Another Way, by Lawrence Lessig (Lawrence Lessig)

For more information about the For The People Act: https://sarbanes.house.gov/issues/hr-1-the-for-the-people-act

Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson candidate joins Larry Lessig this week to talk about why she’s running and how she would restore our democracy by making every voice equal and reducing the influence of big money and big corporations.

Larry Lessig begins the episode with a plea to focus on campaign finance reform. Then, Larry talks to U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Michael Bennet on how to create enduring democracy reforms that can unclog what he calls a "paralyzed Congress."

Equal Citizens founder Larry Lessig speaks with Tiffany Muller, the founder of End Citizens United. The unfortunate occasion is the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United. Tiffany explains not only the problems that big money has caused but also how we need a comprehensive solution that does more than just overturn Citizens United.

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With Larry Lessig on vacation, Adam Eichen, Naomi Truax, and Danny Holt, all of Equal Citizens, discuss the POTUS1 project. This project tracks presidential candidates’ views on democracy reform issues like gerrymandering, voter registration, the electoral college, and campaign finance reform. The trio take the candidates in order from candidates who are actively anti-democracy (President Trump) to the candidates who have the very best platforms on these issues. You can review all the candidates’ positions on these issues at https://equalcitizens.us/potus1/.

Context for the No Labels phone call leak:  https://theintercept.com/2021/06/16/joe-manchin-leaked-billionaire-donors-no-labels/

In today's episode, Equal Citizens founder Larry Lessig and chief counsel Jason Harrow dive deeply in their case about presidential electors, which is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the episode—the first in a multi-part series—they describe how the text, history, and structure of the Constitution require that presidential electors be free to vote for whatever candidate they wish.

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This week, Larry Lessig talks with John Gastil, a Professor at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, about how we can make better political decisions. They discuss the polarized media landscape and specific steps we can take to improve deliberation, understanding, and the use of reason.

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As a bonus episode, we bring your our recent conversation with Senator Bernie Sanders on all things democracy reform. Bernie sat down with Equal Citizens' Larry Lessig and reform advocate Zephyr Teachout to discuss gerrymandering, how to fix our broken campaign finance system, how to end corruption, and much more. Note that this episode was released early to Patreon subscribers. To subscribe, check out Patreon.com/EqualCitizens.

Just in time for the first Democratic debates, Larry Lessig talks with Beto O’Rourke about the candidate’s plans to fix our democracy. O’Rourke explains his plans to expand voting rights and get 15 million more people to vote and to reduce the influence of special interests. He also expresses support for learning more about ranked-choice voting (RCV). Importantly, O’Rourke also reveals that democracy reform will be the first thing he does in office.

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David Van Reybrouck's book, Against Elections, helped crystalize a movement for citizen assemblies. In my conversation with him, we talk about the origin of this idea, and how it could complement democracy.

Adam Eichen is joined by Andrew Perez, a writer and researcher who spent five years as a money-in-politics investigative reporter. Andrew reveals how he uncovered his biggest stories, why money can be so hard to track, and why we need more journalists—now more than ever.

Please note: This episode was recorded prior to the Iowa caucuses and does not include information from the most recent FEC filing.

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Reform is possible. Congressman John Sarbanes is proof. Sarbanes is the most important architect of democracy reform in Congress today. In this episode, Lessig and Sarbanes speak about the For the People Act, and where reform will continue.

Larry Lessig talks with political consultant and CNN contributor Paul Begala about why democracy reform is necessary to make progress on so many important issues, and how to make fundamental reform issues relevant to the real lives of everyday voters.

On this episode, journalist David Daley joins Adam Eichen to discuss his new book, Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. To write the book, Daley embedded with democracy reform campaigns throughout the 2018 election cycle. Adam and Dave discuss their favorite success stories from the book and end with some thoughts about Daley's recent New York Times op-ed about the next frontier of gerrymandering.

Purchase Unrigged:
https://www.amazon.com/Unrigged-Americans-Battling-Back-Democracy/dp/1631495755

Read Daley's op-ed in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/opinion/missouri-republicans-gerrymander.html

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U.S. Representative Ro Khanna speaks with Larry Lessig about his effort to reform our democracy, end corruption, and reduce the impact of money in politics. They talk about working with both Bernie, why Biden will sign reform, finding a way to a real "grand bargain" that can end corruption, and why it's important for activists to keep the pressure on Congress to pass reform.

