Page 1Every month since February 1987 the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation has produced one-hour TV pro -

grams on issues related to peace, social justice, economics, the environment, and nonviolence.

The Olympia FOR’s program airs several times every week (currently every Monday at 1:30 pm, every Wednes -day at 5:00 pm, and every Thursday at 9:00 pm) for the entire month on Thurston Community Television (TCTV), channel 22 for Thurston County’s cable TV subscribers. You can see TCTV’s current schedule at www.tctv.net.

You can also watch the program described below (and more than 160 of our previous monthly interview programs and also many special programs at the Olympia FOR’s website, www.olympiafor.org. Simply click the “TV programs” link, scroll down, and click the program you want to watch. Many of our website’s TV program listings also include links to documents summarizing the program in Word and/or .pdf format.

July 2017“Reform Elections! Restore Democracy!”

Please invite more people to watch this interview and/or read the thorough summary (which you’re reading now) at the “TV Programs” part of www.olympiafor.org.

See many sources of information at the end of this document.

NOTE: This summary includes few pieces of relevant information we did not have time to include during the one-hour TV interview.

by Glen Anderson, this TV series’ producer and host

For more than 30 years the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s TV series has explored a wide variety of issues related to peace, social and economic justice, the environment, and nonviolent social change. We especially provide opportunities for the public to hear voices and viewpoints that are rarely heard in mainstream media.

Our July 2017 TV program explores how our nation conducts elections. We identify several kinds of problems and propose solutions that would increase democracy and fairness.

The U.S. officially brags about being the world’s greatest democracy, but:

• Voter turnout in the U.S. is low compared to other nations.

• Rich people and big business fund campaigns that result in governmental corruption.

• Most Americans express disgust that the people we elect do not represent us well.

• People who are already suffer discrimination are also restricted from voting.

• Other problems exist too.

Three guests share their information and insights into the problems and solutions. All three guests are active with non-profit organizations that are working to reform elections and improve democracy:

• Bre Weider is active with the Washington Voting Justice Coalition.• Colin Cole is active with Fair Vote Washington.• Cindy Black is active with Fix Democracy First.

Page 2We started by mentioning a few problems that have been hurting the U.S.’s electoral democracy.

In addition to the problems Glen mentioned when introducing this program, Colin said that many people do not feel good about our electoral system.

A great many of our congressional districts are not competitive, so people can predict five years ahead of time which party will win those seats for Congress.

Sometimes people are elected without winning a majority of votes.

Bre said there is a general sense that our electoral system is not working for most people. This is even worse in com-munities of color, where people traditionally have been marginalized. For example, Bre (who is African American) said her grandmother was not allowed to vote until she was almost 30 years old. Bre said historical trauma is built into the system, and it was amplified during this past election. Glen agreed that “the people who get picked on are getting picked on worse and worse in every possible way, including the electoral system.”

We did not have time during the interview for Glen to mention that the two big political parties have their own internal screwiness. Their internal politics and procedures resulted in nominating two horribly unpopular presidential candidates in 2016. Public opinion polling kept showing that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had extremely high negative ratings – they were two of the nation’s most unpopular politicians – but the two big parties chose them anyway. The two big po-litical parties’ internal screwiness would go beyond the scope of this interview’s topic, but Glen believes this is an impor-tant part of the problem in our nation’s dysfunctional electoral system.

What core values should drive the significant changes we must make in electoral systems?

In order to solve problems in any aspect of public policy, Glen said we should start by identifying our core values – the basic principles that should guide our public policy decisions – so we can devise solutions that will be ethical and deeply satisfying. Bre said honesty is the first core values that she thought of. People feel that our electoral system is not honest. She also affirmed fairness so people will feel that voting will represent their values and interests. We also need equity. She said people of color are 30% of our nation’s population, but they are not adequately represented in govern-mental bodies, nor are women adequately represented. Glen agreed and said governmental bodies are top-heavy with lawyers, business people and rich people. We are short on poets and social workers. Bre affirmed that we need more kinds of diversity in addition to the typical ways we think about diversity. She said we need diversity of thought too. More teachers, social workers, firefighters, etc., would broaden the quality of thinking across the spectrum, and this would enrich our democracy. Currently, she said, a person must be rich [or have rich pals] in order to get elected.

