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Oct. 19, 2022

609: How Do We Fix Our Broken Voting Systems?!

On today's episode, we're going back to an episode from the 2020 election cycle, as we listen to our conversation with Aaron Hamlin from the Center for Election Science who explains how approval voting can help fix our broken voting systems.

On today's episode, we're going back to an episode from the 2020 election cycle, as we listen to our conversation with Aaron Hamlin from the Center for Election Science who explains how approval voting can help fix our broken voting systems.


Aaron shares his thoughts on why approval voting is such a promising solution to the problems with our current voting systems and why we need to implement it sooner rather than later. He also talks about how approval voting could be implemented on a state-by-state basis and what it would take for that to happen.


We hope you enjoy this episode! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section below or send us an email at brian@briannicholsshow.com.

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Transcript

Brian Nichols  0:00  
Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. That being said, Guys onto the show, Erin Hamlin here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Erin, it's been a while since we had last had you on center for election science. You guys. I'm sure it's election season here. We're recording August 2020. And I'm guessing you guys are getting busy. Because right now, obviously, people are starting to number one focus on election season. So people are starting to get more know involved, but they're trying to do some research, I'm sure. Without a lot of people have been starting to say, you know, this election system we have in America. Why is it only we have, you know, two flavors of ice cream? Why do we only have chocolate, vanilla? And I bet a lot people are going to look and see, you know, maybe it's because our electoral system is a little messed up. So with that being said, Aaron, I think it'd be a great chance right now to reintroduce yourself to the audience and show the value of what you guys are doing the Center for election science. So with that being said, Erin Hamlin, welcome back. And let's do a quick recap. Senate election science, what do you guys focus on? And then also do a quick overview of also your kind of a political background and what got you so involved in focusing on election systems of all things?

Aaron Hamlin  1:12  
Sure, the Center for election science at election science.org. What we do is we empower voters with better voting methods to strengthen their democracy, that they have a voice so they can finally be heard. As the executive director, I founded the organization, and really excited to move forward in terms of conversation here.

Brian Nichols  1:38  
So let me let me ask you this. We have right now in 2020. You have Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and then you have this one lady out there named? She's the bat lady Jo Jorgensen, right? She's been on the show, she got hit by a banner and it was like, Oh, she's got rabies. No dragons is great. She we did a Michael Scott Fun Run. So we're good to go. She's good to go. But people are are starting to actually open their ears open their eyes and open their hearts to considering voting for one candidate named George Jorgensen. And sadly, though, I still hear a lot of folks out there, say, you're wasting your vote, you're just wasting your vote. Let's just Let's get start here. Right, I think to set the stage, let's at least look at some of these common myths. And I think the most common that we do here is the wasting the vote. So could you quickly just address that, and then also discuss maybe a little bit of how we got to the mindset that a vote for any third party candidate is a wasted vote.

Aaron Hamlin  2:33  
Sure, so under our current system, we are forced to choose just one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins. And that is unfortunate to say the least. Because what that means is that a lot of people feel that if they aren't able to vote for the winner, that they've thrown their vote away. And if the candidate that you really like, isn't likely to win, or they seem like they are newer, or they don't have the same kind of disability, for a lot of people, that puts them in the case where they struggle on where the vote for that candidate, because they feel like they're not having a say, in the outcome. And so even if that candidate is your favorite candidate, a lot of people feel pressured not to support that candidate, because they don't want to throw away their vote and not have a say, among the front runners.

Brian Nichols  3:21  
It's sad, right? Because I think right now, people, they really do want a different choice. And it's weird to see you still have this kind of mentality of shaming other people like and it's funny, cuz I'll see, like people in the left, they're like, Do not meddle in elections, unless I'm shaming you and calling you a Russian bot telling you not to mess in an election. But right now with Joe Jorgensen. She's on the ballot in all 50 states. And there really is an alternative right to to what is considered to be the Trump Biden Republican Democrat duopoly. So let's kind of dig into this how, how much of a chance let's Miss, you know, all the cards on the table in our current voting system, because someone like Joe Jorgensen have number one, and number two, based on that, what can we do to make it better in the future by changing the voting system?

