EPISODE NOTES

In this seventh and final episode in the series, we’re focusing on government. 

A New York Times investigation found that elected officials in state and federal offices have been subject to thousands of violent threats over the past two years. That includes 70 of the nation’s 100 senators, and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives. Threats target Democrats and Republicans alike. Candidates are spending millions on security. 

And there have been actual acts of violence too: For instance, Minnesota House speaker, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark were assassinated in June 2025, and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s house was firebombed. 

There are plenty of other indicators that the system of American democracy is under dire threat. But our guest, Lindsey Cormack has hope, and brings some much-needed historical and empirical perspective. 

Lindsay Cormack is an associate professor of political science at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. She’s also the co-host of a new podcast called Government that Doesn’t Suck, which dives deep into government projects and legislation that changed American history for the better. And she’s the author of the book How to Raise a Citizen, (And Why it’s Up to You to do it).

Cormack is the founder and manager of DC Inbox, a searchable database of all the email newsletters sent from every member of Congress, going back to 2010. And she shares data and insights from her analysis of those emails on her Substack, DC Inbox Insights. 

More resources from Lindsey Cormack:

Same Country, Different Dangers When Republicans and Democrats talk about public safety they mean different things, DC Inbox Insights, Oct 2026

More Chances, Fewer Problems? Revisiting Ranked Choice Voting Errors in New York City, American Politics Research, May 2026

Extremity in Congress: Communications versus Votes, Legislative Studies Quarterly, May 2016

Follow her on Instagram @howtoraiseacitizen

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Lindsey Cormack: I get the sense that people are like, "Polarization is as bad as it's ever been." But I don't think historically we have, like, a ton of good evidence to say this other than the sort of effective polarization where we can characterize someone as, "You're evil and stupid because you have a different partisanship than me."

When we think about what polarization meant in the past, it sometimes meant duels. It sometimes meant civil war. We have had really fractious moments in [00:00:30] American democracy, and I think the thing that the democratic sorta solution offers is a way to metabolize and process disagreement before it becomes violence.

[00:00:42] Jamil Simon: This is Beyond Polarization, a special series from Making Peace Visible about what extreme division is costing the United States and what we can do about it. I'm your host, Jamil Simon. Before we get into the episode, I want to tell you about a live virtual [00:01:00] event we're holding in connection with this series, and everyone is invited to join us.

We're calling it Polarization: The Midterms and What Comes Next, and it's happening at 7:00 PM Eastern Time on October 27th. We hope you'll join us to process some of what we've gathered about the forces driving polarization here in the United States, and some of the lessons we've learned from our knowledgeable experts about how to build bridges across the divide in journalism, social media, [00:01:30] in college classrooms, in our communities and governments.

This isn't a lecture or a talk. It's an opportunity for conversation and reflection. You also don't have to have listened to the whole series to participate. We'll have a few questions to discuss, but we're keeping it pretty informal, so please join us. It'll be interesting. Please sign up using the link in the show notes, and feel free to submit your own questions to discuss as well[00:02:00]

In this seventh and final episode in the series, we're focusing on government at a variety of levels. A New York Times investigation found that elected officials in state and federal offices have been subject to thousands of violent threats over the past two years. That includes 70 of the nation's 100 senators and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives.

Threats target Democrats and Republicans alike. Candidates [00:02:30] are forced to spend millions on security, and there have been actual acts of violence, too. For instance, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were assassinated in June 2025, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's house was firebombed.

There are plenty of other indicators that the system of American democracy is under dire threat, but our guest, whose voice you just heard, is hopeful. Lindsey [00:03:00] Cormack is an associate professor of political science at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. She's also the co-host of a new podcast called Government That Doesn't Suck, where she dives deeply into government projects and legislation that changed American history for the better.

And she's the author of the book How to Raise a Citizen: And Why It's Up to You to Do It. Lindsey also has a special interest in how our elected representatives communicate with the public. She [00:03:30] manages DC Inbox, a searchable database of all the email newsletters sent from every member of Congress going back to 2010, and she shares data and insights from her analysis of those emails on her Substack, DC Inbox Insights.

[00:03:47] Lindsey Cormack: Here's my conversation with Lindsey Cormack.

[00:03:51] Jamil Simon: Lindsey, something that's really refreshing about your attitude towards government in America today on your podcast, Government That Doesn't [00:04:00] Suck, is your positivity. Can you start by explaining the attitude you take when talking about government on your podcast or to your students?

[00:04:08] Lindsey Cormack: Well, here's how I think about it. If we have to live here for the rest of our lives, we might as well make it as nice, as fun, as enjoyable as possible. And with the recognition that government is inevitable, politics is gonna happen to all of us, we might as well learn a little bit more so that that ride feels good.

And I just wanna tell my students, they oftentimes think of [00:04:30] themselves as outside of politics. They're mostly engineers or business people. I'm like, "No, no, no. This is gonna touch every piece of your life, and it's just better if you know a little more." And they usually come with me on that journey.

