One Vote, Lots of Questions: Unpacking the Electoral College, with filmmaker, Maximina Juson

this is about answering that pain point that we as an American electorate have around the Electoral College it's confusing we don't understand it and we deserve to understand it so that's why I made this film that's maximina juon the filmmaker behind the extraordinary and necessary new documentary one person one vote it's a film that takes a closer look at something that lots of Americans rarely question the Electoral College voting system maxam's film explores the system's not so equal representation and its racist Origins rooted in protecting the power of slave owners this episode drops on juneth and it couldn't be a better time to examine the realities of the system we use to elect our President we talked to maximina about how her multi-hyphenated career as a musician user experienced designer and filmmaker helped her take on this difficult subject she also shares the perspective shifting moments she had while making the documentary especially her extraordinary experience when she found herself filming at the capital on January 6 2021 as someone who had been researching The Electoral College for years before that point to then see Electoral College history unfold before my very eyes was stunning Welcome to the breakout a show about smashing through life's little boxes and forging your own path I'm Dr Carrie olich and I'm Kelly Gunther Carrie and I are people and change experts and best friends we've spent more than 25 years helping organizations navigate change and get the best out of their people come on we know change is hard but staying the same can even be harder on the breakout we prove that you can escape expectations and best of all we show you how maximina thank you so much we are so excited to talk to you in a couple sentences what are you helping other people break out of you know I think that every person's life has a theme and I consider myself a media multi-hyphenate and thematically it's been my job to be a communicator with audiences in different formats and that's my passion and I love interacting with people and I love communicating and connecting with people and so you know when you feel that urge or you feel that calling which I did at every step of the way yeah I didn't shy away from it I think if you take a moment to think about in your shape-shifting Ventures what problem can you solve for people if you identify a problem and you assign yourself to that problem in your shapeshifting Venture then your chances for Success are a lot higher yeah I think that there's such creativity in problem solving and so when we heard about the film that you're doing about the Electoral College talk about making people think right it's something that is kind of there and we all know and we hear about these swing States and we kind of just that's what we know we don't know any better and when Kelly and I talk a lot about expectations sometimes those expectations you don't even realize they're there because they're so embedded and talk about something that's incredibly embedded the Electoral College your film is magnificent by the way but what made you even take it on so going back to solving problems I think it is a huge pain point for the vast majority of Americans that we don't understand the Electoral College how it works or why we have it in the first place and when I did read research on whether or not a film like this had been made already there hadn't been one and I felt that I was uniquely positioned as someone who has been a live performing musician someone who's worked on the internet making experiences easier to use and understand for people who are using them so I'm a user experienced architect and designer and it's been my job to make things easy to understand and also enjoyable and entertaining and so I thought that I was uniquely positioned to tell the story about the electoral college cuz I I would set out to do it in a way that wasn't only informational and educational but was also entertaining and compelling and captivating yeah and efficient telling an efficient story as well not making it a 2hour movie or you know but a 6 hour 6 hour drama in and out in and out yeah and I think you did such a magnificent job of making it that entertaining so what in three minutes could you describe the Electoral College okay well the Electoral College is America's very unique method for electing a president there is no other Democratic country that uses this method to elect their president and there's no other election in the United States that doesn't just go by simple majority what you're actually doing is you're voting for a slate of electors that support a candidate and their vice president you're not voting directly for the president and a lot of people don't realize or understand that and there's also a slate of electors for every single candidate that you have on the ballot so when you select your presidential candidate when you vote for president you're actually voting for a slate of elector for that party that are supposedly obligated to vote for that candidate but in almost half the states there actually there's no obligation whatsoever they can vote for whoever they want with no penalty which a lot of people don't realize either you know I did this funny exercise on my film where I asked each and every interviewer we what the Electoral colleges and the answer that I got from each and every person was completely different because so it's such a complicated and intricate system that differs from state to state that even I as a person who set out to make a film about the Electoral College learned something new about the Electoral College each and every day that is bananas that is bananas because you're right again we talk about these expectations that sometimes you don't even realize you have them because they're just so ingrained and when I think of the Electoral College in my head is oh yeah it's majority vote and those elect whoever wins the majority gets like the 55 electoral votes for California or something