A "People’s Primary"

The fastest way to change Congress might be to stop obsessing over the general election and start fixing the part almost nobody sees clearly: the primary. Jess Vachon sits down with Tom Joseph, founder of Bookminders and a lifelong systems thinker, to talk about Wilson’s Fountain and a provocative idea he calls a “People’s Primary” designed to work in safe red and safe blue districts alike. If you’re tired of partisan heat and want practical election reform, this conversation stays focused on structure, incentives, and results.

Tom explains why gerrymandering turns many House races into foregone conclusions, making low-turnout primaries the real choke point for representation. He walks us through the logic behind a multi-round nominating contest that aims to reduce the power of campaign finance and party whips, using a clear set of issues, easy candidate comparisons, and a process that helps everyday voters participate without needing to become full-time political researchers. We also dig into the bell-curve math behind moderation, why “free and fair elections” matter as a foundation, and how a super PAC could fund the contest without choosing the candidate.

We get practical about what participation could look like, including secure mobile voting, voter verification, and guardrails that prevent out-of-district interference. Tom also shares a concrete roadmap that starts with targeting a limited number of uncompetitive districts and scales toward bigger goals, plus the leadership lessons he brings from decades of remote-first business building.

If you want more accountable candidates, more competition where it counts, and less rage as a governing strategy, hit play. Subscribe to Ripple and Root, share this with a friend who’s politically exhausted, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Links:

https://www.wilsonsfountain.us/

https://www.mainstreetparty.org/

Transcript

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Jess Vachon: 00:32

Hello, welcome back to Ripple and Root, the show about the people who moved something and about the roots underneath the movement. I'm your host, Jess Vachon. My guest today is Tom Joseph. Tom is the founder of Bookminders, a company that pioneered remote first employment about 30 years before the rest of us even thought about it. He's also the founder and treasurer of America's Main Street Party and the producer of Wilson's Fountain, which is his attempt to rebuild away candidates for Congress get nominated in the first place. Before we start, one thing I want to say to you as a listener, this is not a partisan conversation, and I'm not going to let it become one. Tom's project targets safe red districts and safe blue districts in equal number, and that's deliberate. So, whatever you brought with you into this episode, set it down for 40 minutes. I think you'll find the argument more interesting than you expect. Tom, welcome to Ripple and Root.

Tom Joseph: 01:24

Yes, thanks so much for having me on your program. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this new idea.

Jess Vachon: 01:30

Yeah, excited to have you. Let me start with a line you gave us when you filled out the guest form. You said most people assume you're an accountant, but you're actually an engineer. What's the difference, not on a resume, but in how you see problems?

Tom Joseph: 01:45

Well, I look at everything as systems. And I think my approach 30-some years ago, when accountants would pretty much just take bank statements and provide data way after the fact for businesses, is I saw a need to do this on a weekly basis. And I utilized really stay-at-home moms that were accountants to deliver the service. But it was about solving a problem and putting a system in place. And I just couldn't help myself to turn it into a company.

Jess Vachon: 02:16

Can you dive into that a little bit more and tell our audience like what the issue was that you were facing and what your solution was?

Tom Joseph: 02:24

Yeah, it was my this is 1984. My dad and uncle had a small family business. They had it was they were struggling. They let their bookkeeper go. You know, I was saying, hey, a personal computer with accounting software. I mean, this is 1984, this is the Apple II, you know, with accounting software could help them out. But they were too, you know, they're actually my age now, but you know, that that was asking a lot of 60-year-olds to all of a sudden learn how to use a microcomputer. But my sister, you know, jumped in, she had small kids, and we found that the solution we came up with, you know, was really efficient. And I kind of a light bulb went off. You know, somebody working from home could probably do this for five, 10 businesses. I put the idea on the shelf for seven years. I mean, that's how early it was, pre-internet. But in 1991, when I lost my job, I just couldn't think of a better thing to do than to launch this company. And it took a long time to really get it off the ground because it was, you know, really early days of the internet, but stuck with it. And it's a sizable company, though.

Jess Vachon: 03:26

So, as you mentioned, you started on remote work, giving opportunity to workers, non-traditional workers, way before other people did. And then around 2020, the rest of the country, at least the US, caught up. What was it like being right that early and for that long and mostly alone?