Let’s understand “Corporate Personhood.”

In just a few minutes, when we talk about how we finance election campaigns, the concept of “corporate personhood” would be arising, so Cindy helped us understand now what “corporate personhood” means. A U.S. Supreme Court deci-sion in 1886 extended 14th Amendment protections to corporations in addition to protecting human beings. Now we have seen corporations use the “corporate personhood” concept to claim rights that really should be only for human beings. This has significantly changed the functioning of our economy, our government and our elections.

Glen said that people can learn more about this, by watching an interview about this for the March 2011 program in the Olympia FOR’s TV series. You can watch it through the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s website, www.olympiafor.org. Visit www.olympiafor.org, click “TV Programs,” and scroll down to March 2011. Click the pro-gram title, “Real Democracy, Not Corporate Personhood.” Next to that link is a link to a .pdf document summarizing what we said during that interview.

The way elections are financed makes the corruption worse.

To help us understand how elections are financed now, Cindy mentioned an interesting memo written by Lewis Powell in 1971, shortly before Nixon nominated him for the U.S. Supreme Court, where he continued a pro-business career. In 1971 Powell wrote a confidential memorandum for the US Chamber of Commerce, one of the most powerful organiza-tions supporting big business. Cindy explained that the Powell Memo urged big business owners and executives to be-

Page 3come more politically involved in order to advance their capitalistic interests. In the 1960s our nation’s social justice is-sues were becoming more prominent, so Powell urged big business to become more politically active so they could ad-vance business interests more vigorously at all levels of government. Indeed, business has worked hard and gained much political power over laws, regulations, and government in general.

People talk about how “dark money” corrupts elections. Cindy explained the term “dark money” and how it corrupts our elections. She said the money is “dark” because we don’t know where it comes from. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, “Super PACs” emerged as ways to funnel much money from unknown sources to influence elections. These “Super PACs” hide the sources – which could be from big business corporations or other countries or who-knows-where, so the public does not know who is buying our elections.

Glen said every time we come up with some reform to promote honesty, other people figure out ways to get around those reforms and get back to corrupt business-as-usual. Cindy had mentioned “Super PACs,” which got around the pre-vious reform of “PACs.” Unless we the people reassert public integrity, the special interests will continue corrupting the system.

Indeed, a sequence of U.S. Supreme Court decisions have increased the power of big money’s domination of our elec-tions? A moment ago we mentioned the 2010 Citizens United decision, but few people remember the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, which, Cindy said, had declared that spending on election is a form of constitutionally protected “free speech.” Cindy said the 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC decision allowed rich people to spend as much as they want, exempt from any legal limits.

Colin added that some of the reforms are far too weak. He mentioned a Peabody Award-winning piece by Stephen Colbert that had lambasted the ways in which Super PACs circumvent the rules that tried to prevent corruption.

Glen added that the federal government’s ability to limit corruption has been severely limited. The Federal Election Commission has been prevented from functioning. This independent regulatory agency was created to enforce laws re-garding federal elections, but the Republican Party has prevented it from doing its job. Also, when Trump took power he simply waived the ethical rules that would have impaired the corruption that his appointees are rampantly practicing.

We must seriously reform how we finance elections.

People have been working for public funding nationwide and in various state and local government levels. We need to strengthen those efforts and pass serious reforms. For a number of years here in Washington State, we had a non-profit group, Washington Public Campaigns, which was working for public funding. That group evolved into Fix Democracy First, the organization that Cindy works with.

