The First Annual Equality of Citizenship Awards! [12-27-19]

Welcome to the Another Way Podcast 2019 Award show recap Spectacular Spectacular. I'm your host and emcee for the evening, Jason Harrow. And I am joined on the red carpet by Adam Eichen, campaigns manager at Equal Citizens. Hey, Adam. How are you?

Hey, Jason.

Doing well? Excellent. What are you wearing for our award show? Can you tell the listeners and describe the fine Italian garments that you're wearing for this festive occasion?

I am currently wearing my schlubby khakis and my college sweatshirt that I wear often.

Well, that is perfect attire for the Equal Citizens equality of citizenship 2019 awards, the first annual. You may have heard about them, you may have seen the pre show on E. But. But that's what we're gonna be doing today. It's been an eventful year for democracy reform, and we want to kind of recap it by going through some fun awards, both the highlights and the lowlights. Before we do that, we should say that this is the podcast of Equal Citizens, a democracy reform nonprofit founded by Larry Lessig. And you can find us online at equalcitizens us anotherway. You. You can support us on patreon@patreon.com equalcitizens and if you want, like a copy of any kind of award, if anyone listening is involved with any of these campaigns, please write us at infoqualcitizens. Us. We'll have to figure out what an Equal Citizens equality of citizenship award looks like. Right now we're audio only, so we don't have to go visual, but maybe for next year we. We'll think of it. Yeah, Adam.

And if anyone disagrees with any of our award choices, please write us. Tell us why we're wrong.

Indeed. Yes, we would love to hear from you. You can write us again @infoqualcitizens.us. you can tweet us and Facebook us. Find our Facebook pagequalcitizens. That's a good way to be in touch with us. But let's start the show. Adam, we don't have a theme song. These are pretty low budget awards here for 2019. Maybe for 2020, we should up our game. But I think the important thing is here's the way this is going to work. 2019. As we said, a lot happened on the democracy reform space, and we want to sort of say ways in which both the federal system and states have done things to either try and make things more equal or actually make things more equal by passing democracy reforms that we support, like ranked choice voting, like national popular vote, like public financing of elections, like Independent redistricting commissions to end gerrymandering. All. All of these things are ways that we can make our system more equal. So let's start off with the first award of the night. Adam. The first award. I'm gonna give it, you'll give the next one. The first award is the best idea to make the federal system more equal. Now, we call this the best idea because unfortunately, with a Democratic House and a Republican Senate and President Trump in office, there aren't many things happening at the federal level that are actually passed, enacted, that are advancing the idea of citizens equality. We're just in a stasis. But that doesn't mean there wasn't action. There was a great idea and indeed, serious action. It was HR1, the for the People Act. We're going to give it our first ever Equal Citizens Equality of Citizenship award. And in particular, podcast guest John Sarbanes, who was the primary mover and primary author behind HR1. Adam, it's a comprehensive reform of many aspects of our system. It really does a lot to end gerrymandering. It really does a lot to provide public financing of congressional campaigns, which will revolutionize the way that candidates raise money, and they wouldn't be so beholden to big money. It contains all kinds of ethics protections and voting rights, really strengthens voting rights. So it's a great idea. It's a great idea to bundle all of these together. It's a great idea to give it the number one designation to that. It's the most important thing to move first in our democracy. It's a great name to call it for the People Act. It truly is for the people. It's not for Democrats, Republicans, or independents. It's to make our system better, stronger, more durable for the third century of democracy here in America. So I think there was only one choice for the Federal System Award, and that is HR1. Adam, I'm gonna assume you're gonna agree with that award.

I couldn't agree more, Jason. I think this bill is really revolutionary. I think what, you know, Congressman Sarmade's office put together with this, you know, bridging money in politics with voting rights and gerrymandering reform is not just good policy, but it really shows the way in which the democracy reform community has evolved over the past decade that, you know, in the past, the voting rights community, the money and politics community, the gerrymandering community, were all in their own separate silos. But with this, what HR1 showed is that now we're unified, that, you know, the right to vote doesn't mean much if, you know, money dominates elections. But getting money out of big money out of politics doesn't mean much if you can't vote. And none of that matters if the districts are rigged. And so all these things come together that there's no silver bullet to fixing our democracy. So we have to tackle these inequalities together. And again, as you said, the fact that this is HR1, that this was the very first priority of the newly elected Congress, I mean, words can't quite express how big of a deal that is and how much of a victory it is for the democracy reform community.

Yeah. And we just hope that in 2021, more realistically. Right. It's hard to say that 2020 award show will see HR1 enacted because again, there's no reason to think that the second year of this current Congress will be any different than the first year of this current Congress. But in 2021, listeners will have a new Congress, we'll have a new award show at the end of the year. And I hope that this award changes from best idea to make the federal system more equal to Best piece of past Legislation to make the federal system more equal. That's my hope.

And Jason, if that's the case, there will only be one award in 2021. We will just present all of the awards to HR1.

Congressperson Sarbanes, if you're listening and you want all of the awards, make it happen. Get HR1 done. Maybe that's an enticement to Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell, we would give you an Equal Citizens Equality of Citizenship award if you marshal HR1 through the United States Senate. Can we make that promise, Adam?