Aaron Hamlin  4:08  
So right now, I would say horrendous chance. The though, the way you would think about this, technically is imagine kind of the proportion of the time that her vote would surpass the plurality electoral votes over every other candidate. And so that, that kind of tail of the distribution where where we see the number of times where she hits that threshold is vanishingly small. So it's not gonna not gonna happen. So that's that's the current scenario under our current system.

Brian Nichols  4:48  
Yep. And that's what the the basically the pick one voting system we currently have where basically you pick the worst of, I guess the best of the worst is that is that fair to say?

Aaron Hamlin  4:59  
It If it were really picking, picking up words to try to, it's a terrible situation, regardless of how you frame it. It's a terrible situation. It is.

Brian Nichols  5:08  
So I guess how do we make it better? So I obviously you know, alpha in the room you at the Center for election science, you've been doing a lot of great work in bringing forward different ideas of voting systems. And when you were last in the show, you helped me in terms of of clarifying between rank choice voting and Board account voting, which I will Garin, I've still use that to this day, and we discuss approval voting. So can we maybe set some some of the the, I guess, those different types of voting systems, kind of explain what each of those mean. And I guess what you would say is the best means going forward to actually help bring in more voices to electoral system.

Aaron Hamlin  5:43  
Sure, so some of the popular options that are out there in terms of alternatives, and there are a number of them. So there is an entire class of voting methods that involve ranking Board account, as we mentioned, last time on the show is one of them. When you rank the candidates, and those rankings translate to score values, and you add up the score values,

Brian Nichols  6:05  
I like that one. And that's my favorite one, by the way.

Aaron Hamlin  6:07  
So there's Board account, that's Board account. Another one is, which is more common in the US in terms of reform is called instant runoff voting is a ranking method. It's commonly popularized under the name rank choice voting, which is a little confusing, because there are a whole bunch of ranking methods. So the way that one works is you rank all your candidates. If a candidate has more than 50% of the first choice votes, that candidate wins. If not, which is very common when you have a crowded field, then the candidate with the fewest first choice votes is eliminated. You look at their next choice preference, the transfer over to the to their next choice preference. They're not treated as a first choice preference. And now you ask yourself again, okay, now that we've tallied up these, these ballots, does anyone have more than half of the first choice preferences under the remaining ballots? Because some of them can be exhausted? If the answer is yes, then you have a winner. If not, you keep going through that loop, through multiple rounds until you have someone that passes that threshold. That's instant runoff voting, also known as Frank choice vote and just sounds

