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Matt Koesters didn’t come to electoral reform through theory. He came to it by watching it happen. As a reporter in southern Indiana, he covered a sheriff’s race where the winner needed just 37.7 percent of the vote, because the majority split its support between two candidates. The result reshaped local politics almost overnight. When a crowded 2016 presidential primary field divided support in much the same way, Matt recognized the pattern.
Today Matt leads Fortify Democracy, an organization focused on the structural root causes of our political dysfunction. His premise is one Wilk has been circling for years: if the same bad outcomes keep showing up no matter who’s in office, it’s worth asking what the system is rewarding. In this conversation, the two walk through how partisan primaries and pick-one voting shape candidate behavior, why so many Americans have quietly checked out, and what a better set of incentives could look like.
Key Themes
• Vote splitting isn’t a fluke. It’s built in. Under plurality voting, a candidate with a consolidated base can beat several similar candidates who divide the majority between them. Matt traces the pattern from a county sheriff’s race to a presidential primary, where early wins came with pluralities in the 20s and 30s.
• Pick-one voting drives the two-party system. Matt explains Duverger’s Law and why most people use their single vote strategically—to stop the side they fear most rather than support the candidate they actually prefer. Wilk shares what that has looked like for him as a conservative voter who has repeatedly felt he was choosing the lesser of two evils.
• Primaries reward the edges. With so many districts safely red or blue, the primary is often the real election. That means candidates cater to the most motivated voters, avoid crossing party leadership, and guard against getting outflanked. Matt compares the result to a pendulum that swings harder every cycle.
• Negativity is a rational strategy under the current rules. When the general election is a binary choice, you don’t have to be good. You just have to be less disliked than the other candidate. That, Matt argues, is a big reason our political discourse feels the way it does.
• Approval voting changes the math. Let voters choose as many candidates as they like, and whoever gets the most approval wins. Suddenly, attacking an opponent risks alienating voters who might have supported you both. Wilk connects this to a deeper point: when people fold politics into their identity, an attack on their candidate feels like an attack on them.
• Checking out isn’t always apathy. Matt points to high numbers of Americans who identify as independents or want a viable third option, and argues that sitting out can be a rational response to a system that offers no real choice. Give people candidates who represent them and have a real path to winning, and they come back.
Takeaways
• When the same bad outcomes keep repeating, look at the system producing them, not just the people inside it.
• Politicians respond to incentives. If we want candidates who build coalitions instead of tearing each other down, the rules have to reward that.
• Walking away from politics isn’t always indifference. For many people, it’s a response to having no good options.
• Solutions deserve as much attention as problems. Approval voting won’t fix everything, but it’s worth understanding—and worth talking about with people who see politics differently than you do.
About Matt Koesters
Matt Koesters is the founder and president of Fortify Democracy, a Cincinnati-based organization he launched in 2025 to address the structural root causes of dysfunction in America’s electoral system. An award-winning former journalist, Matt covered local and state government and politics for daily newspapers before working in public affairs at the University of Cincinnati and in strategic communications at Rasor, a Cincinnati agency.
Learn more about and connect with Matt Koesters:
Website: https://www.fortifydemocracy.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fortify-democracy/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579298361939
X (Twitter): https://x.com/FortifyDmcrcy
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[00:00:00:00] Wilk Wilkinson: In 2014, a county in southern Indiana elected a new sheriff with 37.7% of the vote. Nearly two out of three voters wanted someone else. They just split their support between the two other candidates. My guest was a reporter covering that race, and it changed the way that he sees our elections, because sometimes the problem isn't the people. It's the rules that we're all playing by. Stick with me. Welcome back, my friends, to the Derate the hate podcast. I'm your host, Wilk Wilkinson. Your blue collar sage calming outrage and helping to navigate a world divided by fog. And those who would spread that fear, outrage and grievance. The Derate The Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels, America's largest grassroots cross partisan organization working to make courageous citizenship the honored norm. This podcast amplifies the mission that we share to foster a more respectful and united America, where we build together across political and societal divides each week, through the power of story, conversation, and connection with incredible guests, we work to build bridges instead of barriers, not to change minds on the issues, but to change how we see one another when we differ. Friends, it really is about bettering the world, one attitude at a time. We did not create the hate, but together we can derate the hate. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Share it with a friend and visit Braver angels.org to join the movement to make courageous citizenship the honored norm. Looking for more news and less bias? Visit our great supporting partner all sides.com for balanced news fueled by media bias ratings. Friends. I am so incredibly grateful that you have joined me for another powerful, Derate the Hate episode. Let's get to it. Most of us have been there. You walk into the voting booth, look at the ballot, and realize you're not really voting for anyone. You're voting against someone. The lesser of two evils. We tend to blame the candidates for that. Or the other side or each other. My guest today is asking us to look further upstream. Matt Koesters spent years as a newspaper reporter covering local government and politics. In 2014, he watched a sheriff's race get decided by vote splitting a candidate, winning with barely more than a third of the vote, while the majority divided itself. Two years later, he watched the same dynamic play out on the national stage. That experience eventually led him to found Fortified Democracy, an organization focused on two structural root causes of our political dysfunction partisan primaries and the pick one design of our voting system. Matt's argument is pretty simple. Politicians behave the way the system rewards them for behaving. Change the incentives and you change the behavior. Today we're going to talk about how that works, including an idea called approval voting. I'll admit I had never heard of it before Matt brought it to me. And chances are you've already used it without even realizing it. Let's get into it with my friend Matt Koesters. Here we go. Matt Koesters, Welcome to the Derate The Hate podcast, my friend. So good to see you again today. Hey.
[00:03:39:03] Matt Koesters: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:41:16] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. we had a conversation a few weeks back, and, you brought your, your website and some very intriguing ideas to my attention. Some things that I hadn't even had on my radar, hadn't hadn't been aware of. And, and I thought that they would be good things to, to bring up to the DTH audience for for a number of reasons that we'll get into, Matt. So first of all, I just want to talk about, the organization that that you've, built or, or in the process of building fortify democracy.com. tell the listeners, first of all, Matt, what is fortified democracy and what you know, what in your background, what about your story led you to want to, to get this initiative going?
