A Better Way to Vote: Deb Otis
January 11th, 2024
“Voters should feel free to vote for the candidates they like best.”
Deb Otis is the Director of Research and Policy at FairVote, a nonpartisan organization that researches and advances voting reforms that make democracy more functional and representative for every American. We discuss the benefits of ranked choice voting and the likelihood that it will become more popular after the 2024 presidential election.
Ranked choice voting addresses a variety of problems in “vote one” elections, such as vote splitting among similar candidates; ranking candidates in order of preference; proportional outcomes in multi-winner races; more broad-based support for the eventual winner; and more successful general election candidates if ranked choice voting is used in the primary. Maine is a state where ranked choice voting will be used in the presidential election. The Fair Representation Act is a bill that would implement ranked choice voting for members of Congress and also make redistricting more proportional and representative for voters.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Deb Otis
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Deb Otis Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
It's 2024 and the future of America is in your hands. Democracy is not a spectator sport, so we're here to bring you an independent perspective about the election this year and empower you to change the status quo. As a pro-democracy podcast, we're always interested in election reform that makes it easier for the voices of all Americans to be heard at the ballot box, whether that's automatic voter registration, open primaries, ending gerrymandering, or ranked choice voting. Today, we are revisiting ranked choice voting, how it works, and how it is expected to play out this year.
Our guest is Deb Otis. She's the director of research and policy at Fairvote, a nonpartisan organization that researches and advances voting reforms that make democracy more functional and representative for every American with a decade of experience in research and analytics. Deb is passionate about sharing the data driven case for why our country needs election reform.
Welcome, Deb, and thank you for joining us.
Deb Otis: [00:01:31] Hi. Thanks so much for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:34] I mentioned in the intro that we've had a conversation about ranked choice voting before, we spoke to Nathan Lockwood at Rank The Vote. But for those who are new to this concept, let's do a quick refresher. How does RCV work? And help us make the case for it.
Deb Otis: [00:01:50] Sure, ranked choice voting just means voters get to rank the candidates on the ballot in order of preference. So when you go to vote, instead of choosing just one, you get to rank your first choice. And then if you have a backup choice, you can pick a second choice and a third choice and so on for as many candidates as you like and want to rank. This gives voters more power and, crucially, it promotes majority winners. The way votes are counted is if somebody gets more than
50% of first choice votes, that's round one. Just first choices. If they get more than 50%, they win. The election's over. If nobody gets 50% -- and that happens a lot in elections with crowded fields, if you've got three or more candidates, this is common. Nobody has 50% or more among first choices, so it's not clear who that real consensus winner is. That's when the ranked choice voting really comes into play. You would eliminate the last place candidate, do what's called an instant runoff. Every voter who had ranked that eliminated candidate as their first choice, their ballot counts for their second choice instead. So it's like if your top choice didn't make the final round of the runoff election, you still get to express a preference between the finalists who were left in the race. You do rounds like that until somebody has more than half the votes, and that is the consensus winner. That's going to better represent the voters.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:09] Right. Thanks for the refresher. So more and more districts have adopted ranked choice voting since we spoke about it on the show in the spring of 2022. And at the time, I had just participated in the ranked choice mayoral election in New York City. And I think most people were honestly confused about how their vote worked, because there were people who did not rank the person who ended up winning. And so I think people were still frustrated. But I think that may also be a function of the fact that the New York Democratic primary was so crowded. But now that it is more common across the country, what has been the impact of ranked choice voting on the voter experience?