Brian Nichols  7:14  
messy, honestly, I mean, it just if I was an average voter, and I heard that I would, I would, on election night, be staring at my TV screen, just completely, you know, just drool because you're like, what, what does this mean? Because in before you go to approval voting, I think part of the problem is, a lot of Americans look at politics as like, this is the sport really. And with it, there's a team that wins and a team that loses so it's easy with just a you know, pick one voting situation to have a winner, and everybody else is the losers. And I think that maybe is also the mentality of people just wanting some type of like finality at the end of election night, like we know who the President is going to be. Whereas, you know, if you have to go through multiple rounds of you know, pulling out, you know, first place candidates and going multiple rounds, it just, it feels like I could see that, like, Oh, my God, this is gonna take forever. And I mean, let's look back to 2000. Right, we had, how long was it a couple of months after the election, and we didn't really know if it was me, Bush or Gore. And like, the country was kind of in a weird limbo for a little bit like what's going to happen. And it was definitely uncomfortable for the country. I'm sure it was uncomfortable in DC. So obviously, it it has its flaws. And it's not a perfect system by any means. And we discussed that in the show before that the philosophy but let's go to approval voting. This is something that you've been promoting a lot over the center for election science, and you've actually you've been working with some localities to get it enacted. So let's discuss approval voting again, kind of set the foundation of what it entails. But also once we get past that maybe we can go into discussing some of the actual case studies you have right I know we discussed it last on the show. But just to show this stuff isn't just you know stuff you're talking about pie in the sky, you actually you're doing this kind of stuff, Aaron so without approval voting set the floor for us. Hey, folks really quick if you're looking for someone to amplify your message where both voters and customers spend their time look no further right strategies specializes in the unique challenges of both running political campaigns, as well as small businesses in the digital landscape. With a proven track record of helping clients win elections and grow their businesses through smart strategic digital marketing, right strategies the perfect partner to help you reach your goals. Their team of experts will help you save time and money while helping amplify your message to help you win your elections and help win in the marketplace. With SMS texting from right strategies. You'll receive an efficient, affordable and smart way to focus your marketing budget by helping you reach 1000s of voters and customers right strategies will help you make a powerful impact on the outcome of your elections and your business growth. from social media management to expert graphic design work to marketing your product or campaign or heck, even building your brand awareness right strategies can put together a plan that makes sense for your goals and do so within your budget, while learn more about how right strategies can help you win your elections, and also help grow your business head, the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Rs to get your free campaign or marketing plan report card. And of course, be sure to let Morgan and the right strategies team know that I sent you again. That's Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash Rs, amplifying your message where voters and customers spend their time, Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash Rs. And now back to the show. Sure,

Aaron Hamlin  10:28  
with approval voting, you can pick as many candidates as you want. So normally, you're forced to just pick one, if you pick more than one, they throw your ballot out, not the case with approval voting, if there are 10 candidates on your ballot, and you like say four of them, or three of them, or how many of them that you like that you'd like to see elected, you can pick as many as you want. And the candidate with the most votes wins. So that's like, in a nutshell what approval voting is. And it uses the same type of ballot, the so you don't have any kind of complexity with the ballot where it's like a ranking method, for instance, like you got this grid of the number of candidates and then like on like, another axis, you have all these rankings, you don't have any of that with approval, and you just have the bubbles next to the candidate and you bubble in as many as you want. Kind of like a thumbs up or a thumbs down for each individual candidate.

Brian Nichols  11:21  
So it eliminates really the confusion of you know, having to preference anybody, it just really is you have deep do you like this person? So, I mean, I personally, I liked the border count mentality more so because I would like people to go into the ballot box more educated, like to actually have to say like, I think 1234, which, you know, I think that'd be better for America, if you could say, objectively speaking, like, I know that Trump and Biden are both terrible, I think, you know, Joe Jorgensen would be would be the best candidate. And you can say that in your preference, but then say, because I don't want the world to, you know, go one way or the other. Whatever the argument that they're going to use today, you can either rationalize in your brain putting Trump or Biden number two, to say, you know, you're still doing your part for your side. So I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that would be a great alternative. Right. But then to your point approval voting, it brings it down much more to like an easier to actually implement level is that fair to say?

Aaron Hamlin  12:21  
A pro voting is super easy to implement. It's also free, which is not something that can be said for alternative options, like it's a runoff voting, or a choice voting, which require special voting machines, and often have recurring costs within those elections as well. And like you mentioned before, you've got delay issues, there's potential for voter confusion, particularly on the back end, the ballot itself is more complicated. So you've got all those kinds of issues. And really, a number of those issues can come with practically any ranking method. It's just that that particular method is what's being pushed right now in the US.

Brian Nichols  12:57  
So let's, let's dig into some case studies here. Right. So Fargo, North Dakota, discuss you had some good success there, right.

