A powerful nonpartisan solution to fix U.S. Politics

[Music]

everything i need to know about politics

i learned

from cheese for the last decade of my

business career i ran

a 250 million dollar food company in

wisconsin

yes we made cheese if customers liked my

cheese

i did well if they didn’t they bought

cheese from someone else

and i did less well that’s healthy

competition

healthy competition incentivizes

businesses

to make better products better products

equals happier customers and happier

customers equals successful businesses

win-win now while i was running gale

foods

i was also deeply engaged in

and increasingly frustrated by

politics the more frustrated i got

the more i wondered why competition in

politics didn’t deliver the same kind of

win-win results

how do the democrats and the republicans

keep

doing so well when their customers

that’s us are so unhappy

why is the politics industry win lose

they win we lose the answer

it turns out that one thing almost

all americans agree on washington

is broken is also one thing

we’re all wrong about

washington isn’t broken it’s

doing exactly what it’s designed to do

it’s just not designed to serve us the

citizens

the public interest most of the rules in

politics

are designed and continuously fine-tuned

and for the benefit of private

gain-seeking organizations that’s the

two parties a textbook duopoly

and the surrounding companies in the

business

of politics and they’re all

doing great even as the american public

has never been more dissatisfied said

another way

politics isn’t broken it’s

fixed this is a guiding principle of

politics industry theory the

non-partisan body of work

that i originated and have championed

over the last seven years

now before i go further i should tell

you i’m not on the red team

or the blue team i call myself

politically homeless which

may resonate with some of you and my

work doesn’t focus

blame on individual politicians on

either side of the duopoly

the root cause of our political

dysfunction

the cause that endures across all

election cycles and

all administrations is the system

the perverted rules of the game

the rules of the game and politics even

make prisoners of our senators and

representatives

their only option is lockstep

allegiance to their side of the divide

so what do we do about it how do we free

our

congress and make politics win win

we change the rules but which ones

it’s not what we think it’s not

gerrymandering

not the electoral college not the

absence of term limits

and not even money in politics really

by looking at the system through a

competition lens

politics industry theory identifies the

two rules

that are both our greatest obstacles and

our greatest opportunities

they’ve been hiding in plain sight

let’s start with bad rule number one

party

primaries you all know primaries those

first-round elections that we mostly

ignore

the ones that identify the single

republican

and the single democrat who can appear

on the november general election ballot

party primaries have become low turnout

elections

dominated by highly ideological

voters and special interests

candidates know that the only way to

make it to the general election ballot

in november

is to win the favor of these more

extreme partisans in the primary

so candidates from both parties

have little choice but to move towards

those extremes

why does this matter because it

dramatically affects

governing and not in a good way

imagine you’re a member of congress

you’re deciding how to vote

on a bipartisan bill that addresses a

critical national challenge

you might ask yourself is this a good

idea

is this what the majority of my

constituents want

but that’s not how it works in the

politics industry

instead the question that matters most

to you

is will i win my next party primary if

i vote for this bill the answer

is almost always no consensus solutions

don’t win party primaries let’s

illustrate this key design flaw with a

venn diagram

in the current system there’s virtually

no intersection

no connection between congress acting in

the public interest and the likelihood

of their getting reelected

if america’s elected representatives do

their jobs the way we need them to

they’re likely to lose those jobs that

is crazy no wonder congress doesn’t get

anything done

okay now let’s talk about bad rule

number two

plurality voting which i’ll explain in

just a moment

in any other industry as big and as

thriving as politics with

this much customer dissatisfaction and

only two companies some entrepreneur

would see a phenomenal business

opportunity and create a new competitor

but that doesn’t happen in politics

our current parties don’t feel

competitive pressure to serve the public

interest

in large part because of

one rule that keeps out almost

all new competition plurality voting

it sounds fancy but it simply means

the candidate with the most votes wins

that also seems logical but it’s a

really

bad idea why

because in the united states you can win

almost any election even if a majority

didn’t vote for you for example

in this three-ray race the winner only

has

34 percent of the votes 66 percent of

the voters

most people wanted someone else

with plurality voting we may not feel

free to vote for the candidate we really

want because we’re afraid that we’ll

just waste our vote

or worse will spoil the election

so if you think back to the 2016

presidential race

voters on the right who liked

libertarian candidate gary johnson

were told by the republicans don’t

vote for him he’s just a spoiler he’ll

take votes away from

trump and help elect hillary and voters

on the left

who liked green party candidate jill

stein were told by the democrats

don’t vote for her she’s just a spoiler

she’ll take votes away from hillary and

help elect trump

the spoiler problem that comes from

plurality voting

is the single biggest reason almost

nobody knew

outside the duopoly ever runs or gets

any traction

because everyone knows they don’t stand

a chance politics

is the only industry where we’re

regularly told that

less competition is better and if

there’s never any new competition

the existing parties aren’t accountable

to us for results

because they don’t need us to like

what they’re doing they only need us to

choose

one of them as the lesser of two evils

or to

just stay home the founders foresaw

our situation and they warned us

as when john adams said there is

nothing which i dread so much as a

division of the republic

into two great parties each arranged

under its leader and concerting measures

in opposition to each other

now there’s nothing inherently wrong

with parties or

even having only two major parties the

problem is

the current two are guaranteed to remain

the

only two regardless of what they do or

don’t get

done on behalf of the country does this

sound like the best we can do

of course not so the founders gave us

what they knew we’d need

they gave us this our constitution

there’s a reason it’s called the pocket

constitution

it’s short guess what’s not in here

instructions on how to run our elections

crazy rules like party primaries and

plurality voting

they’re made up but thanks to what is in

here

article one they’re optional

article one gives every state the power

to change the rules of election for

congress at any time

personally i think now sounds like the

perfect time

and here’s where we turn nonpartisan

politics industry theory into action

the political innovation we need is what

i call

final five voting with final five voting

we make two simple changes to our

elections for congress

we get rid of what doesn’t work party

primaries and plurality voting

and replace it with what will work

open top five primaries and instant

runoffs in the general election

let me explain these changes with an

example of final five voting

in a hypothetical and kind of cool

election so here we have eight

candidates

from four different political parties

alexander hamilton george washington

abigail adams all the way through to

aaron burr

ambitious as ever immediately you notice

how diverse this field is

it’s a primary people would want to vote

in because it’s exciting

it has experience and vision but it’s

also

young scrappy and hungry okay maybe not

so young and because this is an open

primary all eight candidates are on the

same ballot

regardless of party when the results are

in the top five finishers move on to the

november election

again regardless of party

in the general election voters pick

their favorite

just like always but then if they would

they can also rank their

second third fourth and last

choices you may have heard of this idea

ranked choice voting here’s where things

get interesting

if this election were a plurality vote

like normal

aaron burr would win because he has the

most first place votes

30 percent but because this is final

five voting

the winner will be the candidate who’s