The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – VotingSmarter.org CEO/Founder Terry Crandall Interview

Episode Date: October 18, 2020

VotingSmarter.org CEO/Founder Terry Crandall Interview Votingsmarter.org Download the app: https://apple.co/2HalEBs VotingSmarter is a new educational app which matches voters with their ideal candidates based on issue preferences rather than immutable characteristics or party affiliation. The app was designed to easily educate voters, and to decrease the frequency of voters going on “blind-votes” at the ballot box, because they often end up feeling like they’ve been “catfished” by politicians after election day. Terry is an educator, an entrepreneur and a licensed California Realtor. He is the Co-founder and CEO of VotingSmarter, and unbiased voter education nonprofit who's “ dating app for politics” helps voters find their “political match” in a fair, fast and fun way. He has a passion for public policy, politics, public choice, and technology; and currently teaches economics at Loyola Marymount University. He has previously taught graduate and undergraduate economics and finance courses at Chapman University, The University of La Verne, California Baptist University, and California University for Management and Science. He has served on nonprofit boards, advises multiple startups, and provides expert testimony & consulting services. He is the father of twins and married to Bonnie Crandall, a financial adviser at Prudential Financial.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we certainly certainly certainly appreciate you did i say certainly enough appreciate you guys tuning in you guys are the most

wonderful audience we've ever had. Probably the only audience we've ever had, but you are the most important audience we have ever had, so we certainly appreciate you guys being here. Be sure to watch the video version of this interview. You can go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss. Hit that bell

notification button, and with it, you get prizes you'll get the prize of having this wonderful ding and notification will pop on your phone that will tell you that you are loved by the show and uh to also tell you that we have a new episode up that you should probably just watch and listen to see how that works it's a relationship uh probably the closest one you've ever had no i'm just kidding uh anyway guys uh we uh go to the goodreads uh goodreads.com forward slash chris vosh you can see all our book authors and interviews there go to the ecvpn or for the show to your friends neighbors relatives etc etc online podcasts you

can check them out today we're going to be talking about voting and voting is really important uh this is a something i encourage everyone to do. In fact, I wish there was a law that would force people to do it like in Australia, or I think it's high center Greenland does it. But voting is really important because as several of the different people we've had on the show have talked about, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. So this is why it's important for you to put forth your vote, to send a message to politicians and say, this is what I think, and you better listen to me. Because if you don't send that message, they don't listen to you. They listen to the people who do. So there you go. Today, we have a most interesting guest on. He

is the CEO and founder of a website called VotingSmarter.org. And his name is Terry Crandall. Terry is an educator, an entrepreneur, and a licensed California realtor. He's the co-author and CEO of Voting Smarter. It's an unbiased voter education nonprofit whose dating app for politics helps voters find their political match in a fair, fast, and fun way. He has a passion for public policy, politics, public choice, and technology. He currently teaches economics at the Loyola Marymount University. I went to public school, sorry. He has previously taught graduate and undergraduate

economics and finance courses at Chapman University, the University of La Verne, California Baptist University, and California University for Management and Science. He served on non-profit boards, advises multiple startups, and provides expert testimony and consulting services. He's the father of twins and married to Bonnie Crandall, a financial advisor at Prudential Financial. Welcome to the show, Terry. How are you? I'm really good, Chris. Thanks for having me today. Awesome sauce. A father of twins. That's a lot of fun. Yeah, sometimes. If I look tired, I am tired. But it's great. You know, they're in kindergarten this year.

