From the Vault! Ranked Choice Voting with Kyle Herman from Rank the Vote Ohio

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These cities used ranked choice voting for decades, but it became a victim of its own success because it was too good at increasing diversity of representation in terms of more women being elected, more people of color being elected and a greater diversity of ideology and parties, and so the corrupt party bosses and the KKK led repeal efforts to get rid of it after several decades, and so we know that ranked choice voting has been effective in Ohio, and so that's why we're trying to bring it back to Ohio.

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Welcome to the United she Stands podcast, the show that brings kindness and women into politics.

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I'm Ashley and I'm Sarah, and we're two Midwestern women from Ohio who have a passion for kindness, lifting others up and making a difference.

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Our experience in corporate America has taught us both to build and navigate all kinds of relationships and lead groups of people.

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When it comes to politics, however, there is nothing official about us.

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We're just two gals who want to be better educated on the US government and learn how we, as women, can make an impact together.

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Each episode, we will bring our listeners along on our own educational journey.

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And we'll also share real life experiences from women involved and impacted by politics, and we'll try to make it as fun as possible.

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We're so glad you're here for the ride.

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All right, everyone, welcome back to the United she Stands podcast.

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So in several episodes this year, we've talked at a high level about ranked choice voting.

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I know we touched on it in our political parties part three episode, as well as our democracy reform episode and our latest episode about elections.

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So this week we're really excited to dive deeper into ranked choice voting and we're very excited to do that with Kyle Herman.

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Kyle Herman co-founded Rank the Vote Ohio in 2020 and volunteered in different capacities until he was hired to serve as Ohio's first full-time executive director with the help of their national partner, rank the Vote USA in December of 2022.

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December of 2022.

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Kyle's previous experience includes managing pro-democracy programs in Iraq and Lebanon, responding to letters for the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence and teaching high school history and civics.

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As a proud son of Stowe, ohio, kyle earned degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

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Welcome, kyle.

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Thanks for having me.

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I'm excited to be here.

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We're so excited you're here.

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Yeah, and what a bio that is.

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That's so impressive.

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Yeah, Me and Sarah were talking about it.

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We're like we can't believe Kyle's coming on.

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We were like kind of a little starstruck that you were coming on our show.

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I mean it's funny because we all grew up and live so close to each other and like I'm lucky that I was able to have these experiences and see the world, but then bring them back home and I'd been working in DC thinking that my career was going to be about how do we strengthen democracy in the Middle East?

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And increasingly it became.

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How do we save democracy here at home?

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Yeah, that's really cool and yeah, thank you so much for coming on.

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So, before we typically dive into our episodes, me and Sarah crack beers and we tell our listeners what we're drinking.

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Kyle, are you going to drink with us today?

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I am.

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Love it.

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Could you tell us what you're drinking?

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I am drinking a special beer that was brewed by my high school friend, Brian Bernard.

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It is an Irish ale in celebration of St Patrick's Day.

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Love that.

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Yeah, so the time of recording it's just a little bit after St Paddy's Day.

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It's like middle of March, so this episode will drop a little bit later.

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But cheers to St Patrick's Day, yeah, cheers, sarah, what?

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are you drinking?

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I am drinking Love you by, by Saucy.

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It's my favorite saucy beer, nice.

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My mom actually found it in her fridge from when my brother was visiting and she was like do you want this IPA crap?

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I'm like yes.

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I do yes, please.

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And I'm also drinking an IPA.

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I'm drinking Truth by Rheingeist.

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So out of Cincinnati, a classic Classic.

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It is a classic.

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It's like one of my dad's favorite beers, so it's a good one, fun fact.

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All right, we're going to start real simple here.

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Maybe what led you to starting Rank the Vote Ohio.

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So I first heard about Ranked Choice Voting a while back, especially in 2015.

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There was a Harvard professor named Lawrence Lessig who popularized it as part of his Fix Democracy First platform before the 2016 election, and so I saw throughout the 2016 election, both during the primaries and during the general election, how ranked choice voting could have made everything better, and then, incessantly, would talk about it on social media until in the summer of 2020, a mutual friend connected me to one of the founders of Voter Choice Massachusetts that was working on getting it on the ballot there, but also they were working on starting up Rank the Vote National me and a small group of politically diverse volunteers from across Ohio, as we co-founded this nonpartisan nonprofit and officially registered it back in 2020.

