Hi, this is Jen Rubin, and this is Jen Rubin's green room.

Democracy, Elections, 2004, Threats of totalitarianism.

It is enough to give you heartburn and to make you want to hide under your bed.

But of course, you can't.

If you see the field to the people who want to destroy our democracy, they win.

And I fear that with so much at stake and with people obsessing over polls a year out, that there gets to be a sense of fatalism, a sense of inevitability.

And, of course, the election really hasn't even begun. We're just under a year away, and the campaigns have not really begun in earnest, although many of you who watch the news, listen to the news, read the news incessantly,

feel like it's been going on for forever. The average person doesn't tune in until about

September of 2024, believe it or not. So we've got a long ways to go.

You've got to pace yourself. You've got to keep up. And I think it's also important to understand

that there are people out there who are working on behalf of democracy, not a particular candidate,

not a particular political party. We've tried to feature

some of these on this program, and we have another guest this week who's going to talk about it.

And she is Joanna Ludgake. She is the head of an organization called States United.

They work in the democracy space to help voters, to help election officials, to make sure our elections run smoothly, fairly, and that every vote gets counted.

And that's really the very definition of democracy.

Getting the votes counted, getting them recorded accurately, and then agreeing to abide by them. What a concept, right? Well, Joanna is going to

tell us all about the work that she does. So without further ado, Joanna, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So I constantly tell my listeners that there are organizations out there doing great work in defense of democracy.

So you are the executive director of States United.

Tell us what the organization is and how it came to be. So we started in the

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