Pod Insights SNAFU with Ed Helms BONUS: Culture Wars, Then & Now with Josh Graham Lynn About this episode Josh Lynn of RepresentUS joins Ed to explore political pitfalls from the 1920s that still threaten our politics today. Together they ask: how can we combat those issues, and how can we bring power back to the voters?
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript 8,388 words · 10 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Speaker 01 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans in amounts subject to lender approval.
0:32 Speaker 02 She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.
0:45 Speaker 03 Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolir should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolir is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolir.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolir.
1:28 Speaker 03 This is an advertisement for Zolir, paid for by Genentech and Novartis.
1:36 Speaker 04 Hey there, I'm Ed Helms and this is Snafu: Season Three, Formula Six. How prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people. This is a bonus episode, and as you may recall, I like to bring in guests for these bonus episodes and try to learn something a little bit new or different about the subject. So, we know prohibition was obviously a colossal government snafu and a fascinating story in its own right, but what... Are the nitty gritty lessons or insights we can walk away with this season? I wanted to talk to someone who could help us zoom out, someone who thinks deeply about
2:20 Speaker 04 how power, corruption, and unintended consequences shape our world. So I called up Josh Graham Lynn, the co-founder of Represent Us, an organization dedicated to fighting political corruption and making our democracy work better. Unlike, say, a democracy that poisons its own citizens. Josh helped us dig into big questions that inform our understanding not only of Formula Six, but also its lingering echoes into the present. How do we break free of political influence and lobbyists? How do we bring power back to voters? And ultimately, how do we strengthen democracy for future generations?
3:02 Speaker 04 Turns out, the tangled mess of bad decisions behind prohibition isn't just a history lesson, it's a warning. So here it is, my fascinating conversation with Josh Graham Lynn. Hello, Josh Graham Lynn. Hello, Ed Heckingweiler Helms. Close. Well, hey, so I'm so excited to have you on our Snafu podcast, and I'm just gonna throw a couple of disclaimer slash context bits out there first. The first disclaimer is that I know you very well, and I don't like you at all. No, that's not true. We're very good friends. You are a very good friend of mine.
3:47 Speaker 04 And the reason we know each other well is because you run an organization called Represent Us, and I have been very active with that organization because I really believe in its mission. So with that out of the way, tell us a little bit about Represent Us and your involvement, how it got started and how you got roped in.
4:11 Speaker 05 Wow. Well, what a nice introduction. I thought it was going to be some scary disclaimer, but the fact that we're friends and buddies, I think, makes it all the better.
4:17 Speaker 04 Right.
4:19 Speaker 05 So Represent Us is pretty straightforward. The idea here is that the American government should work an answer to, work for an answer to, the American people.
4:29 Speaker 04 Outrageous.
4:30 Speaker 05 It's just, it's a foreign thought.
4:33 Speaker 04 Right.
4:34 Speaker 05 Because of the influence of big money and special interests and the two political parties that we have and their grip on the system, the American government does not work for the American people. And so Represent Us is all about building a movement of folks from across the political spectrum to make the government work for we, the people. And we do that by going city by city, state by state, across the country, passing laws that actually make the government answer to the people.
4:59 Speaker 04 Right on. Right on. Yeah. Every time I hear that, I just get all excited about Represent Us.
5:05 Speaker 05 I never get tired of saying it. It's one of those, it's like saying to somebody, like, hey, do you want free candy? Or like, it's like, everybody likes it.
5:13 Speaker 04 And I think there is just a very pervasive sense in America right now that, that things are feeling a little broken. No matter what side you're on, if, if your team won or your team lost, there's still this sense that like, well, still, a lot of people are feeling kind of screwed and unheard. And, and that's really what Represent Us is trying to fix. How did it get started? What's kind of the origin story?
5:35 Speaker 05 Yeah. So it's interesting to hear you say, people feel like the government isn't working for them. That's, we know that's true. Lots of people feel that way. I think what a lot of people don't know is that scientific studies, one after the other, after the other, prove that to be true. Yeah. So in the aftermath of Citizens United, which was in 2012, and for those who don't know, Citizens United is a Supreme Court ruling that essentially said that special interests, corporations, private entities can spend almost unlimited amounts of money to Make political contributions, AKA by politicians and elections.
6:11 Speaker 04 Right, and this is because political donations are considered a form of speech.
6:16 Speaker 05 Yeah.
6:16 Speaker 04 Under free speech.