like that and it seems disproportionate it seems weird and then all of a sudden it comes down to Nebraska has one Electoral College Vote or something that goes to a city in Omaha like it's just such a strange mix Max Amina what was maybe an aha moment for you when you looked at the history of why it started because you talk about that in the film and it was disturbing and understandable how it started but what was your Insight or aha why it began this way you know when I set out to make a film about the Electoral College I always thought it was important for us to know you know why we have this institution in the first place how did we get it a lot of people don't even know that it's a clause in the Constitution so first and foremost I knew that that I needed very very high caliber tight watertight scholarship go into the film and so I reached out to the top Scholars who were speaking or teaching about the Electoral College and one of the first historians that I reach out to is Paul finlan Dr Paul finlan who's been writing about the Constitution as it relates to slavery you know for decades like at least four or five decades now so he sat me down and you know we talked about the Electoral College from beginning to now but you know his focus is on you know early constitutional history and he talked about that you know at the time there were 3 million people in the United States there were 13 states and 3 million people and 700,000 of which were enslaved so that's almost a third mhm right but those enslaved people were concentrated in slave holding States so Georgia North Carolina South Carolina Virginia and Maryland so when they were coming together to write the Constitution which would be a set of laws that would preside over the entire Union those slaveholding States number one were very concerned that slavery would get taken away from them and number two half of the people in their states like Virginia almost half would not be able to vote nor would they be able to be counted towards congressional representation because they were not actual citizens and they didn't want to make them citizens and they didn't want to give them the right to vote so how do you then make an indirect method of voting wherein you can count your entire population of people as in addition to your enslaved population count them for more representation and ultimately more votes in the Electoral College now there were other concerns like big States versus small states but then you know the Senate versus the house kind of addressed that issue right you know how do we get to a place where you know we can get this representation without any rights and so an indirect method of voting was what they came up with it was not something that anybody any of the states were completely happy with but it was the one thing that they could all agree on after a long hot summer of you know blocked Windows because they didn't want any press to hear their conversations which slavery was a topic of conversation every day yeah you know and just imagine the sweltering heat in the summertime no AC from May to September they voted you know dozens and dozens of times around how to elect the the president and by the end of the summer they're like you know what this one works let's just do it you know we've got George Washington everyone's going to be unanimous on him for the next eight years we'll fix it by but you know they never got around to it other than the 12th [Music] Amendment it's depressing to think about how it started and that it's continues to this day this film is just so important for so many reasons one because we all need to understand it truly understand it so we can be educated which when you're educated you make you tend to make better decisions but it's also an important part of our history that wasn't taught to us like it's um a Fugue state that we're all in we're kind of very sleepy myself included and I feel like I follow politics like I I feel like maybe I know a little bit more than the average person maybe but on the Electoral College absolutely not and the history of it why I it was so depressing to me that it started because of keeping power right it it wasn't started for make sure it's equal make sure and I think that's what I kind of thought that's what we're taught in school the fact that we're the only country who has this the fact that it is just so embedded that we all some of us kind of know it's really stupid and it's not the majority vote but I think in my head I always thought it was the majority vote and the electors just went with the majority like again I can't even articulate it and that is such a bad expectation right when you can't even articulate what it is but it's in you how devastating and how much that can harm and it is harming our entire democracy so on that uplifting note you know this country is 225 years old and for this to be really like the first film that I'm aware of that discusses the Electoral college is [Music] unbelievable so max Amina why do you think with all your interviews and digging in deep to the Electoral College why do you think it's such a mystery it's like almost a a black box for most of the our citizens in the states and if we can't understand it I guarantee our International Partners cannot understand it at all so why why is it such a mystery and why does it remain a mystery well I think one problem is like the Olympics people talk about the Electoral College once every four years right and so it's top of mind for that period of time where the election is front and center of the national discourse and then it goes away and people go back to the regular lives and all the other things they're being inundated with in the media that you know they don't think about it but beyond that it's also an extremely complicated system that differs from state to state and it's just not information that's easy to get to but in addition to that I think when you look at how it was created even though we have three proslavery Clauses in the Constitution the word slave was never used or slavery was never used and