Atheists, agnostics, long-haired widows, short-haired widows, vandal,

hooligans.

I love the government, hug the government, hug the government, hug the government, love, the government,

hug the government, love the government, hug the government.

Welcome to the politics, guys, a place for bipartisan, rational, and civil debate on

American politics and policy.

I'm Northern Kentucky University political scientist Michael

Barronowski. My guest today is Deb Otis, Director of Research and Policy at Fair Vote.

Now, as that title suggests, she is a data-driven person. I am too. I love that. And so I

am really looking forward to talking with her today about what the data tells us about voting and voting reform.

Deb Otis, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

So I thought before we got into the nitty gritty, we could talk a little bit about fair vote,

your organization.

Could you say a little bit about what it's about and how long it's been doing, what it's

been doing?

We are fair vote. We're a nonprofit and we have been around since 1992, so just over 30 years now.

We are an election reform organization. So we do research and also advocacy. Some of our

priority issues are ranked choice voting and proportional representation. My role is the

director of research and policy, which means I'm on the number crunching side rather than the

go out and win campaigns side. So a big part of my job is looking at how different election

systems work in practice. Okay. And a lot of the discussion around voting focuses on, especially on the left,

...