Hi, everyone. Welcome. I'm so glad to see you all here. My name is Caitlin Penya. I'm the Director of Programs and Operations for the Center for Election Science. Just in case you're here, and this is your first introduction to the Center for Election Science, we are a nonpartisan non-profit and we study and advocate for better voting methods. So the main voting method that we advocate for is called approval voting and it allows you to vote for as many candidates as you like and then they candidate with the most votes wins. In 2018, we helped get approval voting implemented in Fargo, North Dakota, the first city in the U.S. to use it and now we're working with folks in St. Louis, Missouri to help them get it implemented there. They just got their initiative on the ballot here a couple weeks ago and Jeremy, who I'm about to introduce from OpenPrimaries, his organization is also working with us there in St. Louis because they're going to be implementing an OpenPrimary. So we'll get into all of that here in a few minutes but that's who I am and who the Center for Election Science is. And so now I'd like to introduce Jeremy Gruber. He is the Senior Vice President of OpenPrimaries, which is an educational and advocacy organization focused on opening up electoral systems. He's worked on reform efforts across the country, including the successful campaign to adopt OpenPrimaries in Colorado in 2016. Before that, he spent 20 years as a civil rights attorney with various organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, and he's helped author and passed dozens of state privacy and non-discrimination laws. He's testified before Congress, federal agencies, and state legislatures is regularly featured in the media and he's the author of multiple books and articles. So I'm super excited that we have Jeremy here with us to share his expertise and help us understand what his organization OpenPrimaries does and why they think this is an important reform. So Jeremy, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Caitlin. Hi, everybody. All right. Before I get into it, I just I want to give you all on here listening a quick overview of how this will go. So I'll interview Jeremy with I have some questions of my own and then we'll turn it over to you guys for a Q&A portion. Right now I have all of you muted just so we don't have any confusion. And so what we'll do is if you have a question, you can click on the participants button at the bottom of the screen and you should see the participants come up on the side and then you'll hover over yourself and you can click you can click a raise raise my hand option. And so when we get to that Q&A portion, you can do that raise my hand and I'll unmute you once it's your turn. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, you're welcome to also just write your write your questions in the chat. But without further ado, I'll we'll go ahead and get this kicked off. So Jeremy, I'm so glad that you're here with us just just to start things out. How are you doing right now? I know that everybody is kind of dealing with a lot in the midst of this pandemic. So I hope all's well on your end. We are well. We're in New York City. So that's a bit more challenging than maybe some folks have it. But but we're doing fine. And I seem to be managing two teenage sons who haven't killed each other yet. So I count that as a big way. Yeah, that's a huge way.  I don't have to deal with kids and all of the shenanigans that they can cause when you're stuck inside for a long time. So I feel pretty fortunate to. Yeah, so just to start off then. So the mission of open primaries, you say is to open up electoral systems. So can you give everybody an idea of what that means? If they're new to hearing about your organization, you know, what does your work look like? What what are the reforms you're working on? Sure. So the work at open primaries is really in response to a fundamental problem in our electoral system. And that is the issue of closed primaries. Why that's a problem? So 100 years ago, primaries were created actually as an important reform. And they were, for many years, an important reform. They took the selection of candidates that would go on to the general election out of the hands of the special interests and the party leaders and put it in the hands of voters. And at the time, those revoters are the two major parties because most voters were members of the two major parties. So the system worked actually pretty well for quite a number of years. The reason why that system has broken down and why our organization was created is because we're seeing a fundamental realignment of political affiliation in this country. Whereas 20 years ago, most people were members of one of the two major parties. Today, that's just simply not the case. In most states, independent voters are anywhere between 20 and 55% of registered voters today. And that number is only increasing in just a few short years. It's been predicted that independent voters, meaning voters who are not members of a party, will be the second largest group of voters in most states and the largest group of voters in a handful. They're already the largest group of voters in Alaska. They'll be the largest group of voters in Oregon, less than a year. And they are by far the fastest growing group of voters in the country. So the fundamental question is, what do we do with an election system that doesn't let them vote? Because our primary elections in a closed system are designed to only let party members vote. So when you only let party members vote and party members are an increasing minority of registered voters, you start to see two fundamental problems. The first, and perhaps the most striking is just simply undemocratic elections. Voters who can't participate in publicly funded elections. The primaries are publicly funded elections. And secondly, when you have a system where only a handful of the hyperpartisans are voting in often the most important elections, the primaries, you create a political culture where the politicians know that in order to be elected and stay in office, they only have to listen to those voters. They only have to be responsive to those voters. So you see a fundamental breakdown in the political culture and in the responsiveness of politicians to represent their whole district rather than just a handful of voters. Thanks so much for explaining that. I think that so many people don't realize how many independence we do have in this country and how many people are not able to vote in primaries due to there being so many closed primaries across the country, right? Sure. And you know, just a quick number to give you some context. In 2016, for example, 26, over 26 million registered voters were shut out of the presidential primaries that resulted in the selection of Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. That's almost as many voters as voted for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the primaries. So if you look at how dramatically you get a skewed result in candidate selection and in candidate responsiveness, when you only let a handful of voters vote, it's pretty striking. And it's certainly by far the largest act of voter suppression in the country today. And so one thing I'm curious about because I saw, you know, we were posting about this on Facebook and some critiques were coming in from people saying, well, you know, the primaries are really for the party to elect their nominee. So people outside the party shouldn't be able to vote in a party primary. I'm sure you guys get that question a lot or that concern. What's your thoughts there? Well, a few thoughts. I think fundamentally it's just a bait and switch.  Fundamentally, I think that is the one aspect that the parties have never been able to overcome in their arguments. These are publicly funded elections. And if you imagine a voter and their experience going into a primary election versus a general election, it's identical. You walk into the same public building, you use the same voting machines, same poll workers. It's all administered by the county election boards and the secretary of state and funded by the taxpayers. The experience to the voter is the same. The only difference we have right now is a situation where political parties, which are private entities, are allowed to be the gatekeepers of public elections in the primary and are simply actors in the general election. We feel and I think it's increasingly becoming public, public supporters increasingly building towards the idea that if these are going to be publicly funded elections, then we need to let all voters vote in them. It's really that simple. That's what democracy is about. And fundamentally, why are these the parties elections in the first place if we're paying for them? These are the first rounds of elections and primaries increasingly critically important. And we can talk about why that is in a second, but they're increasingly critically important. They're not just where the candidates that go into the general election are decided upon. It's where the entire policy agenda agenda is created. It's where a lot of the decisions are made in terms of what will become before voters in terms of the choices they have in November. And finally, it's often the election that matters in terms of voter competition. And maybe we can talk about that because voter competition and primary competition is an important reason why primaries are so important today. What people don't quite realize, because it's really not talked about too much, is that we're in a 20 year decline of competition in our general elections. In America today, in state and federal elections, 45%, 45% of general election races see candidates running uncontested. That means as you as a voter going to vote in a general election, you only have one person on the ballot. In 85% of general election races, they're considered uncompetitive, meaning that after the election, the difference in terms of the winning candidate versus the second runner up candidate is often 10% or more. So there really isn't much competition in American general elections today. Where is the real competition in the primaries? That's really where the competition is.  Now, there's a lot of different forms of open primaries, and maybe we can get into that. Fundamentally, we don't believe they're the party's primaries. We believe these are the people's primaries. And everybody should be able to vote. If the state is funding it, the state should run it. And we believe everyone should participate. That's simple. Yeah, I think the point that primaries are paid for by taxpayers. And if you are a taxpayer, but then you're not able to access an election just because you don't subscribe to one of the parties, that seems like fundamentally like discrimination in some way, right? Well, it is. And just imagine if this were reversed. I mean, just imagine if a Democrat were told that they had to register with the Republican Party in order to vote in the primaries. Or a Republican was told that they had to register with the Democratic Party in order to vote in the primaries. There would be chaos in the streets that people, why should I be forced to join a private political association whose platform I don't subscribe to? Well, that's what we're asking independence to do in closed primary states. We're telling them, you have to join a private association you don't necessarily agree with in order to vote in a public election. It's absolutely antithetical to our democratic system. And it's the very encapsulation of one of our founding principles, which is no taxation without representation. Yeah, that's a great point. And so I know that you mentioned that there's different forms of open primaries. So can you take us through kind of the different forms of open primaries and the different ways primaries are set up currently in states across the country? Sure. So there's three general types of open primaries. And I say general because every state's a little different. And every state utilizes their the stat have open primaries don't necessarily utilize those open primaries in every race. So you see a huge patchwork even in states that have some form of open primary. But there are three fundamental types. There are basically two types of open primaries that are partisan. So meaning that you as an independent voter can choose a Republican ballot or a Democratic ballot in a partisan registration state that has open primaries. Now you're not allowed to go back and forth. You as an independent pick one of those two ballots.  