6:18 Speaker 05 And I don't want to make everybody go to sleep, but like, there's other Supreme Court rulings, like Speech Now, that had to do with all this, but the short version is, we call it Citizens United, it's a bunch of rulings that stick together. And in the wake of that ruling, it was very clear that the influence of money in politics was going to get out of control quickly. And as a result of that, we thought, well, if the system is captured by big money, we, the people, are probably going to lose faith in our institutions and the whole thing may start to crumble. And that was back in 2012. And I would say that a lot of the fears that we had have started to ring true, where political spending has gotten out of control. This was, once again, the most expensive election we've ever seen. And the one thing that hasn't changed in all those 12 years is that big money still has a death grip
7:04 Speaker 05 on the system, and we, the people, are paying the price for it.
7:06 Speaker 04 So, why are we talking to you in the context of season three of SNAFU, which is all about early 20th century prohibition? Well, it's one of the first big, sort of conflagrations of values in 20th century America. Of course, culture wars go back centuries. And before we go further, I kind of want to, I think it'd be cool to actually read a definition of culture war, because Wikipedia sums it up quite nicely. So, "A culture war is a form of cultural conflict, a metaphorical war between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology, moral beliefs, humane
7:46 Speaker 04 virtues, religious practices, et cetera, upon mainstream society, or upon the other." "In political usage, the term 'culture war' is a metaphor for hot-button politics about values and ideologies realized with intentionally adversarial social narratives, meant to provoke political polarization among the mainstream of society over economic matters, of public policy, and of consumption." So, one of the really interesting things about culture wars, and prohibition is a perfect example of this, is how laws get passed with very little actual support from the general public.
8:28 Speaker 04 So in the early 20th century, we had organizations like the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, and they made a lot of noise, and they also preyed upon a lot of broader cultural fears, associating alcohol and drunkenness with immigrants and big cities and crime. Temperance, on the other hand, was portrayed as an expression of the sort of pure and lily-white, lovely, small-town, old-fashioned American values. But even so, broadly speaking, the general population did not support a national ban on alcohol at all, and yet it passed. So this is where I'm getting back to where you
9:09 Speaker 04 were starting to jump to in the beginning. You often talk about a famous Princeton study that demonstrates this phenomenon. Tell us about that study and some of its real-world implications in contemporary policy.
9:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, so it's just fascinating to me, as we sit here and talk about this, that prohibition has become such a pivotal moment in the American story, the American history. Like, I love that you're doing a whole season on this. So the Princeton University study that you're referencing, without being able to show the graphics for it, it might be a little hard to visualize, but the upshot is that the folks at Princeton, they worked with Northeastern, they found that the American people, average American income earners amongst American people, appear to have a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant
10:03 Speaker 05 impact upon public policy. I will summarize that again. The American people have near-zero impact on public policy.
10:13 Speaker 04 It's literally the opposite of what we all think, and it's the opposite of how we think our government was structured to work, right?
10:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's nuts. So the way they figured this out is they looked at public opinion polls over a 20-year period. So this is a longitudinal study of 20 years of looking at public opinion polls, and they compared those public opinion polls to the laws that Congress did or didn't pass. And again, the upshot of that is that for the average American income earner, there's zero impact at all. Now, when they looked at the same data for folks who can afford lobbyists and those in sort of the higher echelons, the control government, they found that there wasn't a direct correlation. But if those special interest groups didn't like something, they had almost a total ability to block it. So if they didn't want it, it wouldn't happen.
11:03 Speaker 04 What are some contemporary policy examples of this, of how this is taking effect?
11:09 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think there's a lot, actually, and some of them are very, you know, very hot button issues.
11:13 Speaker 04 It's arguably every policy.
11:15 Speaker 05 Really, I mean, it really is. So we'll start with the easy ones, right? Like economic policy. Like, most Americans, when they think about how economic distribution should happen, it's actually nowhere near what economic distribution really looks like. Our inequality in this country is a thousandfold worse than most people think. So that's kind of an easy issue for us all to agree on. And then there's the harder ones, like guns and abortion.
11:40 Speaker 04 Sure.
11:41 Speaker 05 And the truth is, most of the American people want common sense solutions that are best for the most of us on these issues. And instead, what we get are, as you've said, ideological, hot-button, divisive rhetoric, and then divisive policy getting passed. And part of the reason for that is that it's actually better for those in power to have arguments about policy. It helps them fundraise in their elections. It actually helps drive the political industrial complex forward.
12:10 Speaker 04 And it is so interesting that so much of what we hear surrounding these issues is triggering, right? And that's intentional. It's just trying to get emotional responses out of us because that clouds our judgment. And also, like, creating more polarization and adversarial dispositions among the general population makes it easier to control the general population.
