All right. So we're about about to start. I, I understand that the town meeting this weekend that the co founders of clubhouse hosted, they do that weekly. They mentioned our show imagination, action and how, you know how excited they were about it. So that's good. Great, I'm just setting up to record. Here we go. Great. All right, it's six o'clock. Welcome, everyone to imagination, action. This is a show where we have conversations with some of the most compelling people. It's a dynamic mix of Imaginators. And we call our guests, our special speakers, the people, we have the conversation with Imaginators. It's a made up word. It's a combination of imagination. And, and we wanted to sprinkle in some action. If you look at our website, you can see the 250 Imaginators, that are connected with the show. This is our 43rd show we've done. And while a lot of the world is going to shorter and shorter bits of media, we're going longer. This is a two hour show. It's long form journalism. And I know, we have Tina, and Tina Cassidy, who's been multiple author and is in the C suite that at the mother chapter of public television, public radio, on the show for the duration. And we have Dave Troy, who's very thoughtful on this. And then we have Bill Walsh Act joining, who ran for mayor of Boston, and is gonna come towards the end of the show. And at the beginning, we have some special guests who are very involved with technology. But we pride ourselves each week. It's a different theme. But we think these are some of the most compelling people. It's a mix of Imaginators who are re envisioning the nature of their industries of their work and driving the action that will power the world. And we feature some of the most creative minds thoughtful minds. Nike was just do it. years ago, that was their tagline, Ted, his ideas were spreading. And I think today we need imagination in action. And we're going to do that today. To kick off each show we have one of our musicians in residence play a piece. Just to want to be clear. We are recording this. A few minutes after the show, there will be the two hour audio and a transcription of that audio. And we see that our shows get 1000s of pickups after each show and this last Sunday. The CEO of clubhouse referenced our show from last Tuesday. And he's actually stopped by the last two shows so we'll see if he stops by tonight. But regardless, elections technology citizenry and the future of democracy, and my co moderator is Alison sander, who is the Chief futurist for BCG. She doesn't wear a BCG hat as a co moderator. But before Corey plays the musical opening that he's gonna dedicate for today. Allison, any thoughts on this on tonight's topic, while you're particularly excited about it?
Well, I think it's just so incredibly topical, obviously, tonight is election day eight. But they also say that the road to break down democracy is really dangerously deceptive, and many government give way with their democratic basis, not under war, not under some type of coup, but just either from lack of interest from lack of an Informed Electorate from challenges to technology. So tonight, we pulled together and John's done a great job curating an amazing set of speakers to take on a rich set of issues.
Great.
So Cory Cory is the world record holder for the accordion he played for 32 hours he won't tonight. He's also the world champion on the accordion. He's the All right, thank you. No way that only he can. He's designed his accordion. He's won the electric accordion the acoustical accordion different continents. What are you going to play for 90 seconds to kind of celebrate the the kickoff to this important topic?
Well, I thought, since a lot of us, were at an event last week where I played electric accordion and of course, I'll be playing some electric accordion on Thursday, but let me actually think I've never done this before on all the events we've done here play a little acoustic of course, a lot of people never hear me play. So this is actually a quote unquote real accordions
Great. Thank you, Cory. So the first segment is going to be about technology. And I want to turn to Steve and Bob. But before I do, Dave Coppermine, on on election night, what's on your mind? Yeah, so I mean, obviously, Virginia is a big deal, because you know, that, that race is acting as a bit of a proxy for this larger conversation about whether or not the country, you know, is going to return to kind of supporting Trump's agenda or not. And so, I know, Steve Bannon has been very heavily invested in trying to really make that contrast very clear, and Virginia, and has high hopes that he can turn the tide, you know, with getting Younkin elected. So, you know, it seems to be a very tight race. And I think a lot of us are watching that with a lot of concern. And, you know, we'll get into all the details around how elections are being manipulated, you know, across the country, and even around the world. But you know, I would say it's, it's a really dangerous time right now.
Go up to level Dave. What do you think? Yeah, on this topic? Yes, sir. Did you hear me just now when I went? You know, I heard you i Sorry about that. I was on mute. But maybe go up a level from today, just in general on this topic. What are you thinking about? Yeah, I mean, so what I've been really looking at, from a big picture perspective was, you know, there's a lot of interest in this issue around monetary policy. And I know that that's not necessarily on the top of a lot of people's mind. But if you dig down into what a lot of the disinformation is actually about, there's a lot of history historical griping around what happened with the gold standard, and the New Deal. And so we can get more into this. But, you know, in a lot of ways, what we're doing is re litigating the terms of the New Deal, and a lot of what's going on with crypto and with gold, and, you know, different ideas about how money should work is tied to that. And then, of course, we've also got, you know, an historical conflict with, you know, China and communism that, you know, is sort of continuing to fester and inform some of this. So these very large geopolitical pair political themes are informing a lot of what's happening. And, you know, that's what's playing out at the local level, even in places like Virginia, even though we don't really know that we don't we don't talk about that. But that's actually a lot of what's going on. Great. So we do talk more about them. Yeah. And we'll come back to you and clean I know you wrote a great book on an elections and during the Wilson era, and the women getting the vote, and you're you're tracking the the women's vote, and women getting elected office will come back to you. But let's let's focus on technology for a little bit. Steve, you're a serial entrepreneur, you are taking on wireless. You did faceted search. You did point of sale for restaurants, you're doing all sorts of things, but you've made voting technology a priority and you have an innovative tool. And I know Bob, you're CEO of a company you're involved in, I think is in at least 13 states like 13 original states tonight. Clear ballot tool that's being used. What are you guys seeing as as vendors as people in the space what Some of the trends What are things to be aware of what are people nervous about? I mean, you go back to Gore versus Bush, Bush, first score, Supreme Court, you know, technology definitely played a role there. So what what's on your guys's minds?
You know, basically, we believe democracy is vital. I'm sure it's something shared by everyone on this call. And we saw a way through technology to improve transparency and trust. And
I love Steve.
In the transparency and trust in our national infrastructure.
Yeah, Stevie, you, your Wi Fi may not be as strong, maybe experiment, if you get a stronger Wi Fi signal because you came in and out. But Bob, why don't you say Sony and Steve figuring out his Wi Fi?
