Tangle - INTERVIEW: Isaac talks with Nick Troiano of Unite America about RCV and Open Primaries

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Today we are going to be releasing an interview we did with Nick Troiano, who's coming back on the podcast for the second time. Nick is the Executive Director of Unite America, an organization trying to spread election reform all across the United States. We thought this interview was timely because we just had a very impactful mayoral race in New York City that was determined by rank choice voting. This interview was recorded back in April so we didn't get his perspective on Zohran Mamdani and what happened in New York City, but we did get to talk to him about similar election reforms that are spreading all across the country. Looking ahead, I am thrilled to announce that we're actually going to be partnering with Unite America to do some more in-depth reporting and explanatory videos discussing how we might be able to change some of our elections for the better. They are some of the leading experts on election reform in the country. They're actually on the ground trying to make many of these changes. We have tons more content coming, but we thought this would be a great one to get out to you guys now. I hope you guys enjoy this interview. Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer, Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. Today, we are going to be releasing an interview we did with Nick Treano, who's coming back on the podcast for the second time. Nick is one of the people leading the work at Unite America, which is an organization trying to spread election reform all across the United States. And we thought this interview was a great time to bring Nick back because we just had a very, very impactful mayoral race in New York City that was determined by rank choice voting.

Now, we recorded this interview with Nick all the way back in April. So we had kind of taken a little how to get it out. And then we realized this election was coming up. We thought it'd be a lot more relevant after that. So we didn't get his perspective on Zoram and what happened in New York City. But we did get to talk to him a lot about similar election reforms that are spreading all across the country. And looking ahead, I am thrilled to announce that we're actually going to be partnering with Unite America to do some more in-depth reporting and explanatory series and videos trying to suss out exactly how we might be able to change some of our elections for the better. They are some of the

leading experts on election reform in the country. They're actually on the ground trying to make many of these changes. So I'm looking forward to many more videos in partnership with Unite America, maybe featuring Nick down the road, but definitely talking a lot about many of the topics that I know that those guys care about. Now, we have tons more content coming out on the channel, but we thought this would be a great one to get out to you guys now. Without much further ado,

I want to reintroduce Nick Troiano from Unite America, and I hope you guys enjoy this interview. Nick Troiano, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here. Good to be back with you, Isaac. Yeah, so it is a return appearance for you. I can't believe it. It's been almost two years, I think, since we had you on the show last. And I think before we get into some of the stuff that's happened since the last time you were here, we should probably start for some of our new listeners and readers by just

introducing you a little bit. So I'd love to hear you just talk a little bit about some of the work you do at Unite America, some of the initiatives you guys are up to and how you got involved in this work. Yeah. So personally, I came to this work of election reform through the issue that I care most about, which is the state of our country's fiscal situation. When I was in college, you know, going back a decade or so or more,

more than I'd like to share, I was really involved with the Simpson-Bowles Commission, trying to find a bipartisan bold agreement to address our growing deficits and debt. And I saw Congress's inability to be able to deal with that issue. Republicans didn't want to give an inch on new revenue. Democrats didn't want to give an inch on entitlement reform. And so here we are right over a decade later, $20 trillion of new debt since then, and we're on an unsustainable course. What we saw with these tariffs recently and the fears in the bond market really begins

to shake the foundation of our economic security as a country. All going back to this financial and fiscal crisis is really a political crisis. It is our inability to actually govern and solve problems. That's what I saw over a decade ago. That's what motivated me to run for Congress as an independent candidate back in 2014, where I'm from in Pennsylvania and I got an up close first hand experience with just how distorted our election system is and the poor incentives that exist for candidates and elected officials.

And that experience ultimately led me to help start this organization, United America, which is focused on getting at the root causes of our political challenges through systemic changes to the way that we elect our leaders that can positively impact their incentives and therefore positively impact the results that we get from government. And so our organization is working at the state level across the country to champion reforms that are both powerful and viable in trying to improve our democracy. So one of the things that you guys have identified is this thing you call the primary problem. You have a book out called The Primary Solution.