[00:04:29:23] Matt Koesters: Sure. So Fortify democracy is a 501c 4 social welfare organization that I started late last year that is focused on addressing the structural root causes of the dysfunction in our electoral system. Basically, we've identified two structural root causes that incentivizes the dysfunctional behavior that we see in our politics, in our public discourse. partisan primaries and the pick one aspect of plurality voting and the the origin story. My background is in journalism and public relations. And about 12 years ago, I was working for a daily newspaper called the News and Tribune. We covered Clark and Floyd counties in southern Indiana. It's basically the the Indiana burbs of Louisville, Kentucky. And at the time, we had a sheriff's race going on and a little background about where I was living at the time, Clark County, which was one of my beats, had been under single party rule for basically the entire existence of the county. It had always voted Democrat and local races, regardless of how voters behaved in state and national elections. And it often leaned Republican when it came to state and national elections. But locally, the Democratic Party was the only game in town. So if you were to win the the Democratic Party primary for, say, a position like the sheriff's office, then you were widely assumed to be the presumptive winner in the general election. Well, in 2014, I was covering a race in which the, the guy who had won the Democratic primary for sheriff ended up having to drop out because of a scandal. And so the the county party had to have a caucus to replace him on the ballot. And there were two strong candidates. One of them won, the other one felt jilted and decided to run as an independent. And around the same time, the Republican county chairman, a guy named Jamie Noll, was an Indiana state police officer, and he decided to throw his hat into the ring as well. And what ended up happening was one of the worst cases of vote splitting, the spoiler effect rather that I had ever really seen because I had always heard about spoilers when talking to to local wonks. And, you know, you saw it play out a little bit here and there. But in this race, the Republican became the first ever sheriff of Clark County, who was a Republican with just 37.7% of the vote. So the Democrat and the independent had split support among the other 62%, and allowed the Republican to take over. And the aftermath of that was all of the local elections suddenly swung to the Republican Party, because everybody saw that the the wind had shifted. And so a lot of opportunists decided to do that. But, you know, that was the, the first real major exposure that I had had to problems with our voting system. So I came back to Cincinnati, where I lived now the following year, and we all watched the Golden Escalator ride, and I watched that through the lens of what I had just seen in Clark County, and what we saw play out in the 2016 Republican primary race for president was just a much bigger scale version of what I had already seen in Clark County, because Donald Trump, who entered the race as the single most unfavorably viewed candidate on either side of the race, ended up winning the Republican Party nomination. I was like, well, how could that be in the answer is the same electoral dynamics that allowed Jamie Noll to become sheriff in Clark County. It was because the the support among establishment candidates was split among like 4 or 5 different guys. So you have like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Chris Christie. There were a couple of others. But, what ended up happening was Trump was able to win with pluralities in the 20s and 30s in his early primary victories. And the the majority was splitting their vote amongst 3 or 4 different candidates. That's right. So that's that's how he was able to do it. He never crossed 50% by the end of the race. In total, he did cross it in a couple of primaries, but by then it was too late.
[00:08:56:17] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. And this is, this is something I think a lot of people, may not well, until they've heard this, they they may not have looked at That primary scenario for Donald Trump as a vote splitting thing. And, and for people who, maybe for people who I mean, people my age will remember vote splitting in terms of like one of the biggest examples that's happened in, in my lifetime would be the, the Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush. Election that that led to the presidential election and presidential victory of, of Bill Clinton. But this is certainly nothing new. I mean, this kind of thing has happened a number of times before in history. Another good example would be like Teddy Roosevelt with his Bull Moose party. Coming in and, and and wrecking things, which, you know, which ultimately led to some other very bad things for, for the country. But but the reality is, is this thing, this vote splitting, talk about why vote splitting, Matt is a. Is is this thing that that leads to these sometimes very unfavorable results as a result of the plurality voting system? But first of all, just just real quickly, give me the quick version of when you talk about plurality voting for people who don't know what plurality voting is. Let's talk about that for sure. Quick minute and then let's talk about why. Vote splitting becomes this thing that that leads to sometimes, well, quite often the, the lesser of two evils in a lot of cases.
[00:10:45:19] Matt Koesters: In the United States is almost exclusively the lesser of two evils. But, to your point, plurality voting, when we're talking about that, what we're talking about is just the pick one aspect of our voting system. You can only pick one candidate in a single winner race. Some folks may have heard of this referred to as first past the post, but, plurality voting is the name of the system itself. And the problem that that creates is if you have a an extreme candidate that has a more consolidated base going up against multiple moderate candidates that have similar positions, like what we saw in the Republican Party in 2016. Those moderate candidates will split support because again, voters can only pick one, even if they might like several of those candidates about equally they have to pick one right. So that can lead to the kind of results that that we saw in 2016. Pick one voting is really the reason that we have a two party system in the United States. Every time there's been an attempt to start a third party, that third party has either not gained traction or has ultimately served as a spoiler in elections where you ended up getting a really counterintuitive result. So when you can only pick one winner in a race and you have a political environment that's as polarized and and charged up as ours is right now, most people aren't going to use that that one vote that they have to vote for the candidate that they sincerely prefer. In fact, it's actually kind of rare to have the opportunity to vote for somebody who actually has a reasonable chance of winning that you also feel really passionate about, you know, so what we end up doing instead is we've used that vote strategically to try to stop the party that we would like to see take office. So if you are a conservative and you want to make sure that Democrats are not going to win, your best chance of stopping them would be to vote for the Republican Party. And the same would be true in the opposite direction. So if you're a liberal and you want to stop Republicans, you would vote Democrat because they have the best chance of winning. And that's a phenomenon that has been known since about the mid 20th century. It's called due Dover law. A political scientist named Marty Stuart observed that in single winner races that use plurality voting, it will tend towards a two party system. And that's exactly what we have in the United States.
[00:13:17:23] Wilk Wilkinson: It is exactly what we have. And it's it's not serving us well. It's certainly not serving the people of this country. Well. Agreed. It is set up a it is set up one of the ugliest, environments of us versus them tribalism that I've, I've seen in my lifetime. Matt and and I think a lot of people, I mean, upwards of two thirds of, of Americans right now are sick and tired of toxic division. And, and many, many of our, our, our people have, have just completely checked out of the system. And I talk about it not out of apathy. know, not that these folks have have checked out of the system, out of apathy, but it's But it's almost out of self-preservation in the sense that, you know, when you're when you're swimming around in this pool of toxicity, which unfortunately is, is, you know, depending on what your perception of things is, our our political system is, is in many ways what I would consider a, a pool of toxicity because of those political factions, because of the, the strict rigid binary of, of, you know, Democrats and conservatives and, and needing to, take that one vote that you have for, for a strategic thing. And. I've often talked about, My votes for Donald Trump and, and. You know, being a conservative guy who doesn't see Donald Trump in any way, shape or form as a conservative. I, I, you know, I could not look at a, a Hillary Clinton as a viable option. That, that, that aligned with so many of the things that I want from our political system. You know, I could not look at Joe Biden as as a viable option as what I wanted out of our political system the same way with, Kamala Harris, even more so than probably the other two. But, you know, so then I have no choice. Even though I had zero desire as a conservative to vote for Donald Trump, as a person who believes in, in, in a lot of the things that I believe. Donald Trump was seriously in every way imaginable, in my mind, the lesser of two evils when it comes to what I wanted to see out of out of our political system. And I think it's unfortunate, you know, but let's talk about why then, Matt, our primary system. Why why the primary system that we have today? Let's dig in a little bit deeper on that, because just recently, I mean, in in the past. You know, not so many weeks, we we just completed the primaries, especially, you know, in the state in which I live, which I'm proud in one sense to say that we had record turnouts for the primaries in, in Minnesota. But still, it was only like 25% of eligible voters. Yeah. I mean, it's, it it was it far surpassed, like, previous years. But why does the primary system in this country, the way that it's set up in most places in this country? Favor the more extreme candidates.
