(silence) Well, hello everyone.
My name is Valerie Jarrett and I'm a Senior
Distinguished Fellow at the University of
Chicago Law School.
I'm also a board chair of When We All Vote
and co-chair of the United State of Women.
I used to be a senior advisor to President
Obama at the White House, and I'm now a senior
advisor to his foundation.
And it is in those last two roles that I had
the opportunity — I should say, the privilege —
of working with the Brennan Center for Justice.
And so, I am so delighted to be hosting tonight
as we have a conversation about our democracy
and exactly how we're going to fix it.
So in addition to the Brennan Center, which
is a nonpartisan law and policy institute
affiliated with New York University School
of Law, we are partnering with and producing
this event with NYU's John Brademas Center,
which is dedicated to debate on politics,
public policy, and other major issues facing
our world.
And so given everything going on in the world
today and in the United States, what a timely
opportunity it is for us to have a conversation
about our democracy.
So the eight years that I spent in the White
House were just extraordinary.
And I have to tell you, I don't miss the pressure
cooker.
I don't miss picking between bad and worse
alternatives.
I don't miss Congress, but what I do miss,
more than anything else, are the people.
And so, I'm particularly delighted to have
a chance to interview one of those very extraordinary
public servants with whom I had the chance
of working very closely in the White House,
David Litt.
So the last time I met David Litt, I was actually
interviewing him, but we'll get into that
in just a moment.
Not only did he come on board and he wrote
speeches for me, but then he moved on up,
you might say, and became a speech writer
for President Obama, always adding a little
wit to all of his speeches
and the ones that you will remember most notably
were the Correspondents' Dinners, where President
Obama, after he would deliver these very witty
speeches, he would say, "Why is everyone so
surprised that I'm funny?
I'm always funny."
But a lot of that humor goes to the credit
of David Litt.
He moved on from there to — what better place?  — Funny or Die, the Washington office.
And there, he was in charge of ... a lead producer, a writer, and then, he's become an author.
He's beat me.
He's out with his second book
now.
And in order do the book...
And David, I know you're on.
I want you to hold it up, hold up your copy
of the book.
I don't have a hard copy, so I want you to
hold it up so everybody can see your book,
Democracy in One Book or Less: How It Works,
Why It Doesn't, and Why Fixing It Is Easier
Than You Think.
It's a mouthful, but a really good read.
And in order to prepare for the book, David
traveled the country, which is a privilege.
I will say one of the highlights of the last
15 years of my life is having the chance to
see so much of our great country and have
conversation with all kinds of folks to try
to figure out why is there sometimes a disconnect
between we the people, and what actually
happens in Washington or in state houses or
around the country.
How do we more closely align the will of the
people with the work that is done by public
officials?
And frankly, in the climate we're in right
now, living through the worst pandemic in
our lifetime with the Covid-19, and recently,
of course, the extraordinary outpouring of
support we've seen through peaceful demonstrations
around the country around the issue of the
breach of trust between police and communities
of color.
And in a sense, it's laid bare and been a
history lesson for why our democracy is so
important and why government, the institution
of government at each level is so important.
And so that's what we're going to get into
with David tonight.
So David, let's start off with a softball
question.
So which was easier, being my speechwriter
or writing a book about Mitch McConnell?
Welcome to the conversation.
Yes, that's right.
And Valerie, I swear I had not remembered
this until recently, but like minutes ago
as I was waiting, I remembered that one of
the things I said in my first book was that
working for you, I learned how important it
was to be prepared because you had an extraordinary
talent for asking the one question that I
was not prepared for.
So now you have graciously agreed to ask me
a whole bunch of questions and I, foolishly,
am excited about it.
So thank you for being part of this [inaudible crosstalk] and
It is really an honor.
And I will also say when I started writing
a book about democracy, my first stop — I think
literally my first stop — was to talk with
Michael and visit the Brennan Center.
So this is, in so many ways, it's a real honor.
Well, you're in good hands.
All right, so I'm not going to make you answer
the question about Mitch McConnell because
I'd like to think working for me was easier,
far easier, although you did, you did, you did really, really
get, I think, under his skin with this book. That would be my guess.
But let's jump —  [crosstalk]
At least that's my hope.
— jump into the more serious questions
that I have for you.
So in researching this book about our democracy,
and obviously given the climate that we're
living in, tell us a little bit, reflect a
bit about the moment we're in and how you
think your book weaves in the message that
would be resonating with folks around the
country right now.
Well, I wrote this book for exactly the reason
that you described
and I think President Obama has spoken about
it more eloquently, not surprisingly, but
there's this gap in so many ways between what
we want and what our government does.
And when President Obama was in the White
House, on many, many issues, it meant that
change was much harder than it felt like it
ought to be.
I mean, I remember Valerie, you used to talk about
the President's plaque that he had on the
desk that said, "Hard things are hard," but
I also remember thinking at times, "Are hard
things really supposed to be this hard?"
especially when you have a mandate from the
voters.
And that extends all the way to this basic
question of, are we getting the leaders who
we vote for?
In so many cases in American life, we're asking
for one set of leaders and we're getting a
different set of leaders.
And then finally, I think the other thing
that drove me to write this book was this
understanding of, this broad feeling that just I did
not really fully understand how our government
works.
And you know, I worked in the White House.
I worked for you in the White House.
I took AP Government in high school.
I can quote all the words to "Schoolhouse Rock,"
and yet something seemed to be missing.
And so I wanted to try to pop the hood, so
to speak, on our republic and see how our
system is really working and why it isn't,
and figure out what is it that we can do together
to change it because I think that ultimately
is the promise that has brought so many people
to this work.
I mean, it's the thing that got me involved
in politics.
Back when I thought I was going to be a comedy
writer when I grew up, I remember seeing Barack
Obama give a speech after the Iowa caucuses,
and he said, "People who love this country
can change it."
And he described that as the most American
of ideals.
And so, in a way, the book is about history
and it's about political science, but it's
also just about that most American of ideals
and how we keep that alive.
Great. All right, well, so we're going to go into
little vocabulary lessons and you're going
to help us understand some of the words that
you use in the book and that also relate to
some of the topics.
So one of them is "Skywalker."
So give us, give us ... tease the audience with why you use that phrase and what it means to you.
"Skywalker window," actually.
I ended up coming up with this analogy, and
maybe one of the curses of being a speech
writer is you tend to think in analogies too
much.
My wife would certainly say that.
But this one stuck in the book.
There were plenty I took out.
And to me, it feels like as much as we would
like change to be a slow and deliberative
process and a legislative process that can
take years or decades — and that still has ... there's still value
in that — a lot of the time, if we're going
to make change in our current system of government,
it looks like the end of Episode IV of "Star
Wars."
So Luke Skywalker is, you know, heading down this narrow little ravine in the Death Star, and there's
a tiny window and a little opening.