Tom Joseph: 03:48

It was lone week. You know, because I was bucking a trend. You know, I remember going into CPA firms, and you know, they'd say something like, Well, it's the wave of the future. And I was like, well, actually, it's the wave of the present, you know. You know, we can do this now. And there's a lot of skepticism about some of the same things I face with the election issue, which is data security, you know, us taking information off-site of our clients. But accountants are really skeptical of the whole thing. But, you know, when you have a big problem, people are open to new ideas and new solutions. And a lot of small businesses had this bookkeeping problem. They couldn't really, you know, muster the right resources to really put a more sophisticated system in than the one they already had. So, we figured out how to scale that and leverage our experience across multiple clients. And we've actually become more of a boutique bookkeeping service. You know, we really specialize. If it's easy, most small businesses can do it themselves. But we specialize in what I would describe the Hudfudge Sunday of bookkeeping. But nonprofit organizations and complex small businesses are kind of our niche.

Jess Vachon: 04:59

Thank you for that

Jess Vachon: 05:00

Answer. And last one last question before we turn the corner and start talking about the political part of the work you do. What did you learn in 30 years of running a company? What did it teach you about people that you couldn't have learned any other way?

Tom Joseph: 05:13

Well, I mean, you really work for your employees. I mean, if you want loyalty, you have to figure out how to make them happy. We are an employee-first company. And, you know, the one thing that we do that probably know a lot of other companies won't do is we fire clients. And if our clients aren't making life easy for our employees, we value them more than we value clients. And it really paid off. I mean, we've been there's a thing in Pittsburgh called top workplaces where they bring in an outside company and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette to evaluate businesses of different sizes. And we finished second, you know, over 100 companies three times and first once. And that's a lot. And it's, you know, it's a completely numerical evaluation, you know, in terms of how they come up with that result. So, it's paid off.

Jess Vachon: 06:04

Yeah. So

Jess Vachon: 06:05

A I sense a pattern there where there's an issue, whether it's your issue or someone else's issue, you look at the problem, you go out and explore solutions, and then you pursue those solutions, which leads us to the fountain. Tell us a little bit about the fountain and why you started this during COVID.

Tom Joseph: 06:25

Yeah, Wilson Fountain actually came. The first idea was, you know, just sitting there, I was faced with knowing March of you know 2020, what is going on. And the PPP funds came available, and I remember sending them in. I kind of made a promise that if I got the money and I survived the COVID physically, financially, that I would do something. But I didn't want to run through office. And I knew kind of if I was gonna make an impact in my lifetime, I couldn't have to change any laws because my 60s. So, and that takes a lot of time. People struggle with that. So, my constraint was like, hey, is there a way to break the system without becoming part of the system? Like do it from the outside. And I wrestled with it for a couple of years, and then I kind of realized it was a I could use the entire system differently. That was really, I stopped thinking about this as being a political party and looked at all the different types of committees that were in our political committee system: super PAC, National Party, local committees, and candidate committees. And how could I restructure how those entities operate with each other to create a new primary system? And that's what Wilson's Fountain is. What happened was I when I didn't even understand that this was a founding principle. I just was about fairness. And I was I realized I had to form another entity to kind of do this research, and I was trying to figure out what to name it. And I Googled and I found this paper. It was only written at that time, two years before I named Wilson's Fountain, but four years ago, a law student out of Syracuse, I think, published something in Albany Law Review, and he found a remote lecture from a founding father James Wilson that described free and equal elections as the original fountain of democracy. And his analogy is that if we poison the well, it spoils the entire system, not just Congress. And you know, I took this to heart and said, hey, is there a way we can build a completely fair system? And it turns out we can. And also, it's not that expensive considering what we spend on elections.

Jess Vachon: 08:35

So, you know, we talk about poisoning the fountain, or you've talked about poisoning the fountain. When do you believe that that happened?

Tom Joseph: 08:47

250 years ago. Okay, elaborate. I mean, I don't think I think they got off to the wrong start. And what happened was Wilson, who was really the only person that believed in this of the founding fathers, was really on truly believed in popular sovereignty. I think the rest of them were just trying to get out of taxes. But he believed the power was in the people, and he would love the system that we came up with. But the whole idea that parties and money and that you know, people, the factions would get behind into elections and getting people elected. That's really where we started to go off course. The technology makes this, you know, more practical, but all we really needed was a sense of fairness. I think we could go back and say this is not a fair system. You know, if you're really, we have constitutions that say that elections ought to be free and equal or free and fair, they're not. Otherwise, people aren't getting re-elected like they are and able to kind of lie and do what they do without any recourse. There's no accountability, so it can't be free and fair.