I'd love to hear you, you know, obviously written an old book about this, so it's hard to summarize maybe in a few minutes, but explain to our listeners a little bit what the primary problem is, and then we can talk a little bit about some of the solutions you guys have proposed and how it's going. Yeah. In a nutshell, the primary problem refers to just how few voters actually wind up electing most of our elected leaders and therefore how those elected leaders fear if they were to work across the aisle to represent their constituents and solve a problem, they may be primaried out of office. And so it keeps our two parties locked to pandering to their base rather than serving

the general interest of the public. So to break that down on what we're actually seeing, and we just released a new report that looks at this at a state level across the country, is the fact that first, some nine out of 10 legislative districts, both at the state and federal level, are pretty locked for one party or another. We don't have real competitive general elections anymore. Most of that's because we've sorted ourselves geographically, you know, more progressives in urban areas, more conservatives in rural areas.

And so what that means in nine out of 10 in elections is that the election is actually decided in the primaries when both parties choose their standard bearer. The challenge is very few voters participate in those primaries and those who do tend to be much more ideologically extreme. In 16 states, by the way, if you're an independent voter, you're actually blocked out from voting in these taxpayer funded elections. And so what does that mean in the last election in 2024? Only about 14% of voters cast what we call a meaningful vote to elect their state

or federal representative. Turnout was much higher than that. But that means that a lot of voters' ballots actually just didn't matter in deciding the outcome of a competitive election. So when 14% of people are casting a meaningful ballot, that means our elected leaders are only accountable to them, especially when those leaders are thinking about what does it take to get reelected.

And so this palpable feeling that we all have of our government's not paying attention to us, they're not responsive to us on this issue or that. It's validated in this data because it's true. Americans aren't being represented. And the problem isn't just the politicians, it's not just the parties, it's actually the structure of our elections. And the good news about that is we can change it,

and states are doing that. Yeah, so I mean, there've been a few solutions that have gotten put forward, I think, by your organization, other organizations in the space. I feel like maybe, and correct me if I'm wrong here, it feels to me, at least from an outsider perspective, that probably the two most mainstream or well-known are open primaries and the rank choice voting,

which go hand in hand a little bit. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what those solutions look like, broadly speaking. Obviously it's different state to state, which changes things a little bit depending on the system you're trying to address. Yeah. Well, there is no sort of one size fits all solution, no silver bullet, but I'll walk through how we think about making progress on this issue. And all of this is contextualized in the sense that we don't need a constitutional amendment

to solve the primary problem. We don't need an act of Congress. States can change these laws at the state level, either through legislatures or through the ballot initiative process where that exists. But you can think about our primary process in a few ways in terms of how states currently use primaries. On one hand, there are closed primaries, which means that only registered Democrats or Republicans can participate in the Democratic or Republican primaries if you're independent or locked out. So the solution to that is, hey, we should at least

allow independents to vote so that all voters get to participate in taxpayer funded elections. So that's one solution. Expand the primary electorate, let all voters vote. The next set of states are those that everyone can participate, but you have to choose either the Democratic or Republican ballot. You can't by race choose which leader you think is actually best for that office. The solution to that is we should allow anyone to vote for whomever they want for every office. So that means if you want to vote for Republican for Senate

and a Democrat for governor, you should be able to do that in the primary. And we call that an all-candidate primary. And a couple states have these and that could be like a Washington or Nebraska or California that have a top two system or a state like Alaska which advanced the top four from that all-candidate primary. And the reason why and the most powerful end of the spectrum in the solution are these top four systems like we see in Alaska is because it not only expands the primary electorate but it actually shifts only expands the primary electorate,

but it actually shifts competition from the primary to the general election so that the election isn't over in the early primary, that the general election electorate decides these elections and that they have more than just two choices, more than just a D or R on their ballot, but can actually choose from a wider swath of candidates. And that's where the second component of reform comes in, is if you advance more than two from the primary, you want someone to win with majority support. And ranked choice voting solves for that

through an instant runoff. So if no one gets majority, you already have voters' backup preferences and can find who does have the broadest support. So that's kind of the spectrum of solutions. But in general, it's going from more closed systems to more open systems, which give voters a lot more choice, more voice, and more power in their elections.

And most importantly, Isaac, is that it changes the incentives of our leaders. And so if you gave me a magic wand and said, would you rather change all 435 members of the House of Representatives, or would you rather change all 435 members of the House of Representatives or would you rather change how they're going to get reelected in the next election? I'm very much in this latter camp right now. I think we're sending pretty good people into a pretty broken system. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.

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19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, it's funny when I hear you sort of explain it

like that, I find myself just kind of nodding my head. I mean, I want to vote in all these elections. I want to be able to choose, you know, especially given my ideological makeup, participate across primaries, vote for one Democrat and one Republican, depending on, you know, the office or what's happening. Why do you guys run into opposition? I mean, what comes up when you go to push these ballot initiatives or, you know, push these state legislatures to adopt these changes, what's the tension? What do you feel like you run up against?