And so kindergarten at home during a pandemic is great. It's great. It's great. I like the way you say that. I had a good friend who had twins and it was an adventure. I go visit his house every now and then and then just leave in horror. Yeah, you got to leave. And no, look, it's fantastic, but it's humbling at the in horror. Yeah, you got to leave. And no, look, it's, it's fantastic,

but it's, it's, it's humbling at the same time. Yeah. I mean, the one kid wakes the other kid up, says the other, I mean, they, they're like a tag team really. And then he would show me the, the diaper bag. So let's get into this, this thing that you have founded called voting smarter. And I guess people can go to the website. I'll let you go ahead and give them the plugs for the website. Yeah. So, so voting smarter.org is our website. Follow us on Instagram. We have really good election coverage at voting smarter. We've got a, we have our own little tiny podcast, not like yours called pocket politics. We've got a blog called Impartial. You know, we're trying to give people,

you know, good data on the election, completely unbiased. Our team is made up of people on the far left, the far right, the middle, the undecided, if that exists. And so, yeah, we'd love it if you guys could check us out, send us your feedback,

try out our Dating After Politics, our candidate matchmaker. It'd be great. I want to steal something from you, Chris, actually. I really like this. If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. I'm completely stealing that. That's perfect. That's really, really good uh yeah it's a wonderful line i stole it from somebody else uh we had a bunch of politicians that were on the show and i believe her name was mrs matthews i forget she's running in kerns utah and she had that line she says you know if you're not at if you're not at the table you're on the menu so you know they don't they don't care about what you think and and they care about you know because that's what that's what always kills me that people are like well you know it doesn't matter and you're like no these politicians they sit down and they go okay who voted what do they want all right well we better do at least some of this stuff because uh you know we want to get them to vote again and they're like hey there's these other guys who didn't vote they didn't care and like we don't have to worry about them they won't show up next time either exactly and that's that's if we're lucky, right? That's,

that's the system. If it's working right half the time, it's who's at the table, writing the checks versus, you know, who's voting. So definitely. Definitely. So what motivated you to start this project and when, when did you start it? Yeah. So I had this idea back in in 2008 when I was in grad school. And I learned about this theory called rational ignorance when I was studying my master's degree in economics. And it wasn't until I started teaching many years later, then I would teach this and I would talk to my students about it.

And I told them, you know, I had this idea for a startup. And they're like, we really like this idea. Let's work on it together. So it actually came about because some of my students were interested in working on it and working with me on it. And we were just really frustrated with the engagement of people, right? In 2016, voter turnout was lower than it had been in 20 years, right? It was an incredibly contentious election, two very different candidates, yet voter turnout was only 55%, right? 45% of people didn't show up. And that's just for the president, right? The drop-off rate as you go down your ballot, a lot of people just vote top of the ticket. And so we were really frustrated by this. For a long time, personally, I was always mad, right? I was mad at politicians.

I was mad at uninformed voters. And I wanted to blame them. And the more I studied economics, the more I realized it's all about incentives, right? How you structure things matters. And the incentive for politicians is, first off, to have as few number of people vote as possible, because then they only have to spend less money to win, right, the 51st percent of the vote. And so they're not incentivized to get more voters. In fact, when I worked on a presidential campaign in 08, I wanted to work the phones. And I was like, give me the number of people who don't agree with our candidate. And they said, no, no, no. Here's the number of people who here's the phone numbers of people who do agree with our candidate.

I'm like, no, no, no. I don't I want to change people's minds. And they're like, no, we don't do that. We just get people we know to the polls. It's called get out the vote, GOTV. And that's why you're inundated with these ads and these mailers once you pick a side. And so I got really mad at the politicians because they're always fundraising and they're not leading. And when I was a kid, I'm an old man now. And when I was a kid, the problems were the same. It was immigration. It was tax policy. It was trade. It was income inequality. It was, you know, people living below the poverty line. The problems were

the same. We spent trillions of dollars on it and nothing seems to have changed. And so I was trying to figure out why, right? Because I'm a nerd. I love politics. I love economics. And so I was trying to figure out why, right? Because I'm a nerd. I love politics. I love economics. And so I started trying to figure out why. And so there's this theory, rational ignorance. And so it's this idea that it is rational or it makes sense to make uninformed decisions when the cost of being informed is high and the benefit of being informed is low. And right. So we had this whole dating app vibe. I use this example all the time, right? When you get set up on a blind date or you meet someone on Tinder, you don't stalk them. You don't find out if their job is real, if they really like hiking and sunsets before you go meet them, right? You show up at a coffee shop or a bar and, or wherever your friend tells you to go.