Jess Vachon: 09:50

Okay,

Jess Vachon: 09:50

And you landed on the primary as the choke point. And why the primary? Why come in at that point in the cycle?

Tom Joseph: 10:00

Interesting. I mean, you really wouldn't. I mean, you really want to fix the general election, but they won't. And my solution really doesn't work in competitive districts or may not work in naturally in competitive districts. But the idea that there's misrepresentation in gerrymandered districts and that that can be exploited is really a math problem. And that was why this particular solution will be really effective in gerrymandered districts, which happens to be almost every district now. So, you know, this could be very disruptive in the sense that, you know, it all goes back to the bell curve. You know, the political thought is ideology falls on a spectrum. And you place a spectrum on a population that forms some form of bell curve. And if money distorts that representation, pushing it further left or right, a free and equal contest that occurs over multiple rounds will yield a candidate at the center of that bell curve. I mean, it's just it's like a if you run people for the hundred-yard dash and you have enough heat, you're gonna merge the fastest person. And that is really the principle behind this is that if a one-shot election favors money, and what happens when you take the money out of it and you have a hundred people competing for a position based on issues, and the district's able to weigh in and pick the person who best matches their district. It's gonna be a pink or baby blue candidate in those gerrymandered districts.

Jess Vachon: 11:31

And you have the numbers to back that up.

Tom Joseph: 11:34

It's math. I mean, it's Gaussian math. I mean, it's I mean, it's it goes way back. And what's interesting is that that probability statistics was really just hitting or being you know, coming to light around the time the Constitution was written. And I think Wilson used these words to be the what he called the true weight. I don't know something about to if everything's fair, you'll get the right weight of representation, meaning that, and I think he had this in mind. He didn't understand the math, but I think he understood that to get somebody who really was the voice of that district, it had to be fair, and it was somebody that was in the center of that spectrum. And but they didn't have the math theory back then. The other thing they didn't have was the word caucus. And the founders talked about factions. The word political party existed back there. They didn't say that Congress needed necessary political parties, they said it needed necessary factions. And they may have been describing caucuses, not political parties. And that's something that you know we have to think about is that do we really need to have division within the public, or do we really just need the division within Congress? So we're trying to design a system that at the end of the day, if you take the money out of it, you'll actually have five or six major caucuses and that they would have the appropriate ability to negotiate legislation through on a piece-by-piece basis versus this super bills, you know, presidents coming in with these massive pieces of legislation that they hope their party will get behind and they win. That's not the way the system was designed.

Jess Vachon: 13:26

Okay. So, for the layperson, we're assuming that that what you've proposed here is the way to at least create a break in the system to balance it out in the long term. Explain to us how this works exactly, because you you've talked about the math, and not all of us are great at math. You've talked about the theory behind it, but how will this work moving forward and how will people participate?

