Jocelyn Benson is the Secretary of State of Michigan and the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process. We discuss what's at stake this year, why it's vital to pay attention to this November's elections and the primaries this spring, and the role everyday people can play in protecting democracy.

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Referees of Democracy

Secretaries of State are the referees of democracy. They serve as the chief election officers of their state, ensuring that elections are run smoothly with transparency, integrity, and security. They also make sure that every citizen has an equal opportunity to vote and have their voice heard.

The Role of Citizens

The vast majority of the American electorate is squarely on the side of democracy. Citizens play an important role in defending democracy by participating in elections: voting in people with integrity, and rejecting those who would seek to manipulate election results; volunteering to be poll workers; and to be fully and well informed.

Election Results Are Trustworthy

Multiple election audits across the United States proved that our elections are secure and trustworthy. Michigan has undergone over 250 audits that have all confirmed the accuracy and integrity of election results. The information about these audits and election-related lawsuits is available on the Secretary of State's website.

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Jocelyn Benson is Michigan's 43rd Secretary of State. In this role she is focused on ensuring elections are secure and accessible, and dramatically improving customer experiences for all who interact with her offices.

Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process, the first major book on the role of the secretary of state in enforcing election and campaign finance laws. She is also the Chair of Michigan's Task Force on Women in Sports to advance opportunities for women in Michigan as athletes and sports leaders.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and expert on civil rights law, education law and election law, Benson served as dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. When she was appointed dean at age 36, she became the youngest woman in U.S. history to lead a top-100, accredited law school. She continues to serve as vice chair of the advisory board for the Levin Center at Wayne Law, which she founded with former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin. Previously, Benson was an associate professor and associate director of Wayne Law's Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights.

Prior to her election, she served as CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE), a national nonprofit organization using the unifying power of sports to improve race relations.

Benson is co-founder and former president of Military Spouses of Michigan, a network dedicated to providing support and services to military spouses and their children.

In 2015, she became one of the youngest women in history to be inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.

You can follow Secretary Benson on Twitter at @JocelynBenson

Nathan Lockwood is the Executive Director of Rank the Vote, an organization with a vision that the national adoption of ranked choice voting (RCV) could create a political and social culture with elections based on a competition of the best ideas. We discuss how RCV works, the spoiler problem, and the benefits for our democracy.

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The Spoiler Problem

Ranked choice voting eliminates the potential for election spoilers when there are more than two candidates. In the 2000 presidential election, Ralph Nader won 100,000 votes. Had he not run, Al Gore would have likely won by 15,000-20,000 votes instead of losing the state of Florida by 500 votes. The spoiler problem affects both parties, such as when Ross Perot ran as a third candidate and took some conservative votes from George H.W. Bush.

How It Works

Instead of choosing just one candidate, ranked choice voting allows voters to rank their candidates in order of preference from 1st to 2nd, 3rd, etc. This means that voters now have back up choices in case their first choice candidate does not win the race. Their vote would automatically count towards the second choice. With ranked choice voting, voters can always vote for the candidate they truly love without fear of throwing their vote away.

Benefits

In addition to being able to vote for a first choice candidate without throwing away a vote, RCV is a more friendly system for women and minorities. Because people rank their choices, candidates aren't forced to compete against each other with negative campaigning and the results are a more reflective representation of voters. Lastly, ranked choice voting eliminates the need for runoffs, which saves money for everyone involved.

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Nathan Lockwood is Executive Director of Rank the Vote. He played a leading role in founding and growing Voter Choice Massachusetts both as the regional lead for Central Massachusetts and through various statewide roles. He also served on the board of directors of the Voter Choice Education Fund.

Nathan was elected to the Town of Lunenburg, Massachusetts Planning Board and served from 2009 through 2015. His career in the software industry spanned 25 years and included engineering, design, and management roles. He holds a BA in Philosophy from Yale University.

You can follow Nathan on Twitter at @njlockwood.

Art Chang was a mayoral candidate in New York City in 2021. We discuss his campaign and the big issues facing the City of New York. He shed light on the eviction crisis, the hurdles to adopting technology in government, and the power of joining and belonging. Technology Is Culture Change

Adopting technology solutions equates to culture change, which goes well beyond updating ways of working. Tech startups build things with users as their starting point and then work backward from that. Government would have to also think of the outcome for the citizens first in order to successfully use technology. It would force leaders to be engaged and figure out what citizens need instead of thinking about what the government needs.

Joining and Belonging

To make a difference, make a decision to join and belong. Joining together on common ground is the most effective way to make change. Being a part of a team with a shared goal will help foster a sense of belonging. Finding a common purpose is essential if we are to make an active effort to fix any problem that faces us, from increasing voter turnout to saving the planet.