And you meet this person blind. But if you're going to marry someone, if you're not crazy and on 90 day fiance, you're good. There's this courting period. You meet their parents. You find out if they really have a job. Nowadays, you live with them, right? You figure out if they squeeze the toothpaste from the top of the tube or the bottom of the tube, because that's actually really annoying. And so you vet them. And it's rational to vet them because you're going to spend the rest of your life, at least that's the plan, with them.

With coronavirus, it might be the rest of your life. Yeah.'s the plan with them with coronavirus it might be the rest of your life yeah and that might only be a few months yeah actually i mean the divorce rate has to be spiking the first place everybody in wuhan went to it wasn't starbucks it was their attorney when they finally opened up so yeah divorce rates are crazy right now um but our whole thing was, look, um, this isn't dating showing up on election day. It's not a date. It's a relationship. It's at least two years. If it's the house, it's six years. If it's a Senate, it's four or eight years. If it's the president. And really, if you look at, say someone like John Lewis or John McCain, I mean, they were, they were in Congress for decades, right? And so really, it's a super long-term relationship. And incumbency is really strong, right? Only about 15 to 25% of House districts are competitive. And so if you treat this casually, and you just use shortcuts, like, are they in my political party? Do they look like me? Right? Do they, do they, are they the best speaker? Are they, are they attractive?

Right? Bush v. Gore was, I'd rather have a beer with George Bush versus Al Gore. You know, I always likened McCain versus Obama to I'm a Mac and I'm a PC. If you remember those commercials. Yeah, I do. There was like this young, this young, sexy guy versus this old antiquated guy, same thing, iPhone or Mac versus PC. Right. And, and it was none of these things were like, wow, this person feels the same way on the issues as

us. And so that's where we started, right? We said, how do we lower the cost of information? Right. Cause there's two costs to being informed. First off, it's hours of research. Our team has spent over 3,800 hours of research, human research, not scraping the internet, you know, real, we have 40 people on the team and they dug in and they've researched all the candidates, presidential, house,

Senate, governor in all 50 states wow um and by 2022 we want to get down to like city council and dog catcher that's our goal wow because that's really where you need the most help that's where it's the murkiest on the ballot like i rarely vote for judges because i have no idea yeah know? I found that too when I'm looking at the ballot going, I don't know what judge is good or not. And then you're judging them by their name. I mean, that's, come on, that's not a good predictor. Yeah.

And so we spent thousands of hours literally on this. And there's also not just the time cost there's also the the emotional cost i mean how many times do you find yourself yelling at the tv yeah you know and so i call it the psychic cost of politics right it just and and it just gets worse and worse and worse as time goes on and the truth is if you're if you're stuck in your own news bubble on the right or on the left right you're not even getting the news you're getting opinion and if you're not actively seeking out contrary opinions you're not making an informed decision and so we try to be unbiased right which is damn near impossible right but we've mitigated all of our conscious bias. We have a team that's very politically diverse, that I told you, we're diverse in age,

in ethnicity, in gender, right? We come from all walks of life, all over the country. That's been one silver lining of the coronavirus. We've gotten people from all over the United States across five time zones and Hawaii. And, and you know, we all check each other's work. We have a system in place. If you think a blog post or the way we worded a question or the way we evaluated a candidate is biased or somebody else on the team is biased, right? Our organization is very flat. We review those, We check it out. We audit each other's work to make sure we're taking out our conscious bias as best we can and just giving it to you straight. This is awesome. You should take this to Facebook. No, I like how you're approaching this because you're really thinking out of the box like i've never heard anyone put it that way like like think of this as a relationship because people don't realize these decisions impact their lives they impact their children's lives their future lives i mean

