Interview Only w/ Nick Troiano - How To Fix America’s Broken Political System

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bit about reforming. Are the infrastructure of the democracy. If somebody I've had conversations with before, somebody I've known a long time, Nick Triano, he's the executive director of Unite America, are the organization that brought ranked choice voting to the state of Alaska in particular, had been fighting to get essentially to get rid of partisan primaries, whatever form that

can be done. If it's ranked choice voting, it's ranked choice voting simply getting rid of the need for party registration. Then it's getting rid of the need for that. But it has been the through line of Nick's work. But I know that he's essentially been in this game. He look, he ran for Congress as an independent. He's he realized these barriers to entry were extraordinarily high. You know, if you're not a far left or a far right person, is there a home for you in American politics? Is

there a home for you in primaries? And I think Nick has been devoting himself to trying to find that place for those of us that aren't stuck in the wings and joins me. Now, Nick, good to see you.

Good to see you. Check. So let's start with sort of your This is United America. What are we up?

a lot of excitement about the idea. It kind of worked right pretty It seemed like it worked the way it was supposed to work in Alaska, it worked the way many people were hoping it would work in New York City in twenty twenty one, and you know, the main experiment has been less successful because of the decision that main lawmakers made to to only have this somehow count for federal not for state, which is just a head scratcher. And frankly, I find the whole New York

City setup. So the Democrats use rank choice voting, but that trust me, there are a lot of voters who wanted rank choice voting, I think during the general election. But I know, you know this, over the last four or five years, I feel like there's been a movement against it, even people that were supportive going It's hard to explain. You and I've had this conversation. I've always said it. You know, hey, as somebody who has walked people through election nights and talks about you know, vote

dumps and things like that, explaining ranked choice voting. Getting it out of the black box is very difficult. So that's a long wind up. Where are you on this? Where's United America on rank choice voting? And is this a method that you still think is the answer?

increasing dysfunction in government because they incentivize candidates and elected officials to play to the base of both parties in order to win the only elections that really matter these days, which is not the November election when most people vote, but the primaries when the candidates are nominated, because most districts and states right now lean so heavily one way or another. So that's the problem, in our view, low turnout party primaries dictating the outcomes of most elections before

most Americans can even vote. The solution set for what we can do to solve that problem is varied, and when we talk about solutions to the primary problem, it could look like opening up party primaries so that all voters can participate, including independent voters that are currently locked

out of primaries. In sixteen states. It can look like getting rid of party primaries and replacing it with all candidate primaries, so there's a single ballot in the primary, everyone gets to vote for whomever they want, and the top finishers go to the general election. There's a system that's called top two that's used in California and Washington for example, or what Alaska adopted in twenty twenty, which

is a top four system. And when you advance four candidates from the primary to the general election, you want to ensure that one of them wins with majority support, not just plurality. And there are two ways of accomplishing that. One is you can hold a run off election if no one gets over fifty percent, or the other is you can have an instant runoff where people rank their candidates according to preference, and if no one gets a majority,

there's a process of elimination using voters' backup choices. That's what ranked choice voting refers to specifically, which is the part of the reform in a top four primary that is focused on ensuring a majority winner. Ranked choice voting is used in other circumstances, and in our view, it's most powerful when it's combined with a reform to the primary system. So Alaska's reform is a top four primary reform plus ranked choice voting in the general election, and

other places like New York City or Maine are what we would think of as partial reforms because they only have ranked choice voting and they don't really have any other kinds of reforms to the primary system that could improve governing incentives by widening the electorate.

used to it. The second part is how the votes are tabulated, and that is done by election administrators. They have a range of options for how they do it, and some jurisdictions in the country, particularly those that have been using it for a decade or more, have found ways that this can be an instantaneous process and it could be fully transparent, which is to say, they release the cast vote records so that there is a way

that anyone can audit the results. There is a way to make sure that there's results delivered on election night, and there's ways of displaying the results that make it intuitive for people to understand exactly what happens at each round of the tabulation. So the charge sometimes that it's

a complicated or confusing system is really used by opponents to say, you know, let's not change the way that the elections are currently working, because the current way works for them, It works for the two major parties, it

works for the incumbent politician. They're afraid of change. But you know, election reforms like the ones we champion have been used successfully in America and abroad for many years, and it's a necessary part of what's going to take to foster a more functional and representative government.

