Leveling the Playing Field for Women: Cynthia Richie Terrell
February 8th, 2024
“The incumbency challenge is really the biggest reason we don't see a change in the composition of legislatures.”
Cynthia Richie Terrell is the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen. We discuss institutional reforms that can reduce the barriers for women to run, win, and govern.
There are approximately 520,000 elected officeholders in the U.S., but incumbency is the biggest barrier to electing more women. Term limits make more seats open to competition. In addition, ranked choice voting eliminates vote splitting if there is more than one woman on the ballot. In NYC, for example, the combination of term limits and ranked choice voting has resulted in a city council where 61% of the seats are held by women. Policy solutions that address the structural barriers do work.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Cynthia Richie Terrell
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Cynthia Richie Terrell 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.
This is the time we think a lot about elections and electioneering, about motivating to vote, and also whom we're electing to make our democracy more representative of who we are as a people. And one thing we are is approximately 50% women. Yet only 25% of U.S. senators are women, and only 29% of the members of Congress are women. And of course, no woman has ever served as president of the United States. Clearly, we should do better.
To unpack just how we can do better. We're joined by Cynthia Ritchie Terrell. She's the founder and executive director of Represent Women, and an outspoken advocate for institutional reforms to advance women's representation and leadership in the United States. She is also worked on projects related to women's representation, democracy and voting system reform in the U.S., and has worked extensively to help parliamentarians around the globe meet UN goals for women's representation and leadership.
Welcome, Cynthia, and thank you for joining us.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:01:42] Thank you so much for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:45] You've been working in the democracy space for a long time. In fact, you and your husband helped to found Fairvote, a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms, most notably ranked choice voting. And just to remind the listener, we recently spoke to Deb Otis at Fairvote to talk about ranked choice voting and the Fair Representation Act. So, Cynthia, what is the lay of the land when it comes to the electoral system today?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:02:11] Yeah. Thank you. That's a great question. I think that's a great place to start. We inherited our system from Great Britain, which uses a first past the post or winner take all system, meaning you can get less than 50% of the vote for most races in the United States and still win 100% of representation. And that means a lot of people do not have any voice at the decision making table at any level of government. I think it's helpful to step back for a second and think about the fact that the United States elects more people to office than any other country in the world. There are approximately 520,000 elected officials in the United States. Many of those races are at the local level. Of course, many are the state legislative level, statewide executive level, and then Congress. Though Congress, of course, makes up a very small proportion of those races. Another interesting fact about those races is that most of them are nonpartisan, and many of them are single winner, meaning we elect just one person. And when you elect just one person and you have two candidates winning, it's guaranteed that one of them is going to win over 50% of the vote. And I think that's a good thing. I think people whom we elect should at least represent the majority of voters. The quote unquote problem is that when more than two candidates run, that third or fourth or fifth candidate can split the vote, meaning there can be five people in a race, and one candidate may end up winning with just 20% or 25% of the vote. And that's not fair to the majority of of voters who cast votes for other candidates. But it doesn't lead to the process and policy outcomes in our elected bodies that represent the will of the majority of voters on policy issues. And we see that happening at the local, state and federal level.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:08] Hm hm, there are 520,000 elected officials. That's a whopping number. I didn't even realize.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:04:15] I know.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:16] And so out of the 520,000, we know that the majority of them are men. And it's totally obvious, of course, to everybody, men and women, that we should elect more women. I think even men agree on this, but I have heard firsthand from some people, both men and women, that it's good enough to elect a man who's an ally to women. Since you do a lot of research on this subject, what has the evidence shown about the benefits of actually electing women?