they'll they'll put more thought into i don't know some stupid vase at target than they will to their politics and a lot of the terms that you quoted are longer than probably any relationship I've ever been in. Maybe not the two-year one, but still. I mean, I come to think of it. I've had longer relationships with George Bush and everyone else than I had with relationships. And I think the divorce with George Bush cost me, what was it, $8 trillion? Yeah. But it's not a payment program nine it was nine trillion dollars nine trillion i love he doubled he doubled the debt in eight

years all the all presidents before him combined adjusted for inflation and then obama said hold my beer and doubled it again you gotta love it uh so trump's gonna do it in his first term yeah i mean everyone just keeps going home my beer you know one of the things and then at the end you talked about the toxicity of politics and why people tune out or or don't want to make a decision or they feel flummoxed as to like with so much information is coming at me one of the problems has become in my opinion so volatile and so and really dumbed down in a lot of ways than what it used to be is because people don't care and so it just i think they've shown that that basically there's

just a very small groups on both sides making decisions about this country and it's just starting to become more and more of a monkey uh shit sling fest and and the problem is if if everyone jump in a vote like you see in countries where they you know it's actually illegal not to vote they'll actually fine you if you don't um you know everybody should jump in because then it wouldn't be so fringe crazy and people would have to be like okay we have to act like adults because everyone's watching just not our fan base well i i i think you're half right you know like in a country like brazil that has compulsory voting the problem is you get something you often get something like what i call blind like what we call blind votes like blind dates right people just showing up to the polls and voting for their party or voting for the person that looks like them. When you force people to vote, you get even more people making

uneducated decisions or under-informed decisions. And so our goal is for everyone to vote and for everybody to at least have a cursory view of where they stand. We are not this deep dive, boring sort of thing. The average time spent in our app is five minutes and five seconds. There you go. And so, and it tells you house, governor, Senate president. And, and, and it's, and look, it's, it's where you go to get started. If you don't want to be a political nerd and econ econ nerd, sweet. Spend five minutes with Voting Smarter, right? And download the app or use our web app and you're done. You've got at least a good idea of what percentage you match with somebody and who you should vote for. But if you're like, wow, that's

really interesting. Oh, I match. Oh, education. We think dissimilarly. I thought we were the same. And then you can go deep dive. We have a partnership with active vote, another app. This is big. It shows you like a political matrix and you can basically become a super nerd if you want. And you know, I love that, but most people don't. And so what we tried to be is right. This really approachable, easy to use familiar interface, right? Gen Z and millennials, if they all showed up and voted, they'd make up 40% of the electorate.

Yeah. It's, it's over right now. If they could vote as a block, it's over. They control the country forever, but they're also their future too. Yes. And look, it's hard to understand net present value when you're 18 or 25. Yeah. Right? Like that's, it's the most valuable thing I teach in my classes is understanding that sort of idea, the difference between now and later and how you need to plan for both. But, you know, if, again, I don't think it's laziness. Everybody decries the young. Oh, they're so lazy. They're so apathetic. No, if you look at the data, young people are the group who thinks the largest, they're the

largest group who thinks you should be well-informed or very well-informed before you vote. Right. They don't want to make an uninformed decision. And part of that is probably how they've been raised and how we've raised our kids. But I respect that view. Now, the next step is we'll then go get informed. But when you don't know where to start, right, you don't like how it feels to engage in this, you know, vitriolic stuff. And you're still learning about, well, do I want big government or small government? Do I want, you know, you're still figuring out where you are. You're not nearly as intransigent like us probably. And I think it's hard for them. Right. And, and, and look, they're completely