Democrats stay in their lane, they get in their ballot. But you as a registered unaffiliated voter or independent voter get to pick one of the two, and then you have that ballot to make your selections. About 10 states use that form of open primary. Then there are states that also have partisan primaries, but they have a different type of voter registration status called nonpartisan. So in those states, which are primarily but not exclusively in the South, you don't register as a Democrat or a Republican or a green or a libertarian, you register as a voter. Shocking, I know you register as a voter and you pick a ballot the same way you would in a partisan state. But in this case, because you are not a member of a party, you may think of yourself as a Democrat and an independent, a Republican, a libertarian, a green, but you are not registered as any of those. And therefore you get to pick one of the two major party ballots and vote that ballot line. Those are the two forms of what I would call partisan open primary. And then 20 states use a form have nonpartisan registration and open primaries. And then there is what I would call sort of the newer form of open primary, which is top two nonpartisan primaries. Now I say newer, specifically about the state level, because only three states use top two nonpartisan primaries, California, Washington, and Nebraska. In those states, there's no Republican primary and no Democrat primary. There's one public primary. All the candidates are on the ballot with their political affiliation. All the voters vote and the top two candidates go on to the general election. Now I say that's new because it is new. Well, Nebraska's actually had that system for 80 years, but California and Washington only adopted it about 10 years ago. However, it's not new at the municipal level. We've all voted in nonpartisan top two primaries, and that's because nonpartisan top two primaries are the de facto form of primary in municipal races. So municipal elections around the country, 90% of cities use nonpartisan top two primaries, 90%. 24 out of the 30 largest cities in the country use nonpartisan top two primaries. It's the de facto form of primary for that form of government. So in top two primaries, what makes them very different is the parties don't run the primaries anymore. The primaries are run by the state the same as the general election, and they are not to choose candidates. They are to choose front runners to go on to the general election. So those are the general forms. But like I said, there's a lot of gradation between those state to state. Yeah, that's helpful. I know that we've been doing a lot of research on our end into state and city election laws, and it is a labyrinth in and of itself. Chris, he's on the call, our director of campaigns and advocacy, and I know that he's been dealing with a lot of that. And so I can only imagine that there's, you know, even further details involved with the ways that primaries might be set up too. So you all at Open Primaries, do you prefer one type of Open Primary over another, or do you kind of base your approach on the particular state and what their laws look like? You know, we really base our approach on two fundamental things. One is what's possible in a particular state, and two, what do the people want? We're very much grounded, and part of the reason I know we're going to talk a little more about St. Louis Approves, one of the reason why we're big fans of St. Louis Approves is because it's so grounded in what the local community wants to do, and it's a response to electoral issues that the local community has faced for years and want to reform. That's, at its very core, our approach to reform. And so when we look at a state, we don't actually look at states and decide what we want to do in a state. We have people who come to us from different states saying, we want to do something in this state. This is what we want to do. How can you help us? And we're all in to help on any form of Open Primary, because in the end, Open Primaries, it's very basic, whether it's top two, or whether it's one of the forms of partisan Open Primaries is about letting all voters vote. That's a civil rights issue. It's not just a reform issue. It's a civil rights issue. It's a voting rights issue. And fundamentally, if we can let the largest group of voters in the country vote, the rest of the details will follow from that. I think that's a great point. And I love that that's the way you guys go about this. You're not trying to go in and force something on other people. People are coming to you and saying, hey, we want to be enfranchised. We want to be able to vote. This is the context in our community. Help us resolve this, right? Yeah. And let's be honest. There's no such thing as a one size fit all reform. Absolutely. Reform has to be grounded in the needs of the particular community. And now that may, there may be a lot of commonalities among communities around the country. But you can't skip that part of the process. You can't helicopter in saying, I know the perfect reform and it doesn't really matter the specifics on the ground. We know this reform is a good reform. It'll make your life better. We've seen situations where that's simply not the case. And even if you were able to enact it, if the people aren't asking for it and the people haven't worked for it, how long is that reform really going to last? And how deep is the change that reform is going to create? In the end, any particular reform is only as good as the people who believe in it and continue to work for it even after it's enacted. Yeah, that's a great point. And I mean, we can transition into talking a little bit about St. Louis and their situation there. But kind of going off what you're talking about about community, that's how when we were able to help the citizens in Fargo implement approval voting in 2018, it was the same thing. Somebody from Fargo came to us, they were looking for ways that they could improve their elections. So they were researching different voting methods. And based on their research and some of the guidance and resources we gave them, they said, hey, approval voting looks like it's going to be the best solution for our city. And so they're implementing it for their general election. Now, in St. Louis, it's a little bit of a different situation. So they started out the same thing. They were having all of these elections where the candidates were splitting the vote. And because of the political context in St. Louis, where it's a majority Democrat city, really the election is decided in the primary, right? Because it's almost always a Democrat wins in the general. And so you have these large slates of Democrats in the primary who are just splitting the vote like crazy. And so you get a winner who was supported by 37% of the people who voted in the primary. They go on and they're the de facto winner of the general. So citizens in St. Louis were like, this is crazy. We need someone who is going to have broad support among the public. So what can we do? They started looking into different voting methods, different ways to set up their elections. And just like you said, they have different needs than what Fargo had. And so they were looking at a ranked choice voting. They were looking at approval voting. Part of the reason that they went with approval voting was that their city just didn't have the funding to be able to upgrade their voting machines. So for some cities, ranked choice voting might be a good option. For St. Louis, it wouldn't work just because of the practicality of it.  Oh, I was just going to say, and one of the reasons why I think open primaries is such an important reform is because it works so well with other reforms. Yes, that's what I was going to mention. Open primaries is fundamentally about who can vote, not about how they vote, which is why it works so well with a lot of other reforms that focus on how people vote. And fundamentally, I don't think any reform, and certainly not open primaries, is a panacea. But our view, of course, with open primaries is that no reform is as good as it will be unless every voter has the opportunity to take advantage of it. And that's why we think open primaries has worked so well. That's why we're really excited about this project with approval voting in St. Louis, because we think that'll really offer exactly what address a lot of the problems that folks in St. Louis are facing right now. Yeah, so why don't you go ahead then and explain how you got involved in the project in St. Louis and what that looks like, what the initiative looks like, and how open primaries is involved? Well, I mean, you probably could talk more about approval voting than I could. Yeah, that's okay. I really guess so. A lot of approval voting. But I can tell you this. St. Louis, like I said before, the de facto form of a municipal primary is a top two open primary, a nonpartisan primary. And that's why so many other reforms have actually been so successful early on at the municipal level, because they've actually been building upon a foundation of nonpartisan elections. That's not the case in St. Louis. St. Louis is one of the outlier major cities that still has partisan elections. Most of the major cities that have partisan elections tend to be out east, sort of the old party machinery cities like New York and Philadelphia. But St. Louis has that same tradition. And in a city that's like the city I live in, New York City, that's so dominated by one party, in this case, the Democratic Party in both cases, an election system that doesn't let everyone vote really forces voters who are not part of the major party into a situation where their vote doesn't count at all. And nonpartisan elections and approval voting, I think, together really helped change that and create a much more competitive environment. Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that we talk about a bit too on our end is that competition aspect, right? Because so often candidates go into races and there's kind of already somebody who is expected to win and there's really not much competition. But if we're able to implement some reforms like open primaries or approval voting or other voting methods, it can really help new candidates come into races and kind of shake things up a little bit and be able to bring forth new ideas, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't think people sometimes appreciate just how controlled cities that are dominated, the elections and cities that are dominated by one party really are. I like I said, I'm in New York City. The member of this, my member of the state assembly, which is actually a pretty progressive reform minded person. He was select, there was an open seat, the party put him in there to run for his seat. He ran unopposed, he ran with minor competition in the primary, ran unopposed in the general election. And in order to get elected and stay in office, he spends his time during election season. Once or twice a week, he stands out on the subway platform and he talks to people and hands out flyers. That's all he has to do to get elected. And he's a shoe in. And the party knows that when another seat above him opens up, he'll get the nod to move into that seat. And somebody in the party who's in waiting will get the nod for his seat. And that's just how it works in a lot of these controlled party dominated cities. That doesn't serve anybody well, including the party that's dominating. Lack of competition is a very healthy part of our democracy. Cities and states that don't have political competition have far greater rates of corruption, have far stronger interference by special interests. And in a political class, that is completely unmoored from the electorate. Unable and unwilling to even respond to even a majority of the electorate's interests. And that's really where St. Louis has gotten to. This is a city that has been dominated by civil unrest for years. Ferguson is just outside the city limits. This is a city that's been dominated by a lot of unrest. There is a lot of disempowered people politically in the city of St. Louis. And there's a lot of desire among the people of St. Louis to retake the political power away from the parties and special interests and entities that are controlling it at their expense. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, I know that one of the leaders that STL approves, his name is Rasheen Aldridge. He's now just got elected as a state rep. But he's mentioned that as well. You know, there's such high rates of poverty, high rates of gun violence. And they just keep seeing this happening year after year after year, no matter who's elected, no matter who gets that seat. And so they really need something to help shake that up and get new ideas and new leaders and people who are supported by, you know, a broad coalition among the public, right? To be able to push through real reforms rather than just kind of seeing the same cycles occur over and over again. Absolutely. Absolutely. So with open primaries, I know that you guys are working in several states across the country. And then you're also part of the effort in St. Louis. What are some of the various challenges that you are coming across in advancing this reform? Well, I think there's probably one fundamental challenge. You know, we like to say to open primaries, we're the one reform that unites the political parties. The one reform. Unfortunately, it's in opposition. But we know we're on the right track when both parties, at least the insiders of both parties, increasingly, it's actually not the party faithful, but it's the insiders of both parties that oppose opening the system up. You know, when you're elected in a system and you benefit from that system, it's very hard to expect those that class of people to change the system.  