Sure. So obviously, it's election day. So it's always a busy day on election day. It's a stressful day for all the people working the elections. And when you see when you get to witness history, like we did in the last election, these people are pretty dedicated people, but they're under incredible scrutiny. They're under incredible pressures. I mean, we still are dealing with all the precautions of COVID-19. Right, and these people are trying to do elections. With multiple lawyers looking over their shoulders, I, I've gotten the reports from at least four states that the elections are going really, really smoothly. So I think all of the all of the scrutiny, that misinformation, all of the stuff that went into the last election, people have taken safeguards to, I guess the new term is ballot access, right? Tracking ballots wherever they go, right, almost like you would track money in a bank. Right? Everything's being signed off twice to make sure that everybody knows where every single ballot goes. And it all gets counted, right. I know that sounds deep into technology, but people want to see their ballot, they want to touch their ballot, they want to put it in the machine. And they want the machine to tell them that it was counted before they walk out of the building. Right. And, as you know, and I'm almost done here, but as you know, with the emergence of COVID. So didn't, the way we voted in this country changed completely right. In Ohio, they went from 5% absentee ballots to almost 40% absentee ballots, and their elections are easy, because they count them all before, you know, 40% of the ballots are counted before election day so that that ease that eases the burden in Pennsylvania, they're not allowed to count the ballots until eight o'clock tonight, which means they won't be able to give people results, probably for two days, which whenever that happens, then the media takes over and says there must be something wrong with account. So these people are under, you know, under incredible pressures, right. The last thing I'll say about election night, because I figured that would be a great way to start is we had a traditional system where retirees were poll workers, retirees can't work the pollster and COVID. A lot of that has been pushed off to high school seniors. Right, which they actually make great, great poll workers. But the consolidation of polling sites puts pressure on people have to drive for the vote. Right, if the if they're voting in person.
Right, so to Bob, let me ask you, what is the technology that that you're using? To build confidence? You know, in the voting process, how are you making sure you're above reproach from all political parties, whether it's the right the last the Green Party, other other parties because, you know, 70,000,070 2 million people voted for Trump, you know, their voters. You know, you guys don't want to seem like you're in, in cahoots with with one agenda.
Right. So all about the ballot, right. So you collect ballots in early voting absentee ballot at a ballots for the handicap, and, and all of these ballot images are are stored, right? If there's a close election, we have provided for viewing of those images. So, in Florida, we worked on a public ballot portal. So when the elections over the ballots can be deposited in a public order, and people can go in and look at the ballots. We've taken that one step further, in the fact that if there is a close race, we can just segment out the the voting boxes for just those two candidates are more depending on whether there's more in an election right. So this this allows like Florida and Maryland and other states to do public records requests on demand. So if the media or particular candidates wanted to see their see how the election turned out, they weren't sure of the results. We can then offer them the ability to go to a portal, look at those ballots or look at individual contests and actually see how the ballots were.
So what's the technology? I assume it's not hanging chads? No. No. Optical, is it?
It? Yeah, it's optical. Well, it's digital visualization. Right. So what we do is we go in and we look at the the the actual marks on the ballot, we look to make sure that there's only one mark for each contest. If there's two, we're going to kick that ballot out as an over vote, if there's nothing we're going to kick that ballot out as an under vote.
So we use software's that software. It's all
software, it's it's some elementary artificial intelligence to determine voter intent. Right, and then we score the ballot and we give it to one or the other. But then we provide visualization tools for the public to see how we are how the machines actually interpreted the ballots. Great,
Steve, let's see. If you your Oh, Steve's not. I don't see Steve. Allison or teener. Dave, any questions for Bob? You know, someone who's in the industry? He's not a backseat driver, like some of us?
Bob, I'd love to understand a little bit more. What are the competing technologies? Is it still dominated by a few small companies? How do you view the battleground in the elect now in the election technology market? Like who are the big players? Do you see most of the technologies as being fair? Love your help understanding that better?
Sure. So it there's, there's the easy answer in his heart? And the easy answer is this four predominant voting equipment vendors. They've been around for a long time, they're three of them, are the consolidation of private equity companies. Ours is not we were to startup, right, we're a little different. We read our competitors ballots, so that we can do a lot more we can even do mixed elections, like we do in New York, we did the absentee ballots, our competitors do the in person ballots, we roll those up. That's a real stretch. That's, that's a big technology gain in the last few years, however, you have to understand the voting world to understand why that is. Our voting equipment has to be certified by the federal government, the EAC. And in most cases, by states, this is a long and expensive process, this really hinders innovation in the space. Because when you put new technologies, and then you have to go through this six months certification cycle, it increases the cost of the machines, right. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to get really good at that and get really good at at doing that certification faster. So that we can deliver more of the technologies that are available to make voting better. Most of the stuff that I just talked about, that's the visualization stuff does not need to be certified. So as far as providing transparency in elections, we can do that outside of the voting equipment itself. But, you know, entering this market with those kinds of delays is difficult people replace their voting machines, every five to 10 years. Think about that. a voting machine is nothing more than a tablet, an iPad on top of a computer board with a printer and a battery. Right? Would you replace your computer every five years? Would you replace your iPad every five years? Right? Operating Systems gets stretched? Right. So you know, you see people running on, you know, versions of Microsoft that are two or three releases behind which then bring security into question, because you haven't had all the security patches that you would have seen if you run Microsoft 10. So it's hard. It's hard to put innovation in space, right? We would love to get more involved with, like eliminate scanners get more involved with, you know, some of the more sophisticated vision techniques to look at irregularities and balance as opposed to just read out. These are really cool technologies. It just sometimes you have to wait for the next innovation cycle so that you can get it into the product set. Yeah, in a timely manner.
I want to ask Steve to come in here but before I do, how many municipality city states are using the technology from your company today? 30 Tonight,
tonight, Florida's not voting tonight, so that takes a good chunk out. There's about there's two full states, Oregon and Washington. Like I think we own about 80% of both states. But we have like 90 Other counties voting in Pennsylvania, New York and Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. And then of course, once the election is over, we're going to be auditing elections in a number of other states. Right. So the back end process kicks in then.
So Steve, Bob kind of explained a little bit about his company, maybe talk about why you're so passionate about this and what you hope to achieve by the this company innovating in the space?