Tom Joseph: 13:55

Great. Great question. I mean, I'm approaching this like a businessperson launching a business, not like a politician launching an ideological third party. But where we are now is we have a demonstration version of this product. It is not nearly complete. We need to raise money to finish the product. But the big thing we have to do in this business analogy is attract a venture capitalist. In this world, that's a super PAC. And that super PAC would really back the concept of taking a bipartisan approach to break the two-party system. And that super PAC, we'd work together, so we've finished the software to identify an equal number of red and blue districts that we would go after that are now uncompetitive gerrymandered districts. You know, places where statistically we think we can be successful. So, we're not typically third parties or parties look for wealthy people who can fund their own campaigns and don't really think about the numbers in the districts. We're gonna really look and say, hey, there's 430-some districts out there. Let's pick 10 red, 10 blue, or 20 red, 20 blue, and take a shot at doing this. And assuming now that you live just in one of these districts in advance of the primary, and let's say this is 2028. So, it would be 2027. Late in that year, we'd say, hey, this alternate primary system, a people's primary, is coming to your district. You know, learn about it, download the app. You know, if you want to run for Congress, here's how you do it. You go to the portal, you fill this out, you get 100 people to endorse you. You, you know, you have to make the same disclosures you would have if you win, you know, if you go to so it's not gonna be super easy to enter, but it's gonna be way easier to enter than it is now. I mean, it's really restricted now to the 0.1% of people running, and but it would open it up. And the other opportunity for citizens of the district would be on the local nominating committee to actually help be the like Olympic committee to make sure that this contest occurs fairly. We want the responsibility to be out in the district. So, the national party is providing the tech, the super PAC is providing the prize money for the winner, and they're also providing public service announcements to remind people what their duty is to participate. So, the contest launches, let's say there's a hundred prospective nominees in the field. The can't the constituents will be getting advertisements from the super PAC telling them not for candidates, but to for the contest to say, hey, here's a brand-new way to choose a representative, weigh in on the things that are important. There's seven issues. If you bring the app up, you would see that there's two national, three, I'm sorry, two global, three national, two local issues that the local committees put on the ballot for the constituents to weigh in on. So, to enter the contest, the candidates have to have to answer those seven questions left, right, center, or yes, no. And so, it gives without the constituents have to do a ton of research. They could go in and answer three or four of those questions. The system returns, say, hey, these 20 candidates match your values. Endorse them all. You don't even look at them at this point. You're still way better off than the candidate you have. See who makes the top 20. You know, make this kind of like American Idol. There's profiles, bios, you know, ads that are within the system. You can see this now. I mean, we have a mock version of this with it's a PA1 and PA2. One's a blue district, one's a red district, where you can go in and see. And we have it weighted that the conservative district will be primarily conservative candidates, and the blue district would be primarily liberal candidates. But you by picking issues, you can elevate and you can see that a liberal person in a conservative district would be able to push the more moderate candidate. They'll have a voice. They won't be able to get a liberal, but they might be able to get a pink candidate and disrupt the other party. And there's so much hatred towards the other parties. You can see that one of our approaches would be hey, let's get the people who are voiceless off the bench and have them weigh in. You know, that they won't, again, they won't get a Democrat in a red district, but they'll get maybe a less conservative pink representative and make the system more fair. And if we can equal the turnout in our alternate primary to what comes after the public primary, which is only about 100,000 people, and we're going to do this targeted, I think our person can come in as a favorite because you say, hey, this person survived a gauntlet, you know, and they were chosen by you, and they're running now against the, you know, the lackey for the party who is always putting party before you.

Jess Vachon: 18:47

Because if we look 25, 30 years ago, you had more of those middle of the road candidates that would move some things forward. And the thinking at that time, and I think both parties agreed about this, is that you know, it's better to make some progress than no progress. Is that some of the thinking that you have on this?

Tom Joseph: 19:08

Yes. And that, you know, decades ago, politicians still relied on their local money to win their elections. Now they rely on the support of their party whips. So, you know, we don't really lose our vote on election day. We lose our vote when the party big legislation comes up and party whips say, hey, you vote the way party leadership wants to, you're not getting your primary money. And that's where the system is broken. You know, so what we go through on election day is kind of the motion. You know, what really happens in Congress is dictated by a very small percentage of people that donate a lot of money. It's like 0.01% of the population's that's making these decisions. It should be us.

Jess Vachon: 19:50

So why not go after the rulings that said that you could have the super PAC money come in or have these single individuals come in or corporations come in and sway directions in in their favor? Why not why not attack it at that level?

Tom Joseph: 20:06

They've been at it for a decade. You know, we can do this now for a little bit of money. So, I'm there like, hey, while there's a super PAC available, let's take advantage of it. And yeah, I've written the line that a politician would have thought it was a good idea to place in the system something with infinite power, but an engineer would have advised you otherwise because we can use that tool and turn it on their heads. And you know, and for a little bit of money, I mean a little bit of political money, like a hundred million dollars. I think we could disrupt 40 districts. And you know, maybe we don't get 40 out of 40, but you know, if you run 20 red, 20 blue, I think we'd get half, maybe more.

unknown: 20:42

Right.

Jess Vachon: 20:43

And that's just at this point.

Tom Joseph: 20:44

That's just enough attention to get it. Yeah, I can't. Yeah, not only that, the election of the speaker of the house moves in the main chamber. As soon as you get enough people that aren't part of either party that they can't elect, you know, basically agree on the speaker outside the chamber, they have to move it inside. It means that they're it moderates the speaker. There's no way that the whole chamber would agree on a party leader, it'd be somebody from a swing district. It that's the way it's supposed to run. And that really would make that would that be historic. And it's really cheap compared to what they're doing to overturn Citizens United.