And also so cognizant of the rise of independent voters. You know, like I said, independent voters used to be a small minority of voters. It was easy to ignore them. You may not even know anybody who was an independent voter. Today, they're the largest group of voters in the country. And when you have a political system that's oriented against the largest group of voters in the country, you're going to start to see cracks all over the place. And we're seeing those cracks. And you're going to now know people who are independent voters, your friends, your family, people you work with. So it's a lot harder. It's a lot harder and it's become increasingly harder for the political insiders to sort of escape some of these truths. And so you're starting to see, you know, a lot more actually attacks on the open primary issue when they used to just really ignore it. But that just means we're on the right track.  It doesn't come easy. You count your victories when you have them and you know you're building towards something long-term. We've had some significant successes like in Colorado. And we have a number of really important campaigns on the ballot just this year, like in Florida. We're a top two initiative. It's going to be on the ballot this November in Florida. We just passed a review by the Florida Supreme Court. We will be on the ballot. It's called All Voters Vote Measure 3. And it'll be on the ballot in Florida, one of the largest states and most important states politically in the country. So we're making some headway. Yeah, that's awesome. Super exciting. Before I transition to let some folks ask questions, because I'm already seeing a few come into the chat, if people are interested in, you know, trying to advance this in their state or if they happen to be one of the few 10% of cities that don't have open primaries, what would you suggest that they do? How can they get involved? Well, they can certainly go to our website at openprimaries.org. And, you know, if you're really interested in being an activist, you can email me directly. I'm Jay Gruber at openprimaries.org. I'm happy to reach out to me directly. I'll respond. And we'll try to help you make something happen. Awesome. Okay, well, I already see there's a few questions in the chat. If you'd like to ask Jeremy a question allowed, then you can click on the participants button at the bottom of the screen. And then there should be a little raise hand feature. If you don't see it, just type into the chat and say raise hand. We've had people doing that too. So that's fine. So I'll give you guys a chance to raise your hands. But first we've got a question from Sean Griffiths. Hi, Sean. Good to see you. He says, can you discuss the legal efforts that have happened recently or cases going on right now that could affect the way voting rights are viewed in primaries to make it easier to pass and or maintain open primaries? Sure. So, you know, we've been developing some legal efforts over the last few years. You know, most of the focus of reform has always been in two areas, passing legislation or passing ballot initiatives. Both are difficult and expensive and hard to predict. Litigation is a form of reform that has been used critically in other areas of change and other movements for change, whether it be the civil rights movement or the environmental movement on down. It's been less used in the political reform movement. That's something we're hoping to change. So we've been developing, we did bring some litigation in New Mexico, which we've been developing based upon state constitution's anti-donation clause. Most states, not all, but most states have what are called anti-donation clauses. They say that public funds cannot be used for private purposes, right? Public funds of the state can't be used for private entities. Well, one of the gifts the political parties have made a point of doing over the last number of years is saying over and over again, both publicly and in various court decisions, that they are private parties. They can't be forced to do this and they can't be forced to do that because they are private parties and they have a freedom of, a First Amendment freedom of association, right? Well, if that's true, and if they are private associations, then why are why are primaries publicly funded? And they allowed to be the gatekeepers of those publicly funded elections. So we brought a case in New Mexico. We weren't able to take that case all the way for various reasons, largely having to do with our political partners. But we're actually in the middle of organizing a two-front case right now that I can't go too deep into, but that would bring a version of the case that we brought in New Mexico challenging the anti-donation clause of state constitutions, but also a First Amendment challenge. Trying to take the party's own arguments and use them against them if the parties are private associations and they can't be forced to do things. Well, what about voters? Why should voters be forced to associate with a party in order to vote in a in a closed primary? What about voters' freedom of association or freedom not to associate? There is a growing class of cases that the federal courts and the Supreme Court have worked on looking at forced association. And so we're looking at developing that into potential federal litigation as well. Those are the two general areas we're looking at where we haven't gotten to the stage of bringing any cases yet. But we do certainly think that litigation is an important front. Certainly at this particular political time during that when we're in the middle of a pandemic, when ballot initiatives and working with legislatures is going to become incredibly difficult, litigation can and should be a more frequently used weapon in our arsenal and we're trying to do just that. Super interesting. It sounds like you've got a lot of inroads there potentially. Okay, I see the only person so far who has their hand raised is one of our board members, Michael Ravinsky. So Michael, I've just on mute video. Well, yep, there it goes. You can ask your question. Hi, can you hear me? Yep, we hear you. Great. Thank you, Jeremy, for this is all really informative. I have a question about one solution that you didn't mention is potentially, is it possible to not publicly fund primaries if it were possible to just say that there is a general election and that is the only election and that's funded by taxpayers and if individuals choose to associate in private and choose someone to say that we're part of a political party and this is who we support, that's a private affair. Is that a potential solution that you think would be good and are there, if so, would there be any impediments to that? I would not, I'd be not particularly favorably inclined for two general reasons. First and foremost and probably the most importantly, primaries aren't going anywhere. We've been operating in this system with primaries now for many, many years and we can talk about some of the various types of fundamental changes to how our elections are structured that might be better. The chances of enacting those types of changes and the idea that we would get rid of primaries in our lifetime, I don't think it's possible and I don't think it's likely. Our focus has been on what is possible under the CERN system but even if it were easier to get rid of primaries, I'm still not sure I'm convinced it'd be a good idea and the reason why is because if you look at the way elections work in this country and you look at what happens running up to the primary and what happens after the primary, there's a lot of different changes that are going on. A lot of things happen in the primary and then things change after the primary. There's a whole evolution of the political conversation and a whole evolution of the way candidates talk and react that go on because of the process that you have between sort of a first round of elections and a second round of elections. I'm not convinced that taking away that first round of elections, taking away that sort of evolutionary prospect where voters get to work towards winnowing the field and then get to work towards a final election, that all the choices that come to voters and all the options and evolutions that go through the electoral process over the course of that two-election process, whether getting rid of the first one is actually in the voters' best interests and whether they might lose out on a lot of the changes and different ways of thinking that evolve over time between a winnowing election and a general election. Thanks. Thanks, Michael. All right. I'm going to go back to the chat here. We've got a question from Colin Weaver. He asked, what do you mean by independence? Registered voters that are not registered Democrats or Republicans aren't most independence effectively Republican or Democrat in everything but registration? You know, it's funny. We hear that a lot. It wasn't that long ago that independence weren't even thought to be real voters. You know, people used to talk about how they felt independent, but most of the pundits would talk to them about being leaners, right? They're really a Republican leader or a Democratic leaner. Well, you know, if you only have two choices, Coke and Pepsi and you only pick Coke, that doesn't mean you like that type of soda. It just means you have two choices. And I think you're seeing the growth of independent voters, the astronomical growth of independent voters, I think belies any easy categorization that they're just leaners. They are a huge, huge force now in electoral politics and they swing back and forth. Independence voted for Barack Obama overwhelmingly and then they velded overwhelmingly for Trump. Well, how does that happen? There were the independent voters that swung. So to say that independent voters are leaners, I think really is a misunderstanding of just how complex independent voters actually are and who independent voters actually are. Independent voters are all of us. 50%, over 50% of millennials are independent voters, over 50% of new voters are independent voters and increasingly large numbers of minorities are independent voters, 30% of Asian Americans, 35% of Latinos, 20% of African Americans, and yet 50% of veterans who often are considered conservative are independent. And they vote all over the place. I think if you talk to one independent, you'll find out why they're independent and it'll be very different from the next independent you talk to. The only thing that really binds all independent voters together is that they don't want to join a party anymore and they really don't want to be part of a system that is created around putting the parties in charge when members of the parties are now in the minority. Yeah, I think that's a good point too because I do hear from a lot of people that maybe most of their beliefs align with the Democratic Party or with the Republican Party, but they don't like the feeling that party comes before voters or that party comes before the issues. And that the party gets to decide who the next president is going to be just based on their internal establishment stuff. Even if they might align ideologically with one of those parties, it doesn't mean that they want to support the party system or pledge allegiance right to a particular group. There's only two parties. You as a voter are likely to have more in common with one than the other. That's just math. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that you like the party. That doesn't mean that you like the way all their candidates focus. And you see, for example, I was just talking to some voters in Arkansas, for example. Arkansas has an open primary. And they've been talking about moving to a nonpartisan primary. And the question is, well, why? What's the difference? Why do you need to move to a nonpartisan primary? They're like, this is a deep red state at the state level. But a lot of our local offices tend to be largely in Democratic hands. So if I'm a Republican voter or a Democratic voter, I'm an independent voter, if I only get to pick one ballot, if I only get to stick with one party, I'm missing out on important elections with candidates that I care about. Why is our whole election system designed around political parties? Why isn't it designed around voters? That's really sort of the fundamental question that's raised by the issue of open primaries, right? Who are our primaries designed for? We fundamentally believe they're designed for the voters. And the primary that offers more choice is, to us, the better primary. And it's that simple. Good point. All right, we've got one more hand raised. It's actually Chris, our Director of Campaigns and Advocacy. Chris, you should be unmuted. Thanks, Caitlin. Good to see you again. Yeah, so I'm always interested in this, especially coming from Florida and now living in Virginia, the primary system couldn't be more different. And I've worked in both of those places in primaries. And I'm just interested how anecdotally or anything you've seen, hearing basically the campaigns or candidates, I keep thinking of your assembly person, you know, all they have to do is paint out flyers, right? You know, how has strategies changed for these campaigns and are the voters able to kind of see that? Strategies for which campaigns?  