Up vs. Down: Bypassing the Two-Party Sorting Mechanism with Travis Misurell

Is American democracy broken, or is it just rigged? In this episode of VarmBlog, we sit down with Travis Misurell, founder of the Think: The Future is Now Coalition (Fink), to discuss a radical new framework for political engagement: moving beyond the traditional left-vs-right binary to an "Up vs. Down" perspective.

We dive deep into the Digital Politics Hub (DP Hub), a materialist infrastructure project designed to bypass party gatekeepers and empower the common voter. Misurell explains how current systems manipulate our choices before we even reach the ballot and shares his vision for a citizen-owned democracy powered by transparent, digital infrastructure.

Inside This Episode:
The Up-Serving vs. Down-Serving Conflict: Why most politicians serve big donors and "power-boosters" rather than the grassroots.
The Civic Tag Revolution: How candidates can define themselves in their own words—focusing on advocacy and identity rather than rigid party platforms.
The Failure of Civic Tech: Why previous platforms failed (and why a "people-first" movement is the only way forward).
AI & Open-Ended Data: How Fink uses AI to aggregate thousands of citizen priorities without the framing biases of traditional polling.
The Nevada Pilot: Why Nevada was chosen as the testing ground for this new model of election reform.
Digital Democracy Phase 2: A look at the future "toolbox" of citizen-owned technology, from tracking insider trading to creating a national "democracy score" for every candidate.

Connect with the Movement:
Ready to reclaim your vote? Join the coalition and help build a level playing field for every candidate.
Visit the Hub: hub.futureis.org
Take Action: Add your name and share your community's top priorities to help drive the data that candidates need to see.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Transcript

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C. Derick Varn 0:49

Hello and welcome to Varmblog. Today we are talking about a way to think of politics in a different binary. Instead of left versus white, we're gonna be thinking about up versus down. My guest today is Travis Misrell, founder of Think, the Future is Now Coalition. Here at VarnBlog, we often discuss how party gatekeepers and cancel capital intensive systems shrink our choices before we ever get to a ballot. And Travis Miserel is tackling this through a materialist infrastructure lens by building the digital politics hub, which we'll maybe refer to as DPHub for short from here on out. And this is not just a tech platform, it's a way to bypass

Up Vs Down Politics Frame

C. Derick Varn 1:37

the two-party sorting mechanisms. This system uses a unique use of civic tags where candidates define themselves in their own words, focusing on advocacy and identity rather than party platforms and labels, and where citizens provide open-ended data on their actual priorities. We'll be discussing why previous civic tech projects failed. Many have failed, and the problem of the parties as a referee, as a model of political utility, and maybe how we can start to build a more uh citizen-owned democracy in the near future. How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you? I am well. So you often pitch these concerns as people should start should stop asking just about left or white as their kind of nebulous directional metaphors and start asking about up or down, which is a different directional metaphor. Uh, but I would like you to clarify what you mean by up or down here.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, sure. So so upserving candidates are the ones they serve their big donors, they serve special interests, they serve those with more power than them. So basically, they turn to those with higher power to raise them up in power, whereas the downserving candidates are the grassroots candidates, and they want to serve you, the voter, and they gain power by gaining massive voter support, volunteer support, grassroots donations. And so it's a it's a different framing. Most of the people already in Congress are the upserving ones, and they're not actually representing you as a common voter. They're they're serving those that are giving them the most power boost, which is the big donors and party gatekeepers.

C. Derick Varn 3:29

Well, I mean, I think that that's pretty crucial to understanding why, for example, political platforms and whatnot don't actually lead to anything like predictors of voting records or administrative functions or anything like that, because that's not for the people that these upserving politicians are focusing on, right? How does focusing on this create a way for a voter to cut through what is an increasing environment of just flat out political noise? I mean, it's one thing when you have paid ads and and all this, and people would talk about you know campaign finance reform, but that's not even relevant now to social media. It's hard to even imagine how it would apply to Twitter or X or whatever. So, how how does this help get around that? And and what should voters be looking for?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah, so to what they should be looking for and how to identify down serving candidates, like the bot the bottom line is are they legitimate? Are they gonna actually fulfill their promises? Are they even gonna try to fulfill their promises? So we want to help people identify those markers. So some of it is like who's funding their campaign. Most people don't know this, but it is public available, publicly available to know who's funding campaigns, you know, what kind of super PACs are behind them, things like that. Uh, because those are direct conflicts of interest. You know, they're not gonna fix healthcare if millions of dollars from health care industry is giving them money. They are purposely being basically legally bribed not to fulfill their promises. So

Spotting Conflicts Of Interest

SPEAKER_01 5:11

that's the number one is is just getting into this mindset that it almost wouldn't matter left versus right. It's it's that they all have these conflicts of interest, they're all gonna promise what they can to get your vote, but then they don't, they don't, they're not gonna do it once they're elected, and and then the media is not gonna really hold them accountable anymore. You know, so that's that's kind of the world we live in today. And really to tie it into what we're doing, we want to build a level playing field that gives you all your choices right up front. These are all your options. You know, it's not about the gatekeepers deciding who your choices are. We want every candidate to be an option, at least in the beginning, and then let the citizens narrow down the choices, not the establishment.

