in a given amount of time in the history of any campaign. I think it was over $30 million on one kind of slew of ad buys. That's a lot of money and it's all self funded.

Exactly. So I think that folks in the democracy reform movement, or maybe I should only speak for myself, I have mixed feelings about something like this. On the one hand, we like the fact that he is not beholden to super PACs. He is not beholden to corporate interest. He is among the richest people on the planet. And so he can drown out. He does not need to beholden to the ExxonMobil lobby, to lobbyist, to supervisor. He's got more than enough money to just drop unlimited money on his own campaign and do what he thinks is right. And maybe there's some value in that, right, Adam? I mean, but on the other hand, of course, the way that he earned his money and the fact that he is basically trying to use his wealth, some might say, to sort of just purchase an election, indeed, the timing of his run and the way he came in are sort of, in some ways inconsistent with a stated desire to, like, really run a campaign and engage people. Right. It's more in the nature of, let me just buy this office. Right? I didn't want to spend 2019 running around the country. I wanted to spend it doing whatever I wanted to do. And now I'm ready to enter and please give me some votes. Here's a bunch of money for me to explain what I'm doing. So I don't know. I have two minds about the impact of Bloomberg on the race and of course, his platform on democracy reform issues. He is uniquely positioned to try and clean up a race and try and say, hey, I'm not distorted by super PACs. That's part of my pitch to people. Shouldn't we allow more people to do that? But on the other hand, he seems to have said, well, if you wanted to run as a billionaire, you should have gone and made a billion dollars before you started to get into politics. Right. That's kind of the gist of some recent comments of his. So I don't know, are you as split on sort of his entry as I am?

Well, I think that my biggest problem is just about access. It's about the issues in our country in terms of our representation. And democracy is about who even has access not just to give money, but to be a viable candidate. And there does seem to, to me, something profoundly unfair about because you have access to money, you can become a viable candidate, that the access to money makes you a political contender. There seems to be something there that rubs me really the wrong way. But that said, I think that what Bloomberg's entrance to me does is it opens up a conversation about Buckley, Buckley v. Vallejo, the original Supreme Court case that really set the modern campaign finance infrastructure. The Supreme Court upheld contribution limits directly to candidates and got rid of limits on independent expenditures, and they also got rid of any sort of limitations on the ability to self fund. And so I think Bloomberg's entry really does actually open up a very interesting intellectual space for reformers to potentially reconsider or at least question Buckley once again. And some candidates like Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and others, you know, say that overturning Citizen United isn't enough. But we also have to return back to Buckley. So I think that at least intellectually speaking, I think Bloomberg's run, at least regardless of whether or not normatively it's a good thing or a bad thing. I just think it's interesting from the perspective of now we have potentially four billionaires, depending upon how you count them, who have run or are running. And that includes, you know, Donald Trump. I don't know how you want to assess the President's wealth. Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, and then Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, was also flirting with an independent run. And so I think that there's an interesting question here about the ability to turn wealth directly into a candidacy for yourself, as opposed to kind of the traditional narrative of billionaires buying elections on behalf of their own self interest by buying other politicians. So I think there's an interesting intellectual space for reformers to maybe mobilize more people around, kind of in some respects, the absurdity of that system.

Yeah, no, it is a good point. It is absurd. I mean, I guess I'll just add that we live in a capitalist economy. Right. And so the proposition that are billionaires more likely to do X? Is it easier to do X when you're a billionaire? Right. Whether that's run for office. Right. You sort of started off your remarks by lamenting the fact that, boy, isn't it a shame that it seems like almost a prerequisite to have a ton of money to run for president. Shouldn't we just pick the best candidates? And it's often easier to do things when one has a lot of money. That's just the nature of our system. So I think that Bloomberg's entry really, to me, it will be about can he truly use it for good. Right. Because many people were attracted to Trump's wealth in terms of how uncorrupted he appeared to be. Right. And I don't think he's governed that way. I think he's governed in an extremely corrupt way, in part because he doesn't like spending his own money. We don't know how much money he has. And I'm not gonna question it all I Don't wanna be sued on this podcast. But what we do know is that he kind of played with portraying himself as funding his own campaign. But, but of course we know he did not do that in 2016, and he certainly is not doing that in 2020. But people are attracted to that. Right? And he ran on that. Right. He is not beholden to these outside interests. He alone can drain the swamp. Right. He doesn't need to go groveling to the big corporate interests and lobbyists like Jeb Bush did, that he laughed at. Indeed, he famously portrayed himself as one of those very people to politicians of both parties. So I think we are at a turning point here where what are we going to see from Bloomberg? Are we going to see the sort of fact that he's going to tout his independence and say, I am going to use that independence to work on your behalf and to clean up the system, to make it so that everyone can run independently? Right. To make it so that not only billionaires. Because we cannot have a Congress, Adam, of 535 billionaires. That's not possible, right? I mean, I know. I think that given the way the stock market has gone, I don't know if Forbes has expanded beyond 400 or something. How many. There may in fact be 535 billionaires in the country. I'm not 100% sure, but surely not all of them are going to populate our Congress. And even if they wanted to, I don't think that anyone would agree that would be a good thing. So if that's the case, what is Bloomberg going to do? Right? How is he going to gonna sort of give that message of independence to people and create meaningful reform so that people can act as independently as he thinks he can act? That's the question.