Aaron Hamlin  13:04  
Yeah, and this is kind of an interesting implementation. So a lot of times as we're discussing this, now we're talking about single winner pool voting. With Fargo, they had a two seat Commissioner race. And typically when you have multiple seats use a different kind of class of different voting methods. But with this, since there were only two, and also we were working within the confines of what was politically possible, and Fargo with looking at their commission, we still use this for the two seat election. Now, the next election in 2022, we'll use a single winner election with approval voting for their mayoral seat. But for they're going back to here with their commission, the they had a seven person race for their commission. And normally, they the people in their commission seat and the commission rates, they, they would win with something like 30 40%, if they're lucky in terms of percentage of the ballots that they were voted in on. But with approval voting this time around, the two people who were elected both of them were elected with over 50% approval. And on top of that, the it seems to have addressed the vote splitting issue. So there were a number of people in this particular election a little bit more center left, where otherwise it looks like they would have split their vote. But here under approval voting, their vote was not divided. And like here, I'm talking about it within the center left, but like that changes depending on where you are. If it was another geography or locality, it could have easily been the center right? Or whatever. Have you spoken their vote. So we're really worried but we really are concerned with us making sure that the electorate themselves wherever they are, whatever kind of political ideology or hopes and dreams that they have, that they don't have to worry about spreading their vote and they Are we able to get the winners that represent them?

Brian Nichols  15:03  
I would imagine that one of the hardest parts is gonna be like the education aspect, right? Because I mean, let's be real, the most, really any American citizen gets to learn about their education or sorry, learns about civics is in their, their education system, there's their public schooling system. So unfortunately, I would be a little nervous to say that, you know, you implement a brand new type of voting, and everybody's gonna be ready to rock and roll. So how do you how do you go about in helping get people prepared, both in terms of, you know, the citizenry in terms of knowing what to do and how to actually, you know, do an approval voting, but also, like, my dad's elections, our elections Commissioner, my home county up in Northern New York, and like, they have elections inspectors all across the country, they have to sit there every single election with people and I'm sure the first election it's going to be, you know, a lot of questions. So how do you address those questions? When it's go time and in, you know, people are actually going out and cashing those ballots?

Aaron Hamlin  16:05  
Absolutely. So we had to be proactive. And it wasn't to be clear, it wasn't just us here, we, this was the result of a grassroots effort. So we had a number of people local to the community that were on the ground, that really were offering the solution this as a solution to their community, and they wanted it to be a success. And they wanted to make sure that everyone understood it. They started off on a really positive foot by the voting method that they chose, because other alternatives are much more complicated than this. But they pushed for an education campaign, they did a lot of media outreach, making sure that this is something that people were aware of. We also help them with doing educate providing education materials, who provided them a grant, recently, in order to make sure that they were able to educate the voters themselves, make sure that they understood that how the ballots worked. And in addition to that, we did a poll to see how what kind of impact it had in terms of how people accepted approval voting. And the results of that poll indicated that 71% of people said that approval voting was easy, which is not surprising, because it is easy. 63% said that overall, they liked approval voting, and another 62% said that they were comfortable with approval voting. So it looks like given the data that we got back that the education campaign was successful.

Brian Nichols  17:36  
Well, it's a plus. And that means that I would say that proves it can be scalable. Right. So let's scale it up, let's say and I would love that my awesome researcher and behind the scenes extraordinaire, quarry heat, he brought this up in a question, and I think it actually raises, you know, a lot of you curious, like, hypotheticals is, let's say, we were able to get approval voting scaled up on a national level, right? Would you envision seeing like approval voting actually take over the existing electoral system being that of like, the Electoral College, and more so have it based on a national popular approval voting type of mentality? Or would it be more so of the it would be each individual state, and then it would go to Electoral College, how would that all work out?