C. Derick Varn 5:54

You mentioned that the system is rigged, not broken. And I think you know that that's intimate. You're not gonna get any argument from me on that. But I do want to ask you in what race specifically is it rigged? And and maybe we can go from there.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

I mean, it's just that the system itself is rigged, so it's essentially every race, pretty much. So you I mean you could point to anything. It's it's basically like I've been we we're doing a lot of focus in with Nevada candidates right now, and we've been speaking to them there, and it's the same, it's the same story everywhere that these brassroots candidates they get no visibility, that the media will not talk to them, the party leaders will not acknowledge that they're even in the race. You know, the before the ballot, before the uh before you even decide who's on the ballot, the candidates,

How Gatekeepers Control Visibility

SPEAKER_01 6:41

the the party gatekeepers know who they want to win, and they're gonna stack the the favor in that person's favor. So, you know, as we say it, there's part there's Democrat gatekeepers or Republican gatekeepers. Yeah, there's a difference between their general ideology, but ultimately both sides, if they don't approve of you as a candidate, they're gonna do everything they can in their power to make sure you're you can't win by people not even knowing you exist. So I'd say it's a it's a systemic issue in the in the structure of how how we're presented our choices.

C. Derick Varn 7:16

Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense to me. And it also explains certain weirdnesses of American politics, for example, when you do see some insurgent candidates be the glass roots or not, they'll often appear to appeal to other states, uh population to get money because they can't get visibility without that, particularly if they're overcoming an incumbent advantage and incumbent funding. And that's strange because you're asking people who won't represent you and who you don't have any like producier responsibility to or delegate responsibility to you don't represent at all to promote you, and that also has a distorting effect on local politics, even for insurgent candidates, because they are thus beholden, if not to big corporations and super PACs, they're at least beholden to interest beyond the interest of their own representative pool. I think it's important to understand that. I I I want to talk about how this is hidden, though, from the average person, because people think you know, they have a say in primaries, they have a say in caucuses, they can get the signatures to get a candidate on the ballot, although the costs for that are often, even for local races, increasingly astronomical. But a lot of people, you know, feel that the system is rigged, they know at some level what you're talking about is true, but they don't understand how they're shut out of it early on. So can we talk about the specifics? Like, what are you seeing in Nevada? You know?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Yeah, so the the main thing is like, you know, where the law, in terms of the way the legal structure is concerned and like the logistical process of voting, you have all choices. You could even choose third choose third party, independent, everyone. But you're we're all manipulated to have a false sense of of limiting our choices. So there's a few different ways that that happens. So one is just purely the visibility of these candidates. You'll have no idea. Like, there's just one race, the CD2 of Congressional District 2 of Nevada, that there's like 20-something people running in that race right now, and yet the media is only covering like two or couple, like, and then no one else, they like they're not even saying, Oh, there's a huge pack of people in here. No, they're just like two, two main people. Everyone else don't even look at it. So, you know, it's already so hard. I hear this all the time when I talk to citizens that people don't know how to find where their choices are. There's there's no like smooth way to just say, you know, this is my zip code, here are all your choices, and then here's how to, you know, learn more about each choice. You know, there's various sites with various capabilities, definitely more federal levels easier, state level is is semi-easy, and then it gets hard super hard once you get local. So visibility is definitely number one that just because it and it it ties to three different the three evils of of that's preventing democracy is the the party gatekeepers, the mainstream media, and then the big donors. And so, you know, immediately before the primary is even discussed, the big donors are there. So the establishment choices are gonna have all the funding they need. They're already plugged into the same networks, you know, status quo, quid quo quo, all that stuff. They as soon as you say that I'll do whatever the party tells me to do, I don't give a shit about my voters. All I care about is what you guys tell me to do. You you get you get your checks. There you go. You got all the big donors that they want you to have. You have money, you're not gonna have to worry too much about money. Yeah, there's still plenty of fundraising, they still have to do beyond that, but they have a huge starting point. Then two is just the party gatekeepers that as soon as they decide that you are not who they want, they're gonna they're gonna keep doing stacking anything against you again to that visibility and and networks and keep you away from the the networks of voters, networks of donors, all that stuff. And then the third is the media kind of tied in. They're they're all kind of you know interconnected in a lot of ways. Because the party gatekeepers don't want you, because the big donors are not gonna fund you, the the media is gonna be like, all right, well, you're you have no shot. I'm not gonna even bother giving you any any voice, so I'm not even gonna interview you ever. So that also ultimately, so it's really those things that prevent you from having to see all your choices. And then if one or two of them do end up being known even to a small extent, they're like, Oh, this fringe crazy candidate thinks they're gonna win, ha ha ha. Like, you know, they they present it in a way that if you vote for that person, you're wasting your vote, and that's that's part of the manipulation as well.