distracted, right? They have devices in their hand too, probably. And, and there's, there's's so much competition for their time that's why it was all about being fair first because that doesn't exist in the market but fast second and we're going to try and be make something unfun fun with this whole dating app sort of game vibe that we have i like it can you swipe left and swipe right on your on your camera so in the app right uh and i can i can demo it for you if you want i can plug in the phone and and show it to you but um yeah you swipe left for disagree with a political statement you swipe right for agree you can swipe up like super like i think is in is in tinder and then swiping down would be like super hate or strongly disagree. Right. And so we pick up sort of four data, or you can skip a question. We present you with 15 different political statements,

right? They're designed, you know, we tried to divide it as close to equal as we could between right and left to sort of pick up how you respond, right? What's your visceral response to the statement as, as much as the policy right and so we picked that up in our algorithm and then we just match you to how the candidates would answer and it came out really well i used the website okay yeah the web app yeah yeah yeah so i used the web i used the website came out really well i was gonna vote for uh putin but uh it came up and said i should vote for joe biden 76 percent you it also gave me an alternative uh green party guy uh which i thought was interesting because you kind of gave me a

choice where i'm like okay well it sounds like i'm really alive with this guy but maybe i should you know read into this guy some more um do you find that most people who use your website, your app, or should be using it are more undecided or people that are just kind of like, I don't know, maybe they're starting the journey of trying to figure out their political affiliations or what they're interested in? Or are they deep in the weeds of what they believe? They just want a confirmation. I would say, I mean, it's geared towards the first two versus the latter. But I would say our users are mostly people who are undecided or have no idea where to start. And so we have, we have a few people who are when, when what we call wonks, like political politicos, like, like maybe me who, who know too much about this stuff and probably probably you too. And you know, when they get ahold of the app, they're like, this isn't nuanced enough.

And you're right. It's not, it's because it took five minutes. Our competitors have 75 questions, right. And, and, and go there next, right? Like we think this is a space where you should keep exploring, but we're trying to fill the gap, right? We're trying to really help the under-informed voter. There's nobody servicing them. It's people who want to get deeper, deeper informed. So yeah, it's mostly those people. And what sucks is, right, we launch ourselves in an election where it's the least undecided top of the ticket election probably in my lifetime, right? You likely know between Joe Biden and Donald Trump who you're going to vote for. And mostly it's either you love or hate the guy who's in office now. That's what our data is showing. In fact, in the beta version of the

matchmaker, we had a question that said, or a statement card that you respond to that says, the way you conduct yourself in office is as important or more important than what you accomplish. Trying to pick up the people who might be aligned with trump but not like trump right the never trumpers on the right because the last thing we want to do is have you take the app and say no i'd never vote for this person this app's bs yeah it didn't give me the results of what i would be like but i was able to do that when i went through mine i'm like like, oh yeah, that makes sense. This is clearly, you know, the choices that I want to make. And, and a lot of people didn't like the question. We took it out, but what, but obviously it shows you the spectrum. You can see all the candidates and you're going to match

a little bit with everybody and a lot with some. And so maybe you don't like the way Trump runs things. And so Joe Jorgensen, the libertarian, right, maybe is a 70% match where he's a 75% match. And you're like, well, I don't like how he's doing things. And so I'm going to vote for Joe Jorgensen. Or maybe you you match 80% with Joe Biden. But you you're worried about his cognition or other things, you know, you don't like him or whatever. And then you're a 75% with the Green Party. Howie, I'm totally blanking all of a sudden. And so you can vote green, or maybe you didn't even know, maybe you're more aligned with green, right? Because, you know, Biden came out and said he's not for the Green New Deal at the debate. Right. And so we're we don't have anything against Republicans or Democrats, but we're we don't want anybody to

have a stranglehold on somebody's vote. I really like where you thought this out and and and put it together, because I remember going through the journey of, you know, growing up and then finally starting to give a crap about things, especially 9-11 that really impacted me and and like i need to really figure out what's going on in my world and why my shit's blowing up and uh i need probably need to care more and you go on this journey that seems really overwhelming at the time sometimes it still does these days where you're like do i trust the washington post or is that a bad thing and you know i mean fortunately now there's like graphs that can show you stuff and even now i'll talk to people and they're like like all the news seems to be against trump and you're like well you know if you're

