Innovating American Politics Panel Reimagines Democracy for Digital Era
What if the United States could innovate its way to a democracy that better serves the people, and what would our nation look like if we built it from scratch in the digital age? As the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle kicks off in earnest with Super Tuesday, those questions inspired a panel discussion hosted at Brooklyn Law School Monday evening featuring four guest speakers who have observed the nation’s polarized politics and frequent bouts of Congressional dysfunction, in some cases at close range.
Jerome Grazioli ’19, a senior associate in private asset trading operations at J.P. Morgan, moderated the discussion. “Our objective tonight is to discuss how to innovate the American political system, create space for a healthier and more productive form of politics in this country, and offer the younger people who are just beginning to form their own political philosophies a better framework through which to view and talk about politics,” Grazioli said.
The speakers, who brought a range of entrepreneurial and public policy experience, included: Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital and a former White House communications director under former president Donald Trump; entrepreneur Andrew Yang, a former presidential and New York City mayoral candidate who founded the Forward Party; Charles Wheelan, a public policy professor at Dartmouth College, former Congressional candidate in Illinois’ 5th District, and author of The Centrist Manifesto; and Beth Simone Noveck, professor of experimental artificial intelligence and director of the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, and a former U.S. deputy chief technology officer under former president Barack Obama.
Changing the Game of Politics
Yang and Scaramucci focused on how to address political issues such as gerrymandering, the limitations of the two-party political system, and lawmakers’ drive to stay in power, no matter what, which they say has corrupted the governing process and led to fewer options for voters.
Starting out with statistics, Yang pointed out that U.S. Congress members’ approval ratings fluctuate between 15 and 22 percent, yet the re-election rate for incumbent members of Congress is 94 percent. “I speak to business audiences all the time and I say, ‘How would your customers feel if four to five of them were unhappy or frustrated, and you change absolutely nothing?’” Yang said. “That's the way most Americans feel about our political system most of the time.”
The rare incumbents voted out in recent history were the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after Jan. 6. “So, if you’re a current member of Congress, the only way you can lose is if you run afoul of your party's base, the most extreme eight to 10 percent of voters,” he said.
He and Scaramucci also pointed out the problems caused by gerrymandering, with Yang saying that 90 percent of the congressional districts in this country have been “drawn to be either blue or red and are not competitive. In general, there is no suspense as to who’s going to win a general election.”
Meanwhile, neither party is incentivized to change that system, Yang added. A bright spot is an initiative launched by co-panelist Wheelan called Unite America which invests in nonpartisan election reform and which led to changes in Alaska. There, traditional primaries, which left out Independent voters, have been replaced by all-party primaries that allow anyone to vote for any member of any party, and to do so using rank-choice voting. That system facilitated the ability of U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola to be elected to Congress, defeating the better-known former gubernatorial candidate, Republican Sarah Palin, Yang said.
Similarly, Yang founded the political party the Forward Party, which a growing number of political officials have joined, presenting themselves as there to serve, not beholden to the two-party system. One of the things the party does is focus on smaller local races and use the “reverse coattail” effect to get people who are interested in local issues to pull the lever in presidential elections, he said.
Scaramucci, who once described America as a “disruptive start-up,” said he still thinks it is, but the government and lawmakers work against innovation.
“We have this great innovation, and a great start-up mentality in the country, from a business and academic perspective,” he said, “and we have this sort of solidification of the country, in government. There are ways to fix it. I mean, some of Charlie [Wheelan]'s ways or perhaps all of Andrew [Yang]’s ways. But the people in power actually don't want to fix it because then they would have to leave power and they really don’t want that.”
He also pointed out that both Trump, who he does not support in the upcoming election, and former president Barack Obama succeeded in winning the presidency because they were innovative in finding blocs of voters who felt they were not being heard. Those blocs remain out there.
“The most powerful voting bloc in the country is 144 million strong, they vote the exact same way in every election. It's the non-voter,” Scaramucci said. “So, we'd have to get politicians to go after the non-voter and say, ‘Listen, I know you're cynical, the duopoly has been designed to make you cynical. Let's bring you back into the swimming pool with ideas that matter to you and your family.’”
As for Trump, Scaramucci said he does not believe his former boss, who famously fired him after about two weeks, can win in 2024.
“The demography has changed dramatically and so we get an echo chamber, from our confirm biases, that we think that he's going to win because the people around us think that he's going to win, but the country's a very different, different country today,” he said. He added that the strong economy is working against Trump.
Governing Better and the Threats and Opportunities of AI
The two professors on the panel discussed how technology and innovation could help people work better together. Wheelan said that the big problem with U.S. politics is the “tribalism” and an unwillingness to work across the aisle because lawmakers feel, “I can’t do anything that might be a win for you.” When trying to describe the process of governing to his students, he uses the analogy of a group of people with different dietary objectives, including meat lovers, vegetarians, and lactose-intolerant people, who must order a single large pizza and compromise, or they can’t eat.
“We need to get better at making communal decisions. And innovation is anything that allows us to do that more effectively to get what more people want, and to deal with the problems like AI that are, if not existential, potentially existential,” Wheelan said.
In response, Noveck agreed that artificial intelligence could be a threat to elections, such as with “deep fakes” or AI images that depict fake events and added that AI will need to be regulated. But she sees the technology as having a greater potential to do good by helping to make elections secure, and by allowing government to corral and synthesize large amounts of information or feedback on voter issues.
“AI can help us better authenticate voters before they go to the polls, as it's doing in India,” she said. “AI can also help create, very cheaply and easily, educational videos, training videos, and other materials that can make it cheaper to run for office.”
Noveck, who is the state of New Jersey’s chief AI strategist, said the state was one of the first to utilize AI to serve residents. “When we deliver a digital service, we do it with citizens, not just for them, and we ask people how we can do a better job,” Noveck said. “And when they write back to us, we use AI to help us listen to what they're telling us so that we can synthesize the thousands of comments that we're taking in.”
In Brazil, AI is used to engage the public to make decisions on behalf of the legislature, while in Belgium, a standing panel of citizens sits next to professional politicians, “day in and day out” through AI, Noveck said.
The discussion, which concluded with a cocktail reception, was sponsored by Brooklyn Law School’s Legal Hackers, the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE), the American Constitution Society (ACS), and Antitrust and Competition Law Association (ACLA). Faculty speakers included Professor of Clinical Law Jonathan Askin, founder/director of the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic (BLIP) and CUBE, and President and Joseph Crea Dean David D. Meyer, who kicked off the event by welcoming the panelists and audience to the Law School.
To view the photos from the event click here.