And you don't have a very long opportunity,
but if you make that shot, if you take the
right action at the right moment, the change
is enormous and really, really quick.
And so, that's how I think about democracy
and fixing our democracy is, how can we make
those changes that don't just affect one policy
area or several policy areas, but how do we
make the changes that make everything more
easy?
How do we make the change that makes change
more possible in the future?
Okay.
So let's fast forward.
Imagine it is January 2021.
It seems like a lifetime away, but let's just
assume, and this isn't fantasy, but let's
just assume that the President, the House
and the Senate all say, "We want to reform
our democracy.
We want to be better.
We want to perfect that union."
If you were to advise them, where would you
begin?
Well, one place I would start is to say we
need to begin that process with a real reckoning
of our history.
And I particularly think about this right
now as the protests continue across America
and this uprising against racial injustice.
One of the things that I have to say I certainly
did not learn in high school was the ways
that racism and white supremacy and the status
quo are embedded in our political process
in many cases.
So the history is part of that, but let's
say we have this moment, this Skywalker window,
and we can really do some stuff. To me, there's
three different categories.
So number one, how do we make sure everyone
who wants to vote can vote?
Number two, how can we make sure that every
vote really matters?
And number three, how do we make sure that
bills that have popular support and the approval
of experts — so that both the populace and
the elitists agree they're a good idea — how
can we make sure at least those bills can
become a law?
So I think the quickest place I would start
is automatic voter registration.
I mean, we can, we're going to talk about many other
solutions, but for me, that seems like the
clearest and least controversial idea.
And I'm sure people will come up with reasons
they oppose it. They already have. But in
so many other countries, voter registration — in most other countries — voter registration ...
they don't do the way that we do.
And one of the things that I thought when
I kept going through the book — as Americans,
we're so proud to be the oldest modern democracy,
to be this example for other countries.
So when other countries look at the way we
do something like voter registration and say,
"No thank you, that's not for us," that should
also tell us maybe we're not doing that in
the right way.
So if we could make voter registration automatic,
right away, politicians would have to listen
to a lot more Americans than they have to
listen to today, and the number of people
who are, who are barred from voting has just shot
up in my lifetime.
Well, it's funny you mention that for a couple
of reasons.
Number one, for the last year or so, I have
been a huge proponent of mandatory voting,
which is a little one step further than what
you're proposing.
And I got this idea when I was talking to
an Australian and they have mandatory voting there.
And there's not a high penalty if you don't
vote — it's like $25 — but everybody votes because
it's a culture shift.
And she said, "Look, if everybody had to vote,
politicians would be forced to be more accountable
to those in the middle, and not just simply
go after a small sliver of the base because
they would know everybody would be voting."
And I will mention, and I did in the introduction,
that I chair the board of When We All Vote,
and it's an organization that Michelle Obama
launched a couple of years ago.
It's designed to actually change the culture
in our country around voting — meeting people
where they are, and specifically looking at
closing the age gap.
Evidence shows that people who vote in their
first election, they're more likely to become
lifelong voters.
And also, the race gap, because we know in
too many of our communities, people of color
are disenfranchised through policies, practices,
and procedures, and even laws.
And so we were troubled after the last presidential
election that over a hundred million people
didn't vote, to your point, David. And how
do we meet them and draw a nexus between their
lives and the issues that they care about
and voting, and ensure that they are informed
voters, and ensure that they're not just voting
for the president in one election or one candidate,
but that they understand it matters who's
on your school board. In the current climate,
who the prosecutors are, who's the mayor,
who's in the state legislature drawing the
lines for redistricting and allocating resources,
who's in the executive branch and in the legislative
branch providing the important checks and
balances.
And it is so hard to do it, but I'm encouraged
to see, even in this climate — and we'll get
more to voting later — that people do want
to show up and engage and I think are becoming
more informed voters.
But to go back to your book.
So you do talk about H.R.1 in your book, which
is kind of [inaudible] apple pie, making it
easier to vote, making sure that there are
ethics rules that members of Congress follow,
et cetera, but describe a little bit of it
and what you would want to do to change it.
So H.R.1, as I'm sure many of you watching
this know, was the first bill that the Congress
passed in, you know, after the 2018 midterms.
And it has tons of really good ideas, including
voter registration, automatic voter registration.
I mean, it includes public ... better public financing
for campaigns, all sorts of things that are
core ideas in democracy reform.
But one of the reasons I wrote this book is,
I will say — and the Brennan Center does a
fairly good job of avoiding this problem,
to all of your credit — but a lot of political
reformers who have these big, important ideas
try, it seems, to make their ideas seem as
uninteresting and unimportant as possible.
And so my big change with H.R.1 would be we
need to call it something other than H.R.1.
And I know it technically had another name
as well, but you still hear about H.R.1, and
that indicates to people who work in Congress
that it's very important, but most Americans
do not work in Congress.
And so the way we talk about these issues
shouldn't be as obscure
elements of political science.
These questions of how our elections are run,
who gets to register, who gets to vote, how
we fund our campaigns — these are basic questions
about what it means to be American, and also
about whether we can change our country together.
So we should approach these questions like
these important and also inspiring ideas that
I think they are.
You're touching on something that was my pet
peeve, as you well know when we worked together
in the White House.
And that is, there's one vocabulary in Washington,
and then there's a very different vocabulary
outside of Washington.
And since when I arrived in Washington back
in 2009, I was a newcomer.
I started in my career in local government
in Chicago
and in fact, said I would never, ever, under
any circumstances, work for the federal government.
Why?
Because I felt it was so detached and removed
from the issues that were important to the
lives of the people I was trying to help in
Chicago.
And I used to always say, why do we have to tailor
our hopes and dreams into the programs from
the federal government?
Why can't the federal government tailor all
of their resources to be specific to the needs
that we have on the ground?
And I found when I arrived in Washington,
there was like this club of people who knew
what reconciliation and filibuster and omnibus
and all these ... and I'm like speak to me in
English, will you please?
And so I think that's part of where the, the chasm
is between we the people and those who elect
us, because we're not even speaking in the
same language.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, I think that there is this category
of things.
If something is really important and also
most people don't know a lot about it, that
is an area that's always right for exploitation.
I think, I think I talk about that in the book, in
the sense of committee assignments. Which
committee you're on — if you're a legislator — matters a lot, but most Americans don't know
how much it matters.
And so that's, right off the bat, that combination
means somebody's going to take advantage of
that fact.
So, I did write this thinking, the more Americans
who understand how this stuff works — you mentioned
the filibuster and reconciliation, and those
are both things that I talk about in the book.
And I tried to sort of think about this in
the sense of, I started out, as you know, as a field organizer,
talking with volunteers on the Obama campaign
in '08.