Sure. What are some things that are probably going through their head? What are kind of their incentives? How do things change for them? You know, how would they approach it? Yeah, so there's actually been some studies that have looked at, you know, the movement from closed to open primaries. And what happens? So fundamentally what happens on day one? Independent voters can vote. So in a state like Florida, which has a measure on the ballot, that measure passes the next election four million, four million voters who couldn't vote in the primary will be able to vote. So from a voter participation standpoint and a democracy standpoint, that's huge. From a politician standpoint, from a political culture standpoint, what you see is in an open primary is you see candidates more likely to campaign outside of just their party, campaign to independence in a partisan state, campaign to all voters in a nonpartisan state. So in California, for example, which has nonpartisan elections, which means Republicans and Democrats and independence are all part of the potential voting pool for a candidate. You will see politicians, and this has been measured about responsiveness of politicians in terms of who they speak to in their district, who they respond to when members of their district reach out to them, and the types of policies that they adopt in terms of how broadly they're supported within their district as compared to sort of special interests within the hyperpartisan segment of their own party. And you see some dramatic improvements, dramatic improvements. In fact, we're going to be actually holding our own webinar in a few weeks with a couple of academics from USC and from Stanford University. We're going to talk about their studies on just that, just how more responsive a political system you can find. When all voters can vote, politicians actually have to listen to them because they know they need to vote in order to be elected and stay in office. It's that simple and that complex at the same time. Thanks for a good question, Chris. All right, we've got another question here from Colin. If anybody else has questions, feel free to raise your hand or stick them in the chat. I know we are almost to the top of the hour, so we might start wrapping up here in a minute, but Colin asks, since this is a joint CES and open primaries call, to what extent does approval voting mitigate the problems of closed primaries? Wouldn't third party candidates be much better suited to run in the general, providing more options for all voters? So I'm not sure if I personally have the best answer for this. I'm not the voting methods expert. If our executive director Aaron were on the call, I would probably defer to him. I think that in general though, approval voting, if you're stuck with closed primaries, approval voting would definitely help mitigate that if you were using approval voting in those primaries. And then if you're using them in the general, because like you said, Colin, voters would be able to support the Democratic candidate that they like or the Republican candidate that they like. And then they could also support that third party candidate who they love the best, but they're afraid that that candidate can't win. And so they don't want to let their least favorite candidate win by just voting for that third party candidate. But I think that I can let Jeremy talk a little bit maybe too about the primary portion. The problem there is just like Jeremy was saying, is that even if you're using approval voting in those closed primaries, which I think would definitely help with a lot of the political polarization aspect, you're still leaving out a lot of people who can't participate at all in that closed primary without first giving allegiance to a particular political party. And Jeremy kind of outlined earlier the way that primaries, the primary election kind of sets the stage for what issues are going to be important during the rest of the election. And so if you don't have a say at all in that first part, then you've lost out, right Jeremy? I think you said it exactly right. You know, there's no conflict between different reforms can provide, can push towards similar aims, right? I think most electoral reforms are focused on creating a fairer and more responsive electoral system. I think that's, it's fair to say that that is a theme across a lot of different reforms. And certainly no reform, I believe, including open primaries can do that on its own.  But like I said at the beginning, that really starts with letting all voters vote. And that's at least for us it does. And I think it'll, in a city like St. Louis, the combination of nonpartisan open primaries and approval re-roading are sort of the one, two times that the city needs to really get back on track. Yep, I absolutely agree. Well, so far I'm not seeing any other questions. Oh, Brian, shake. Yay, we've got another one with their hand up. All right, Brian, I'm going to unmute you. So, all right, thanks. My question is, sometimes these types of, I guess, two-round systems or top two systems use what I would call a contingent runoff. And some use an obligatory runoff or top two runoff. And I actually now, I think about it, I didn't do the research. I don't know if the system being proposed in St. Louis is an obligatory one or a contingent one. But I wanted to ask you, would you like better? And if you, it was okay to use the contingent version, I believe that Louisiana uses the contingent version. But the other question kind of related to that was, Louisiana also does a top two runoff in early December, which I kind of like. And we wonder what your feelings are about those ideas. Yeah, look, I think Louisiana oftentimes gets sort of described as a top two system. I don't really consider it a top two system. I think you're absolutely right. It's a runoff. It's not really quite the same. And in a top two system like has been used in Nebraska for state legislature and California and Washington for all races, you have two candidates on, you have all the candidates on the ballot and the top two move to the general election. There is no later runoff. There are two elections and that's it. And so I think it does, it does differ from Louisiana. I don't think you see the same type of, look, Louisiana has an open system. And I certainly think that's important in terms of sort of the overall structural changes that the Louisiana system has wrought compared to some of these more dramatic nonpartisan systems in other states. I don't think it's quite at the same level. It hasn't created the same level of sort of political disruption that has sort of fundamentally reshuffled the balance between voters and the political class. I'm muted. If anybody else has any questions, I'll give you just a minute to get those in. But right now I'm not seeing anything else. All right. Well, if anybody does have, think of any other questions that you might have for Jeremy or you want to get involved, definitely send him an email. His email address is jgroober at openprimaries.org. And I thank you so much for taking the time to be here, Jeremy. It was super interesting and enlightening to hear everything you had to say. And thank you so much to everybody who's attended. Your questions have been great. Let us know if there's anything else we can answer for you via email. My email is Caitlyn. I'll type it in the chat here. Caitlyn at election science.org. We've really been enjoying being able to do these virtual meetings over the past few weeks since the pandemic has hit. And we always appreciate contributions from our donors and our supporters to help us keep educating people about not just approval voting, but other reforms like open primaries and other ways that people can get engaged and strengthen their democracy. Well, it looks like David has his hand raised. So maybe we'll let him answer or ask his question real quick. All right, David. Hi. So I actually entered something in the chat about the fact that in Massachusetts, I'm not sure what you call it, but people who are unenrolled can pick either primary, any primary ballot to vote in. But if they're enrolled in one of the minor parties, in our case, I think it's the Green Rainbow Party and the Libertarian Party or what I would consider minor parties. The ballots for the primary ballots for those parties are often nearly empty. And so people can vote in the primary, but on the ballot, there really aren't any choices to make. So it's almost a write-in. That's basically the only way you can use it if there are no candidates on the ballot. I was wondering if there were any comments about that. Yeah, no, I think that's a problem. That's one of the limitations of a partisan open primary. Well, that's quite frankly, it's not a limitation of partisan open primary. I should correct myself. That's the limitation of a partisan primary period. In a partisan primary, when you have the two major parties running the primary, third parties can participate. And even in an open primary state like Massachusetts, they still can't participate. And that's fundamentally because the major parties have asserted the First Amendment right of association. They say, look, all right, we understand, we don't want them to vote, but we understand that unaffiliated voters don't necessarily affect our freedom of association. They're not members of a different association. But they assert the third party members are, they're members of a different party. And the idea of members of a third party voting in, quote, their primary, they find an ethma. I disagree. But that's really why we've been, while we certainly work towards opening the primaries to let unaffiliated voters vote, we are certainly pushing for and hope to enact more broadly nonpartisan systems. Because in nonpartisan systems, everybody gets to vote. Third party, independent major party, it doesn't matter. Fundamentally, I think the question you raise is really a question that we grapple with all the time is why are two major political parties in this country getting disrespected who votes in publicly funded elections? It's crazy. And it shouldn't be that way. Our electoral system is not working for the voters. It's fundamentally working for the parties and the special interests that support them. And so I'm absolutely with you. If Massachusetts wanted to move towards a more of a nonpartisan system, we'd be the first ones to jump and say, how can we help? I think we did have one more question from Brian Shank. So I'll let him ask that. And then we'll wrap up. Let people get to their dinners. Okay, you can go ahead, Brian. I never really liked very much the idea of narrowing down our choices to only two for the general election day. And so I was wondering what you thought about some of the other systems I've heard of a proposal where they wanted to narrow it down to four and use instant amount of voting or right choice voting for the final round. I like that, of course, approval voting for that final round. But I thought maybe you could narrow it down to four or five. But it does seem to you voice this idea that it's beneficial for the voters to have two rounds and have a winnowing round. And what do you think about maybe a top four or top five system? You know, we're actually supporting a top four ballot initiative in Alaska right now for top four with rank choice voting. That's going to, there's some core challenges, but that will hopefully be on the ballot in November and we're supporting it. We support all forms of open primaries. I think one of the problems, and this is kind of gets back to what we talked about earlier, is making sure that the system works for the particular community. Our elections, like we talked about before, are highly uncompetitive. So the idea of picking top four might work in a state with very competitive primary elections. It would be, it wouldn't work at all in a state that has highly uncompetitive elections. So for example, we did a, we looked at, there was a proposal for top foreign North Dakota and we looked at primary elections over several sessions and we found an interesting thing. There had never been more than one or two elections per election season. Going back several election seasons were more than four candidates were on the primary ballot. So what happens when you enact something like top four in a state that doesn't have competitive primaries? You've basically gotten rid of the primary altogether. So you'd be, in those types of situations, you'd be essentially going to the voters saying, we want to reform the system and then your reform essentially takes away one of the elections by making the primary moot. So we're big supporters of all forms of open primaries, top four, top whatever, but it has to work within the particular state and within the particular political realities and competitive realities of whatever state it's considered for. But if it works, like in Alaska, we don't only support it, we work for it. Well, thank you so much again, Jeremy, for your thoughtful answers to everyone's questions and for being here to help us understand what open primaries does and the different efforts you have going on around the country. I put in the chat, if anybody would like to support our work at the Center for Election Science, you can donate at electionscience.org slash donate. And Jeremy, you guys are at openprimaries.org, correct? That's it. Awesome. Well, thank you again for being here. Thanks to everybody for participating and hopefully we'll see you on the next call. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.