Deb Otis: [00:03:54] I would highlight a couple of ways that this is impacting voters. Number one, voters who have used ranked choice voting overwhelmingly report in exit surveys that they like it, they understand it, and they want to keep it. They prefer it to their prior method of voting. And so it can sound foreign to someone who's hearing about it for the first time. But once a voter has gone into the voting booth, looked at that ranked ballot and said, oh, this is simple. Once folks have voted that way and seen it in practice, they want to keep it. Another aspect I'll highlight is the people who win under ranked choice voting have a broader base of support from the voters. I'll use an example from New York to to contrast here. New York had a primary election for one of the congressional districts for the 10th congressional district in 2022, and the winner won with 25% support. That was within the party primary, only advancing to the general election with only a quarter of the support, even from within their own party. Now contrast that with New York City, where their municipal elections use ranked choice
voting. As you know, that doesn't happen in New York City. If you get a crowded field, nobody gets that a majority win. You you don't know who the consensus candidate is. That's when the second choices come into play. And that's when you really elevate candidates who had appeal as a backup choice, candidates who can reach beyond their base and who voters can connect with say, "oh, well, maybe they're not my first choice, but we have some common ground. They can be my second or my third choice." So we see voters getting a candidate who they ranked on their ballot. More often than not, a 70% of voters get the election of one of their top three choices. And so that's more engagement with the process and with the winners than you get in. Choose one elections.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:39] Um, so what has been the impact on election outcomes? I mean, you talked just now about some people essentially having a broader base, but do you think it actually improves the relationship between those who are elected and the constituents?
Deb Otis: [00:05:56] I do. I think this campaigning for backup choices is crucial. Candidates know that you need more than just 20% of the voters in order to win, and so you have to reach out to those voters. You have to build bridges. One of my favorite stories from working in this movement comes from candidates who have campaigned. They go door to door, and candidates are used to maybe having a software or a list of which houses are your likely voters. And so you should go knock on those doors and turn out just those voters. And then candidates in ranked choice elections say, even if I see a house with a yard sign for my opponent, I still go knock on that door. I engage with that voter. I say, hey, it looks like you're already supporting so and so, but I think we've got common ground on these couple of issues. Let's have a conversation and I'd like to ask you to rank me. Second, we see examples of candidates doing that in places like Alaska, New York, Minnesota. And I think that extra connection with voters really matters. One city councilor in San Francisco spoke about this effect when she won for the first time. She said, the way that I had to campaign under ranked choice voting means that I had the ear of more different constituencies and more of them have my ear, and it's affecting the way I govern now that I'm in office.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:16] Excellent. So this might be not obvious, but have there been unexpected outcomes like upsets?
Deb Otis: [00:07:24] Yes. You know, any election sometimes ends up with a vote splitting. This can happen if you know two similar candidates who maybe appeal to the same base. If they both run, it can prevent one of them from winning. That happens in choose one elections. But if you're in a ranked choice election, we eliminate that vote splitting, which sometimes means maybe you'd get two candidates who are similar to each other. Among first choices, they finished second and third because they split up their base of support. But once one of them gets eliminated, the voters for that candidate probably transferred to the other candidate who was similar. And so we get, I call it a come from behind victory, where one of those two candidates, even though they they started in second place, they go on to win. They leapfrog over the candidate who couldn't appeal for backup choices. That happens about 10% of the time in ranked choice elections. It's also really common in runoff elections. You know, we all see runoffs in places like Georgia. Eight other states have them, and a lot of our large cities have runoffs from municipalities. And we see very commonly, the person who wins in the second round might be different than the person who won in the first round. And so that happens in ranked choice voting as well. About 10% of the time it's a feature, not a bug. The system exists to solve for that 10% of the time, when otherwise you would have elected the person without broad support.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:44] Ah, interesting. I want to stick to the nuts and bolts here because everybody does it slightly differently. You know, some places have open primaries and some don't. And that of course yields different results and different processes. So ranked choice voting is not made equally across the board. What are examples of places that you think do it particularly well. What's a gold standard in your mind?
Deb Otis: [00:09:09] Well one of my favorite newest examples is Portland, Oregon. They voted to adopt ranked choice voting, and they will first use it in fall 2024. And so they're going to be using a multi-winner form of ranked choice voting that I consider the gold standard for legislative bodies. It's multi-winner because a lot of city councils and school boards around the country elect multiple seats at once. For a lot of us, when we go vote for city Council, it's you're filling four seats so you can vote for four. In Portland, Oregon, they are going to use ranked choice voting to fill those multi-winner seats. So the voter experience is the same. Voters just go in and rank the candidates in order of
preference. But from each district in Portland, they're going to elect three people. And so those three people are going to be chosen by ranked choice voting. And when you do this for multi-winner offices, it becomes a form of proportional representation. So different groups are likely to be represented in proportion to their share of the votes. And so this can be great for ensuring that the majority faction still wins a majority of seats. But you also get a fair number of seats for any minority factions in the population.