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And we were all volunteer until 2022, when we got support from our partners to start scaling up and hiring.

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That's really incredible.

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So before we go any further, we want to make sure everyone listening is on the same page here.

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So can you just explain ranked choice voting for us Like what is it?

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Yeah, ranked choice voting is a simple upgrade to the way we vote.

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It's already used in Maine and Alaska, where, instead of just picking one candidate, you rank your choices first, second and so forth, and if someone gets a majority of more than 50% which is currently not required in Ohio's elections, but if they do then they win, and if they don't, then the person who was in last place is eliminated.

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And if you voted for them as your first choice, then your vote, instead of being wasted, will simply transfer to your next choice.

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So it's just like a runoff, but instead of having to have an entire new election, like they do in Georgia, in order to hit that 50% threshold, then we already know who your backup choices are.

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So that's why we call it an instant runoff, because your vote will automatically go to your next choice until someone gets a majority.

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Is that kind of used like synonymously when you guys talk about rank choice voting Because I've heard people say that too, like instant runoff?

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Instant runoff voting is exactly the same as rank choice voting.

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Gotcha Awesome.

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That is awesome.

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So why put so much effort into changing the way that we vote for candidates today, and what are the benefits of it?

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The reason that we are focused on ranked choice voting as a systemic reform is because all of the other issues that people care about depend on making our system more responsive.

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If you don't require a majority to win elections, you're going to keep getting candidates who only represent a fraction of the voters and oftentimes will represent corrupt special interests more than they will actual voters, and especially, as you talked about in your episode on the two-party system in that series, about how the parties are basically captured by the most extreme elements in their primaries so that by the time we get to the general election, because of gerrymandering, because of the two-party system, then we don't have real choices.

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But with ranked choice voting, when you require a majority to win and enable more parties, more candidates, to run in the independent runoff process, you are more likely to get candidates who are working to find common ground and actually address every other issue that we care about in order to win majority support, rather than only appealing to extremists and special interests.

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Yeah, that makes sense so kind of.

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I know like two things I've read about it and something you kind of just touched on it makes typically candidates less, you know, extreme on the political spectrum, right.

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And then also it enables you to actually, if you want to vote for someone outside of the two parties, because you're not worried about your vote being throw away.

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Right.

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Yeah, I think that's like really powerful.

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Yeah, all right.

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So you talked earlier about Maine, and Alaska have already used ranked choice voting, so we've seen it used other places.

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Can you tell us a little bit about what that's looked like?

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You know, what has it done for those states?

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Yeah, maine has used ranked choice voting since 2018, and Alaska started using it last year, in 2022.

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And we saw in both states that the campaigning was less negative than it was in other states.

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There was more cross-party endorsements, there was more candidates campaigning together even to say like, hey, we want you to rank us first and second just so that we both can be above other candidates.

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Because when you have that incentive structure changed, where you want to be voters, second choice, even if you can't be there first, you have to be more cooperative.

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You can't just spend all your time attacking the other side and fear mongering and all that.

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And so in Alaska, for example, last year we saw a moderate Democrat representative, mary Peltola, and moderate Republican Senator, lisa Murkowski, actually endorsing each other, which can't happen in other states because they would get kicked out of their parties, they would lose their primaries.

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But this showed that Alaskans, who are very independent minded and, just like Ohioans, just like many voters in other states, when they're given the choice between extremists who only pander to their own base versus politicians who are willing to work across the aisle, they want to choose the more collaborative leaders, because the problem isn't just the personalities in our current system.

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It's that whole incentive structure, and so that's why we think that ranked choice voting will continue to be successful in other states.

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That's actually fascinating.

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I feel like I didn't really think through the whole campaign benefit of ranked choice voting, People running together or campaigning together, that's awesome, Like hey, put us as one and two.