then and that I wouldn't do rank choice. I think the country suite, there's a runoff, then the top two face off, we have one more debate, like there's a runoff, right Like it feels like that that is that we you know, we wouldn't have a big drop in you know, the concern and when we got rid of general election runoffs, the concern is always, well, you're not going to have

a good turnout. Well that's not true anymore. I mean, my god, I look at the special election in Tennessee earlier this during the early part of December, and for a special election in December, you know, there were something like one hundred and fifty thousand total votes. I mean

that's impressive for that. I mean, I think the engagement with the democracy, and you know, I think there's a I think there's a commentary about our country that our electric gets engaged when when they when they think they feel it slipping away. But you know, it turns out that apathy was a sign of stability. But it is,

so I don't mind that. What but if we had thirty states holding runoffs but the other twenty didn't, then I could see that that would be an issue.

there's a runoff. And so in that case, the top

two finishers advance, or if someone gets a majority of the vote. It's a one and done election. And by the way, it's simpler for election administrators, it's simpler for voters, and it's better for democracy because the election that matters is the one in which most people are already voting, and so you get a more representative outcome and there's

not this initial primary filter. We're only ten percent of voters, who are usually on the most extreme fringes of the political spectrum, are deciding you know, election outcomes, and so this will set wonky and maybe mechanical to people, but it has an impact on public policy because when you look at Louisiana, it's one of the only Deep South. It is the only Deep South state that's expanded medicaid, for example, and was one of the first states to

really lean into charter school reform. And when you think about the purpose of government and is it representing people, in Louisiana, more citizens have access to healthcare and too education than a lot of other pure states. And the reason for that is they have a more functional political system with leaders who are intended and focused on solving problems rather than just these partisan squabbles every day. And

so performing our elections improve incentives. But ultimately improves governance so that we can solve problems that matter to people.

The State House and the State Senate now have bipartisan governing majorities. It's not just one party that's in charge. There's a coalition of members Democrats, Republicans, and independents by the way, that are working together. To address the problems important to the state, most recently overriding a governor's veto

to increase education funding. And so Alaska's been a success story of how better elections result in better governance, and it's produced a backlash from those who used to be in power and liked elections when it only represented a handful of people, And so they've been trying to repeal this system. They were unsuccessful in that last year, a majority of voters in Alaska voted to defend the system, and opponents are going to likely try again next year.

And I suspect that support for the system is going to continue to grow over time, not just because people in theory like the concept of the freedom to vote for whomever they want, but now they're getting real and better results from the system that they voted in a few years ago.

make government better fighting against the forces that are trying to protect the status quo. I think that the period of defense is most important in the immediate years after the adoption of reform, but that it gets better over time because the new incumbents, there are those elected under this system who actually like it and want to defend it. And so it's not the legislature that's trying to repeal it, right, it's a small faction of partisan activists that are.

of years later, voters voted differently, and the Republican now represents that US House seat. So I do think that there's this transition period in which the parties and the politicians have to get smarter in how they campaign under the new rules of the system rather than campaigning under what the old rules used to be.

potentially replicate. And that's what we did see in last year's elections. You know, multiple other states pursued ballot initiatives for an Alaska style kind of system, and while none passed, three states came within three percentage points of passing in a pretty to.

if I'm not mistaken, And it did seem as if the opponents got savvier in pushing back at you guys in Nevada and elsewhere.

and durable support among voters for these policies. We don't need to convince anyone that our political system is broken. What we do need to do is educate voters about the benefits of these systems and why it is worth a change. And as you know, the threshold of getting a voter to vote yes on an initiative is much harder than getting them to vote no, because you have to kind of prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt.

And I think that's the task that we've signed up for and we're going to continue to work on because the status quo is unacceptable and it's leaving us in

a direction in which we're seeing our politics.

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can have. And when you think about the re redistricting wards, it is taking you know, the issue of political party manipulation and putting it right in the voter's face. Right, so you know, I throw that in there. You throw in that the electorate that you're like to get in a midterm environment is an electorate that's going to be more open to changes in the primary system. I think that electric you would get in a mega induced environment. I think we think you know where I'm going there.

So what states do you expect to be on the ballot in trying to do primary reform?

in both Massachusetts and Oklahoma. Two very different states politically, but what they have in common is that all of their congressional seats are decided in the party primaries, and in Oklahoma those are closed to unaffiliated voters. And so those are two states I think to be watching for and to your point, the environment has never been more ripe because our political system has never been more dysfunctional.