The Eviction Crisis

In the wake of the pandemic, many people across America are facing the threat of eviction. Homelessness comes with a stark burden on our society. For example, if a student is homeless for one year, it cuts their chances of graduating in half. Government has the power to anticipate and mitigate the eviction crisis because it has access to information such as income tax returns, and could use technology to get ahead of the issue.

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Art believes the key to solving our most important problems is visionary leadership. He has worked to advance democracy through NYC Votes, to improve child welfare with Casebook, to bring universal broadband and climate resiliency to the waterfront with Queens West, and to build an onramp to the tech sector for CUNY students with CUNY TAP.

Art most recently ran for Mayor of NYC in the 2021 Democratic primary based on his belief that New York City can work for everyone. Before that, his work involved creating a successful ground-up legal knowledge management program at JPMorgan Chase as a Managing Director. Prior to that, he founded and led Tipping Point Partners, a tech startup incubator that created products/companies that revolutionize work for frontline workers and the people they serve, including voter engagement, campaign finance, social services, television, publishing, fashion, e-commerce. They co-created NYC Votes, Casebook, and the CUNY Technology Apprenticeship Program. At Tipping Point, Art built a decade-long partnership with Pivotal Software, and eventually joined Pivotal to help the world's leading financial services companies with digital transformation. His 40 year work experience spans New York City's key industries and government.

You can follow Art on Twitter at@achangnyc

Danielle Allen is a MacArthur Fellow and the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She's published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought, and is widely known for her work on justice and citizenship. Her most recent book is Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus. We discuss the promise of good governance, common purpose, and our moral compass in action.

Democracy Works

Good governance bolsters democracy by delivering for people in real ways that improve quality of life. For instance, it lowers the costs of living, makes quality healthcare accessible, and addresses the climate crisis, racial injustice, and more. Effective government connects hope with getting things done.

Common Purpose

Finding a common purpose is what fosters action. If individuals and communities can unite over a common purpose, they will have a target to work towards. Shared goals make it possible for teams to work cohesively and effectively. If we know where we are going collectively, then we can apply this to any issue that plagues our democracy, from inequality to climate.

Moral Compassion in Action

Our moral compass is already in action across the nation. For example, working together for fairness is much more common than one might think. Ballot propositions often achieve super majority votes. In Massachusetts, more than 70% of voters in 2020 voted for a proposition that gave small auto dealers access to data in cars, so they could stay in the business of making repairs. It's just one instance of solidarity in action.

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Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and is currently on leave as the Director of Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. She is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. Her most recent book is Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus.

Danielle has worked tirelessly through her writing, policy work, and political advocacy to advance the causes of freedom and equality, and to lay economic and health foundations on which all can flourish. She is especially proud of her civic education initiative which is supporting teaching and learning in fourteen Massachusetts school districts.

When the COVID crisis hit, Danielle quickly assembled a Rapid Response Network of forty researchers and eight institutions to lay out a policy roadmap, The Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience, and led the development of influential data metrics and tools. Many of the proposals in that Roadmap and in the related work developed have been incorporated in the Biden-Harris Administration Coronavirus Response Plan, and Danielle and her team have offered technical assistance to local leaders at city and county levels throughout the country.

She is a former Chair of the Mellon Foundation Board, past Chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

You can follow Danielle Allen on Twitter at @dsallentess

Understanding Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter stands as a movement to demand and secure Black humanity. Being a leader-full movement makes it less susceptible to disruption and has de-centered Black patriarchy. Its broad and deep inclusivity has also widened our consciousness beyond historical notions of Blackness. However, the lack of a clear leader also poses challenges in national messaging about the movement.

Love, Equality, and Fairness

Looking back at the history of Black thought in America, we see the shortcomings in our understanding of racism. Simply knowing that racism is wrong is not enough to break away from the everyday segregation our society faces. This moral immaturity continues to exist today, especially in the form of performative activism and fickle support of social movements. Combatting this kind of immaturity requires building a stronger sense of filial love across different communities.

Moral and Affective Ideas

Ideas can be powerful, but it's the affective nature of an idea that determines its power. It's clear that racial inequality results in an uneven distribution of wealth. Some would say that it is unfair. However, describing this reality as unfair removes the emotional punch that racial inequality actually results in the devastation of families, leading to anguish and despair. These two ideas are not interchangeable.

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Chris Lebron is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He specializes in political philosophy, social theory, the philosophy of race, and democratic ethics. His first book, The Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice In Our Time (OUP 2013) won the American Political Science Association Foundations of Political Theory First Book Prize. His second book The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of An Idea (OUP 2017) offers a brief intellectual history of the black lives matter social movement.