[00:16:42:04] Matt Koesters: So I like to think about this from a systemic standpoint and for for people that are not familiar with systems thinking, maybe you've worked in like manufacturing or distribution or something like that, where you've seen a system like Six Sigma or Kaizen or Lean, where the idea.
[00:17:01:19] Wilk Wilkinson: Is three of them.
[00:17:02:15] Matt Koesters: Yeah. So, you know, and the idea is you're trying to identify those points in the process where inefficiencies are starting to arise. And so you can address them there instead of trying to look downstream from those things and fixing the mess that the stuff upstream is causing, right. So what what happens in our politics is that the dynamics of our politics incentivize certain behaviors. So if you let's say you're a Republican lawmaker right now, okay, your, your, your prime directive is to get reelected whenever you're a politician. So how do you make sure that you get reelected as a Republican lawmaker at the federal level? Well, first you want to make sure you don't cross the boss, because if you do, then you're you're probably going to end up in the boss's crosshairs. And that would apply it to people like, you know, Thomas Massie or Bill Cassidy or, John Cornyn in Texas. You know. Yeah.
[00:18:04:16] Wilk Wilkinson: These these were anyone. Yeah. There's several. But yeah.
[00:18:07:11] Matt Koesters: Right. So so these these people, like, they have conservative bona fides, but, you know, they they ended up doing something that caught the ire of the president, who is the, the the person in charge of the Republican Party now. That's right. And and so, you know, they they crossed the boss. So you don't want to cross the boss and you don't want to get out flanked. So outflanked. So if you are, trying to make sure that you are catering to the voters that are most likely to vote in a primary election, which is going to be the the people that are on the most, you know, extreme ends of the political spectrum, regardless of whether you're you're voting Republican or Democrat.
[00:18:50:03] Wilk Wilkinson: Most passionate ones, the the people that are come hell or high water, they're going to get out and they're going to do what they got to do because they're passionate. They have a feeling inside them, a fire inside them that says, I have to get out and do this.
[00:19:02:15] Matt Koesters: Exactly, exactly. And you want to make sure that they're on your side, right? So that means that if there is a wedge issue or a culture war issue or some other thing that that popped up in is an ideological hot potato or political football or whatever, you want to make sure that you're not going to upset the people that you're depending on to win the primary. Because here's the reality. In the United States, almost 90%. It's it's like something like 85% of primary elections are the real election, because the political lean in congressional districts and in some states means that whoever wins one of the the primaries is going to go on to win the general election. And especially.
[00:19:47:17] Wilk Wilkinson: In this case, yeah, right now with with gerrymandering and redistricting and the things that we're seeing and and it's such a short sighted thing because we see, you know, when the party in power decides to start doing this or that and it that's a whole nother kettle of fish. That's something that we could we could talk about later. But but yeah, with the redistricting and, and the way that the districts are laid out. Yeah. You're right. Once the once the person wins the primary, they've pretty much won the general. So go on. I didn't mean to interrupt.
[00:20:20:00] Matt Koesters: No, no, no, no.
[00:20:20:17] Wilk Wilkinson: You're right at the point of contention too. It's it's just it's an ugly thing that leads to just more ugliness. But it's short sighted because when power shifts, as it eventually will.
[00:20:31:19] Matt Koesters: Yeah. Well, under our current system, like, think of it like a pendulum. It's just going to keep swinging harder and harder in each direction each election cycle. Right. You know, because we we see one side lose and then they find something that's a more extreme position that they can either attack the other side on or something that they can energize their base around, you know, either way. But, you know, the incentives for the politicians and the primary just don't get primaried if you're if you're an incumbent. But if you do, you want to make sure that you are catering to the most consolidated base that you can, because moderates are going to split the vote amongst the rest of the. So you can win with pluralities in the 30s and 40s and then comfortably coast to reelection in the general election. But let's talk about incentives in the general election, because the dynamics of our, our, our voting system, because you can only pick one that makes voting a binary choice between left and right. Okay. So if if you are trying to win, all you have to do is suck less than the other guy. That's it. So that means that you can you can attack that other person all day long. Call them every name in the book you don't even worry about. If you get attacked. It doesn't matter, because if you can put them on their heels, then they're playing defense and now they look like they're there, you know? Oh, I didn't do that. Yeah. Another week. Right. So that's ultimately why are political discourse is so messed up. Because if if all you got to do is is spout, you know, outrage and fear and, you know, just grievances, you know, just constant partisan legislation.
[00:22:14:23] Wilk Wilkinson: They talk about it all the time.
[00:22:16:10] Matt Koesters: Yeah. That's that is the root cause of, of all of that stuff, you know. So yeah. So what do we do? How do we how do we get people to to think about things differently when it comes to politics? And the answer, I think, is ultimately to address the electoral system that is creating those dynamics, the incentives for politicians. Because if you can make a couple of adjustments to the way our system works, you can alter those incentives and incentivize better behaviors. So instead of a partisan primary or instead of partisan primaries, particularly closed primaries, those are even worse than, you know, when somebody has the option of participating, why not open it up? Why not make it so that all the candidates and all the voters participate? It doesn't matter what party. Anybody who participates is in. Because what that will do is it will incentivize the politicians to to try to appeal to a more broad coalition as opposed to a narrow base.
[00:23:15:13] Wilk Wilkinson: And this is exactly why I wanted to talk to you today, Matt, because I always want to be thinking about solutions. I don't want to constantly be thought, you know, focused on the problems and, and you know, everybody's complaining about something. But you know what? I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I don't want to constantly be, just spouting off problems without solutions. And this thing called approval voting, which I'll admit I had never heard of before. A lot of people have heard about ranked choice voting, but have never heard of approval. I don't know how many people have heard of approval voting. I had never heard of it, so I was completely ignorant to this until you brought it to me. And now I'm pretty excited about it. It makes a lot more sense. Let's get into that, because this is what I see as a viable solution. I love the idea. And again, going back to the primaries that just happened, you know, we've we've got, you know, when we're handed a ballot, we're like, okay, are you Republican? Are you registered as a Republican or are you registered as a Democrat? Okay. If you're registered as a Republican, you only can do this column. You can't do anything in the other column. And it's it's yeah, it's not. But talk about approval of voting because this is one of those things. Again, let's let's look at solutions to our common cause problems. And anybody that looks at the primary system today has got to recognize anybody that looks at the two party system that we have in this country today, and that the primary system that promotes the most extreme and ugliest voices. And we we're constantly dealing with this vote splitting thing. Approval voting has a way to well, it's got a path to to being a strong solution for that. Yeah. Talk about approval voting Matt.