We've just emerged from the longest government shutdown that we've seen in history, motivated by you know, in this case, democratic leaders who just want to fight. I mean, that's what this has become. I mean, the word of the year the Oxford Dictionary new word is rage bait. That's reflective of where our politics is.

a decade ago, there was a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Senate, it goes to the House. Why does it fail? Well, the House majority leader was primaried out of office that summer because he was open to some compromise on this issue. And then here we are a decade of pendulum politics. We had, you know, effectively open borders under the Bided administration, and now we have ice raids with even American citizens being snatched off

the streets under President Trump. People don't want these extreme

policies that we've been seeing of late. They want these issues to be addressed in a sensible way. That's not going to happen until we change the incentives of our political system.

sort of a compliment. He goes, there's sometimes that I wish you would take up this cause here, this cause there. And I always say I'm not a centrist. I'm an incrementalist, meaning that are some things I'm on the left and some things. I'm on the right, but I know that the only way to make change in America is one step at a time. And I don't think you try to do big things. You try to do baby steps

and eventually you get your hockey stick moment. Why do you think it's been so hard to galvanize the frustrated center in America?

country work. You know, when we look at the landmark pieces of legislation that have passed the Congress, whether that was civil rights or social security, or medicare or welfare reform and a balanced budget, these things were votes of a majority of both parties doing it together and to be sustainable, not what we're seeing today. The promise of

primary reform is that for every state that adopts it, it effectively liberates both senators and the representatives from those states from being beholden to the base to being representative of the whole. And so you don't need to win in all fifty states. If we can abolish party primaries in tense states, that's twenty US senators. It's a fifth of the Senate that actually can have more leaders who are willing to work with each other on issues of

national importance. That's never been more important for the country. When I think about where we're at right now facing the rise of artificial intelligence, whether we get this right in terms of setting the right rules for the road, having the right overset in place, making the right investments, that's going to be hugely consequential for our economy and

national security. In our society. And if we don't have a representative Congress that can do that, other countries will, or the corporations themselves will, and we're all going to be worse off for it. So whether we have a Congress that works affects us all. And the reason why it doesn't today is not just because of this partisan paralysis. It's because without competitive elections, we wind up getting career

politicians who stay in office for way too long. We have a quarter of the Congress that's over the retirement age, over a third of the sentence above age seventy. It's how we get congressional hearings where they're asking about tik tak instead of TikTok. And these aren't the folks that we needed making the decisions that are going to affect maybe the biggest transformation our economy and society, you know, going forward.

one of them came with serious periods of reform. You know, after the Civil War, during the basically after the Gilded Age, and the and the and the robber barons right after, you know, during and after FDR and you know, both

for good and for bad, right like when, and so I'm optimistic that we're about to hit one of those periods that we know, Look, we've got to do something about the pardon power. We've got to do something. You know, it's clear the Constitution is going to have to deal with campaign finance issues because you can't do it legislatively. And we've got to deal with age limits. Right, I'm all for this age issue, but they're only you have

to do it in the Constitution. So the point is is that I'm I can be I'm almost like a squirrel with this. I'm like, oh I like that reform. Oh yeah, I want to do this. There's a lot of I've been you you go to these gatherings too. I get invited to many of these sort of gatherings, whether it's a fledgling third party movement, a fledgling reform movement, you know, those advocating a constitutional convention. The folks at the Forward Party. You've got the World Open Primaries, which

is another organization that's working in a similar fashion. I know there's a loose connectivity between these groups, right you guys, You know you're all rowing in the same direction. But everybody has their own sort of laying in their own thing. And maybe it's you already are biased that you have got to start. Do you think you feel like there is an order to the reform that's necessary here, that you know, before we get to X, we've got to do why, and before we get to why, we got to do Z.

Congress and potentially create an environment in which constitutional change is possible. So I think the state by state route is both a strategy and an opportunity to try different things. And the second thing is I and we did not start with primary reform as being our north star. We got there through examining what sits at the center of both what is most viable and could be most impactful.

And I do think that abolishing party primaries is the biggest possible change that we can make right now that can open the window for other potential changes down the road, particularly changes that will require legislatures to do something, because for them to do something on this issue, they need to be more representative of the population who supports these

reforms than they are today. So I both support an experimental approach to this, and we support primary reform for a very particular reason, which I do think it is the most solvable problem right now.

could actually, you know, open the door to a whole bunch more of ideas. Do you find yourself frustrated that other reform minded folks don't see this as the core problem.

one policy that they're behind. It's a diversified approach, including what could be done on the state or federal level. And so it doesn't frustrate me that there are multiple potential pathways to making our democracy better. The thing that's frustrating to me is around apathy or defense of the status quo, because can anyone look around today and say, oh, no, this is actually fine and we're moving in an okayed direction.