[00:04:41] Jamil Simon: And do they enjoy it?

[00:04:43] Lindsey Cormack: At first, no. I mean, a lot of engineering students think of themselves as like, "We are in a meritocracy. Only the best engineers get ahead." And I'm like, "Wait a second. What if you're a civil engineer and you gotta talk with two cities about building a bridge, or you're gonna have a new invention and liability around it?"

It's [00:05:00] like, no, no, no, it's not just a meritocracy. And even if it was, so many of my students go into computer science and related disciplines. I tell them, "These things change the way our politics happen, and so you owe it to us to understand the system a little bit before you go ahead and change all the world."

[00:05:16] Jamil Simon: I would definitely say we're seeing that right now. Maybe I've just become cynical after the last few years of this administration, but how hard is it these days to find examples of good government?

[00:05:28] Lindsey Cormack: So I often say to [00:05:30] people, if you can't look up for it, look around. Because I know that every time I visit a city or a state that I haven't been to, there is someone, some local leader who is doing something worthy.

It might not be the thing that I find to be the most important or you find to be the most pressing, but there are people who are trying hard all around this country, and I think that's one of the successes of America is, like, we are a good and worthwhile country to be in because we are a self-righting people.

Like, when stuff doesn't work, we look around and say, "I guess we'll go ahead and fix this." And so I [00:06:00] think you can find that even if you can't always look up to Congress to see it.

[00:06:03] Jamil Simon: Yeah, well, we may be in a self-righting moment right now. So what's, what's your favorite story so far that you've covered in Government That Doesn't Suck?

Are there lessons there for today's politics?

[00:06:14] Lindsey Cormack: I think there's a lot. One of my favorite episodes that we did was about the commercialization of space, where it was this discussion about how NASA can only do so much with budgets that are actually really small compared to a ton of the other things that we spend money on, and how perhaps the [00:06:30] best way moving forward is this sort of collaboration that has some government-funded efforts and some private industry who's going to pay for some of the extremely high costs.

But I also really liked thinking about one that was, like, a little bit wonky, a little bit in the weeds, but this Pendleton Civil Service Act. Because I, I like thinking about a government that doesn't suck is not just the politicians that are elected to it, but it's also the expertise that can be insulated from politics in doing the harder, more complicated functions.

And so I [00:07:00] think it's sometimes harder for people to kind of imagine what the history of was like before you had just, you know, I'm gonna hand out the postmaster general to whoever my best friend is, or whoever's nephew needs a job is gonna get this new thing in my administration. You've kissed the ring, and this is, you know, the team that you're gonna play on.

But we do better with competent public servants, and I, and I think that was an episode that I really liked, too.

[00:07:20] Jamil Simon: Do you think America is at a crisis point? I mean, a lot of people on both sides do.

[00:07:26] Lindsey Cormack: I think it's hard to say because I get the [00:07:30] sense that people are like, "Polarization is as bad as it's ever been."

But I don't think historically we have like a ton of good evidence to say this other than the sort of effective polarization where we can characterize someone as you're evil and stupid because you have a different partisanship than me. And the reason that I say this is when we think about what polarization meant in the past, it sometimes meant duels.

It sometimes meant civil war. And so we have had really fractious moments in American democracy. And I [00:08:00] think the thing that the democratic sort of solution offers is a way to metabolize and process disagreement before it becomes violence. And so I am hopeful that we are going to do that same thing even though it might feel really heightened right now.

I am hopeful that we don't devolve into physical violence, which is kind of the solution we had to do in the past when things got too heavy. So I, I don't think that's the moment that's coming for us.

[00:08:24] Jamil Simon: I'm delighted to hear your optimism as, as a political scientist, 'cause I sure [00:08:30] hope you're right. What do you think are the biggest challenges our democracy faces right now?

I mean, just give us your top three. I'm asking because we're very concerned about polarization, political violence, and dehumanizing rhetoric, and that's why we launched this series, but you may see bigger problems.

[00:08:47] Lindsey Cormack: I see three that are actually probably related to that. The first one that I see is this notion of a zero-sum politics where the person who disagrees with you is not a worthy opponent, they are an enemy.

And the way that I talk about this in class is [00:09:00] a lot of the politics or the communications around it feel like it's like, "I have to crush these people," or, "They're gonna crush me and my whole way of life is gonna be gone." And that sort of strategy of politicking is sort of like, I'm gonna have, like, iron that crushes tinfoil, and I think about it more as, like, steel sharpening steel.

Like, I think the productive friction that a democratic system presents to us is the capacity to collaborate into something that's better, but that requires that we don't make our opponents enemies. And so that's, like, the biggest problem that I see right now, is [00:09:30] this idea that you're an enemy, not a worthy opponent.

We want to have an opponent in a system where you have to have conflict.

[00:09:35] Jamil Simon: Absolutely.

[00:09:36] Lindsey Cormack: Yeah. It's just like that's, that's, that's what we're built for. That's what, that's what this system is designed to kind of encourage.

