Millions of Americans now believe our electoral process is corrupt.

They don't trust it.

And that worries me more than anything.

Because if you lose your ability for people to govern themselves, which is what elections are about, then you lose self-government and you have to go to the

alternative model, which is the authoritarian model, letting one person make all the decisions.

You're listening to the Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how

energy, the economy,

the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future.

By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play

emergent roles in the coming great simplification.

Today's guest is Richard Gephard, a retired politician who was a member of U.S. Congress

for 28 years as both the majority and minority leader of the Democratic House of Representatives.

He also ran for President of the

United States in 1988 in 2004. Dick has had a long and storied career in public service, which

continues today in his 80s, where he's working on issues of democracy and social media and polarization and climate change,

among others. I've worked with Dick on a bipartisan project called Advanced Policy, which is

trying to look two or three steps ahead at the macro policy interventions that our society

and our government are going to need as we face the great simplification

in coming decades. I asked Leader Gephard to join me today to offer his deep experience

and his personal deep study of democracy to discuss the importance of civility among the American

people ahead of our upcoming election next week. As tensions

continue to rise, the pressure on our democratic systems and our country's ability to self-govern

...