Colin summarized basic information about public funding of campaigns. He said it is not a radical idea. Other coun-tries avoid the kind of corruption that plagues our elections by funding election campaigns through taxes. A few local parts of the U.S. (including Seattle) use public funding too. Public funding allows more diverse people (not only the rich or those with rich supporters) to run for office. It reduces the “pay to play” corruption in which rich people and corpora-tions dominate governmental decision-making.

Amend the Constitution to establish: (1) Corporations are not people; and (2) Money is not speech.

Supreme Court decisions have been assuming that “corporate personhood” is a valid concept, and that it’s OK for big money to fund campaigns. The only way to fix those two systemic problems would be to amend the U.S. Constitution to explicitly say that corporations are not persons and that money is not speech.

Cindy said many Constitutional amendments were enacted in order to correct various problems that the Supreme Court had been allowing (e.g., poll taxes that required people to pay to vote, and laws preventing women from voting). Cindy said we need a 28th Amendment to the Constitution in order to abolish “corporate personhood” and to affirm that money is not speech. Glen said Cindy’s organization is part of a nationwide movement to accomplish this.

Cindy said more and more states are passing resolutions or initiatives putting their states on record calling for this re-form. In November 2016 Washington State became the 18th state to do this (by an initiative passed by voters), and this year Nevada became the 19th state to go on record (through legislative action). One way to amend the Constitution is to have Congress begin the process, and that’s what these states are promoting. The other way is through Article V of the

Page 4Constitution, which would call a constitutional convention, but that Glen said that would be extremely risky because that would open up the danger to changing the Constitution in many, many dangerous ways. Some elements of the right wing are urging an Article V constitutional convention so they could rewrite the Constitution to become extremely right-wing.

Cindy said several bills in Congress would be good remedies to accomplish our goals, including House Joint Resolu-tion 48, which calls for amending the Constitution in good ways.

Glen said people have been experimenting with different kinds of wording to accomplish our goals, and some have been converging upon similar wording to make it easier to move through Congress. Cindy agreed that the language is still being debated.

Ranked-Choice Voting = Instant Runoff Voting

Colin said one problem in our electoral system is that sometimes people are elected even though they did not receive a majority of votes. He said the U.S. uses “first-past-the-post” voting in which the person who gets the most votes (a plural-ity, not necessarily a majority) wins. But this means that when multiple people are running, some persons get elected without an actual majority of votes.

For example, in the current race for Mayor of Seattle, 21 candidates are running, and the two with the largest numbers of votes will advance to the general election. It is possible that the candidates in the general election will be persons who each got only 15% of the votes in the primary (with 85% voting against them). This is not very democratic.

Glen said the State of Maine suffered with this for many years. Their governor has been elected and re-elected with only slightly more than 1/3 of the votes in a 3-way race. He is a widely disliked, mean-spirited extremist, but the decent, fair-minded people split between two other decent, fair-minded candidates, so this widely disliked extremist keeps getting elected, even though he keeps getting just a little more than 1/3 of the votes. Colin said in 2016 he got 37% of the votes.

In November 2016 Maine’s voters chose to use “ranked-choice voting” for future elections for governor, statewide of-fices, and the U.S. House and Senate.

The remedy is called “Ranked-Choice Voting” (RCV) or “Instant Runoff Voting” (IRV). Instead of having a primary followed by a general election, voters can do this in one step (an “instant runoff”) by ranking the candidates in order of preference.

Colin explained how this is actually simpler than it might sound at first. He said people rank their preferences in many aspects of our daily lives (e.g., when deciding with friends which restaurant to visit). This should be an intuitive aspect of voting.

However, our current voting system causes people to vote against candidates they don’t like, not just the candidates they do like. Colin said our current system hurts people at all places across the political spectrum. Examples:

In 1992, some people who really liked Ross Perot did not dare to vote for him in the general election because they were afraid Perot would be a “spoiler” taking votes away from the older George H.W. Bush and leading to the elec-tion of Bill Clinton.

In 2000, some people who really liked Ralph Nader did not dare to vote for him in the general election because they were afraid Nader would be a “spoiler” taking votes away from Al Gore and leading to the election of George W. Bush.