Well, first and foremost, there's just a reflexive opposition from the political parties themselves because they are used to operating within the system as it's currently designed. In many ways, they have either mastered or even manipulated that system to their own interest and they don't like the idea of changing it or the uncertainty that changes would bring. And so the political parties as private organizations that have come to really control a lot of our electoral and governing processes

lead the resistance to change. And that's nothing new. This is what's happened in the past. Although I think it's a little bit short-sighted on their part because the current primary process actually isn't serving them too well either. In both the Democratic and Republican parties, we see time and again they are nominating candidates far outside the mainstream of the electorate, which means that they're losing otherwise winnable competitive elections.

And so some party leaders do see the fact that, hey, this current system is broken, not serving me. Maybe some of these reforms could actually be in our interest. And by the way, when independent voters are the largest and fastest growing segment of the electorate, particularly among young people, we have to adapt if we want to stay relevant and build support. So I would say that's the challenge and the opportunity when it comes to the parties. Voters as a whole, I think broadly do like these ideas.

And we see that in the polling in every state that that we're in 70 80 percent do like the idea that you should be able to vote for any candidate in every race yes you know it's quite simple some are concerned about maybe some downsides of oh well will this mean that there's what they call party rating you know the other party coming into my side to choose them you know the worst candidate to give themselves an advantage. And while I understand that objection, the data just doesn't bear that out, doesn't happen in states that have these more open systems. To the contrary, we see the manipulation of the current system, right? In 2022, Democrats spent $50 million in Republican primaries to try and advance the far-right election deniers to give themselves an advantage in the general election.

Or Republicans that are trying to boost less popular Democrats or run Green Party candidates to screw over the Democrats in the general elections. Like, that's happening under the current system. It's not like we have a perfect system today. So that's how I would respond to maybe the more common objection that sometimes we hear to these ideas. Yeah, it kind of brings to mind, like Mitch McConnell, Warren, Trump and Republicans in

2024, that some of these people they're pushing for the Senate, we're not going to win. And then a few months later, we watched the party kind of lose winnable races by electing people in the primaries who, like you said, I think were kind of outside the mainstream of the electorate. I think another criticism that I've sort of come across, at least keeping up with some of the recent work, is the idea that open primaries can reward people that just have the most money or most support from special interest groups. I think this was particularly an issue that came up during the Denver mayoral race. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about that, how you respond to some of those criticisms as well?

Yeah, I think the opposite is actually true. Right now, when you have low turnout primaries that might be composed of 10% of the electorate determining the outcome of our elections, that is a ripe environment for single issue groups, for special interests, for wealthy donors to come in and have outsized influence because they're only having to talk to 20 or 30,000 voters for a congressional race, not the three quarters of a million that actually happen to live in that district. So the current system gives outside interest disproportionate influence in being able to swing races.

And what we've seen is that that has really accrued influence to ideological super PACs that sometimes have just a couple, you know, billionaire backers that are trying to advance, you know, a particular agenda. And we have a, we've been working with, you know, academics and researchers who've taken a look at this and have shown that when you move from close primaries to all candidate primaries by a factor of two or three, you actually dilute the influence of these special interest groups because you're expanding the electorate.

And so I do think for those that are concerned about this money and politics issue, open primaries has the benefit of mitigating the special interests. Now is it fair to say if our elections are more competitive and there are more people voting that as a candidate, you may need to raise and spend more money because you're talking to a larger electorate, yes. But that's not a bug. That's a feature of having a more open system.

And that was the unfair criticism leveled at the Colorado campaign by Senator Bennett and others here, I think unfairly last year, as they say, elections are going to get more expensive. Well, yeah, because there's going to be more candidates running and more choice and competition for voters. And that's a good thing for democracy. So last time we spoke, I think, at least from where I was sitting, it felt a little bit

like you guys had the wind at your backs. I mean, you had won some ballot initiatives across the country. We had just seen Alaska adopt this RCV system. It seemed to be going pretty well. We had this really interesting result with a Democratic House member, never a Trump Republican senator, or a sort of pro-Trump Republican governor. It was like, this is it. This is representative of the Alaskan people. That's something that stuck with me at least. I think as I understand,

at least in the last election cycle, you guys ran into some challenges, at least at the national level, like some ballot initiatives that didn't pass that you were hopeful about. Tell me a little bit about like what has happened in the last year, how the landscape has changed for you. I'd love to hear just like sort of the 30,000 foot view

on what's happened since the last time we spoke and what you guys are thinking about it right now. Yeah. Well, when you zoom out first, what I would point out is that we're 25 years into this sort of modern democratic renewal and renovation that the country hasn't seen since the progressive era century ago. And it started in states like California and Washington that were the first to adopt all