12:41 Speaker 05 I think there is a truth that for many on some of these issues, it's not just the rhetoric, right? Like that When we talk about guns and abortion, there's a real world implication there. And so I don't want to minimize, like, it's not just about the rhetoric, right? It's not just that we are talking about it in an inflammatory way. It actually has a very real impact on people's lives. I think where, when we're talking about the government working on behalf of the people, it's the fact that the laws that get passed and the way the government operates is actually wildly out of step with what most of us would consider reasonable or common sense. And we never have that conversation. Like, because that's the conversation that gets lost in the nuance, because it doesn't get people fired up. It's not hot button. It doesn't fuel the culture war.
13:25 Speaker 05 And so I think both of those things can be true. Like, on one hand, this has real world implications on a lot of people's lives. And on the other hand, we could get a lot better at talking about it through a political lens without getting so fired up about the personal impact. It's like, the ability to hold both of those things could get us much better outcomes, if only our government were designed to do so. And it's just not.
13:50 Speaker 01 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
14:18 Speaker 06 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
14:33 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to, I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
14:44 Speaker 06 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
14:49 Speaker 08 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
14:55 Speaker 06 So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.
15:17 Speaker 04 Okay, so we've established that public policy as it is generated by Congress has a statistically nonexistent connection to the desires of the public. Why? What are the primary, what are sort of the underpinning reasons for that?
15:36 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, the simplest answer is follow the money. Right? Running for office costs a lot of money. And so in order to win office, you have to have a big pot of money to spend. And where do you go get that money? Well, you can fundraise from lots of $5 donations, which some people do. Or you can go to special interests and the people who have lots of money and ask for big chunks at a time. And that's actually a lot more efficient, right? You can raise a lot more money, a lot more quickly, if you get it in big chunks. And I think that everybody kind of knows that part of it. But part of what people don't know is that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party also do a ton of fundraising that they then spend on elections.
16:21 Speaker 05 And when you're in Congress, let's say you want to move a bill forward. You have a great idea, you want to move it forward. In order to move that bill forward, you have to be on a committee that works on that kind of thing. Right? So in order to get on a committee, you actually have to fundraise for your political party. That's how committee appointments end up working. But if you really want to move something forward, if you want to have control over whether or not the committee moves your wonderful idea to the floor of Congress, you have to be the committee chair. And so in order to be the committee chair, you might have to fundraise another $250,000 on top of what you've already fundraised to get into office, to get into the committee. That is not like a maybe thing. That's actually how committee appointments work. There are fundraising goals that are put in place.
17:03 Speaker 05 The New York Times recently did this incredible exit interview with a whole bunch of people leaving Congress. And they just talked about this. They were like, that's how it works. It's business as usual. And it's so corrupt.
17:15 Speaker 04 It's corrupt and legal.
17:18 Speaker 05 Right.
17:19 Speaker 04 It's corrupt and baked into the system that we have.
17:23 Speaker 05 By some accounts, members of Congress, when they get into office, have to spend up to 70% of their time fundraising for reelection.
17:32 Speaker 04 Right.
17:32 Speaker 05 I don't want to paint a picture that these are bad people. It's just that's the reality of the system.
17:36 Speaker 04 So.
17:37 Speaker 05 Yeah. It could be Ed Helms runs for Congress and contrary to popular belief, is a really good guy who wants to do really good things. And yet you can't do good things because you have to spend your time fundraising if you want to do those good things. And so it's a trap. And like all systems, this one exists to protect itself.
17:55 Speaker 04 And it feels like it's such a cliche to say like, it's the system. We're going to put the system on trial. But that kind of is the deal. Like, that's exactly what we're dealing with with our political system right now.
18:11 Speaker 05 It's totally the deal. And, you know, unfortunately, most of us don't think that it's our job to change that system.
18:17 Speaker 04 It is. It's up to us. You and me, Josh.
18:21 Speaker 05 It has to be. Yeah, most of the two of us that are here do think it's our job to change that system.
18:26 Speaker 04 There are a lot of reasons that we feel polarized as a country right now. And, you know, we can point to the obvious wedge issues. We can point to the information silos, the social media and all of these things. And those are very real and they're, you know, cable news, which is very corporate and cynical. And these are, these are very real factors. But there are also a number of structural factors that are wedging us. Things built into the political system engineered to polarize us even further. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about those more structural issues.
19:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, sure. I think very often.