C. Derick Varn 12:02

Yeah, that's I mean, to me, that's uh been obvious since Ross Perot, but I I do think it's interesting, like there are attempts to get around this, and uh what I know more about is like 40403 C and D political advocacy groups that really can't do much about this stuff because they're not super PACs, and their political spending is often limited to you know five, ten thousand dollars, which sounds like a lot until you ever do anything in politics. But you've also noted that there's been other attempts to get around this. You you you have talked about 15 different tech platforms that have tried and failed to intervene in American democracy. Why did they fail?

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Yeah, so the the main thing is like each each organization from movement to civic tech, like there's they're they're trying one side of influence. And so part of what's unique about Think is like we're actually looking at a lot of different angles to move the needle, that if we interconnect certain pieces, like basically building a citizen-owned ecosystem, that's essentially what we're trying to do. And so we're trying to build healthier alternatives to what already exists. But for the direct answer to your question, so the civic

Why Civic Tech Keeps Failing

SPEAKER_01 13:34

tech orgs that have tried this, they're their problem is like they're building a tool to make voting easier. And so they want to build a tool, and then I mean, part of their mistake is they build a tool and they think that people are just gonna all magically flock in. No marketing, no outreach, just people just magically show up. Um, some you know, they'll try a little bit of marketing, but they usually underestimate how much marketing is needed. But ultimately, like the problem is like they're not promising systemic change. They're just saying, oh, here's an easier way to vote. That you'll be able to see more information about your candidates, so it'll be quicker to decide who you want to vote for. Now, what we're doing is we're calling, we're not saying we're not even a tech company. We're people first, this is a movement first. We're building supporting technology as we go, as we talk to candidates, citizens, and movements, we build technology that will reinforce what they need and help them, but we're not tech first. Most of our resources actually go to outreach and interconnecting, building partnerships and citizen engagement way more than we do on the tech side of it. And often the core of that is like we're talking about fundamentally upgrading democracy. That we're we want to modernize democracy. It's one of the few things that have not caught up with the digital age. You know, you can order a cheeseburger, you can get a ratings of the cheeseburger, you could get a ratings of the Uber driver that's gonna deliver that cheeseburger to you, but you basically can't look at your choices on a menu or ratings on anything for a candidate. Like it's ridiculous. Everything else in this world is digitized except for politics. You know, so we're building in digital infrastructure that will make it easier for an average citizen to see all your choices and then zoom in as deeply as you want to see, you know, which which is the best match for you. And so that framing is something that those other tech companies did not do. They're just we're a tech company, here's a tool, and it's gonna make things a little easier. And we're like, no, we're we're here to completely flip the system upside down, bring accountability and transparency into the system, and empower citizens to have all their choices right up front.

C. Derick Varn 15:44

So, you know, you talk about the limitations of individual tools, and it does seem like a problem of most complex social systems. You intervene with a tool, you're gonna address one part of a complex social system, right? You talk about the need, and you describe part of FINC's mission as building a new kind of infrastructure. Can you go into the specifics of Fink's infrastructure?

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Yeah, sure. So it's it's a two-phase approach. Right now, it's it's with our digital politics hub, the DP hub. Already it's a matchmaker to match citizens with their candidates. It's a way for citizens to say what their priorities are and then matchmake to candidates that will fulfill those priorities. It's still in the earlier stages, but that's that's mainly what it is right now. But overall, the phase two is what we call digital democracy, takes it to a deeper level and more more stakeholders involved. The the main groups that we see as part of an ecosystem is it's a civic tech orgs, but then it's also independent media and independent journalists, it's movements and

The DP Hub Infrastructure Plan

SPEAKER_01 16:55

other kinds of political organizations, and then it's the candidates, as well as parties, alternative parties, party co uh candidate coalitions. So the idea is like we want to build infrastructure that plugs each piece into a greater system. So we we literally have we'll have we'll have a whole system built out just for independent media to be give them a voice and to connect them to get more visibility with citizens. Same with candidates, and that's candidate part, is what we already started building is giving candidates visibility and then even movements, and movements would be on here, movements would be able to do their own scoring system on candidates, and you can see it right through our system. They'll be able to be in networks of trust. Like, there's just a lot of different features for each perspective that in that's involved in politics, and we want to build an integrated infrastructure that empowers each one of these, and none of it is based on like, oh, well, you don't believe my political belief. It's like everyone across any political belief can be plugged into this. As long as they want to play a fair game and want real representation for citizens, they can plug in and there's a way to empower anyone from media, the citizens. So, you know, there's a lot of layers to it, but it's it's just building an interconnected system that helps uh streamline the matchmaking ability between all these different stakeholders and communicating between people, giving choice, giving choices up front, transparency, all that, all that good stuff.

C. Derick Varn 18:24

Hmm. One of the ways you you tend to frame this and what and what I've read in your materials is that you focus on civic tags, at least for the politician end of this. What are these civic tags and how can they give you more information than say just the DRR and the platforms associated with that behind the name?