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I feel like that would just bring out I mean, we're centered around kindness here, or we try to be at least, and so I think that would really bring out more of the best of people as opposed to the worst of people which we see all the time in campaigns.

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To your point about campaigns like you actually might get to hear a little bit about, like what they want to do or the actual solution they want to provide, instead of them just bashing the other side, which I think is really important as well.

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Exactly when you have this two-party binary, your only incentive is to attack the other side.

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But when you're running in a field of four or five candidates, you actually have to distinguish yourself on your policies and make a positive argument for yourself instead of just demonizing a single opponent.

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Yeah, that's huge.

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I feel like that alone like should win people over for rank choice voting, you know.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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That's awesome.

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That is really awesome.

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So, okay, we already discovered that we're huge fans of this right.

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So how do we make rank choice voting happen and what are the steps that we have to take here in Ohio?

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So we are a 501c3 nonpartisan nonprofit that is exclusively focused on public education.

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At this point, we need to raise awareness and support for what ranked choice voting and instant runoffs are, so that when people hear about them, they recognize them and say like, oh, why don't we do that?

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There's a better way to vote, and so we are laying the groundwork for a potential ballot initiative in 2024.

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We have some national partners who are going to do a viability assessment this summer to see if Ohio is on track, and if we are, then we expect that ballot language will be drawn up to start collecting signatures later in 2023, but we will need 414,000 valid signatures from across the state.

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So that means that we're going to need help from everyone, and if people want to get involved with our nonprofit, you can go to rankthevoteohioorg or rtvoorg slash action and you can sign our online petition.

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You can sign up to volunteer, you can donate, but mostly we need help raising awareness and support, and you can follow us on social media and help amplify our message that way as well.

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Awesome.

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So a little bit of a follow-up there.

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I think ballot initiative is not something we've really talked about, so could you just kind of explain that, Like what is a ballot initiative?

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How does that, you know?

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How does that work?

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Well, I'm a former high school history and civics teacher.

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So back in 1912, teddy Roosevelt visited Ohio and the state legislature passed a series of constitutional amendments, one of which allowed a mechanism for direct democracy in the case that the statehouse became corrupt and unrepresentative.

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Who could imagine that that would ever happen?

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But it gave the citizens the ability to collect a massive number of signatures to show that there was widespread support throughout the state in order to put an issue on the ballot that citizens could vote for or against in order to have a mechanism for direct democracy.

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And there's actually an attempt by some current legislators to try to raise the ballot initiative threshold from a majority of 50% plus one to a super majority of 60%, because they're fearful of direct democracy and the power of the people.

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And we've seen efforts in other states where the two major parties have opposed ranked choice voting.

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We saw that in Nevada when they voted on it in 2022.

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And yet, even despite that, a majority of the people voted in favor of it, and so that's why we expect that this direct democracy process through the ballot initiative is the most viable path for ranked choice voting.

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So the other option technically is that our elected officials could propose it, but basically it doesn't benefit the two parties, so we're not expecting that to happen.

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Exactly and we know from conversations that we and our allies have had that ranked choice voting then there's a high likelihood that their party will punish them by primarying them in the next election, because those party bosses want to control the process instead of letting the voters decide.

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And so they're threatened, because ranked choice voting puts voters first instead of the parties.

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Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.

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Thank you for that Because even for me, like I knew what a ballot initiative was, but I think that's a newer term.

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I feel like I learned that recently because we've gotten into researching all of this information, so I think that's something that I don't know that a lot of people are aware of.

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Wow.

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Oh my gosh, I'm just like I'm drawing all these connections from our last few episodes about political parties and the division and how oh my goodness, it's just crazy Everything is just pointing back to them and the power they have and that they're threatened by democracy reform, because that's like what we should be doing.

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But ah, crazy.

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While I'm on my history and civics kick kit, can I go back to the proof of?

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Uh?

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Most people don't know this is that rank choice voting isn't new, and actually it was used here in ohio more than a hundred years ago in five cities.

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It lasted for several decades.

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Ashtabula, ohio, was actually the first city in the United States to adopt ranked choice voting in 1915.

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It was followed by Cleveland, cincinnati, toledo, hamilton.