Aaron Hamlin  18:27  
You could technically do it either way. So sidestepping the Electoral College, you can do that a couple of ways. One is through a constitutional amendment, which is very challenging. Another is using an interstate compact, which is something that the national popular vote plan wants to do, their approval voting is actually compatible with that in a way that other alternative voting methods aren't. So it does have an advantage if you want to sidestep the electoral college by using the national popular vote plan. But also if you don't want to sidestep the Electoral College, and you just want to say, hey, states have the ability to allocate their votes, however they want. But maybe I don't know about this inner state agreement. You can still have it so that the state themselves uses approval voting to decide how they allocate their individual electoral votes. And the same, and now they do it in a winner take all sense. So for instance, like let's say if New York passed approval voting at the statewide level, well, then you're looking at better offices to so approval voting would be used to vote on Senate seats, US House seats, and you could use it to vote on the presidential election as well.

Brian Nichols  19:45  
Interesting. So I guess what would your thought be? So obviously, when you have the Electoral College and we're digging in some history here, right. Electoral College itself was a compromise and the compromise was to basically get as well, it was part of when you had the Senate in the house right to give the equal representation, essentially, for the states that had larger populations versus those who did not have as large population. So you look at what today, the Electoral College, and a lot of folks on the right are, especially in the right, are in favor of Electoral College, explicitly for the fact that it does give the flyover states especially a voice. So I would hear probably one of the first objections would be well, Aaron, like, what are we doing here? Like, you're gonna end up having all these people that are, you know, in these these flyover states that are now going to be dictated by the coasts? How do we deal with that?

Aaron Hamlin  20:42  
So here to be clear, what I'm saying is that you can see approval voting works with the national popular vote plan. So you can do that if you want to, you don't have to do it. I'm just saying it's compatible with that approach. And it's compatible with a lot of things just because it's such an easy method. If you want to do it by a state by state approach, and have the states allocate their electoral votes, just how they normally do, but use approval voting, instead of the choose one voting method. Now, you can do that too, within the context of the Electoral College

Brian Nichols  21:12  
and see, I got to play devil's advocate, right? Because these are the questions that I know people are gonna see on Facebook, they're gonna they're gonna say, Hey, we should try approval voting. And then you're gonna have you know, Boomer Bob come in, and he's gonna be like, Well, what about the flyover states? And then it's going to be a whole conversation, well, then let me give me a conversation, it's just going to be no, all caps screaming by Boomer Bob, and it's not going to be productive. So I think it'd be great just to have kind of those objections ready to be overcome my day jobs in sales. So like, everything in my head is always about how you're going to be able to best overcome an objection. So in this case, I would say probably that would be one of the main objections. The other objection I would hear, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this, is that it's it's not practical. Why Why? Why do you think we can do this? What? Why you think number one, that we can get anybody to agree on a president let alone changing the way we vote entirely? What's what's the way you would overcome that? In the world of wine, there are so many choices, and that's why blood of tyrants, wine has tyrants losing their heads, whether you're looking for a new go to that home, or watching impress your friends at a party, a lot of times wine has you covered. And if you're trying to get rid of some pesky parents in your life, well, we've got that covered, too. And the Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash wine and get $5 off your order. One more time, Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash wine freemen don't ask permission. So take a sip, you'll be glad you did.

Aaron Hamlin  22:33  
Well, so far, for example, in the city of Fargo, North Dakota, it passed by 63 and a half percent in St. Louis, where we're running another campaign now with the community there. It's looking extremely good in our preliminary polls. So long as we're able to run a competent campaign and get the word out, it looks likely that that'll pass. But there's still a lot of work to do there. But it looks very, very promising. Mainly when so whenever we're, we don't want to, we want to be efficient with our efforts and with the donations that we get as well, because we're a nonprofit. So one of the ways that we calculate our actions is that we do polling at a time. And every time we do that polling, what we see is that once people hear about approval voting, they tend to like it, not to say that everybody likes it. But by far, people like it more than they don't like it once they hear about it. So it's really just a matter of learning about it as an option. Because at the end of the day, what they're comparing it to is this terrible, terrible choose one system that they have now, where they can't express their opinions, honestly, where they feel like they are throwing away their vote where they can't support third parties. And approval voting gives them the ability to address folks voting issues, being able to support the candidate that they really like. And they're going to do that in a way that is easy. It's not hard to implement it. It's free to implement it doesn't. It works and even the dumbest of voting machines. And so they're getting all these these aspects of, of voting and making sure that their voices heard that they want, and it's not costing them an arm and a leg and both cost. And it's not costing them in complexity, either.