[00:25:04:05] Matt Koesters: You got it. So here's what I'm advocating for. And here's what fortified democracy is advocating for in in the primary round. Let's have a single nonpartisan primary. All the voters, all the politicians. Everybody picks one at that stage and we advance the top four. What that does is it ensures that we have diversity of thought in the general election. Then in the general election, we have four candidates. Just let voters pick as many or as few as they want, count them all at the same time, and whoever gets the most wins. That ensures that the candidate with the broadest support is the one that ends up winning. The difference between approval voting and ranked choice voting is that approval voting is, well, there's several differences. One, it's simpler. It's very simple. In fact, most of your your your viewers and listeners have probably used it without even realizing it, whether it's because they took a doodle poll trying to figure out the right time for a meeting, or if they were trying to figure out what pizza toppings to get at a party or or what restaurant they and their friends were going to go out to on a Friday night, you know, do we go to the hey, raise your hand if you want to go to the steakhouse, raise your hand if you want to go to the Chinese place, raise your hand. If you want to go to the Mexican place. You're allowed to raise your hand as many times as you want, and each one of those votes carries the exact same weight. And whichever one gets the most votes wins. That's approval voting in a nutshell. And and so if you are able to choose multiple candidates in the general election, that completely changes the incentives for the politicians, the office holders and the candidates. Because now, instead of just attacking one other person nonstop, just a constant firehose of negativity, now they have to be sensitive to the possibility that the supporters of other candidates can also vote for them. And if you call another candidate names and, and, you know, try and tear them down, what that might be interpreted as by the people that support that candidate is that you're calling them stupid for, you know, supporting that guy. Right. So now you've lost all of that potential support because they can vote for you and them. Right?
[00:27:13:12] Wilk Wilkinson: So yeah, let's let's just let's just think about that for a second. Right? I mean, let's go back to the Hillary Clinton line of baskets of deplorables, a basket of deplorable short and and right there I know somebody right now who's constantly calling anybody who even sees Donald Trump as a human being, as a as like a Trumper. Right, as a pejorative. Right. And that it. Well, number one, it doesn't change anybody's mind. It actually turns people off to your way of thinking. People's ears slams shut. What you what you're saying there, Matt, is an incredibly important point in the sense that you have to build coalitions. You have to you have to treat your opponents with a certain modicum of, of dignity, if not a, a, a large amount of dignity because people will gravitate to a particular person, they're just naturally going to do that. And when, especially in the day and age right now where people have made their political identity part of their core identity, any attack on that other person becomes an attack on them, right?
[00:28:22:22] Matt Koesters: That's exactly right.
[00:28:23:23] Wilk Wilkinson: Now all of a sudden, out of the four people that we could I mean, because let's face it, I mean, there's going to be people that are say, well, what if everybody picks everybody? Well, it's it's that's.
[00:28:34:00] Matt Koesters: Not going to happen. But whatever.
[00:28:37:06] Wilk Wilkinson: Whatever it is, whatever it is that that dissuades them. And they say, well, you know what I can handle? I can live with these three.
[00:28:46:17] Matt Koesters: Exactly.
[00:28:47:07] Wilk Wilkinson: That guy's been bashing my guy or girl, whatever. What every single ad that I see, you know, every single ad that I see, you know, I mean, it's just like the primaries here in Minnesota. It's it's every Democrat that was running their basic basically their whole platform was I hate Trump more than this person hates Trump. Yeah.
[00:29:10:07] Matt Koesters: That's not a winning message. Not a winning message at all.
[00:29:13:04] Wilk Wilkinson: I am going to fight Trump harder than that person's going to fight Trump because I hate him more. And and it's like, well it it I mean and you can do that in certain states, you know, because it's, you know, because of the way that things are laid out. But it's, it's if you build your if you build your platform upon what I'm against as opposed to what I am for eventually you will you will lose. And not only that, you are only going to get the again. You're only going to appeal to the most negative and angry base.
[00:29:50:18] Matt Koesters: Right. Yeah. And here's here's the thing. We know that a lot of people have checked out, as you mentioned earlier, and it's because of these dynamics, you know, you see these these two sides fighting. And for a lot of people, neither of those sides represents who they are, what they want to support. And everybody is trying to behave rationally in this system, okay. Like we're all doing the best that we can. And this is going to maybe be controversial some people. But I think that when you only have two choices that are really viable and neither one of them do anything for you, I think it's a perfectly rational decision, then not participate at all, because you're making a statement about your feeling about the system itself by not participating. Yeah. You know, it's it speaks even.
[00:30:37:22] Wilk Wilkinson: Line of not having to say it.
[00:30:39:06] Matt Koesters: Yeah, exactly. And we know that 36% of Americans didn't vote in the last presidential election, which turned out to be the most consequential election of our lifetimes. We know that 45% of Americans now identify as independents. That's the highest number that we have ever seen. Since such numbers started being measured, 62% would like to have a viable third party, but only 15% of Americans would actually commit to supporting that third party, which tells you that they inherently understand the problem even if they don't know how to articulate it right. That's right. So we have this huge group of people that feel like the political system is not serving them. It has left them behind and they are sitting out. So how do we get these people to start taking part again? And the answer is you need to provide them with candidates that represent their values and have a realistic, viable pathway to victory when it comes to elections. Because third party candidacies right now, like who runs as a third party candidate, it's usually people that are very ideological. And they they want to make it so that people are hearing their ideas. Like, I remember a poll from some years back, back when I was still a reporter that said that, third party and independent candidates have somewhere between 8 and 10 times as much copy on their campaign websites as the Republican, the Democrat, because the Republican and Democrat. No, they don't have to really say too much. In fact, the more they say, the more, more the.
[00:32:06:16] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:07:19] Matt Koesters: So like, what if we can make it so that independent and third party candidacies become viable pathways to office? Well, the first thing that happens is that candidate quality improves because people who don't think that they can win under our current rules would suddenly say, you know what? Maybe I do have a chance. Maybe I should run. I'm perfectly qualified. I've got skills, I've got ideas. You know, running on actual ideas becomes the winning strategy here because that's how you build appeal. That's how you build support across the political spectrum. How am I going to make the lives of my constituents better? Right. And then once you win, those incentives remain in place because you have to worry about being challenged from the right, from the left, no matter where you are on the political spectrum, that challenge can come from the same side or the opposite side. So the two party system is not going to ensure that you just automatically get reelected every two years. Right.
[00:33:06:06] Wilk Wilkinson: So yeah. So this is all this stuff is amazing, Matt. Because this being somebody who who thinks a lot about root cause problem solving. Thinks a lot about what the solutions are to our common cause problems. Focuses, the vast majority of my mental energy every single day of the week into how do we how do we provide viable solutions to us versus them tribalism and get away from this, this toxicity that that has just overcome so much of our daily lives and and this, this is, this is something I'm not saying this is the the perfect answer, but this is a this is this is there's a lot here that people need to be looking at and thinking about and really, really asking themselves, do we want to continue feeding the beast that is built upon us versus them? Tribalism? Do we want to continue feeding the beast that keeps us and benefits those who want to keep us divided? Or do we want to start looking for answers to to kind of slay that dragon? This is a this has been a great conversation. We're at the end of our time, Matt. But but, where can people find out more about about you, Matt Koesters and, I'm assuming they can find out all about DuVernay's law approval voting. Where where do they find this stuff?