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These cities used ranked choice voting for decades, but it became a victim of its own success because it was too good at increasing diversity of representation in terms of more women being elected, more people of color being elected and a greater diversity of ideology and parties, and so the corrupt party bosses and the KKK led repeal efforts to get rid of it after several decades.

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And so we know that ranked choice voting has been effective in Ohio, and so that's why we're trying to bring it back to Ohio.

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I feel like that should be like your slogan, though Like it works before like let's do it again.

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I was thinking more like anti-ranked choice voting is what the KKK wants, like do.

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opposite of them, right like do the opposite of them, because I don't know if you don't.

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If you are against rank choice voting, you're part of the KKK maybe that's a little too far but you said it, not me, right I mean.

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But seriously, that's really interesting that's like definitely the fun fact for today.

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Yeah, um, I had no idea.

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I really did think it was like a whole new idea, because also, like people are so confused by it, like they're like, oh, like it'll just make everything more difficult, but it it won't yeah, and australia has used it for over 100 years.

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so is ireland, uh, and what we see from the polls and in like more than 60 cities where ranked choice voting has been used, is that over 90% of the people, after they've used it, say that it's simple and the vast majority want to keep using it, and so this idea that it's too complicated is really just an insult to voters, because it's literally as easy as ranking your choices one, two, three.

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Right, right, and I think, too, we'll try to make sure we include this in the show notes.

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There's like a two minute video that I've watched 10 times.

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When people ask me what it is, that's what I send them.

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I think it just does such a good job of explaining it.

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Also, though, I think you are the first person I've heard like succinctly explain it.

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I was a little bit nervous about asking that question because I was like, oh, like, talking about it's kind of hard.

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It's not a hard process, but I think sometimes explaining it is a little bit hard.

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Yeah, and we practice it with our volunteers and our canvassers to make sure that when we go out with our sample ballots, it's very easy to just point and explain.

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And most people don't even ask like, well, how is it counted?

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You just show them this is how you vote.

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People don't even ask like, well, how has it counted?

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You just show them this is how you vote.

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You have more choices, so more parties and candidates can run and most people are like sign me up, right, that's awesome, yeah, yeah, very cool, wow, okay.

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So we talked a lot about, like, specifically, ohio and the ballot initiative.

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What about our listeners that live outside of Ohio?

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If they want to get involved, how can they do that?

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So Rank the Vote Ohio is an independent nonpartisan nonprofit, but we're part of a national coalition of similar organizations in almost every state, because that's how rank choice voting is going to be passed is state by state, because everything's so broken at the national level, but you can find out about the organizations in your state by going to rankthevoteus or fairvoteorg, and those are two of our national coalition partners who have lists of all of our similar organizations on the website where you can get involved in your own state.

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Awesome, thank you.

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Most of our listeners are Ohio-based, but we definitely have some outside, so we wanted to make sure we covered them.

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We would like to have more listeners outside of Ohio, so we're prepping for when we blow up, you know.

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Exactly.

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Just because we did a.

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We recently recorded an episode on democracy reform and different strategies, and of course, rigged choice voting fell within that.

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But just out of curiosity, what other strategies are you particularly passionate about when it comes to democracy reform?

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That's a great question Right About Ohio is part of the Ohio Voter Rights Coalition, and so we want to make sure that there is a widespread nonpartisan effort to make sure that voting rights across the board are protected and strengthened, because when there are questions about voter security or voter integrity, we don't think that the answer is to try to make it harder and more complicated for people to be able to vote.

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We think that, yes, we need security for verification, but at the same time, ohio's elections already lack integrity because they don't require a 50% threshold to win.

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They don't require you to actually win a majority, so we get people winning all the time with 30 or 40% of the vote, even though a majority of people vote against them, and so that's why we see rank choice voting as a way to increase election security and integrity, and also because how can you have integrity when you're purposefully limiting the options of the parties and candidates who are able to run in the first place?

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Yeah, we did just touch on the last episode, voter registration and voter ID laws, which I think is kind of a little bit of what you're alluding to right, like, let's not make it harder, let's just make it secure.

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Yeah, yeah.