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:04:44] Yeah, that's such an interesting and important question. We do a lot of global research. We have an international research manager, Fatma Tawfik, who's based in Cairo, who tracks outcomes for women in different countries. And the the reason we do that is to see what the best practices are to elect more women to office. But she also researches the impact of those women in countries around the world. They're obviously not that many that are at gender balance or have sustained gender balance over time. But we see in those countries a number of things, we see a greater diversity of women who are at the decision making table. Of course, no group is a monolith. Women aren't a monolith. Men are not a monolith. Young people aren't a monolith. So it's really important to get a diversity of women's perspectives and lived experiences in the legislative body. And when we see that happening, they make policies that better reflect the needs and concerns of their constituents. And we we see that around the world. But we also see that here in the United States. In the last two election cycles in New York City, for the New York City Council, which has a combination of things which we could talk more about later, it has time limits that create open seats for women candidates. It has public financing, which enable women who don't come in with a big trust fund to run viable campaigns. And it also has ranked choice voting. So that encourages more women to run, and eliminates split votes. We've seen the council go from just 13% or 14% women to 61% women just in one election cycle, and in this last, last year, they sustained that win. So women hold 61% of seats on the New York City Council. And not surprisingly, there's a pretty good range of ideological perspectives. They don't all agree on things, but they have put forward legislation on wage equity and on caregiving and on transit and on a number of economic issues, which better reflect the will of the constituents they serve. So that's a very specific example, which we're able to track because we study what happened in New York City. And we're really interested to see what the impact of having a majority women on the council does. One of the studies that we did not do, but we're really happy to elevate, is from the Center for Effective Lawmaking, which looked at the rate at which women in state legislatures crossed party lines to endorse legislation. And the study found that women are more likely to do that than male legislators. And there are a number of reasons for that. Women tend to be newcomers to the legislative process. The data suggests they are a little bit more focused on the issues and the policies. That's why they run in the first place, to solve problems for their communities. So they may be a little bit more oriented to looking at the policies, considering them and
recognizing the value of crossing party lines. And I think in our current crisis of deep polarization based on partisanship, which is a relatively new thing, I think it's very important to nurture the potential of women doing even more of that, to providing incentives for women to work together across silos to solve problems that affect all of us.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:05] So you just mentioned that in New York City Council, it's a majority of women. And I'm wondering whether it's easier to get elected as a woman in municipal or local elections, because in November of last year, 2023, Saint Paul elected only women, seven of them, to the city council. And like you said, there's still not enough women. But what was the secret sauce for maybe the women in Saint Paul and the women in New York? What's your view on this?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:08:36] Yes. Well, just to stay on message, it's no coincidence that both of those cities use ranked choice voting. So multiple women felt able to run. There wasn't any sense of women being told to wait their turn, which is what many women hear from the party establishment. It's not time for a woman to run for any number of reasons, because you'll split the vote, or we already have a good, solid guy in that position. And then there were great programs and organizations in New York City and in Saint Paul and in Minnesota in general, that supported those women candidacies. And we have identified the importance of having those pipeline organizations, if you will, organizations that are really identifying and encouraging and equipping women to run for office in coordination with the systems changes which make their wins and their candidacies more successful. So in New York City specifically, it was a group that started out with the name 21 in '21 because they hoped to win 21 seats on the New York City Council. They had to change their name because I think they won 32 seats. And so they now are called the New Majority. But that group, under the leadership of Jessica Haller and other really key players in New York City, identified women to run, made sure they understood how to qualify for the public financing system, identified districts where they had a high likelihood to win, and then, of course, made sure they understood how to campaign in a ranked choice voting election. And just as an aside, Amanda Farias, who now has a leadership role on the New York City Council, has a great commentary on the impact of ranked choice voting on her successful election in previous elections. She would have just appealed to her specific constituency that was based on demographics that she shared with them, but she