[00:34:41:23] Matt Koesters: You can check out Fortify Democracy at www.Fortifydemocracy.com, and you can check me out personally on LinkedIn. Matt. Koester's K O E S TERS. I'd love to connect with your listeners. Happy to discuss these ideas with anybody that comes my way.
[00:35:00:12] Wilk Wilkinson: Fantastic. Well, I do appreciate your time. I appreciate all the all the the great and valuable tools we've had a chance to bring to the listeners today. And, yeah.
[00:35:11:17] Matt Koesters: It's been my pleasure. Wilk. I appreciate you having me on, and I'd love to do it again sometime.
[00:35:16:22] Wilk Wilkinson: Fantastic. We will have you back. I appreciate you, Matt.
[00:35:19:17] Matt Koesters: Take care. You, too.
[00:35:21:11] Wilk Wilkinson: Friends, I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if there's anything in this episode that provided exceptional value to you, please make sure to hit that share button. If you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to get the Derate The Hate podcast sent to your email inbox every week. We really are better together. So please take a moment to visit Braver angels.org and consider joining the movement towards civic renewal and bridging our political divides. This is Wilk wrapping up for the week saying get out there. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you've got. And remember, it's up to you to make every day the day that you want it to be. With that, my friend, I'm going to back on out of here and we will catch you next week. Take care.
Transcript is AI generated and may contain errors [00:00:00:00] Wilk Wilkinson: In 2014, a county in southern Indiana elected a new sheriff with 37.7% of the vote. Nearly two out of three voters wanted someone else. They just split their support between the two other candidates. My guest was a reporter covering that race, and it changed the way that he sees our elections, because sometimes the problem isn't the people.
It's the rules that we're all playing by. Stick with me. Welcome back, my friends, to the Derate the hate podcast. I'm your host, Wilk Wilkinson.
Your blue collar sage calming outrage and helping to navigate a world divided by fog. And those who would spread that fear, outrage and grievance. The Derate The Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels, America's largest grassroots cross partisan organization working to make courageous citizenship the honored norm. This podcast amplifies the mission that we share to foster a more respectful and united America, where we build together across political and societal divides each week, through the power of story, conversation, and connection with incredible guests, we work to build bridges instead of barriers, not to change minds on the issues, but to change how we see one another when we differ.
Friends, it really is about bettering the world, one attitude at a time. We did not create the hate, but together we can derate the hate. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Share it with a friend and visit Braver angels.org to join the movement to make courageous citizenship the honored norm.
Looking for more news and less bias? Visit our great supporting partner all sides.com for balanced news fueled by media bias ratings. Friends. I am so incredibly grateful that you have joined me for another powerful, Derate the Hate episode.
Let's get to it. Most of us have been there. You walk into the voting booth, look at the ballot, and realize you're not really voting for anyone. You're voting against someone.
The lesser of two evils. We tend to blame the candidates for that. Or the other side or each other. My guest today is asking us to look further upstream.
Matt Koesters spent years as a newspaper reporter covering local government and politics. In 2014, he watched a sheriff's race get decided by vote splitting a candidate, winning with barely more than a third of the vote, while the majority divided itself. Two years later, he watched the same dynamic play out on the national stage. That experience eventually led him to found Fortified Democracy, an organization focused on two structural root causes of our political dysfunction partisan primaries and the pick one design of our voting system.
Matt's argument is pretty simple. Politicians behave the way the system rewards them for behaving. Change the incentives and you change the behavior. Today we're going to talk about how that works, including an idea called approval voting.
I'll admit I had never heard of it before Matt brought it to me. And chances are you've already used it without even realizing it. Let's get into it with my friend Matt Koesters. Here we go.
Matt Koesters, Welcome to the Derate The Hate podcast, my friend. So good to see you again today. Hey. [00:03:39:03] Matt Koesters: My pleasure.
Thanks for having me. [00:03:41:16] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. we had a conversation a few weeks back, and, you brought your, your website and some very intriguing ideas to my attention. Some things that I hadn't even had on my radar, hadn't hadn't been aware of.
And, and I thought that they would be good things to, to bring up to the DTH audience for for a number of reasons that we'll get into, Matt. So first of all, I just want to talk about, the organization that that you've, built or, or in the process of building fortify democracy.com. tell the listeners, first of all, Matt, what is fortified democracy and what you know, what in your background, what about your story led you to want to, to get this initiative going? [00:04:29:23] Matt Koesters: Sure.
So Fortify democracy is a 501c 4 social welfare organization that I started late last year that is focused on addressing the structural root causes of the dysfunction in our electoral system. Basically, we've identified two structural root causes that incentivizes the dysfunctional behavior that we see in our politics, in our public discourse. partisan primaries and the pick one aspect of plurality voting and the the origin story. My background is in journalism and public relations.
And about 12 years ago, I was working for a daily newspaper called the News and Tribune. We covered Clark and Floyd counties in southern Indiana. It's basically the the Indiana burbs of Louisville, Kentucky. And at the time, we had a sheriff's race going on and a little background about where I was living at the time, Clark County, which was one of my beats, had been under single party rule for basically the entire existence of the county.
It had always voted Democrat and local races, regardless of how voters behaved in state and national elections. And it often leaned Republican when it came to state and national elections. But locally, the Democratic Party was the only game in town. So if you were to win the the Democratic Party primary for, say, a position like the sheriff's office, then you were widely assumed to be the presumptive winner in the general election.
Well, in 2014, I was covering a race in which the, the guy who had won the Democratic primary for sheriff ended up having to drop out because of a scandal. And so the the county party had to have a caucus to replace him on the ballot. And there were two strong candidates. One of them won, the other one felt jilted and decided to run as an independent.
And around the same time, the Republican county chairman, a guy named Jamie Noll, was an Indiana state police officer, and he decided to throw his hat into the ring as well. And what ended up happening was one of the worst cases of vote splitting, the spoiler effect rather that I had ever really seen because I had always heard about spoilers when talking to to local wonks. And, you know, you saw it play out a little bit here and there. But in this race, the Republican became the first ever sheriff of Clark County, who was a Republican with just 37.7% of the vote.
So the Democrat and the independent had split support among the other 62%, and allowed the Republican to take over. And the aftermath of that was all of the local elections suddenly swung to the Republican Party, because everybody saw that the the wind had shifted. And so a lot of opportunists decided to do that. But, you know, that was the, the first real major exposure that I had had to problems with our voting system.
So I came back to Cincinnati, where I lived now the following year, and we all watched the Golden Escalator ride, and I watched that through the lens of what I had just seen in Clark County, and what we saw play out in the 2016 Republican primary race for president was just a much bigger scale version of what I had already seen in Clark County, because Donald Trump, who entered the race as the single most unfavorably viewed candidate on either side of the race, ended up winning the Republican Party nomination. I was like, well, how could that be in the answer is the same electoral dynamics that allowed Jamie Noll to become sheriff in Clark County. It was because the the support among establishment candidates was split among like 4 or 5 different guys. So you have like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Chris Christie.