19:14 Speaker 05 It's so easy to point to the media environment. And of course, we should because it's a huge part of the problem. But it's not the whole problem. And it is getting to this other piece that we don't think of. You just started talking about it, our primary system or gerrymandering. So we'll start with gerrymandering, I think. Most people know the word gerrymandering at this point and they understand that it's bad because it cuts people out of elections that they should otherwise be able to vote in. And the problem with with gerrymandering is that in some 87% of races for the US House, we already know which party is going to win the election before it even starts because the districts have been drawn to protect the party that's already in power. And the reason that that happens is that when your party wins elections, you get to
19:59 Speaker 05 be the one to redraw the district for the next election. It would be like a Super Bowl winning football team getting to set all of the rules for the coming season to favor themselves. This is politics, not a game, but like you can see how it happens. If instead of having politicians draw district lines, you gave the power to, let's say, voters from across the political spectrum. I'm using a number that is real here in the state of Michigan and also in Washington. They use nine Democrats, nine Republicans and nine independents overseen by judges following rules to draw their new maps. And as a result, they draw districts that are much more competitive, much more fair, much more reflective of the population.
20:37 Speaker 04 You said much more competitive. What are the numbers on how gerrymandering has affected the competitiveness of congressional elections?
20:48 Speaker 05 Yeah, so this year, the number might have been 83%, but it's always between 83 and 87% of congressional elections have no competition at all. And that's kind of an abstract concept, right? Like, what does that even mean, no competition? And it's in the primaries, we get to vote for, like, if you're a Democrat, you vote for Democrats. If you're a Republican, you vote for Republicans. I'll come back to that in a second. If you have a gerrymandered district where you know the Democrat is going to win, then all, the only thing that matters is that primary. And then by the time you get to the general election, yes, sure, there's a Democrat and a Republican voting, but the districts have been cut up in such a way that only the Democrat can win in that district. And of course, the same thing happens on the other side, too. I'm just picking on Democrats here.
21:33 Speaker 05 So let's just talk about primaries for one second.
21:36 Speaker 04 Well, I just want to put an exclamation point on that because it still blows my mind. It, it, over 80% of congressional elections are non-competitive.
21:46 Speaker 05 Right.
21:47 Speaker 04 And, and what that means fundamentally is that they aren't really elections. Like, they're not, they're, they're just kind of a rubber stamping ritual, a process, a, a kind of, like, a quaint nod to the past, but it isn't, it's not an actual election.
22:12 Speaker 05 Well, and the result of that is that we, as the people, don't actually have the power to hold politicians accountable. Because there's no, there's no threat for them. They, they get into power and they know they're going to be able to keep their power, even though it feels like we might be able to vote them out.
22:28 Speaker 04 We're doing the song and dance, we, we're doing the song and dance of how, of putting a Republican and a Democrat against each other, but in 80% of districts, one will always win.
22:38 Speaker 05 Yep.
22:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:40 Speaker 05 And so, you, you asked before about, like, the divisiveness of this. What ends up happening is that because there's no competition in the general election, the primary election is actually where we choose the candidate who's ultimately going to go on to win. And in the primaries, you only have Republicans running against Republicans and Democrats running against Democrats. And we've all heard the term, like, so-and-so got primaried and so they lost. And that's because in the primaries, there's a much narrower group of voters who are voting. And so, the party tends to be more extreme with their rhetoric, tends to elect more extreme candidates because you've got such a narrow amount of voters making their voices heard.
23:22 Speaker 05 And just to put that in numbers, what ends up happening is that 5% to 8% of total voters in any given place end up choosing the candidate who's going to ultimately win. Which is again, it's like, it's crazy to think about 5 to 8% of voters choosing the candidate who then breezes through the general election and wins.
23:41 Speaker 04 And, and we, we know that generally the, the voters that participate in primaries are the most sort of extreme voters of that group.
23:50 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's the party base, right? We've all heard that term a thousand times. They've got to play to their base voters. Those are the base voters. They're the ones that show up.
23:58 Speaker 04 And this is why we, we see so many politicians emerge that everyone's kind of shaking their heads like, how did this guy get nominated? How did this, how did this lady get there? Like, that seems crazy. Well, it's because like, the most hardcore, fervent partisans are the ones nominating those people.
24:18 Speaker 05 So you brought up before this sort of question about the media environment?
24:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:22 Speaker 05 And I, I, I still think it can be hard to visualize really like, why is it that this structural or systemic problem that we were just talking about leads to the extremism? Because still, right? Like, can't the media just shut that down? Can't we just, like, isn't it all a social media problem? And so just a thought experiment, like, imagine if the majority of Congress and the Senate and the presidency were filled with people that had won in really competitive elections where they had to answer to a majority of voters across the country. They would be talking to Democrats and Republicans and independents because in order to get beyond 50% a majority, you have to do that. Now you put any random congressperson on the news and instead of saying crazy stuff about
25:06 Speaker 05 the other side, you've got someone in there who is actually a rational, thoughtful, I don't even want to use the term moderate, because it's not about moderating the politics. It's just about being representative of the people who are supposed to put you there.