Brian Nichols  24:25  
This is where I like to tie everything together, right? Because what you're speaking to is, is really what libertarians speak about all the time, and that is the value of the free market. And that is when you when you increase options, you increase the quality because now the other options have to compete. And we see that I mean, if I were if I were to say, you know, you have to go and purchase either a Ford or a GMC, and here's the thing, I'm sorry, it's actually going to be voted on by every Buddy and whatever one that they vote on for D plus 1% majority, that's the car you have to use. And everything like That's insane. And it is insane. Because that's not how not only it, I mean, not how it should work. But that's not how it works in anything. I mean, we don't expect that with our with our movies, we don't expect that with our TV shows, we don't think it with our cars. We don't think that with, you know, our phones for crying out loud. So I think it's important for us to then make that jump. And that is to say, people, why would you want that in your voting system? It just it. It does breed unfortunately, just this this incestuous swamp that we have in DC right now. I mean, God Trump when he was running in 2016, that's kind of what got him into the White House. Was his really explaining to the people that yes, there is a swamp and we're going to drain it. Now. Did he do that? No, he completed it by like eight times. But regardless, that was a sentiment that people were resonating with. So to your point, Aaron, I think there is a desire by the people to have this alternative voting system. And with that, change the candidates that we're getting. So with that being said, I wanted to quickly turn the question more towards that of one of strategic voting. Right. So my, my expertise before I went into sales was in political science. And one of the things we talked about is strategic voting theory. And I would love to hear, you know, if you could give me the the argument for voting for a third party for either side, right? Because right now I see we have the left and the right, who are just they're so tribal. And they don't want to at all hear any other side. But I think that there is a merit, right? If we were to objectively look at a third party candidate from a strategic strategic voting standpoint, so could you speak to that, and maybe to the merit of both candidates to say, hey, timeout for a second, really look at the third party candidate and see that you might be able to get more positives than you would otherwise.

Aaron Hamlin  26:59  
So here, like are you asking about this in terms of under our current system, or under approval voting?

Brian Nichols  27:05  
Let's let's let's make it under approval voting. How about that?

Aaron Hamlin  27:09  
Okay, under approval voting? Boy, it's so much easier. So. So under under our current choose one method? Yes, at that point, you may, you may sweat some bullets there. So under approval voting, it's really not an issue. So say, you really like Joe Jorgensen. And so you're looking at Biden as well. And you're thinking, like, I don't, I don't know about Biden, or maybe maybe even have second thoughts about Trump. But at the end of the day, you you're looking at the candidates, and you say, like, I I'm having a tough decision among the front runners. But it is clear to me that Joe Jorgensen is better than every other candidate. Well, under approval voting, you can always support your honesty, but it will never harm you to support your honesty as a candidate. And so right away, you support Joe Jorgensen, and even other people, maybe other people who maybe don't have Jorgensen as their favorite, but they say, maybe they actually like Trump, or they or they like Biden, but they have a libertarian spirit to them. And they say, like, you know, what, maybe Joe Jorgensen, maybe she isn't even my favorite. But she's got a lot of ideas that I'd like to see brought to the table. And I'd like to support her as well, to make sure that those ideas are heard. So this, this really has a number of ancillary effects. So here when you're voting now you can support your on his favorite if you want to hedge your bets. At the same time, you can vote for Trump, or you can vote for Biden to hedge your bets to make sure you have to say that to make sure you have your say in the outcome, and support Jorgensen at the same time. But even say in the event that Joe Jorgensen doesn't win, even under approval voting, you've done something that proudly voting is incapable of doing. And that is being able to capture the support of non major party candidates. So our pool of voting does an excellent job of capturing support for independent candidates and third party candidates. And we saw this when we did a poll in 2016, as well. So when we did a poll in 2016, comparing Clinton Trump Johnson and Stein, under approval voting, Johnson got 21% approval. And if you remember, in that election, he got 3% under plurality voting, so that is a tremendous drum.