There were a couple of others. But, what ended up happening was Trump was able to win with pluralities in the 20s and 30s in his early primary victories. And the the majority was splitting their vote amongst 3 or 4 different candidates. That's right.
So that's that's how he was able to do it. He never crossed 50% by the end of the race. In total, he did cross it in a couple of primaries, but by then it was too late. [00:08:56:17] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah.
And this is, this is something I think a lot of people, may not well, until they've heard this, they they may not have looked at That primary scenario for Donald Trump as a vote splitting thing. And, and for people who, maybe for people who I mean, people my age will remember vote splitting in terms of like one of the biggest examples that's happened in, in my lifetime would be the, the Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush. Election that that led to the presidential election and presidential victory of, of Bill Clinton.
But this is certainly nothing new. I mean, this kind of thing has happened a number of times before in history. Another good example would be like Teddy Roosevelt with his Bull Moose party. Coming in and, and and wrecking things, which, you know, which ultimately led to some other very bad things for, for the country.
But but the reality is, is this thing, this vote splitting, talk about why vote splitting, Matt is a. Is is this thing that that leads to these sometimes very unfavorable results as a result of the plurality voting system? But first of all, just just real quickly, give me the quick version of when you talk about plurality voting for people who don't know what plurality voting is. Let's talk about that for sure.
Quick minute and then let's talk about why. Vote splitting becomes this thing that that leads to sometimes, well, quite often the, the lesser of two evils in a lot of cases. [00:10:45:19] Matt Koesters: In the United States is almost exclusively the lesser of two evils. But, to your point, plurality voting, when we're talking about that, what we're talking about is just the pick one aspect of our voting system.
You can only pick one candidate in a single winner race. Some folks may have heard of this referred to as first past the post, but, plurality voting is the name of the system itself. And the problem that that creates is if you have a an extreme candidate that has a more consolidated base going up against multiple moderate candidates that have similar positions, like what we saw in the Republican Party in 2016. Those moderate candidates will split support because again, voters can only pick one, even if they might like several of those candidates about equally they have to pick one right.
So that can lead to the kind of results that that we saw in 2016. Pick one voting is really the reason that we have a two party system in the United States. Every time there's been an attempt to start a third party, that third party has either not gained traction or has ultimately served as a spoiler in elections where you ended up getting a really counterintuitive result. So when you can only pick one winner in a race and you have a political environment that's as polarized and and charged up as ours is right now, most people aren't going to use that that one vote that they have to vote for the candidate that they sincerely prefer.
In fact, it's actually kind of rare to have the opportunity to vote for somebody who actually has a reasonable chance of winning that you also feel really passionate about, you know, so what we end up doing instead is we've used that vote strategically to try to stop the party that we would like to see take office. So if you are a conservative and you want to make sure that Democrats are not going to win, your best chance of stopping them would be to vote for the Republican Party. And the same would be true in the opposite direction. So if you're a liberal and you want to stop Republicans, you would vote Democrat because they have the best chance of winning.
And that's a phenomenon that has been known since about the mid 20th century. It's called due Dover law. A political scientist named Marty Stuart observed that in single winner races that use plurality voting, it will tend towards a two party system. And that's exactly what we have in the United States.
[00:13:17:23] Wilk Wilkinson: It is exactly what we have. And it's it's not serving us well. It's certainly not serving the people of this country. Well.
Agreed. It is set up a it is set up one of the ugliest, environments of us versus them tribalism that I've, I've seen in my lifetime. Matt and and I think a lot of people, I mean, upwards of two thirds of, of Americans right now are sick and tired of toxic division. And, and many, many of our, our, our people have, have just completely checked out of the system.
And I talk about it not out of apathy. know, not that these folks have have checked out of the system, out of apathy, but it's But it's almost out of self-preservation in the sense that, you know, when you're when you're swimming around in this pool of toxicity, which unfortunately is, is, you know, depending on what your perception of things is, our our political system is, is in many ways what I would consider a, a pool of toxicity because of those political factions, because of the, the strict rigid binary of, of, you know, Democrats and conservatives and, and needing to, take that one vote that you have for, for a strategic thing. And. I've often talked about, My votes for Donald Trump and, and.
You know, being a conservative guy who doesn't see Donald Trump in any way, shape or form as a conservative. I, I, you know, I could not look at a, a Hillary Clinton as a viable option. That, that, that aligned with so many of the things that I want from our political system. You know, I could not look at Joe Biden as as a viable option as what I wanted out of our political system the same way with, Kamala Harris, even more so than probably the other two.
But, you know, so then I have no choice. Even though I had zero desire as a conservative to vote for Donald Trump, as a person who believes in, in, in a lot of the things that I believe. Donald Trump was seriously in every way imaginable, in my mind, the lesser of two evils when it comes to what I wanted to see out of out of our political system. And I think it's unfortunate, you know, but let's talk about why then, Matt, our primary system.
Why why the primary system that we have today? Let's dig in a little bit deeper on that, because just recently, I mean, in in the past. You know, not so many weeks, we we just completed the primaries, especially, you know, in the state in which I live, which I'm proud in one sense to say that we had record turnouts for the primaries in, in Minnesota. But still, it was only like 25% of eligible voters.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it it was it far surpassed, like, previous years. But why does the primary system in this country, the way that it's set up in most places in this country? Favor the more extreme candidates.
[00:16:42:04] Matt Koesters: So I like to think about this from a systemic standpoint and for for people that are not familiar with systems thinking, maybe you've worked in like manufacturing or distribution or something like that, where you've seen a system like Six Sigma or Kaizen or Lean, where the idea. [00:17:01:19] Wilk Wilkinson: Is three of them. [00:17:02:15] Matt Koesters: Yeah. So, you know, and the idea is you're trying to identify those points in the process where inefficiencies are starting to arise.
And so you can address them there instead of trying to look downstream from those things and fixing the mess that the stuff upstream is causing, right. So what what happens in our politics is that the dynamics of our politics incentivize certain behaviors. So if you let's say you're a Republican lawmaker right now, okay, your, your, your prime directive is to get reelected whenever you're a politician. So how do you make sure that you get reelected as a Republican lawmaker at the federal level?
Well, first you want to make sure you don't cross the boss, because if you do, then you're you're probably going to end up in the boss's crosshairs. And that would apply it to people like, you know, Thomas Massie or Bill Cassidy or, John Cornyn in Texas. You know. Yeah.
[00:18:04:16] Wilk Wilkinson: These these were anyone. Yeah. There's several. But yeah.
[00:18:07:11] Matt Koesters: Right. So so these these people, like, they have conservative bona fides, but, you know, they they ended up doing something that caught the ire of the president, who is the, the the person in charge of the Republican Party now. That's right. And and so, you know, they they crossed the boss.