Our current system means that if you vote for the candidate you think is best you’ll actually cause the election of the candidate you think is worst! In the two examples above, RCV or IRV would have allowed voters to avoid the spoiler ef-fect: a 1992 voter could have ranked Perot #1, Bush #2, and Clinton #3; and a 2000 voter to rank Nader #1, Gore #2, and Bush #3. Colin said, “In a democracy you should be able to vote for the candidate you like the most without feeling bad about it.”

Glen explained ranking several candidates. The candidate getting the fewest number of votes is eliminated, and those voters’ votes are transferred to their second-ranked candidate. When votes are re-tallied, whichever candidate is on the bottom now is eliminated, and the votes for that candidate are reallocated to the voters’ next choices. Eventually, bottom-ranking candidates are eliminated until one candidate remains who is acceptable to a majority of voters.

Colin said a number of organizations around the country use this method for their own internal elections. So do a number of cities and counties. Starting now, the State of Maine will use this method too.

Page 5One nice side-effect of RCV or IRV is that it reduces the amount of negative campaigning. Candidates want to be cho-

sen as 2nd choice or 3rd choice, so instead of slinging mud at competitors, candidates discuss the issues in substantive ways in order to gain support from other candidates’ voters as an alternative even if not their first choice. This is better than negative campaigning. Colin says research has shown that in Minneapolis and St. Paul, which use this method, negative campaigning has indeed decreased. He says that if a candidate is doorbelling and sees a competitor’s yard sign, this can-didate can still visit that house and ask to be that voter’s second choice in case their first choice loses. This increases ci-vility and democracy, and it reduces the political polarization that plagues our nation.

A 4-minute video clearly explains and illustrates how Ranked-Choice Voting would eliminate the Third Party “spoiler effect” and give voters more choices to elect whom they want instead of voting for “the lesser of two evils.” The original link is: https://act.represent.us/sign/rcv-np/?share&t=1&akid=12382.517441.bFS1sj An easy way to type it you’re your browser is to watch it at www.tinyrul.com/yboow63r

An interesting example occurred in 2016, when most Republican primary voters voted for the 16 candidates other than Trump, but with 17 candidates, Trump – who was widely disliked and mistrusted – ended up winning without majorities.

Colin summarized the experience of Pierce County WA, which passed RCV in 2006 but removed it a few years later. Pierce County’s election officials did a very poor job of implementing it. RCV is not really confusing and would have worked well, but Pierce County implemented it in a very confusing way.

RCV can help underrepresented demographic groups be more likely to win and increase diversity of elected officials.

Proportional Representation

Colin said that a basic concept of democracy is that governing bodies should reflect the population’s political diversity, but our current system does not promote that. He explained that proportional representation would help each governing body reflect the political leanings of that community’s population.

So, for example, if you have a district in which 60% of the voters feel one way and 40% feel another way, the propor-tion of elected officials should reflect this 60/40 distribution, instead of having all of them represent the majority view and none of them representing the minority view. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of places in the U.S., minority views are not represented adequately. For example, if you are a Democrat in rural Texas or if you’re a Republican in San Francisco, the odds are that no elected officials represent you.

To achieve Proportional Representation we could create larger districts with several representatives from each district. Instead of 5 districts electing 1 person each, we could create one district electing 5 representatives reflecting the diversity of the population’s thoughts. A few minutes later we showed a graphic on the screen that illustrates this.

This information -- http://www.fairvote.org/how_proportional_representation_elections_work -- came from Fair-Vote, www.fairvote.org

In late May 2017, British Columbia’s election strengthened two progressive political parties, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Green Party. They are combining to promote some electoral reforms – including proportional repre-sentation – that they want to offer to the voters in 2018.

Gerrymandering vs. honest redistricting

Another perversion of the spirit of democracy occurs when one political party has the power to draw the lines defining electoral districts in order to benefit the political party that has that power. This is called gerrymandering. Colin ex-plained this abuse.