Well, part of why I'm passionate about it as I try to choose things where I think I can personally make a difference, right? There's lots of you know, philanthropic things that one or interest one can have. But one where I think my knowledge of technology makes for a better, you know, success. And I've been very intimately involved in things like how do we drive out cost for the municipalities, you know, people, people don't appreciate some subtle things. But the cost per unit of these machines is a form of disenfranchisement, for folks, in more rural places, when you have fewer people, you got to spend just as much for the machine, it's really important that we can get those costs down. Or in very urban places where you end up with long lines, because they're not affording more machines. So it's things like that. That's why I'm, I mean, that's why I'm involved in this particularly particular problem. But I'm passionate in general about improving democracy, I know how vital it is, I know how important, you know, all of the institutions and trust that we have in our society, you know, that make contracts work. In particular, that's, that's what is the engine of constantly improving quality of life, in our country, when we break down that trust, not only the cost to conduct our democracy goes down, but the cost to do everything else goes down? A great example that ties back to elections, all of the craziness over the past two years, are making it extremely hard to get insurance for while you're in the elections industry. No insurer wants to insure it anymore. Because, you know, pretty much every day is an act of God. Right? You don't know what's going to happen. And there's no way to predict what will happen. So, you know, it's so important that we focus on these institutions that create a civil well functioning society, or else, many things will break down. That's why I'm involved.
So Tina, Dave, any questions for Steven Bob, the first segment I want to do on the technology for voting? You know, there's a lot to talk about tonight. But you guys, we got two people who are practitioners in the space and they're trying to lead they're not owned by private equity firm and their major players. This isn't a lemonade stand operation. And, you know, they want to be above reproach for all people involved. Well, I'd
love to jump in to just to add a sort of a question. And, and some commentary, I mean, I I firmly so I've written a book called Mr. President, How long must we wait, Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson in the fight for the right to vote, it's about how women won the vote in 19/25 amendment. And, of course, as many of you probably know, just because women won the vote doesn't mean that all women actually had access to the ballot. You know, black men were disenfranchised after the 15th Amendment, giving them the right to vote was passed. There were black women who were disenfranchised after the 19th Amendment was passed. Of course, Native Americans were allowed to vote until 1924, at least on paper because they weren't even considered citizens. The same was true for immigrants of Asian descent who were precluded from becoming citizens and voting until 1950 to two due to the Asian Exclusion Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 tried to clean up this whole mess and make voting rights. Truly more egalitarian. But there have been many attacks on that. And even if you think about the access to the ballot among Native Americans, you know, they, Utah and Nevada didn't grant them voting rights until the 50s. And it wasn't until the 70s that the Supreme Court upheld the ban on literacy tests, which in conjunction with you know, poll taxes also kept African Americans from the poll. So what is I guess my question here is, you know, I'm interested in how technology can solve for these underlying nefarious motivations that have not gone away since the founding of the republic that have tried to disenfranchise Americans. And, you know, I am constantly thinking about, you know, how can technology solve for that? I think we saw in the last election, how absentee ballots, you know, certainly made access, more feasible for lots of people who couldn't miss work or, you know, couldn't go to the polls due to COVID. Or, you know, just for people who were ill and needed to mail a ballot. And I'm all for that. And that's like, a very low tech solution, right is just using the mail. We also saw issues with that. But what other how else can technology solve for racism, sexism, regionalism, all the other isms that have sought to disenfranchise people for so long?
Tina, excellent question. So let's just have that question. Thinking for a second. Dave, and Allison, let's stack three questions. And, and Bob and Steve, before they go can decide how they want to answer them, Alison? Sure.
Um, so Steve, it's and Bob, it's just really moving to hear your commitment to bring technology and innovation to elections. And Steve, that's so beautifully stated about how both vulnerable but also critical. Democracy and our institutions are, I'd love to understand because you've obviously looked at this space quite a bit. What are the levers that you think are critical for election technology that works? So you mentioned lower cost? You mentioned increased transparency, I presume sort of speed and efficiency as one. But you've just spent more time thinking about this. And I'd love to get the benefit for our listeners of your thinking. And then also, you mentioned, Bob talked about how COVID change the game, sort of how vote by mail versus in person voting, how all of that has sort of changed the skill set that technology needs to have.
Great. Thanks, Alison. And then Dave, let's get a question from you. And then these guys will share their thoughts. Yeah, so I mean, I can't think of maybe a more fraught business to be in than making election machines right now. Because, as we saw in 2020, you know, there were companies that made perfectly competent election machines that have the results challenged and people, you know, were told that they were in partnership with, you know, dead Hugo Chavez. And that, you know, there were, you know, embedded bamboo implants and chips and ballots and hammer and scorecard. And there was so much disinformation and nonsense floating, floating around around election technology. And then all of that culminated with, you know, a big round of law fair. And, you know, I mean, obviously, now, you know, those companies are fighting back against really defamatory claims. But as we've seen, you know, settling in election with correct and, you know, truthful tabulations of ballots doesn't seem to be sufficient anymore. So I was wondering how you guys are thinking about the warfare landscape, how you're thinking about how to defend yourselves against accusations of, you know, working with satellites in Italy, you know, the run by the Italian government that are shooting down and changing boats from the sky. Like, there's so much nonsense. How are you guys, you know, sort of handling the nonsense landscape? Great. So we have three great questions. Stephen and Bob, however you want to take them, you can do them one at a time, you could blend them in a blender. But I'd love to get your thoughts on these questions.
See if I can, Bob, I just wanted to start with one point. You know, a lot of the stuff around inclusion in elections starts with what we call the voter rolls. Okay. The US is probably the only country that tosses voters into the bit bucket, the proverbial Bitbucket, meaning you're deleting them on a regular basis. Like you would think a simple law that you can't remove someone from a voter roll unless you've established them on a another voter roll somewhere else. Right, or they passed away. Those are the two things that happen. Yet we routinely allow states to just purge things. I mean, I've been wrapped. I've been caught up in it several times in New Hampshire, where I had to go clean things up because somehow they thought I was no longer a resident of the state. That is not a question of technology. Technology can fix this very easily. Write things like I mean, actually, when people talk about blockchain and elections, it's the perfect one, right? There should be a blockchain for every municipality. If you're going to take someone off your blockchain. They should be on a temporary and where they can be moved somewhere else. But it's a political question. So unfortunately, I can technically solve that most important one that was raised, which is inclusion with technology, but not if the politicians don't want it to happen. Okay. And I'll let Bob pick up from there on the other questions. Okay, so,
Steve, Steve is right here. Not only do we have to it as a technology provider, when you look at the EAC stuff, you know, to get voting machines proved, it's pretty, it's pretty old stuff, right? Stuff that probably could have been eliminated a long time ago. But when the real problem comes in, is that every state has their own laws. You are reading about this in the paper every single day, the laws in Georgia, you know, the laws in Florida, and everybody makes each state has their own laws. Right. So the difficulty that makes for any technology provider is, you know, New York has a landscape ballot, everybody else has a portrait ballot. Alright, that sounds small. Once we translate that, that's fine. But when I looked at Elizabeth Warren's legislation, when she asked me to look at it, you know, it was a great, great bill. I mean, the whole thing was great to talk about having a universal ballot for the entire country, designed under a certain set of specs to make it easily readable, easily comprehensible, was required to have it in multiple languages. It was really, really, really well done. stration, which would be the stuff that would stop it and a lot of the southern states, it would be great. If you know that if they could pass some Federal Voting legislation to try to make it least a ballot uniform, because then we could put all sorts of technologies on top of that, but just the individual trying to build machines that have to deal with 35 or 50 Different states in their in that the antiquated laws, right? I mean, New York, New York didn't have no excuse absentee balloting until COVID. New York. Right. I mean, you know, the probably the most intelligent state in the country. Right. And but they they were all blue laws that were on the books, right? They at least change that. So, like I said, I think we need some federal legislation that standardizes some of the ballots, the other thing Steve talked about was the voter rolls. You know, they're states like Massachusetts, that when you get your driver's license, you automatically get registered to vote. I don't know why that wouldn't be universal across the country, right? You know, you don't have to worry about, you know, you're already in a system that's already has your address on it. If you change your address, the first place, you're going to change your addresses on your driver's license. So it'll automatically change it on your voter records. There's no reason to do that. There's a lot of low hanging fruit here. Well, we could make it easier for people to vote and easier for people to be franchised in the process and actually like the process, right? If you can make voting fun, right, not long lines and make it hard and things like that. Then people will feel like the more of the process. But you know, the good part about this job is I do get I get, you know, get to see Amy Klobuchar is Bill while she was writing it and was Warren's bill. And they were both big steps towards stopping the, you know, the disenfranchising voters. And I would have loved to have seen those get passed. But
Kelly's in the room, one of the leaders of clubhouse, thank you for representing this is being recorded. The whole show will be up in a few minutes after we close out the night. any follow up questions to Steve and Bob and I've known Steve for years. He's an entrepreneur and optimizer, he's tenacious, and the fact that he's he's, he's cycles on voting. I think this is a company that I'm really excited to see, innovate and grow. And
the question the answer your question about technology. And that is, I hear what has been said about that. And that's not necessarily a technology problem. I do wonder about the generational aspect of this issue. And thinking about how Generation Z is going to demand to be able to vote from their phone or by text or what have you, you know, I I just feel like they're pushing so hard to make change, and so many other ways that it seems like a natural that are going to be pushing for technology solutions that are even more accessible and then possibly talked about so far, like using Mail. I can tell you that my kids don't even think they know what Santa is used to have to look one. You know, it's really interesting, so about the generational angle here. So there have been a number of trials and pilots on with you know, it started with West Virginia. Securitate Mark Warner, actually used to draw this military guy and said, you know, you can go with flexible, we actually liked back into that, but they'll definitely go to a server education. I know that they're turning that in this election in Utah. I know they want you to think about it. Like it's wonderful in some southern states, right as not being safe, right? It's sort of the reason why we aren't able to do anything. She's right, rather than physically do it. There's a lot of misinformation around hacking and all that good stuff is sort of a burden. That's going to be a big problem rather than a technology problem. But I have two daughters who can't figure out why. If I was going to, I can go because they want to go to publication they want to. So I think that's probably wise for us probably two lessons when, in reality. Back to my question and opportunities of access versus security around different countries and models, you guys could strip technology in this country, how elections vulnerable? More time? Sure. online solutions are probably not because they provide a rigorous empirical proof. I think, at everything, we argue that blockchain solutions to the public ledger challenge, but it seems to be sorted out. So you know, I mean, do you think realistically to go with paper ballots and go to something that's using version and electronic vices represents just wanting to trick the population that actually enjoys going to polls? And voting? Right. So you should vote, right? I saw people running for Congress. And I'm seen as a widespread thing. But there are people that like, rape or you know, want to touch a gallon milk. And so it's just a technology thing. That's emotional things, especially out there with others in line, because there is no doubt that the US, particularly a target state actors. Okay, so that is one of the challenges with any solution. That's it, I believe there are chemicals, which is not going to go into all of that here. But I come back to the question, it is such an easy thing to fix. Our voter registration database should not be controversial, it should be easy. Instead, what happens is the politicians, no matter what party, if you feel that messing up, the voter rolls is going to vanish, and they find a way to do that marginal difference. So we end up not passing laws to just solve that problem to these technical solutions. So we can solve this other one, I feel we need to get our priorities per step. Literally, this is important. So Stephen, are there any kind of document of the show where this is recorded? We'll be referencing it in the search of this topic. Do you want to get out that they want people spending a lot of time on this issue on this technology, arms business? All I would say is a lot of misunderstanding of what works? And what appreciation of mathematics in most cases, like the challenges of voter fraud from multiple times. Isn't that right? How many, how many others? I can see. That's why these things are problems. It's the same mathematical problems challenging. This isn't really like how you look at all these numbers of very complex reports. Or anything dealing with probability in Statistics has been woefully misunderstood. And is ripe for misinformation exploitation by international experts. From any any kind of question everything is really, really important to understand problems that can be encountered during election, so they understand it that way. If you were exactly the process, and it was about to start finish, then I think those are a lot more trusting people doing feel like the actual numbers. You see, now they're starting tracing out from behind you in your mailbox all the way and it's coming. I think those kinds of coverage will do a lot to make the voters confident. And I think the education we can give to voters so they click on the charter money with their politicians. So Allison get a lot to talk about tonight. Just getting started this is imagination. You know, and probably not elections technology citizen dream future democracy out. Summarize what you just heard just a second. What are some themes
You know, a big impact on on turnout on the outcome of elections and how people feel invest in democracy, of course, backlash that as well. But I guess I'm interested in how we keep people, just regular ordinary voters from across the way I'm invested in the subject and willing to to fight, you know, at that local level and individual activists, I mean, I, it's incredibly challenging, there are a lot of people just have to put it on the table. And, you know, born activists are not trained, because they don't know how to engage. I think keeping up a level of anger about feeling disenfranchised, as maybe some of these rules or regulations that expanded access recently are now being held back. I mean, I'm interested to see what effect that has on the grassroots level. And I think that that's that reference level change, and also the generational change that I mentioned, I feel like the two things that really are the only way that we can change the political debate, you know, it has to be just discussed, we have the technology solutions, but we don't have the political buy in to make voting more inclusive. You know, what is gonna change that and I think this generation and better change is possible. And I think I'm always thinking about what is possible, but you think it took me 75 years to understand that and and find my friends and I said no, not going to take another set of five years for all Americans you have to do you think we think that voting is up to you or for you? That's That's what should be looking at and thinking about, you know, everyone and vote because so many we can't even do that, even though there are so creative that everyone would have access to. So there's an opportunity and everyone, there's a reason and just to carry away Just
depend on on on the democratic process to make decisions and try to solve problems. Do you think COVID is is is exposing that democracy is slow and, and? And what do you think that means for the future?
So, you know, enthusiastically and a lot of it boils down to social dynamics and the idea of, you know, if the if the outgroup, you know, namely, you know, the Democrats and, you know, science minded people, what have you say that, you know, this is the way that we should handle this, then the way that you can kind of harden the social capital of the in group, namely the Republican Party is to basically just do the opposite of whatever it is they say is correct, and it sort of doesn't matter from a practical standpoint to them. Whether that's correct or you know, informed by react You're gonna kill people or whatever it's like, it's a way of creating this, you know, very hard kind of social cohesion against this enemy, you know, that they think is a threat to the country. And so it created this kind of basis for this kind of rhetorical device that enabled them to really, you know, pursue, you know, an agenda against this, this evil effort, namely, you know, the Democrats and scientists and Fauci and all of that. So, you know, to your core question of, like, Can democracy deal with, you know, something like, COVID? I mean, I guess the answer is we have to, and we have to figure out a way to make it work, because I don't think that we are, you know, particularly interested in having a, you know, authoritarian kind of regime, like we, you know, have seen in China, or in Russia, which, you know, China has been more successful at managing COVID, we think, than Russia, although we can't get real numbers of Russia. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, we we need to return the United States and other, you know, Western liberal pluralistic democracies into a a social configuration, where democracy can actually function. And that is kind of what we have as a core problem right now is that we are socially ailing make. Sense. After this, I wanted to ask you, I know you work at a media corporation or media organization, and a corporation for public television. Can you talk about how you think the media is doing at helping to facilitate good democracy? I know tabs.
The fact that we have been grappling with whom to allow to vote since the beginning of the Republic, this is an ongoing debate, even tonight, is is kind of amazing. And so yeah, the pace of change is slow. And yet the world is changing really fast as as technology as our social dynamics, as is the spread of misinformation. And so I feel like there's a real mismatch with the way our, you know, our, our government is set up to function and the reality of the 21st century. So that's just another layer of friction, making this an even more intractable issue. to your second question about, you know, what, what role does the media play here? To be clear, I work for GBH in Boston, I'm the chief marketing officer there, GBH is the largest producer of content for PBS, in America. And we also are a dual licensee with an NPR station in Boston as well. So, you know, we I think public media believes it plays a particular role in civic issues, in not just informing and engaging, but really, it being part of the conversation with local communities, about everything that matters, including, you know, democracy and government and, and all of that. So, you know, I, I, I, I have been involved in the media landscape, my entire professional career actually starting when I was writing for the local newspaper as a 15 year old and have covered presidential elections as as a journalist, and, you know, care a lot about, you know, the role of journalism in our democracy. I think, as someone not in a journalistic role right now, I'm, as I mentioned, on the marketing side, and as a media consumer, in this last election cycle, the last two election cycles. I personally felt like I had to stop watching cable news and, you know, really found comfort in JUDY WOODRUFF on PBS NewsHour, where no one was screaming. It was really balanced and clear, and there wasn't an obvious agenda that was being pushed at all. And, you know, I feel like we, as a society could really use a dose of that. I wish more people would tune into to public media for that reason, it took my blood pressure down every night when I could sort of sit down and watch the news hour of course you don't have to watch it on live linear television you can watch it on YouTube on demand and you know, I think that journalism owes it to the American democracy to just bring the temperature down and to really explore issues in a fair and balanced way.
Amazing work right now across across the spectrum about lots of different topics and you know, I definitely think it's worth thinking about you know, who's paying for the news when you're tuning in? All right. V Are you? Now
is? do every day and we we care a lot about it. And and it's it's tough being a nonprofit news organization, you know, I mean, we could spend every penny that we have to produce the content, but if we're not getting enough people to consume it, you know, because we don't have a large marketing budget then you know, then that's on us. So, you know, I guess I would just say that where we're deeply committed, it's it's in our mission to make sure that we do the work no matter what. And then, you know, work really hard to make sure that people know that it exists, and that it's been created for them. And by them.
Great. Thank you, Dave, for those comments. And Tina for expanding on that. Allison, what's on your mind before we go to Sam?
Well, let's see. I have a question for both Dave and Tina, sort of separate questions. So Dave, I think that both Bob and speak spent time talking about what the solution space would look like. And you've been very honest. And I'm sure nobody would dispute it, that the disinformation world is extremely complicated, but I would love your thoughts, if there any solutions out there that you feel could be powerful for helping to get a more informed electorate. And if you've seen anything out there that inspires you. And then Tina, I will admit, as a avid WGBH watcher, you lower my temperature. But I would love your thoughts on the question of whether instead of public radio at WGBH, have looked at your listeners and figured out whether you get both sides and what those numbers look like. Because you do hear more and more that are our media spaces, pretty much entirely part of them. And it'd be lovely to understand what it takes to create a neutral media profile that that actually can get both sides to listen to the same issues and agenda.
Great. So, yeah, I appreciate the question. And it's something that I'm been thinking a great deal about. And I'm starting to develop kind of a framework that I've been socializing with some of my contacts in the space as well as some, you know, smart thinkers and scholars, you know, working on this set of problems. The thing that we need to really consider is that, you know, disinformation, what is it? What does it actually do? What are the effects of it? And, you know, we sort of have this, I would say fairly naive idea that, you know, disinformation is the intentional dissemination of information that isn't true or it's intended to harm and that's true But what is the mechanism of harm? We tend to think, you know, in American exceptionalism, American individualism, that this is a matter of getting a person to erroneously believe something that isn't true? Well, okay, that might be happening in some cases. But in fact, you know, what is actually happening, if you sort of watch what happens to a population of people who have been exposed to disinformation, and are inclined to potentially believe it, it tends to have social repercussions. So what will end up happening is, you know, somebody will start to believe that, you know, ivermectin is a cure for the hydroxychloroquine as a cure. And, you know, without really paying too much attention to the science, they start to take on this belief, and they also start to gain social identity and social belonging from being a part of the group of people that believes this. So it becomes a social process. And that, in turn informs their identity. So they might start to get bumper stickers that start to, you know, demonize the out group. And what this does is it has the effect of dividing up society and breaking us down into ever smaller and smaller kind of cliques of people who are, you know, motivated against outgroups? So, you know, when we think about what solutions to something like this information, our you know, we think, Well, you know, we should, instead of standing around falsehoods, and lies, we should tell the truth, we should promote science, we should promote critical thinking. Well, the problem is, is that that social damage has already occurred, by the time that we get around to the solution of trying to put truth out there. So not only are these people like alienated from, say, their family, you know, how many people you know, have family members that have gone off the deep end with this stuff. How many people have unfriended people on social media because their, you know, friends or family members are spouting craziness, once these social ties are broken down, and people become part of the social media use, that are opposed to the app group, if you start sending truth with them, they become very resistant, they've become very defensive against it. And so what we have to realize is that this isn't about truth or falsehood. And indeed, even truth can be weaponized to harm populations, if it comes at the right time at the right context. So this doesn't have really a lot to do with whether things are true or false. This has to do with damage being done to our social fabric. So you know, sprinkling truth on this damage, social fabric is akin to like spraying water on a forest fire, hoping to unburn it, right, it just doesn't work. So what we start to have to do is to figure out what how do we rebuild these ties of social connection and social capital that have been burned away. And it's a little bit like what happens in a forest after a forest fire, you know, you start to see little green, new sprouts, and things start to come back. And pretty soon things start to look Okay, again. But we have to basically recognize that this is we are dealing with a process that is in some ways irreversible. And the only way that we're going to reverse it is to start to address people where they are socially and start to try to rebuild social ties. And if you talk to a lot of people on the left on the right, who are, you know, very married to their social network and their beliefs, the last thing they want to do is listen to people on the other side. So that is the challenge that we're facing, you know, faced with right now is that the thing that we need most is the thing we least want to do. I believe that one possible solution to this, and I think that there are many, but there they all have to deal with this issue of rebuilding social ties, is to introduce something like national service. It doesn't have to be mandatory. But we need to rebuild social connections and ties of trust between people across different divisions and social values that we have right now. So across race, geography, wealth, all of these divisions that are so easily exploitable in our society, we have to figure out some way to rebuild social trust and ties between us It isn't a matter of education, although some people could certainly use more. It isn't a matter of intelligence, because these people are not stupid. It's just a matter of social division that's being exploited by bad actors in order to weaponize people for their own personal gains. And so we need to get past that. Yeah. Let me just jump in Bill Walsh. Back is joined, he ran for mayor. He's a student of history and you really appreciate the city. He was born and grew up in Iowa, no New Jersey, and he came here during the Nixon administration hasn't left. And there was some federal money created a health center in Codman square. And it's become a remarkable nonprofit that has done a lot of good and has worn many hats. He's chair of the board of Bunker Hill Community College, I think he's, he's retired but he's on 15 boards. He's the chair of a bunch of them. And he's, he loves politics and excited to have you join I know you were running your way Your board meeting for a school that you helped found with your health center. That is an amazing charter school and one of the neighborhoods of Boston in Dorchester. Bill. Welcome as one of our Imaginators to imagination action.
Hey, well, thanks. Can you hear me? Because this is the first time I've done this? Yep, you're doing great. Okay, great. Actually, I since I don't know what with the first hour of this was discussing, I can only the part that I was just listening to I can tell you from being part of a Super PAC, for one of the candidates to the what didn't make it into the final in the Boston mayoral race that we were doing consistently polling and when a Nisa Isabey George is this, the globe ran a series of articles about her husband, who was the developer in the city, and the all of the kind of bad things that were happening because of her husband. That was very interesting to see. Because, you know, the whole issue then was, Well, is it is she vulnerable? Should should we do like attack some of a Nissa Sabi, George, because she was vulnerable. But what we found was that all of her supporters double down. People were saying how outrageous it was that her husband was doing these things that, you know, seem to be illegal. And, but, but in fact, all of the people that were with this be George were actually doubled down, and they're supportive Assad be George. And so the whole notion was, Wow, this is really interesting. But it's also really true about what's happening with the body politic, and in the United States. The other interesting thing that's going on right now in the mayor's race is that at the five o'clock numbers, it's the conservative precincts, the precincts that had the highest percentage of voters who went with Trump, although in the city of Boston, that was like in the 40s 40% range. Those are the precincts that are voting at a much higher rate tonight. And so that, you know, that's a really interesting number. Because what that means is that this 30% alleged differential between Michelle Wu and in this savvy George is probably lower, I always thought it was lower. But the question is, will the Liberals have Roslindale in Jamaica Plain in the Back Bay, people come out to vote, which they really haven't done it any great numbers in the last 20 years. But I know that the Conservatives are really coming out to vote. So what happens in that scenario? I don't think that Aneesa can can win, she was so far behind. But I think it's going to be a lot closer. And what does that mean for Michelle Wu, who's going to take office on if she wins on November 16? And has this major list of priorities that, you know, that are going to require all sorts of support from the legislature in the city council? So anyway, that's just a really interesting thing of, you know, how does politics happen in the second decade of the 20th 21st century? It's much different, you know, not even thinking of McCall setname. McAuliffe in Virginia. And what that means if he loses, there's all sorts of oddities in politics that didn't exist 50 years ago, when I first got involved in politics.
Or any I just want to react to Yeah, I just wanted to directly respond to what Bill said, I think that's exactly in line with what political scientists have noticed. There's a woman named Liliana Mason at University of Maryland who wrote a book called uncivil agreement. And basically what she observed was that the people who were sort of most socially isolated into their own in group and had the fewest cross cutting social ties to other you know, groups and, you know, different kinds of influences. Those people would be the ones most likely to vote in highest numbers, as well as to condone political violence. And so, you know, that finding doesn't surprise me at all. That is exactly what you would expect to see in a city like Boston, is that those precincts would be the most reactive. And Dave is calling in from Baltimore. Kena you want to react to this Allison?
I can certainly respond to Allison's earlier question about, you know, public media composition by by audience. And, you know, I think the question was, What does Public Media's audience look like? There was a Pew Research study on this A couple of years ago, and NPR was behind Vox, at 49% identifying as liberal. And in terms of the PBS audience 39% self identified as liberal or democratic. You know, I think if you if you are looking for a benchmark, you know, PBS and the Washington Post are sort of tied at 39% of their audience who identified as as liberal. So I think, you know, I think that that says something. And, you know, it's certainly, obviously at the other end of the spectrum from Fox News, Breitbart Newsmax, but I, I will just add to, you know, one other point that that Dave mentioned, and that is the, the challenge of the fact that we no longer have a national narrative. We don't have, you know, large swaths of the country sitting down and watching one of three news programs, you know, all at the same time, sort of covering the same events in a similar way. And I think that that's really helping people become more sort of socially isolated as as, as Bill and, Dave, were just talking about, you know, I think that being able to choose your own adventure, as it relates to the news you want to consume, is allowing people to become just more firmly embedded in their own beliefs. You know, there's obvious confirmation bias in terms of the news that they're consuming. We can curate our own news feeds now, as well, this is also an issue related to technology. And and so, you know, the problems are many, I think, to bring it back to what Bill was just saying, if we looked at, you know, what media outlets, those who are voting for, for George, for the Boston mayoral election tonight, you know, they probably look a little different from what those who are voting for Michelle Liu might be reading, watching or listening to. And, you know, while the Boston Globe has been the main, you know, sort of source of news in this region for more than a century, I think that, you know, demographics have changed, the way people subscribe to that paper has changed. And you can just sort of tell by looking at comments on some news articles that, you know, sentiment has changed in some quarters among their audience as well. So, you know, it's a really fascinating landscape, even in a place like Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, where the sort of global perception is that this is a very progressive place. There are still conservative pockets. You know, you mentioned West Roxbury, you know, the pill, South Boston, you know, places and Dorchester. There are conservative pockets. And, you know, are they always going to be like that? I think that this is also a question of demographics as well. And, and how people evolve in their thinking, and if they if they do, I don't know, I mean, I, I think that this election is going to tell us a lot about the future of the city.
Yeah, so I'd have a comment, if you mind,
Dan. Yeah. So let me just let me just frame this imagination, action. We're going to have a 92nd musical interlude and a few buy a New England Conservatory graduate who plays the violin. But I'd love to hear Sam's question. And Tom and Armand. And then I'd also love to just also hear from Bill, you were late to the show, but like, what keeps you up at night? What are you thinking on these topics? So we'll get three questions. And then we're going to come back to you, Bill. But yeah, Sam, what do you got?
We're just going back to the first hour, Bob and Steve with a tremendous technology benefits, you know, and promises and voting by phone and whatever. But I still go back to some of Tina's warnings of historically about disenfranchised world that we had for most of the history of the country. And the RE disenfranchisement, I think, is a force that we still need to deal with, regardless of the technology. But I also wanted to address the sort of common feeling that I think many of us is just notice, and those of us speaking have about the great virtues of GBH and frontline and so forth. But know that the world is generally not the most polarized parts of the world are not listening, as we've were just talking about to them. As much as the networks that have Have fallen afoul of what is to be the fairness doctrine or to abandon what in Reagan years? What would the panelists see as a possibility? Or, or way in which to try to restore some sense of what's the difference between the GVH sort of approach and the approaches which take a kernel of truth, often the old Soviet model of dissent, this propaganda, where you take your compromise, somebody compromised by taking one kernel piece of truth and blowing it out proportions, which is, tends to be the way say a Fox News would, would handle things, is there some way of recreating a standard in this in the media space?
Really amazing question. I mean, I, you know, not every media organization has a mission statement. And I think, you know, I mentioned this earlier, thinking about whether an organization is a media organization, as for profit or nonprofit are sort of two critical measures of whether they, you know, what is their ultimate motivation? Is it to make money? Is it to, or is it to, you know, inform the public? And what is the model, you know, even to think about, like, what was going on at at, at Breitbart with, you know, pageviews driving ad dollars, and then advertisers finding out that their aggregated ads were being placed on Breitbart, and they didn't know it, and there was, you know, advertising backlash, and then, you know, enough advertisers pull out and the whole thing crumbles. You know, so there's also this, there's also a capitalistic incentive among, you know, the audiences as well to influence how media behaves by supporting or not supporting certain advertisers. So, you know, I'm not saying I have all the answers, but I do certainly, I am personally invested in the nonprofit model. And, you know, just really believe in the fact that public media is for the public and is exists only to, you know, to serve the communities where they are, I mean, and NPR has the largest distributed, you know, newsroom in America, there are more NPR journalists throughout the United States than in any other newsroom that exists. And I feel like that means, you know, NPR is, is covering rural communities and urban places and is doing really important work. You know, I think, how do we how do we continue to invest in those types of models to ensure that, you know, they stick around and they're healthy, and they continue to grow? You know, and I think, while also, you know, having enough investment to evolve to this rapidly changing landscape, I think that's the biggest struggle right now for all media organizations and public media is included in that.
Sam, you know, we've been friends for years, you know, expect no less than a great question. Thank you. You should stay on stage for another question. Todd, are you in Japan right now?
No, in Chicago?
Oh, no, there's another tide that always comes. Todd, do you have a question? And let's get Todd and a RAM. And then we'll see what our Imagineers have to say.
Sure. Thanks, John. And thank you all for appearing on the show. It's really important topic and great to hear the democracies are kind of rare in human history. And, you know, you have to if you go back 2500 years ago to like the Athenian city states that they had a lot of these same problems, right factionalism, and people would open the gates to invaders just because they were so mad at the other faction of the city, kind of knowing that they'd all be slaughtered just as long as the other faction was slaughtered first. And, and so our founding fathers knew all about this. And George Washington wrote extensively about the dangers, the factionalism. And so they designed the whole thing to kind of slow it down, slow down, that rush to be angry and change things. But it seems like the electronics and instant news and everything has sped everything up. So we've kind of undone the design of our founding fathers and suddenly there's this urge to act and people get angry and they want to have something done right away. So how do we slow that down? How do we do something even more than the founding fathers? In terms of just kind of, you mentioned it earlier in terms of there needs to be more consideration, more thought before decisions are taken, any thoughts on that?
I can speak to that. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this the last few years, and especially a lot of the early thinking that was done, you know, with Federalist number 10, and George Washington's, you know, farewell speech and all of that kind of thing, like, you know, it, it really is a different world now than what, you know, they were kind of operating in, but they identified all the right problems, they also identified the unique character of the United States, which is that it's a very large country, and was trying to become a very large country, while being mostly empty. So that meant that you had this, you know, very naturally occurring division between rural and agricultural states, and these kind of urban centers that were developing. And so, you know, they developed, I think, a pretty good set of, you know, balancing factors to try to deal with that. But as you point out, you know, things have kind of accelerated and all of that kind of stuff that was put in place, then doesn't really work as well as it does now. So, I think, you know, one of the things that we need to do is to think about, you know, how the things that we do affect the function of the country, and whether or not they're sort of helping us or hurting us with regards to dealing with those problems of faction. And, you know, I know a lot of people are very adamant about abolishing, say, the electric Electoral College, and there are some pretty good reasons to advocate for that. It seems really outdated and antiquated at this point. And the idea of giving people in Wyoming, you know, so much power disproportionately, to, you know, the the population seems, you know, wrongheaded, anti democratic. And in some ways, it is. Similarly, the Senate is configured in a similar way, and people are like, well, we should, you know, abolish the Senate. And I think we need to slow that down. I think we need to think really hard about what the effects are of tweaking these knobs. Because, you know, if we tweak something like removing the Electoral College, you're going to end up with a situation where, you know, a lot of the country feels fundamentally unrepresented forever. And is that beneficial to the health of the country going forward for the long term? Is it beneficial in the near term? I don't think anybody has thought that through in a really coherent way. And I think that we need to, you know, really consider those kinds of changes. And I think we also need to figure out, you know, to the extent that these checks and balances were put in place that that, you know, really modulated the social capital relationships between people and urban and rural and all of that. What other things can we do that function in that same way? If we are going to maybe take away something? What are we going to put in its place that keeps the country actually glued together and functioning and around shared purpose? I mentioned something, you know, like national service that could lead us in that kind of direction. But we can't just run around like bowls in the china shop, just changing things. Because we feel like it'd because we're angry about stuff. And hoping that it works out. We have to be much more considerate and thoughtful in terms of the kinds of policies and changes that we pursue. So I think that's a really great question and a good observation. Yeah. Thanks, Todd. around and I hope I said your name right. Do you have a question you want to ask? Before we hear from Bill?
Yeah, so my name is actually Aram. And as a California who is 66 of the power of a Wyoming i in the Senate, and 3.8 times less power and the Electoral College, I already feel very unrepresented. So to this year just bring up before I'm really tired of not having fair power. Within my federal government. Yeah.
And Dave mentioned, the farewell address, which I think was written by Alexander Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton came up with the electoral college. So there you go.
Yeah. So I, but you know, that's sort of a an aside and a whole other whole other conversation. I was excited to see the words elections and tech together, because that's a space that I actually work in. And I, I wonder if, you know, if you guys could talk a little bit about what opportunities we have to actually, you know, make elections work better. And how that can help to, you know, restore faith. And, you know, both in participating in our democracy and believing in the results, and certainly to try to stem the tide of mighty equals right, you know, politics by force, that that's certainly seeing a surge in popularity at the moment. Thank you.
Proves great. So thanks. We had Steve Papa, who's a serial entrepreneur who's backing a technology Clear, clear ballot company and as CEO talking about what they're doing, they're being used I think, in 13 states, Florida is one of them tonight, a bunch of their software's being used for voting and so we heard them talk about it. So so that that was why we had tech in the title but any of the Imaginators want to comment on this question? Before we go to Bill? I'll send you I'll say something on this topic.
No, I just I love Todd's question. Then I think about what's eroding trust and how you build trust. And I love the the comments that Dean Tina's made on on media and Davis made and Bill, I really appreciated your comment of how different elections and politics look today than 50 years ago. So I'd love to come back to Bill and just find out what have you seen lately that builds trust in today's political world?
Yeah. So before we hear from Bill, Bill is a musician so he'll appreciate this Caroline. Could you pluck your string so Bill believes that you're not you're not playing a CD ROM or or audio tape or laser disc? Yep. So that's live Alright, so Caroline, you're an amazing musician play something to celebrate democracy and citizens and and elections and display a little bit of a an Irish air actually I think it's British but it's it's you'll recognize it?
All right, as always, thank you, Caroline, you are one of our musicians in residence. This is a two hour show imagination action, while tick tock is going shorter and shorter. We're going longer. There's long form journalism. We love to get our Imaginators people are using their imagination and making action happen to get things out there. We're recording the show. It'll be posted in a few minutes after the show. And we create transcriptions and people look to this for ideas. So Bill, go off what's on your mind in terms of democracy, elections, everything. You can be nonlinear. Just say what's on your mind.
Okay, well, thank you for Oh, Danny boy, but I know that it actually came from another another song besides that, but the Irish singer does Danny Danny Boy. Anyway. So a couple of things. One is that if you want to take a look at a book that I read recently about Washington and his fear of factionalism, travels with George by Nathaniel Philbrick is a fun book to read. And because he traces by his he, his wife and his dog, trace Washington's tours after being inaugurated as President to New England to Rhode Island to Long Island and then to the south and it all it's all about factionalism and slavery. So here's some bad news. As of six o'clock, the Boston Globe is saying that only 24% of us 20 20% Of Bostonians have registered voters have voted in this election. When you start getting numbers that low. You're talking about pot potential upsets Because and the amazing thing to me is that it'd be really difficult for people to say they didn't know there was an election. So. So that's the thing that I greatly fear. The other thing that I greatly fear is that I used to understand Republicans I got along with Republicans. I mean, the Republicans of the past were people that were, did not want large government. And, you know, generally in a kind of an old fashioned conservative way, and I understood them, I don't understand Trump's Republicans, I really don't I can't get them. I don't really get it. And, and so that's the thing that, you know, you've asked John about not being, you know, things that keep me up at night. And that's the kind of thing I worry because when Trump got elected, and it was a really was a narrow election, and you know, kind of barely squeaked in with the few votes here and there per precinct in certain states would have completely changed that election in 2016. Instead of like realizing that she's, you know, he had a really thin margin there, and not blowing up the government, he blew up the government, he changed things dramatically, he moved the country in a totally different direction. And that's the kind of thing where the Republicans have old and the Democrats have old wouldn't have done that. And so that's the kind of thing that I fear because what it does is it sets up people that are, you know, that will not tolerate the other side. Whereas in the past, we tolerated each other. The, you know, I was a lifelong Democrat, but I tolerated the Republicans even got along with the Republicans and occasionally even voted for Republicans, because sometimes they been more sense of when was going on in the Democratic Party. But right now, there's, there's none of that that's going on. So in a few minutes, I'm actually going to walk down into the, to my precinct ward 13, precinct 10, one of the highest voting precincts in the city of Boston and get the tally at eight o'clock, which will tell me like, what the percentages were in my particular precinct of who voted for Isabey George who voted for Whoo, and how the city council and also the questions were