Brian Nichols  29:33  
So it shows it works. It's wild. What we need to do then obviously is get more people aware of what's happening at this the Center for election science and number one that involves people sharing today's episode, but number two, heading over to the Center for election Science website. It's election science.org. And Aaron they can find you over on Twitter at Aaron F Hamlin. Now with that being said, give us a call to action. where can folks I know you guys are accepting donations to help keep pushing things forward. So where can folks go ahead and do that?

Aaron Hamlin  30:03  
Absolutely, you can go to election science set org, we have a great donation page. It's also worth mentioning that because of the Cares Act, you can donate up to $300. If you don't do a stock donation for your, so if you don't do itemization, you can do an above the line deduction, but the theater dollars this year because of the Cares Act, if you make a cash donation. So that's one thing to keep in mind. Otherwise, feel free to donate to your heart's content, so that you can see approval voting implemented in more places. And if you're looking at this, and you say, Okay, well, I'm, I'm excited to donate, but you know what, my excitement does not end there, I really want to make sure that this is implemented in as many places as possible. And I want to be on the front lines, to make sure that my voice is heard that my neighbor's voices are heard, and that the candidates that I care about that they're able to bring their issues to the table, and you're just not content until that can happen. And approval voting is implemented in more places, if that's your attitude, we have a great opportunity for you. So this year, we have started up a chapter campaign. So if you go to our website, under take action, and then join the chapter program. So if you go to election science, that org, good to join the chapter program, and click on that undertake action, you can join a chapter in your local area, and we have chapters all over the country already. We this just started this year. And already we have chapters. In Denver, we have them in Portland, we have them in Austin, we have them in Dallas, we have them across the US in major cities. And this is right now we're already hitting these major cities, but in the future, we will go into states. And so this is really an excellent opportunity to get involved to make sure that that you don't have to be in a situation where your your friends give you crap for voting the way that you see fit, and making sure just being able to make sure that you're able to have your voice heard, and not get crap from your friends, and not have second guesses about making sure that the people that you vote for represent you.

Brian Nichols  32:23  
Amen. Honestly, that's exactly what we need. Because at the end of the day to err and I think it's important to recognize that over half of Americans didn't even vote last election cycle. So that means that you know what the people that that are voting right now are not actually in the majority. I think the majority of people out there who I daresay are the silent majority, or people who just want a rational human being to be the head of the country. And gosh, I would say if we had approval voting right now, Dr. Jorgenson would have a hell of a chance. But with that being said, Aaron, thank you so much for joining The Brian Nichols Show. And definitely, I will include the links there in the show notes. So people want to get inspired and go and act they will have the means to do so. That being said, Aaron, thanks again. Thanks so much, Frank.

Unknown Speaker  33:03  
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Brian Nichols  33:09  
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Aaron HamlinProfile Photo

Aaron Hamlin

Executive Director and Co-Founder

Aaron is the executive director and co-founder of the Center for Election Science, a non-profit working to get the approval voting method implemented in cities across the United States. Aaron and the Center for Election Science are hoping to help Americans break out of the two-party system and improve the way we vote by implementing approval voting, which enables voters to vote for multiple candidates. In the past 3 years, Aaron’s organization has helped get approval voting passed in Fargo, North Dakota and St Louis, Missouri, with a new campaign just underway in Seattle. Aaron would love to have a conversation with you about:

- The problems with our current political system
- How approval voting can help get third parties like the Libertarian Party into elected office
- The successes of approval voting in Fargo and St Louis