For losing your partner can never be an easy thing for anyone, but for a woman, the hardships that come with it can be traumatic. International Widows Day is commemorated by the United Nations to create awareness about the situation of widows across many parts of the world. According to the United Nations estimate, there are around 258 million widows around the world and nearly one in every 10 widows lives in extreme poverty. The COVID-19 pandemic has also added to this problem in many parts as people lose their partners to this deadly virus. The theme for this year's International Widows Day is invincible women, invincible problems. The theme tends to highlight the fact that for many societies a woman's identity is attached to her partner and after his death the problems faced by her are ignored by policy makers who do not give any special attention to the widows. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hey YouTube, ShaeBear1000 here and... Monkey! Hi monkey! Hi babe! Okay, we're going to do a little challenge for you guys today. Bean Boozled! You can see that. That's what we're going to do. Now I know everybody's doing this on YouTube and stuff and they've been doing it for a couple years.  It's a jelly bean game for those of you that don't know. Different flavors. Like different colors. Like one color, say white. One can be spoiled milk or it can be coconut or whatever. This one, what you do is you lift that up and it takes the beans right out for you. Just like that right there. Okay, so now I'm not really looking forward to this and I'll let monkey tell you why. Me? Yes. Well, how many times have we done this? Three? Four times? This is the third time. This is our third time? Okay. What happened the first two? Well, the tape or something happened and when he went to make the movie it disappeared. It's gone. Memory card. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the first one disappeared. The second one was corrupted file. Yeah. Now, this is terrible guys. This is awful. It's vile. And there were funny videos too and we don't have them. So we're going to do it again so y'all can see this and hopefully we make it through it but Now if you guys see my last video where it says challenges. This just so happens to be Saturday night so at 3 a.m. it's 8 34 right now but at 3 a.m.  Now she's going to be out. Now my niece commented on it. Hot pepper challenge. So I'm going to do it. 3 a.m. hot pepper challenge for you. Um, I couldn't get any Carolina ghost pepper supposed to be the hottest peppers in the world. I couldn't get any of them. So what I did was I got three of the next hottest or supposed to be one is jalapeno. One is what a Sorrento and the other one is a habanero. So to make it interesting. So I'm not just eating a little bite. I'm going to take a bite of all three at the same time. Seeds and all. And so I'm going to make it good for you guys. I'm going to do this at 3 a.m. after doing this. It's like like there's one that's supposed to taste like dog food. Now I've smelled some dog food. You open up cans. Smell good. Some of these things these are bad.  Let's get to it. All right. All right. What we're going to do is we're just we're going to eat them at the same time. One piece. And she will tell you what they are. Get this one. I'm going to do that one. Hang on. And you can hold this one. Okay. Mine is going to be moldy cheese or caramel corn. Moldy cheese or caramel corn. But they're not the same are they? Are they the same? Yep. They are. Oh okay. Well that's pretty cool. I drop one every damn time. We played this game. Bruno doesn't get it. Where'd it go? Is he in the jelly bean? No he's not. You got something else. You want to get another one baby? Because it just bounced off the floor somewhere. It could be millions of miles away. But the problem is I don't want Bruno eating it. Well it won't hurt him.  Again? Yep. No it ain't. What's that one? It's the same. All right. Okay we got the same one. So we're either going to have moldy cheese or popcorn. Caramel corn. moldy cheese or caramel corn. You ready? For those of you that don't know, caramel corn is popcorn. I love you. Come on let's do this. Three. Problem is we already know where's it going to happen.  We'll try. Oh. Makes you not want to eat cheese ever again. Really. And at the end we're going to do four pieces at the same time. And but this time the last two times she made me go first and that's not fair but we'll do it at the same time this time. Okay. Okay. All right let's be fair. You can make your own rules too with us. So you know you make it it depends how many people you have to and how much. Yeah and the more people you have the better. Yeah a good point. Yeah it does sound here to make pretty much make up your own rules. So you can like set them out on a plate and divide them up like four whites and you each take one of the same color. You can do it that way. However you guys want to do it's fine. Roll dice. You can roll dice. That's a good one. Draw cards. Awesome. All right. So take a few drinks. Yeah. Is that the same one we just had there? Okay I got a green one which can either be grass clippings or lime. Or lime. So we just had that one so we'll get her another one out here. Same one? Yeah. Then I'm going to play this again next week at my niece's house on Christmas Eve. Hmm I'm not. I'll watch. This is last Christmas Eve I played. Oh this is a nice one. I played Tipsy Land. It's on the version of Candy Land only an adult thing where you do a lot of drinking and I won the first game. The second game I didn't even make it halfway through and she was sick and I was drinking. I was pissed. She was pissed. Because I was dating my niece's so it wasn't. Okay now she's either going to have toothpaste or berry blue. Or berry blue which either one like we like so we've had these before but the toothpaste actually if they would sell them and now I would eat them. Yeah so either way she it's win-win for her so. So yeah and it is good though if they sold them toothpaste flavor it's really good. Tastes like aqua fresh. I do not work for aqua fresh.  You'll be just fine. Eat your bean. All right let's do this. Did you say buy? Mine tastes toothpaste. I like it. Mine's pretty good I think it's mine. Oh okay we good. That one's bad. That's a pretty good bean there. Oh and you can't smell these either.  But if you pick up one bean try to smell it.  Uh-oh I don't know. Here this one. Oh and what's this one? This one's a different one. That might be the stinky socks or 2D fruity. I think that's what that is because they sell the multi-colors on it that looks like it would be. And yours? Mine could be booger or juicy pear. Gee thank you babe. Booger?  Let's do it.  Come on yeah come on. Let's do this. This time she threw up a lung. How many is that? Three? Uh-huh. All right let's do another one.  Oh there you go. Either dog food or... Oh chocolate pudding. Chocolate pudding or dog food. Let's see what I got. Yellow. What's yellow? Yellow? Could be rotten eggs or buttered popcorn. No I do not want to trade. Let's do it. Cut small. Dog food. Hey I need one now.  You almost blew. First time we did it we was drinking. What was we drinking wine? Forever too. Oh I'm not doing the four together. Yeah we are. But this is four right? We did four. All right let's do one more and then we'll do the all four one. No come on it's a challenge.  It's a challenge. Whoa it's a challenge. Here you are now the kids I know. There's a white one. We haven't had that yet. No I haven't. So that's either coconut or sport milk. Yeah. That other one was a yellow one. Oh what's this one? For peach. Butter for peach. He too. Not bad one. Oh that's what sticks with me. Yes honey please come on it's a challenge. It's too much. It's a challenge. I'm already on the verge. Well let's do the all four now. Here's your two. I'll get you two more. I got 2D fruity. It's probably the moldy cheese or caramel corn. Oh my gosh. I'll get mine. Oh my god it's rotten eggs. Or I have dead fish or strawberry bananas. Strawberry bananas. It's a fun game. What is it like eight bucks? Amazon or yeah. Or so I got I got grass clippings or lime. These two the same? No they're different. No they're different. One that has the spots on it are the dead fish or the strawberry banana. And the single one is barf or peach. Barf or peach and this one. Or that one could be your moldy cheese or caramel corn. Caramel corn. Oh let's let's just let's just do it. Let's just do it. Okay. Can I take a breath? Take a breath and let's do it. Come on it's a challenge. Yeah I did not do well the last time. Hopefully I can get this up for you so you can see it in time to say all right he's going to do it tonight but you probably won't get to see my challenge till tomorrow so. Right. Unless I do it live for you or something. That would be fun. I think you should do it live. My first one live. Yeah that'd be fun at three in the morning on a Saturday night. Nobody's going to be up watching it. You never know. All right if you guys get this before three comment down below and let me know what you want me to do. Right now we're going to do four piece ready hun. All right. All right I love you. I love you too. All right ready come on babe. Let's do it. Yep go baby go. That's terrible. That's horrible. We should have got one of each freaking color and did a whole handful. No more. No one. Are you alive? This time I did well. Hey not bad. I'm burning my tooth. There you guys go. We did this challenge. Now nobody challenged us. We just seen everybody doing it and thought what the hell we'll give it a shot all right. I really surprised you because I went and bought it and then got it. Well yeah because we was talking about yeah we should get it and try it. Well she she ordered it and and this is third time so hopefully this one will come out and if it don't then I don't know why I'm saying all this shit because you won't see it anymore. This makes perfect babe.  All right listen guys. What's in this son of a baby? I love you. Little bit of room with this.   We all do it. But she won't cuss on her video. She'll cuss on mine all day long. Yeah I like them. See you.  Eat your things. All your chips and drink your wine. I'm going to edit this video and you guys like my new intro? If you do comment down below. Let me know if I need to do some more work on it or something whatever. Remember if you get this before 3 a.m. Comment below if you want me to do a live feed and if I get at least three of you that's going to be up and it's going to be watching I'll do it live. So but I need three yeses down below and then I'll do a live feed. If not I'll go ahead and videotape it. I'll upload it and you probably won't get it till the morning sometime because 3 a.m. is late anyway but for your night I'll let them know. Oh and send him some more challenges. He likes to do them at 3 in the morning on a Saturday. Yeah between midnight and 3 I don't necessarily have to be 3 if you're not going to be up but you know you want me to do a live feed let me know. But yeah send me some challenges but it's going to be late anytime after midnight but no later than say 3. There's about the time I do it and everything and so yeah so between midnight and 3 because she'll be asleep and I'm always up so. All right guys we're going to get off here. Thanks for watching as always. Yep yep. Say bye. Monkey's out. All right thanks for watching guys. Merry Christmas. Shamer I'm caught. There's got to be something. Shamer I'm caught. There's got to be something. That's making you funny.  It doesn't get any better the more times we do it and I gotta do it again next weekend with Courtney. That's going to blow maybe literally. Shit we're still recording. No I don't want to I don't know if I've got something to do with this. I'm just going to do it up here and then I'm going to check it.