We can. And in fact, you know, it would go right next to the award that a couple weeks ago we were together in Los Angeles at the MOFA Awards and he was awarded a MOFA award, not exactly a prestigious award or a happy award. So maybe he could display the good award next to the bad award.

Yes, we'll wipe the bad one out. It will be all good for Mitch McConnell if he moves it through the Senate. Sadly, the prospects of that are pretty dim. But turning to more hopeful things, Adam, you've got the next award, which is not only best idea to make a state more equal, but best actual past piece of legislation or constitutional amendment that will make a state more equal. Go ahead with that one.

So I think 2019 really showed Jason progress in the fight to making our presidential elections more equal. So actually, there's a tie here in terms of policy. The first goes to the state of Maine for passing ranked choice voting for the presidential elections for the presidential general election. And starting in 2024 at the presidential primary now, Maine has passed ranked choice voting. As we've discussed in previous podcasts. I've interviewed Kyle Bailey, the campaign manager for the effort to bring ranked choice voting for congressional or federal elections there and primaries. But what they did this year was they expanded the ranked choice voting program to apply to the presidential general. And what that means is that the person who wins the the electoral votes and now Maine is a little different there. Kind of there it's by congressional district and there's a statewide vote. So there's actually three separate vote tallies. But if you want to win any of those electoral votes now, you will have to get over 50% of the vote. That if no candidate gets 50%, you know, so voters going in rank their candidates from first until whatever in order of preference. And if no candidate gets above 50% of the vote, the last place vote getter is their votes are eliminated and reallocated according to second choices, and that process continues until the eventual winning candidate gets above 50%. And Jason, this is a great way to ensure that the person who wins the electoral votes in that state has the broadest possible appeal among the electorate. I don't know if you want to say anything about this particular policy.

Yeah, it's a wonderful policy. It's a terrific extension of the policy that Maine adopted after an incredible fight that, like you said, another podcast guest, Kyle Bailey, talked in a great conversation about the fight to get ranked choice voting for congressional elections and other elections in Maine and now bringing it to the president for the first time. It's a wonderful showcase. It'll be a very high turnout election. And as we've seen recently, you know, parties that get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5% of the vote, they could make a real difference in determining the who wins electoral votes and who wins this presidential race, which is expected to be very close once again. So great for the citizens of Maine. Adam, I think it's a great award, but as you mentioned, we have a tie. Who else won this award? Yeah.

And very quickly, Jason, we hope that this idea now spreads, right? Yes, the first is the hardest in some respects to get it passed, to get a new idea implemented. And so we hope that once Maine makes the jump, just like they did with the ranked choice voting for legislative elections, we hope that other states will follow suit, end the spoiler in the presidential election, ensure the winner of state's electoral votes gets the Majority of votes. We hope that spreads across the country. But the other winner is the movement for the National Popular Vote. We've discussed this previously. It's a interstate compact that only that states pledge to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, the national popular vote. And it only goes into effect once the number of states, which is the equivalent to 270 electoral votes, sign onto the compact. So it only go into effect until it would actually swing an election. But this year, in 2019, four states, four states joined the compact. Delaware, Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon. And two more states should have joined the compact. Maine and Nevada almost did, and for reasons that I still don't understand, didn't. But hopefully next year they may. But this was a big win. Delaware has three electoral votes, Colorado, nine, New Mexico five, Oregon seven. With all four of those states added to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, that brings the number of states in the compact to reach 196 electoral votes. Again, it won't go into effect until it reaches 270, but that gets us very close. There's still some hurdles remaining, but this is the closest we've ever been, Jason. And for four states in one year, not bad.

Not only not bad, but worthy of an equal citizens Equality of citizenship award. I mean, talk about equality of citizenship, right? I mean, what could be more equal than having every vote counted equally across the country for the national popular vote? And voters in these states and legislators in these states are saying, yes, that's what we should do, right? There is no reason that the candidate who receives fewer votes nationally should attain the presidency through the Electoral College. And more importantly, there's no reason they should care more about voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida than they should care about voters in Texas, California and Alaska, right? Every vote should count equally. So if we're giving an award here for advancements toward equality of citizenship, boy, adding 24 electoral votes to the tally in one single year for the national popular vote is huge. So that's really important stuff. We should say a preview for this award in 2020, which again, we might not have this award in 2020 if Mitch McConnell takes HR1 through the Senate. But let's assume he doesn't do that and we have this award. Again, lots of exciting candidates. We'll do a 2020 preview early in the year in January. But just because of the nature of the fact that there are way more Elections in 2020 in the fall of November and more potential ballot measures, we hope, hopefully, if things go right. Adam, we've really got a potential bonanza in December of 2020 as we're giving these awards. If some of the ranked choice voting may come to Massachusetts, full stop, ranked choice voting may come to Alaska. There is a ballot initiative brewing to defend the National Popular Vote in Colorado. That's critical. Much more to come. So hopefully these state initiatives to advance equality of citizenship keep on keeping on and we can give many more of these awards. I'd be happy if we had a three way or a four way tie in 2020.