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah, great question. Yeah, so that's uh one of the key ways to differentiate individual candidates. You know, what what one of the main things that think is our one of our goals is is to really get move past the part the ultrapartisanship that, like, you know, some people truly believe that all Democrats are great or all Republicans are great. It's like, no, you know, there's so much more complexity to the world than that. So the way these tags work, and

Civic Tags For Real Candidate Signals

SPEAKER_01 19:14

there's there's three categories of tags. There's like who I am as a person, like a parent, a veteran as a candidate. The second one is their political lens, and that's one of the most important ones. So they could say, you know, I'm filed as a Republican, but I identify as a libertarian, or I file as Democrat, but I I identify as a Marxist, a socialist, a progressive. Like, so there's already a multiple choice that they could choose, but they could also create their own tags, they can define their own tags so there's not a miscommunication. So that's the the best one is the political lens tag. And then the third one is advocacy tags. So those are like just a keyword to say, what do you stand for? Free energy, uh clean energy, you know, education first, you know, what any pretty much anything they could think of. And so the idea is like, you know, kind of using in this modern world, people like hashtags and keywords. So these civic tags is a way of like, you know, instead of a candidate having like a 10-page essay on what their policy are, and then you don't know what it actually means that when push comes to shove, now you just have like that one keyword, it's like one or two keywords, you know, and then they can define it, but if they define it, maybe a sentence, not more than that. So it forces them to be concise and to the point. So the tagging allows the candidate to differentiate themselves, but then also on the citizen side, now as this starts really rolling out and taking shape, can uh citizens can put power to some of these tags. You know, if if like millions of people love the clean energy tag, that's gonna tell these candidates that clean energy is is a very popular way to move forward. So it's kind of more a more fluid way for citizens to tell candidates what they want on a on a on a very large scale.

C. Derick Varn 21:05

Another thing that makes the DP Hub kind of unique is using surveys and open-ended questions as opposed to polling, which for people who don't know or have never taken a poll, most polling choices are pre-selected for you, and thus are given to all kinds of both framing and selection biases. Hence why certain poll results seem to contradict each other. How do you sort these open-ended responses, though? Because that has been a that's probably a large reason why polls posters didn't use them as the technology of like cataloging and indexing every possible open-ended answer, yeah, particularly before computers, but even with computers until relatively recently,

Open-Ended Surveys Powered By AI

C. Derick Varn 21:52

was an onerous task. I mean, you know. Uh how are you how are you sorting those results? And what do you hope to get by that sorting?

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, so the like, I mean, the the main reason that it's now possible is really about AI. Um I I can't deny that. That like now AI, you know, you could have 10,000 open-ended answers that citizens have submitted, and AI can aggregate it in a couple minutes. So that is the game changer that has happened now. You know, pollsters, so it's new even for polsters, and then also pollsters, a lot of them want to shape things in certain ways. So we want this like completely open ended system. Like right now, when you when you first add your name to our uh on our hub, we asked just three main questions like what's the biggest problem your community is facing right now? If your representatives could do one fix one thing, what would it be? And what would good leaders do differently than what you see right now? So that's like a good starting point. So, and the idea is like, you know, people will answer it differently based on their local location, what state, what local level. So we can aggregate all this data of like, okay, in this state, this is the main concerns that people mention. And in this district specifically, they're talking about the playground that's about to get torn down or this mall that they're they're upset about. Uh so it really like completely, like, first of all, it's like we're not pointing anything up at first. So it's like, what comes to an average person's mind if you're gonna say, you know, what is the number one thing you're you're worried about? You know, so rather than loading the question to get an answer, completely open-end it, see where it goes into. But then, yeah, so using the AI to aggregate the data, show that you know, this many people have a concern like this, you know, find different patterns. A lot of the issue might be trust. You know, they they talk about different issues that they care about, but the bottom line is trust, or you know, AI can find different points to pull out, like as it sees more patterns. You know, once we get the the these answers plugged in from like thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, then there's more and more ways that we can see the common denominators of what people are worried about, what keeps them up at night, you know, what what it what is that the front of mind. So, you know, AI could kind of be endless, and you know, we'll probably be surprised by some of the data the more once once we get a higher level of responses. But like a lot of the candidates we're talking about and not talking to in Nevada are really excited about that kind of data. That the I mean, you know, I I think you kind of touched on it that pollsters are getting less and less accurate right now. They can't even really predict elections as much anymore in the last few years. And a lot of that is just people are different now. I mean, people, there's more people that identify as independent than in the two parties right now, and that's pretty much never happened in modern history, and so that messes up a lot of that, those their predicted data points. Um, so different a lot more fluidity to to you know pull out concern. Like, you know, the more America gives their ideas, their thoughts, their fears, their feedback, the more we can pull, you know, unpredictable data from it.