Canada primaries. They were challenged by the parties in the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in the favor of reformers and that set the table for what we've seen happen at larger scale in a more coordinated way since. And the win in Alaska in 2020 for the first top four system, as you referenced, did breathe new life, I think, into this movement and gathered interest from other states to say, hey, maybe we can do this here, too. So fast forward, that all leads to 2024, where we've seen the most ever in a given election cycle initiatives for some type of

election reform. And it was a big deal that in seven states, some version of an open primary or ranked race voting or in combination got onto the ballot, you know, often through, you know, defeating the parties that would litigate against it. In Oregon, it was referred by the legislature. In Idaho, it was 2,000 volunteers gathering signatures. And you know, go forward to election day and over 5 million people voted for these things. So the amount of awareness and support generated by the movement was the biggest ever. And it was also disappointing because all of the offensive initiatives fell short, including in three states by just one to three percentage points, including in Montana, you know, where if 6000 votes went the other way, you know, we'd have the next state. And so we came close. And that was in the face of pretty significant opposition from the parties, over $20 million in opposition

spending just in Montana and Nevada alone. So while disappointed, we're not discouraged though, because of the support that was mobilized from across the spectrum in support of these reforms. If anything, our major takeaway is that the time horizon by which we need to be operating, including the time that has to be invested before going to the ballot to ask voters this question, probably needs to be a bit longer. And I say that because while there is wide support for the concepts of reform, everyone should be able to vote from wherever they want, whoever wins should have majority support. That support often doesn't run very deep.

It's not the salient issue that people are getting up every day and thinking about. And so we have to build more conviction within the electorate. Because otherwise, like any issue that goes to the ballot, yes tends to decline over time, particularly as opponents poke holes. So how I interpret the results is not a bunch of voters saying no, not ever. You know, if they had a doubt, it's no, not now, or come back to me when you answer this question or I'm not convinced or this bow language is confusing. So that's all to say that we're not giving up.

These were important efforts that I think advanced the ball. And in several states where they came close, we're actively engaged in what the next step should be. And just to give you one example of that in Montana, just this legislative session, we're actively engaged in what the next step should be. And just to give you one example of that in Montana, just this legislative session, we saw a Republican legislator introduce a top two all candidate primary bill that just wouldn't have happened, but for nearly half the electorate saying that they were interested in some type of reform for their primary system.

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I'm curious, I mean, I guess given that, like, you know, what's different now about how you guys approach voters on this issue than it was maybe 10 or 15 years ago? I imagine you've learned a lot about how to simplify the explanation or, you know, how to make the ballot language more accessible or more appealing. What sort of change in your strategy over time having experienced, you know coming up a little bit short and also having some of these bigger wins? You know, America's been at this for five years, so I can't speak too much to what's changed in the last 15. But I would say in our go-forward, like we spent the last few months really trying to learn as much as we can from

last year and then understanding well, what tweaks do we need to make? What changes? Some significant about the strategy going forward. I think the top thing for us that we're trying to keep in mind is simplification. We're out there selling a product, and that product at times can be viewed as a bit complicated by voters who aren't in the weeds of what these reforms are, how they work, and so how do we simplify both the policy that is going on to the ballot and the ways in which that we are talking about it. And the other is how do we make it more salient, including to connect the dots,

that these reforms aren't just nice sounding things in terms of giving voters more choice, but that they are actually critically linked to the results that voters want to see from their government. If we are upset about immigration or the economy or on healthcare, well, why is that? What's blocking progress? Why aren't our leaders solving these problems? And to help connect the dots back to this broken incentive structure and how these reforms can impact that. And that's a voter education and coalition building process that we and our partners

are now engaged on at the state level. I'm curious to kind of bring this into the sort of present moment that we're living through right now. It occurs to me that, obviously, I think, and most people would have a hard time arguing, at least what we're witnessing from the Trump administration, the second Trump administration has introduced a lot of uncharted territory. At the very least, a point I've made on this show many times is that I worry a great deal about the expansion of executive authority. Trump is testing the boundaries of what presidential power can really look like right now, whether