So if I was in Wooster, Ohio, talking with
one of my volunteers about why this matters,
how would I want to describe that?
How would I have that conversation in a way
that leaves somebody whose full time job is
not politics, but they care about this, they
know how important it is, how would I leave
that person with an understanding that helps
them be a participant in all of this work?
And I think that gap is very ...
You know, sometimes the other thing is, this book ... My first book wasn't about knowing very much other than
what happened to me. You know, it was a memoir.
This book I really researched,
and so now I'm a person who knows things,
which is very new to me.
As you know, Valerie, I'm a communications
person, not a policy person.
I'm still not a policy person.
But sometimes when you know a lot of stuff,
you want to prove how much you know.
So you want to be able to say, "Oh, well,
we could solve that through reconciliation."
And what you really are saying is, "Isn't
it cool that I know what reconciliation means,
and maybe you don't?"
And it is cool — I sometimes fall into that
trap now myself.
But it doesn't actually work, because then
there's that disconnect you just described.
And so it's so important that we figure out
how to take these complicated ideas and put
them into English, and then also connect them
to values that are not about, you know, systemic reform
or structural democracy change.
I mean, I told people when I was working on
the book, "My goal is to write a book about
structural democracy reform without ever using
the phrase 'structural democracy reform.'"
And I'm pretty sure — I haven't done a find
in Word yet — but I'm pretty sure I succeeded.
Well, you're exactly right.
My other pet peeve were the use of acronyms.
We gave everything an acronym.
But what I realized is that sure, it was a shortcut
for us, but when we said the acronym, the
public had no idea what we were talking about.
And so, figuring out how ... I mean, like ACA.
Well, people turned it into Obamacare for
political reasons, but it's the Affordable
Care Act. That means so much more than "ACA."
And so when we do the shortcut, I think we
hurt, to your point, delivering of the message,
because we should be reinforcing through storytelling
what all of these laws do that connects back
to people's life.
And when you say affordable healthcare, well,
everybody knows that's something that should
be important to them, right?
But they have no idea what ACA or Obamacare
mean, other than if it's told through a political
lens, and you know you shouldn't like it.
One of my best examples would be, someone
did some polling in Kentucky and they said,
"How do you feel about Obamacare?"
"Ugh, terrible. I can't stand Obamacare."
"Well what about Kentucky Kynect? How do you feel about that?"
"Kentucky Kynect has changed my life."
Well guess what buddies, they're the same
thing.
Right, I —
And that's why I think communication has to be
constantly in the minds of lawmakers, or else
they lose their audience, and it's the most
important audience of all — the people who
voted them in.
So speaking of voting, one of the topics that
you mentioned in your book, was that you believe
that actually voting is ... immigration, rather,
is a voting issue.
And you know, because you were there, how
hard we tried to get comprehensive immigration
reform through Congress.
One of the more frustrating disappointments
that we had.
But tell us why you consider immigration
to be a voting issue.
So, I'll just start with one of the things
that I think if I had to pick one thing that
I was most surprised by, when I researched
the book —
I'll actually, I'll share two.
One is that the House of Representatives used
to have a filibuster, which totally shocked
me.
The other is the number of states that at
one point allowed non-citizens to vote.
And so I'll just let everyone watching take a guess
as to how many states at one point allowed
non-citizens to vote ... 38 States.
So nearly 80 percent of our country at one point
allowed non-citizens to vote
and when you think about it, non-citizen voting
when this country started made sense, because
everybody was new to America, because America
was brand new.
And also, because this idea of taxation without
representation worked in reverse — that if
you pay taxes, there was a sense that you
should be represented.
And of course, a lot of people were left out
of voting as we know when the country started,
but non-citizens were not among that group.
Now over time in the last 100 years, non-citizen
voting has basically gone away.
But what we replaced it with was the ability
for people to earn citizenship.
So in the 1960s, we had major immigration
reform.
In the 1980s, we had major immigration reform,
and then we basically stopped.
And one of the things that shocked me about
that is that because we stopped, we have
more and more people who have lived here for
a very long time, either because they came
here legally and are green card holders, or
because they're undocumented, but have been
here for more than 10 years.
That's the number I picked in the book for
just people whose home is the United States
and they can't vote.
And so people who are living here and can't
vote are becoming a second class of citizens,
or in this case of non-citizens.
And one of the things that really stunned
me was that Rush Limbaugh actually said in
2018, he said he would be fine allowing every
undocumented immigrant to become a citizen,
which by the way, I think would've been really
nice to know back when we were trying to get
immigration reform done.
But he said he would be fine with that, as
long as those formerly undocumented immigrants
couldn't vote for 15 or 25 years.
So if you think about that, what he was saying
is, this actually isn't about economic anxiety
and it's not even about white nationalism.
It's about the fear that if we allow immigrants
to become citizens and earn their voting rights,
they're not going to vote for people who I
like.
And the way that I think about it is, well,
yeah, that's how a democracy works.
If people live here and they have skin in
the game — and by the way, in many cases, can
fight in our military. Green card holders
serve in our military, and yet they don't have
the right to vote.
And of course, voting has always been tied
to military service.
So my point here, I was talking with a member
of Congress about this and about some of the
ideas in my book, and he said, "So you're
saying we should pass a voting bill before
we pass an immigration bill."
And I said, "Sort of, but not quite.
I actually think we should pass an immigration
bill as a voting bill
because mass citizenship is a form of mass
enfranchisement."
And so these things go hand in hand, and I
think the more we can figure out the ways
that these things are connected, the better
we're going to do, you know, Valerie, to your point,
about if we have that Skywalker window in January 2021, as you had kind of started things off by discussing.
Yes, well ... and obviously, there's a long history
in our country of trying to disenfranchise
the African American community.
And I don't think Rush Limbaugh would feel
the way he does ... did years ago that he does now.
I think he's evolved, and now he's against
immigration at all — in fact, let's just deport everybody.
But the African American community has had
challenges as a result of laws that have been
passed that were clearly discriminatory, and
young people, too.
One of my favorite examples of disenfranchisement
is in the state of Texas.
So if you have your license to carry firearms
in Texas, you can use that to register to
vote.
If you have your student identification, because
you attend one of the universities, that's
not good enough.
So there are obviously more blatant ones than
that, but making it onerous to vote, making
... Georgia passed a couple of laws while
Stacey Abrams was running and the Secretary
of State, who was running against her, to
make it more difficult, to heighten the test
to prove your identification.
When, and in fact, in our country, hey, guess
what everybody? — and obviously our friends
at the Brennan Center know this — there is no
vote fraud in this country, it's de minimis.
And trying to solve a minor problem with a
sledgehammer is ridiculous.
Well, I digress.
Let's get back to your book.