[00:09:41] Jamil Simon: We're built to manage conflict sensibly, you know, productively, constructively, if you wanna call it.

[00:09:47] Lindsey Cormack: Absolutely. I think that's the basis of the democracy pieces as well as the republican pieces of what we're doing here. Like, yes, different people are gonna disagree, but eventually we're gonna have someone who's the voice for this time. They're gonna figure it [00:10:00] out, and if not, we pick a new one. Those are disagreement questions.

So that's the first thing that I have, is this, like, enemies versus opponents. I think the second thing that is, is really challenging is the stuff that ricochets around the internet. The stuff that is incentivized in social or anti-social media tends to be extraordinarily negative, and so this, like, performative political outrage or this sort of, like, a grievance narrative or this revenge thing that you see where it's like, you know, "You wronged my people [00:10:30] now, and now I'm gonna make sure that I tell you all the things that are wrong with you," if that's the sort of, like, stuff that is floating around the internet, we don't have a lot of good models for people who aren't talking heads as to how they should be chatting about politics, how they should be processing disagreement.

And so I think that's another big problem, which is th- the internet ecosystem that we exist in.

[00:10:50] Jamil Simon: I know. We've created a lot of conflict entrepreneurs who are making money or winning votes by being extraordinarily [00:11:00] divisive.

[00:11:00] Lindsey Cormack: And that spills over into how our politicians act, because they are in the same incentive structures.

They are in those same sort of, like, if I say something mean on Twitter or X or Blue Sky, I might get more donations, so why don't I say that mean thing? I think that's problem two for me. And then problem three is this notion that civic confusedness is okay and that someone else will take care of it.

Like this idea that like politics is so annoying or so overwhelming or [00:11:30] so impractical for me to do anything in, someone else will do that. I think that eats away at our sense of agency and it eats away at our sense of hope for the future if we say like, "Well, the die is cast and someone else is playing this game."

That is not a good way for us to live, and if we have to live here for the rest of our lives, I think we should recast our notion of what we're doing here.

[00:11:50] Jamil Simon: I think you're right. I do.

[00:11:53] Lindsey Cormack: Young people, what I say to them, I say to them is, "You are a founder." Like the idea that there was a set [00:12:00] of founders 250 years ago and then we're done is not true.

We are constantly refinding what America is, so cast yourself as someone in that process. Go find something. You have different things you're good at, different things that animate you, but find something and try to contribute to the country in a way that you're both proud of yourself but other people benefit from.

[00:12:21] Jamil Simon: I'm glad I asked that question. You've been analyzing email newsletters, which actually blows me away, but [00:12:30] analyzing email newsletters of Congress for 15 years for your project DC Inbox Following the email correspondence between government officials and their constituency gives you a really unique perspective on how government actually operates.

Tell us a little more about how you got into it and what you're learning from it.

[00:12:49] Lindsey Cormack: Thank you. This is some of my favorite work. In 2009, I was a graduate student at NYU, and I had just finished my last correspondence course for undergrad, where I was handwriting out [00:13:00] calculus and sending it to a calculus teacher, professor in Kansas, and she was sending me back things.

But it was the transition to email, and I thought at that time, "Well, Congress is probably switching to emails too." I was getting a graduate degree in government, and I was like, "W- what's our process for archiving them?" I didn't know the answer to that, so I called the Library of Congress and I was like, "What's our strategy for archiving this?"

And what I got in 2009 was that they were printing them all out, and I thought the archive should be digital. And so I sat down, [00:13:30] tried a bunch of different ways to do it, but in the span of about nine months from beginning to end, I got it set up and running. And ever since 2010 through this day, every e-newsletter that's sent from every member of Congress in the House and the Senate is collected, and I analyze them.

I, I read them almost every day. I don't read all of them. There's, like, 230,000 in there. But I learn a lot. I learn a ton on sort of the arc of a story, how a narrative explodes. Something that I learned recently, and I had a sense of it, was [00:14:00] Obamacare. I, I made this really neat graph that was looking at, like, the relative use of Obamacare from Republicans to Democrats, 'cause originally it was pejorative.

It was like, "Ooh, this is gonna be a horrible thing." And then about halfway through the time span between 2010 and 2025, it flipped over to where more Democrats were saying Obamacare as, like, a proud moment, and it's, it's that sort of stuff. You can track these sorts of things and see, like, when the narrative shifted or when the words changed.

[00:14:26] Jamil Simon: Yeah, I've seen some of those graphs that you've put together, and they're [00:14:30] remarkable. They are actually quite revealing.

[00:14:32] Lindsey Cormack: I think so, and I also think we are owed this information. These are primary source document, taxpayer-funded communications by our official sitting legislators. And I understand why Congress doesn't allocate the funds to do this, because they are loathe to allocate funds for researchers to study them.

I get that. Mm-hmm. But I do think it's like a... I, I actually think it's like a national treasure. I'm like, I'm so happy I have this. There's been times in which no one cared about it, and I was like, "Maybe I should stop," 'cause it does take effort. There's, like, a lot of maintenance. There's, like, [00:15:00] bad actors who try to get into the website.