And I should say now that the Democrats seem to have potentially opened the door for National Popular Vote to pass in Virginia after taking back the state legislature there. So National Popular Vote, it may seem to listeners that we're still a long ways away. There is a conceivable path, Jason, to getting the National Popular Vote interstate Compact into effect by 2024. So again, it may not affect the 2020 election, but these victories are significant indeed.

Indeed. Okay, so let's get to some ideas that come out of the presidential race. And in particular we're going to give some negative awards. Unfortunately, there actually is a lot going on in the presidential race and we can get to that. We can get to some positive awards. But. But there have been some bad ones. So we just gave out two really good awards. I want to talk about a couple of bad federal democracy reform ideas proposed. I'm going to give this award, which is for worst democracy reform ideas. And again, this is a tough one to give because we like democracy reform being talked about. We like democracy reform ideas, but we should call them like we see them and say that Tom Steyer, whose idea of democracy reforms includes some sort of mechanism for a federal referendum, like a ballot measure into the federal system, which seems to obviously violate the Constitution, which, unlike some other states, has an absolute firm requirement upheld by the Supreme Court to have all bills go through both houses of Congress and be signed by the President and not be adopted by referendum. So I'm not sure exactly what he's thinking there. And then term limits, which have also been rejected as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. So he's just sort of throwing things at the wall. I appreciate the effort here, but I think we want to give this award for thinking like this. These are two things that have been essentially definitively rejected by the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional. There's all kinds of wonderful ways to improve our democracy that are fully legal and wonderfully consistent with the Constitution. Tom Steyer, let's start doing those. Let's start proposing those.

So two points that I want to follow up about this.

Right.

So the first is it requires a level of hubris. And I know we're going to bash Steyer here, but it really does make me angry. It requires a level of hubris. Who to pick these two reforms if you are running as a democracy reform candidate, because there are so many good ideas out there that the reformers are working on. I don't know a single reformer, Jason, that is working on the issue of a national referendum or anyone in our communities. I mean, maybe a couple, but for term limits. So really, in terms of actually we

should say term limits federally. Right.

Term limits.

There are certainly movements and indeed some states have term limits for state legislators and the like. And indeed the folks that represent us have term limits for state legislators as part of their American Anti Corruption Act. So I just want to make that clear. There are people. I don't want to marginalize those people as part of that movement. They're an important part. It's an important idea. But federally, there's no one really working on it because it was tried a couple of decades ago and the Supreme Court rejected it.

Right. And so, you know, I just don't quite understand what's going on in terms of there's a vibrant democracy community. I don't know why he's picking these ideas as opposed to the ones that people are actually on the ground fighting for. And the other thing just about term limits, Jason, is, is, you know, there are splits in the reform community. Not everyone agrees term limits are a good thing. The political science studies show potentially that it actually empowers lobbyists as it weakens the institutional memory of the legislature. So, you know, it's one of those things that we can have a debate about it, but it's not necessarily a net good or there's any sort of consensus about it as a democracy reform idea. So again, these kind of this level of hubris, I think, is really frustrating to me.

Yeah. Okay. You wanted to. We're going to give some worst but also best candidates on issues of democracy reform. Let's start with the worst. Adam, there is a place in your heart you want to give. Let's do two divisions. Worst Democratic candidate on democracy reform, current or former and worst Republican candidate on democracy reform, current president or challenger. Who are you giving those awards to?

Well, I'm giving on the Democratic side, I'm giving this award to the senator from California, your state, Jason. Senator Harris. I generally found Harris to be very rarely mentioned democracy reform at all. And when she did, it was mostly Milk, toast and seemingly talking points. She ended her. We've talked about this on a previous episode, Jason. She ended her campaign lambasting billionaires spending money in politics. Maybe now she will realize that campaign finance reform is critical, and I hope to see her champion this moving forward. But her silence on it when she had the presidential debate stage was deafening. And I frankly, was very discouraged by that. The Democratic Party as a whole, a lot of the contenders really did, if not prioritize the issue. They did at least release a plan to address these structural issues. The senator from California did not.

But she's out of the race, unfortunately. And maybe that speaks to the fact that democracy reform issues are important to talk about and resonating. Okay, but we've got two major parties in this country, so we should give a Republican award.

Well, you know, on the Republican side, we have to give it to the current president. The current president.

Wait, let me. This could have been a close vote here. Adam, let's. No, I think this was unanimous. Okay, sorry, continue.

This was unanimous. You know, Governor Weld, the main Republican challenger, has actually, according to our rankings, has an A. He's come out in favor of our entire platform. The president, on the other hand, gets an F In terms of our POTUS 1 rankings. The President not only does not support the democracy reforms, though he proclaimed to want to drain the swamp, he has done nothing but actually populate the swamp. And his work around the census this year to try and add a citizenship question, as well as other pretty harmful actions, including spreading lies about the prevalence of voter fraud, despite the fact being there, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and delegitimizing our elections makes this a clear award.