If you can't, then then choose something, choose one of these things to be for and get behind it, because I don't think the path that we're on, you know, is sustainable.

any potential changes to a system they've known the same way while all of their lives. And that's good news, because young voters become all voters and just a question of time. And so I think time is a really important lever here when you look back, as you reference before to the progressive era when we got major reforms done, the women won the right to vote, direct election of the Senate, banning of corporate campaign contributions, income the big party primaries.

the duopoly, and it's you know, the Democrats and party in the Republican Party doesn't really work together on anything other than this right, which is sort of protecting their status at the ballot. You can sometimes win over local members of a party or local party organizations if they're in a state where they've been marginalized. But I imagine donors are hard to come by because a donor usually is a partisan right. They usually are passionate about something.

Is it hard to find people passionate in the very wealthy space about reform.

That's fine, but there's been a lot of people on who have come into this movement because their interest is not trying to elect or oppose one political party or another. It's about people who have been philanthropically mind who care about an issue, that knows we're not going to make progress on that issue, but for government being able to

be functional and representative of the electorates. So I would say it's a different profile oftentimes of a donor that gets involved in this space and from across the political spectrum as well. It's really interesting in this work, not just at our team or board level, but also in the donor community of people that may not agree a lot on particular candidates or particular policies, but we do agree that government should represent a true majority of Americans.

And then let's have the argument once we have, you know, a government that can represent us.

Schwarzenegger was instrumental, you know, in that campaign. And when I look at incoming governors like an Abigail Spandberger who serves in you know, have one term in Virginia, maybe this is something that schol champion is part of her legacy there to say this will be good for the commonwealth out into the future. Let's get this done. I think when we have executive leadership that leans into the issue, legislatures may be more likely to follow.

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vote in it. So I you know, Virginia is a place where I where you feel like, no matter where what your ideological stripe is, you at least have some say in the conversation. But Virginia may also repeal a constitutional amendment on redistricting reform in a couple of months, and California just did it, and I look at what happened there. There was real momentum on redistricting reform just

four or five years ago. And I would bet frankly that movement had more momentum than your movement did. We were part of that. Actually, yeah, for me, but it had a and and it's amazing how that flipped that quickly. Are you at all I mean, are you at all demoralized at how people who are reformers are going? Yeah, but on this, I mean I just have struggled, you know, And I've had this debate with friends out in California.

I said, Look, I just don't understand why. If disenfranchising voters in Texas is bad, why is the answer disenfranchising voters in California.

When he goes sweeps into a state, it is get this, find me five more seats, or I'm going to primary you in your next election. So I think it's important we connect the dots back to the political incentives piece, which is how primaries can be weaponized not just to push people to the extremes, but to push them to

do undemocratic things to consolidate power. The opposite is true as well, or the other side of the coin, which is that if we didn't have party primaries, this challenge of safe districts or districts that are heavily lopside would matter less, Chuck, because there would be more competition in the general election if we advanced more than two candidates

rather than what it is you know right now. And so I think the answer to.

so it was a d on d general election. And I remember the dividing issue was actually tart at the time, and one of them had been you know, voted against it. One of them voted for it, and that essentially they were wooing the third of Republicans that were in their district. Right, they were both Democrats, and there was a third of

Republicans that were the swing voter. And I thought, boy, that that could really if if we could have that system everywhere where, at any point in time, even if you're in the minority, you your vote could be the swing vote. You get to decide do I want, you know, do I want a libertarian conservative or do I want

a evangelical conservative? Right? And if that's the two choices, well, I you know, it may not like either, but I have a preference of which I want less, you know exactly. Yeah, you think about it.

have a choice that is real. And so the idea that in red districts you get to choose what kind of Republican you want, during blue districts, what kind of Democrat you want in the general election, is much better than showing up to an election that's already been decided.

But all the local offices, he said if I want to have to say in local primaries, you know I got to vote. So in some ways, conservatives, older conservatives in the South have actually been participating in primaries this way for a long time.

extremely unpopular. I mean, we just released a poll today from Republican polster in Texas that found two thirds of Republican primary voters support the current system. They like to have the freedom to vote. They don't like the idea of government overreach and starting to have to register publicly what party you're from. So these attempts are driven by insiders, driven by extreme factions where they're trying to is unpopular,

and that's one of the reasons why you know, in America is working hard in these states to defend the current system from going backwards. And what we have found is that our allies in this in many cases are Republican legislative leaders who know that not only is this bad for America, it's bad for their party. When the largest and fastest growing part of the electorate are those that don't belong to either party, How can you expect to win those voters over if you're kicking them out

of the process in which you're choosing your candidates. And so it really is, you know, courageous Republican leaders in many of these states that are standing up to forces within their own party that want to close elections to create more pure ideological purity that might wind up costing them elections.

but I don't want to have to identify. I mean, it's sort of a strange thing that government is making people do this in a quote unquote democracy.