25:19 Speaker 04 Right.
25:20 Speaker 05 And so you would be putting people into the media who have enormous megaphones, who really do define our culture. Like, our, our politicians tell us how to be very often. And so the power of changing the system way upstream primaries, gerrymandering, is that you elect people who then become spokespeople for our culture and reflect back to us something that's much more positive, much more nuanced, and much more thoughtful. And I think that gets lost in this conversation somehow.
25:50 Speaker 04 You're saying that more level-headed people will reach higher levels of government, and they will be the mouthpieces that we see on the media, and that more measured kind of dialogue will have a cultural impact on all of us?
26:10 Speaker 05 Absolutely. Yeah. And I'll just add one thing to it, which is like, we already established in our conversation about primaries and gerrymandering, and with money in politics, like, the incentive, if you're running for office, you are incentivized to be more radical because that's how you win. You are incentivized to be a better fundraiser because that's how you win.
26:30 Speaker 04 Right.
26:30 Speaker 05 If you change those structures so that you are incentivized to be more responsive to the people, less of an egomaniac, more, you know, more interested in representing a diverse coalition of voters, if that's the incentive that actually helps you win office, then you will likely elect people who fit that description.
26:51 Speaker 04 How do you change those incentives?
26:53 Speaker 05 It's really easy. I can't believe we haven't done it already. So it comes down to policy. I like to just boil it down to the simplest language that I know, which is like, you just have to change the rules of the system that we're in. So, we talked about the rules. Rules like who gets to draw district maps. In order to fix gerrymandering, you give the power to voters instead of politicians. Now you have voters drawing maps that are more representative. And this already happens across the country in a few states, and they do work better.
27:25 Speaker 04 And when you say voters, it's
27:27 Speaker 05 It's similar to jury duty. Like, so, you know, jury duty, you get called in, and you sit on a jury. This is similar in that you join a commission that is responsible for drawing those district maps.
27:38 Speaker 04 Right. And that's one of those things, like,
27:42 Speaker 04 That is such a no brainer, right? And yet, we're in this feedback loop where the people that are making those rules are the people that benefit from their, the existence of gerrymandering. So they, and so, so, so what then becomes the way that, that citizens can make those changes? Or force our representatives in government to make those changes?
28:11 Speaker 05 Yeah. So the ballot initiative process is actually one of our best tools. It's not the only tool, but it's certainly one of our best. And so in some states, citizens can get together and propose a initiative to put on their ballot to be voted on. And that just, that requires collecting a bunch of signatures. It usually requires fundraising to do so. And, you know, lawyers and political strategists, it's, it's work, but it's totally doable and it can be led by thoughtful, committed citizens. It really can. And then, you know, you run a political campaign, you win your ballot initiative, and you have changed the law in your state.
28:45 Speaker 04 Yeah. And I think, I don't, I think a lot of people don't realize like how much power citizens can have in that way. That what ballot initiatives can do and that they're really, they are really just initiatives from the citizenry. They're not, it's not a, it doesn't have, it's not a political process. It's something that goes, citizens initiate and it goes before voters. And so things like gerrymandering, which no politician is incentivized, some might have the sort of moral backbone to, to, to back it up, but they're not incentivized to fix gerrymandering because they're all benefiting from it.
29:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
29:28 Speaker 04 So it's, it is, it is up to us and, and represent us has seen a lot of success with ballot initiatives.
29:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, we absolutely have. And I don't want to understate the necessity to also put pressure on politicians at the state level.
29:46 Speaker 04 Yes.
29:47 Speaker 05 So ballot initiatives give us the chance to do direct democracy, but America is a republic, not a direct democracy. And so very often, we need to elect people into power and then hold them accountable and responsible. And so one of the things that we've started to see is that the more our movement builds power, the more that we are able to actually use that power to tell politicians, if you don't start fixing things, we're going to vote you out. Now, of course, that's not going to work in Congress yet. That's a ways off. But in cities and in states, it is, it is the next frontier of how we create change.
30:19 Speaker 04 Yeah. What are some others?
30:22 Speaker 05 Oh, the most exciting one of all has got to be ranked choice voting.
30:25 Speaker 04 There you go. All right.
30:26 Speaker 05 Everybody gets pumped when we say ranked choice voting.