you're excited about what he's doing or not. He's doing that. In the system, as I think our founders imagined it to be, we have this check on him, these checks on him. One is the judiciary, which we're seeing be very active. A lot of the stuff Trump has done now is being held up by the courts, seeing the standoff of the Supreme Court, whatever. And the other is the congressional branch, the legislative branch. And the question of Congress's role in this, I think, is on the minds of a lot

of Americans, whether they're upset Democrats are being feckless or whatever, or they're like, where's the spine that Republicans have? And it occurs to me that the primary problem is closely related to these issues. So I guess I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how it impacts the way members of Congress are acting in moments like this. I mean, I know you wrote a piece about the confirmation hearings and some of what we saw then, but what's the tangible impact of having a small segment of this really ideological voter base decide who members of Congress are going to be in primary elections? Well, I think in this current moment, if you were to

tell our founders and the framers of the Constitution, hey, we have a president who's trying to concentrate executive power, and override the legislature and go after his political enemies and so forth, they would not be surprised, right? They kind of anticipated that human nature being what it is that we would face this challenge from kind of anticipated that human nature being what it is, that we would face this challenge from kind of strongmen leaders. And that was part of the motivation of, well, why did they design a system of separation of powers and checks and balances was to counteract that. surprised of today is just how that system has been vastly

undercut by blind partisanship, right? They talked about the separation of powers. Today, we have a just a separation of parties, right? If one party controls majority of the legislative branch and the executive, while the party and the legislature is inclined to roll over for what the executive wants to do. And that's been a slippery slope that we've been going down for some time, first on policy matters and now really on constitutional matters. And that's dangerous.

I mean, that goes right to the functioning of the system, the sustainability of self-governance, and is a big threat that we face. And we're seeing that in real time. And the primary problem is at the root of it, particularly when you have an executive that will weaponize the primaries to say, if you go against me or stand up for your branch of government or your you know unique political perspective I will field and fund and campaign for a primary challenger in your state and you won't win your seat back

and why that is so potent is because the five to ten percent of One party's base is very loyal to the to the president, you know right now and the legislators know that So how does that manifest? We saw this in the confirmation hearings as you mentioned, you know, right now. And the legislators know that. So how does that manifest? We saw this in the confirmation hearings, as you mentioned, you know, when Pete Hegseth was up to be nominated for defense secretary, there were early concerns raised by senators like Joni Ernst in Iowa, for example. But as soon as the saber rattling started of a potential primary challenge, you know, she came out and supported it. It's very rational, right? And I think for these members, they also rationalize it,

saying, I want to be able to do good work, and maybe I'll really stand up if the threat gets very bad, but I can't do that if I'm not here, and so I'll make a compromise on this issue, right? And then we face an even larger kind of challenge. Where we have seen senators stand up in the past is when they feel like they are representing their full constituency and not just their party base.

And the impeachment proceedings from post-January of six, I think underscore that. The senators and representatives who voted to impeach or convict and run for reelection and actually still serve, all of them come from states that have reformed their election systems. That's Susan Collins in Maine with rank choice voting. It's Lisa Murkowski and Senator Cassidy in Alaska and Louisiana that don't have traditional party primaries. It's David Valdeo and Dan Newhouse in the house coming from states with top two. And so there's a direct line of how much courage and independence do our leaders in Congress have? Well, it's a function of how much political latitude

do they feel that they have given the election system, you know, from their states, not the only factor, of course, but a pretty big one. I'm curious, I mean, I think in reading a lot about your work and seeing how some of the RCV and open primary stuff has played across the country, it seems to me, again, correct me if I'm wrong, it seems to me that you guys have an easier time selling Democratic and independent voters on some of these reforms than Republican voters or maybe members of the Republican Party. I'm curious if A, that's true and B, if it is why you think that disparity exists a little bit. Let me just say when I mentioned that both parties are opposed to us in Nevada, it was the Democratic Party that wound up spending over $12 million to oppose these

reforms. And so there is bipartisan support among voters and there is bipartisan opposition among parties, you know, depending on the particular state. I do think that among the electorate, conservative voters are naturally more skeptical of change, right? They're conservative for a reason, and I respect that. And independent voters, more open-minded to election system changes because they're most disenfranchised right now, you know, by the current way that we elect our leaders. So some of this flows, you know, naturally from who these voters are and how they think about politics today. But I do think, you know, naturally from who these voters are and how they how they think about politics today. But but I do think if you said which of the

two parties would have has more to gain electorally from changing our election system, I go back to the example that you gave before, which is in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans lost five competitive seats in the Senate because they nominated further right candidates. That's a Herschel Walker in Georgia. It's a Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. And you go down the list.