Page 6Glen showed the camera the image below. One political party abused its political power to draw the boundaries of

these two actual congressional districts in order to serve that party’s interests and to diminish the other party’s potential to elect their own candidate. There is no geographical or demographic reason for these bizarre shapes other than to manipu-late the boundaries for specifically partisan bias.Two examples of congressional districts whose lines were drawn to benefit

one political party:

The image below shows 4 ways to draw district lines when 40% of this district’s voters are red and 60% of the dis-trict’s voters are blue. The first image shows this 40/60 proportion. Instead of the blue party winning all of the time, the “perfect representation” image shows that breaking this districts into 5 districts would allow proportional repre-sentation, so each political view would be represented. The “compact but unfair” image shows that a compact dis-trict (which is generally a good idea) would be unfair to the red minority in this example because they would be left with no representation. The “neither compact nor fair” image shows a gerrymandered way to rig the districts to favor the minority party over the majority party. Gerrymandering is also done specifically to deprive racial minorities of fair representation.

Page 7

Page 8Colin’s recommendation for the situation above is to keep this as one large district instead of dividing it into five dis-

tricts, and to use proportional representation to elect five officials who will represent the actual diversity of the one large district’s population. He said proportional representation is used in a number of places throughout the U.S.

Bre told us about Washington State’s situation. She said our state’s redistricting is done by a nonpartisan commission, but there is still some partisanship because the “nonpartisan” commission members are chosen by the State Legislature.

Although Latinos and Latinas comprise a very large portion of Eastern Washington’s population, they have been seri-ously underrepresented as elected officials in local governments and the State Legislature. She said that more than 90% of local elections in Washington State are conducted “at-large,” rather than by districts. This results in sizeable minority populations being unrepresented. For example, there were absolutely no Latinos or Latinas elected into Yakima’s local government, even though they were 60% of the population. The remedy in this case was to break the “at-large” area into five districts. Now four of those five seats are held by young Latina women.

Bre thanked One America (www.weareoneamerica.org), an excellent statewide organization that works for immi-grant rights, for their excellent leadership in this effort. Glen also thanked the ACLU of Washington (www.aclu-wa.org) for their expertise and efforts in this. Colin said the City of Everett might replicate Yakima’s model because Everett’s City Council members tend to come from one particular part of the city, while the areas where poor people and minorities live have absolutely no representation.

Voter suppression

Bre has been working on exposing and debunking Republicans’ allegations that “voter fraud” is taking place. Glen re-ferred to these allegations of “voter fraud” as a kind of scam. Bre said these allegations were made often in the 2016 elec-tion season, but this kind of “voter fraud” does not occur in the U.S. to any meaningful extent. Several of us read that re-cent data from more than one billion votes cast in the U.S. in recent years, there were only 36 cases of this kind of “voter fraud” – a rate far lower than the risk of being struck by lightning.

Bre said what really does happen is “voter suppression.” In 2016 Hillary Clinton lost Wisconsin by a relatively small number of votes. Wisconsin’s Republican Legislature and Governor enacted some of the worst voter suppression laws in the nation. Just within Wisconsin, 250,000 persons (especially in the constituencies who were likely to vote for Democrats) were prevented from voting. That was enough to flip the state’s vote total – and its Electoral College votes – and potentially the nationwide election. Other states also did various things to restrict likely Democratic voters from vot-ing.

Glen said “voter suppression” methods include requiring significant voter ID (e.g., birth certificates). Many older peo-ple, poor people, people born in rural areas or other countries (but naturalized citizens) might not have access to birth cer-tificates. This is a way to disenfranchise certain kinds of people, just like poll taxes did in years past. Bre said different state have different laws and rules about different kinds of ID. So, for example, in Texas a student cannot use student ID for voting, but a gun owner can use a gun ID for voting.