Deb Otis: [00:10:19] These can be, you know, a political minority, a certain issue coalition that maybe only controls 30% of the vote, or this can be groups with different racial or ethnic backgrounds. There should be space at the table for all of these different groups, all of these different factions. And a multi-winner ranked choice voting leads to proportional outcomes. So that to me is the gold standard. But that is not quite as common in the US as the typical single winner. One that we started talking about. You know, I would highlight New York City is using it just for primaries. That's happening in Arlington, Virginia as well, where they've used it for Democratic primaries. And it happens with the Virginia Republican Party, where they use ranked choice voting only within party primaries in order to choose a strong nominee. So I think that model is really interesting. Parties want to be able to put their best foot forward. They want to nominate a strong candidate. And so if you use ranked choice voting in your party primary, you're more likely to get a candidate who can really bring the party together and go on to succeed in November.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:19] So what about the places that have general election ranked choice voting? Because there I think it's very interesting that you could have, let's say maybe all four from the same party or three out of four from the same party. And does that render better outcomes? Because I'm thinking here also about minority rule and how sometimes that gets elected. I don't want to say by mistake, by design, obviously, but does ranked choice voting also address that problem?
Deb Otis: [00:11:48] Yes. Ranked choice voting does a much better job of preserving the will of the majority of voters. Here, you're less likely to end up with minority rule, because the majority is not going to nominate two candidates who then split the vote accidentally. I think Alaska is a is a good example of the phenomenon that you're speaking about. They advance four candidates into the general election and then use ranked choice voting among those four. And so they did it for the first time in 2022. And
we saw outcomes that truly reflect what Alaskans in each district and statewide really. Wanted, and we saw some examples across the board. For the US Senate, they reelected Lisa murkowski, who's considered a moderate Republican for US House. They elected Mary Peltola, who is considered a moderate Democrat, and then for governor, they reelected Governor Dunleavy, who is considered one of the most conservative Republican governors in the country. And so voters choosing those outcomes, all with the same system, of course, really reflects Alaskans independent streak, the thing those candidates all have in common they campaigned on issues that were important to Alaskans. They didn't dive too deep into the national partisan fray. They focused on Alaskan issues, and they were willing to campaign to a broad base of voters, not just one niche base.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:07] Mhm. Yeah. That's very important that you really talk about the issues that affect your constituents.
We're taking a short break to share about a podcast called Burn the Boats, where I've actually appeared as a guest, and will be back with Deb Otis in a moment.
Burn the Boats: [00:13:26] I'm Ken Harbaugh, host of Burn the Boats from Evergreen podcasts. I interview political leaders and influencers. Folks like award winning journalist Soledad O'Brien and conservative columnist Bill Kristol about the choices they confront. And failure is not an option. I won't agree with everyone I talk to, but I respect anyone who believes in something enough to risk everything for it, because history belongs to those willing to burn the boats. Episodes are out every other week, wherever you get your podcasts.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:59] And now let's return to my conversation with Deb Otis.
So this year, 2024, we know that the election coverage will be dominated by the presidential race. And the Iowa caucuses are just around the corner now. How are you in the movement thinking about ranked choice voting this year in 2024? Aside from, let's say, Oregon, do you have a specific focus?
Deb Otis: [00:14:23] Well, the presidential race is really making our case for us. Consider the discussions about possible third party or independent candidates entering
the general election. You know, we hear a lot about this No Labels party, possibly groups like the Forward Party or other independent candidates who might want to run. And all of a sudden people start throwing the spoiler word around. Some folks pressure the candidates not to run, saying that you might split the vote and help the other side. Some people will pressure their friends and neighbors. Hey, don't waste your vote, which is really misguided. Candidates who want to run want to have a platform. They want to have their issues out there, and voters should feel free to vote for the candidates they like best. And now that's going to happen in Maine, for example, where they use ranked choice voting, people will be able to rank the presidential candidates. And so Maine's Electoral College votes are going to be based on the ranked choice voting votes. In other states, especially swing states, voters are going to have to be strategists. Voters will go into the voting booth doing the math. How can I vote my conscience and make my vote as impactful as possible without hurting my own side?