Jess Vachon: 21:22

They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars and they're not getting anywhere very fast. Because maybe they don't want to get anywhere very fast. Gridlock works for them.

Tom Joseph: 21:33

Well, the hey, if the politicians wanted to overturn Citizens United, it'd be overturned. I mean, if the Democrat and Republican Party were behind this, they love it. They love Citizens United. You know, it's really the people that hate it.

Jess Vachon: 21:48

So how are you going to keep the super PAC, for lack of a better term, clean? How are you gonna make sure that there's not an undue influence from those that are funding the super PAC?

Tom Joseph: 22:01

Well, think of it. This is interesting. When I came up with this idea, the very first question came with the attorneys. What if somebody comes in? What's influenced? I said, Well, what number one, they don't deback a candidate until the people choose. So, they have no weight in picking the candidate. The other thing is that if somebody's like a big oil person, they put money in the super pack, well, it's being spread across 20 red, 20 blue, or 10. So if you have a partisan interest, this is a dumb super pack to put your money in. So that's, you know, and as soon as they, you know, we went through this, the attorneys are like, wow, the only real way to beat this is to either ungerrymander the districts or get rid of super PACs. I go; I take either. But they won't. I mean, I to me, I think they won't. I mean, I think, and also the reason Supreme Court ruling means that if they got rid of super PACs, if the money's donated directly to the party, we could effectively do the same thing that we could back the candidates. So, they're making it so the parties can more directly name candidates. Right now, the Democratic National Committee can only spend so much money saying the name Kamala Harris. And same thing with the Republic. You know, they can't, they're restricted. Other than that, it's get out the vote. And now they're bringing down those barriers. That's why get out the vote is what they do, because they can't name the candidates that they that are on the ballot. That's my problem. I can't, I can't, I don't have money in the party to advertise the party, and I can't spend money privately to advertise for the party. So, like anything, if you go to Wilson's Fountain, it never mentions the party, it'd be illegal. And so, if I do anything under Wilson's Fountain, I don't mention the party. Like people have to kind of figure it out.

Jess Vachon: 23:53

So, you have candidates that are selected by the electorate in the primary. You go a couple rounds; I assume you get down to one candidate who's going to be represented. What does the funding and support look like at that point? Does it just stop after the primary or does it continue?

Tom Joseph: 24:13

No, so what happens is that, and we're working with a couple election law firms, that the nominating committee is a local committee, and it won't need require funding to operate. And we envision, you know, once we're in a district, that we would this would almost be like a permanent operation. But there is the possibility that that there's something in the federal election regulations called a test the waters committee, that this committee can roll into the candidate committee and actually be the fun initial funding for the candidate. But in the structure, we've designed, the local committee, the treasurer, is somebody will be the treasurer of the candidate committee, and they'll either spend that money down or return it to the local committee. That the candidates are not allowed to accumulate a war chest, and they're not allowed to donate more money than any other citizen. Right now, if you run from office and you're a rich person, you can put unlimited funds into your own campaign. Even though that might favor our candidate, we think that's a bad rule. And so, we're kind of implementing in our system all the rules we think ought to exist in the election system and make it fair. Because I think at the end of the day, it's going to benefit you by having better candidates. That, you know, people that aren't just about being rich, you know, and it's supposed to be government of the people, by the people, for the people. You know, why don't we do that? And I think one of the ways you do that is that we're going to make a rule, just say that, hey, I don't care if you could put 10 million in, you're only allowed to put 2,700 in. That's the same as your neighbor. And that this is the way the system ought to work. And if you want to be part of the system where you buy office, there's two parties that love that. Go join them.

Jess Vachon: 25:52

You chose 20 and 20. That seems like an interesting number to pick. 20 solidly red districts and 20 solidly blue districts. Why, why not 30 or 10 or some other number?

