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The Politics Chicks is a progressive politics podcast and politics news show hosted by Christy Branham and Monica Healy.
Every week, we sit down with candidates, elected officials, journalists, historians, policy experts, advocates, and everyday Americans shaping the future of our democracy. We go beyond the headlines with thoughtful interviews, fact-based analysis, and candid conversations about the issues that affect our lives—from elections and public policy to healthcare, education, civil rights, and the economy.
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Ep_26_Transcript_FINAL
[Music]
I'm here to tell the story about a man, a woman, and an idea.
The man, Lieutenant Tyler Brown, was a classmate of mine at Georgia Tech. He and I joined the military after 9/11 out of a sense that our nation, and democracy itself, was under attack.
Now, Tyler was a natural leader, and he was widely admired as our student body president. He was like the big man on campus, and I think he had all the drive, the talent, and the commitment to be a future senator or CEO.
But sadly, Tyler died when his squad was pinned down in an ambush in Ramadi, Iraq, in September of 2004.
So that was almost 20 years ago now.
As he lay dying, Tyler continued to shout out orders to his troops to guide them away from danger and to respond to the sniper who shot him. He lost his life for his team, and he fought for his country because he believed in an idea.
A few months after Tyler died, an Iraqi grandmother cast a ballot in the first election of her lifetime. After she voted for Iraq's parliament, officials had her dip her finger in purple ink to make sure she could only vote once.
Now, this woman wore that purple finger like a badge of honor, waving it for anyone to see. This was despite knowing that Iraqi militant groups had been actively bombing and murdering people just for being part of the process that day.
So she risked her life, as did millions of others, because she believed in an idea.
The idea of democracy has been inspiring risk-takers in this country since the Age of Enlightenment, when a small band of rebels pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to challenge the notion that a king could be born into absolute power.
Since then, our republic has been forced to evolve as we fight to extend the power of the vote to an ever-greater number of our fellow citizens: first to all men regardless of wealth, then to all men regardless of color, and then again to all women and men alike.
In every case, those out of power took great personal risk to fight for their right to be heard. In every case, men and women lost their lives believing that a better version of our republic is worth fighting for.
And in every case, from the Civil War to Civil Rights, American democracy has proven its ability to evolve under great pressure, like coal being squeezed into a diamond.
Now our democracy is again at a crossroads.
Millions of Americans feel locked out and disenchanted with a system of government that's been captured by its political class, its wealthy donors, and its expensive lobbyists.
Our elections are controlled by a party process and access to cash, while gerrymandering pushes the most extreme voices to the top.
It's hard to criticize the one-party state in China when 80% of Americans live in a state governed entirely by one political party, and almost 90% live in a congressional district considered completely uncompetitive in a general election because it's so dominated by one party.
So we have to ask ourselves: Do we even have a two-party system anymore? Because for most of us, the answer is no.
So it's no wonder that voters have lost faith in a process where they no longer feel heard, or that voter apathy is so high, or that registered independents are now the largest and fastest-growing voter group, especially among the young.
But unfortunately, many no longer believe that democracy itself can deliver. They think that the system is rigged, and they are placing their faith in the idea that either a dictatorship or complete anarchy is the only way to wipe the slate clean.
But are those our only choices? Really? In America?
Rather than collapse into despotism, instead in this country we have a choice. We can choose to acknowledge the serious structural deficiencies in our political process, and we can work together to find ways to solve them.
We can evolve our government to use 21st-century tools to provide greater access, accountability, and transparency on demand.
And the Digital Democracy Project was designed to do just that.
As a technology consultant ever since leaving the military, it's my training to look at the system itself and to imagine: How can we make this system work well?
Imagine if we could all have a voice in shaping the legislation that affects our lives by directly telling our legislators how we want them to vote.
Imagine if we could cut out all the middlemen that stand between us and our government, like the biased media, the endless campaigning, and the broken election system.
Imagine if we, the voters, had all the same power as the lobbyists, the party insiders, the corporations, and the special-interest groups.
Now imagine if we could do all of that from the comfort of our couch.
Well, we don't have to imagine anymore, because the Digital Democracy Project is here.
Our platform starts by combining mobile voting—that's voting on your phone—with online accountability tracking so that we, the voters, are driving the process.