realized in the ranked choice voting process she could appeal to other constituencies to get their support, and that's what helped her get over the top. I'm not capturing that as beautifully as she has said it, but I think that's really key about a ranked choice voting election is that candidates actually win when they're able to get outside of their base and appeal to other constituency and demographic groups. Similarly, in Minnesota and in Saint Paul, there's a terrific organization, Fairvote Minnesota, led by Jean Massey, that is very focused on advancing ranked choice voting. But Jean and others on her team really see the value of encouraging women to run. There's some excellent training and educational resources that they've developed in Minnesota, so that everybody really understands the impact and the potential of ranked choice voting, and we hear again and again and again that education is so key, of course, to anything. It's not as though we just need education about voting systems. We need an educated society across the board, but particularly around voting systems, where there feels like there could be some jeopardy if people, candidates or voters make the wrong decision. Education is so important, and Jean Massey and her team have done a terrific job there to really make sure candidates understood the system, were able to run and the system and had the support they needed.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:42] That's so encouraging to hear. Just as a side note, we did have one of the co-founders of 21 for '21 on the show.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:11:49] Oh great.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:49] Before 2021: Melissa Mark-Viverito. Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:11:52] Oh, wonderful.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:53] Yeah. She served on the City council in New York and she was like, this is wrong. We can't have, we can't have so few women on here. Let's do something to change that. So you mentioned just now also that women are found to more readily work across the aisle. And of course, that may be true for many women, but what about somebody like Governor Kim Reynolds in Iowa, who just turned down federal aid to feed children over the summer when they're not in school? And I feel like there are a number of high profile women in politics who really are not helping the case
that you're making. So how damaging is that for women running for office or simply working in public service?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:12:33] Yeah. You know, there of course there are norms and then there are outliers. And that's going to be true all the time. We see conservative Supreme Court justices who don't necessarily act in the way you think that they might, given their background and their community. And so I think that's just par for the course that's inevitable. And we can't get too sidetracked or distracted by that. I think it introduces an important conversation about the incentives that are in our system right now, and what calculations they have to make to retain power. And I think in order to build a enduring and resilient and reflective democracy, we really need to look at those incentives and build a new set of incentives through electoral rule changes that encourage women to look for policy solutions that reflect the needs of their constituents. And we don't really pay a lot of attention to rewarding the collaboration. We tend to highlight times when there's fierce partisanship. And I'm I'm reminded of Lani Guinier and her work around the importance of not just having a quantity of women or men of color in a legislative body, but having real power that reflects the needs of the community. And I think she was just an incredible thinker around these topics, like how we really build power that's based in different incentives and rewards, the kind of behavior that we all need for legislators to practice.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:00] I want to talk about how we can get more women elected and make these systemic changes that you're talking about, institutional reform. But before we get there, I feel like we need to talk about Nikki Haley, who is an unexpected person to be in second place behind, of course, the front runner in the Republican primary this year. But of course, she is, in a way, the poster child for how the challenges to elect women persist. So what is, in your mind, the biggest barrier to electing more women?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:14:34] I think just in terms of quantifying it, incumbency is the biggest barrier in Congress. For example, 95% of people get re-elected, whether that's a male or a female. And so when there's that little competition, it's super hard for challengers to run and to win. We saw in the 2022 Midterm elections, even though there were many challenger candidates who registered and filed to run in elections, and we spent somewhere between $8 and $9 billion on congressional races in the midterms, we went from 123 women in the US House to 124 women in the US House, and one
challenger won. And so many of us, of course, feel like we're in a crisis in our democracy and haven't had the opportunity to consider strategies that might be more effective. And so we as human beings, I think, tend to do what we've done before. And we think, well, we just need to spend more money on these races or we need better trained candidates. But what we see from that stat of the 2022 midterms is that it's just not feasible that we're going to see a change in the composition of the US House, for example, until we make districts more competitive and we figure out ways for women to run in primaries without splitting the vote. And so I think that's evidence that the incumbency challenge is really the biggest reason we don't see a change in the composition of legislatures.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:07] Well, fascinating. I didn't realize that. So I guess that's one of the reasons why New York City has become so competitive on the city council, because it has teem limits.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:16:15] Exactly.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:18] We're taking a short break to hear about a podcast from our
friend Ken Harbaugh called Burn the Boats, and we'll be back with Cynthia in a moment.