So you mentioned the filibuster, and we also
talked earlier, David, about how you traveled
the country and you talked to a lot of folks,
but you also talked to some folks inside,
like one of our former colleagues, Marty Paone.
So tell me a bit what he said about the filibuster
and why you found it so interesting.
So, I will talk about that conversation
with Marty, but first I actually want to
digress and go back to your digression
Okay.
about voter fraud, because I think it's ... you know, we hear these claims
about fraud.
One of the things that I think is really important
to point out is that people have claimed
to be fighting voter fraud in the service
of disenfranchising eligible voters basically
since the start of American history.
Women could legally vote in New Jersey for
the first few years of the 1800s.
And when lawmakers passed a law disenfranchising
women, they said they were fighting fraud,
and of course they weren't.
And the other thing that I found really remarkable
is that if you took ... so this was the in-person
voter fraud, which is the particular type that many people seem to be, claim to be concerned about —
if you took a line of voters, a human chain
of voters from New York, all the way across
the country to Seattle, down to Los Angeles,
over to New Orleans, which would be an enormous —
I mean, you know, not possible in the age of social
distancing,
but still — if you had that enormous human chain,
on average, one of those voters would be committing
fraud.
So when you say de minimis, you know, I'm not a lawyer, so I feel the same way that I do ... or that you do about some
of the DC terms.
where I think we ... it's almost, it's difficult to explain just how small a problem in-person voter fraud is.
I think ... when I kind of ran some numbers, I think voter fraud would swing a presidential
election sometime around the year 120 million A.D.
So it's very hard to overstate how few elections
are being influenced by fraud.
The ... So to move just for a second to Marty and
the filibuster.
So Marty, as you know, Valerie, was kind of
the rules guru for Democrats in the Senate
for about 30 years,
and his job was to know procedure backwards
and forwards.
And so he came to the Obama White House, he
was the legislative affairs guy for the Senate.
And I went to talk to him about the filibuster,
because I wasn't sure where we should land
on this.
And I was expecting that he would, as an institutionalist,
give me some reasons that I would say we can
reform the filibuster, but we shouldn't get
rid of it.
And that would make me look like a very reasonable
person in this book, and you know books are
a great chance to look very reasonable.
And in the end, what shocked me — and it wasn't
just Marty, but other experts, too — they ended
up saying, you know, the filibuster has a function.
and if we get rid of it, it will lead to some
unintended consequences, and we shouldn't
sugarcoat that.
But at the same time, the moment that Mitch
McConnell and his caucus feel that the legislative
filibuster is no longer helping them, it's
gone.
So the question with the filibuster is not
if, it's when, and that changed my mind entirely.
And then the question becomes, if the filibuster
is at some point going away, then who's going
to be in charge with that new power when that
happens.
And so that's why I ended up feeling that
if we're in a situation — and when I say "we"
here, I just mean people who are committed
to democracy, it doesn't have to be of any
one party —
but if people who are committed to making
democracy work have a majority in the House,
the Senate, and the White House, but they can't
get to 60 votes, which is the threshold that
you need for a filibuster, then it's time
to get rid of it.
And I think there will be unintended consequences
with that.
That's the history of the filibuster, but
I do think it's worth doing.
All right. So let's go back to voting for a second, because
there's really much to unpack there.
So everyone, of course, saw the lines in Georgia
and Wisconsin in the midst of the Covid-19
pandemic, when people were being forced to
choose between exercising their right as citizens
to vote and their health, something that we
would all say should be quite objectionable.
But the lines didn't begin then.
I remember back in 2012, when President Obama
was running for his second term, traveling
down to Florida, because we knew that the
ballot there was pretty long,
and so we were anticipating even during early
vote that there would be lengthy lines.
And I went down there right in the middle
of the early vote period, and in Miami, and
I went out to one of the polling places and
the line was around the block.
And I will say, part of my job was to say,
"Please don't leave the line. Stay. Don't
go away."
And what was reassuring was so many people
said to me, "Honey, don't you worry.
I have my chair.
I have my bucket of fried chicken.
I have a little bit to drink and I will be
here for as long as it takes."
And I think part of that was the passion with
which people felt about voting for President
Obama.
But why did the ballot have to be that long?
Why did they add all of those referendums
onto the ballot?
Why?
Because they were trying to make it more difficult
for people to vote.
And when you layer on what we've been seeing
of late, and who knows what the circumstances
will be by November, but let's plan for the
worst and hope for the best, is always my
motto.
And so one of ... so to the points that you've been talking
about, David, three policy changes that When
We All Vote proposed: number one, everyone
should be able to vote by mail.
Again, this notion that there is fraud in
vote-by-mail is nonsense.
The military has been voting by mail since
the Civil War.
Washington State only allows vote-by-mail
and there is no fraud. And ...
But in order to do that, we need to have the
post office have the resources, additional
resources it needs to accommodate what we
know will be an influx in ballots.
And I have a friend in New York who tried
to vote absentee in Georgia.
She requested it back in March. She never
did get her absentee ballot.
So we know that is a challenge right there.
The other thing, we should be able to register
online.
With technology being what it is, we should
be able to do that.
It should be so easy to do that.
And we should expand the early vote.
Again, even before the pandemic, people can't
always take off work on a Tuesday.
Yep.
Something comes up — a sick child, a sick parent,
you have an exam, you forget, you sleep in,
whatever.
Make it easier for people to vote by expanding.
So those are three simple things that
could be done, and I ...
And to this notion about everybody can do
something — when I was in San Francisco a while
ago, I met a woman who would take her ironing
board to naturalization ceremonies, and afterwards,
she'd register everybody who came out. To
your point about it should be automatic,
why are we not making it easier to vote?
What say you on this topic, David?
I would say, the short answer is we're not
making it easier to vote on purpose.
The challenge in the United States has been
for the last 40 years that — I would say since the
Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act —
public opinion has said voting is a right,
but our election laws continue to act as though
voting is a privilege
and our systems of elections continue to be
based on this idea that voting is a privilege.
And actually it turns out, even the word "franchise"  —
I was trying to figure out why is it that
we use the same word franchise for talking
about the right to vote, and also about the
right to, you know, open a Burger King?
And it's because it's this idea of a special
privilege that is being conferred to you,
either by the American state or by Burger
King headquarters, but either way, that's
what it means to be enfranchised.
Whereas voting, by the way, comes from
the Latin word to vow, which is something
everyone can do.
So I think of it as this tension between voting
and a franchise.
And one of the ways that politicians have
always sought to win elections is not just
by persuading voters to agree with them, but
by taking voters who might not agree with
them and keeping them from voting.
I mean, this was something ...
I wrote something about this recently.
I thought about this in the context of the
protests — that so many of the communities that
are most impacted by police violence, that
are impacted by systemic racism in all kinds
of ways, are also the communities where voting
rights have been under attack for years and
years and years, for decades.