Tom Joseph: 26:05

Attrition. So, you know, I have to assume that there's going to be attrition that occurs through this, that of the districts we pick, some of the districts aren't going to buy in. And one of the options we're going to give the super PAC is that if the primary is a flop and you don't get public support, the super PAC can pull out. You know, that the public is going to be on the hook to support the primary. Let's say they reject it and know it, say that, sorry, you know, you have to earn the super PAC support. So that is attrition there. And the fact that, you know, some candidates, like what we've seen, don't turn out to be the person that we thought they were. I think at least in this system, we can say, hey, the second-place person is going to be pretty close to the first-place person. So, we could just sub them in. And but we do expect that there's going to be things that come out about candidates that didn't come out during our system. So, some attrition there. But we want to make sure that the end of the day that we've got, you know, enough people that in one shot we disrupt the house. I want to make sure that as that people look and say, hey, if I donate 10 bucks to this, these guys have a shot because they're doing 20 and 20 or 10 and 10, something where it's sufficient. Right now, the numbers are so close, maybe you could do 10 and 10. But initially I just thought with attrition, success rate, if you want to get down to winning five to 10 on each side, you know, you got to start with 20.

Jess Vachon: 27:29

Okay. So is my understanding a lot of this has been built out by college students. I think some of the colleges were Penn, Drexel, Temple, Haverford, Swarthmore. And you're putting this intellectual property into the public domain. Tell me about both those decisions to work with college students and to put the IP in the public domain.

Tom Joseph: 27:48

Well, one, you know, I've made my money. So, I'm not this was really a pay it forward initiative for me. So, I knew anything I was doing for this. Number one, I thought it'd have a lot more credibility, too. If this was not something that, you know, everything in the political committee belongs to the public, and everything I'm doing at Wilson's Fountains for a public domain. But the reason I picked college students is, frankly, they're the only ones who worked with me. You know, the graduate students didn't even want to work with me. Nobody, I couldn't, I two years once our election law firm figured out what I was up to, they conflicted me out. It took me two years to find an election law firm that really wasn't so tied to either party or both parties that they would work with me. It was like finding a unicorn. But the college students were affordable, smart, and not painted to think that this was gonna fail. You know, so I wanted people that are so green that they didn't realize we were tempting the impossible.

Jess Vachon: 28:50

Was there anything you learned from the students from having them in this exercise that you didn't expect?

Tom Joseph: 28:56

Oh my God, everything. I mean, they delivered so much more. The Chauncey, who may have contacted you to set this up, has been working on this for a couple of years and you know, came up with a brilliant design. He's it's funny because he's not a software guy, but you know, took his political science knowledge and came up with a really clever way for us to allow the public to kind of find these candidates quickly. His issue matching system is really, but there's a bunch of different ways that people can find candidates through the system. But the fact that they there was so much that he knew and other people on the project knew that educated me, that was that was a great learning

Tom Joseph: 29:35

Experience.

Jess Vachon: 29:37

So, something that's not clear to me is this are you creating a third party? Is or is it just a pathway to one of the two existing parties? And if it's a third party, you know, the country's had a history of a third party splitting the vote. Can you address that?

Tom Joseph: 29:54

Well, like I said, it's it is a 527 committee, is the predecessor for a national party for us to qualify as a national party. There are certain things that we have to do that we can do under the context of being a software company. You're supposed to have a national convention, ours would be like a user’s group meeting, you know. So, we think we can qualify as a national party. And once we do, we would be able to put people right on the ballot. That's the advantage. Once somebody wins this contest, we have to go out and actually get signatures to get them on the general election ballot as an independent. They wouldn't be under our brand until we qualify as a national party. But the splitting of the vote actually is something that occurs in swing districts. You know, we're only going into districts where we can't be a spoiler. So, we're looking at districts where the winner is consistently winning with at least two-thirds, like 70 to 80 percent of the vote. So, there's enough opposition votes there, like 20 to 30 percent that they're worth going after, but not so much that they have a shot at putting a candidate up. You split 70 and a half, you still get 35, and then the other party only has 30 percent. So, you know, we're looking at again, this is a math thing. There's so many districts out there to pick from, and a lot of them have been gerrymandered in this very specific way that there's gonna be a lot to pick from.

Jess Vachon: 31:17

Is this potentially an electoral college play? I mean, if we look farther down, so if you have just enough votes that you're shifting a gerrymandered district, then you have the potential right to change the electoral college vote if we're talking presidential.