There's all sorts of stuff, but I am really happy that it's there.

[00:15:04] Jamil Simon: You've written extensively about the way members of Congress communicate with their constituents, and you've looked closely at the words and phrases that they choose. In a recent Substack post, you analyzed messaging from members of both parties around public safety.

What was your major takeaway from that analysis?

[00:15:22] Lindsey Cormack: Despite the fact that we live in the same world, the things that we point to as fearsome are different. Uh, and that's sort of true in any kind [00:15:30] of slice that you wanna take for American politics. Republicans and Democrats oftentimes use really different vocabularies and focus on really different issues or priorities, even though it's happening at the same time.

The only time that wasn't true was during the COVID-19 pandemic when we saw everyone converge, and 90% of the emails at that time mentioned COVID.

[00:15:50] Jamil Simon: And why do you think there's that difference in perception?

[00:15:54] Lindsey Cormack: Well, I mean, part of it is, uh, is a legitimate difference in what matters. Part of it is, like, what you [00:16:00] care about and what feels scary to you, and I have no illusions that Democrats and Republicans process information the same way.

But part of it that I see in the communications is that Republicans tend to have more concentrated on-message, message-disciplined disseminations of terms, phrases, and words. And so you can just see a starker difference because there is one party who cares a lot about staying on message and one party who doesn't as much, but on occasion, and actually in this period right now, [00:16:30] Democrats are sort of turning that around.

But for the first 14 or so years of DCM box, that was one that Republicans did a much better job of saying, like, "Here's the words that we're saying," and Democrats were a little bit more diffuse.

[00:16:40] Jamil Simon: Right. So it's pretty easy to see how this division contributes to a more polarized electorate. Do you think that this kind of messaging works in the members' favor?

In other words, do the Congress members who use more polarizing language tend to hold onto their seats? Is there a correlation from what you've learned? [00:17:00]

[00:17:00] Lindsey Cormack: It's a great empirical question. I don't have the answer to say that, like, I've looked at the messages and done a tone analysis. But I, I would say impressionistically, that's not necessarily the case because you have, you have candidates like, um, Matt Gaetz, who ends up just not running because he was gonna probably be expelled.

You have people like Andy Ogles who lost. He uses pretty extreme rhetoric. But on the other hand, you have, like, Paul Gosar in Arizona uses incredibly extreme rhetoric and, and gets reelected often without anyone running [00:17:30] against him. And so I, I don't know what the right or empirical answer is to that, but I, I know that there is one.

[00:17:37] Jamil Simon: Based on what you've seen during your work in DC Inbox, are there any areas of bipartisan consensus that stand out?

[00:17:44] Lindsey Cormack: Yeah. There's stuff around service, like national service, veterans-y stuff. Republicans talk about veterans more than Democrats, but n- there's no, like, anti-veteran rhetoric. There's no, like, let's not support the troops rhetoric.

That's something that's, that's pretty bipartisan. And then [00:18:00] there's also kind of bipartisan agreement in the face of natural disasters. So, like, whether you've got, like, a hurricane or a flood or tornado, that you usually see both Democrats and Republicans getting out to constituents saying, like, you know, "Here's where you can pick up clean water," or, "Here's the boil advisory," or, "Here's where FEMA's gonna be on these days," or whatever.

So, so in those sorts of moments, when you have a, a tension or a disaster or a security issue, you do tend to see more, more agreement.

[00:18:26] Jamil Simon: Yeah. You also analyze the voting records of members of [00:18:30] Congress and how their actual votes line up or don't with what they talk about in public. I'd love for you to tell me that Democrats and Republicans are quietly working together getting things done behind the scenes, but I don't know.

[00:18:44] Lindsey Cormack: That's not really what we found there. So that was one of the very first things I did, and it was inspired by my mentor, Howard Rosenthal, because he was, in political science, sort of the grandfather of scaling legislators. And so he had this scale called a nominate score, [00:19:00] and it was you essentially, like, pin the most liberal one, pin the most conservative one, and then iterate over all the votes that they take into Congress to sort of give everyone a number.

And I said, "Well, what if we only scale them on the votes they reveal to their constituents? What are we gonna find out?" And what we ended up finding is that legislators tend to try to look like their constituents. So if they feel like their constituents are more moderate, they tend to reveal more moderate votes.

If they feel like their constituents want something punchier, they tend to f- reveal more extreme votes. But the important caveat is that [00:19:30] analysis only happened in one Congress. It hasn't been updated since, but it's the first and, to this day, the only sort of exercise that looked at that.

[00:19:37] Jamil Simon: Well, how is the functioning of Congress and its ability to get stuff done tied to polarization?

Do you see a link there?

[00:19:45] Lindsey Cormack: I do. I, I think the, one of the hardest parts to see is what polarization kind of makes impossible. And what I mean by that is when the goal is, I need to show that I am absolutely right and those people are evil or [00:20:00] stupid, it makes compromise almost impossible because then you're, like, bending.