And so we're in this situation where people
say, "Well, if I can keep you from voting —
either by taking away your voting rights or
just by making the lines incredibly long or
making the process very complicated — if I
can keep you from voting, I don't have to
listen to your problems."
I was on an event, like an Instagram event earlier today
and someone commented and they said, "Well, you know, when people ...
people who don't vote have no right to complain."
And I saw that kind of scroll through
the thing and I said, "I actually need to
stop that because I did hear that growing
up, and I heard it from liberals and conservatives,
not just from one side or the other.
But actually it's not that people who don't
vote have no right to complain. In millions
and millions of cases, it's the opposite.
It's that people can't complain because they
have no ability to vote."
And the reason we're not doing more is often
intentional.
The one thing I will add quickly to that is
long lines are not just a problem in some
states or other states.
In some states, you have a problem where,
for example, one of the things that I care
a lot about is the poll worker shortage we're
facing in America.
So here's an example of a great solution:
in Cincinnati, they said high school kids
can take the day off to work the polls.
So they can, they deal with their poll worker shortage,
they get all these young poll workers who
are very energetic, they understand the technology
really well, and these young kids get a civics
lesson in the process.
And so they're solving all of these problems
all at once.
In many, many other parts of the country we're
not being as creative about it and so there's
a combination of incompetence and also intentional
incompetence.
A really good suggestion.
So I was remiss. I meant to mention at the beginning
that in about five minutes, I'm going to pause,
even though I have like a hundred more questions
for David, and I'm going to give you, the audience
a chance to ask some questions.
So I've been noticing that you guys have done
this before, and there are some questions
in the Q&A, so we'll be shifting to that.
So now's a good time if you have a question
for David, pop it in and we'll make sure that
he answers it.
But in our time left, I do want to talk about
one ...
I have so many pet peeves, but another pet
peeve of mine is the Supreme Court's decision
in Citizens United, which you do talk about
also in your book.
So give us a sense about what are some practical
steps that we can take there, because what
it does is obviously it takes away from the
voice of the individual by putting so much
money into the mix because corporations can
write these huge checks.
It's why we have all this dark money.
It has, I think, really corrupted the process
and made it very difficult for politicians
who want to have that nexus between themselves
and the voters, because there's this big gorilla
in the room.
So talk a bit about Citizens United.
So to research Citizens United, I went to
Las Vegas to spend some time in one of Sheldon
Adelson's casinos.
And Sheldon Adelson, for those of you who don't
know, is probably the biggest donor to conservative causes
And we don't know who the biggest donor is
because so much money is now being donated
in secret.
I didn't learn a ton from that particular
visit, but I did lose some money,
so there was that.
What I learned when I got back home and kind of
dove into more traditional forms of research,
is that the way that I would describe Citizens
United to somebody who's never heard of it
before is that it's not just a court case.
We already have elections in the United States
where the amount of money you have is directly
tied to how much power you have.
They're shareholder elections.
So in a public company, the more shares you
own, the more power you get.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
That's kind of the way public ... that's the way companies are run.
What Citizens United did was take that process
and directly apply it to the elections that
decide who is in charge of our country in
so many different ways —
to say the more you invest in the political
process through donations, the more power
you get, the more influence you get.
And one of the decisions that Roberts handed
down — and this was not in Citizens United,
but in one of the followups — was to say, essentially, "That's fine — that if you donate more, you
get more influence."
And also you can donate basically unlimited
amounts.
And so it is going to be very difficult to
do something about Citizens United, because
it's going to take either a constitutional
amendment or major changes on the Supreme Court.
But there are some things that can lessen
the impact of Citizens United that are pretty easy.
One of the ones that I talk about in the book
is this thing that they're doing in Seattle.
They have something called democracy bonds.
So for 25 ... or you get basically a $25 gift card for being
a Seattle citizen and you can donate your
gift card to either liberal causes, conservative
causes, politicians, you name it, or you can
just say, forget it and the money goes back
to the treasury.
But what this does is it gives everyone $25
to donate to a politician.
And so the total amount of money being put
into the system by small dollar donors goes
way up and it reduces the impact of money
being put into the system by large donors.
And Rick — I think, I forget if I'm pronouncing his name, his last name wrong, Rick Hasen, I believe, who
wrote a book called "Plutocrats United" —
he talks about this as an idea called leveling up.
So there's leveling down, making it harder
for wealthy donors to have as much influence,
and there's leveling up, which is making it
easier for the rest of us to have influence.
And I think leveling up is probably more likely
to survive a constitutional challenge, and
I say that as someone who is definitely not
a constitutional scholar, but that's my impression of it.
All right, so just ... we have time for one more before
we go to the questions.
And so, I suppose Obama has always said, "Good is better."
And I think when we imagine a better political
process, what do you think that looks like?
Just to give everyone context, David is very
familiar with this, but we often try to do
everything.
And we thought, well, let's go for as much
as we can possibly get.
And when we would push as hard as we could,
inevitably, we had to compromise.
And so if any of us looked disappointed, President
Obama would say to us, "Good is better than
the alternative."
You know, good is how we got the Affordable Care Act.
It wasn't perfect, but it was a lot better
than what we had before.
And so it was kind of his guiding principle. But tell us what good would look like here,
and then we're going to get to some ...
I'm skimming, there's some great questions
here for you.
Excellent, well so this is actually an excellent chance to ...
Because I also brought your book, Valerie,
you know I Vanna White'd my book earlier. Now I can
Vanna White your book.
Actually put yours up again, because one of
the questions is people didn't see yours.
You didn't hold it long enough.
Oh yes. Here. I ...
All right. Everybody got it? Get a screenshot. Go buy it.
Yeah, everyone can take a screenshot.
You can go to my personal website, amazon.com.
I'm kidding, by the way, you should go to
Books Are Magic, which is sponsoring this
event.
I mean that.
Books Are Magic is great.
And actually one of the things, I'm just going to ... I'll jump back into the question.
But one of the things that I think has been
very exciting about the book world during
the pandemic has been the way that bookshop.org,
for those of you who may not know about it, has ...
and some other [inaudible] have come to support
independent bookstores right now, which has
been, you know,
we're talking about things that are good.
And I think that is something that has been ...
It's been hopeful to see people come together
in that way.
So anyway, all of that is to say in your book,
Valerie, you talked about this idea that —
and I'm paraphrasing you, so correct me if
I'm wrong — but you talked about this idea
that you learned in city government, which
is that in a good compromise, everybody walks
away a little bit unhappy.
And I think that's an important part of public
service that I think is very hard to wrap
one's head around —
that if you're going into public service
because you think it's going to make you very,
very happy all the time,
it's not. But what it is, is it can make you
very satisfied and very fulfilled because
you can look at moments and say, "This is
unquestionably better than it was yesterday.