Tom Joseph: 31:35

Yeah, I that's a whole nother conversation. I actually believe we have not implemented the electoral college the way that James Wilson designed. The language of in the describes the House would represent as the exact same language that describes the Electoral College, meaning he believed that each elector shouldn't be tied to the state results. I mean, it's not popular sovereignty in terms of the way he defines it. So, I think he'd be a little appalled to see how we've implemented the electoral college. And if you get back to doing it the way, there probably were a number of elections that it looked like the electoral college may have come out the other way if it was done the way he had designed. The other thing is that he thought that the Senate would should be proportional. So, the fact that the Senate's not proportional kind of skews the Electoral College to say that, you know, in a situation like in 2000 and 2016, the Republicans won the House and they won 30 governorships. So, the fact that maybe that's if it's really close, maybe that should be the tiebreaker. I, you know, as much as I didn't like those results, yeah, is that better than when there's three or four candidates, somebody with 34% of the vote who's extreme, winning over, you know, maybe equally moderate candidates that split the rest of the nation's vote. So, you got you know, two-thirds of the nation that's really moderate, but they just happen to split their vote across, you know, these three candidates, and then you have this extreme person who had not even close to the majority of the vote. So, we're we only think about this two-party mindset, but the founders were thinking about what happens in these situations. And the Electoral College is really designed to resolve that. And that's what happened the first time Jackson lost. He said it was a corrupt bargain. Wilson would have said that's the system working the

Tom Joseph: 33:20

Way it should.

Jess Vachon: 33:22

That's a good point. So, this is based upon participation of people in these districts coming out. You're asking them a lot of people who don't vote to show up. You're asking them to use technology where some people are technology averse. You know, if you look at the older generation, some of them are adopting technology, but some prefer the old way of voting. How are you going to adapt this for that full spectrum of voters and encourage voters or people who don't vote to actually participate? Well, let me flip it.

Tom Joseph: 34:14

And so, yes, will this system not be conducive to a part of the population that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller? Yeah. And you know what? They'll be able to come to kiosk or locations. But if we can connect with the people who are technology sophisticated and target, like said, a district and market them and get them excited about it like a new product, I think we can outdraw the primary. So, we don't have to meet general election numbers, we just have to meet primary numbers, which are getting worse and worse. So, from that standpoint, it's really all about perception. You know, that if we can say, hey, this our person won, our primary, if we had 110,000 constituents participating, and that person won the and they had 90,000. You know, we have a shot. This is a real candid. And I think the current system, if somebody goes into that primary who's an independent or new person, they got to bring down the incumbent in one shot and they have no street cred. You know, this will give them street cred in the district that they survived this contest.

Jess Vachon: 35:24

So, I want to flip this question. I targeted the groups that might not be technologically savvy. Now you have some groups that are technologically savvy. How are you gonna keep this from being gamed or flooded with people who don't live in the district?

Tom Joseph: 35:40

Well, they won't be able to get in. It's a private contest. So, you have to match. We're we've been working with a couple organizations. One digital democracy project has implemented technology called Votes, and we've worked with Ramon to make sure our app will adapt to votes. Votes is a secure mobile voting platform that's actually used in in the military for people who are, and it's being it's being used more and more, but it basically ties you, it turns your mobile device into a ballot box. It ties your ID to a voter record that makes sure you're a citizen in the district that you can only vote once. And it's this has been used since 2018. So, it's eight years mature. I mean, people aren't aware of how far we've come with secure mobile voting technology. And it's being used in other countries, and we're just not taking advantage of it here. We're not here enough.

Jess Vachon: 36:37

Why do you think that is?

Tom Joseph: 36:41

I think that there's pushback from the establishment because the more people that participate, the weaker the two-party system gets. And I think that they're always pushing back on these reforms because they the more people participate, the easier it is to kind of remove people that will serve the people. I mean, they like the system the way it is now because the primaries are uncompetitive, people don't turn out. If you have, you're an incumbent and you have money, you're likely gonna win the primary. And if you're in a gerrymander district, there's no contest in the general election. So, you win this really small contest and you win a hugely important seat.

Jess Vachon: 37:27

So as you've been pursuing this project, what's the most serious objective objection you've gotten? And did it make you go back and change anything?

Tom Joseph: 37:39

Number one, there's like two audiences here. There's really audience where I'd say that people that have podcasts are regular people, you know, not people that are tied to the political ecosystem. And I get very little objections here, at least ones that I can't easily defend. Like people, the security thing comes up a lot, but people just aren't aware of how far we've come with that. And basically I'm saying that, hey, we're gonna implement something that's probably even more secure than what you have at the state in your local municipality. A lot of these devices are more than 10 years old. I think some of the original issues that people had about being concerned about the internet might have been valid 20 years ago. But now people are Venmoing and MGM gambling and you know doing all these things, banking, you know, and two-factor on that. This is, I think we're gonna find in most of these districts, you got at least 100,000 people that can manage this technology. I think way more.