You're either weak or you've been fooled or something to, like, agree with the other side on something. And so when we look at the communications that members send, they don't send a ton of like, "Hey, guess what? A bipartisan delegation got together and hammered out this really complicated thing that l- is gonna allow infrastructure to move forward."

[00:20:23] Jamil Simon: Right.

[00:20:23] Lindsey Cormack: So I think one of the things is it just, it, it makes it really hard for members of Congress to want to compromise [00:20:30] because then they'd have to, like, say that sort of thing out loud. I, I think that's, like, m- maybe one of the biggest problems, is it, it just puts this idea that, like, any time in which you're gonna say something nice to another, you're gonna do something that is not what you should be doing.

So I think that's, like, the, the biggest challenge.

[00:20:47] Jamil Simon: Yeah, compromise is just unacceptable, which is crazy, because compromise is what it's all about.

[00:20:54] Lindsey Cormack: Yeah, and I think that's, that's really hard. I also think, though, the goal is not to [00:21:00] have no conflict. Like, the goal is to responsibly and democratically process that conflict, and when we have this affective polarization, the idea that, like, they're horrible, whichever side you're on, it makes that sort of stuff kind of impossible.

[00:21:17] Jamil Simon: Well, I mean, there are so many things wrong with what this administration is doing, but the Republican-led Congress refuses to apply a check on executive power. How did we get to this place where the body that's supposed to provide [00:21:30] a check on the president has approved appointees like Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth?

[00:21:35] Lindsey Cormack: This is something I agree with you so much on, and it's something that I've sort of changed the way I've started talking about this because I'm in a bunch of different settings where people will ask me touchy political questions, and I always say, like, "I'm happy to work it through with you." But on this question of, like, how is it that the president right now is getting so many outcomes that many reasonable people think ought not be, whether that's the appointments you just mentioned or some sort of, like, internal [00:22:00] self-dealing and corruption and those sorts of things.

And I don't point the finger at President Trump. I point the finger at House and Senate Republicans because when we think about, you know, his sort of incentive is like, "I wanna run this country and the world." He is not constrained by this notion of some, like, high-minded constitutional ideal of a leader that does X, Y, or Z.

He has much more of, like, a self-interested approach. And to his credit, he often thinks that, like, if he does it in his best interest, it's gonna be in the interest [00:22:30] of others. But I think for Republicans in the House and the Senate, I do sort of have a, like, shame-on-you finger to wag at them, where I'm like, "You all are students of government.

You all studied this. You understand that none of the founders wanted you to be sycophantic suck-ups to your president, and instead, you're the legislators. That's the executor. And you have decided that you're just gonna say, like, 'Let's follow Trump.'" If you look at members of Congress' communications, Republicans in the last two years, and actually a little bit in the first term but more now, [00:23:00] have done a ton of this, "I am here to support President Trump's agenda.

I am here to get this thing done on behalf of President Trump's urging." And that's just, like, not what we thought legislators were meant to do. That is, like, not their role. Their role is to lead, to legislate, and then let the executive branch enforce, and they've sort of, like, right now flipped this. And say what we will about Democrats, they didn't do a ton of that for Biden or Obama.

They did not do, "President Obama says we're doing this, so here we go." B- but the Republican Party right [00:23:30] now does have this... It's kind of reversed.

[00:23:32] Jamil Simon: It is very reversed, and it's dangerous, I think, because they're the ones that we elect every two years.

[00:23:37] Lindsey Cormack: And they're closer to the people.

[00:23:39] Jamil Simon: Exactly. Exactly. That's the whole point.

But you live in New York City, which [00:24:00] has been experimenting with ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting, at least in theory, should decrease polarization Since voters don't have to choose one candidate over another, you rank your choice on your ballot. You recently analyzed ranked choice voting in New York City.

How is it going?

[00:24:17] Lindsey Cormack: Well, there's promises and there's pitfalls, like with any electoral reform. And so I had analyzed the first time we did this, uh, when we resulted in Mayor Adams winning, and then the second time we did this when we had [00:24:30] Mayor Zohran Mamdani winning. And the sort of things that I focused on were not necessarily the polarization of the candidates, though there are other scholars who look on that.

It was, what is the likelihood that someone's ballot gets voided because it's mismarked? And we just know that if there are more opportunities for you to mismark a ballot, that's more opportunities for error. I think that's one of the undersold problems of it, and, and something that that first study looked at was, like, the last two elections that we had with traditional voting, what was the rate of ballots that were discarded by area?

So you can [00:25:00] look at, like, assembly district. It's the smallest sort of, smallest geography where we have good census data on the characteristics of the people there, so terminal education, household income, racial makeup, stuff like that. And in 2013 and 2017, it's pretty randomly distributed how many ballots get tossed.

But in 2021, when we had our first ranked choice voting opportunity, it's related, and it's positive, and it's correlated with all the stuff that you wouldn't want, where it's like poor people tend to get their ballots thrown out more. Places that have lower [00:25:30] education terminal degrees tend to get their ballots thrown out more.