C. Derick Varn 25:02

One thing that I I think is interesting about this that maybe isn't obvious is how local it is. You know, one of the problems with the massive amounts of money you need, even to do local politics, that it ends up making all campaigning national, like I mentioned uh priorly. But it also means that like also individuals aren't following, don't know how, don't know what's going on in local politics. And in Utah where I'm from, uh we tend to have ballots sent to us and they're very extensive. And and I keep up with politics. I'm a political podcaster, you know, it's something that I do. And even I like particularly it comes to like voting for judges. I'm always like, I don't even know where I would find this information. They gave me one little book guide, and I read it, and I'm just

Why Nevada Is The Pilot

C. Derick Varn 25:49

I guess I'm supposed to trust what the Utah lawyers say. And what you know, some uh in my state, some elections are partisan, some elections are not, and the the sorting's not obvious, although even the non-partisan elections are really kind of partisan because of the funding routes that you talked about. Um what I find interesting about like the this open-ended strategy is it is a way to get a feel for like specific issues in very local places that obviously that often aren't even covered by local news anymore for a variety of reasons. And also are diffused on things like social media. You know, I talk about this on my show. Uh, people ask me why I don't talk more about specific like Utah labor politics stuff I do in my daily life here. Um and I don't because my audience is too diffused, like it it's you know, I have thousands of listeners, but they are spread out uh over actually multiple countries. Uh so when I try to cover like something specific to Salt Lake or the greater Salt Lake area where I live, uh there's really no market for it. And it it's it's interesting that the survey strategy would create a way for people to uh engage with that again because they would not be as dependent on these big money sources. I mean, you know, and that's behind all the problems when you talk about the media. Uh one of the problems with the media is local media is dying and runs less and less of its own news because it doesn't have the money to support itself and it doesn't have a local base that it's competing with diffuse shows like mine, actually, and not succeeding, but also that means that no one's covering those things in the same way anymore. This kind of brings me to the Nevada pilot. You know, we mentioned it indirectly already. You you mentioned the Nevada situation where you guys are running the proof of concept. Why did you choose Nevada? You know, it's a neighboring state. I actually was just there a week ago, but uh, you know, Nevada's kind of an interestingly strange state in in a lot of ways. So why did why was Nevada like your your point for the pilot?

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yeah, I mean to be honest, the the first the the first one that initiated was just it was kind of that's where the opportunity happened that we we gained a strong partnership in Nevada. But but then that you know, before we really decided to make it a pilot, we looked at it and and it is a test place for a lot of primaries for like kind of kind of experimenting on on different formats. Like the so there's something with that state that they're they're just used to piloting new ways of election reforms and stuff. And then also it has a unique thing where a lot of the the national demographics are mirrored in Nevada. So like the percentage of independent right now in the in the in the federal level kind of matches the same percentages that are in in Nevada specifically. So it tends to be one of the one of those states that a lot of people pay attention to early on in before the the major elections to kind of see how it pans out. So that that was the the the rationale after just just the opportunity to connect and then and then seeing that as like, okay, yeah, it actually looks like a perfect opportunity to to plug in with them. I mean, we'd be open, like I mean, any any candidate nationwide can create their profiles on our system and whatnot. It's just we're we're specifically we're putting extra attention to Nevada. But if there's another state that just really starts blooming and we see a big opportunity, we kind of go, we kind of go with the flow of of wherever the opportunities are knocking. But you know, right now it's the big ones, Nevada.

C. Derick Varn 29:41

Yeah, I I find Nevada interesting for for something like this because it is weirdly non-partisan and also hyperpartisan simultaneously. Like blue areas in Nevada are extremely blue. There's more union representation in Nevada than people realize because of the casinos, oddly. You know, there's and yet also like the the the red areas of Nevada are almost without government. So it it's an interesting state in that regard because they all exist in the same state in the same ecosystem. I I I find it interesting, you know, how this would fare in a very obviously partisan state like California or Texas, where the one party almost has a management over the state in such a way that really favors it. How do you think this would go in a state like that?

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Actually, really, I would think it would go maybe even better. Because, like, I mean, the the biggest distraction and problem we have is like people still go into their lesser two evils. Like, you know, so a lot of what we market is like, you know, you are not being represented, trust and government all-time low, your the money in politics all-time high, this and that. We're we're trying to prove to people that no matter that you're even your own party has a boatload of conflicts of interest, and that ultimately you're you're kind of choosing lesser two evils. And and most people are on board with that, except for like the die hard like people like super committed to their party, which is it's still a huge population, but so they're the ones like, you know, if I talk to Democrats, like, oh, but Trump this, but Trump that, it's like, okay, but like the system is breaking down, both parties are not representing, and like, so they they just go immediately to the worst evil. Well, that that side's even worse. Like, okay, just because something's worse does not mean your side's great, you know. Like, so, you know, so in a situation where it's actually heavily one side, that distraction is a little less dire to them. And so, like going to California, it'd