the reason for that was intentional because the states where slavery was beginning to be abolished knew that if they brought back a constitution that had pro-slavery Clauses written into it that it would not be ratified so they created language right that talked about slavery and enslave people without using those words and I think that that just created from the beginning right a sense of masking yes and and and a layer of um complexity that throughout time it was just really above most people's heads right you're not transparent about it and if you keep saying look over here look over here and I'm doing things over here after couple hundred years you don't really notice it and so it becomes again so embedded I think maximina you were um at the capital filming January 6th so and I'm I know you had some scary moments what was it like to be there on January 6th yeah so what people don't realize was January 6th was the last step of the electoral college process so because I had been following real world electors throughout the 2020 election it made sense for me to go to the capital to capture footage I figur that there would be protests and counter protests but as someone who had been researching The Electoral College for years before that point to then see Electoral College history unfold before my very eyes was stunning and um you know a lot of people would ask me like did you know that was going to happen did you know no number one no I did not know that was going to happen but to be there you know I basically started my day at the elips where I saw the tweet that that that Trump was going to be giving a speech um at the ellips and so I'm like okay I'll start there I figured that there would be protests and counter-protest to capture and then as the day progressed you know we were told to walk down the the mall you know to the capital so I did that and I was just following you know filming everyone and then at a certain point I get a alert on my phone Capital has been breached right so now I'm getting text messages from uh people that I know around the country saying are are you okay right and my producer saying whatever you do stay out of The Fray and I said okay well you know the minute I feel unsafe I will turn around yeah but I just kept walking towards the capital until eventually I made it all the way to the Capital steps I mean there was no one there you know to stop us I did not enter the building but I as I was there um I was filming and then at that point someone did come up to me and was aggressive during the course of the day people would ask me what Outlet are you from and I would tell them the truth that I was an independent filmmaker and they you know they were fine with that but as the day progressed and things got more extreme and especially right there at the steps of the capital that's when someone threatened me and told me that they would destroy my camera that I needed to stop filming I responded to that person like listen I'm willing to talk to you to explain to you why I'm here and what I'm doing but really what you're trying to do is you're trying to take away my freedom and when I said that this guy with a qan on hot hat steps forward and and says to the guy who was threatening me and says she's right she has a right to be here you know and then the guy that was threatening me was like she's just going to take it and she's going to distort it and she's going to twist it around make us look bad and and the qanon guy was like you know we don't have to listen to what they say we don't have to listen to what they say at that point I felt somebody fiddling with my camera and I looked back and you know I didn't see anything but then when I tried to record again I saw no media no media no and so someone had taken one of my media cards out of my camera and so then I stepped back and I was just really taken aback by this and I was looking around to see who it might be and that's when the guy with the Qin on Hut and a couple of his friends came over to me and they said you know Miss are you okay that was completely out of line that's not what this is about he shouldn't be threatening you like that wow um and that's when the guy who had been threatened me came back over to us and started calling them traitors basically you traitor how dare you I came here to die you know things like that like I'm ready to die for this cause basically and um the guy who he called a traitor lunged at him and said f you I'm not a traitor and lunged at him and they started going at it and I was like okay I do not want anybody to get hurt on my behalf so that's when I said it was time for me to go home but at this point it was like maybe 4: or 5:00 it was past the curfew they had made that day and I was two miles away from my car so I had to walk back to my car at a very long distance and I was exhausted and also obviously just kind of unnerved adrenaline and then again some other gentleman walked up to me and said hey you know what what Outlet are you with and I said I was an independent filmmaker and then I said yeah I had just been mugged someone just stolen half of my footage basically so again these were protesters Trump protesters and they were like we're going to make sure you get back to your car safely can I you they took one of them took my camera helped me carry my equipment back you know so we walked miles back and at that point I was like listen you guys have done enough for me you know I'll figure my way back home they're like absolutely not we're going to going to make sure you get home safe and you know they were they were very kind and protective eventually I did make it home we had to make a pit stop at a hotel to have dinner with their family who had all come down for the protest all of that was quite an experience but you know it also taught me that you cannot just lump you know a ton of people together into one yeah Us Versus Them bucket right there was a lot of kindness that was extended towards me that day towards people who I with whom I hold different views but they saw me in my Humanity I saw them in