We're living in a better country today than
we were yesterday."
You know, I was thinking about the Supreme Court's decision, a sort of rare, joyful Supreme Court decision.
Unbelievably joyful and unexpected actually.
Yeah, I have, I'm ... I don't know. I'm just ...
That is not something that gives me too much
hope as I think about the rest of the term
and where we're headed with the Court.
But that moment, and sometimes it happens
with Supreme Court decisions because they're
so sudden, where you can say at 10:00 a.m., the country became a little bit better and that's
a really ... that's an incredible thing.
Right. We should say the Court ruled that
employers cannot discriminate against the
LGBTQ community in hiring decisions and firing
decisions.
And so they're protected now in a way that
they were not the day before.
And as we talk about what "better" would look
like, one of the things I think is really
remarkable is that even ...
You know, I saw a poll from 2013 where 56 percent of Americans agreed that you should not be able to discriminate
against someone in the workplace for being
gay.
But because of our political process, we had
to wait eight more years, seven or eight more
years, for a conservative court to give us
these rights as opposed to being able to win
those rights through legislation, through
the legislative process.
So to me, what better looks like is when the
American people agree that we really want something,
and also when we agree, when it doesn't violate
basic rights and when the ... for consensus among the people
who know the issue the best, when we're all
on the same page, we should be able to get
that done.
So I don't think that if you, for example,
went through my book and passed every single
solution into law, we would solve climate
change or we would end gun violence, or we
certainly wouldn't end systemic racism or
totally reform policing the way that we clearly
need to.
What we would do is restore the basic idea
in our country, which is that we can solve
our problems together.
And I think the alternative is not dysfunction
and plotting forward.
I think there was this sense that maybe we
can just muddle our way through it.
But what we're seeing there's going to be ... if we can't get the process to work so that democracy gets people
what they want at least some of the time,
then the alternative is not going to be a
failing democracy, the alternative is going
to be authoritarianism
because in today's environment, authoritarians
are not staging coups, they're making sales
sales pitches.
It's the, it's the ... kind of a spin on Winston Churchill's old quote.
You know, he said "Democracy is the best form of government,"
... or "the worst form of government, other than all those that have already, that have ever been tried."
I love that quote.
Yeah, it's a great quote.
But today you see authoritarians all over
the world saying, "Well, democracy is the
worst form of government you've ever tried.
Why not try something else?"
And the problem with authoritarianism is you
don't get a return policy.
Once you decide to go that direction, you
don't get to say, "Oh, actually Churchill
was right on that one.
Let's go backwards."
And so I do think that that idea that you
alluded to that President Obama has articulated
so often that good is better is really at
the heart of a democratic process,
and I hope it's at the heart of this book
too.
Okay, so now it's the audience's turn and
just a heads up, you have 68 questions.
Spoiler alert, we're not going to get to them
all, but we're going to get to some that I've
decided I'm picking now.
So the first one, I really like.
It's from Victor Shy.
He says he's an incoming freshman at UCLA,
and his question is this: "Do you think that
the polarization we're experiencing now affects
the potential of making the structural reforms
necessary to our democracy?
And if so, how do we start to reform our fragile
democracy?"
So Victor, I think that's a great question
because there's this ...
Overarching in all of this is this idea of
we're more polarized than we used to be.
And that's certainly true in the level of
our politics, but it's also increasingly true
within neighborhoods and just in terms of
voters, and that's just a fact of American
life right now.
The question is, is polarization driving the
structural problems we're facing or are the
structural problems creating polarization?
And I think the answer is a little bit of
both, but I think we discount the amount that
structural problems lead to polarization.
Valerie, you and I were talking about this
about 20 or so minutes ago, this idea that
if everyone could vote, then politicians would
have to be moving more toward persuading people,
towards saying, who is the median voter?
Who's the person in the center who I can win
over with my ideas?
And once that happens, the polarization, by
definition, goes down a little bit.
And there's other things we can do — just as
an example, ranked-choice voting, which is
a way of rather than just voting for your
favorite candidate, you vote for a list of
candidates that you rank in order of preference.
And I go through it in more detail in the book
because it's a little complicated, but the
way it basically works is it makes sure that
your vote counts, that you can vote for your
top choice, but you won't waste your vote.
And if you had that in party primaries, you
would have more candidates running as a consensus
candidate who says, "Hey, I might not be the
first choice of the most voters, but I'm the
second choice of so many voters that that's
my route to winning the election."
And once you start to have that, to a large
extent, these things follow trends.
I do think you would see less polarization
from the top and I think that sense of coming
back together and reaching toward consensus
would then start to trickle down to other
parts of American life.
Great, now this is a question I often get,
so I think, be curious of your thought. This is from Derek.
He says, "In working on changing the culture
around voting and participation, what do you
think it would take for there to be a federal
holiday on Election Day?"
And I do want to give a shout out — there are
increasing number of employers who have announced
in the last week that they are going to give
their workers a paid day off on Election Day.
But David, what are your thoughts on a federal
holiday?
Well this is one of those things where I'm
probably against the grain of most people
who think the way I do about democracy.
I think that a federal Election Day holiday,
it's not a bad idea, but I don't think that
it actually would make nearly as big an impact
as we think.
And the reason is, Valerie, what you just alluded
to — the real question is so many people don't
get federal holidays off.
So you would need to make sure that it's a
federal holiday and also people who work jobs
where you don't get those federal holidays
off are able to get that day off.
If we were moving around the timing of Election Day,
the thing I would be most inclined to do,
if I could wave a magic wand, would be to
move Election Day to a Sunday and then have
mandatory early voting all day Saturday, and
then essentially replace Election Day with
"Election Weekend."
And to some extent, the more you get into
this stuff, the more you start to do these,
like, all right, if you could design a government
from scratch, what would it look like?
But I do think that's the way that I tend
to think about it.
I don't think it's a bad idea at all.
And I think particularly what you just alluded
to — I think companies absolutely should be
giving the day off to employees to go vote.
The other thing that I will say in addition
to the idea of a federal holiday, which again
we could do, and all it would take is
a law, a lot of states [crosstalk]
And a lot of money. And a lot of money.
Okay, that's fair. And a lot of money.
But a lot of states have time off.
You're required to give your employees time
off to vote.
But those laws are often pretty toothless,
they're very hard to enforce, they sort of assume ...
This often happens in elections —
the burden is on the voter,
so you have to prove that you took that time
off to vote, as opposed to it being assumed
that, okay, you went and waited to vote.
And by the way, if you're in a four-hour-long
line to vote, then often you don't get that
time off because even generous states don't
give you four hours.
So states could also do a huge amount here
by changing their laws to say, if you're stuck
online for four hours, then your employer
has to give you the amount of time it takes
to vote.