doing a lot of illegal illicit immoral stuff the news is probably gonna be bad you know like nixon didn't have great news during nixon sure sure they weren't like they were like uh hey nixon's you know i mean maybe china was like the one thing that was good that he did at the time but you know the rest of time it was like he's sucking on that war and you know and the watergate thing um so there's that but you sit there and you look okay do i trust fox news do i trust wapo do i you know what news sources do i get and then like you mentioned in social media there's so much overwhelming there's so much fake news there's so much of this there's even news sites that that are just straight

opinion biased stuff there's no there's no um journalistic standards to them whatsoever but it feels overwhelming and so i i identify what you say because i remember going through it the first time and even then i would i would be like like i remember early on i'm like this drudge report seems really cool and they're like that's a right wing and i'm like what does that mean uh i don't know it just seemed kind of new cool with the aggregation and they're like no it's right wing and i'm just like okay well i gotta learn what this stuff is when that works totally and and look i i've i've been looking for a news aggregator on the left right so i could have my left drudge and my right drudge and figure

out where the facts are where the where the tilt is and um you know our whole thing is we're actually working with two uh groups that filter news so we're building a news feed for the app i don't know if if we're going to be able to get it done before the election uh but with there's a group called all sides that ranks media right tells you if they're on the left or the right and then there's a group called All Sides that ranks media, right? It tells you if they're on the left or the right. And then there's a group called The Factual that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to rate sources and stories. I think I've seen the old sides. They present both to you? Yeah.

Like you can do a side-by-side? Yeah. And so we're trying to work that into a feed in the app. Because we want to aggregate, you know, we want to put our hand on the scale as little as possible. We want to help you to, we want to take the time. The search costs is the econ term, but we want to lower those search costs and just present you with stuff.

So you can see both perspectives and figure it out. Right. I try and spend an equal amount of time on, on both partisan news channels, right. And sort and sort through it out. Right. I try and spend an equal amount of time on, on both partisan news channels. Right. And then sort and sort through it myself. People don't have time to do that though. Yeah. I had to do it for my job. You know, they have real jobs and real fat, you know, they, they have families, you know, and so that, that's what we're all about. Yeah. And you have twins. So there's, you know, chasing those guys around. No, I like the idea. It was really quick and easy to do. I went through it. I answered some of the questions as to what things were important to me. I think there was a block that came up with a lot of different topics. You can pick what you want. You know, it only said I like Biden 76% of my answers match with Biden. So, you know, let me know that, that, that he's kind of there, but there's maybe other options. And then you

kind of encourage you to go, well, okay, so maybe I need to find out more about this guy or look into this guy, or whatever the alternative is, as to maybe I'm not thinking of whatever. But I like how it gets people down that road. One of the things that's been just making me mental is when I watch these videos of undecided voters and it seems like you guys handle them a lot better than I do. To me, they're the people who go to McDonald's and they're making the life choice for two hours at the drive-thru because they can't figure out which they

want, the quarter pounder or the big Mac. It's been there since their childhood. Yeah. childhood yeah and and and i'll be sitting there riding the horn the mcdonald's screaming that way i try not to do this anymore in my old age but you know and you're like dude why are you asking 20 questions to the guy it's mcdonald's you know it's big mac or quarter pounder man it's that that's it and uh but and so i've often kind of bashed the undecided people as being those people where they can't the the the ability to make a choice just overwhelms them and then they shut down and they can't function i don't know if that's a is that is there a way for us to be looking at undecided voters or do they just need more resources like what you have?