Yeah, I think that's right. That doesn't need too much more explanation. So I'll go back to the positive. We should give also an Equal Citizens Equality of Citizenship award to the best candidates on democracy reform in 2019. Of course, this is somewhat provisional. The race is not over. The race is far from over. We haven't even had the first primary yet. But so far on our POTUS 1 rankings, Adam, we have four candidates that are in the A plus tier. So they all have to tie. Right? For best candidates, that is Senator Elizabeth Warren, business person Andrew Yang, Congressperson Tulsi Gabbard, and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld on the Republican side, with Mayor Pete, as an asterisk, coming pretty darn close. He's sort of an honorary mention. Those four, though, that received an A, they've all endorsed a really robust mix of Policies from ending gerrymandering to making sure there's paper ballots and election security, automatic voter registration, same day voter registration, restoring voting rights, all kinds of fixes that we need. And those four candidates also crucially have pledged to take this issue seriously and indeed make it their first priority. They've either pledged that to us in specific events with us or podcast conversations with Larry Lessig, or they have said it prominently publicly on their website. They've made it a big part of their pitch. And so those people deserve equal citizens Equality of citizenship awards. And if any of them is elected, including Republican Bill Weld. Adam, I expect these issues to be taken seriously. And in combination with our first award winner, HR1, I expect these reforms to be implemented swiftly. I mean, you, you know, we hope day one, if they want a little bit of time to think about IT and Marshal HR1 through certainly year one, that's critical and they've promised to do that. So that's a good award to give. And this is an award that we want to keep expanding. I mean, if we do this at the 6 month mark or if we do this in another couple months, we hope that this would be a six way tie or an eight way tie or something like that.

Yeah. And I should add two additional asterisks. That one, though she wasn't in the race for long. Another former A candidate was Kirsten Gillibrand, the senator from New York. She released one of the most stunning and amazing democracy public financing plans, a voucher plan where every American would be eligible for up to $600 in democracy vouchers. Her plan was excellent. She used the debate stage to highlight it. She was out of the race pretty quickly, so maybe she doesn't quite qualify here, but I commend her for her work this year to popularize that idea. And of course also the other candidate in the race to endorse Democracy dollars is the senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. Great public financing plan. We're still waiting on him to commit to fixing democracy as his number one priority.

Indeed.

So, you know, it really is cool in the presidential race. It's been really fascinating. I think I can speak on your behalf of Jason, just to watch the candidates develop these plans and really compete with each other to get the best plan. I mean, there's some remarkable ideas being floated around.

Agreed. And Senator Sanders, if you want this very prestigious award, if you want the Equal citizens Equality of citizenship award, come out, definitively pledge to fix democracy first. Until then, it's four way tie at the top. Okay, let's move on to another ignominious award, to another unfortunate award. And this unfortunate award, we're going to call it the Least Aware of the Inequality of Citizenship in our Country, Least Aware of the problems related to inequality of citizenship in our country. And this is a strange one because there's certainly a lot of people who are unaware of it. I don't think we can say, though, that many Republican politicians and things like that, or I should say Democratic politicians who are also enemies of democracy reform, they are aware of it and just doing nothing about it. So we can't give it to those folks who are we just giving this sort of blissful ignorance to.

Oh, there's no question in my mind, Jason, if you, our dear listener, has listened to our podcast before our conversations, you and me, Jason, you know, there's no question. It's the debate moderators. There was one question. We were recording this before the debate in December. So they may change, you know, they may late entry. They may change the calculus here. But you know, they have spent the entire cycle ignoring the issue of democracy reform. They asked one question about it on the topic of voting rights in November, and even then there was virtually no conversation in substantial way about the reforms. I mean, it's just been, it's been a disgrace. It's been journalistic malpractice, that there have been debates in critical states where these democracy issues are really hurting Americans. You know, you think of Michigan, where they had the worst gerrymander, and then a movement to actually end gerrymandering in Florida, in Ohio, in Texas. I mean, these are places where vote suppression, where money in politics, where gerrymandering. I mean, they are hurting the American people. And the debate moderators decided not important enough, I guess, to ask even a single question. We're not even asking for a full debate, although maybe we should ask a full debate around democracy. But they couldn't even ask, couldn't bear to answer the question or ask the question in any one of those debates. And even when they finally, finally did in two cycles, because they never did in 2016 either, it was really just kind of a disgrace.

Yeah, it's hard to dispute that award. Right. I mean, I think that the we've gone around on this, so I won't say too much except that again, we hope to not give this award again. I mean, there are many more debates to come and the media really does have a job to do in terms of educating people on the importance of these issues, that there is a movement going on and that These are related to some of the problems. There are so many substantive issues that the debate moderators ask about that are some combination of, like, pie in the sky programs that will never happen without fundamental reform or questions about the partisanship and gridlock that pay no attention to the factors underlying it. Folks, all the networks, all the publications that sponsor these debates, you guys share this award equally. And we don't want to give it. We don't want to give it again, but we have to. Okay, now we've got another divided award here. We're going to. Just like we divided up Republican and Democrat, sort of worst candidates, worst. We're going to do the very unfortunately prestigious. But we hope, again, we hope to highlight these things to let you know about what's going on and that these things can change. And we hope we don't give this one in 2020 again. This is the Undermining Citizen Equality Award, the development in 2019 that has most undermined the concept of citizen equality. And we're going to break this into three divisions. There's going to be a judicial division and an executive division and a legislative division. Adam, you may notice that These are the three branches that you learned about in 8th grade civics class of the federal government. So we're going to talk about what the federal government has done to undermine citizen equality in those three branches. Okay, the judicial nominee is Rue versus Common Cause. This is Chief Justice Roberts majority opinion on behalf of five of the nine Supreme Court justices that said that federal courts had no role to play in solving gerrymandering. Even if it was unconstitutional, even if it was a problem, there were no manageable judicial standards, and therefore, sorry, we judges can't help even the worst of the worst gerrymanders. We cannot fix our political system. We're out of the business. Too bad. So long. If you have no meaningful say in the political process, that is not what our Constitution requires. There is no reason for it. Political scientists and plaintiffs have developed excellent objective measures, as Justice Kagan pointed out in her wonderful dissent. But we have to give the judicial nominee for the Undermining Citizen Equality Award to Chief Justice Roberts majority opinion in Ruscho vs Common Cause. Adam, do you want to talk about the Executive Branch Award?