Ken Harbaugh: [00:16:29] 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 when 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: [00:17:00] And now let's return to my conversation with Cynthia Ritchie Terrell.
So let's talk about how we get more women elected. Tell us about the founding of Represent Women and the work that you do. According to your website, you are an advocate for institutional reforms to advance women's representation and leadership. So what does that mean in practice? How do you do this work?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:17:22] That's a great question. We began ten years ago as a project of Fairvote. We had some funding to do research on how electoral systems impact outcomes for women. About five years ago, we got our independent IRS status, and throughout that ten year period, we've really been focused on looking at the structural barriers that women face in politics, both as candidates and elected officials, and what the policy solutions are to correct those barriers. We of course understand that there are many barriers that women and specific demographic groups, different intersectionalities face in the world, in society. But we're really focused on changing the policies that create a more level playing field for women to run, women to win, women to serve, and women to lead. And I have found that it's useful to give, as a parallel, some other examples of times in US history when we've addressed inequity with policy solutions that look at the structural barriers. So suffrage, of course, was a policy solution to address the fact that women couldn't vote. We didn't simply encourage more women to try to vote when we realized there wasn't a law that enabled them to vote. The Voting Rights Act is an important policy solution to the actual barriers that people of color faced in voting that the voting rights movement highlighted. Title IX is a great example of a policy change that really leveled the playing field through funding for girls to participate on an equal level with boys in the classroom and on the sports field.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:19:00] And then the Americans with Disabilities Act is another example of a policy change where we looked at all the different kinds of barriers that people with disabilities who make up a large percentage of American population face, whether that's an intellectual disability or a visual or a hearing disability or somebody who's in a wheelchair. And the clearest example of it that everybody will immediately recognize are the cutouts and sidewalks that the ADA required in all communities so that people in wheelchairs can access the sidewalk. I mentioned that because, of course, there's nothing that the person in the wheelchair as an individual should have done to be able to access the sidewalk. It was up to society to recognize that there was a structural barrier of the sidewalk for the wheelchair to get up on the, the sidewalk. And once that change was made, not only is it an enduring change, literally because they're mostly cement, hard to get rid of cement, people began to realize like, "wow, this levels the playing field for most of society." Whether you're on a bike or you're an older person, or you have a baby carriage or whatever it might be. And so that same philosophy of looking at the real structural barriers that women face, and then the
policy solutions to address those barriers, we know from data in this country and from data around the world, I will just say that those are the things that are the most enduring and impactful, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:20:21] Those are great examples. So what are the policy prescriptions to get more women elected.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:20:27] Specifically around women running for office? They often don't have the kind of support they need from political parties, you know, gatekeepers, donors, and PACs. So working with those groups to set targets and incentives, rewarding parties that recruit more women to run for office is a strategy that we can employ. And highlighting PACs that do a better job donating more money to women candidates is another strategy, so that more women can run for office along with public financing. That's not something we work on because so many other great groups are doing that. The second bucket of our work is around women winning when they run. I mentioned the challenge that challengers face that it's hard to win in our system because there are so few open seats and we've seen great gains for women, but it's also hard to sustain those wins when there are the barriers of the split votes and the incivility and so forth. I bet Deb Otis covered this when she was on the show about the incentives that ranked choice voting provides, but I'll say them again. By nature or definition, a ranked choice voting campaign tends to be more civil because people are finding common ground. It actually could hurt your chances to be tearing down your opponent, but it would help you get a second or third place vote from that candidate's supporters if you find common ground. So ranked choice voting helps elect more women by limiting split votes, by encouraging more women to run without splitting the vote. By focusing more on issues which the data says women run to solve problems and address issues in their communities. That's consistent across party and across geography. And then importantly, in a single winner race, like a mayor or a district where you're just electing one person, if that woman has received a majority of votes, as is required in a ranked choice voting election, she's much better prepared to serve effectively because she has a real mandate to govern. And we've seen instances where a woman in a regular, traditional winner take all contest might win with just 25% of the vote, and that leaves her open for more attack and critique. The third bucket of work are once women have run and won successfully, how can we make sure that they're really able to serve? And that's a whole list of policy changes that we support from childcare