Army scientists add a newly engineered nanopowder with urine and observe unexpected results. Hydrogen releases from the urine at a fast and furious rate. As an army scientist we try to develop new materials and technologies that will benefit particularly the soldier in the field. The research team announced earlier this summer that a nanogalvanic aluminum-based powder they were developing produced pure hydrogen when coming into contact with water. The researchers then observed a similar reaction when adding their powder to any liquid containing water. This powder which we have discovered reacts very fast with water to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen, the most plentiful element in the universe, has the potential to power fuel cells and provide energy to future soldiers. Fuel cells generate power by channeling hydrogen through a series of membranes that split it into positive protons and negatively charged electrons. At the cathode the electrons and protons combine with oxygen resulting in electricity, water and heat. Using the fuel cell you can generate power. One kilogram of aluminum powder can produce 220 kilowatts of power in three minutes. In space astronauts recycle wastewater and urine because drinking water is a precious commodity. For soldiers in austere environments there are many precious commodities, but power and energy is increasingly important to run communications and electronics gear. And urine is usually not in short supply. When we demonstrated it with urine we saw almost a factor of two-fold increase in the reaction rates. And so in some ways we're all very excited because it opens it up for additional potential applications that the rates are so fast and so efficient. The team is still investigating why urine causes a faster reaction, but it may have something to do with the electrolytes and the acidity of the liquid they said. I'm excited about it because it was sort of a spontaneous finding. We weren't expecting to develop this material specifically for hydrogen production and it was a group effort. In a statement the laboratory director Dr. Philip Percanti said it may find great utility for forward deployed troops who need a compact and lightweight energy source. We've had an overwhelming response to at least the initial video that we released and we've been having industry partners, multiple industry partners contact us inquiring about potential licensing. We've had numerous universities contact us. Army partners have also reached out to us. In the coming months the team will continue to investigate and push the limits of the discovery to try and understand its implications. From Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, David McNally, ARL TV.


It was all quite random that I happened to be seeing the add of this Meetup. In fact, the date that I started Creative Crew was probably before the actual incorporation and it started as an Adobe user group when I was still in Italy in 2006 and I was so curious to expand and share my knowledge about Adobe and I went to ask Adobe how do I set up a user group back in Italy and it took forever to answer me. It took weeks and weeks. Could you put up the slide with the previous logo? Because I have a little story about it. And so I bugged Adobe so much to a point that I told them I remember writing an email saying if you don't tell me how to set up an Adobe user group I will set it up anyway and I will call it Adobe user group whether you endorse it or not, it doesn't matter. And suddenly they replied saying you're welcome to set up a user group. But there was a time when I was moving to Singapore and there was a major problem. I did not speak English and so I had to learn how to speak English first because before I actually made my meetup groups and so I started conducting some training in Photoshop learning English very fast and all the pictures that you see here are actually pictures that I have taken from Singapore Zoo. This one I think was in Bangkok. This one in Cambodia. Of course this is the Merlion. This is the Bird Park in Singapore. This is in Orchard Road opposite Takashimaya.  But the first meetup of Leon, January 2009 was actually the version 1.0 of Creative Group because there was an alpha and a beta version of it. And at the beginning it was me trying to get some people to come and listen to me talking about Photoshop. And then illustrators, sometimes in designs, sometimes after effects. And at the beginning it was a real disaster because I just moved to Singapore. I have very few friends. I don't speak much English so I just asked my friends come, I show you how to do some editing with the photos. And I have a few friends that were posting these very, very tiny talks. There was a moment where I was just this little to give up and all that you have seen today would not have happened. When I conducted a presentation and I booked a room and I was so excited and I put it all the way on social media called my friends, write them SMS because there was no WhatsApp back then. I think it was 2007. And I was trying to do it every month. And the audience was very, very small, like one person. I remember running a whole presentation for one person. There was ones that I really nearly gave up. There were only two. And at the end of the presentation I say, I think, guys, thank you so much for coming but I will not carry on. And it was Alex who used to come to the meetings back then and say, trust me, one more time. And they say, how do you know one more time? They say, trust me, one more time, do it one more time. And that month actually happened. It was in, when he told me that was September 2007 and we were running the presentation at Adobe. And Adobe was so kind to sponsor the room and I showed up with two guests. So there was just me and two guests. And it was a beautiful room where you were kept. And they told me, trust me, one more time. I said, okay, let me do it one more time. I remember going back home telling my wife, I'm done with Creative Cruise. Yeah, you should not carry on doing it because you're not making any money or just investing your time and you don't get anything out of it. But I trusted Alex that time and the month after it happened that there was a company here in Singapore that was selling software. That month, I don't know why. I don't know how it happened. I really don't remember but they put us in the mailing list. And I asked Adobe to host one more time and it was so packed, so packed that the room that they have allocated couldn't fit all the guests that came. There were 82 people that attended that presentation and they had to actually open another wing of the Adobe office because there were people literally sitting on the desks and that night I met Carson. It was the first time I met Carson and I asked him, would you like to help me organize the next one and the next one. By the time we reached 2009, I believe, we already incorporated a proper society. So we had Mark Plunkett, Lime Slim and the core group of 10 that actually signed and became a memberability that was still registered with the registry of the society. I'm not really sure about that. But it was how it started. I'm very glad that at the point where I needed to leave Singapore and take a quick break, please call me back in five minutes. At the point where I was supposed to take a break and I stayed away from Singapore for four years, I'm very glad that you guys stopped the Adobe monologues because the market changed so much. There are so many things that you can do now outside of Adobe and they all belong to the same sphere. It's so exciting that now you guys brought it into a totally new dimension. As for me right now, I'm very interested into the blockchain space and I've got a few projects running that are exciting to me. Probably very boring for the majority of the people. The potential outreach of blockchain is quite interesting even for 3D printing, which is something that probably didn't take off as fast as we imagined. We were imagining like ten years ago that everyone would have had a 3D printer at home. But now nobody have a 3D printer at home. And the reason why nobody have a 3D printer at home is because you cannot track what you print. And so if I want to print out a dinosaur from a toy or a movie for my little child at home, I can't print it because there is no model available unless I develop it or I get someone to develop it. But my idea could be a 3D printer that is blockchained and on the blockchain, Toys R Us puts the project as a sort of a smart contract that begins when I start printing it and ends after I print the dinosaur. They get the commission and I get the dinosaur. And all I do I order from home and I blockchain the IP of it. So every time someone wants to print that specific item, it gets rewarded. And so the 3D printer might have you have to refill the ink, you have to top up your wallet and then you are good to print. And in that case you will expand dramatically the usage because you can print whatever you want. Just you have the unlimited library of projects available for sale that you can track and legitimately reward whether it's one of the news that can be done. For other things, I certainly saved the date for the 13. I'll be happy to see what you guys are up to. Thank you.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jasper's case breaks calm coming at you with 2020 tops chrome Chrome update series sapphire edition baseball. It's a lot going on here one box ram team break number five with 10 five-star spots being given away in a different dice roll at the end of the break big. Thanks everybody here For making this happen. There are the teams right there. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it Five and a four nine times just like May Four five four may the fourth be with you nine times on the randomizer one two three four and Ninth and final time after nine times hank down to Monty so as always we do the break first before a different dice roll for the the giveaway camp and copy that cell I want to copy the names and then control V paste right there. There's everybody after nine times five and four for the teams one two Yeah, that wasn't a coincidence with the dice roll the force is real six seven eight Twins down to the nationals This break brought to you by Disney plus Disney plus Featuring the latest Star Wars animated series the bad batch check it out. All right, so here's the Well, here's the list right here's the first half of this no trade windows in these little filler breaks All right, but there could be some really nice right nice stuff in here. I've got cubs for Jeremy Dodgers Marcos White Sox Richard and there could be some really nice potential really nice potential in here All right, so let's get all this on one page. Let's sort by Column B by team But Rex saying Star Wars wishes it was Star Trek. It doesn't Star Wars is better Star Wars won't even be in that class it actually you're right because our is outclasses Star Trek easily Rex So, yeah, you just You just proved our point So we got to do two of these to unlock five star I mean plus we got to sell a couple five star spots straight up the next one is up already So let's select that die right here And we'll see which one we're gonna do one two three for the left side four five six for the right side Three one two three. So this we will save for next time. So this is break five So this will be For random team six There's the final printout hot off the presses You don't hurt my feelings. So you my feelings wouldn't be hurt because I know I'm right Star Trek Less than symbol Star Wars easy. Everyone knows that formula. I do like interstellar Easily Jose Star Wars characters crush the Star Trek crew. Good luck everybody here. We go see what we got We got a green Ken Griffey, Jr. It's a nice start I think the Ken Griffey, Jr.'s actually saw pretty well. They said Steve Birch Mariners Two out of 45 There he is again I like the mummy trilogy with Brendan no the first one was pretty good But then the other two were terrible Mike trout Kyle Lewis And we've got a rookie auto Travis Lachens For Jeremy and the O's Steve Birch also gets the rookie Kyle Lewis as well Mike trout for the Angels that'll go to Roy last bottom mojo What else we have here and maybe Jacob DeGrom at the end right here So all right some nice cards. They're not bad for a filler break ladies and gentlemen the next box is already in the store You can chase some some five-star Spots as well. So Monty down to Monty and everyone in between Here's some new dice. There's a new list. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it Ten times for the ten spots were given away So hard ten Top ten after ten one Two nine and good luck everybody tenth and final time Now from 11 on down My apologies, we'll get him next time folks. Thank you. In fact, there is a next time So I want to give that a shot Jasper's case rates comm. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you And a big congrats to Monty Jeremy Hank Roy Richard John Marcos Steve Monty and Steve There you go. This group right here. You're in that five-star break. We gotta sell out some spots straight up do one more of these breaks We're breaks on that. Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us and may the fourth be with you


So, since I'm a semi-biologist, I graduated from Biokinistry. Did you have like half your body out of the class the entire time? No, I'm a biokin major. Here's your degree. It's ripped in half. I'm only giving it to decide your body. It looks better on the camera. Okay, so we're recording. That should be flashing. So hi, I'm Ty. Nice to meet you. So I got a hobby where I set up a table and talk to people about whatever they want to talk about. I think it's really cool to show that, you know, any two people can talk about anything, regardless of the color, whatever, big size, how rich they look. It doesn't matter. Normally, the conversations that we have are really cool when they're centered around what someone really strongly believes or a philosophy they have or something they wrap their lives around. If you want to talk about that, we can talk about Marvel movies or your favorite junk food. All right. But is there anything that you really strongly believe is true or something you're confident about? Can I also fit something? Can I ask your name again? Oh yeah, Jacob. Jacob, I'm Ty. Ty. Jacob. That's a big question. Well, I'd say I'm a Christian. Okay. So that's probably my biggest belief. There are a lot of beliefs in this story. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Did you just say like the Christian God exists, maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I believe in one God and that is my son. This is a really heavy topic. Yeah, yeah, it is. They're a middle school class, by the way. Okay, yeah, yeah. If you want to talk about this story, because I believe we can talk about anything. Well, let's just go down the list. We'll make a list of things and maybe we can pick one. No, we can talk about Christianity. That's cool. Okay. So would you say then that is it a specific sect, the Christianity? No, just Christianity. Almost like non-denominational, I guess you would call it. Non-denominational. The best denomination. Yeah, it's kind of distracting. There's like thousands of sects of Christianity, which is a bit concerning like for my standpoint as a Christian, that's not a good thing that we're that divided. Right. What I found is my mom was in Chattanooga, right? And on her corner is the 4th Street Baptist Church. And across the street is the 5th Street Baptist Church. They can see each other. Yeah. When the congregations, the one parking lot, they go to different directions because they don't get along. Yeah. Maybe the messages are different, but... Yeah, and it's sad because a lot of the times, different sects, they just like...  A lot of the sects, they fight over really just secondary, tertiary things. It's really not the main thing, which in my opinion or I guess in Christian theology is that God sent a son in the world to save the world from sin. Okay. Most churches tend to fight over just like little traditional things. And it's really sad that they celebrate. It does. I also feel like whenever a pastor brings in a new car, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like he has a suit that's a little bit too nice. Yeah. Or maybe there's a person who just has too many flowers on the hair. Let's make our own church. Yep. Something like that. Something like that. Or maybe like even just like how you baptize people. Oh. So like that's a big thing because I guess where I'm from, like the majority of them are Baptists. And they're pretty strict on like how you should do baptism. And it's a very special thing. Like how long to keep them under the water. Exactly. How long, what age you can start. As if there was instructions on the Bible. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh-huh. So... And every church does it differently, but to fight over like how you should do it is kind of nonsense to me. Can I throw out something? Yeah. And normally when we have these conversations I would just gently challenge for the sake of conversation. If you told me you like pretzels, I would have you try potato chips. It's like that. Yeah, yeah. Um, you had said that there's a lot of fights over secondary things. Uh-huh. What are the primary things that you think if you don't follow this you're wrong? Uh-huh. Okay. Um... Well this was a big debate kind of in the first century. Okay. I guess it's kind of been... Actually I guess there's still debate among like theologians. The first century from like zero to 100? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Over like who Jesus was. Okay. Like was he 100% God or was he like half human, half God? Like how human was he and how divine was he? Okay. Um... In that... I think now most people are pretty much settled on like he was 100% man and 100% God. What? It's weird. It doesn't make any sense. And 100% a math teacher at the same time too. He's just like he can do it. Uh-huh. He breaks... He can break... Well, it's ethereal. It's just like... Yeah. It's hard to... So where do you fall on that? That's tough. I'd say... I don't know. I'm kind of a skeptic as well and I'd say like you can't really tell. Um, and I don't know if there's... There's not really a way to make a definitive statement on something like that. I love that you said that. There's not a really definitive way to make the statement of who Jesus was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In regards to like how... How much man was he and how... Definitively was. Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. Man. And I guess you could say that's a primary issue or you could also say that's a secondary issue depending on where you fall. I'm wondering though... Um... And I'm definitely not a theologist as he can probably tell. I'm not a very good theologist either. I'm wondering could we say that the statement is then that for Christianity you got to believe in God and Jesus. Yeah, yeah. That's a primary thing. At least for me as well, like understanding that God came to save the world and not condemn it. In the fall of Jesus? Yeah, in that the two states, the two commandments that he gave... These are more secondary things. I'm about to start my own church right now. Oh, okay. I mean, these are pretty... He's saying all these extra things. That's against our thing. Let's start the west side arboretum. That's a school. All right. I'd say the two things that are pretty apparent throughout his whole ministry and he stated in like two... They have records of at least two gospels of what he said and it's like the great commandant is love God and love people. I'm going to throw out one random question. Yeah, go ahead. You said you were not denominational but you were not necessarily quoting scripture but you're using a lot of the biblical texts to support the beliefs. Yeah. Is there a particular Bible that you think is definitive? Because there's different versions of that too. Yeah, I don't have like a specific translation that I find. Do you look for the common denominator among them all? Or like, do you have any way of parsing actually? Because some books have completely different chapters and completely different verses. Yeah, so those are like the Latin bulgit and some of like, I guess, I think the Catholic Bible. Yeah. Or an extra book in there. You can stay in America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have the Church of Latter-day Saints. They have their own. You have Jehovah's Witnesses. They have their own. And that's just in U.S. You go to South Africa. They have the Bible. It's completely, not completely, but it's distinctly different from ours. And even in the same religion, you've got new international versions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. James' version, NDE. Like... When it comes to the different translations, like it doesn't matter to me. Okay. But I guess I've never like fully looked into the other books of the Bible that aren't like standard at least here in America. In America. Yeah. Okay.  