Yeah, look, I had I felt the same way about undecided and under informed voters. You know, like I I've like I said, I resented politicians. I resented voters for a long time until I really understood. Again, it's it's about opportunity cost. It's about not knowing who to trust, right? You can't blame politicians for fundraising for 18 months of a two-year house term if that's what it takes to win. You can't blame them for sending you 20 pieces of mail

if it works, right? It's like junk mail. If you use that 20% off Bed Bath & Beyond coupon and then decry getting junk mail, well, no, that's your fault. Damn it. They got me. And so, you know, somebody's believing that the FBI is after them from a voicemail on their phone or they wouldn't be sending those voicemails.

And so I think that. That reminds me. I need to answer some voicemails. Yeah, yeah, definitely call the Social Security Administration. You can show money. But it's... So instead of resenting people, and then again, this is sort of my new approach to life and politics, is it has to be about empathy, right?

So what we try to do is we try to change the incentives. We try to react to what the reality is, not what we want it to be, but what the reality is and how do we fix it at the margin? How do we tinker with this? How do we nudge elections in the right direction? And every person we interviewed has to be willing to put where they stand politically on our website or in our blog right so you have to say where you are what political party who you're thinking about voting

for because we want to be transparent and so we had this but it did not determine whether or not you got hired right it wasn't like well we need this many people on the right or we don't want anybody on the left or on the you know like it was merely the only question we would ask every person we interviewed, tell me about a time you've been in an argument about politics and how did you work it out? Whether ideally at work, with family or friends, and then are you willing, is it possible you're wrong? All of us who, some of us believe very fervently about our political beliefs on the team, but we're all willing to admit we might be wrong. And I think that's where it starts, you know, and at least on our team. And so that's what's missing from this conversation.

It's now sort of like religion. My political point of view is moral and yours is immoral. And so we don't treat it that way at all right if if if you want to be if you want to love canada day and great if you want to love canada be great we there's no judgment there's no look just find out more that's all we're about yeah i love this it's a dating app sort of menu for figuring out which politician you want to have a relationship the only downside is is just make sure you don't show me what uh joe biden looks like in heels and a dress that's all you know we have some pictures of rudy like

that but none of that's true yeah and anthony wiener's been here drive yeah yeah he's been banned from the app too just because of the pictures he likes to share. So yeah, I think eventually we'd love it if the candidates actually built their own profiles. That'd be fun to see what kind of pictures they put and what hokey things they like to do and make it sort of dating vibe. You know, where we are right now is we we've helped thousands of people already get informed. Our goal is to help millions, right? Because that's really who's under-informed, millions of people.

And if we can lower the barrier to being informed, then they're much more likely to vote. And so that's why we're really thankful for you letting us on the show and talking about us and getting people to go download our app in the app store or try the web app on our website like you did, right? The link on our website detects if you're on an Android or a laptop and it takes you to the web app or it takes you straight to the app store. And so you can

download the iOS app. And the iOS app has a little bit more functionality than the web app, but they give you the same results. It's the same data on the backend. And, you know, we've got big plans after the election. We, we, we're going to help our, our, our users actually vote with their dollars. And cause I'd love to be able to vote every day, not just vote every two or four years. And, and so we're, we're working on tools that can really help you influence politicians every day of your life versus just on election day. There you go. There you go. So, Terry, anything more we need to know about what you guys are doing? How are you doing it? Well, again, we are a nonprofit, so we've done this all out of the goodness of our heart. We've self-funded this, right? I've put a bunch of money into this. We take donations.

Our team works, you know, we have 40 people all working out of love of country. And we need help. These cool tools pop up every elections, every four years, and then they die by the next election. And we're not going to do that. We're going to push through to 2022 and 2024. And, but, but we need people's help. We need, we need you to try out the app. If you like it, share it. If you don't like it, tell us why we're all, you know, there, we get tons of, Hey, this is awesome, but we, we'd love to hear that, you know, this,

this doesn't fix this because we want to make this as best as, the best possible tool we can. So yeah, check us out, votingsmarter.org. Follow us on Instagram. We've got great election deadlines, debate, timing, interesting statistics, some funny memes from time to time. And, you know, share us, follow us, use us.