Jess Vachon: 38:41

Let's assume that this is successful when it's launched. You get through the first year of doing this. What do you see as the evolution of it? What does it look like in the second or third go-around? And you know, this is probably going to be a long, long road. What would you hope 20, 30 years down the road, that that people look back and comment about this effort? What do you hope they'll say? And what do you what do you what do you hope that the nation will be using as an election system?

Tom Joseph: 39:15

I have a six-year plan. In 2028, like I said, 20 red, 20 blue, that we basically disrupt the house. In 2030, that we were in those districts and more, and that now we're looking at the Senate and being in enough and probably have to go over to small state because the larger state, the big it is. But small state, since it's about capturing market share, you know, we could, it's just easier to capture market share in a smaller state. But basically being competitive in the Senate. And by 2032, do we have enough people that download it, have access and excitement for the app that we can have a national nominating contest for president that has nothing to do with money? That if everybody weigh in on the same days, you know, California, New Hampshire, Iowa, you know, that that we eliminate on a national level and will feel down to a top candidate in a moneyless nominating contest. And they'll go up, they won't that'd be a serious, you know, competitor if they went through a national primary that played out over like a World Cup for a nominee.

Jess Vachon: 40:26

So I think I heard a little element of this in what you said as well. Do you see the primary process shrinking, becoming faster and quicker, and moving us to the to the candidates much faster? And what are the benefits of doing that?

Tom Joseph: 40:42

Well, think about that. You know, you had Lindsay Graham just died. You know, we could run a little special election, multiple rounds, do it quick. But you know, the pe it people will pick. It won't be somebody saying, hey, I think it ought to be Lindsay's sister. I mean, you know, this is ridiculous. The founders hated inherited power. This idea that just because you have a name that you get re-elected, or you have money that you get re-elected, that they thought was just awful. And so that's why they didn't have a House of Lords. They wanted a Senate.

Jess Vachon: 41:17

So, you're obviously someone who doesn't look at things as being impossible. Where did you get that from? What well do you draw from that sustains you on those challenging days?

Tom Joseph: 41:28

Well, I mean, starting bookminders, you know, that seemed impossible. I'd launched helped launch a charter school, not just a charter school, a multi-unit charter school. And the Pennsylvania charter school law is designed not to, they more or less said that you have to have a separate board for every school that you have. So, we came with this idea, well, you know, if we want to have eight schools, we're gonna have to have identical boards and have a simultaneous board meeting. It turned out it's legal. So, we actually, you know, even though we have like at eight entities, we managed it like it was one entity at one board meeting and published eight minutes. But it's just kind of a clever way to get around the law. So, I think that I'm looking at this like, hey, technology disrupts markets every day. And if I try to launch this as a third party, it's an impossible task. But if this is an insurgent technology disrupting the market, this happens every day.

Jess Vachon: 42:20

All right. And last question. If this works in 10 years, someone's in Congress because of the process that you helped build. What thing do you hope is different about that person?

Tom Joseph: 42:32

I hope that the whole system is different, that the rancor goes away, that we that this works as you know, a civil organization is supposed to work. What we have now is just a pathway to civil war. And, you know, to me, having a person won't change it. I mean, having, like I said, a different system where there's balance is really what I'm about. I tell people I'm not a conservative or a liberal, I'm a Libra.

Jess Vachon: 43:06

Well, thank you for joining me today. Tom, where should people go to learn about this project and also to actually participate to help do something?

Tom Joseph: 43:15

Yeah. Mainstreetparty.org. I mean, the thing that we want is, you know, money is helpful, but traction is more important. Spreading the word, you know, getting on more shows like this is fantastic because that there's a obviously a ripple effect, and that's what we want.

Jess Vachon: 43:30

Tom, thank you so much. This has been super informative for me. I feel like I have a better understanding of the project and how to participate. I'm sure others who listen to this will feel the same way. I would encourage everyone to go out and participate. That's what this show is all about, and that's why we feature leaders such as Tom, people who are out there making changes in the world that we live in. Links to everything that Tom mentioned will be in the show notes. If this episode gave you something to ponder, please like the podcast and share it with others. I'm Jess Fashion thanking you for listening. Until next time, bye everyone.