So you don't want to cross the boss and you don't want to get out flanked. So outflanked. So if you are, trying to make sure that you are catering to the voters that are most likely to vote in a primary election, which is going to be the the people that are on the most, you know, extreme ends of the political spectrum, regardless of whether you're you're voting Republican or Democrat. [00:18:50:03] Wilk Wilkinson: Most passionate ones, the the people that are come hell or high water, they're going to get out and they're going to do what they got to do because they're passionate.
They have a feeling inside them, a fire inside them that says, I have to get out and do this. [00:19:02:15] Matt Koesters: Exactly, exactly. And you want to make sure that they're on your side, right? So that means that if there is a wedge issue or a culture war issue or some other thing that that popped up in is an ideological hot potato or political football or whatever, you want to make sure that you're not going to upset the people that you're depending on to win the primary.
Because here's the reality. In the United States, almost 90%. It's it's like something like 85% of primary elections are the real election, because the political lean in congressional districts and in some states means that whoever wins one of the the primaries is going to go on to win the general election. And especially.
[00:19:47:17] Wilk Wilkinson: In this case, yeah, right now with with gerrymandering and redistricting and the things that we're seeing and and it's such a short sighted thing because we see, you know, when the party in power decides to start doing this or that and it that's a whole nother kettle of fish. That's something that we could we could talk about later. But but yeah, with the redistricting and, and the way that the districts are laid out. Yeah.
You're right. Once the once the person wins the primary, they've pretty much won the general. So go on. I didn't mean to interrupt.
[00:20:20:00] Matt Koesters: No, no, no, no. [00:20:20:17] Wilk Wilkinson: You're right at the point of contention too. It's it's just it's an ugly thing that leads to just more ugliness. But it's short sighted because when power shifts, as it eventually will.
[00:20:31:19] Matt Koesters: Yeah. Well, under our current system, like, think of it like a pendulum. It's just going to keep swinging harder and harder in each direction each election cycle. Right.
You know, because we we see one side lose and then they find something that's a more extreme position that they can either attack the other side on or something that they can energize their base around, you know, either way. But, you know, the incentives for the politicians and the primary just don't get primaried if you're if you're an incumbent. But if you do, you want to make sure that you are catering to the most consolidated base that you can, because moderates are going to split the vote amongst the rest of the. So you can win with pluralities in the 30s and 40s and then comfortably coast to reelection in the general election.
But let's talk about incentives in the general election, because the dynamics of our, our, our voting system, because you can only pick one that makes voting a binary choice between left and right. Okay. So if if you are trying to win, all you have to do is suck less than the other guy. That's it.
So that means that you can you can attack that other person all day long. Call them every name in the book you don't even worry about. If you get attacked. It doesn't matter, because if you can put them on their heels, then they're playing defense and now they look like they're there, you know?
Oh, I didn't do that. Yeah. Another week. Right.
So that's ultimately why are political discourse is so messed up. Because if if all you got to do is is spout, you know, outrage and fear and, you know, just grievances, you know, just constant partisan legislation. [00:22:14:23] Wilk Wilkinson: They talk about it all the time. [00:22:16:10] Matt Koesters: Yeah.
That's that is the root cause of, of all of that stuff, you know. So yeah. So what do we do? How do we how do we get people to to think about things differently when it comes to politics?
And the answer, I think, is ultimately to address the electoral system that is creating those dynamics, the incentives for politicians. Because if you can make a couple of adjustments to the way our system works, you can alter those incentives and incentivize better behaviors. So instead of a partisan primary or instead of partisan primaries, particularly closed primaries, those are even worse than, you know, when somebody has the option of participating, why not open it up? Why not make it so that all the candidates and all the voters participate?
It doesn't matter what party. Anybody who participates is in. Because what that will do is it will incentivize the politicians to to try to appeal to a more broad coalition as opposed to a narrow base. [00:23:15:13] Wilk Wilkinson: And this is exactly why I wanted to talk to you today, Matt, because I always want to be thinking about solutions.
I don't want to constantly be thought, you know, focused on the problems and, and you know, everybody's complaining about something. But you know what? I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I don't want to constantly be, just spouting off problems without solutions.
And this thing called approval voting, which I'll admit I had never heard of before. A lot of people have heard about ranked choice voting, but have never heard of approval. I don't know how many people have heard of approval voting. I had never heard of it, so I was completely ignorant to this until you brought it to me.
And now I'm pretty excited about it. It makes a lot more sense. Let's get into that, because this is what I see as a viable solution. I love the idea.
And again, going back to the primaries that just happened, you know, we've we've got, you know, when we're handed a ballot, we're like, okay, are you Republican? Are you registered as a Republican or are you registered as a Democrat? Okay. If you're registered as a Republican, you only can do this column.
You can't do anything in the other column. And it's it's yeah, it's not. But talk about approval of voting because this is one of those things. Again, let's let's look at solutions to our common cause problems.
And anybody that looks at the primary system today has got to recognize anybody that looks at the two party system that we have in this country today, and that the primary system that promotes the most extreme and ugliest voices. And we we're constantly dealing with this vote splitting thing. Approval voting has a way to well, it's got a path to to being a strong solution for that. Yeah.
Talk about approval voting Matt. [00:25:04:05] Matt Koesters: You got it. So here's what I'm advocating for. And here's what fortified democracy is advocating for in in the primary round.
Let's have a single nonpartisan primary. All the voters, all the politicians. Everybody picks one at that stage and we advance the top four. What that does is it ensures that we have diversity of thought in the general election.
Then in the general election, we have four candidates. Just let voters pick as many or as few as they want, count them all at the same time, and whoever gets the most wins. That ensures that the candidate with the broadest support is the one that ends up winning. The difference between approval voting and ranked choice voting is that approval voting is, well, there's several differences.
One, it's simpler. It's very simple. In fact, most of your your your viewers and listeners have probably used it without even realizing it, whether it's because they took a doodle poll trying to figure out the right time for a meeting, or if they were trying to figure out what pizza toppings to get at a party or or what restaurant they and their friends were going to go out to on a Friday night, you know, do we go to the hey, raise your hand if you want to go to the steakhouse, raise your hand if you want to go to the Chinese place, raise your hand. If you want to go to the Mexican place.
You're allowed to raise your hand as many times as you want, and each one of those votes carries the exact same weight. And whichever one gets the most votes wins. That's approval voting in a nutshell. And and so if you are able to choose multiple candidates in the general election, that completely changes the incentives for the politicians, the office holders and the candidates.
Because now, instead of just attacking one other person nonstop, just a constant firehose of negativity, now they have to be sensitive to the possibility that the supporters of other candidates can also vote for them. And if you call another candidate names and, and, you know, try and tear them down, what that might be interpreted as by the people that support that candidate is that you're calling them stupid for, you know, supporting that guy. Right. So now you've lost all of that potential support because they can vote for you and them.