Digital Democracy And Citizen Ownership

SPEAKER_01 31:46

be about getting a better Democrat in office. Okay, you have a lot of strong, you know, there's certain, you know, certain districts where there's two senators in the general election, both Democrat, but like there's still a huge establishment ownership of uh of California, and and and a lot of people in that state are unhappy with their the specific choices of like they want, you know, most of them do want the Democrat, but they don't like the Democrat that's chosen. So what we would be doing, because like a lot of what we want to do is bring the problem to the primary. The primaries is where you really have your choices, you know. By the by the general election, it's it's basically a lesser two evils by that point. So we would, you know, something like California, we would be pushing of like how to how to help people identify the better candidate even within the same party, and not to treat every everyone in the same party the same way. Yeah, so I I think it would it would go pretty well in a lot of different circumstances. I mean, that that's part of the uniqueness, is like how we're politically agnostic. Anything from better candidates within two parties to third party independent. We don't care which way America goes, we want to build infrastructure that allows any of it to be possible.

C. Derick Varn 32:56

So this be go this is beyond pushing just like a third party or multiple party options, which have also historically in the United States not gone well. I the only time that I can think of third parties being a serious contender for the presidency is in the early 20th century. I think 1918 would be where you had two third-party pandemics who can could hold more than 10% of the vote. But it's been that long, and the next, I think the next closest one is Ross Perot in 92. But I think it's also important though that like your point out that these parties also contain all kinds of people within them, and both parties actually. Like, there's a huge difference between Ramp Paul and Marjorie Taylor Green and Marco Rubio, just the name of some Republicans, are AOC Gavin Newsome. Weirdly, I'm having trouble with Democrats today, but Corey Booker. Those the those those are there's also a pretty large gap there, and there's insurgent movements in all of these parties. In fact, right now we see a lot of it. A lot of incumbent Democrats, even though Democrats are doing well in early voting debates right now, their funding's not doing well, and they are they are often incumbents are often getting unseated within the party. So I I find it interesting because it would give people a better way to understand that. There's nothing that does that nationally. There are like there are some things that do it for specific interests in specific areas, like the the DSA, for example, if it hits above its above its, you know, 100k membership level, but it's really only super influential in some specific progressive cities. And uh, you know, it has it has integrated representation in in New York and the Democratic Party, but that's about it. Right? Like the other insurgent groupings tend to have to have money. And you know, I remember I'm old enough to remember Tea Party Mach 1 in 2007, and how by 2011 the original founders were complaining that they were astroturf by money, and it changed the the message that they were sending. And I find it you know interesting to think about well, what if they didn't have to get astroturfs by money? What would the Tea Party look like? Now, you know, I'm not a partisan of the Tea Party, I didn't like them, but it would have been interesting to know what that would have stayed as if it had stayed organic. It might have still been crazy, but I would, you know, right now I don't know what that is. And so I find that I find a way around that very interesting. I want to ask you though, specifically uh, your your end goal is not the the the digital politics hub, it is the digital democracy. What specifically is that? Like, you know, that's it's broad name.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Yeah, and it's supposed to it's more of like that might not even be the final name of it. It's more of like digital democracy, it's is actually getting a popular term these days, but people people see it as a different thing. What we are it's it's almost like a civic internet, is what we are envisioning it. So like digital right now, the digital the DP hub we're building is a tool. The but digital democracy is gonna be the toolbox. So right now we're building some tools as the example to get it started, putting it in the toolbox when the time comes, but we're also not gonna be the only one putting tools in the toolbox. So there's other organizations that we're already friends with, some that we just hypothetically can see have combined connecting with in the future. But we envision digital democracy being a citizen-owned space that America, ultimately, America is gonna own this technology. They're gonna be like not think. We're actually gonna build a structure where every American can opt into one equal ownership stake of the come of of the technology. But then all like different reforms, civic technologies, parties can all use this infrastructure, this shared stage, shared infrastructure, and build it beyond what FINC has. So, like we're kind of like the vision of it, and we're we're gonna forever kind of do the marketing and buy-in and get more citizens involved. But eventually we want digital democracy to take root away from think controlling it at all. We want it to eventually be completely citizen-owned. And so it's just gonna keep building out, like if and when we get if people, if we start doing online voting, like legally online voting, that would be part of digital democracy. But also being the infrastructure for independent media, being the the one system for for the candidates. As we build out what our profiles look like with accountability, we want to plug in, like, oh, like for example, opensecrets.org does a lot of the data around who's funding what campaigns. So we want to plug that data into digital democracy to come up with a democracy score for every candidate. That that'd be one of the data points. So other can others other organizations are tracking the uh how much money people are making in the stock market from candidates and like watching for the windfalls and the insider trading stuff. That data would be plugged in. So it's almost like aggregating the different data that organizations are pulling together, aggregating different technologies that exist into one system. So again, it's really like this toolbox analogy of like there's all these tools that already exist, but most people have no idea they exist. We would we would be the ones marketing the toolbox, but then once you see that once you open the toolbox, all the tools in there are from all different places in the country of all different organizations that have built different things. So that's ultimately what digital democracy is. It's like once it goes beyond think building it ourselves, and it's like all these different orgs and citizens and media building it together is when that is gonna flip to, and that's our phase two digital democracy.