for legislators and paying. Paid leave for legislators and things like proxy voting is important. If you're a mother living in San Diego and you need to cast a vote in Sacramento, it's hard to do that if you're also a caregiver for parents, or other people in your family. And then another topic that we've been doing more in-depth research on recently is compensation for legislators. There are a number of states that don't pay state legislators anything. It's hard to convince a woman to run for an office where it may be only 4 or 5 months a year that doesn't pay anything. Like that's just not a sustainable way to have government function. So we've gone through running, winning, serving and then leading our reforms, like having a suggested, um, rule around gender balance tickets and making sure when somebody is running for governor, they recruit a woman or a man to serve as a lieutenant governor candidate. We've seen this happening in the Democratic Party, but also in the Republican Party. John McCain chose Sarah Palin as a running mate for a number of reasons, probably, but because that created gender balance on the ticket. But we see that also the importance in terms of the latter, for women to rise from a position of being a state legislator to a leadership position requires us looking at who gets to be a committee chair and who gets to have a role in a political party and who's running these campaigns. So the whole impact that women can have, both in appointed positions within parties and legislatures, can really help them be prepared to run for higher office and leadership roles.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:32] Hm mm, exciting. Lots of things here. Huge amount of work. Tell us a little bit more about wilfully, I mean, purposefully, I should say, choosing gender balance, right. Because of course that works in leveling the playing field. But I think a lot of people reject that as a concept for hiring someone. Like, how can you avoid the fate of affirmative action in college admissions, for example, which was at the same time widely viewed to help people of color, but also regarded as giving a hand to someone undeserving?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:25:05] Yes, I think that really is such an important thing to interrogate wore. The simplest answer is that we see more governors appointing more diverse and inclusive cabinets at the state level, and they do that because they recognize that to win elections, they need to speak for the majority of voters, or that's the ideal. And we see that happening across the country. So we've done research over the last five years on the state of gender balance in state cabinets, and I think it simply helps the elected officials, in this case, state government, do a better job for their
constituents. And so there's not anything very controversial. We see that happening and conversations happening about the need for that in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. I also think there's some very helpful data from the private sector, from McKinsey and others that supports the idea that when there's greater involvement of women on a corporate board, there are different outcomes. There's the data around profitability. And a parallel to that could be in terms of the public sector productivity, that higher numbers of women in a cabinet or on a board could lead to better outcomes for everybody. And I think there's a a rational basis for advocating for more people with more information being involved in the decision making process. Another interesting thing that we are all in the midst of in this entertainment award season that we're in, is the the role of gender categories are widely accepted in a lot of entertainment awards ceremonies. In the Oscars and another awards shows where we do have categories for men and women, and we have Best Actress and Best Actor, and we have Best Supporting actress and Best Supporting Actor. And because of those rules, we know that women will be nominated and will win those positions. Of course, we see the reverse of that. There is no Best Woman Director award, and at least in the Oscars we see that means there's just one woman nominated. Many years there have been no women nominated. And so it makes me a little uneasy, frankly, to say, "wow, that's the road we have to go down." But on the other hand, that is the tool that is the most effective tool to ensure that there's gender balance. And perhaps that's a good segue to our research in other countries where we see that I think it's 95% of the countries in the top 50 that are democracies employ gender quotas of some sort, either a constitutional quota or a legislated quota or a party quota are the things that are most common, where a party will make a commitment to recruiting women. It's not a perfect system. Sometimes women end up at the bottom of the list in a party list system, but there have been some really shining examples, like Tunisia as a outcome of the Arab Spring some years ago, now adopted a zipper system where it was required that every party alternate man, woman, man, woman, man, woman. And that's a pretty effective system to make sure there are more women in office.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:18] Wow. Well, I love that the quotas do work. I mean, I think that's proof positive, right? That more women can serve, but also it gives an opportunity for women to show how they serve and hopefully, especially in the United States, get elected. I mean, I think it's a great idea to have people who serve in cabinets or, you know, in these unelected positions where they're appointed by the person who is