And that's, like, not what we want for a good representative politics. Like, it's people who are at the margins of power already, and we've said, like, "Guess what? Instead of, like, a one choice, this is now a five choice over five elections." It's just a lot of opportunities for error. And so I was worried about that before the election happened.

The data bore it out. But then in this next time, in 2025, the relationship is still there, but the magnitude is down by about an order of magnitude.

[00:25:56] Jamil Simon: Very

[00:25:56] Lindsey Cormack: interesting. So people learned, which is good. But I think that's [00:26:00] something any state or any city who adopts this, you really gotta invest in that educational piece up front, and we didn't in 2021 as much.

Like, uh, only 15 million were spent on advertising this on, like, the side of bus stops. It was something where the candidates themselves, I analyzed all the candidate emails. Very few of them took any opportunity to explain to p- voters what that ballot was gonna look like. All they said was, "Rank me first.

Rank me first." The only person who did anything different was Andrew Yang, who was like, "If not me, Kathryn Garcia." No one else talked about the ranking. And even, [00:26:30] like, Spanish speakers or non-English speakers, there was not a term of art that everyone was using. Spanish translators were having to, on the fly, come up with how you would say ranked choice voting, which is sometimes, like, pick your top five, rank five in order, select the one you want most first.

And so we just... We weren't, I think, adequately prepared to do it in a way that felt fair, and I think the, the cast vote records bear that out.

[00:26:52] Jamil Simon: That is so interesting.

[00:26:54] Lindsey Cormack: And that's the thing about any of the reforms, like whether people are like, you know, open primaries or ranked choice voting. If anyone [00:27:00] tells you that there's, like, one solution to solving polarization, hold onto your wallet.

Like, that is, it is not true. There is not a silver bullet that's- Like if I donate to this, the republic is gonna be fixed. That, that's not a reality.

[00:27:10] Jamil Simon: Yeah. Well, moving on, I, I love the title of your new book, How to Raise a Citizen: And Why It's Up to You to Do It. I'm a big admirer of your emphasis on teaching young people about Congress.

Frankly, I think it's the only way out of the mess we're in. It's not a quick solution, so we need to get started right away [00:27:30] Can you expand on that? You know, what, the importance of reaching young people?

[00:27:35] Lindsey Cormack: Yeah. So I wrote this book because I'm a professor at a very good school. It's really hard to get into, and my students have excellent SAT and ACT scores.

They're also earnest learners who are bright kids and wanna go on to good careers. But I find that in Intro to American Government, a class I teach every fall, nearly all of them will fail a very simple, very basic, what does [00:28:00] the American government look like? They won't know the difference between the House and the Senate.

They won't know how people get elected. They don't know about primaries. They don't know about registration dates and election date. There's plenty that they don't know about that's, like, not, you know, tricky, hard history. And so with that knowledge, six years into teaching, I was like, "What's happening here?"

Like, how am I getting the brightest kids and they, like, don't know these things? And we've put them in K through 12 public schools, and then like, "Go on your way, citizens," and you don't even know the rules of the game. And so I took [00:28:30] six of them as research assistants, and we interviewed teachers in 47 states, and we looked at curricular decisions and outcomes in every US state.

And what we found is that in the nation's report card are eighth graders, only 22% of them in 2022 are considered proficient, and the scores have not increased from 1998 to 2022. So that's like indicator one, we have a problem in eighth grade. And then when you look at high schoolers, we don't have a national assessment.

All we have is advanced placement US government and politics, and [00:29:00] that's only an opt-in. 2% of our students take that course in, in America. But they opt in, so it's the ones who, like, should, you know, wanna do it. It is consistently one of the lowest scoring tests out of all the APs administered. In 2023, it was the 37th lowest out of 38 administered.

Like, children do better- Wow ... in calculus and Chinese than they do in American government and politics. It's wild, right? That's crazy. It's wi- Yeah ... it, it is. And so it's something where you're like, "Okay, this is a problem." But I think the reason that we see these really bad outcomes is that the way that we teach [00:29:30] civics, government, politics in K through 12 is it's different in every state, and in the States it's different in public, private, independent, parochial, home schools.

But the modal form of delivery is one class in middle school, in seventh or eighth grade, and one class in high school, oftentimes in the second semester of the senior year of high school, which I don't know what you were like then. No. I know what I was like. Yes. The second semester of your senior year of high school is not like, "Please tell me everything I need to know so that I can figure out this system as I move into adulthood."

Right. That's [00:30:00] not ... In every other subject, it's not the time. A- a- and it's too little. It's too little, 'cause this is not, it's not a terribly hard subject. Like, it's intricate, it has a history, but it's not that hard. The challenge is we do it too little, too late, and if we're giving them one shot in middle school and one shot in high school, it's not surprising they're not masters.

We haven't given them the time to master it. Every other subject we go K through 12. This is one that we don't. Like, our children don't understand the government that they're inheriting And one of the reasons I think it's really seductive to have these [00:30:30] other sorts of political ideologies that we might have thought were fringe, or identities that we might have thought were problematic, they're seductive because they're not rooted to this s- like, American sense of what democracy is, and that's not their fault.