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Larry Lessig talks with Democratic presidential candidate John Delaney about his nuanced view of why Congress is so broken and so badly polarized. They talk about money in politics, campaign finance reform, the need of Congresspeople to constantly be raising money, the impact of gerrymandering, and other innovative ideas to improve our democracy. They also discuss the issue of whether—and why—it's important to make fixing our democracy a high priority.

Larry Lessig speaks to John Pudner of Take Back Our Republic about the bipartisan need for democracy reform. Pudner is a Republican political strategist who talks about how democracy reform is consistent with conservative principles, the need to reduce politicians' reliance on lobbyists, the rise of "SCAMPacs," and more.

This week, Jason Harrow and Adam Eichen of Equal Citizens recap the Democratic presidential primary. How important has democracy reform for voters? For the media? Adam then tells stories from the ground in New Hampshire. They conclude by discussing ideas to make the 2024 primaries more small-d democratic. Feedback welcome to info@equalcitizens.us.

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A video recording of the event is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4ruZdpFWP8

In this episode, Lawrence Lessig outlines our plan to fight back against SuperPACs. He explains the logical mistake in SpeechNow v. FEC, why we launched a video competition (with a $50,000 prize!), and the legal strategy that could render SuperPACs largely powerless.

For more information on the video contest, visit:

cancelsuperpacs.com

Larry Lessig speaks with Issue One's Nick Penniman about why Nick left journalism to begin tackling the problem of fixing our democracy. Nick then discusses the difference between putting policies on websites and having politicians prioritize real reform that would de-rig the system and enable real change to happen. And they discuss how to build a coalition across the left, right, and center to at last get the change that 80-90% of the public wants to see happen.

Evan McMullin came to national prominence when he ran for president in 2016 as an independent, anti-Trump conservative. Since the 2016 election, he has been a strong and principled independent voice on many issues. This week, he speaks to Larry Lessig about how to find common ground to rebuild and improve our democracy, which he believes is “under threat” right now. He says he is excited about the possibility of forming a cross-partisan coalition for gerrymandering reform, ranked-choice voting, and more.

Not all AI is democracy ending AI. Some can support democracy and make it better. In this episode, I talk to Kim Polese, whose career launching transformative technologies (beginning with Java) has landed with a democracy enhancing AI, CrowdSmart. We talk about its potential, as well as the open source alternative, pol.is.

In this special episode, Equal Citizens founder Larry Lessig talks with U.S. Senator Ron Wyden [D-Or.] about how to protect our elections in this time of crisis. Wyden was the first Senator elected entirely in a mail-in election, and he has emerged as a champion of mail-in voting as the way to ensure we can all vote safely in elections for the remainder of this year. They discuss Wyden's bill as well as what happened in Wisconsin's recent primary that makes vivid the need for immediate reform.

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Our first lifeboat is hope — hope that government could actually do good. Brink Lindsey, formerly of the Cato Institute, and now Director of the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center, talks to me about governmental capacity, and how we could make it better.

How will we make fundamental democracy reform a key part of election 2020? Join us each week to find out.

For more information about the ballot measure and Alaskans for Better Elections, click here: https://alaskansforbetterelections.com

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/EqualCitizens
 

After hope, we need health. Josh Greene, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of Moral Tribes talks to me about building healthier engagement between increasingly polarized citizens.

In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, Jon Stever launched an extraordinary experiment to draw together a representative sample of the world to discuss the climate and ecological crisis the world is facing. In this conversation, I talk to him about how he and his team did that, and what it teaches us about the potential for citizen assemblies generally.

In this season, Lessig will have a conversation with Ben Hepburn, a friend from high school, whose politics is not Lessig's. The plan for the season is to check in regularly about the latest questions raised by the new Trump administration, and see whether a conservative and a liberal can find common ground, or even just understanding. This first episode was recorded just before in Inauguration. 

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Music:
Roundpine by Blue Dot Sessions
Noe Noe by Blue Dot Sessions
Vengeful by Blue Dot Sessions

Post-production:
Josh Elstro of Elstro Production

Matthew Seligman wrote about this recently at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/the-good-but-also-ominous-news-from-the-supreme-court-about-voting-in-pennsylvania.

Voting rights have always been contentious in America, and our era is no different. Larry Lessig digs deeply into the past and present of voting in America with Ari Berman, a senior reporter at Mother Jones and the author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.