Bre said that – especially in some Southern states – the voting rolls have been significantly purged in various ways, in-cluding cross-checking with other lists. She said voting rolls are available for the public to see, so certain “interest groups” have gone to county offices and gotten the voting lists, and then questioned people whose names sound like they are members of minority racial or ethnic groups (African American, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, etc.), because those constituencies tend to vote for Democrats. But once a person’s name has been pulled out for questioning, that person is not eligible to vote until they go through the whole registration process again in order to be reinstated. States that prohibit same-day registration have allowed this method of “profiling” to prevent many people from voting.

Cindy said this process includes reckless cross-checking and accusations of “voter fraud” when, for example, a Latino voter in Texas has the same name as a different Latino voter in Arizona. This cross-checking can assume that this is the same person and prohibit that Latino from voting.

Glen said this happened in the 2000 election, especially in Florida, where the statewide elected official responsible for Florida’s elections was also the statewide chair of the campaign to elect George W. Bush. This was a horrible conflict of interest. She allowed this kind of cross-checking and removed from the voting rolls people whose names were similar even if not the same, and people whose Social Security numbers had 5 of their 9 digits the same as someone else’s SSN. This was enough to flip (through the U.S. Supreme Court) Florida’s Electoral College votes from Gore to Bush. Florida’s Republicans got away with this!

Page 9Bre said “voter suppression” efforts have targeted non-profit organizations (e.g., ACORN) that were registering poor

people and minorities to vote. She said some of these were pulled off the voter rolls for questioning and never added back on, so these people were not allowed to vote.

Remedies do exist! Bre works with the Washington Voting Justice Coalition, www.wavotingjustice.org. She urges the Washington State Legislature to pass the Washington State Voting Rights Act. We need automatic voter registration, same-day registration, pre-paid envelopes for voting by mail (because requiring a voter to attach a first-class stamp is ac-tually a kind of poll tax), and pre-registration for 16-and-17-year-olds in order to acquaint them with the electoral process. We also need to provide election-related information in more languages. A new law added many more drop-boxes for completed ballots. Bre said some of Eastern Washington’s counties have only one drop-box for the entire county, so peo-ple need to either drive a long distance or pay for postage stamps.

Washington Voting Rights Act

The Washington Voting Rights Act is an initiative for the January 2018 Legislative Session or the November 2018 statewide ballot. See information at www.wavotingrights.org

Bre said more than 90% of local elections are at-large. She reinforced what Colin had said a few minutes ago about at-large elections failing to represent the diversity of voters or the issues the voters care about. This initiative would promote more district-by-district voting when appropriate, as we had discussed a few minutes ago regarding Yakima. She ex-pressed appreciation for State Senator Sam Hunt (D-22nd Leg. Dist.), who has been a strong supporter of this. She said this initiative would make sure every voice is heard and representation really happens.

Glen affirmed this and said we would have wiser decisions about public policy if more voices were included when making decisions.

Fix Democracy First

Cindy works with a great statewide organization, Fix Democracy First, (206) 890-0489, www.fixdemocracyfirst.org Glen said he has long belonged to the organization Washington Public Campaigns, which evolved into Fix Democracy First. Cindy said Fix Democracy First advocates for fair elections and good government policy to serve the will of the people, not the power of money.

Cindy said Fix Democracy First does good advocacy work, including through the State Legislature. This group sup-ports the efforts and legislation that Bre mentioned, including the Washington Voting Rights Act and efforts for a 28 th Amendment, as we discussed earlier. They passed Initiative 735 in 2016 with a 63% majority calling for a constitutional amendment, as we discussed. They support public financing of elections, such as Honest Elections Seattle. They engage people in the community to promote these issues and move democracy forward.

Cindy said Fix Democracy First relates well with other organizations too. She is working actively with FairVote in Washington State and with Washington Voting Justice Coalition and other compatible organizations.

Glen mentioned that all of the organizations we are promoting are grounded in the real principles of real democracy. None of these organizations is partisan. These organizations are about having good procedures. Then if someone joins a big party or a small party, we’ll all have fair opportunities for elections.