That's kind of all of our faults for dropping the ball on that one.

[00:30:44] Jamil Simon: I mean, for example, not knowing the impact of a primary, I mean, not knowing what a primary is right, right from the get-go is a real problem because we're ending up having a very small [00:31:00] margin of people choosing our candidates.

[00:31:03] Lindsey Cormack: Yeah, they're very consequential, but we don't really teach that.

[00:31:06] Jamil Simon: Why do you think it's important for parents to educate kids about civics? And what's at risk if they don't?

[00:31:12] Lindsey Cormack: Well, I think the biggest challenge is that we have this idea that someone else will take care of it, and usually that someone else is the schools. That's not true. And it's not that I don't think schools can't do it or schools ought not do it, it's just that it is a very fraught environment for teachers doing the work in the minutes that they get in the [00:31:30] classroom to do this with the structures that they have with parents looking over their shoulder saying, like, "Make sure you don't teach it a way I don't like."

All those things make it hard to do it. So the first thing is you, you have to do it because no one else is going to. But the second thing is we want our children to be successful and to be healthy, whether that's physically or mentally healthy. And the things that sort of I see my young college students, there's a lot of anxiety about the future.

There's depression about the sense of, like, what they're doing right now doesn't matter. There's this sense of anomie where, [00:32:00] like, they maybe don't have relations to other that feel worthwhile or meaningful. And politics is an antidote to all of those, and understanding government is an antidote to being afraid of things.

If you get your child whatever they're interested in, might be parks, might be bikes, might be trains, whatever, if they can go work for a local politician or an entity that does that sort of thing, that is repeated, purposeful interaction with humans where you can see change. It's really helpful to understand your agency, even if it's just we clean up a park monthly.

[00:32:30] Great, your park is cleaner, and you did it, and so did you and your friends. That is a great democratic lesson. You can see it. It's, it's instantaneous. And some of the stuff isn't, and some of the stuff doesn't work, but, like, the explosion of bike lanes in New York City alone in the last 15 years is because enterprising people who care about this got together and said, "We're gonna figure out this system.

We're gonna lobby different routes, and then we're gonna make it so that the mode of transport we want is protected." That's, that's great if that's something you care about, and I think children can find [00:33:00] all sorts of things that they're interested in, and we have to help them find those connections to what sort of like, oh, does government have a hand in that?

The answer is usually yes. Let's go figure it out.

[00:33:08] Jamil Simon: Well, one piece of advice that you have for parents is don't raise a partisan. That's hard to do in a polarized climate. And given the media environment, why do you think parents should resist passing partisanship to their children, and how can they avoid it?

[00:33:24] Lindsey Cormack: The way that I think about it is through an analogy. Like, let's say you're raising a citizen versus a [00:33:30] partisan. The analogy is an athlete versus a spectator. Like, if your child came to you and said, "I wanna learn how to play soccer," you'd say, "Great. Let's learn the rules of soccer. Let's watch some tapes of soccer.

Let's get on the field. We'll learn how to dribble and shoot and defend. Let's get off the field. We'll condition so you're stronger and faster when you come back on. Eventually, we'll scrimmage." If you do all those things, you're gonna make a very capable athlete, and whatever team they wanna play for, they're gonna be good at doing it.

But if you're just interested in raising a spectator, it's easier. You say, "These are the [00:34:00] colors we paint our faces. We cheer when that guy goes on the field. We boo when they go on the field. We wanna win. We want them to lose. The end." If we are trying to raise citizens, we are trying to raise capable athletes that can navigate the teams, the parties, the s- the little sort of political entities that exist, as capable.

And we know that the parties of yesterday are not the parties of today, will not be the parties of the future. So instead of raising a spectator who cheers when your side wins, raise an athlete who can [00:34:30] have the fluidity to figure out which team is gonna make the most sense for them. And the final reason I think you should focus towards that versus raising a partisan is that the best social science research out there right now says it's about a coin toss that you can get the outcome you want anyhow.

That is to say, if you're like, "I really want a little Republican," 50% of the time you might get that because you tried, or you're going to turn them off so much to politics they want to not talk about it, or they rebel and say like, "You know what? I'm actually a Democrat." And same thing for people who wanna raise Democrats.

So don't make it the [00:35:00] goal. Raise a good citizen, let them figure out which team they wanna cheer for or play for.

[00:35:04] Jamil Simon: Yeah, let them choose their party and be able to make that choice in a, an intelligent, constructive way based on legitimate factors.

[00:35:13] Lindsey Cormack: And I understand, like, you know, we have children to impart our values and to recreate humanity in ways that we think are beautiful and worthwhile.

And so it's not like you can't have conversations with your children about values, but I think the goal shouldn't be, "I'm making sure you adhere to this party outlook." The goal should be, [00:35:30] value this country enough to know that sometimes this party gets it right and sometimes that party gets it right, and reasonable people find belonging in both sides of these things.