Of course, there's lots of cool technology under the hood, but for voters it's really as easy as ordering a pizza.
First, you vote. You cast a ballot on your phone.
To handle the voting, we chose to work with Voatz, a Boston-based startup that's already been certified by several states to provide a mobile voting app for military voters overseas to cast ballots directly from their phones.
It uses device-level authentication, a blockchain backend, biometrics, ID verification, and more. The long and short of it is that it's highly scalable election software that you can carry in your hands.
This technology is revolutionary.
I wish it had existed back when I was in the military, because I remember voting on more than one occasion where my candidate had actually dropped out of the race by the time my absentee ballot moved its way through the mail system.
So I wasted my vote.
Not only can this technology provide greater access and security, but it even allows us to completely rethink our relationship with our government and to imagine something entirely new.
For instance, why should we have to wait every few years to let voters have a say in the process? Why can't we let voters weigh in on whichever legislation they like, whenever and wherever they like?
So we worked with the folks at Voatz to enhance their app for the Digital Democracy Project so that, for the very first time, voters can cast ballots on pending legislation that's currently being debated in our capital—and do it right from their phones.
But since legislation is written by lawyers for lawyers, we use AI so that our legislative tracking team can rapidly read, summarize, and distill the key points of a bill, putting it into common language so we all understand it.
Then we place it in the app so that voters have the power to decide for themselves what's best for their communities.
Just like ordering a pizza, once voters place their order, our platform tracks it.
We display the aggregated votes in real time on maps on our website. We call this the Tally.
It shows what voters want on each bill, broken down by legislative district. It provides legislators with a quick and easy view so they can see what their voters want before they have to take a hard vote in the capital.
They love it because it's free public polling.
But it also allows voters to hold legislators accountable to the results.
Compare this to our current system. You can call your legislator, send an email, or write a letter, but you have no idea how many others have done the same thing or where they stand on the issue.
Only the legislator knows if they're voting with or against the will of their district, and they have a heavy incentive to suppress that information if it doesn't align with the lobbyist walking into their office holding a sack of cash.
We make this information public because we're based in Florida, and we think sunshine is the greatest disinfectant.
Then the pizza gets delivered, and the pizza lover goes online to write a review.
We think this is the best part: the Scorecard.
The Digital Democracy Project compares what voters wanted in the app to how legislators delivered in the capital.
We compare the vote tallies from the app to the same votes on the bills on the floor, creating an apples-to-apples comparison.
We run the numbers for every legislator and give them a scorecard at the end of every session so we can easily see whether they matched their district.
This gives voters concrete data to work with on Election Day so they can decide which legislators to reelect and which to replace.
It's similar to how we use restaurant reviews to decide where to eat, except our secure platform prevents fake five-star reviews.
All of this is provided as a free public service because the Digital Democracy Project is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization with bipartisan funding from the State of Florida.
Imagine that: bipartisan in Florida.
Over the last 18 months since we launched, registered Florida voters have used the Digital Democracy Project to tell legislators how to vote on more than 180 bills.
These included legislation that banned social media accounts for children under 14, allowed the shooting of bears on private property, and provided hurricane relief funding, among many others.
But what's most exciting is seeing the early results in actual elections.
Commander Tom Keane, a former Navy officer, was the first legislative candidate in Florida to endorse the Digital Democracy Project.
He didn't have nearly as much party support, endorsements, or campaign funding as his competitors, and he was running in a tightly contested special election in Orlando.
But he won that race by promising to use the results from the app to provide greater accountability to his district.
Commander Keane—now Representative Keane—has gone on to use the Digital Democracy Project to inform his votes in Tallahassee, and he has inspired dozens of other candidates and legislators to endorse the project.
Now, I'm not naive. I don't believe this is a silver bullet that's going to fix all our problems.
But I do believe the Digital Democracy Project will be one of many reforms that advances the cause of American democracy.
I believe we can inspire voters to reengage in the process and take back ownership of our government.
And I believe we can once again create a government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people by using revolutionary technology to put power back into the hands of the people—literally.
And to Tyler, to our Iraqi grandmother, and to the countless millions who sacrificed everything for an idea, I hope we can do you proud.
[Music]