elected, let's say, the mayor, and show off these women as capable, competent, and therefore gives them a leg up if they decide to run.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:28:52] Absolutely, absolutely. Could I just jump in and mention a success story around that was in new Jersey, our terrific allies, the center for American Women in Politics, they've got great data. They were partners with the New Jersey state legislature and the governor's office of requiring the state to collect data by race and gender of all the appointed positions in the state of New Jersey, meaning the actual institution that named people was required or is now required to track what the outcomes of that process are. And I think there's a great phrase, you know, we can't make change unless we know where we are. We count what matters to us, essentially. And so having that instituted in other state governments, encouraging them, working with them, having other public universities maybe help collect that data so we can begin to understand the landscape for appointed office, I think is a terrific place to start.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:49] Yeah. Well, just as a side note here, also, we did have Kelly Dittmar on.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:29:53] Oh, wonderful.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:54] Yeah, we've been trying to elevate women in office for a long time, or for as long as we've existed as a podcast. Yeah. Well, one of the questions I have is about the incentives you talked about earlier to promote bipartisanship when they are already elected. Tell us a little bit more about that, because I think the voters should know what we can do potentially in the future or maybe right now to encourage this.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:30:19] Yes. I think one of the most promising reforms is something that we work on, and Fairvote works on, and some other groups are thinking about is this idea of changing the structure of our elections so that we elect more than one person in a geographic district. Instead of just one person being sent to either our state Capitol or the US Capitol to represent 100% of the people, to say, we're going to elect five people in Maryland or Georgia or New York or wherever it might be. And when you send five people to the state capitol or the federal capitol, it's much more likely that you'll have a cross-section of views. And it's important that we also use a ranked system
to make sure that no one group dominate all those five races. And so this idea of proportional ranked choice voting, it sounds like Deb already mentioned the Fair Representation Act when she was on, is something that we can do just by statute. It doesn't require a constitutional amendment or any big change. There are some states, like my home state of Maryland, that already use multi-seat districts for our state legislature, and so adding a ranked choice voting element means that it's more likely that you get the breadth and depth of views of voters in the delegation, and that includes greater gender balance. We see women winning about twice as many multi- seat districts as single seat districts. We see the impact on race with something like the Fair Representation Act enacted, people of color would be able to elect candidates of choice from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I think that's pretty dramatic. Right now, the Voting Rights Act is an incredibly important tool, but it also means that there are significant communities of color who aren't privileged to live in the single Black majority district in their state, and so having a larger geographic district that elects more people enables more of the voices, more the voters to have a seat at the decision making table. So I think that's probably the single most important thing we can do to change the incentives that exist in politics right now. Because all of a sudden, it goes from five different legislators being sent to the legislative process to just represent their constituents, come, you know, heck or high water. They have to get jobs for their district, they have to advocate for construction in their district, etc., etc. But in a five seat district, all of a sudden, those legislators are tasked with working together on behalf of the constituents they share, which completely turns the incentives upside down. I see that at work in Maryland, even though we have multi-seat districts in a plurality winner situation. We don't yet have ranked choice voting for the state legislature in Maryland, though I hope we do in the years to come. The three delegates who represent me are tasked with working together on my behalf, and that just changes everything about the mood and the process of governing. And I think that's the most helpful reform that we can look toward. Some perks of that system are that it would eliminate gerrymandering because the power now, it resides in the person who draws the district in the first place. Because they're so often determining the winner of the race. We know that a very few districts are competitive in Congress, for example, and that's because the line draws and a state have determined that's going to be a Democratic district, that's going to be a Republican district, and there's really no chance to change that. We talked about that incumbency at the beginning of the show. But in this situation, the district lines really wouldn't matter. It would be the voters, in essence, who are determining their district