their humanity and it was an incredible once in A- lifetime experience to number one witness what you know one of the most historical days in our nation's history but also to be right there in the midst of all the people to to really see and understand understand where they we coming from we'll get back to the interview after this quick break the breakout comes to you from aachi group we offer coaching and Consulting to help you dig into change here's what we know only about 10% of us are really self-aware without self-awareness Improvement is tough because if you don't know what box you're in you can't break out of it that's where we come in we've got aof soft spot for people itching to forge a fresh path the High Flyers who need to be nudged out of career ruts teams who are looking to become more aligned and yes even those bold Souls who've occasionally worn The Jerk badge connect with us at abig group.com January 6 what a roller coaster of emotions that day for you which it should be a very boring day January 6 no one even knows that that really happens in my head we are all elected in November and for you to have the scary the mugging and then all of a sudden the same group is like no we're going to protect you and I was just thinking Kelly of how maximina said it's my freedom like you were so calm in that moment as someone's as someone's doing that to you and I thought I don't think Kelly and I would be as calm I think there would be a lot more swear words no I don't think as calm and certainly it was very ious act for you to be going through what you did and still making the effort to film and show what happened cuz certainly I think we've all seen by this point you know the outcome and the just in sheer tragedy of the day for sure I'm wondering you know what kind of response have you had so far for this film despite the fact that it's not quite out yet for the general public what kind of feedback have you received it's been phenomenal and when we got to the Q&A port of the evening most people would basically start their question with a first off thank you and a couple of them said I felt really dumb about 80 minutes ago but now I feel really smart yeah I didn't have the information to be able to talk about the Electoral College and so I didn't yep and so if this film empowers people to talk about the Electoral College and to dialogue around it in a way that they haven't been able to before I mean then that to me is the you know the goal that I have been trying to reach is that let's get to a place where we're not demonizing but we're dialoguing and so even when I went out into different communities with the four electors you know that I followed I went there in an effort of understanding right I didn't go there to try to film people to make them look bad or weird but I really wanted to go and understand right the positions of and the motivations for each and every one of my lectors and to present them in all their humanity and so right now our country is just devolved into vitriol and hatred you know vitriol and hatred are great fundraising tactics um for politicians and so I wanted to make this film about the people and the process every time people would say Hey you should interview this politician I'm like no this is about the people in the process the candidates are ancillary really this is about answering that pain point that we as an American electorate have around the Electoral College it's confusing we don't understand it and we deserve to understand it and so that's why I made this film I think the other thing that impacted me was the power of the Swing states that in a lot of cases yeah you can cast your vote doesn't necessarily mean anything but you've got a handful of like 12 13 states that can really obviously swing an election so it's just it's it's fascinating and then to also she has that one visual that shows like folks in California their vote counts like so much less than a vote in Wyoming and because of the the ratio of electorates to the population and it's just it's no one likes to feel disenfranchised no one and we're kind of all we're accepting this expectation and that's what you and I Kelly talk about all the time is like undo these expectations like you don't have to like follow this and yet we all are following this expectation of the Electoral College and we're not a majority rule democracy whereas everyone else every other election in the United States is like that every other except for this one [Music] last question for you maximina you have one minute with someone who's stuck and they want to break out what do you tell them I tell them do your homework but don't doubt yourself I love that amazing spoken like a true researcher filmmaker um I love that when do you anticipate the film being released right now the date will be in the fall in October um on PBS Independent Lens and PBS is also including the film as part of a democracy initiative which I have yet to learn what that means but yes it'll be part of a PBS democracy initiative but Premiere through Independent Lens um in October well we're so grateful to you maximina for going into and doing all of the research necessary to explain this very complicated process and capturing in a way that is so compelling thank you for your courage and being there on January 6th as well and for all your hard work in bringing this to life thank you for having me today and thank you for taking the time to talk about one person one vote along with all all the other shape-shifting Ventures that I've done and I hope this helps other people to just kind of go for it go for it mhm do it [Music] absolutely that was filmmaker maximina Jan talking about her important film one person one vote and this is the breakout from Achi group at Achi group we specialize in coaching and Consulting for Brave New Directions connect with us at abachi group.com and don't forget to subscribe to the breakout so you never miss a new episode and make sure you're following us on Instagram at the breakout pod I'm Kelly Gunther and I'm Dr Carrie ID see you next time [Music]