Lebron is the winner of the 2018 Hiett Prize In The Humanities, which recognizes a "career devoted to the humanities and whose work shows extraordinary promise to have a significant impact on contemporary culture." In addition to his scholarly publications, he has been an active public intellectual, writing numerous times for The New York Times's philosophy column, The Stone, Boston Review, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Billboard Magazine.

You can follow Chris on Twitter @lebron_chris

Neil Roberts is Professor of Africana Studies and Faculty Affiliate in Political Science and Religion at Williams College. He's working on a new book titled How To Live Free in an Age of Pessimism. We discuss the legacy of Charles Mills' scholarship on the racial contract, freedom, and transforming society from the bottom up.

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Racial Contract

White supremacy has shaped modern society in ways that may not be immediately obvious. Charles Mills proposes in the Racial Contract that we've operated under the assumption that rights belong to whites and are theirs to give away. By changing our conceptions about the racial contract and, in turn, racism, we can work towards constructing a new approach towards living free in our democracy.

Living Free

Living free isn't simply the lack of enslavement. In our world, social and political orders are constantly changing, creating new dynamics of subjugation. If we choose to think of freedom outside of the context of enslavement, then living free requires the individual to grow a sense of awareness of their surroundings and the political system they exist in. For example, suffrage is a hallmark of a democratic and free society.

Positive and Negative Freedoms

Positive notions of freedom are about the visions of freedom that are desired in a body politic, such as autonomy or plurality. They also include public policy, legislation, and constitutions. Negative notions of freedom are about non-interference and non-domination. One example is mask mandates, which is considered by some to be an interference of freedom.

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Neil Roberts is Professor of Africana Studies and Faculty Affiliate in Political Science and Religion at Williams College. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago with a specialization in political theory. Roberts is the recipient of fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation as well as a member of the Caribbean Philosophical Association Board of Directors.

His present writings deal with the intersections of Caribbean, Continental, and North American political theory with respect to theorizing the concept of freedom. His most recent book is A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass (The University Press of Kentucky, 2018). Roberts was President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association from 2016-19 and, since July 2018, he has served as the W. Ford Schumann Faculty Fellow in Democratic Studies. His next book is How to Live Free in an Age of Pessimism.

You can follow Neil on Twitter @neildsroberts.

Anat Shenker-Osorio is a renowned communications researcher and campaign advisor, the host of Words to Win By, and the Principal of ASO Communications. We discuss how to empower voters, the impact of repetition, and the importance of being clear on what you stand for. Social Proof Is Real

The most telling sign that a message is reaching the masses effectively is if the public acts on it. For example, the last national election cycles in 2018 and 2020 saw a large increase in voter turnout. It is not productive to narrate the problems with voter turnout. Instead, we should encourage non-voters to grasp the potential their vote holds. The proof of that effective messaging is in the social movements that follow.

Vote Is a Verb

Voting behavior is one of the most studied aspects of political communications. Because of this, we know that voting behavior is best understood as a matter of habituation. Seeing voting as an action that we need to take rather than a belief that we need to hold will create a more effective approach to spurring voter turnout. In order to make voting a habit for more people, we have to talk about it consistently.

Say what you're for: the Question of Negative Messaging

All candidates should repeatedly state what they stand for because repetition is an essential ingredient in making sure a message is heard. Negative messaging can often be counterproductive because when you're negating the other side, you are actually reinforcing their argument. What's more, by focusing on the opposition and not clearly stating your own position, you risk leaving your message unheard. It's impossible to have a message resonate if no one hears it.

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Anat Shenker-Osorio is the host of the Words to Win By podcast and Principal of ASO Communications. Anat examines why certain messages falter where others deliver. She has led research for new messaging on issues ranging from freedom to join together in union to clean energy and from immigrant rights to reforming criminal justice. Anat's original approach through priming experiments, task-based testing, and online dial surveys has led to progressive electoral and policy victories across the globe.

Anat delivers her findings at venues such as the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Centre for Australian Progress, Irish Migrant Centre, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and LUSH International. Her writing and research is profiled in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Boston Globe, Salon, The Guardian, and Grist among others. She is the author of Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense About the Economy.

You can follow Anat on Twitter @anatosaurus

We're revisiting our conversation with Mark Rank, a poverty expert, professor, and author of Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty. We discuss the true causes and systemic nature of poverty, and poverty reduction as being both moral and smart public policy.

Musical Chairs

American poverty is a bit like a game of musical chairs. The US only has good opportunities for 8 out of 10 Americans, meaning 2 people always lose. Instead of adding new opportunities or chairs, we shuffle the opportunities around, but 2 of every 10 people still end up without the opportunities. This shows that poverty is a result of the systems we have in place, not personal shortcomings, and if we continue shuffling the opportunities, we will continue having a poverty problem.