FairVote and FairVote Washington

Colin works with FairVote Washington. Glen has long supported FairVote’s nationwide level of FairVote. Colin said FairVote works to make elections more representative along the lines that we have discussed during this interview. They work for Ranked Choice Voting and Proportional Representation. FairVote supported the successful campaign for Maine to adopt Ranked Choice Voting in 2016’s election. See FairVote’s information at www.fairvote.org

He is a co-founder of FairVote Washington, www.fairvotewa.org, which works for those kinds of issues within Wash-ington State’s local and statewide levels.

Page 10The “Fair Representation Act” is on the “Advocacy” part of www.fairvote.org

One of FairVote’s relatively new activities is promoting the Fair Representation Act. This would be a good remedy for some of the problems we have been discussing. Colin summarized the Fair Representation Act as a bill that FairVote has drafted for Congress. They are looking for a sponsor.

The Constitution does not specify how to elect our congressional representatives, so this federal legislation would change this to Ranked Choice Voting and Proportional Representation, and it would eliminate gerrymandering. We would have larger districts electing several representatives, so various parts of the political spectrum would start to find themselves actually represented in Congress, unlike now, when many, many districts are not at all competitive by party. Because all kinds of people would be better represented, this Fair Representation Act should not be a partisan issue. Glen said it would also help people who support smaller parties (Greens, Libertarians, etc.) to start getting represented too. Colin said people could start voting for the candidate they like best instead of voting against the candidate they strongly oppose.

The “Advocacy” part of www.fairvote.org explains the Fair Representation Act.

Washington State’s voters passed I-735 in November 2016

Glen said the problems we have been discussing are significant, and powerful forces have been causing and perpetuat-ing the problems. Nevertheless, most Americans – and most voters – want better democracy in the ways we have been promoting during this interview. It’s important for people to avoid cynicism and recognize that we can indeed solve these problems! Glen expressed appreciation to our guests for going beyond identifying the problems to actually propos-ing workable solutions.

And once in a while we win! Cindy had already said that in November 2016 a landslide of Washington State’s voters – 63% – passed Initiative 735. She said that the voters – by passing I-735 – called upon our members of Congress to pro-pose a constitutional amendment to overturn the “corporate personhood” notion that corporations have the human rights that the Constitution provides for human beings, and to establish the fact that money is not “free speech,” so we have a constitutional right to pass laws and regulations to control political campaign donations and make them public. Cindy said I-735 passed in all ten of our state’s congressional districts! This sentiment is widely dispersed statewide.

Other problems and solutions

Besides what we’ve already discussed, there are additional problems – and additional solutions. These include:

Honest Elections Seattle gives vouchers for donating public money to campaigns: www.honestelectionsseat-tle.org

Take the Initiative (www.taketheinitiative.us) will help support progressive signature-gatherers in Washington State.

We can count the votes in better ways -- more transparent, more honest, and more accurate. Some of the computer-ized voting machines can be easily hacked and messed with, and some of those companies are owned by highly partisan Republicans who refuse to let anyone see the computerized voting machines’ programming.

Reforming elections must be a top priority in order to make progress on any good issues

Glen said the November 2009 interview he conducted in this TV series focused ENTIRELY on getting big money out of politics in order to improve our democracy. You can watch this program through Olympia Fellowship of Reconcilia-tion’s website, www.olympiafor.org. Simply visit www.olympiafor.org, click the “TV Programs” link, scroll down to November 2009, and click that episode’s title: “Voter-Owned Elections:  Replace Special Interests’ Big Money Fi-nancing.”

Glen said getting big money out of elections is crucially important regardless of what other issues we care about! Big money in elections prevents us from making necessary progress on the climate, on single-payer health care, on stopping wasteful military weapons, on limiting genetically modified foods, and on and on. Whatever progress you want to

Page 11make on your high priority issues is being severely limited by the problems we have been discussing during this hour – and in the November 2009 interview.