For more information about Unrig, visit: https://www.unrigbook.com  

On this week's episode, Jason Harrow and Adam Eichen of Equal Citizens talk with election law expert Rick Hasen about the impact of COVID-19 on our democracy. Rick is a professor at UC Irvine and the author of the Election Law Blog and the new and eerily-prescient book Election Meltdown. Rick discusses the importance of expanding voting from home and absentee balloting, whether elections can be "cancelled," and other impacts the coronavirus will have on our elections.

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We want to understand why you listen and how we can make our episodes even better in the New Year. Complete the survey at democracygroup.org/survey for a chance to share your thoughts with us and win some swag from the network.

Ireland has been perhaps the most impressive example of citizen assemblies addressing national issues in a new and edifying way. David Farrell is an academic who has studied the Irish example. I talk with him about what Ireland can teach the rest of the world.

What happens when news must compete? How does that affect the news? In this episode, we talk to Ben Smith, a journalist and entrepreneur who played a central role in the transformation of media through social media. His book, Traffic, tells that story better than any other just now.

On this episode, Adam Eichen is joined by Phil Keisling, Chair of the National Vote at Home Institute (www.voteathome.org). The two discuss the spread of Vote at Home—a reform that requires states to mail every voter their ballot before the election—and why this may well be the next frontier of voting reform.

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In today's episode, Larry Lessig launches a new "season" of Another Way and explains why we want to talk about reforming our democracy and ending corruption by speaking with folks in or running for Congress and in the media. Our first guest in the series is Mondaire Jones, who is a Democratic candidate for New York's 17th District. They discuss Jones's background, voting in a pandemic, how to take on big money in politics, and more.

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Dave Daley joins Larry Lessig this week to talk about the past, present, and future of gerrymandering. They discuss the nefarious mechanisms and effects of drawing district lines for maximal partisan advantage. Dave is a senior fellow at FairVote and former editor of Salon.com and is also the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count.

Lessig's Medium post on Hawley: https://lessig.medium.com/senator-josh-hawleys-outrage-741732e8821

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Larry Lessig talks to South Dakota 2018 gubernatorial candidate Billie Sutton about his history in bronc riding and his political career fighting corruption and running a grassroots, small-dollar campaign in South Dakota. (Note: We apologize to listeners and to Billie about the poor quality audio on this call. We are working to improve audio quality for future episodes.)

Equal Citizens founder Larry Lessig talks with Alex Morse, a candidate for Congress in the First District of Massachusetts, about how Congress really works. They talk about how fundraising permits Congresspeople to live above their means, and why it makes it hard for them to provide real solutions that would improve people's lives. He also explains why, without first reforming our democracy, we're not going to be able to make substantive progress on key policy priorities.

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This week, Katie Fahey of The People, a Michigan-based advocacy group, talks with Larry Lessig about how she wrote a Facebook post asking if anyone else wanted to take on gerrymandering in Michigan…and then found herself leading a successful movement that passed a ballot measure to actually end gerrymandering in Michigan.

This week, Adam Eichen talks with political strategist Kyle Bailey about the incredible fight to bring ranked-choice voting (RCV) to Maine. They discuss how to get voters to respond to the bipartisan message that we must improve our democracy, and how to win a fight that incumbent politicians of both parties are resistant to.

In a bonus episode, Jason and Adam of Equal Citizens discuss how democracy issues came up in the last Democratic debate, and then they deliver a knowledge drop about Ohio voter rolls. And they announce that you can now become a Patron of Another Way by going to Patreon.com/EqualCitizens. Join now!

Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn at 23, and founder of UpWorthy, talks to me about creating healthy online spaces, and democratic activism that builds up democracy rather than tearing it down.

What was media like? How has media changed? In this episode, we talk to Princeton Professor Markus Prior about the architecture of public media, over the period of what he calls "broadcast democracy," and in the period we're living within today. How does that architecture affect the politics that is possible?

The assumption of most lawyers — or Americans — who know the word "SuperPAC" is that the Supreme Court has declared that the First Amendment protects SuperPACs. In this episode, you'll learn why that assumption is flat-out false, and about the fight to end SuperPAC money in America's democracy.