to participate in it. And I just won't do that. I know the pledge is meaningless, but I kind of feel, you know, but I don't think they have the right to ask that right now. It is a privately funded election that they run, so okay, it's private organization. They

can have that say. So I just don't participate in. I won't participate in in because there're sometimes the Republicans have gone off and on about doing the same thing where they make you sign an oath because there isn't a there isn't party registration in this state. So let me shift in our last few minutes here to the other areas of reform to focus on. So I agree with you. I think primaries number one are sort of easy to communicate to people that it's a problem, right,

it's a we're polarized. Hey, it's this primary issue. People get it. So I'm with you. I think it is the good first reform to focus on what's next. What's two, three, and four in your head? I think it's a good question. I think we need to do something on campaign finance. It's a salient issue for most voters. They don't like the idea of special interests or wealthy interests having disproportionate say in our political system that will likely require a

constitutional amendment. There's something the other number two issue. When

you ask people what's wrong with.

change in law or state constitutions. But how do we think about other ways we do democracy outside of an electoral context. And there's a growing movement around deliberative democracy and citizen assemblies, which are essentially randomly assembled groups of citizens that can deliberate on issues and make recommendations to government. I think they're interesting ways where they can actually be integrated into the government.

at the township level.

few weeks. They're presented with information and arguments from different perspectives on an issue and then they liberate in a facilitated way together to render a particular you recommendation or perspective that then say, goes to the city council and so binding. No, although it could be set up in a binding way, but right now, many of the ones that are being done are advisory, you know, in nature. I think there are interesting ways in which may be

integrated into the citizen initiative process itself. We can use citizen assemblies to determine what gets to go to the ballot. I mean, it's just it's an improvement in what direct democracy,

you know, can look like. So I would say like over the next decade plus, there's going to be needs to reimagine what democracy looks like. I mean, we're coming up on our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary as a country. We've gotten here, I think by continuing to look at and innovate and improve the way that we can self govern,

and we need to be responsive to the times. And so whether it's these election reforms or citizen assemblies, the ideas that we need to keep democracy fresh to keep it working.

that were just four hundred random people that were selected to be in the you know, and then you brought them together just like you would a jury, and okay, this is the legislature. We're going to compensate you for your time. You're the citizen legislature for the l and hey, look, if you feel like any you vet them, maybe you know, certain people can't serve, and you know whatever, you can

come up with some criteria. But compulsory representation is something that I've actually been curious about, where you basically, okay, yeah, once every twenty years, I got to sit on the city council, you know, once every twenty twenty years, I

got to do six months. I got to do six weeks at the state capitol. You know, I think we would get better. I think we would certainly get outcomes that were more reflective of the population.

Juries make life or death decisions the trust. Really they are also capable of informing what our marginal tax rate could be.

a couple of rural states that would be more open to trying this first, you know, And it could be interesting whether it's a you could see easily see one of the New England states being open to this concept. I mean, the New Hampshire State House can be such a pain in the ass with how many specials, you know, we have foreignered members. There's always somebody who's you know, can't do it, or can't go or this or that. If you told me they transition to something like this

in twenty years would shock me. By the way.

in many states right now by legislatures that are trying to increase the threshold of what it takes to pass the ballot initiative to make it harder to qualify. So I think everyone who cares about democracy, and especially in the reform movement, ought to be working together to make sure that we protect and improve the citizen initiative process.

There will be initiatives on the ballot next November that will both attempt to make things worse that we need to defeat, and a couple of states innovating with constitutional protections of the initiative process so that legislatures can't undo them in the future.

it these days than folks on the right. And in fact, had Clinton won in ninety six, I think it was Greg Abbott at the time as governor of Texas was basically wanting to to lead a movement of states to call for a constitutional convention. And you know, had Clinton one in sixteen, that might have been what the right would have focused on. It might have been an interesting exercise. But do you think it would Is that a fool's errand in your mind? Or is it something that whose

time might be now?

vote of the electoral college. And if we double the size of the House, I promise you nobody will be complaining about the electoral college.

states that we continue to work on for form. But we'll say having had the experience of running for office early on was good in being grounded and how voters actually think about democracy and elections, not just an academic perspective on this, and I feel grateful to be in a role right now to make the biggest impact I can that can impact how people who runs and how they govern and at scale.

you breaking through? I think that works in the favor of independent candidates the extent that there are a fewer gatekeepers that are saying whether you're credible or not, but you can reach voters directly in a more democratized way than ever has been the case. I'm hoping that we might see a couple of these candidates actually break through what has been that glass ceiling and then show that it's possible.

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