C. Derick Varn 39:19

Okay. So what given the the concerns about funding in any political structure, how is this funded now? And and what's what's the funding goals for the future? Like you mentioned citizen-owned, what what does that mean in specific? You know, those kinds of questions are probably pretty pertinent.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Yeah, sure. So yeah, doing the citizen owned first. So it's uh A, any so any any citizen will be able to opt in, no money involved. Like, yes, though it'll it'll encourage a donation, but it wouldn't be required. But they're also not gonna be able to take money out either. The the the goal is like essentially every American gets one share of the system. So you either opt in, you have one share, or you didn't opt in, you get no shares. I mean you can't buy a second one, you can't sell it, all that stuff

Funding Model And Candidate Services

SPEAKER_01 40:06

would be importantly in structured out. Really, the goal is just like giving making sure that the American people have legal ownership over digital democracy. And so they essentially there'll be like an election every few years of who's running the technology. It's not gonna be think, it's gonna be somebody else, and like, you know, we've we're gonna vote for them, vote for maybe there's like a board or something that Americans would vote. And then maybe there's certain big decisions that would come up to a vote. Mostly it's mostly you're you're voting for representatives that would run the technology, and you you're you're you're electing people that you trust that are gonna keep the system nonpartisan, objective, all that stuff. So that's the point of the path of the shares, really, for decision making and ownership, true ownership from the citizens. So that's that side of it. So the funding side, right now it's it's just small dollar donations, trying to get five bucks, ten bucks from a lot of different people. But then as we gain more buy-in with the citizens, we're we're providing a lot of amazing services right now for candidates and then eventually for media and then also movements. So, like, so for example, right now, you know, we're we we just built, we're we built a platform where all candidates can should can be visible equally. We have a the tagging system to differentiate each of them so so you could quickly do a snapshot of what makes them unique and what they stand for. And we're gonna ongoingly funnel voters into this system so that more and more people see these candidates. So once it gets to a point where they're getting substantial citizens, are getting have visibility with them, we're connecting to them like the and the results of all these open-ended questions and the tagging data. So we're giving them data that helps them drive which direction they should go. It's not gonna give you their name, it'll just say, like, in this district, this is what people care about, in this state, this is what people care about. So these are all services that as the as we scale up and have the right amount of numbers, we can we can charge them and still have a very modest fee. That's not anything compared to like those, the the big holsters and and all that stuff, but still provide an incredible service, giving them visibility with millions of people, even plugging them in as we build the next stage with independent media. Then we're gonna help connect uh candidates to the media so they get independent media attention where they don't get the mainstream media attention. Um, so there's a lot of services basically that we're gonna provide. So we're we're never gonna charge the citizens directly, but any any of these larger services, there's gonna be more and more like marketing services, social media engagement services that we'd be providing. So we could as that builds out, we could give more and more, you know, charge charge more to the candidates, to media, and to movements that were basically getting them more support. So that's that's the main thing with the the funding. And I mean, one another and another way to look at it too is like what we're building is like is an easier, significantly cheaper, more efficient way to showcase every candidate. Like we can show we can showcase every candidate nationwide, federal, state, and local level for a fraction of the cost that it costs today to run campaigns. You know, right now, like the last election was over $12 billion. Like what we're talking about is a fra is like a couple million at most, and like and and digitally showcasing everyone in one fair stage. So it's a significantly cheaper way to showcase candidates, you know. So there's there's plenty of ways to to you know do the do the modest, you know, charging the cer for services that we're providing and all that, and just keeping it ethical and transparent.

C. Derick Varn 43:52

That makes a lot of sense. I guess this leads me to like, you know, you you've been personally, you know, heading a lot of this up. How did you want to, you know, how did you come about wanting to get involved in this kind of information diffusion and you know, changing democracy? What specific things inspired you to do that?

SPEAKER_01 44:17

I guess, well, like long story short, all my life, like I I've I've always saw myself, I I think very differently. I'm neurodivergent, like autistic technically. But um, I have this like pattern recognition thing. And like I see things in a way that most people don't, which has its pros and cons. But you know, originally it was always psychological and sociological interests

Founder Origin Story And Motivation

SPEAKER_01 44:39

of mine since I was like 12. And then it became more political in in in uh 2016 when I saw Trump versus Bernie ultimate. It's like I saw the patterns and then realized like what would be the common denominator if you changed one thing to have the largest impact on society to fix the system towards representation. And so with my my brain of thinking, like, you know, seeing what money in politics is, seeing how all the how the system works today, how people want the system to work, all those things together over time, I saw this giant big picture and then figured out that this, what I'm building right now, is the common denominator, the way to flip everything around by doing one big thing can flip everything around, and that's you know, building an equal stage. If every citizen knows that every every candidate and every citizen is in one place, you don't need millions of dollars. Every citizen can go here, see all their choices, all their all all the all the intricacies of you know who who's different from each other, compare them side by side, and then candidates get their visibility where they're getting shut out. I mean, it just it just fixes fixes everything, and the only challenge is the buy-in to just get enough citizens on board, and then everything else can just follows immediately after that. So that's it, so it's basically like what would have the biggest impact with like with like you know, what one one rock and kills a million stones. That was the answer. And so that so I built basically what would be what I saw as the best solution that would bring really flip the system over and and bring a true democracy forward.