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What's fascinating is, I feel like people are against changing these processes because they think it's complicated or it's new or it's not you know the best way to do it, whatever.

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But like little do they know like the actual processes that we follow today are so like corrupt and just like not there for the two-party system and that's just how it is, and oh wow and, like other other states, have automatic voter registration, have same day voter registration, and they don't have any problems with election security, like we know from other states that you're able to do those things while having the same confidence in election security.

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And so those are the reforms that I, as an individual, support, but also the redistricting reform that we badly need in Ohio.

00:23:26.065 --> 00:23:52.679
It's unfortunate that our current legislature, according to both the Ohio Supreme Court last year and bipartisan rulings, as well as the federal courts that forced us to have elections with gerrymandered maps they said that the maps we used last time were illegitimate, and so we know that our current legislature is unrepresentative.

00:23:52.679 --> 00:24:01.808
And so we think that ranked choice voting can help on the redistricting front because it makes all districts more competitive.

00:24:01.808 --> 00:24:30.388
It makes gerrymandered lines harder to draw when it's not a two-party binary and you have more than two parties that can run in every district, and it changes the incentive structure so that members of the redistricting commission, even if they are politically political folks, they have pressure to do the right thing, to appeal to average voter instead of only appealing to the anti-democracy extremists in their primaries.

00:24:30.388 --> 00:24:52.769
But, that said, other states like Michigan have much more effective redistricting processes where they're able to remove the politicians from them and have a more neutral commission with more fair standards of achieving those more representative districts.

00:24:53.815 --> 00:24:55.258
Yeah, gerrymandering, I agree.

00:24:55.258 --> 00:24:56.881
I think it's like a huge issue.

00:24:56.881 --> 00:24:58.083
Sarah loves the word gerrymandering.

00:24:58.083 --> 00:25:00.288
Gerrymandering.

00:25:00.288 --> 00:25:05.314
I was like I can't believe that's already in an episode that you've probably-.

00:25:05.454 --> 00:25:08.085
Oh my gosh, that was yeah, I listened to your episodes.

00:25:08.536 --> 00:25:10.243
That is so amazing.

00:25:10.243 --> 00:25:15.145
Yeah, I wasn't sure if that one had already dropped or what well and literally last night.

00:25:15.207 --> 00:25:22.183
So this isn't out there yet, but last night we recorded about elections and that elections will come out right before your interview, and she did it again again.

00:25:22.444 --> 00:25:31.896
Oh, I love that we're having callbacks like yeah, she literally like paused after she said gerrymandering, like knowing I was gonna do what she was gonna do.

00:25:31.896 --> 00:25:34.821
I just I don't know what it is.

00:25:35.182 --> 00:25:42.384
I it's the grinch, yeah, um, so I want to go back real quick to I already forget what I wanted to talk about.

00:25:42.384 --> 00:25:45.356
Oh, um, gerrymandering really threw me off.

00:25:45.980 --> 00:26:09.101
Um, yeah, so I want to go back real quick, because when you were talking about voter registration and just like security and right, like like those concerns, it also kind of like light bulb in my head went off because I was like ranked choice voting could help that as well, because a lot of what I think people worry about with voter security, right, election security, election voter fraud, all that kind of stuff that goes along with it it's it's fear mongering as well, like people, right.

00:26:09.141 --> 00:26:14.400
I mean we could go back to the 2020 election and talk about how there were a lot of claims made and never backed up by proof.

00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:26.746
But if you have a two-party system, I think you're less likely to get that, because right now, what happens is one party loses and they're like, oh, we lost because it was not real or it was false results, false information, take your pick, whatever they want to say.

00:26:26.746 --> 00:26:42.719
But so, like I'm thinking through that and I'm like, wow, rank choice voting could help that as well, because you're going to have less people making those kind of what I would call crazy claims that aren't true, just because they're going to throw off, they're going to, you know, lose voters or kind of lose the trust of the people, and there's better and more options out there for them.

00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:44.481
Yeah, exactly.

00:26:44.481 --> 00:27:00.669
And if you're going to be a sore loser and tell people that their votes don't matter and that the election is rigged, then you're really only hurting yourself, because why would people vote for you if that, if they don't think that they can have faith in the system?