And also making these laws much more enforceable
and placing the ... removing the burden of proof on the voter
to have to prove that they were trying to
vote.
We should trust people enough.
And I think that's ... What would happen by the way is if you did that, politicians would have less of an incentive
to create those long lines.
So these things can be a virtuous circle where
the more we help everybody vote, the less
inclined politicians will be to make it harder
for people to vote.
Now several people have been commenting that
as we're talking in somewhat idealistic ways
that we haven't really focused on impediments like gerrymandering. Do you want to say a bit about that?
Yeah, gerrymandering is an extraordinarily
important issue in American life, and it's
really complicated.
I mean, I sort of discovered as I was working on the book, I think that's ... I don't think my editor is watching,
but if she were on this Zoom, I think she
would agree that that's the chapter that took
the longest to get right.
Because hating gerrymandering is very simple
and understanding gerrymandering is much more
difficult.
So the first thing that I think is very important
to understand in American life today is the
unfairness that takes place that actually
isn't about drawing unfair districts.
So over the last 20 or so years, we've seen
this acceleration of a trend where Democrats
increasingly live in cities and Republicans
increasingly live outside cities.
And what that means is Democrats are packed
together in these dense urban areas,
and that makes it very, very difficult to
draw districts that would be fair or would
be competitive.
An example — New York City, where I grew up and where I'm sure a lot of you are watching
from right now.
You know, if you took my apartment where I, on 86th Street, where I grew up, you can't find a precinct
that voted for Trump. You'd have to go like
deep into New Jersey.
You can't draw a district that is not going
to be deep, deep blue.
And that means that it's going to waste a
lot of votes.
So that's the not ... that's the part where gerrymandering isn't affecting things.
But then you add on top of that the most
aggressive gerrymandering we've ever seen.
The University of Chicago — the law school,
which is not a liberal institution — they did
a study and they found that the scope and skew — I think that was their words — of gerrymandering in
after the 2010 redistricting cycle, when legislators
could draw new lines, was unprecedented in
American life.
And so, the way I describe it is almost like a case
of arson in the aftermath of a forest fire —
a lot of this is happening because of demographic
trends,
but then on top of that, people are rewriting
districts or redrawing districts to make
it almost impossible to get people in power
out of power if we decide that they're not
doing a good job.
And so, I think the most telling quote in all this, in Wisconsin — which is a state that comes
up a lot in any book about how democracy needs
to be working better — in Wisconsin, the ... in the
state assembly, Democrats won the most votes.
They won a majority of the votes cast.
Republicans won not just a majority of seats,
but a huge majority of seats.
And when they asked the assembly speaker, "Well, how is this fair?"
He said, "Well, we would have ... Republicans would have had the majority of seats if Madison and Milwaukee
weren't counted."
And the thing about Madison and Milwaukee
that I point out in the book — and this took
a great deal of research — is that people live
there
so of course they should be counted.
But this idea that, "Oh, well, we don't need
to count people who don't agree with us,"
is so antithetical to democracy and it's
happening all the time.
And I will say that was way too long an answer,
so I'll try to make the other ones much shorter.
No, but it was good.
It was robust.
So a few people have raised something that
Shelley Friedman Rosh raised,
so I'll read her question.
"How do you think we can counter the cynics,
especially young 20- and 30- something cynics
who are ridden with disillusionment?"
And it is true — disproportionately, young people
don't vote,
notwithstanding the evidence that shows that
if they do, they become lifelong voters.
Since you're closer to that age than I am,
David, what say you?
So what I would say is, to some extent, you have to meet people where you live ... where they live, rather,
meet people where they live.
And I feel like that was a phrase that I heard
a lot in the Obama administration, as well.
And you need to recognize that if you're voting
in your first election, democracy has never
worked that ... has never functioned particularly
well in your lifetime.
In fact, two of the five presidential elections,
you can remember the people chose one president,
and they got a different president.
So I understand why people feel disillusioned,
especially young people, and why people feel
cynical.
I think that's one of the reasons that I wrote
this book was to, rather than say, "No, don't
worry, the system is working fine," which just
doesn't pass the smell test,
to say, "If we understand the tools that we
have available to us — yes, they're not all
working the way they're supposed to — but we
can fix the problems we have with the tools
we have."
And I think we can point more and more toward
examples where that really does make a difference.
And this was something certainly that was
an important part of what we were doing and
trying to do in the Obama administration,
which was making that connection between decisions
made by our leaders and decisions made by
ordinary Americans, and then the impact of
those decisions on Americans' lives.
And I think that that fundamental process is still
possible.
And then the other thing I will say, which is
a little less airy and a little bit more concrete —
we need to be paying a lot more attention
to local elections.
So, it is very hard to get people to see a big
picture.
That's just the nature of big picture, but
who's your mayor,
who's your city council person,
who's writing those basic laws —
we're seeing this right now in all of these
debates about policing —
this stuff is so important and it's also much
more immediate.
So if I was talking to a group of young voters,
I think I would start with local and go national,
where I think often we've tended to start
national and go local.
So a few people want to know how to get involved.
I already told you about When We All Vote.
It's a nonpartisan effort to change the culture
around voting.
People are saying, "What do you do
given that we're in a pandemic?" Go online
whenweallvote dot org.
David, are there any other ...
Several people are asking for organizations.
Are there any organizations you want to shout out?
So I would say — and it's not just because
we're talking, I would say if I was having
this conversation with someone else, I would
still say When We All Vote is a fantastic
organization that is trying to make a real
change on these issues.
All On The Line, which I believe is nonpartisan — 
that's another organization that is really
focused on gerrymandering and bringing this
issue to the fore because gerrymandering used
to be one of those issues that we talked about,
which was really important, but no one cared
about it.
And it's taken a lot of hard work, but I think
that's changed.
It's still important, but people care about
it now.
And so it's much harder to get away with stuff
you shouldn't be able to get away with.
I'm trying to think of other organizations
that I think are doing the best work.
I mean, the Brennan Center clearly is an organization I think is terrific,
but you probably know about the Brennan Center
if you're here.
The other thing that I will say is that whether
or not you have an organization, small changes
make an enormous impact here.
So particularly if you are a young person
or you know a young person, which means you
move around a lot, which makes it harder to
get registered and stay registered,
asking people to register, but also making
sure they check their registration to confirm
that they're registered in this age of voter
purges is really important.
So little things like that — you don't need
to wait to find an organization to tell you
what to do.
Often it's just as simple as going to the
people in your life and saying, "Are you registered?
Have you double-checked? Have you applied for that absentee ballot? Did you get it yet?
If you haven't gotten it yet, you know, who should you
complain to?"
And if we all did just a little bit of that,
we would live in a different country.
I mean, it's an extraordinary thing to think about,
but just a couple more of those things if we
each did would change America completely.