grouping, if you will. I think the beauty of that is that it allows for the nuance of every voter that we all carry with us to show up in the legislative delegation. So right now, I think we're confined to if you're a Democrat, you have to be pro-choice. And if you're a Republican, you have to be pro-life, for example, or not care about the climate or any number of other things. But I think we need legislatures that are filled with people, Republicans who do care about the climate, may be fiscally conservative, might be open to certain kind of reproductive rights, but they're not having to fit a certain kind of profile to get elected. And similarly, Democrats who may be conservative on some things but liberal on other things, and the charm of this proportional ranked choice voting system is that it really puts voters first. It gives voters maximum power to choose the representation that works for them, and that could differ. It could mean I vote for a Green Party person in my city and a libertarian for county council, but I really like a Republican woman who's running for governor because she's free to share views that I would hold. But I really want to vote for a Democrat for Congress. And this system of proportional ranked choice voting gives voters the maximum power to elect candidates who represent them. And I think if we move quickly toward that system, not only will legislators have an incentive to work together on our behalf, but voters have more power and accountability to hold legislators responsible for their votes.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:52] Wow, there's so much here. Well, that's very exciting if we can get all of that done. But actually, I was I was about to ask you. I was about to ask you. You know, we're in the middle, of course, of a presidential election year. And the media is busy framing the election as a competition, right, as a horse race between the candidates. But really, we should be thinking about it in terms of who is going to represent us and the interests of our communities. And I think this, what you're just saying, would really change the game and, you know, take out the gamification of the election system or of elections and move the focus to how candidates are going to govern on our behalf.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:36:31] Exactly.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:31] So what are two things that an everyday citizen can do to help get gender parity in elective office or in public service at large?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:36:41] One immediate thing is to look to see if there's a push for voting system reform in your community. That's happening in a lot of cities and a lot of states this year. So that's exciting. And another thing you can do is join Represent Women's Women's Power Collaborative. You can go to our website representwomen.org. And this collaborative is meant to be a platform for those who care about women's representation and those who want to build a healthy and resilient democracy, to come together across those silos, to work in regions and different kinds of communities, to push for these kinds of reforms together. There are a lot of silos in our country, real and imagined. And so the Women's Power Collaborative offers a platform that I think is innovative and important to bring people together.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:33] All good advice. So as we are rounding out our conversation here today, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:37:41] I guess not to just repeat myself, but I think what makes me the most helpful is evidence that I see that people are coming together, coming out of their box or their silo or whatever construct we may exist in to reach outside of that and build relationships with people with whom they may differ politically or differ geographically. But working together on reforms, I'm part of a number of groups that are talking about how to do this better, whether that's folks from the voting rights community or the veterans movement, or the climate movement, or young people, or just any range of groups who are really coming together to innovate differently. And I think it's that kind of relationship building at its core. Maybe that's just the most fundamental truth about everything, is that the outcome is only as good as the relationships that we can build. And so building authentic relationships that are built on listening and on trust is core to everything.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:42] Thank you. That is hopeful. And I am personally very hopeful, in large part because the work that you're doing. That's amazing. Thank you very much for everything that you do. And thank you for joining us on the podcast.
Cynthia Richie Terrell: [00:38:54] Thank you.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:55] Cynthia Ritchie Terrell is the founder and executive director of Represent Women, and an outspoken advocate for institutional reform to advance women's representation and leadership in the United States.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Ken Harbaugh. We just heard about his podcast, Burn the Boats. He's also a former United States Navy pilot, and he was the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Ohio's seventh congressional district in the 2018 election. His new film is Against All Enemies, a documentary that explores the critical role of military veterans in domestic violent extremist groups. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks for listening. You must really like the show if you're still here. we have an ask of you. Could you rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:40:25] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.