00:27:00.669 --> 00:27:10.108
Like, there are definite reasons why we should be skeptical when democracy is undermined and we need to be vigilant about that.

00:27:10.108 --> 00:27:18.679
But if you go around making false claims with conspiracies, that becomes even more of a deterrent for people to vote for you in a multi-party system.

00:27:19.058 --> 00:27:20.923
Right, yeah, yeah, very cool.

00:27:21.584 --> 00:27:23.446
Yeah, I also.

00:27:23.446 --> 00:27:28.403
I know this is about like rank choice voting, but I also want to hear about your experience just in DC.

00:27:28.403 --> 00:27:32.779
Let's derail for a second here.

00:27:32.779 --> 00:27:37.998
Kyle, can you tell us about your time in Washington DC and what you were able to experience there?

00:27:39.300 --> 00:27:45.277
Yeah, so I moved to DC after grad school trying to get a job in foreign policy.

00:27:45.277 --> 00:28:05.436
I had a previous experience as a high school history and civics teacher in Lebanon, and so I had an interest in democracy in the Middle East, and I actually applied for a job at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs to work on pro-democracy programs in Lebanon and Iraq.

00:28:05.436 --> 00:28:09.020
But I didn't get it because one of my best friends from grad school got it.

00:28:09.020 --> 00:28:27.163
So I got sort of sidetracked by another connection from one of my other friends who told me that the White House Correspondents Office was looking to hire to finish out the administration.

00:28:27.163 --> 00:28:29.246
This was in 2015.

00:28:29.246 --> 00:29:02.976
And so I was one of the staff who helped President Obama respond to letters from the American people, and I did that from 2015 until the end of the administration in 2017, which was an amazing experience to see so many inspiring letters about all different issues from people from all walks of life and then to try to help respond to those and then, after that ended, wait pause.

00:29:03.036 --> 00:29:05.259
I'm sorry I have so many questions Did you like work in the.

00:29:05.259 --> 00:29:05.979
White House.

00:29:05.979 --> 00:29:08.182
Did you like work in the White House?

00:29:09.202 --> 00:29:12.405
Yeah, so I worked.

00:29:12.405 --> 00:29:34.868
My office was in the Eisenhower Executive Office building, which is right next to the White House, but it's like literally across like a small parking lot from the West wing and so they're all like.

00:29:34.868 --> 00:29:42.234
I would sometimes go to the West wing for work, but more often I was in the Eisenhower building.

00:29:42.234 --> 00:29:45.443
But we did have some fun experiences Like we, we.

00:29:45.443 --> 00:29:48.575
No, this is going to be a long, too long a story.

00:29:50.027 --> 00:29:50.528
That's okay.

00:29:50.528 --> 00:29:52.114
Honestly go for it if you want.

00:29:52.704 --> 00:29:52.984
Okay.

00:29:52.984 --> 00:30:08.904
So one of my favorite experiences was Michelle Obama did a Reach Higher campaign for higher education, and so we were all encouraged to wear our college attire.

00:30:08.904 --> 00:30:26.516
So I wore like my Ohio Wesleyan track shirt and then a bunch of us went outside to take a photo outside the West Wing and all of a sudden, vice President Biden comes striding out and he's like oh, I'm supposed to be meeting with the Prime Minister of Georgia right now, but I saw you all out here, what are you doing?

00:30:26.516 --> 00:30:34.606
And it was just really funny because he was known as, as you know, for just like being so personable.

00:30:34.606 --> 00:30:50.038
He wanted to talk to everybody, and there was actually a rule among the staffers that you couldn't tell him that your mom or like somebody was a fan, because he would immediately be like give me your phone.

00:30:50.038 --> 00:30:54.125
And then he'd like literally like call.

00:30:54.125 --> 00:30:56.670
And I'd be like hey, this is Joe.

00:30:56.769 --> 00:31:08.568
And then the people would be like Joe who, oh my god, that's so funny yeah, so many fun stories like that and how crazy is that, like I'm sure, at the time, you never were like oh, joe Biden's gonna be the future.