[00:35:39] Jamil Simon: Let me ask you a couple of quick questions. True or false, the US has outgrown the two-party system.

[00:35:45] Lindsey Cormack: I say false in the sense that I don't think this is a question of how many people are here. I think the way that we get to a two-party system is a result of the electoral system. So if we are gonna elect single member winners in [00:36:00] geographically bounded districts, we're gonna get two parties on average.

And so I, I don't think outgrown is the right word for it. But I also don't think we actually have a two-party system. I think we have a hundred-party system, and that is a state-level Democratic and a state-level Republican system in every state.

[00:36:18] Jamil Simon: That's an interesting way to look at it. Should the terms of House members be longer?

[00:36:22] Lindsey Cormack: I can see the argument for that. Yeah, I can see the argument for that, yes.

[00:36:27] Jamil Simon: And should there be term limits for Congress?

[00:36:29] Lindsey Cormack: I [00:36:30] think there already are term limits for Congress, and it is, like, what the will of the people are willing to withstand. The, the process of an election is a term limit, and I actually think term limits at the federal level I, I think they would be potentially net negative because you'd have unbounded legislators in their last term either doing what they want or doing the bidding for whatever company they're gonna soft land at afterwards.

And so I think that actually with the, like, injection of money in politics that we have right now, I don't think term limits are, are necessarily a, an, an [00:37:00] answer for polarization or for better governance.

[00:37:02] Jamil Simon: If you were to campaign or lobby for one major change in the way government works in America, what would you change?

[00:37:10] Lindsey Cormack: Oh, that's a great question. If I was changing the school system, I would mandate that government and history is taught in a K through 12 way, age appropriate, and, and building over time. I think if we could do that, we would probably get to better outcomes because it all trickles up in the sense of, like, people [00:37:30] can then see themselves as wanting to be in that fray, and then other people can say like, "Oh, I know how to hold people accountable if they're bad actors in that fray."

I think that would be good, and I think if I could change something at the government level, like how governing happens, it would be to make sure that there's more facilitation of cross-party activities that are outside of the norm. And I, and I say that because when we think about the early republic, partisans were, were very stark partisans.

They weren't, like, trying to agree on tons of things in [00:38:00] the legislature, but there were these softer social spaces where they could sort of circulate, and the wives and the sisters have these sorts of informal roles because they're kept out of formal politics. And I think when we can see each other as humans, when we have the opportunity to laugh with each other, enjoy something together, then it makes it less high stakes when it's like, "Okay, now we have to vote on this thing," or it's less, "I think you're out to hurt me," when obviously you're not.

We just had shrimp cocktail over a nice party together. So I, I think we need more commendable, accessible ways for people of different [00:38:30] parties to interact.

[00:38:31] Jamil Simon: Yeah. No, I mean, speaking as, you know, from all the peace builders we've talked to, 'cause that's our main focus, that's one of the things that they always say, you know?

By hanging out with people outside of the formal operation, you know, you find out that everybody puts their pants on one, one leg at a time, you know?

[00:38:48] Lindsey Cormack: And I think the women in Congress, they do this well. Like, the women in Congress have softball where it's, like, the women in Congress against the press corps.

And the men in Congress, they have more who, who play [00:39:00] that sort of sport, so they have like a partisan baseball game. But I actually think it'd be amazing if they had to mix it up, and it's like, oh my God, if you're gonna throw someone out, you're gonna have to throw it to another person on a different party instead of just Republicans versus Democrats.

[00:39:14] Jamil Simon: I can't thank you enough for being part of this series that we've been working on about polarization and what it costs us in terms of ourselves and our government. But it was fun talking to you. Very grateful for your time and your participation.

[00:39:27] Lindsey Cormack: Thank you for thinking to ask me. I [00:39:30] think our missions are linked, so I'm always happy to chat with people who are on the side of making government more functional and making the whole process feel better for all of us who have to be here anyway.

[00:39:50] Jamil Simon: You can find links to Lindsey Cormack's book, podcast, articles, and more in the show notes. Lindsey's podcast and our Making Peace Visible [00:40:00] podcast are both part of the Democracy Group, a network of content creators united around the goal of understanding what's broken in our democracy and how people are working together to fix it.

Learn more at democracygroup.org, and download their new free guide to learn nine ways you can take action as an everyday citizen to make democracy better. The Beyond Polarization series has been produced by Andrew Muraskin and Faith McClure, with social media [00:40:30] support from Emmy Todd. I'm Jamil Simon.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the series, and please join us for our live virtual event, Polarization: The Midterms and What Comes Next. There's a link in the show notes. If you can't make it, that's okay. We're easy to reach. You can always email me at jamil@makingpeacevisible.org. And if you enjoyed the series, a positive review on Apple Podcast is super helpful.

Be sure to stay tuned to this feed for a [00:41:00] new episode every two weeks for analysis and insights from people working to build a more peaceful world and the storytellers covering conflict and reconciliation. Thanks so much for listening.