If you really like us, donate and let us know how we can help. There you go. I love it. I love the concept of it. I want everyone to vote. I mean, I could say that I want everyone to vote for my favorite guy. But to me, this country would just be much more better if 100% of the people vote and vote who you care about. And then you get to own it

because then you get, you got to go, Oh, wow, I did good. Or I did bad. Or next time I'll do something different. But the fact that you just go on, I'm not going to participate is not cool. And, and hopefully we're seeing huge amounts of turnout with this vote. And I think people are realizing that their vote's important, that how we shape this country is important. A lot of people are struggling. And hopefully this is one of those deep moments where we bounce back and we go, wow, okay, yeah, this is important and we need to start getting, and we need to start giving a damn, really. I love the app. I tried it out.

It came out mostly with my match, about 76%. I was going to vote for Joe Biden and gave me some options. And then you guys get the email from me and we start getting probably some emails and some interactions with you guys so that we can get more information if we want, correct? Yeah, yeah, definitely.

If you give us your email to go down ballot, right, through the web app, you enter your email, then you can see your house break down. And if there's a governor or Senate race in your district or state, then you'll see those candidates, right? And so that's really, everybody seems to know the top of the ticket.

I mean, there are a few voters that you mentioned that are still undecided, but it's the smallest proportion of any presidential election in decades. But it's really those down ballots, right? Nope, there's no air, there's no oxygen to talk about governors, senators, house, right? There's nobody getting any coverage on that stuff.

And so if you have no idea who to vote for, you're not going to vote down ballot. And then somebody else is going to choose those people. And those are the people who write the laws. The president actually doesn't do that much. And so for your daily life, it's the big stuff they handle. And the little stuff is all in the law. And so definitely it's super useful there. We're going to get more and more granular as time goes on for the next elections. But yeah, the best way to keep in contact with us is through Instagram. We have a Twitter, we did a live event with singer Aloe black, where we talked similarly about why it's important to be informed. And, um, you know, we've got other, other people, um, athletes sort of sharing what we're doing. And, um, we want, we want as many people as part of this conversation as possible, uh,

because you have the power, not only to get informed, but to influence your friends and family to get informed and make better decisions. The better decisions we make, the better country we have. There you go. I'm voting for you. Hey, I'll come on the show when I run. There you go. I love it.

So guys, check it out. Fair, fast, and fun. Refer to your friends if they're having trouble making a decision. They can decide what they want to do. You can go to votingsmarter.org and check it out. I really encourage everybody to give a damn this year. Get involved. If you want to work for whichever candidate you like, get involved with their process. Get out the word. Let's get everybody voting. I mean, if you've got to peer peer pressure your friends let's peer pressure them to vote and be smart so this is a great way to take and do that if you want to donate to the great cause they're doing do that as well uh thanks to terry for being on the show today thank you for being with us thanks a lot chris you know uh we really appreciate you know i really appreciate you having me on having having this conversation. Vote.org's registered, I think, 800,000 new voters in the last couple months. Let's make sure they don't take blind votes. Let's make sure they get informed, make great decisions, and shows like yours having us on really help move that ball forward. So thanks for having me on today. Thank you very much, sir. Be sure to check it out, guys. You know, all politics is local. And like he says, the down ballots are really important because those are the people who

make your local laws. I mean, for me, I have two dogs and they're Siberian Huskies that escape a lot. So the dog catcher is usually who I'm going to be probably mostly interacting with. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys to watch the video version. You can go to youtube.com for Chris Foss at the bell notification button. Refer your friends' names, relatives to the CBPN or Chris Foss Podcast Network. You can see online podcasts there.

And goodreads.com forward slash Chris Foss. You can join some of our projects and book groups on Facebook as well. So friend me there. Thanks so much for tuning in. Stay safe. Remember to vote. And we'll see you guys next time.