00:31:08.789 --> 00:31:13.911
I mean we didn't think of it at the time Most people kind of thought he was on his way out.

00:31:13.951 --> 00:31:14.773
You know that's pretty crazy.

00:31:15.465 --> 00:31:15.708
Yeah.

00:31:15.868 --> 00:31:16.797
Oh, my God.

00:31:16.836 --> 00:31:17.664
Wow, that's awesome.

00:31:17.664 --> 00:31:21.106
Ok, one other question that you can move on to your next step.

00:31:21.666 --> 00:31:24.409
I'm sorry.

00:31:24.648 --> 00:31:29.031
How often did like did you get to interact with Obama, or or how often did you have to?

00:31:29.412 --> 00:31:46.982
So we mostly interacted with him through writing because he would read 10 letters a day and he received like 10,000 a day, but of those anyone in our office could nominate a letter for any reason to be one of the 10.

00:31:46.982 --> 00:31:57.536
He just wanted a politically diverse sample of what America was saying, and so he didn't mind if they were critical or like whatever it was.

00:31:57.536 --> 00:32:05.342
This was the most unvetted pieces of writing that he would read, because everything else went through.

00:32:05.342 --> 00:32:38.881
The staff secretary was like seen by everyone, this was his way of getting out of the bubble and hearing from like real, unfiltered Americans, and so on those letters he would sometimes have handwritten responses, but most of the times he would write on the letters basic instructions for how he wanted us to respond, and so then we would take those letters and have a custom response based on his instructions.

00:32:39.182 --> 00:32:43.828
But then we also had a letter library of more than 200 form letters.

00:32:43.828 --> 00:33:05.349
That actually was my job to write and maintain the new letters for this letter library, where we would take what we'd written to other folks on all these different issues so that when people would ask similar questions they could receive the same response.

00:33:05.349 --> 00:33:15.320
And so we were constantly updating that as news change, as policies change, as we got more writing directly from him.

00:33:15.320 --> 00:33:47.751
But we I did actually get to take my family to meet him in the Oval Office in October of 2016 because he was doing departure photos with all of the staff before his administration ended and he was like so personable, like in person, you know, taking the time to like meet with all of us and our families and thank us for our work.

00:33:48.272 --> 00:33:49.435
Oh my God, I would have shit my pants.

00:33:49.556 --> 00:33:50.196
Yeah, same.

00:33:50.196 --> 00:33:52.307
Oh, my God, wait, was Michelle there?

00:33:53.128 --> 00:33:53.670
She was not.

00:33:54.471 --> 00:33:57.116
Oh, man that's okay, we that's okay.

00:33:57.298 --> 00:33:59.227
Wow, that's incredible, that is really incredible.

00:34:00.690 --> 00:34:00.890
Um.

00:34:00.890 --> 00:34:18.835
So after that ended, through a family friend I met the mayor of Alexandria, virginia, and she was looking for a new assistant who was good at writing and doing correspondence, and so I worked for her for a year.

00:34:18.835 --> 00:34:49.699
And while I was working for her, my friend who worked at the National Democratic Institute on Lebanon and Iraq, she went to be on their Iraq team in the field, and so that's when I joined and I spent four years working on the pro-democracy programs in Lebanon and Iraq and it was while I was working there that the pandemic started.

00:34:49.699 --> 00:35:13.920
And so I moved back home to Ohio, thinking that it was going to be temporary to wait up a pandemic, but increasingly became concerned about the state of democracy in Ohio and increasingly involved in Rank the Vote Ohio, so that I switched to doing this full-time late last year to doing this full time late last year Awesome, when you were with the Democracy Institute.

00:35:19.164 --> 00:35:19.686
Is that who it was?

00:35:19.686 --> 00:35:21.110
Did you were you actually?

00:35:21.170 --> 00:35:25.260
in Lebanon and Iraq all the time, or was it like you travel over and you come back?

00:35:25.260 --> 00:35:28.170
I visited occasionally, so we would have events that I would go to help out with.

00:35:28.170 --> 00:35:40.215
And then when there was like an election observation mission in Lebanon last May, I helped coordinate that and was one of the election observers and things like that.