Mila Atmos: [00:15:28] Mhm. Oh, thanks for putting it this way. This makes it very clear. So I guess at the end of the year we'll see whether Maine will make the case for the rest of the country to use ranked choice voting also for presidential elections.
Deb Otis: [00:15:42] By the end of the year. I think we could double the number of states that use it. We've got at least two states that will be running ranked choice voting ballot measures in fall of this year, possibly up to three more states, so potentially up to five. But definitely we'll see statewide ballot measures from Oregon and Nevada. And so they could join Maine and Alaska and double the number of states.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:03] Oh that's amazing. So what's your strategy to put ranked choice voting on the ballot that people can vote on or introduce it in state houses and state legislatures, let's say, where there is not an option to put it on a ballot, what's your strategy to make it become standard across the country? How do we pass it?
Deb Otis: [00:16:24] There are a couple of different paths to achieve this, and I will flag this is a reform. Changing the status quo can be hard. And so at times it can feel like you're fighting an uphill battle here. But it gives me hope to see the growth in this movement. Several years ago, it tended to be smaller groups trying to pass it by ballot measure. Now we have a lot of support from elected officials. And so these state legislative victory is a viable path. Now in 2023, there were twice as many pro ranked
choice bills in state legislatures as in the prior year. This year, in 2024, we're expecting that trend to continue as elected officials start to see that this can actually make their job easier. This can improve their relationship with constituents, and this can allow them to get things done without being punished for, say, crossing the aisle or making a compromise as long as they are following the will of the voters and maintain the voters support.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:19] So how many states are you in now? And I know that there are some places where it's in some parts of the state, but not in all parts of the state.
Deb Otis: [00:17:27] There are active movements in more than 30 states. I would say about 20 of those are really are big, solid groups that are making a lot of progress. And it's a variety of groups in states that are trying to get this on the ballot, where voters can vote for it, like in Nevada and states where the activists are pursuing the legislative path. Like Fairvote, Minnesota recently worked closely with the legislature to pass a bill there in the 2023 session to create a study committee to expand ranked choice voting around the state, because they have five cities in that state that already use ranked choice voting. And the voters there really like it.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:06] Um, so I want to pivot here a little bit because Fairvote is not only about ranked choice voting, you're also advancing the Fair Representation Act in Congress. This is actually quite beefy because it has multiple components, including ranked choice voting. But tell us more about this bill.
Deb Otis: [00:18:25] The Fair Representation Act is a bill that would implement ranked choice voting for Congress, but also change the way we do our districts. So right now, we elect our Congress from 435 districts that each elect one person. And now these districts have some problems. It feels like we just finished a congressional redistricting cycle. We just finished the gerrymandering wars of the decade. But there is news out of New York in December of 2023. They have to redraw their congressional maps. The same thing just happened in North Carolina a few months earlier. The redistricting wars never end. It'll last for the full decade until we start again. And in a lot of these districts, they're drawn so that they are fully safe for one party. 90% of congressional seats can be called two years before the election, two years before you even know who's going to be on the ballot. You know which party is going to hold that seat. This leaves a lot of
voters feeling like our vote doesn't matter, because in those districts it doesn't. And so we've got the 10% of us in swing districts where it matters and the 90% of us who aren't, and where it's a foregone conclusion. So our current way, 435 people from gerrymandered districts is not working well. The Fair Representation Act would make those districts bigger and make them elect multiple people.
Deb Otis: [00:19:44] So I'll use Massachusetts as an example. They have nine Congress people right now and from nine districts. We propose they should have three districts of three members each. So that's a lot like what I talked about from Portland, Oregon earlier. So they would maybe have an eastern Massachusetts, a central Massachusetts, and a western Massachusetts district within each of those districts elect three people proportionally to the share of the vote that they get. Well, it would help create a place for New England Republicans who are currently pretty underrepresented. This would create a home for Democrats from Oklahoma who are currently locked out of representation. And this would create more space for independent and third party candidates as well. Most voters would be represented by congresspeople of both parties. So we would no longer have folks in this scenario where you support one party, but you're in a district that's safe for the other party, and nobody will take your call, and you've got nobody looking out for your issues. This would solve that. And so the voter experience is ranked choice voting. You rank the candidates in order of preference, but your districts are bigger. And you're going to elect three, 4 or 5 members depending on which state you're in, because, you know, not every state's number of districts is divisible by by nice even numbers.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:58] Right? Right. Well, thanks for explaining it this way. This makes it really clear that, you know, you can end up, like you said, getting represented by somebody in your district which might be otherwise safe for the opposing party, let's say. And this makes it possible to circumvent that. It's kind of a really neat solution, I would say. What's the progress you're making on this bill? Because I know it has been introduced several times without passing. And more broadly, what kind of opposition are you facing in passing these kinds of election reform?