Yes, I would love that. Two additional things I want to quickly hop in and say about Ruscho is that one, I want to just emphasize the amount of evidence that the plaintiffs gave was amazing. I mean, the amount of social science that they provided to show just how bad gerrymandering is. They created quite the network or resources to allow the court to rule the right way, but they still chose not to. And the other thing, Jason, they also, by ruling this way, they vacated a bunch of federal court rulings that would have struck down gerrymandering in federal courts in swing states across the country. So that's another thing that I just want to flag.

Yeah. Okay, so let's move on to the executive branch nominee, though.

So the executive branch, this one is also not really much of a question. This award is given to the Trump administration for their devious actions to try and undermine the census, an accurate census, Census count this year. So, for those who don't know, the Trump administration, rather clumsily, you know, in a clumsy manner, tried to add a question to the census to ask everyone their citizenship status. Now, that may seem rather innocuous, but what that was shown to do would be to reduce participation in the census. And the census, for those of you who don't know, it's not only to provide an accurate count of everyone who is residing in the United States. That's clear. The census is not supposed to change, just pick citizens or not citizens. It's to get an accurate count of everybody living here. But it is also used to allocate federal funding, from health care to education to a variety of federal programs. And perhaps most critically, it's used to determine reapportionment of congressional districts, as well as redistricting to draw the lines. And what this would have done is it would have really hurt a lot of states. It would have opened the door for state legislators to redraw the lines just using citizen voting age, population. It sounds a little wonky, but basically what that would have done is it would have made gerrymandering even worse. It would have made it so the lines could be skewed even more towards the rural areas. It would have basically been a disaster for our democracy. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled, Jason, that the Trump administrator administration couldn't go through with it, although it was really done on procedural grounds, and mostly because the Trump administration did such, such a poor job executing this procedural act that even the Supreme Court, even Roberts, couldn't quite fathom it.

Yeah, and by poor job, you mean they openly lied about exactly what they were doing and followed none of the required procedures, though the majority opinion there didn't, you know, was more about the lying than the procedures, which was a little bit disturbing. But nonetheless, that award is deserved, but thankfully will not really have an effect on the 2020 census. Again, there's lots of other problems, but that question will not be on the census despite Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary's sort of best, worst efforts. Okay. For legislative, we're gonna jump from federal to state. For the primary nominee, though, I think there is an honorable mention that I'm gonna add. Adam. The legislative nominee for the undermining citizen equality award is is the Florida legislature for doing absolutely everything it could to undo the will of the voters and try and undermine the ability of former felons who have now served their sentences to be able to register and exercise their right as citizens to vote. Quick background. In 2018, the Florida Constitution was amended by voters with over 60% of the vote to permit restoration of many felons voting rights. Florida has one of the most draconian laws on the books that prohibits former felons from essentially voting for the rest of their lives absent a very onerous clemency procedure that is rarely used by the current Republican governor. And the voters rejected it and wanted to restore voting rights to approximately a million former felons, many of whom are nonviolent or serve relatively short sentences. The Florida legislature has done absolutely everything it can to prevent these people who again have served their time and done their debt to society from getting their voting rights back. They have hemmed and hawed. They've ultimately passed legislation that would essentially put in a poll tax by requiring all these felons not only to have served their time in jail, but also pay back some fines that may be decades old and that may be extremely onerous or that they are totally unable to pay. And just to be able to vote right, that's like depriving someone of a right to vote because they have an outstanding parking ticket or something like that. It's ludicrous and it's pretty much sort of TBD whether or not they'll really fully get away with it. Looks like there's some courts that are hopefully gonna put a stop to it. But they're doing everything that they can, Adam, to undermine citizen equality. But we have to give an honorable mention. We have to go back to the federal system because Mitch McConnell comes up once again. Right. If we're talking legislature, let's go back to HR1. We've already ment it, so we're not going to give him this award. But if you talk about undermining citizen equality from a legislative perspective, how about not even giving HR1 a vote? Right? How about a bill that passed the House that is called HR1, that is the for the People act that would have comprehensive democracy reform. How about Saying we're not even getting a second of debate on the US Senate floor, which has more important things to do. What. What exactly is it doing? Adam, Are you aware of what's more important than having this debate and having a vote? So, once again, from a legislative perspective, he's doing everything he can to undermine citizen equality, but we're gonna give this to the Florida legislature, this nominee. Okay, so, Adam, here's what we've got. We've got the judicial nominee, Rucho versus Common Cause, against the executive nominee, Wilbur Ross, President Trump and their efforts to add a citizenship question to the census to undermine its accuracy and change the way that people would be counted. And we've got the Florida legislature, which is just blatantly submarining the will of over 60% of Florida voters to restore voting rights to over a million felons. Drumroll, please. Adam, you and I both agreed that this award should go to Rucho v. Common Cause. It's a tough one. These are all efforts to undermine citizen equality. But what we decided in a nutshell was that the census effort ultimately would have been extremely damaging, but was blocked by the Supreme Court. And the Florida effort to overturn the constitutional amendment there, we hope, will be unsuccessful as well. And ultimately, even though it really affects the lives of a million Floridians who absolutely deserve to vote, the fact that the Supreme Court has said the. To stop state legislatures from gerrymandering and that you cannot bring these cases in federal court could have damage for decades, Adam, for our democracy. So, ultimately, we tip our hats to Rucho versus Common Cause for doing everything that could possibly be done in the gerrymandering space by Chief Justice Roberts to undermine citizen equality. Anything else you want to say about that ignominious distinction for Rucho versus Common Cause?