00:35:41.157 --> 00:35:43.831
Awesome, that's really those are really awesome experiences.

00:35:44.173 --> 00:35:49.090
Yeah, are you happy to be doing what you're doing now, kind of something a little closer to home?

00:35:49.914 --> 00:35:50.175
I am.

00:35:50.175 --> 00:35:58.239
It's nice to be back close to family and friends and to try to make a difference in our own state.

00:35:58.239 --> 00:36:02.846
Yeah, that's awesome that is awesome, ok, awesome.

00:36:03.467 --> 00:36:11.135
So if our listeners wanted to get involved, what is the most impactful thing that they could do and what should they focus on in terms of getting ranked?

00:36:11.135 --> 00:36:16.922
Choice voting either you know standard process for their state or this current state, ohio.

00:36:18.306 --> 00:36:19.548
Thanks yeah for Ohio.

00:36:19.548 --> 00:36:26.934
You can go to rtvoorg slash action and there are several options for getting involved.

00:36:26.934 --> 00:36:30.835
If you have time to volunteer, please sign up to volunteer.

00:36:30.835 --> 00:36:33.673
If you don't have time, please at least donate.

00:36:33.673 --> 00:36:49.135
We rely, as a grassroots organization, on recurring contributions and we have our petition page online that you can sign and share in order to help us build our list to show that Ohioans want ranked choice voting in Ohio.

00:36:50.137 --> 00:36:51.686
Yes, and we'll definitely link it in the show notes.

00:36:51.686 --> 00:36:54.746
Everything will be in the show notes, so if people want to grab it, they can just go right there.

00:36:54.746 --> 00:37:02.735
So last question before we say our goodbyes if there's one thing you want our listeners to walk away with, what would it be?

00:37:03.784 --> 00:37:07.989
Ranked choice voting makes our elections more free and fair and gives you more choice and more voice.

00:37:08.811 --> 00:37:09.311
Love that.

00:37:09.311 --> 00:37:11.315
Yeah, great, succinct answer that is.

00:37:11.315 --> 00:37:13.177
All right, kyle, thank you so much.

00:37:13.177 --> 00:37:14.277
Thank you.

00:37:14.277 --> 00:37:15.639
I think this has been so great.

00:37:15.639 --> 00:37:21.047
I know I learned a lot.

00:37:21.068 --> 00:37:25.583
I think our listeners will learn a lot and hopefully we'll get some new supporters for Rank the Vote Ohio.

00:37:25.583 --> 00:37:26.224
Yeah, thank you so much.

00:37:29.085 --> 00:37:30.932
Thanks for joining us for today's episode.

00:37:30.932 --> 00:37:32.780
We appreciate you more than you know.

00:37:32.780 --> 00:37:39.166
If you appreciate us and our show, please hit the follow button and share this episode with anyone you think would enjoy it.

00:37:39.527 --> 00:37:43.001
You can also give us a follow on instagram to saying the no on all things.

00:37:43.001 --> 00:37:44.286
United she stands.

00:37:44.286 --> 00:37:45.750
The link is in the show notes.

00:37:45.750 --> 00:37:50.186
We'll see you next time and remember we can make a difference in this world.

00:37:56.813 --> 00:37:58.454
All right, you guys ready, we'll kick it off.

00:37:58.454 --> 00:37:59.534
Let's do it.

00:37:59.534 --> 00:38:03.960
So, before we go any further, well, I just banged everything off the desk.

00:38:03.960 --> 00:38:06.481
Remember when I told you not to hit other stuff?

00:38:06.481 --> 00:38:10.487
I was doing it.

00:38:10.487 --> 00:38:13.820
If it's worked there, like what are what's the kind of the proof or what, what are you know?

00:38:13.820 --> 00:38:14.503
I'm just going to back that up.

00:38:14.503 --> 00:38:17.130
I can't talk today, so it's fine.

00:38:18.153 --> 00:38:18.335
Cheers.

00:38:18.335 --> 00:38:19.670
Yeah, the beer usually knows.

00:38:19.670 --> 00:38:22.612
It's like these girls are crazy.