Deb Otis: [00:21:33] The Fair Representation Act. We are expecting it to be reintroduced again early this year, and support is growing because interest is growing in this type of reform. A recent Pew survey from late 2023 found that only 4% of
Americans said that our government is working very well or extremely well. That means 96% of people think that there's a problem and are ready to find solutions. And so we've been seeing support growing across the board for this kind of transformative change. This kind of multi-member districts with proportional representation like the Fair Representation Act would do. And so Congress tends to be a lagging indicator, I think, of popular support. But we are seeing that pickup on the hill and I'm really excited for that. You also asked about opposition. I think changing the status quo can be hard, and we tend to get opposition from groups who are already in power. Folks know how to run and win under the current system, and those will be the least likely to want to upend that and maybe share their larger district with a member of another party. This is the kind of reform that's going to be good for voters. It's going to be great for diversity and helping our elected officials look more like the populace. And that does challenge the status quo in some ways. And so when we see opposition, it tends to come from entrenched interests.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:51] I spoke to somebody recently who thinks that ranked choice voting basically demands that the electorate is better informed. And I'm just paraphrasing this person's argument here, and I, of course, firmly believe that every voter should be well informed. But so this person said, listen, it's hard enough to get people to get out and vote, you know, to show up at the ballot box and then to demand that they know more about the larger field of candidates before they get to the voting booth, makes it more complicated. What do you say to that?
Deb Otis: [00:23:25] Well, I think the founders did envision an informed electorate as the basis of this country's government system. I don't think ranked choice voting requires you to be more informed than our current politics. You know, a lot of us go in having some sense that, oh, I like either of these two candidates. I really don't like either of these two. And I'd be fine with anyone in the middle. And then it can be really hard to choose who to vote for when those are your preferences, you might say, well, I can't vote for my real favorite because I need to stop so and so who I think is really bad. With ranked choice voting, you just get to go in and vote your honest preferences without being punished for it. The presidential primaries kind of make the case for this. The Republican field this year is crowded. It is full. And this reminds me of the Democratic field four years ago. And voters often know a lot about these candidates and have strong preferences about them. But then we're really limited when we go to vote. And so
I think for voters, you can always choose just one if you only have a preference about just one, or if you've only heard of just one.
Deb Otis: [00:24:29] But especially if we were to go to the Fair Representation Act, you would likely see on your ballot multiple Democrats and multiple Republicans, and it would mark on your ballot which party they were from, of course, along with possibly some independent and third party candidates. And you would get the choice. Oh, you know, maybe I'm kind of a centrist. Maybe I support some candidates of both parties. Maybe I'm going to cross party lines with my rankings or you'd have the choice, hey, I want to rank all the Republicans first, or I want to rank all the Democrats before I start dipping into any other parties. And so I think voters can certainly handle that kind of thing. And it would represent us better. Voters around the world vote this way. Voters in Australia and Ireland have been using this system for 100 years now, and they can do it. Their politics are pretty stable. I think we can do it here too.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:15] Yeah, I think that is maybe the most compelling argument is that it would make the politics more stable, right, in this country. And while you were answering this question, I was thinking about the days when people were urging John Kerry and John McCain to run together on the same ticket, right, because people felt like they both represented a value that Americans from all stripes could espouse. And since it's a combined ticket, it would eliminate sort of the spoiler votes. In terms of the spoiler vote question for the 2024 election, do you think that after this election 24, that it will make it more possible for the Fair Vote Act to be passed, and for ranked choice voting to be adopted nationwide for the presidential election?