C. Derick Varn 46:18

All right. So you you have this in-game vision, you've been working on this for a while. What are some potential hangups you might face in getting this off the ground?

SPEAKER_01 46:33

Well, the biggest thing, like, and then this is all all those tech companies that that have tried some kind of political social network have failed, is there's this chicken or the egg thing where like it the the hub is still only as valuable like for citizens, it's gonna be more valuable once there's like thousands of candidates creating their profiles and setting up their tags. So, you know, so citizens are waiting for candidates to set up their tags. Meanwhile, candidates are more enticed to go on the platform if citizens were already there. So it's like citizens are waiting for candidates, candidates

Chicken-And-Egg Growth Challenge

SPEAKER_01 47:05

are waiting for citizens, so there's that chicken or the egg. So that's their that's definitely the biggest challenge to overcome. I mean, that's also why we're focusing on outreach, is like we're selling the potential of what this could be. And then also that like a lot of the candidates we're talking to, if they funnel citizens to the hub, we could gather data that they need of like what do these people care about, what are their priorities, stuff like that. And then and then there's a networking effect that you you as a candidate bring some people in, then this other candidate brings people in, you're both gonna benefit from the visibility of each other's. So it's kind of like incentivizing the candidates to bring their own citizens with them on onto the system. That that's how we're we're trying to overcome it. But that is the big chicken or the egg issue that we have. And other than that, the biggest thing was just like there's so many layers to what we're doing. It took a while to like to streamline like what to keep in the forefront. Um, so I've been working for on this for about three years, and we finally felt like this was the year we were ready. This is where we launched the hub in January, added the political part of the political candid discovery uh last month. So now we're finally really ready to move forward. But the first three years was about language. How do we say this? That people really understand that we're nonpartisan, that we're neutral, we're the referee, we just want to build a level playing field. So there's like a lot of a lot of that that was the initial challenge that we overcame. And so now it's just that that chicken or the egg thing that we're we're working slowly past in in Nevada.

C. Derick Varn 48:37

Hmm. Well, I I think that uh that is a good penultimate question. I think my final question uh for you is like, what gives you hope that this will be successful since it will undoubtedly have a lot of money to interest against it eventually?

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Yeah. Well, it's really yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's that you know, people desperately want change. People know the system is breaking down. You know, again, more more than ever in modern history, more people are identifying as independent rather than Democrat or Republican. Even the registration numbers are actually starting to reflect that that people are leaving the two parties to be independent. People are ready for change. You know, five years ago, ten years ago, this the people might not have been ready enough. Now they're they're gonna be more open to something different. They just see that the system is just not working, regardless of who's in in office at

Hope, Scale, And How To Join

SPEAKER_01 49:34

the time. So I see that, I see all the polling data. It's like it just what we're building just makes so much ethical and logical sense. And no, no matter where you are on the spectrum, whether you're you're very traditional or you're you're a democrat or you're extreme on any side, like no matter where you stand, what we're building will benefit you. There, there's infrastructure to help you. So if you're a third party, we're building a shared infrastructure that completely plugs you in. If you're a Democrat, we have a way to get past the gatekeepers. You know, every everyone has a way to use this to their own advantage. And, you know, and people can see that. We've seen it in in these in our samples as we talk to thousands of citizens and movements and stuff. Like, we do give people new hope. We we've proven we have people in the movement from like socialists to anarchists and moderate Republican centrists. We have like every every flavor of political person in on board with this. So we just need to scale it up at this stage. So that's that's what gives me hope is just people want change. No one else really has like the like a real solution forward. We're the only ones like building something where we're not gonna shove you in a decision. We're not saying this is how you need to vote on healthcare, this is who you need to vote for. No, we're building an infrastructure that helps you make your own decision, and you know, so it's so different from anything else. It's it's very easy to differentiate ourselves in that sense. So it's all now a matter of scaling it. And that's so that's that's what keeps me hope here, keep keeps me hopeful right now.

C. Derick Varn 51:06

All right. I'd like to thank you for your time. Where can people find your work, Travis, if they're interested in what Fink and the DP Hub are doing?

SPEAKER_01 51:16

Yeah, so for everyone that this resonates with, just go to hub.future is.org. The first thing we want you to do is just add your name. Once you're there, there's a few quick actions you can take, but that's the big first step. Add your name, answer a couple questions if you if you're willing to. They're they're optional. That adds the demand and support that we need uh to get get this really to the next level.

C. Derick Varn 51:38

All right. Thank you so much, and I hope you have a great day. Thank you. Thank you too. Bye bye.