It's very similar to kind of the model that Tom Steyer is taking, right? I mean, Tom Steyer, the billionaire who's done a lot of political activism in the past six plus years. I mean, he's running in a similar vein but more explicit right now. I mean, and so we'll see where, you know, how Bloomberg's platform develops. But I mean, it's something that Steyer is doing. I mean, he's on the debate stage now. We'll quibble in a later episode about Tom Steyer's reforms that he's proposing. But, you know, I think that the, I think what you're getting at is that there is a real desire among the electorate whether or not it's Trump's, you know, I Can't be bought. Drain the swamp. You know, Bernie Sanders, the system is rigged. I don't take super PAC money. I don't take corporate money. And my average donation, a small dollar donation, is, I think it's now $19. Something like that's under the $27 that he had in 2016 or someone like Bloomberg being. I can't be bought either. And here's my reform platform. I think that basically what all three of these things in some respects have in common is the real rebellion against the system in which corporations and billionaires influence politicians. In other words, that the incentive structure becomes skewed by a political system inundated by economic influence.

Right.

And so I think that a lot of this getting at the same kind of energy in the electorate, which, you know, rightfully or wrongfully, I think is a positive development. And for our purposes, I think that that does, you know, portend good things for the potential for reform, because people do want reform. They do want to get government that works for everybody.

Yeah, most people do. I'm not sure that Exxon lobbyists want a government that works for everybody, but most people do. And I hope that many listeners do, too. But. Okay, before we close today, Adam, we should say we have repeatedly excoriated the debate moderators for not asking a question about democracy reform. Really? Any topic related to democracy reform, voting rights, money in politics, campaign financing, ranked choice, voting, nothing for many years and dozens of debates. But, Adam, you live tweeted all of the debates so far, and in November, you saw something different. So are we giving a little bit of kudos here to end this podcast?

We are giving a little bit of kudos, yes. There was a debate question about voting rights, rightfully so. It was in Atlanta, Georgia, the site of some of the most egregious voter suppression in the country. And what followed was, you know, a pretty mediocre exchange. It was not what I was looking for. There were a couple of good answers. Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg spoke about reform. The conversation was unfortunately quickly derailed by Tulsi Gabbard, who pivoted the conversation into a question of foreign policy, which really was unfortunate as far as I'm concerned, because we finally got a democracy question, and we really didn't even get more than maybe two minutes plus of real substantial reform discussion. But following that, Bernie did bring it back to reform and actually touted the need for public financing of elections and to make sure everyone could register and vote. That was great to bring it back on the topic and Elizabeth Warren used her closing to talk about anti corruption too. So the end of the debate, weirdly enough, actually got a little bit of reform in it. And that is reason to celebrate especially it would have been, you know, I mean, it would have almost been a sick joke had in Georgia, they not even really discussed voting rights. But I will say the moderators need to do better. I'll give them credit for asking that question. But it was the very last question at the debate that had the lowest viewership, if I'm correct, of all of them so far. And so I think what, you know, we really need to see a democracy or question featured more prominently than at the very end. And then the moderators let it get off the rails within minutes. And on that topic, you know, so we'll wait to see what the next debate shows. But I just want to say that, you know, Jason, as we were recording this, the House just passed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights act today. And that is a wonderful thing to celebrate too. So as much as I'm going to criticizing the debate moderators for not allowing for a robust conversation about voting rights, progress is happening that we are seeing the House of Representatives pass a landmark bill. This was independent of HR1, the For the People act, for legal reasons, they want to build the case for the reauthorization through more hearings. But, you know, on the question of voting rights, I do really believe that that issue, whether or not they talk about it in the debates, is becoming increasingly salient for not just the Democratic elites, the party leaders and the people running, but also for the electorate. I think that on the issue of voting rights, you know, money in politics is, I still think, an open question. I think the trend is that way. But public financing clearly isn't salient across the entire country. But on the question of voting rights and the Voting Rights act and some other things, like automatic voter registration, you know, the time is coming. The question is just how close we are, but we're getting very close.

Yeah. So on that note, Adam, on that very optimistic note, and indeed, I'm not sure I expected to give credit to debate moderators. Again, we did several episodes talking about how they have just shirked their duty. Things are changing, and maybe that's where we should end it. Okay, so that's a lot of recent news for this download, but Adam will talk to you soon, and I look forward to talking to you soon about our biggest 2019 year in review. That's gonna be a fun one. So stay tuned for that. See you soon, Adam.

See you.