No, just to our listeners. We are really splitting hairs between just how bad all of these things are. And these are just three of the most egregious. I mean, we could do a whole podcast episode about just the horrible things that have been proposed and actually enacted to restrict citizen equality to make our unequal citizenship even more unequal. So you really have to be quite an achiever in this category to win. And, Chief Justice Roberts, you did well.

Indeed. We tip our cap, but we also tip our cap in some ways for taking away the award from Wilbur Ross. Right, because he indeed joined the liberal justices in striking down the ability there. So, mixed bag on Chief Justice Roberts. We're not giving this personally. We're giving this to the case itself, and the decision Itself, which does a lot to undermine citizen equality, as Justice Kagan points out in her dissent. Okay, let's switch back to the positive and then end with an overall word. We'll go through quickly through these. We're going to do a full 2020 preview in January, as I mentioned. But we want to mention that there's a couple of awards we want to give kind of first, forward looking. We want to give the most promising 2020 democracy reform campaign to RCV Massachusetts ranked choice voting Massachusetts. Adam, you know these folks. Well, Massachusetts is where you live. Tell us a little bit about what you expect from these folks and why we're going to sort of. I don't know if this is going to inflate their egos too much, but we want to make sure we highlight these folks in 2020. And we want to say this is a very promising potential development.

Yeah, I mean, Jason, I think that the state most likely to follow suit for Maine with ranked rights voting is Massachusetts. There is an amazing grassroots movement happening on the ground there. You know, I think they gathered, you know, over 100,000 signatures to get it on the ballot for 2020. There are a couple other procedural hurdles that they have to reach, but it seems pretty sure that they will have, you know, achieved something remarkable to get it on the ballot. Massachusetts, I mean, it really is a Herculean effort to do that. And it required just such an amazing coordination among, you know, across the entire commonwealth to gather signatures to educate voters. This has really been a campaign that's been underway since 2016. After Maine passed it for the first time. There were a group of people who came together and said, let's do it. And they've stuck with this ever since then. And they've built their network to tens of thousands of volunteers and supporters. And, you know, it really is. It embodies what a grassroots movement looks like. And I think it has a really good chance of passing. There's so much that has to be done before then, so much education. I mean, this is going to be a dog fight. This is really going to be quite the campaign to run. But if done well, I think they have a chance to win. And if they win, that's the second state to pass it. And of course, I think we will talk about it, that Alaska may also have a ranked choice voting ballot initiative, and that would be critical for 2020 if that passed. But Massachusetts, right next to Maine, serves kind of like a little bit of a northeast powerhouse of ranked choice voting. It could spread down the corridor, it could spread towards the Midwest area. This gives ranked choice. It would give ranked choice voting even more legitimacy in the mainstream and it would be quite, quite the victory.

Yeah, I think that's right. Related award Forward looking for 2020 Most Critical Area of defense for citizen equality. We're going to give this to Colorado and the National Popular Vote. We say defense because as listeners may remember from earlier in this very podcast, in this very award show, Colorado received an award for passing National Popular Vote and becoming part of that agreement and trying to work toward having a president be elected by the national popular vote. But that is under siege. Opponents of citizen equality have put this on the ballot, have put a repeal effort on the ballot. There is a people's veto mechanism in Colorado. And so In November of 2020, folks will go to the polls and be able to say, no, we want to stick with this law that our legislature passed and governor signed or we want to repeal it. It will be the first time that something like this is on the ballot. And I think it's a really important piece of defense. You know, obviously the National Popular Vote Compact doesn't rise or fall with one state. That's the very point of it. But because it is the first time and because it is, you know, it is prominent, Trump obviously in 2016 won while getting pretty much throttled in the national popular vote. And so it's a polarizing issue right now, even though it really shouldn't be. And I just think it's critical that the folks in Colorado run a really bipartisan campaign. A campaign about fairness, a campaign about equality, a campaign about the way we should elect the president and the way that most people think we should elect the president. If they just take their partisan hats off, there's really no reason that citizens in Florida should have so much more power than citizens in California or Massachusetts when it comes to the presidential race. But they do. And Coloradans have tried to correct it. And I hope that they can maintain that victory. So that's an important one. Okay, Adam, we've got one more award here. It's a bit self serving, honestly. Not serving to us, not serving to you and I, but self serving to Larry Lessig, the founder of Equal Citizens and a true democracy reform champion. We're going to give the award for best book advocating for citizen equality. So to Larry's new book, they Don't Represent Us, out now, available in audiobook and hard copy and ebook form from your local reseller, that they don't represent us. Adam, I think this award is well deserved, aside from the fact that Larry is the founder, there have been lots of good books. We of course, should mention some additional books that came out in 2019. And indeed, we want to feature some great books and Larry wants to feature those. But of course, when your founder writes a book about citizen equality, I think it's worth giving an award to. It's really, it's a really comprehensive articulation of just why we have the representational problems we've got, why there are so many areas where in our democracy, citizens are not equal. They are not equal just as a matter of voting power. They are not equal as a matter of say they're not equal as a matter of input into our political system. And that leads to worse outcomes for everyone. So if you're interested in this topic of citizen equality, I think that's a really good read. Adam, anything else about that final award winner? No.

