Radiolab - Tweak the Vote

Is democracy fundamentally broken? Or does i just need a ... tweak? Back in 2018, when this episode first aired, there was a feeling that democracy was on the ropes. In the United States and abroad, citizens of democracies are feeling increasingly alienated, disaffected, and powerless. Some are even asking themselves a question that feels almost too dangerous to say out loud: is democracy fundamentally broken? Today on Radiolab, we ask a different question: how do we fix it? We scrutinize one proposed tweak to the way we vote that could make politics in this country more representative, more moderate, and most shocking of all, more civil. Could this one surprisingly do-able mathematical fix really turn political campaigning from a rude bloodsport to a campfire singalong? And even if we could do that, would we want to? Special thanks to Rob Richie (and everyone else at Fairvote), Don Saari, Diana Leygerman, Caroline Tolbert, Bobby Agee, Edward Still, Jim Blacksher, Allen Caton, Nikolas Bowie, John Hale, and Anna Luhrmann and the rest of the team at the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden. And a very special thanks to Rick Pickren, for allowing us to use his rendition of State of Maine, Maine’s state anthem. Check that out, and all his other state anthems on Spotify or Youtube. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by L-atif Nasser, Simon Adler, Sarah Qari, Suzie Lechtenberg and Tracie Hunte Produced by - Simon Adler, Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari, and Suzie Lechtenberg Original music and sound design contributed by - Simon Adler Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Duration: 1h 14m
Broadcast on: 18 Oct 2024
Audio Format: other

Back in 2018, when this episode first aired, there was a feeling that democracy was on the ropes. In the United States and abroad, citizens of democracies are feeling increasingly alienated, disaffected, and powerless. Some are even asking themselves a question that feels almost too dangerous to say out loud: is democracy fundamentally broken?

Today on Radiolab, we ask a different question: how do we fix it? We scrutinize one proposed tweak to the way we vote that could make politics in this country more representative, more moderate, and most shocking of all, more civil. Could this one surprisingly do-able mathematical fix really turn political campaigning from a rude bloodsport to a campfire singalong? And even if we could do that, would we want to?

Special thanks to Rob Richie (and everyone else at Fairvote), Don Saari, Diana Leygerman, Caroline Tolbert, Bobby Agee, Edward Still, Jim Blacksher, Allen Caton, Nikolas Bowie, John Hale, and Anna Luhrmann and the rest of the team at the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden.

And a very special thanks to Rick Pickren, for allowing us to use his rendition of State of Maine, Maine’s state anthem. Check that out, and all his other state anthems on Spotify or Youtube.

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Latif Nasser, Simon Adler, Sarah Qari, Suzie Lechtenberg and Tracie Hunte
Produced by - Simon Adler, Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari, and Suzie Lechtenberg
Original music and sound design contributed by - Simon Adler

Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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Hey, it's Latif, given the approaching American presidential election, we are on week two of our election run. So last week, if you'll remember, we had the story about the dramatic changes in how we cover presidential candidates in this country. Next week, we have a brand new episode about why and how we count our votes for president. But this week, we have the evolving story of how we cast those votes. The episode I'm about to play for you, it's six years old, which I mean, if you think about the long sweep of American political history, that does not feel like a long time and yet so much has changed. So when we released this episode, the process we're about to outline for you, like it was pretty obscure. It was used, I don't know, in a few places, few cities, few states in the US. Now, this is big time. What we are describing to you, it's on the upswing. This is literally going to help decide who the next president is going to be, which I don't know about you that I find that kind of inspiring. It feels like things can actually change in this country. So anyway, we will play the episode now, and then we will do a quick update on the flip side. Yeah, so without further ado, here is tweak the vote. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio from WNYC.

I'm Robert Krollich. And I'm Lataf Nasser. Thank you. And today on Radio Lab, Robert, I am going to make you wrestle with your most cherished ideal American democracy. Oh, I see. Okay, great. Wait, Hannah, second, I'm just struggling with the influence. Now I have a one. Okay. Okay, great. And I'm going to start things off by introducing you to Yasha. Yasha Monk, I'm a lecturer on government at Harvard. He studies politics. Maybe we could just start with where you grew up. Yeah, so I was born 1982, I grew up in Germany, moved around a bunch of different places in Germany as a kid, and then went to college in England in 2000. And I was kind of studying politics. I was a history major. So Yasha was studying politics, but he was studying it in the past. So he was looking at going all the way back to the cradle of democracy and ancient Greece, and then how democracy came to thrive around the world. But as he was studying that, he was noticing in the news, he would see in certain countries like France or Austria, there would be these parties, these far-right, ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant parties that were starting to gain some traction. And for Yasha, I saw some of this. This was a little bit scary. Because my family has been in the wrong place at the wrong time for about four generations. His great-grandparents perished during the Holocaust. My grandparents sort of barely survived from the Soviet Union. My parents grew up in Poland, and were thrown out of a country in a huge sort of antisemitic way for 1968. And so the idea that political systems that seemed relatively stable and seemed relatively peaceful might suddenly turn fractures and even violent was something where I suppose I always had to sort of dim awareness of even as a kid. So I remember being quite worried by this and having friends who were quite worried about it, but we were worried about it as sort of this weird bad thing that's going on. But I don't think we actually thought that these people might win. Jump to the early 2010s. They start winning. For the first time, Malin Nopan will have a seat in Parliament, along with seven others from her far-right party. These far-right parties in Austria and France, they start to gain power. And it's not just there. But huge swaps of Europe. What's happening in Italy is also happening elsewhere in Europe. Similar right-wing parties start rising up in Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary. An identity crisis for the entire European continent. And it's not just Europe. You have India, Turkey. And what started off as of course, the United States. Unlikely impossible is now reality. Basically, there's this wave of politicians whose message was people aren't really listening to you. Your government has failed you. Trust me. I really speak for people. I'm going to fix everything. And to Yasha, this was, you know, this was like a wake-up call. And not just because of immigration policy or right and left leanings of certain politicians, but even more deeply than that.

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