So when Mitch McConnell said candidate quality was their challenge, he might as well have said the primary problem. And so I do think that even some of the opposition that we do see among Republicans isn't always entirely rational based on her electoral self-interest. And that can change over time. You know, it wasn't rational when Trump was out there saying, don't vote by mail in 2020. And they eventually came around to the perspective that if they want to win elections, they should stop saying that.

You know, we might see that too on some issues of election reform where their opposition has been more knee-jerk based on just a small sample size of states that have adopted these policies so far. But I think as these policies are more broadly adopted and implemented, both parties have come around to seeing it's not really about tilting the scales in favor of one side or another. It's about leveling the playing field. And they can build a moat in the near term to protect their political power. However, I'll go back to the fact that 50%, close to 50% of Americans identify as independent, that number is growing. In no marketplace is it sustainable for the for the existing

duopoly to remain in power when they're losing that significant of market share, you know, over time. And so either they adapt proactively or they will wake up one day and realize that if they weren't the first party to move on this and to anticipate these changes and to do something about it, they're going to be at a significant disadvantage. All right. Well, before we get out of here, I guess that's a good segue to one of my last questions, which is tell me a little bit about what's on the horizon for you guys.

I mean, we've been talking a lot about what happened in 2024 and somehow you guys are processing that and responding to it. What's immediately in front of you in the next year or two? What do you feel like are some big initiatives people might want to keep an eye on? Some places where maybe we could see some changes? Well, coming out of the 24th cycle, like I said, we were disappointed

on some of the offensive opportunities. However, opponents tried to repeal the system in Alaska and voters defeated it. And so Alaska continues to be I think a wonderful use case to show the power of these reforms. They have bipartisan governing majorities in both houses of their state legislature doing the people's work now. And that will continue to inspire other states down this path. And like I said, there's no one size fits all solution. New Mexico, we were very glad to see in the legislative session this year, a bipartisan

bill that groups they've been working on for close to a decade actually passed that will allow independent voters to participate in future primary elections. Independence, there are over 300,000 of them or about a quarter of the electorate there. So it's a big deal that these voters are being brought into the political process for the first time. And that's giving momentum in other states like Pennsylvania, where there's been a bipartisan bill for a few years now, trying to enfranchise the million independent voters who are currently locked out. So this movement is not only about

ballot initiatives, it's also about where progress can be made in the legislatures. And that seems to have some building momentum in both red, blue, and purple states across the country. And you know, what I would just say, as we are in this political moment, no matter if you like what's happening, dislike what's happening right now in our politics, I think everyone kind of appreciates that we are not on a positive trajectory. You know, we're becoming more divided, more dysfunctional, and that can't sustain. We can't keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result on it. So

this movement is going to continue to build and I think position itself to be part of imagining what the next chapter of our country can look like. We're coming up, as you know, on our 250th anniversary next year. We're still young as a democracy, but we can't take for granted what we've got. And why we've been able to sustain this long is because we've been able to rethink, reinvent, reimagine what democracy is in our own times. We did that 100 years ago when we gave women the right to vote and direct election of senators and the secret ballot.

Those things weren't put in the constitution by our founders. The people did that as a way of improving our democracy. That's the special sauce of America and I think what we need to continue to do to ensure that this grand experiment of self-governance continues long into the future. All right, Nick Trelliano. Thanks so much for joining us again. If people want to keep up with some of your work, where's the best place for them to do that? UnitedAmerica.org has a bunch more resources. You'll find a link to the paperback edition of the book, freshly out, the primary solution, as well as the next couple

weeks here, a updated edition of a film called Majority Rules, which is a documentary that looks at the success in Alaska and some of the progress in other states. So a book and a film for those interested in learning more, and also resources of how to get engaged in your state, because in a lot of states in the country, there's an active campaign that folks can connect with and begin to make a difference. Awesome. Nick, thanks so much for the time, man. I appreciate it. Thank you, Isaac. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered is John Law. Today's episode

was edited and engineered by John Law. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Audrey Morehead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at www.reedtangle.com. Discover the magic of BetMGM Casino, where the excitement is always on deck. Pull up a seat and check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer. From roulette to blackjack, watch as a dealer hosts your table game and live chat with them throughout your experience to feel like you're actually at the casino.

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