One of our guests in the November 2009 interview was the late Craig Salins, who worked hard to get big money out of election campaigns. He was active with the non-profit organization Washington Public campaigns, which later evolved into Fix Democracy First. One of the things Craig Salins said during that interview – and which I have been quoting ever since 2009 – is this:

“Scratch any issue – energy, health care, environment, decisions about taxes and budgets – and you’ll find that special interest money is calling the shots.”

Craig’s point was that big money in politics prevents us from making necessary progress on all of the issues we care about. So – as Craig told us in 2009 – whatever issue is our top priority (protecting the climate, fixing our health care system, eliminating wasteful military weapons, making food healthier and more nutritious, or whatever) – alongside that top priority, our other top priority must be stopping rich people and big business from corrupting our elections, be-cause big money is an obstacle that prevents us from making progress on our top priorities.

Closing encouragement from Glen

Glen thanked our three guests – Bre Weider, Colin Cole and Cindy Black – for sharing their positive values, their substantive information, and their encouragement to promote honest and meaningful democracy:

Almost everybody in the U.S. knows that our electoral systems are broken in many ways, so they fail to meet our needs. Elections are corrupted by rich people and big business. Some politicians rig the laws and policies to take away the voting rights of people in the other party. The list of abuses goes on and on.

Fortunately, many non-profit organizations and advocates such as our three guests are working hard to solve the prob-lems and strengthen democracy.

Democracy must be based in grassroots people-power, so I hope you will help!

Many sources of information exist!

Many, many non-profit organizations are working to reform elections and restore democracy in the ways we have been discussing during this hour. In this program’s closing credits we are listing only a few that our guests are working with most directly. We are listing more than a dozen on the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s website. Visit www.olympiafor.org, click the “TV Programs” link, and scroll down to July 2017. The Word document next to the link for watching this program summarizes thoroughly what we said during this interview. The end of that Word document lists more than a dozen non-profit organizations working to reform elections and restore democracy.

Alliance for Democracy, (978) 333-7971 www.thealliancefordemocracy.org

American Promise works for the 28th Amendment to get big money out of politics: www.americanpromise.net

Black Box Voting works for transparency and honesty in how votes are counted: www.blackboxvoting.org

Common Cause works for many kinds of honesty and integrity in government: www.commoncause.org

Fair Representation Act would promote proportional representation: See www.fairvote.org or go directly to www.fairvote.org/fair_rep_in_congress#why_rcv_for_congress

Fair Vote Washington is a non-partisan, grassroots group working for electoral reform in Washington State: www.-fairvotewa.org

FairVote works for many kinds of reforms in our electoral system nationwide: (301) 270-4616, www.fairvote.org

Fix Democracy First works to reform elections in Washington State: (206) 890-0489, www.fixdemocracyfirst.org

Free Speech for People works for several kinds of rights related to constitutional democracy: www.freespeechfor-people.org

Page 12 Move to Amend works to amend the Constitution to assert that corporations are not persons and money is not

speech. This would sharply reduce big money’s power over elections. www.movetoamend.org

Public Citizen was founded by Ralph Nader in 1971 and works in many, many ways to protect citizens’ rights and make government accountable to the people. www.citizen.org

Ranked-choice voting: 4-minute video: www.tinyrul.com/yboow63r

Washington Voting Justice Coalition, www.wavotingjustice.org

Washington Voting Rights Act, www.wavotingrights.org

www.represent.us -- The “Anti-Corruption Act” would fix several problems with our corrupt, dysfunctional electoral systems. Visit www.represent.us, click “How We Win” and click “Anti-Corruption Act.”

www.taketheinitiative.us helps people in Washington State work on statewide initiatives.

You can get information about a wide variety of issues related to peace, social justice and nonviolence by contacting the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation at (360) 491-9093 or www.olympiafor.org

We're all one human family, and we all share one planet.We can create a better world, but we all have to work at it. The world needs you! You can help!

You can get information about a wide variety of issues related to peace, social justice and nonviolence by contacting the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation at (360) 491-9093 www.olympiafor.org