Oh. What's up, guys? How are you doing? How are you doing? You guys look super cool. Isn't this like the coolest crowd that just walked by right now? You also do the Gap commercial. This is amazing. Is it a Gap commercial? Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. He's trying to bait us that less fat. Look how cool. Look how cool they look. I'm just saying. If you want a card, here you go. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. No problem. Alright. I'd say 100%. 100%. I wanted to find 100% and just let me know. Yeah. Because it's a number. Yeah. And you can change the number. I don't care. But 100% to me is like... Like no doubt. No doubt. There's no way I can be wrong. I'm not asking questions anymore. I'm certain close-minded on the position. I'm close on the position. 100%. Let's go 98%. 98%. Yeah. Everybody has those periods of doubt, right? I think so. And I think it's actually healthier to not be absolute. Yeah. About what you believe. What got you to the 98% confidence on this guy? And Jesus. Yeah. I'm just going to mind the move. Yeah. Go ahead. Or like on the existence of the Christian guy. So I'm actually a medical student. And I found a big interest in biology when I was in high school. And that's kind of when I started being really skeptical of things. And eventually you just... And that's a big discussion. You kind of meddle through all the specifics of what I guess they Christian say and what biologists say about... Are they Christian biologists? Oh yeah. Yeah. And so you can... There's like a whole field of Christianity called... What's the name? Glee Club? No. They seem like a really handy... Oh no. It's Apologetics. Oh okay. Have you heard of it? Yeah. I know about it. So it's like trying to use science to like just reason that God exists and that Jesus existed. What do you think about that? There's some validity to it.  Do you feel like you need science to support a belief in God? I don't think you need it. In fact, I think there's... Do you think it enhances the belief? It can. There can be an issue that where I think some people try so hard to prove the existence of God that they forget the point of God. And it's like they're just trying... Oh man, I wish I could write that down. Go ahead. Go ahead. I think people just try and try. And I think it's maybe because they don't believe themselves and they want to. But I don't know that's a... So what's like some of the best evidence that you've heard to support the existence of God? And would you... Yeah, yeah. Is this what's getting you to your 98%? This is more not my field when it comes to like astrophysics. I actually have a really good pal who's... Okay. I would just generally like to know what specifically got you to your 98%. Okay. All right. So since I'm a semi-biologist, I graduated in biochemistry. Did you have like half your body out of the past the entire time? Well, no, I'm a biochemistry. These are the great scripts that happen. We're only giving you to decide your body. I'm just not pursuing biology anymore. I'm pursuing medicine. But it's still biology. Yeah. I get it. I'm biochemistry. Oh, are you? Yeah. Okay. So when you look at the creation of life, let's say you look at the central dogma of biology, which is like DNA goes to RNA, which goes to protein. Yes. But for that cycle to continue... Well, I guess it's a cycle. It's not just a linear progression because you need protein and RNA to make DNA as well. And so you kind of need a cycle and how that cycle starts. I can't... Like I've looked into it. I've tried to read papers and there's nothing that's convinced me that that can just spontaneously happen or it can even happen with... Throughout a progress. Agreed. It can happen throughout a progress. I think... What do you mean by that? Like it can... I'm thinking about the words as you're saying it. Yeah. Sorry. From your faces. Like the progress to get to that cycle, I can't see a way of that happening. There's like big... There's like one big hypothesis out there called the RNA hypothesis. RNA world theory? Yeah. And that because RNA can act as like a catalyst and also as a way to store information, biological information, that might have been what was initially used as protein and DNA. Right. But like when they... Do you know the Stanley Miller experiment? Yes. Yeah, yeah. So they show that if you put like... RNA and 1,2 can make it rapidly produce itself. It can make like a little tiny monsters of itself. Well... Simplified versions of RNA. The one I'm thinking of is that they put a whole bunch of... Nucleotide. Sorry for interrupting. Well, you know you're fine. I'm just... It's been a while since I've read it. So like they try to recreate the oceans of the Earth. In this small environment. And then they would like zap it with electricity. Sure. To kind of simulate the... Simulate the environment and atmosphere of the Earth four million years ago. Right. And they show that they can actually make some molecules that are essential to life. Some amino acids. Right. And like urea, bromide, hide stuff like that. However, the amino acids that they make are only like lysine and very simple non-polar amino acids. So they haven't shown that they can create more of the complex amino acids that are needed to sustain life. And they also never showed that they could create DNA or RNA. Can I ask you how does this get you to the God belief? Like how do these experiments lead to 98% confidence in God? I just... I don't see a way of life spontaneously generating. And I don't see a way if you... Like if you were to talk to my astrophysics pal. Sure. And if you talk to him, I cannot see a way of the world or the universe spontaneously generating. Jacob, can I ask you a question? Yeah. I'm wondering, so you have this... You have this theory that's presented in the scientific model. Uh-huh. And it sounds incredible. And you say, that sounds... I can't see how that's feasible yet. Uh-huh. Therefore, this is my... This is my... The other thing. Uh-huh. How did that... How is that your foundation? How did that become... I wouldn't say that's my foundation. That's just like part of... Or how does this being hard to believe make this 98% confident? Like how... Oh, okay. How did that become the alternative at a 98% confidence level? Like was that the reason why you're 98%? I think that's just part of it. And I think if you look into other parts of my faith... So like it's kind of hard to explain and it's kind of all feeling, right? From a skeptics point of view. There's some things in your life that you just kind of... You have a gut instinct. Gut instinct? That you know it's true. Are gut instincts ever wrong? Oh, all the time. If they can be wrong all the time, does it justify supporting a 98% confidence? From a logical standpoint, no. What is getting you to that 98%? I'd say... So a belief in certain things in the Bible. So one of the big arguments in apologetics is why would 12 people who followed Jesus around heard what he said and then saw him die lie about him coming back to life only to know that they were going to be persecuted and put to death for saying that. Does that get you to the 98%? That's kind of like the main thing. It's like the biology aspect and then that as well. I'm just going to test what that is actually your main thing. I'm going to ask you a question. If it turned out, this is kind of weird. Again, I'm just stimulating conversation. If it turned out that there was substantial evidence to a criteria of your satisfaction, they were in fact lying. Would that reduce your confidence from 98% down to maybe 70% maybe a little lower than that? Probably. Okay. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, go ahead. Say I had a... I don't know. I have a cat. I do have a cat and he's a really good cat. His name is Vinny. Vinny.   So listen, I used to look overseas for a while. It's very common over there in Sweden. Everyone's walking their cats around. In America, they keep them locked up in doors and they're like, that cat wants to be outside. That's when he's in the window. And if you leash train them really young, they're super super cool about it. But it's not so much the leash training.  Yeah, yeah. Okay.  And he's a full blown, full blown, Bengal tiger and I have a picture of him and it's me and the tiger. Would you believe I have a tiger then? It'd be tougher and be harder to believe. It would be harder to believe.  It's the same picture. Would you believe that? I'd say it's Photoshop. It seems like the more incredible the claim, the better the standard of evidence or the standard of evidence improves. Would you say that God is more incredible than a purple dragon from Jupiter? I would, yeah. So the thing isn't so much that I think the apologist's angle is hey, what's the likelihood of these 12 people lying? It's like maybe it's not even that they're lying. It's just that that's a really low bar of evidence. It's basically 12 people saying Tyrone has a cat. You believe that. Tyrone has a tiger. 12 people say that. Maybe you believe it. Maybe not. 12 people told you hey, Tyrone has a purple dragon from Jupiter. I'm not believing that. You need more evidence to support that with. What if it is a case of not so much that they might be lying but that just may not be enough evidence to reach that conclusion as a definitive claim for at least a 98% certainty that a God exists since it's way more incredible than from a dragon? What do you think about that? Can you restate that question? Yeah, it's kind of a long question. Do you have enough evidence to justify 98% confidence in God? And if it's not on that 12-apostle story, what else is getting you to that level? What else? I'd say I can't answer that just right now. I'm totally fine with that. Can I throw one last?  If I had a coin, it's a quarter. It's not a trick coin. If I flip it and I catch it, put it on the back of my hand, I don't know if it's heads or tails. Do you know if it's heads or tails? No. That's the best answer. Yeah. Until we have that evidence. Jacob. Alright. Wonderful talking to you. Nice talking to you. That was really cool. So, explain to me what to do exactly again. Sure. Okay, so if you want, here's a card. I got a YouTube channel.