So a few people have asked this in the same
kind of a theme: Given the entrenchment of special
interests — and people describe various ones — given the role of the media that has changed
over the years, given kind of all of the headwinds ... so,
what's something concrete that the people
who are tuning in — and you got a lot of folks
listening — what can they do today to try to
make sure that their voices are heard and
that they can move the needle?
And you've talked about this a little bit,
but so many people have raised that, I just
want to give you another chance to go at it.
Yeah, let me give you a really concrete thing.
When you mentioned media — I'm one of those
people that is quite frustrated with Facebook,
but I'm not one of those people who's deleted
their Facebook account,
and I don't think you should.
And the reason is because pushing back against
misinformation in this current electoral climate
is going to be very important.
And a specific type is going to involve when
ballots are counted in 2020.
This is one of the things that I'm thinking
about a lot right now,
and thankfully, there's a lot of people who are
smarter than me who are thinking about it a
lot, which is more important.
A lot of states are doing the right thing,
and they're saying, "If a ballot is postmarked
by Election Day, it's counted,
even if it's not received by Election Day."
So you can drop your ballot off in the mail
on Tuesday, and it shows up, you know, in the central
counting center on Friday, and it's still
counted.
The problem is, and we saw this in 2018 because
some states already do this, we are in an
environment where politicians are discrediting
elections that they think they might not
win.
And what we saw in 2018 was a number of elections
that got deci... you know, the election night vote
said one thing, but there were all these completely
valid votes coming in later,
and politicians said, "Oh no, we should only
count the election night votes,"
even though that would mean discarding thousands
or millions of completely legal, valid votes.
And that's only going to be a bigger problem
this year because so many state laws have
changed very quickly.
And again, those changes are good, but if
we allow those changes to become an excuse,
to discredit an election with false claims
of fraud, then we could be in some real trouble.
So if you are looking to do something, one
of the most important things you can do is
know the laws in your state.
And if your state is one of the ones that
is counting ballots after Election Day, legal
ballots after Election Day, let people know.
And similarly — you know, politely, but firmly — if people
try to falsely cast doubt on an election,
don't wait for some authority figure to correct
the record.
Unfortunately, the way that America works
now, and the way media works now is that's
on all of us.
So I would say that's actually one thing that
is so important and anyone can do,
and you don't have to do it in a rude way.
You know, I'm not advocating for like more nastiness
on the internet because it has plenty, but
it's something that we absolutely should be
thinking about.
That's good.
Well, it's seven o'clock and so we're going
to close, but I want you to have the last word
before I wrap.
And I ask everybody this question, because
I think in these challenging times where we're
going through so much in our country, and
obviously, I'm a lot older than you,
I still remember the Civil Rights Movement.
This moment does feel more inclusive, not
only around our country, but also around the
world.
What gives you hope, David?
Well, first of all, before I answer that,
let me just quickly again thank the Brennan
Center for hosting this, Books Are Magic for
hosting us, and everyone should ... I'll do the
book cover one last time. I hope you read
the book and get it from Books Are Magic.
It's a great, great bookstore.
And obviously, this is a ... bookstores are working so hard to serve their communities right now, especially.
And Valerie, thank you for doing this.
I am completely honored.
I feel like, you know ... I think as you mentioned, this is ... well, I guess it's the second-best interview
I've ever had with you.
I'll put it that way.
The one where you hired me was slightly better,
but this was a close second.
You asked what makes me hopeful.
And this is a story I ended my last book with.
In 2012, I got to write a speech for a woman
named Stacy Lynn at the convention.
She's not a politician, she's a mom, and her
daughter, Zoe, had a congenital heart defect
and the Affordable Care Act, as Stacy put it,
was saving her daughter's life.
And so, at the convention, Stacy brought out
Zoe and she talked about what the Affordable
Care Act was doing for Zoe.
And for the end of my last book, I got to
go to Arizona and watch Zoe, who has now grown
into like this, you know, karate-chopping little kid, and think about how ... you know, we talk about how good is better,
but it's so clear to watch that when you see
somebody, who might not have been alive, if
not for this decision made by this president
in Washington,
and now she's trying for a yellow belt.
And as it happens, a week or two weeks ago,
I think it was a week ago, Stacy posted something
else on social media.
And I think Zoe's about 10 now.
And there's a picture of Zoe and Stacy said,
"I'm so proud of her.
She decided to do this all on her own."
And Zoe was in their house and she was taking
a knee.
She was kneeling for 8 minutes and 46
seconds for George Floyd.
And to me, that was just an extraordinary
moment to see this idea that, that here was
somebody who was quite literally saved by
America being at its best, but not just saying,
"Thank you, and now I'm going to go live my
own life,"
but even at 10, she's thinking, "I want to be
the kind of person who is there for somebody
else who needs it."
And I feel like if a 10-year-old gets that, then
I think we're going to be okay.
That's how I feel about it.
What a beautiful note to end.
Well, before we close, in addition, of course,
to thanking the Brennan Center for everything
you do each and every day, and also creating
this forum for us tonight, I have three asks.
Because I'm the moderator,
I get to do that.
So first of all, if you've not completed your Census, please go to my2020census dot gov and fill it out.
I filled mine out online.
I am not good online, as many of you who know
me, know that, but it was as simple as it
could be.
And it is so important.
It will affect the resources that flow to
your state,
and we need you to do that.
The electoral college,
all kinds of things are affected by our Census count.
And so make your voice count, and fill out
your form.
Number two: If you can sign up to vote-by-mail, do, and encourage everybody you know
to do that, as well, so that we can try to alleviate
some of the pressure on Election Day.
And of course, if you don't do that, try, if
you are in a state that allows for early vote,
to go and vote early, again alleviating that
pressure.
If you can't vote early or by mail in your
state because it's prohibited, call your members
of Congress, call your secretary of state,
call everybody who you vote for and let them
know how unhappy you are with that and put
pressure on them to change.
We have seen just in the last few weeks how
when good people come together and lift up
their voices, change can happen swiftly, far
swifter than we would've ever imagined even
six months ago.
So please let your voices be heard.
Please join me in congratulating David, on
this incredible book — all the hard work that
went into it and his willingness to share
his thoughts and to push the envelope,
because again, that's how change happens.
And thank you, David, for continuing to be
hopeful.
You know, we're all about hope and change,
and nobody said it's easy.
Nobody said it's anything to do with Pollyanna.
It takes grit and determination and resilience
to be a voice that tries to perfect our union,
so I thank you for this book.
Someone asked, "Is it on Audible?"
Yes, it is.
So you can get it, right, on Audible as well.
My last plug for the book today.
And thank you all for sharing a portion of
your evening.
Your questions were terrific.
I'm sure ...
I'm certainly sorry that we could not have
gotten to more of them.
I wish you all well, and goodnight.