On this episode of the podcast, Adam Eichen is joined by Nick Nyhart, a longtime advocate for public financing of elections. Nick recounts the largely forgotten period of time (1996-2005) when a handful of states adopted public financing measures and the possibilities for reform seemed truly auspicious. The two then deconstruct where things went wrong and why, despite the setbacks, there is reason to be hopeful.

The new season of Another Way is finally here! In this episode, Lawrence Lessig outlines his plan for the season, which will eventually be turned into a book. Listeners are invited to reconceptualize the crisis that American democracy faces and to join Lessig in the search for democracy's "lifeboats".   

This week, Joan Mandle, Executive Director of Democracy Matters, joins Adam Eichen to discuss the role that students play in the Democracy Movement and how to get more of them involved moving forward. If you know a student who would like to be trained as a democracy organizer, visit www.democracymatters.org.

Buy Lee's book here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop-9780190913854?cc=us&lang=en#

This conversation builds off a February 5th, 2021 interview, available here: https://equalcitizens.us/the-quest-to-understand-the-people/

On today's episode, we continue our discussion of the Supreme Court case about presidential electors. Larry Lessig discusses the 2016 presidential election with presidential electors from Washington State. The Supreme Court is set to hear their case on May 13.

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Even great ideas need to be studied and understood scientifically. Jennifer Heerwig has done more than anyone studying the effects of the voucher experiment in Seattle, Washington. In this episode, we hear what she has learned, and what that could mean for reform more generally.

On today's episode, we follow-up our conversation with electors from Washington by talking with three electors from Colorado. Mike Baca, Polly Baca, and Bob Nemanich are the three plaintiffs in the case of Colorado Department of State v. Baca, which will be argued in the U.S. Supreme Court by telephone on Wednesday, May 13. They describe how they came to be electors, what they were trying to do in 2016 when they contemplated voting for a candidate other than Hillary Clinton, and what it means to them to have the Supreme Court hear the case.

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In this episode, Adam Eichen speaks with University of Kentucky Law Professor Joshua Douglas about the growing movement for democracy reform, the policies that are working in states and locales across the country, and his new book, Vote for US: How to Take Back Our Elections and Change the Future of Voting.

Comedian Paul Rodriguez and politician Rocky Chavez join Equal Citizens' Jason Harrow for a discussion about why they support a popular vote for President as California Republicans—and why they joined Equal Citizens' lawsuit trying to abolish winner-take-all for just that reason. They also discuss why they are in the minority as Latino Republicans, how the need to raise money makes it hard for politicians to respond to constituents' needs, and more.

We can make our unrepresentative representative democracy representative. But AI may mean that's not enough. This episode introduces the final section of this season — lifeboats: the changes we could make to make it so democracy can survive.

On this week's episode, we bring you a recording of a live conversation between Equal Citizens' Jason Harrow and Jesse Wegman, a member of the New York Times editorial board. Jesse's new book is called Let The People Pick The President, and Jason and Jesse discussed the history of efforts to change to a popular vote for President, as well as the current push through the National Popular Vote Compact. Thanks to the Leadership Now Project for hosting this wonderful virtual discussion. You can learn more about Leadership Now at https://www.leadershipnowproject.org/.

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Check out Weston's fantastic podcast Swamp Stories here: https://www.swampstories.org/

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In this second episode, Ben Hepburn and Lessig continue to see where we can find common ground in our understanding of the current administration. Are we on the left too pessimistic? Is the other side too optimistic? 

Listen to Rabbi Pollack's appearance on Another Way from 2019: https://equalcitizens.us/how-a-rabbi-in-pennsylvania-is-fixing-democracy/

In today's episode, Jason Harrow talks with Kathleen Unger, the founder of VoteRiders, about voter ID laws and how her organization is helping more than 1 million people get identification so that they can vote. They discuss the prevalence of voter ID laws, how difficult and expensive it often is to get id, and how the coronavirus crisis is making things even worse.

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This week, Adam Eichen speaks with Rabbi Michael Pollack, co-founder of the Pennsylvania-based pro-democracy organization March on Harrisburg. The two discuss the role spiritual leaders can play in the fight for reform, March on Harrisburg's history and tactics, and how the group's work could be replicated across the nation.

A link to the updated New York Review of Books essay:

https://medium.lessig.org/1759084fcf6f
 

A link to the original New York Review of Books essay:

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2021/12/10/why-the-us-is-a-failed-democratic-state