30:31 Speaker 05 I know it sounds so boring, but I got to say, I was at a gathering of some people a couple of days ago, and somebody in the corner of the room was like, you know, the problem is that ranked choice voting is so confusing, and it's really hard to explain to people. And somebody across the room was about to speak up and say, like, are you kidding me? You're just ranking things. Like, what's your favorite? What's your second favorite? What's your third? It's not that hard. But instead of that, this guy from Australia was like, excuse me, if I could just speak up for a moment. We've only ever used ranked choice voting. It's what we always do. And every single one of our elections is run that way. And it just, like, it just makes sense. And like, how could you possibly think it's confusing? You're just, it was fantastic to actually have somebody from a country. And then there was somebody from Ireland who said, yeah, you know, we've been
31:13 Speaker 05 using it forever as well. And it's just a better system than what you guys use here in the US.
31:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:18 Speaker 05 So I will.
31:19 Speaker 04 Is that, is that right? Australia has used ranked choice voting in all of their major political?
31:24 Speaker 05 That's just how they do it. Yeah.
31:26 Speaker 04 I did not realize that. That's amazing.
31:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, there's like eight countries around the world that use, that mostly use ranked choice voting. There's cities across the US that use it, and a handful of states as well now.
31:36 Speaker 04 So it's really interesting, the amount of misinformation and disinformation that's out there about ranked choice voting, because a lot of entrenched power on both sides of the political spectrum realize that it's a shakeup for them.
31:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, so of course, the people that are saying it's terrible are the ones that have the most to lose, so the established party interests. The reason it's amazing is that in our current system, you very rarely see folks winning with more than 50% of the vote, especially if there's a third party running for election or in a primary that, you know, multiple people winning, you can, if there's four, let's say there's four candidates running in a primary, you can win with 26% of the vote. You just need your little portion plus one.
32:23 Speaker 04 Right. Which is kind of bonkers.
32:25 Speaker 05 It's nuts.
32:26 Speaker 04 Right?
32:27 Speaker 05 It's really, yeah.
32:28 Speaker 04 That's like 26% of the vote.
32:29 Speaker 05 So it sounds reasonable, like shouldn't the person with the most votes win? Yes, of course they should, which is really different than shouldn't somebody who got support from a majority of the public win? And what's so important about when you use ranked choice voting is that you actually require a candidate to have more than 50% support amongst their constituents in order to win. Makes sense? You need more than 50% support. And so that's the most important thing here, and I want to just harp on it for a second. Like, instead of, if it was you and me and two other people running for office, I would only need to find my 26% in order to win. And that might just be like, only the, you know, only the dog lovers, or only the crazies,
33:13 Speaker 05 or like whatever you want to say, only the people who think that the roads should all be painted blue, right? That's my 26%. But if I have to get more than 50% to win, then I have to speak to a majority of the electorate, and to put that in real terms...
33:28 Speaker 05 Progressives are usually about 25% of the electorate. Conservatives are somewhere around 30 and the rest are anywhere in the middle. And so you can't win with either just conservatives or just progressives. You have to start broadening your base. So when we talk about incentives, if I have an incentive to reach a bigger base to win office, I'm going to have to do that. And then, once I get into office, I have to answer to those people. Ranked choice voting makes that possible.
33:51 Speaker 04 So your incentive is to temper your message and not cater to the extremes.
33:58 Speaker 05 Totally.
33:59 Speaker 04 I mean, how much more chill would our world be?
34:03 Speaker 05 Right.
34:03 Speaker 04 If elected officials felt a need to speak to a larger audience.
34:09 Speaker 05 And not only speak to them, but then be accountable to that audience once they get into office.
34:13 Speaker 04 Right.
34:13 Speaker 05 Because then you're kicking them out. But I do want to answer the question. I know people are going to be listening and thinking like, yeah, but you haven't said how it works or what it is. It's really simple. You choose your first candidate that you think is the best and then you rank the other ones in order. So number one, Ed. Number two, Josh. Number three, Jane Doe, et cetera. It's literally that's the whole entire thing. You just rank your candidates in order rather than choosing one. And then, as the votes are calculated, they're able to figure out who has a majority support.
34:43 Speaker 04 Another term for ranked choice voting is instant runoff, right? Is that a phrase that kind of, I think, I like that phrase because it helps me understand that it's sort of a, then the vote counting is a sort of multi-step process. Can you walk us through that a little bit?
35:05 Speaker 05 Yeah, the application of that is really simple. If, let's say there were four people running for office and let's say, I'm going to use you as an example again. Let's say Ed gets 51% of the vote, like the first choice votes. The election is over. Ed has won because he got more than 50% of the vote. But let's say you only got 49%. And then there's three of us who are splitting up all the rest of that other 51%. If that were the case, the vote tabulators would then look at everyone's second choice votes. And apply those until somebody reaches more than 51%. And since you were already at 49, it's very likely that people who voted for me, number one, maybe voted for you second, and so you got my votes and you won. Sometimes what happens, though, is that instead of somebody getting 50, it's really spread out.
