Independence will tend to be in the forefront of favoring structural political reform that levels the playing field and and essentially

says look political parties can compete in the political marketplace, but they shouldn't also be running the competition

which is how it works right now.

And so we need a nonpartisan system, we need structural reforms and

and we need the right to be an independent. You shouldn't have to join a political organization in order to have your full democratic rights in the United States of America. That's that simple.

It is my pleasure to welcome to forward the president of independent voting the co-director of the Center for an independent

Sustainable Democracy at ASU and board member of the Forward Party.

Jackie, say it, welcome Jackie. Thank you Andrew, great to be with you on Thanksgiving Week.

So you're the co-author of this new book The Independent Voter with your co-director Tom Riley and then also a history professor named Omar Ali.

I got a lot out of this book. How does this book come about? Tom and I had been writing chapters

in various volumes on the independent voter and

in discussion with Omar Ali about the story that we were trying to tell and the three of us decided that this could be a moment where

writing a book that was dedicated specifically to talking about who is the independent voter?

What is this phenomena about? Why are they so misunderstood in the political world which they are?

And so we decided to take a shot at it and we reached out to a couple of publishers and

Routledge Press grabbed the project right away and asked us to finish the manuscript quickly which we did and now we're out in print.

Now well congratulations on that. So I think of you as sort of the godmother of independent voters.

You're literally the president of independent voting and a work for independent voters.

How the heck did you wind up working on three presidential campaigns? I think you worked on Bloomberg's campaign too.

Like you were sort of the peregon of independence. Like how the heck did that come about?

You know it's such an interesting question and I think there were so many cross-currents, some of them were personal and some of them I guess were more contextual.

But you know I grew up in a very politically aware and politically active family.

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