Right? [00:27:13:12] Wilk Wilkinson: So yeah, let's let's just let's just think about that for a second. Right? I mean, let's go back to the Hillary Clinton line of baskets of deplorables, a basket of deplorable short and and right there I know somebody right now who's constantly calling anybody who even sees Donald Trump as a human being, as a as like a Trumper.
Right, as a pejorative. Right. And that it. Well, number one, it doesn't change anybody's mind.
It actually turns people off to your way of thinking. People's ears slams shut. What you what you're saying there, Matt, is an incredibly important point in the sense that you have to build coalitions. You have to you have to treat your opponents with a certain modicum of, of dignity, if not a, a, a large amount of dignity because people will gravitate to a particular person, they're just naturally going to do that.
And when, especially in the day and age right now where people have made their political identity part of their core identity, any attack on that other person becomes an attack on them, right? [00:28:22:22] Matt Koesters: That's exactly right. [00:28:23:23] Wilk Wilkinson: Now all of a sudden, out of the four people that we could I mean, because let's face it, I mean, there's going to be people that are say, well, what if everybody picks everybody? Well, it's it's that's.
[00:28:34:00] Matt Koesters: Not going to happen. But whatever. [00:28:37:06] Wilk Wilkinson: Whatever it is, whatever it is that that dissuades them. And they say, well, you know what I can handle?
I can live with these three. [00:28:46:17] Matt Koesters: Exactly. [00:28:47:07] Wilk Wilkinson: That guy's been bashing my guy or girl, whatever. What every single ad that I see, you know, every single ad that I see, you know, I mean, it's just like the primaries here in Minnesota.
It's it's every Democrat that was running their basic basically their whole platform was I hate Trump more than this person hates Trump. Yeah. [00:29:10:07] Matt Koesters: That's not a winning message. Not a winning message at all.
[00:29:13:04] Wilk Wilkinson: I am going to fight Trump harder than that person's going to fight Trump because I hate him more. And and it's like, well it it I mean and you can do that in certain states, you know, because it's, you know, because of the way that things are laid out. But it's, it's if you build your if you build your platform upon what I'm against as opposed to what I am for eventually you will you will lose. And not only that, you are only going to get the again.
You're only going to appeal to the most negative and angry base. [00:29:50:18] Matt Koesters: Right. Yeah. And here's here's the thing.
We know that a lot of people have checked out, as you mentioned earlier, and it's because of these dynamics, you know, you see these these two sides fighting. And for a lot of people, neither of those sides represents who they are, what they want to support. And everybody is trying to behave rationally in this system, okay. Like we're all doing the best that we can.
And this is going to maybe be controversial some people. But I think that when you only have two choices that are really viable and neither one of them do anything for you, I think it's a perfectly rational decision, then not participate at all, because you're making a statement about your feeling about the system itself by not participating. Yeah. You know, it's it speaks even.
[00:30:37:22] Wilk Wilkinson: Line of not having to say it. [00:30:39:06] Matt Koesters: Yeah, exactly. And we know that 36% of Americans didn't vote in the last presidential election, which turned out to be the most consequential election of our lifetimes. We know that 45% of Americans now identify as independents.
That's the highest number that we have ever seen. Since such numbers started being measured, 62% would like to have a viable third party, but only 15% of Americans would actually commit to supporting that third party, which tells you that they inherently understand the problem even if they don't know how to articulate it right. That's right. So we have this huge group of people that feel like the political system is not serving them.
It has left them behind and they are sitting out. So how do we get these people to start taking part again? And the answer is you need to provide them with candidates that represent their values and have a realistic, viable pathway to victory when it comes to elections. Because third party candidacies right now, like who runs as a third party candidate, it's usually people that are very ideological.
And they they want to make it so that people are hearing their ideas. Like, I remember a poll from some years back, back when I was still a reporter that said that, third party and independent candidates have somewhere between 8 and 10 times as much copy on their campaign websites as the Republican, the Democrat, because the Republican and Democrat. No, they don't have to really say too much. In fact, the more they say, the more, more the.
[00:32:06:16] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah. [00:32:07:19] Matt Koesters: So like, what if we can make it so that independent and third party candidacies become viable pathways to office? Well, the first thing that happens is that candidate quality improves because people who don't think that they can win under our current rules would suddenly say, you know what? Maybe I do have a chance.
Maybe I should run. I'm perfectly qualified. I've got skills, I've got ideas. You know, running on actual ideas becomes the winning strategy here because that's how you build appeal.
That's how you build support across the political spectrum. How am I going to make the lives of my constituents better? Right. And then once you win, those incentives remain in place because you have to worry about being challenged from the right, from the left, no matter where you are on the political spectrum, that challenge can come from the same side or the opposite side.
So the two party system is not going to ensure that you just automatically get reelected every two years. Right. [00:33:06:06] Wilk Wilkinson: So yeah. So this is all this stuff is amazing, Matt.
Because this being somebody who who thinks a lot about root cause problem solving. Thinks a lot about what the solutions are to our common cause problems. Focuses, the vast majority of my mental energy every single day of the week into how do we how do we provide viable solutions to us versus them tribalism and get away from this, this toxicity that that has just overcome so much of our daily lives and and this, this is, this is something I'm not saying this is the the perfect answer, but this is a this is this is there's a lot here that people need to be looking at and thinking about and really, really asking themselves, do we want to continue feeding the beast that is built upon us versus them? Tribalism?
Do we want to continue feeding the beast that keeps us and benefits those who want to keep us divided? Or do we want to start looking for answers to to kind of slay that dragon? This is a this has been a great conversation. We're at the end of our time, Matt.
But but, where can people find out more about about you, Matt Koesters and, I'm assuming they can find out all about DuVernay's law approval voting. Where where do they find this stuff? [00:34:41:23] Matt Koesters: You can check out Fortify Democracy at www.Fortifydemocracy.com, and you can check me out personally on LinkedIn. Matt.
Koester's K O E S TERS. I'd love to connect with your listeners. Happy to discuss these ideas with anybody that comes my way. [00:35:00:12] Wilk Wilkinson: Fantastic.
Well, I do appreciate your time. I appreciate all the all the the great and valuable tools we've had a chance to bring to the listeners today. And, yeah. [00:35:11:17] Matt Koesters: It's been my pleasure.
Wilk. I appreciate you having me on, and I'd love to do it again sometime. [00:35:16:22] Wilk Wilkinson: Fantastic. We will have you back.
I appreciate you, Matt. [00:35:19:17] Matt Koesters: Take care. You, too. [00:35:21:11] Wilk Wilkinson: Friends, I want to thank you so much for tuning in.
And if there's anything in this episode that provided exceptional value to you, please make sure to hit that share button. If you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to get the Derate The Hate podcast sent to your email inbox every week. We really are better together. So please take a moment to visit Braver angels.org and consider joining the movement towards civic renewal and bridging our political divides.
This is Wilk wrapping up for the week saying get out there. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you've got. And remember, it's up to you to make every day the day that you want it to be.
With that, my friend, I'm going to back on out of here and we will catch you next week. Take care.
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