35:50 Speaker 05 It's 26, 24, 25, 25. And so those second choice votes actually can move, it can make it feel kind of like a horse race where someone's ahead and then someone else gets ahead. But it's just the same as the runoff elections that they currently use in Georgia, where if nobody gets more than 50%, you have a second election.
36:07 Speaker 04 Right.
36:07 Speaker 05 But you've already cast your votes for your second election, so you don't need to come back to the polls.
36:10 Speaker 04 Right.
36:10 Speaker 05 You save a bunch of taxpayer money.
36:12 Speaker 04 The ranking is your sort of second round of...
36:14 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly.
36:15 Speaker 04 Of the votes. It is so elegant, it's so simple, and it's so intrinsically fair.
36:23 Speaker 05 No wonder we don't use it.
36:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, no wonder we don't use it. Exactly.
36:30 Speaker 00 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
36:59 Speaker 06 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
37:14 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
37:25 Speaker 06 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
37:30 Speaker 08 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
37:36 Speaker 06 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.
37:58 Speaker 04 There's another really interesting bit of Represent Us strategy that has echoes in prohibition. The Volstead Act, prohibition, was overturned in sort of a movement that grew state by state. And it turns out, this is part of a larger trend of laws that have passed in this same kind of incremental way. Tell us about how that factors into Represent Us strategy.
38:31 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's actually a core piece of our strategy is to follow in the footsteps of the prohibitionists, the anti-prohibitionists, and learn that throughout American history, passing state laws is ultimately what often leads to a federal victory. And it's not just prohibition. We've seen the same thing with interracial marriage, which took 200 years of effort, about 64 losses before they finally got their first victory, 64 years of losses, I should say, before they got their first victory. But those of us alive today might be more familiar with the legalization of same-sex marriage, which actually only took about 12 years from its first victory to becoming federal policy. And so what we see is if we're going to change the government, if you're going to change
39:16 Speaker 05 some big societal issue, the path that has been used very often in the US is to win laws in the states as you build a movement, as you shift the culture around those laws. So city by city, state by state, we fix things and then move on to making it federal. But I think what's interesting about this as pertains to the states is you might think, well, if we're winning in the states, we're not fixing the federal government. But constitutionally, the US states have control over the federal elections. That's just how it works here in the US. It's how our republic was designed. And so when you change a state law, you're not only building momentum for that federal change, but you actually have the power in many states to directly affect that federal election in your state.
39:59 Speaker 04 And it doesn't take as much momentum as people might think, right?
40:06 Speaker 05 Right. It's those first few victories are often really challenging. Marriage equality lost 31 times before they got their first state victory. Now, in our
40:16 Speaker 04 What about weed, man? That's one of them too, right?
40:19 Speaker 05 Weed's killing it.
40:20 Speaker 04 Come on.
40:21 Speaker 05 But yeah, this is, it's like, once you get to a certain number, and there's no magic number. But what we've seen happen is that those first few victories are slow and they're few and far between. But then eventually you get your second, third, fourth, fifth victory. And they start to pile up.
40:36 Speaker 04 And you're saying victories, meaning like states building?
40:39 Speaker 05 States changing laws.
40:40 Speaker 04 Like one, two, three, four, five, six states starting to change these laws.
40:44 Speaker 05 Right. And then historically, what has happened is that, again, there's no magic number, but once you get up to maybe the six, 10, 12 number, there tends to be a real acceleration in states passing that same law.
40:58 Speaker 04 Right.
40:59 Speaker 05 Right. And so we think of it as a tipping point. Where you get to a certain number of states and then this acceleration happens where many, many more states get on board. And then usually after that tipping point, it's not very long until federal victory happens.
41:12 Speaker 04 Very cool.
41:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, it just means there's hope.
41:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, right. Cause people, I think people think it's so overwhelming to, to just like change a massive federal law. And that does feel overwhelming and, and almost incomprehensible. Like, how do you do that? But it does start small. You can start with these state initiatives and, and then it really is a domino kind of momentum thing. And it's cool to sort of see that track through history with some of these major cultural moments. Prohibition, marriage equality, and so forth. When people are advocating for the American government to work better, that is part of a really remarkable legacy of work that goes back really to the founding of the country.
41:59 Speaker 04 Ever since we got this country going, there's been an ongoing effort to just make it work better. Can you speak more to that legacy broadly? And what it's really looked like over the last 200 years?