Poverty Myths

Being poor in the US is subject to several damaging myths that make it harder to reduce poverty rates country-wide. We think of a poverty rate between 10-15% of the US population, but shockingly 60-75% of Americans will spend at least one year of their lives in poverty. Another myth blames poor Americans for their own poverty, not the systems that maintain poverty in America. We also assume the costs of poverty are borne by the poor, but US taxpayers pay more than $1 trillion per year due to the externalities of poverty.

Social Safety Nets

The US has a much weaker social safety net than other developed countries. We view poverty as a personal shortcoming that is not to be rewarded with welfare programs or healthcare. Since we think the poor are undeserving of help, we do not invest in social safety nets, creating high rates of poverty. Social safety nets reduce poverty by 75-80% in other countries, whereas the US safety net only reduces it by 25-30%. The most successful anti-poverty program in the US is Social Security.

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Mark R. Rank is recognized as a foremost expert on issues of poverty, inequality, and social justice. His research on the life course risk of poverty has demonstrated for the first time that most Americans will experience poverty at some point during their lives. To date, he has written 10 books on a range of subjects, including an exploration of the American Dream, a new understanding of poverty and inequality, and the role of luck and chance in shaping the course of our lives. In addition, he has published articles in numerous academic journals across a wide variety of fields.

He has provided research expertise to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as many national organizations involved in issues of economic and social justice. His work has been cited by then-President Barack Obama, as well as Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

You can check out his book Poorly Understood here.

We're revisiting our conversation with Colin Jerolmack, an environmental sociologist and author of Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town. We discuss the public-private paradox and the tragedy of the commons, as well as the undemocratic aspects of American property rights. Public-Private Paradox

America has clearly delineated public and private domains: the public domain is regulated, and the private domain is not. A public-private paradox occurs when a decision made in the private domain creates issues in the public domain. In the case of fracking, choosing to allow drilling in your land is a private decision. That decision creates many externalities such as overuse of roads, unwanted sights and sounds, contaminated well water for neighborhood, which harms the public good.

Tragedy of the Commons

The Tragedy of the Commons explains how individual decisions pertaining to common resources can lead to degradation of that resource, hurting everyone. It's in everyone's own best interest to use as much of a common resource as possible, because if they don't, someone else will. Unfortunately, when everyone does this the shared resource is often quickly degraded. In the case of fracking, many landowners decided to lease land because their neighbors were doing it, and choosing not to lease would mean absorbing the externalities of fracking without any compensation.

American Property Rights

American landowners own their land "up to heaven, and down to hell," meaning they own both the air and subsurface rights along with their land. This is quite different from almost all other countries, where subsurface mineral rights are owned, regulated, and sold by government bodies. Landowners in the US make entirely private decisions to allow oil and gas drilling on their property without the consent of their neighbors, and in some cases without any regulation from local, state, or federal governments.

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Colin Jerolmack is a professor of sociology and environmental studies at NYU, where he also teaches courses on human-animal relations and chairs the Environmental Studies Department. His first book, The Global Pigeon explores how human-animal relations shape our experience of urban life. His second book, Up To Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town follows residents of a rural Pennsylvania community who leased their land for gas drilling in order to understand how the exercise of property rights can undermine the commonwealth. He also co-edited the volume Approaches to Ethnography: Modes of Representation and Analysis in Participant Observation with Shamus Khan. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.

You can follow Colin on Twitter @jerolmack.

We're sharing a curated list of podcast recommendations on abortion rights that we put together for our friends at EarBuds Podcast Collective in September 2021. Reproductive rights will be in the news a lot this year because of the Mississippi case before SCOTUS and because of the midterm elections.

The 5 episodes we recommend are:

Amicus with Dahlia Lithwick – "Abortion, Surveillance, and Vigilantism: An American Story"

Fresh Air with Terry Gross – "SCOTUS & The Future of Roe v. Wade"

Access: A Podcast About Abortion with Garnet Henderson – "2021 is a Record-Breaking Year for State Attacks on Abortion. How Are Advocates Fighting Back?"

The Takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry – "Corporations Stay Silent on Abortion"

Future Hindsight with Mila Atmos - "The Human Rights of Women"

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Follow the podcasts on Twitter!

EarBuds Podcast Collective: @EarBudsPodCol

Fresh Air: @nprfreshair

The Takeaway: @TheTakeaway

Access: A Podcast about Abortion: @ACCESSpod

Future Hindsight: @Futur_Hindsight