Deb Otis: [00:26:11] Yes. I think every election cycle helps make the case more and more. I see us moving towards wider adoption of ranked choice voting. Not inevitably, because there's a lot of work to be done, and we need to keep working on this. But there's a reason we've seen such strong growth for this reform, and I project that that will continue every single election. We see more places adopting ranked choice voting, so we get more evidence about how it works in practice, and we can kind of put to bed some of the fears about, will this have unanticipated consequences? What will this really do? Will this harm this group or that group. And we can see that in practice it is working well. Voters like it and it is electing representative candidates. And so each set
of new ranked choice elections is making the case more and more for us. And it's making it easier to get the next set of wins.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:00] Right. So, well, since you're saying it's making it easier, what are two things that an everyday person can do to advance ranked choice voting wherever they live?
Deb Otis: [00:27:12] Well, I'm from Fairvote and so of course I think you should go to Fairvote action.org. There's a section called Get Involved where you can find a list of ways you can get involved, from small activities locally to big activities. So that's one fairvote action.org. And another way is get involved in your local politics. It doesn't necessarily have to be ranked choice voting, although I think ranked choice is a great way to get started of course. But you know, if you're a partisan, consider looking into, you know, your local Republican or Democratic city committee where you can get involved in politics at the hyper local level. You'll meet people who have similar interests, and you'll get really engaged, and it will likely help you start working on other advocacy campaigns, too. I got my start volunteering on a local ranked choice voting campaign. That was about seven years ago, and now my career has taken me to do even more of this. I think once you start getting involved, you will find that there is so much hope and so much forward looking energy in advocacy movements that it is really worth your time.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:16] Excellent. Well, on that note, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Deb Otis: [00:28:22] Well, seven years ago I used to go into rooms and I would start with, okay, I'm here to talk about something called ranked choice voting. Has anybody heard of it? And you'd get blank looks. Now, when I walk into a room, I don't have to ask if people have heard of it. I expect that they have. And I say, I'm here to talk about ranked choice voting. What questions do you have? And people have heard of it and they want to engage. And so I am seeing hope because of how much people are ready for a solution. It can be easy sometimes to just gripe about our problems. People are looking for how we can fix it, and people are looking at ranked choice voting. Once we pass this, we get elected officials who are more responsive to the electorate. I see this as an important first step that will make it easier to make progress on other issues.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:07] Um hum. Yeah. I think my favorite thing about ranked choice voting is that you feel you can really vote your conscience, and you can still have a second choice candidate who might still win. It makes me feel like I'm really a participant in democracy, right? That I didn't just throw my vote away because I didn't vote for that other person as my first choice, but can still vote for the person that I'm most passionate about, who is probably not going to win. I mean, I think there are lots of people out there that you like and, you know, might not have broad appeal.
Deb Otis: [00:29:43] And I think that's why we've won 27 city ballot measures in a row. It's quite a winning streak and I'm looking forward to continuing it.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:50] That's amazing. 27 so tell us about the most recent win in '23.
Deb Otis: [00:29:56] In 2023 there were seven cities. Several of them were new, including several cities in Michigan. But a few of them were expanding existing ranked choice voting or defending it. There was a repeal attempt on the ballot in one of the cities that has had it for a couple of years; that is Minnetonka, Minnesota. It's in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. And so some folks tried to repeal ranked choice voting. It was on the ballot in November of 2023. Ranked choice survived, of course, and it won by an even larger margin than when it was first implemented a few years prior, when it also won on the ballot. And so it's just an indication that once voters have used it, they like it, and they don't want you to take it away. And so I think that was one of my favorite wins.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:40] That's terrific. Well, on that note, thank you very much for joining us on the podcast. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Deb Otis: [00:30:49] Thank you. It was so nice to talk with you today.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:52] Deb Otis is the director of research and policy at Fairvote, a nonpartisan organization that researches and advances voting reforms that make democracy more functional and representative for every American.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Montana gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse. We had him on the show in the fall of 2022 when we discussed his book, Gun
Fight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America. We'll be talking about why he's gotten off the sidelines to run for governor and why this election matters. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
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This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:32:10] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.