42:14 Speaker 05 Since the very beginning of our government, we've been redesigning it. It's this idea of a more perfect union, right? And Maybe it goes without saying, but I need to say it anyway, that our union has always been far from perfect and continues to be far from perfect to this day.
42:28 Speaker 04 I do love that language.
42:29 Speaker 05 We've already talked about.
42:30 Speaker 04 More perfect.
42:31 Speaker 05 More perfect.
42:32 Speaker 04 Let's just make it more perfect, like we're getting there. It's always going to be more like we always have to be making adjustments, trimming the sails.
42:40 Speaker 05 And we've sort of talked about it, like women didn't have the right to vote. People of color didn't have the right to vote. There have been really big changes in who's allowed to participate in our government and how the rules work. But the way I like to think about this is we absolutely need everyone's voice to be heard. So any restriction of the right to vote is an abridgement on someone's freedom, and that's a problem. And it needs to be fixed. And at the same time, we have to have a system that is responsive and accountable back to the people that put our elected officials in power.
43:19 Speaker 05 And so represent us is about taking the ideas of progress and the the sort of momentum and legacy that has been built by the civil rights movement, by the suffragists, and saying, we will continue to perfect this union by making it work better for we, the people.
43:39 Speaker 04 More perfect. We'll get there. What would you say to our listeners out there right now, anyone who might be feeling a little disenchanted or like, what can I do? How can I be part of this process? All of this sounds great, but it's a little out of reach for me and I'm just depressed. Like, how, what would you say to connect to that person?
44:05 Speaker 05 One of the best stories I've ever heard is a story of four retired women who called themselves the badass grandmas. There was two independents, a Democrat and Republican, who all just decided, you know what, North Dakota's got too much corruption and we got to do something about it. And so they, working with Represent Us and working with some of our partner organizations, did all of the work necessary to get a ballot initiative written, raise the money, get the legal advice, build the political team. And they actually won. And North Dakota went from having some of the weakest transparency and ethics laws in the country to having some of the strongest. And as a result of that, there were changes in their government. Like, this is real stuff that actually matters.
44:44 Speaker 04 Isn't that-
44:44 Speaker 05 It started at a coffee shop.
44:46 Speaker 04 Isn't that the state where no politicians had to disclose gifts that they got from lobbyists or citizens?
44:54 Speaker 05 From lobbyists.
44:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, so lobbyists could just give them anything and there was no transparency at all.
45:01 Speaker 05 Right.
45:01 Speaker 04 And these badass grandmas were just like, uh-uh, no, that's not okay.
45:05 Speaker 05 We need to see the dirty work.
45:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, if you're gonna be dirty, we need to know. And then we're gonna vote you out.
45:11 Speaker 05 That's right.
45:12 Speaker 04 Yeah. Good for them. Can they run for president? Or is that a-
45:17 Speaker 05 We've actually, we've been cloning them.
45:19 Speaker 04 Yeah.
45:21 Speaker 04 Good. That sounds good. Well, Josh-
45:24 Speaker 05 This is how movements are built in the modern era.
45:25 Speaker 04 There you go.
45:26 Speaker 05 You just clone people.
45:26 Speaker 04 Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on, Snafu. I really, really appreciate it. And I think our listeners will too. Just hearing a lot of your insight and point of view on this stuff. This is a show about history's greatest screw-ups. And I just want to thank you for trying to make our country a little less screwed up.
45:49 Speaker 05 It is absolutely my pleasure. The opportunity to have such a thoughtful conversation and to really dig into this stuff is amazing. And just glad to be a part of it. So, thanks.
45:59 Speaker 04 Right on. Thank you, sir.
46:03 Speaker 04 Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company, in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis- and Alyssa Martino. Additional production from Steven Wood, Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapali and Akemini Ekpo. Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Our associate producer, Tori Smith, edited this episode. Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chug.
46:47 Speaker 04 Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Our amazing theme music is by Dan Rosado. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Reizak.
47:35 Speaker 09 Honestly?
47:36 Speaker 02 Honestly?
47:36 Speaker 09 Honestly? No one wants to think about HIV, but there are things that everyone can do to help prevent it. Things like PrEP. PrEP stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis, and it means routinely taking prescription medicine before you're exposed to HIV to help reduce your chances of getting it. PrEP can be about 99% effective when taken as prescribed. It doesn't protect against other STIs, though, so be sure to use condoms and other healthy sex practices. Ask a healthcare provider about all your prevention options. And visit findoutaboutprep.com to learn more. Sponsored by Gilead. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Previous BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter Next Project Azorian's Sunken Sub Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated