The Politics Industry at Work: And How Would You Like Your Gridlock?
May 5, 2021
Our national legislative agenda hinges on any one Senator’s vote or abstention or last minute demand… A few months into term and the majority of U.S. House Members already anticipate their next primary battle… Meanwhile, bridges crumble, the border crisis deepens, and gun carnage continues unabated…
Might be time to take a fresh look at our political gridlock.
This episode’s featured guest, Katherine Gehl (co-author of The Politics Industry) provides this sorely needed new perspective on our two-party duopoly and continued gridlock. Applying the “five forces” strategic analysis of her co-author, renowned HBS Professor Michael Porter, Katherine describes her “eureka” moment of recognition: politics industry “suppliers” (e.g. elected politicians) have so much power while its “consumers” (we, the voters) have so very little.
Katherine also details for Purple Principle listeners the systemic factors that entrench our political duopoly. And all this despite the fact that so many Americans, Katherine included, feel politically homeless. At the top of the list is how we elect representatives through polarizing party-run primaries that work against moderates and pragmatists, and plurality-decided general elections which create the spoiler effect for any third party or independent candidate.
How do we unshackle from the politics industry gridlock? Katherine’s plan for Final Five voting is the designated first step in changing the incentive structure of our politics-as-usual. Combining the benefits of unified open primaries with ranked choice voting, Final Five voting reduces the polarizing effects of primaries and eliminates the spoiler effect that locks in our two party duopoly.
Feel like political reform is impossible? Maybe not. In looking back on the Progessive Era of a century ago, Katherine points out that the United States has already had the experience of significant, broadly mandated change. She then describes the current work at the newly-founded Institute for Political Innovation as an adaptation of Progressive-era spirit, focusing today on state level efforts for Final Five Voting in legislative sessions and ballot initiatives.
For a master-class in politics industry reform, tune into “The Politics Industry at Work: And How Would You Like Your Gridlock?” Featuring Katherine Gehl, Founder of the Institute for Political Innovation and co-author of The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy (HBR Press, 2020)
Original Music by Ryan Adair Rooney
Show Notes
The Institute for Political Innovation
“The Progressive Era: 1895-1925.” The Wisconsin Historical Society.
“President Theodore Roosevelt.” The Miller Center.
Michael Porter (1979). “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.” The Harvard Business Review.
Party Affiliation: Gallup Historical Trends. Gallup Polls.
A.B. Stoddard (4/19/21). “Can 'Final Five Voting' Cure Our Sick Politics?” Real Clear Politics.
Mickey Edwards. Library of Congress.
Mickey Edwards (1/13/21). “A Republican Journey.” The Bulwark.
“The Spoiler Effect.” The Center for Election Science.
National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers
Transcript
Katherine Gehl
I know. I'll do culture and get everybody to be friends and want to work together in a bipartisan way. Oh, shoot. That doesn't work. They say they want to work together in a bipartisan way. And then they always vote the same way.
Robert Pease (host)
That’s our special guest today, Katherine Gehl, Founder of the Institute for Political Innovation and Co-Author with the renowned strategist Michael Porter of the insightful book, The Politics Industry.
Katherine Gehl
I know I'll do policy. Oh shoot. Everybody knows the good policy. They just don't have the political will to do it.
Robert Pease (host)
Join us today as we look at our frustrating politics with an original, clear-sighted and maybe even optimistic view on how to reform things. This is the Purple Principle, a podcast about the perils of polarization. I’m Robert Pease.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And I’m Emily Crocetti. And that view looks at politics as an industry, specifically a duopoly of two major parties, Republican and Democrat, Elephant and Donkey, Red and Blue – locked in a zero sum battle.
Robert Pease (host)
And yet through all kinds of rules, norms and perverse incentives, both parties are pretty much assured of survival, for something like forever.
Emily Crocetti (host)
Which, as you’ll see, is a huge part of the problem. First, though, let’s get to know Katherine Gehl, starting with the basics like how to pronounce her name, where she’s from – and her tolerance level for a pretty lame joke or two.
Robert Pease (host)
I also wanted to make sure that we're pronouncing your last name correctly. It's Gehl. Is that right?
Katherine Gehl
“Gail”, just like the woman's name.
Robert Pease (host)
And are you originally from Wisconsin?
Katherine Gehl
I am.
Robert Pease (host)
We're based in New Hampshire, you know, “live free or die,” and Wisconsin had some sort of a contest for a new state slogan, maybe for license plates at some point, and someone suggested “eat cheese or die.”
Katherine Gehl
I did not know that, was that you by chance?
Robert Pease (host)
No, I wish it had been, but, amazingly, it did not win.
Katherine Gehl
Well. And I don't know if you know this, but before my new career in political innovation, I ran a $250 million food manufacturing company and we made cheese.
Robert Pease (host)
Yes, we saw that TED Talk. We really enjoyed and benefited from the book, so let’s put that cheese plate aside for just a moment. I wanted to start with the premise of the book, looking at politics as an industry, which is a very original premise. Did that just come to you as like, a “eureka and aha” moment, or had it been brewing for a while?
Katherine Gehl
Rob, It was a “eureka aha” moment. And it came about only because I was not in a career in politics. I ran this food manufacturing company in Wisconsin, and in 2013, I was working on a classic for profit business strategy project using all of the classic tools. And so everybody who got their MBA learns the same ways to think about corporate strategy. And one of the things you do is use the Five Forces that professor Michael Porter of Harvard Business School created decades ago. And they're the gold standard for understanding competition in industries. So I was analyzing the competition in my industry and it was “Eureka!” as I was going through. I would say my brain split in half, and half of me was about cheese. And the other half was saying, “Oh my goodness, that is how it is in the politics industry. There's high barriers to entry. Oh, the customers have very little power, Oh, look at how much power the suppliers have.” And it was only later when I wanted to bring other business people into this effort on political innovation that I determined it would be helpful to write it up, to show this logic of the politics industry, because it not only explains what's gone wrong: it's a really good basis for understanding what we can most powerfully do to alter the dynamic.
Robert Pease (host)
Well, that's interesting because I'm afraid a lot of people who may have had a similar “aha” moment in private business have said, “I've got to get elected because there's no competition there.” So we're glad you went in a different direction with that.
Katherine Gehl
Rob, could I say quickly, that's only because I first had that other “aha” moment, which is to say not so much that I should get elected, but I only came to understanding the industry after basically taking several detours, which I talk about as my five stages of political grief. And finally, it was Mickey Edwards, former Republican congressmen from Oklahoma who had written a book called The Parties Versus the People. And in it, he says, it's the system. And I've always been a systems thinker. I think it's fascinating that I took years and needed someone else to tell me that in politics, it's also the system. And then once I knew that that opened the way for later, my being able to see it as an industry.
[Archival Audio collage, campaign spending]
Robert Pease (host)
The Politics Industry. Takes in more and more money, but does less and less for you. Kind of like your not so favorite cable and internet provider or utility company – except our red and blue duopoly controls so much more of our lives.
Emily Crocetti (host)
Like how much tax you pay, how that money gets spent, and the policies that shape our energy, environment, healthcare, transportation, education, finance and a whole bunch of other industries.
Robert Pease (host)
As Katherine mentions, her co-author on this book is Michael Porter, the renowned Harvard Business School Professor, author of 12 books on a wide range of subjects. Here he is explaining his most famous piece of analysis, the 5 forces of competitive strategy.
[Archival audio, Michael Porter on “The Five Forces”]
Emily Crocetti (host)
And that’s what Katherine Gehl is referring to when she mentions the suppliers in the politics industry, that is that the parties and politicians have so much power. But the customers – that is, the voters like you and I – have oh so little power.
Robert Pease (host)
Katherine also mentions former 8-term Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma as an important influence, talking here about the unintended consequences of an electoral reform during the Progressive movement a century ago.
[Archival audio, Mickey Edwards]
Emily Crocetti (host)
Edwards was a founding member of the Heritage Foundation and a consistent conservative. He represented Oklahoma’s 5th district from 1977 to 1993.
Robert Pease (host)
But in recent decades he has been a strong advocate for political reform and frequent critic of his own Republican party, culminating in his recent decision to become an independent after the January 6th Capitol riots.
Emily Crocetti (host)
Katherine Gehl describes herself as a former Democrat who is now a non-partisan, or, in her words, politically homeless. We asked how that homelessness contributed to her book and to her creating the Institute for Political innovation.
Katherine Gehl
The homelessness was created by my look at why I was homeless. Why was it not just me, but why were so many of us homeless? Why are we dissatisfied with the choices that we have in this industry that is so important to all of our lives? We're not used to disliking the choices we have in our lives quite so much, which is to say competition. Our capitalist system does a very good job of continually improving products and services that are available to us as customers because competition pushes for that improvement. And that's why I got into the work, because I was dissatisfied and so were so many people. Fascinatingly, and I'm sure you know this right now, all we talk about are Democrats and Republicans, right? And yet 25% of the country identifies as a Republican, 25% of the country identifies as Democrat, and 50% most recently now identify as independent. And they're even invisible to our conversation. And actually we're only talking mostly about what Democratic primary voters want and what Republican primary voters want, which is yet a smaller subset of those two quarters of the population.
Robert Pease (host)
And Emily, we should say the most recent Gallup poll prior to Katherine’s interview did have this high water mark for indie voter identification of 50%, an amazing number. But this number goes up and down month to month.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And in fact went down to 42% the following month. But her general point is perfectly valid. We don’t hear about indies. Here’s how we covered this issue early on in Season One with our “Forty Million Missing” episode.
Robert Pease (narrator):
Independents are like the agnostics in the national church of “us vs. them,” “blue vs. red,” or “red vs. blue.” In the media realm, independents have no cable channel. And when was the last time you saw an independent commentator on a major network?
[Archival audio collage, partisan news coverage]
Robert Pease (host)
Independents are largely missing from high school and college textbooks and classroom discussions. And in many states, independents are excluded from the primary voting booths.
Emily Crocetti (host)
But while third parties and independents are largely MIA today, they were very much a part of the progressive era a century ago. And Katherine’s home state of Wisconsin was at the center of the action.
Robert Pease (host)
So let’s hear about some of Katherine’s heroes from that period in time when a broad coalition of Americans pushed through a bunch of political reforms, including 4, count em 4, constitutional amendments, which is inconceivable today, and when we briefly had just a bit more than the two traditional parties.
Katherine Gehl
Teddy Roosevelt is one of my heroes. I have a three-year-old son and I finished writing my original report in the three months after he was born. And he basically slept on my lap and he is named Teddy, for Teddy Roosevelt.
[Archival audio, Theodore Roosevelt]
Katherine Gehl
So I have no hero, you know, of the Progressive era, greater than him than Teddy Roosevelt, but I'll give you my second, which would be Robert LaFollette, “fighting Bob Lafollette,” because he's from Wisconsin. And that's where I'm from. And Wisconsin was one of the states that really led the way in the progressive era.
[Archival audio, Robert LaFollette]
Katherine Gehl
Which is to say that we in our democracy already had the experience a hundred years ago of looking at how things were going in the country and saying, “Oh, it's not really working how we want it to for the majority of people. So let's change the rules of the game and politics.” And that will create a situation where our public policy changes in a way that in the case of the post-progressive era really unleashed a wave of growth. So it's time to have a new progressive era. I'm sure your listeners know that doesn't mean liberal. That just means, you know, move things forward.
Emily Crocetti (host)
Moving things forward. A new broadly based progressive era. Ambitious stuff in our polarized times. In the next part of the interview, we’ll get to hear some of Katherine’s main ideas for breaking the duopoly stranglehold on our politics and getting things moving.
Robert Pease (host)
But first a really quick review of that first Progressive era in the United States, from roughly 1890 to 1930. This movement cut across party lines and did an awful lot to improve things for a huge number of Americans, at work, at school, and even the dinner table.
Emily Crocetti (host)
Progressives helped give women the right to vote. And they made it possible for regular citizen voters to directly elect U.S. Senators who were previously elected by legislatures in many states.
Robert Pease (host)
Progressives also led the way in establishing a modern regulatory system, including the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, energized by Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, on the health risks of the unregulated meat industry.
Emily Crocetti (host)
She also mentioned her son’s namesake, Teddy Roosevelt. Who’s known for many things: establishing the national park system as President and then running the most successful third party campaign for president in history, earning 27% of the popular vote and 88 electoral college votes.
Robert Pease (host)
In that 1912 election, and that was before term limits, Roosevelt ran to regain the Presidency on the Bull Moose Party ticket after officials from his own Republican Party denied him the nomination.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And sure, photos of Roosevelt hunting big game on safaris don’t make for a huge instagram following nowadays.
Robert Pease (host)
But in his own time he was a major voice for breaking up the hugely powerful bank, railroad, and other monopolies and duopolies, which were called trusts at that time.
Emily Crocetti (host)
In her own polite Wisconsin way, one century later, that’s what Katherine Gehl would like to do as well. For Katherine it’s not breaking up, it's more like shaking up, or at least waking up, our beloved two-party, red vs. blue duopoly.
Katherine Gehl
You know that song, “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places?” I always, if I could sing, I would sing that, which is in a sense, “we're looking for a fix to our politics in all the wrong places.” The real place to look is at the incentives that are driving the behavior and therefore the results that we're getting, or in most cases not getting, out of, for example, Congress. It's the only industry I can think of where those people in the industry playing that game, their jobs and their revenue in the politics industry are the ones that make the rules that govern that industry. Like the politicians are the ones who set the fundraising limits. The politicians are the ones that in most cases dictate and create the rules of how the elections are run. And so they keep altering rules and setting them in a way that benefits their own private organizations and their consulting firms, their media firms, their campaign firms, et cetera. And those people keep doing better and better, while the customers are doing worse and worse.
Robert Pease (host)
The U.S., excuse me, is so innovative in many ways, in business and culture and way less so in politics. Why do you think Americans have put up with this for such a long time?
Katherine Gehl
So, my own experience of why I put up with it, why did I not see it? Is because I think we were taught a certain sort of idealized view of the United States. And by the way, I am the biggest fan of the constitution, of our founders, of what I always call the greatest political innovation of modern times, which created America in the first place. And we grew up in a time when America was very ascendant and it seemed like everybody was going to follow our democracy. So we just didn't think it was something that was living that needed to be fixed because it didn't “need to be fixed,” or we didn't think it did. And the degradation has been slow. So it's like we've been frogs in that boiling water as the water has been heating up to boiling.
Robert Pease (host)
Well, let's turn to another important topic, which is legislative machinery. And you have the example of the Hastert rule.
Katherine Gehl
So most of us don't really know so much about the legislative machinery. We just remember School House Rock, and how a bill becomes a law. And it's not that: the Hastert rule is an example where party partisan control has really co-opted the way laws are made for the purpose of benefiting the parties instead of results in the public interest. And what the Hastert rule says, and it's not written down, it's a tradition – should be called the Hastert tradition, but it's the Hastert rule – and it says that no Speaker of the House from either party will allow a vote on the floor of the house unless a majority of the majority, which is to say a majority of the speaker’s party, wants that bill to pass. And that means that legislation supported by a majority of the House or a majority of the country sometimes has no chance of passing because there will never even be a vote. And by the way, it's the same in the Senate. So that's fundamentally undemocratic, and those are the kinds of rules we have to look at. I'll tell you again, remember my song that I want to sing, “Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places?” We are all looking at the filibuster as if that's the only piece of legislative machinery. The only rule that could or should be changed. I don't want to get into whether the filibuster is a good idea or not. I'm going to say there are other rules that we would absolutely have to change before we could have a functioning Congress. The be all and end all is not the filibuster.
Robert Pease (host)
Ahhh, the filibuster. That’s the rule by which any U.S. senator can silently, even without a floor speech, raise the threshold for passing legislation from 51 to 60 votes, which is way more difficult. And Emily, I don’t know if we were looking for love in our recent filibuster episode.
Emily Crocetti (host)
But we were looking for bipartisanship and how filibuster reform might affect polarizing trends in the Senate and our nation’s politics.
Robert Pease (host)
Adam Jentleson, a former deputy chief of staff in the Senate and author of Kill Switch, feels that the gridlock stemming from the filibuster contributes to hyperpartisanship and polarization.
Adam Jentleson
The reason that getting rid of the filibuster will I think help us take baby steps as a nation to get out of this polarization is that it's very easy to see President Biden picking up small numbers of Republicans on some of the major priorities that he wants to pass, such as the infrastructure bill that he's going to bring up. It's very hard to see him picking up 10 Republicans and getting to this arbitrary 60 vote threshold.
Emily Crocetti (host)
But our other guest, Richard Arenberg, a senior senate staffer to three Democratic Senators, has a very different view.
Richard Arenberg
If you think that excessive partisan polarization is the disease, eliminating the filibuster is going to exacerbate, not solve, that problem.
Robert Pease (host)
There’s so many contributing factors to our gridlock and our polarization. So we asked Katherine, for the benefit of our indie-minded listeners, what is the biggest issue to focus on in addressing our political duopoly.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And, without any hesitation, she pointed to the way we hold elections, and to her proposal for Final Five voting as a way to change the incentives.
Katherine Gehl
The biggest structural barrier to entry, meaning the biggest reason why we don't have competition to the duopoly of Democrats and Republicans, is the way we vote. So in the United States, we have plurality elections. And the point of plurality elections is the person with the most votes wins. And that seems logical, but it's really a problem, because that means that we have something called the spoiler effect. So if you're a Democrat or Republican and someone new wants to come in, that person is almost always painted as a spoiler as in, “Oh, don't vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, because she'll just spoil the election for Hillary Clinton and help elect Trump. Don't vote for Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, cause he'll spoil the election and help elect Hillary.”
[Archival audio collage, “spoiler” candidates]
Emily Crocetti (host)
That's great to hear. On your website, you have a great little bit of animation about final five voting.
[Archival audio, Final Five Voting]
Emily Crocetti (host)
And with plurality voting which we have currently, someone can win the election with just 20% of the vote. So could you describe how Final Five voting changes that?
Katherine Gehl
Final Five voting is the combination of two specific political innovations, one in the primary election and one in the general election. In the primary election, we get rid of party primaries and implement a single ballot election where everybody runs on the same ballot and the top five finishers advance to the general election, regardless of party, including independents, for example. And the second change is that in the general election, we eliminate plurality voting and we implement instant runoff voting, which uses a rank choice ballot. The purpose of final five voting is to change the incentives that drive the behavior of our elected officials so that they are incentivized to deliver results and that they have the freedom to deliver results when they're serving in Congress. So in order to do that, final five voting addresses the two key structural impediments in our election system right now that keep us from getting any results from Congress. And those two problems are that party primaries push both sides so far apart that they simply, in many ways, are not permitted. They don't have the freedom to work together, because every time they contemplate coming together in a consensus way, each, each Senator, each representative has to think, “Oh, will I win my next party primary If I work with the other side to bring this consensus bill to fruition,” and the answer for both sides is almost always no. So final five voting fixes that. The second thing final five voting does is it gets rid of plurality voting, which means it gets rid of the spoiler problem. So it creates an opportunity for new competition, healthy competition, no more zero sum competition, and competition is key in any marketplace.
Emily Crocetti (host)
So it feeds a feedback loop in a good way, it sounds like.
Katherine Gehl
Oh I like that. Yes.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And so then tell us about the formation of the Institute for Political Innovation?
Katherine Gehl
Emily, I created the Institute for Political Innovation to bridge the gap between the ideas that I put out in my book, The Politics Industry. And I determined that we needed an organization to do that. So when people read the book, the last sentence actually says, you know, I'm all in, are you? And literally, I received it on July the evening of July 4th. I love the poignancy of that, an email that said, “I'm in.” And then in the body, it said, “what are the next steps?” And that person has become a major player, a major political philanthropist in this. And that has happened more than once.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And have you been able to get bipartisan support for your Institute? How hard or easy has that been?
Katherine Gehl
We absolutely have bipartisan support. I'm deeply committed to that. Political reform has traditionally always been perceived as a trojan horse for party advantage of one side or the other. Reform in general, which is to say change in general, is historically more welcomed by Democrats. It's just a difference in the ideology of how fast things should change or not. So it is a bit more of a lift to bring conservatives on board, not because of the validity of the ideas, but because they are more hesitant and have a higher bar for experimenting with change in the political system. But the good thing is, in this case, final five voting politics industry theory. And again, most importantly, the solution that we're really working on right now, final five voting, is completely non-partisan, there's no aspect of it that provides a benefit inherent to one party or the other. It's also a proposal about healthy competition. I often call it free market politics, which delivers innovation, results, and accountability the way free markets do in well-functioning private economy. And so that's actually in many ways you could say something that the conservatives often hold up as a key part of their ideology, the benefits of free markets.
Emily Crocetti (host)
Can you tell us about the idea of the state electoral innovation laboratories and what you mean by that?
Katherine Gehl
So the constitution gives each of the 50 states the power to make the rules for their own elections. So any state can change the rules of how their senators and house members are elected. So we can make the change to Final Five voting on a state-by-state basis. And we will begin to see the results and benefit from the results of doing that when even only a small number of states make that change. So for example, as you know, Alaska in November of 2020 became the first state in the country to adopt this system design. Alaska passed by ballot initiative what I call a final four voting system. My earlier work in 2017 proposed four candidates. And in the past year I’ve determined that five is more optimal. So Alaska passed final four through the amazing work of Shea Siegert whom you for example had on your podcast and many other people and organizations, and we can see the effect already in the behavior of the federal delegation from Alaska.
Emily Crocetti (host)
Alaska is definitely one of – if not the – most indie-minded state in our union/
Robert Pease (host)
And they’ve certainly had some of the most indie-minded elected officials, including Senator Lisa Murkowski and the last independent governor in the U.S., Bill Walker, who appointed members of both parties to his administration. And here’s Emily and I reporting further on this from our Season 1 episode, “Declaration of Independents, Alaska-style.”
Emily Crocetti (host)
I’m Emily Crocetti. Alaska is a different kind of state in many ways. It’s dependent on ferry transportation, prop planes, and all kinds of snow machines.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And its size is different; even on a different scale. You could easily fit the next two largest states, Texas and California, inside of Alaska and still have room for Nevada and New York. Alaska is different politically too, and the most independent or non-partisan electorate of all 50 states. Nearly 57% of Alaskans do not register for one of the two major parties.
Robert Pease (host)
And Alaskans may well have better, less polarizing elections having passed Ballot Measure Two. That close vote has now been certified, making Alaska the first in the country to have both unified open primaries and ranked choice voting for state wide elections.
Emily Crocetti (host)
But in the same year Alaska did pass an ambitious reform, an Open Primaries ballot measure came up a bit short in Florida, while ranked choice voting fell well short of passing in Massachusetts. We asked Katherine if she was surprised by these mixed results.
Katherine Gehl
I mean, not necessarily, you know. I think change is hard and what I hope is that those of us in this, and those of us in this community, you're going to learn from the campaigns. We don't win as much as from the ones that we do and I would never have PR. So I don't know that I'm surprised by one in particular and not the other or something. I'm not surprised that we don't have all wins. I mean, this is just not realistic, you know, to think that you're just going to have all wins.
Emily Crocetti (host)
It seems like the fact that they're even coming up is a step in the right direction though.
Katherine Gehl
Oh, no question. I applaud everybody who's working on this. I mean, one thing I'll tell you is during the time that I've been doing this, the number of people and the quality of people that have come into this industry of political innovation is really exciting. The momentum is exciting. And the fact that citizens in states across the country are saying, “huh, it shouldn't be this way. You know, we need to look at something different.” I mean, it's the beginning of the progressive era of this century.
Emily Crocetti (host)
So you’ve set out an ambitious agenda, obviously with a bunch of different reform ideas. But if you had to point to the vital first step, like the most important first reform that will make the most difference in subsequent reforms coming about easier, what would that vital first step be? If you had to point to one.
Katherine Gehl
Final Five voting for federal elections is the single most important thing we need to do right now. Other reforms will be helpful. They'll matter, they'll make a big difference, but if we do not change what it takes to get reelected, there is no other set of reforms that would have a chance to alter the incentives.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And so what would you say is the biggest obstacle right now to that not coming into play?
Katherine Gehl
Final Five voting is going to be adopted on a state-by-state basis, and in half the states that can be done by ballot initiative. And then the other half of the states, it has to be legislative, which means our legislature has to pass the law and the governor has to sign it. And in order for each of these states to decide to do that by ballot initiative, vote of the citizens or legislation, you have to start a campaign in that state. And so the campaigns are starting. That's one of the things we really focus on here at the Institute for Political Innovation, we expect to see votes on a minimum of four ballot initiatives for final five voting in 2022. And what's going to keep it from happening is just the challenges of getting the campaign started and funding the campaigns and running them well. But it's nothing that isn't normally faced by new efforts. So I don't expect it will come easy. I expect you will have losses between here and the promised land, but it's totally achievable. And when people come together, we're definitely going to be able to get this done.
Emily Crocetti (host)
We’ll be following the progress on Final Five voting and checking in periodically with Katherine Gehl and the Institute for Political Innovation as they work to bring some competition and accountability back into our political system.
Robert Pease (host)
But, as Katherine notes, there’s a lot of great groups and individuals behind these nonpartisan political and electoral reform efforts. So do consider getting involved.
Emily Crocetti (host)
Two great places to start are the umbrella organizations the Bridge Alliance and the National Association of Non-Partisan Reformers, both based in Washington, D.C.
Robert Pease (host)
Next week, however, we’re going to turn away from the gridlock in Washington to the unfortunate topic of conspiracy theories and the online formation of cults in recent times. We’ll have three special guests on this episode: Doni Whitsett, a professor at USC, and Steve Hassan, author of The Cult of Trump and a former member of the Unification Church.
Emily Crocetti (host)
And also Rachel Bernstein, an experienced therapist for cult deprogramming and the host of the IndoctriNation Podcast.
Rachel Bernstein
I think cults do still occupy a physical space and it's just in the brain. And so there doesn't have to be a compound and it doesn't have to be that it's where you live, or you live with all the other members in a tiny little apartment somewhere, and the control is constant. Many people are getting into very controlling organizations, just having never met the people in person. So I think the distance actually can create more of a bond, because you fill in the blanks with what you want to be true about the group and what you want to be true about the people you're talking to.
Robert Pease (host)
Tune in then, share and like us on social media. This is Robert Pease and Emily Crocetti for the Purple Principle Team: Alison Byrne, Producer; Kevin A. Kline, audio engineer; Emily Holloway, marketing and outreach; Dom Scarlett, research associate. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.