Well deserved, Larry. We'll present you an award next time we see you.

Indeed. Indeed. Okay, so that's it for the 2019 Equal Citizens Equality of Citizenship Award. Adam, before we turn to a quick recap of what we at Equal citizens did in 2019, any kind of themes that just emerged from you in the awards before we leave it, before we kind of leave the award show space and turn over the keys to the Kodak Theater.

You know, I think, Jason, I mean, anyone who's listened to the episodes that I've posted know that I'm just very optimistic. I think that the number of victories are growing and I know it just doesn't feel that way unless you're really paying attention. But Jason, you know, for those of us who spend legitimately every day thinking about these issues, there is a lot to be optimistic about. And I think that, you know, as we build this reform movement, we have to cherish those victories. We have to keep telling ourselves that, you know, reform is possible, indeed, reform is happening. Otherwise, you know, it's way too easy to lose confidence and faith that the system can be fixed. But, you know, again, I think if you talk to a lot of reformers, they do feel optimism or at least a sense of possibility. As my friend Francis Moore Lepay said in a previous episode that she's not an optimist, but she's a possibilist. She believes in the possibility of change.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, my takeaway is that we did roughly half positive awards and half negative awards, Right. If we had sat here and done an Equal Citizens Equality of citizenship award in 2009, I'm not sure what the positive would be. Right. It would be essentially mostly negative awards. There was not a lot of action in this space whatsoever. So going from 0 to 50%, good, some steps forward, some steps back is great. And hopefully in 2020, we'll continue inching forward. And then the hope is, again, especially with HR1, that in 2021, the dam really breaks open. Depending, of course, on the results of the election and what citizens demand. I will say that the breaking open in 2021, I don't think will depend only on the president. Right. I mean, we've seen state victories, we've seen local victories, we've seen an increasing appetite. And no matter what happens at the federal level, we have a system of state and local government as well. And there will be a lot of action. But, gosh, HR1 is just sitting there. And I really, really want this award show to be a one award podcast in 2021.

And Jason, all these state reforms build towards HR1. I mean, you think of what's in HR1. A lot of what's in HR1 are policies that have been promoted on the state level. All of the victories over the past 10 years have culminated, or are culminating right now in the development and potentially the passage of HR1. And then there's more to do after HR1, that rank choice voting, we still have to make that salient. But every single one of these victories gets us closer to that place of a more comprehensive federal reform. So just each of these reforms build on each other. That's my takeaway, is that this is all an iterative process, that democracy is iterative. It builds on itself, both in the good and in the bad, but especially in the good in terms of, you know, again, you know, when Larry was advocating for something like, you know, democracy vouchers 10 years ago, you know, no one was talking about it. There was no model. But now we have Seattle, and now we have evidence that it works. Now we have more and more municipalities, more and more activists considering this. You know, if you really track how ideas are turned into, you know, campaigns turned into policy, you know, we're right on that now. But again, to our listeners, you know, the only way this happens is not just it doesn't just happen. It happens because citizens demand it. It happens because there's a campaign. It happens because we organize. And that's the real takeaway. That's what we do here, Jason. You know, we're in this because we want to help, you know, facilitate this movement to win more victories in 2020. And I do think 2020 is going to be another breakout year for our movement.

I think that's right. So let's end the award show there and do just a quick bit of info dump self promotion, let's be honest. But I think it's useful because we are working towards some of these things and we are working to make that award show even more positive in 2020. Going through really quick some of the things that we've done in 2019. To recap the year, we've hosted town halls with several presidential candidates. Seven by my count, Adam Andrew Yang, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard, Governor Bullock, Marion Williamson, John Delaney and Bill Weld. We've also had podcast conversations with additional candidates like Beto o'. Rourke. And you know, we're trying to do this to press them to talk about it. Right. The fact is that especially with the way the media is structured, cable news, social media, there's a high focus on the presidential candidates in the presidential race. Getting them to talk about it and prioritize it. That's one of our things. That's something we believe that we could do for you, the listeners, is to get them on the record about these things and to make it clear that there is a movement of people that want these issues talked about and want to move it there. So we hope to continue with those in 2020. We hope to get more presidential candidates and more prominent politicians on these airwaves and in in person events. So hopefully we can expand that list for our 2020 recap. Continuing the theme of the conversations we're having. Obviously, Adam, you and I get to have these conversations. That's something we've done and launched in 2019, and I think it's fun. And listeners, if you have suggestions, there's a place on the website to give us ideas. You can also email infoqualcitizens us. We've had additional podcast conversations with those candidates. Like I said, in addition to Beto, in addition to Senator Michael Bennet, activists, amazing activists like Katie Fahey, your friend Rabbi Michael Pollack, Congressman John Sarbanes, who is the recipient of, of an award here, Evan McMullen, another fun thing I think we've done in 2019. Okay, Adam, let's talk about POTUS 1. We already mentioned it when we talked about Democratic candidates, but that's another big thing. You've been a big part of that in 2019, so why don't you talk about that?

Yeah, I mean, for those who haven't seen it, we have the POTUS 1 webpage. And we've been tracking all the presidential candidates and their democracy reform platforms. We've graded them, we've ranked them. You know, that's been a really rewarding project for me, Jason. I think, you know, it's really good to have that information synthesized, especially since the debate moderators didn't ask a question about it. Most people don't really know where the candidates stand. So it's great that we had the opportunity to provide that resource to voters, to equal citizen supporters. And, you know, I have to say that, you know, the candidates, some of the candidates were aware that we were ranking candidates. And in fact, after the. Steve, Steve Bullock, the governor from Montana, after his democracy town hall, I was talking to him and I was kind of lightly criticizing him for not publicly supporting public financing of elections. And he said to me, I saw your POTUS 1 webpage, and maybe I will endorse public financing because I want that A plus. Now, he dropped out before he could change the ratings and endorse public financing. But still, the point is, you may not see it as you, the listener, may not see the internal dynamics that we have with the campaigns, but it is working. People are aware of this. They want a good rating. They don't want to be seen as not a reformer. In this day and age where the vast majority of Americans want fundamental change in our elections.

Exactly. We also spent some time earlier in the year pushing for ranked choice voting in the New Hampshire primary. That's not going to happen, unfortunately. We did our best effort. The hour was late, time was short, but we made real progress. We got a lot of supporters, a lot of people who want ranked choice voting in New Hampshire. And it was part of a movement to use race, ranked choice voting in some Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses, which is happening for the first time in a really meaningful way in 2020. So that's gratifying to see. And there is some more appetite for ranked choice voting in 2020. So I hope we're not done there. There will be more primaries in New Hampshire, Adam. We know that they take it very seriously there. And one day, perhaps they'll use ranked choice voting. And we hope to be a part of it. Okay, just a couple of other things. Because we are also a legal organization, we have four lawsuits challenging winner take all in the Electoral College to try and change the way we select the president. No decisions yet out of any appellate courts, but we're continuing to move those through and again hope to persuade the courts of appeals that there is real reason to think that the current system is unconstitutional. Not only wrong, but unconstitutional. We also are moving cases about the rights of presidential electors, which we've talked about before, whether they can vote freely for any candidate or whether they can be bound to vote for the nominee of their party. This is an important and unresolved question that we'll know whether the Supreme Court will take it up in January. We got a victory from the 10th Circuit, which vindicated elector freedom. That's the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. We got a loss in the Washington State Supreme Court. That conflict means we think it's likely that the Supreme Court will take it or at least take some action on these cases. It would be very unusual for the Supreme Court to let this split stand so that people should know what the rules are going into this very important election in 2020. And the last case that we've got that we want to tell you about is another victory. Boy, we've given out awards and we've had victories. Here's another victory to end on. In Alaska, we brought a really novel case to try and question why the state election regulator has gotten out of the business of enforcing contribution limits to super PACs and independent expenditure groups. We have a novel theory, and we lost in front of the administrative agency which said that the reason we're doing this is that courts have said that similar laws violate the First Amendment. And we had a theory for why that's wrong. We'll do a whole podcast on that. But ultimately, an Alaska Superior Court judge in November agreed with us. And so we will most likely be in the Alaska Supreme Court in 2020 in a major case that we hope could work its way up to the US Supreme Court and not allow the Supreme Court to necessarily overrule Citizens United, but to sort of rethink its implications and rethink the way that states and local governments and the federal government can regulate donations to super PACs, which are really damaging to our system and which we think is not only totally permissible under First Amendment principles, but indeed, totally consistent with the way our framers thought of the idea of corruption and what government should do to create a government that is by the people, for the people, and dependent upon the people, and not only moneyed interests. Okay, so with that list, Adam, we'll dig into some more of these issues certainly in 2020. We'll keep working hard. Thanks for attending our award show and helping me present these awards. We hope the recipients of the awards are either delighted at the success they've gotten. There are some remarkable successes. And we hope that they're angry if they've received awards that were not so positive. Again, Mitch McConnell, shout out. You, too can be the recipient of a Positive Equal Citizens Equality of Citizenship award. We desperately want to give it to you. The ball is in your court. With that, should we end 2019, Adam? We should. Okay. Talk to you soon. Have a good year.