Fix Congress? Tom Joseph’s Free & Equal Elections Plan

Politics & Religion with David Pasqualone and Tom Joseph, Episode 11

David Pasqualone: Hello, friends. Welcome to this week's episode of Politics and Religion. Today, we have a very special guest with us, who not only saw a problem in American government, but he came out with a solution to fix it. Tom, welcome to the show.

Tom Joseph: David, thanks so much for having me on your podcast. I really appreciate you allowing me to give some oxygen to this idea.

David Pasqualone: No, I appreciate you being here. And, in business everybody can have a complaint, but the ones that are the most effective and make the world change for the better are the people that come with solutions.

So talk about the problem you saw in our government and the solution you came up with, my friend

Tom Joseph: Just for some background, I'm not a politician. I'm not an academic. I don't have a book to sell. I, Always bugged me, this idea of being a businessperson, gerrymandered districts, uncompetitive districts, the fact that it was so easy for people to get reelected, that [00:01:00] there really is no accountability, no competition, and it seemed like these are really desirable positions.

Why is there no accountability? And that was really the problem that bothered me for years. I was originally motivated by Ross Perot back in 1992, who started the Reform Party really with the idea of reforming Congress. I think he got a little misdirected got more focused into winning the presidency, but it really planted a seed in my mind that maybe a businessperson could kinda look at the problems and make things run better somehow.

I didn't really have a solution when I first thought about this, but it's just something that was always in, in the back of my mind for three decades.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and this isn't about being a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian. This is about being an American. So Tom Joseph is with us today, ladies and gentlemen, and Tom, again, you just described a little bit, but specifically, what is the [00:02:00] problem you saw?

Tom Joseph: I- the lack of competition, and I during the COVID, I thought partisanship was gonna kill us. I had made a commitment that if I got some help for my business, which I did, that I would do something. I didn't know what. And initially, I started a political party, America's Main Street Party, what this brand is with the idea of hopefully coming up with a better party was originally m- the thought.

But I got about a year into it, and I was thinking, this is really just more of the same. I'm really gonna rely on finding rich people to choose where and when they run." And I was kinda trapped, and I made a joke one day that we do a better job picking the next American Idol than we do the next representative of Congress, and a light bulb went off that, maybe we could c- create a kind of a moneyless contest where people would elevate through multiple rounds, and we'd use technology to inform constituents on what to do and really just focus on [00:03:00] the House, the smallest districts, you know in the federal government.

This is a big problem, but instead of going after a, presidency or a Senate, start with the basic building block, the person that's supposed to represent us, which these people r- right now are really disconnected from us. How do we make them accountable? So I thought about, using an app and a portal in a way that, the campaigns could be basically free and equal.

And a constitutional friend of mine actually pointed me to... he said, "This does have historical roots in the free and equal election clause." And I looked it up, and the guy that wrote the clause, James Wilson 100 years prior to him writing the Pennsylvania Constitution the English Bill of Rights had stated that all elections should be free in England.

Meaning that anyone could run. And back then, that meant anyone that was a landlord or landowner. But what Wilson saw is that if the elections weren't fair, that the system would be distorted. And what he did was he described free and equal [00:04:00] elections as the original fountain of democracy, and that if we poison the well, that fountain, that it spreads to all aspects of the state.

So yeah, if you say this is not a Republican Democrat thing. This is, like, how the system should work so that the people have accountability with their elected representatives. And the one thing that the two parties agree on is they like that it's easy for them to get reelected. They like that big money keeps them in office, and all they have to do is listen to a very small number of people, whether it's on the left and right, do their bidding, and they are set up to get reelection.

The reelection rates here are, like, 85 to 90% for Congress. It's ridiculous. And our satisfaction rating's 16%. So that does not jive. You don't have, people coming back and buying a product 90% of the time when they... only 20% of them like it. So to me, again, this just didn't seem to make sense.

So you know, I started working on this thought of can we come up with a legal way to put a, a nominating contest into [00:05:00] the election system? And believe it or not, we figured it out. And I worked with college students in Philadelphia, so first couple guys at Penn to re-rele- research the Federal Election Commission code and figure out how we could use A political party, a super PAC, local committees, and candidate committees in a very different way.

Just repurpose them. Put different rules around them. And if we get people to donate money and support it, guess what? We change the system without any legislation. There's really no law preventing us from having a fair way of choosing a nominee. Not electing them, just choosing the nominee. And if you put a fair contest in an unfair district, you're gonna elevate a candidate that's gonna be more popular than the incumbent.

I can guarantee it. 'Cause the system right now rewards them to go further left and further right of the district, and this happens on both sides. And if you have somebody that's really, been chosen as the most popular, they're gonna win. I think it's just really a matter of time and money and [00:06:00] putting the contest in the right district to really start changing the system.

David Pasqualone: So you wanna show us a little bit what your software does- Sure ... and how easy it is to use?

Tom Joseph: Yeah. And again, I'm gonna preface this by saying that, this was built for first the prototype by college students at Drexel. After we wrote the specs they built a prototype, and then we had another gentleman you know, apply AI to it, and then I brought it to Pittsburgh, have a software firm here who's created...

This is really like a demo. This doesn't really work, work. But it'll give you an idea that we don't need advertising to choose a candidate. If we don't need to advertise, we don't need money. If we don't need money, we can have a fair system. So here we go. So hopefully you can see that. The premise here is that a local committee is gonna determine that there are seven issues on the ballot for the next two years, and that in order to enter the contest, the candidates have to weigh in on [00:07:00] these different issues.

A good example, one, is trade. Now just to say, PA-1 is the district that I picked. This is a red district. This is Bucks County outside of Philadelphia. As a constituent, I'm just gonna say, "Hey, I'm, I have a moderate position on trade right now," saying that, "Hey, we had 101 candidates in this contest.

Right now, 51 of them agree with me on trade." Say that, "Inflation's also important to me. I believe that we ought to have strong regulations." Ah, now I only have four people. I'm gonna switch that because I just wanna- Yeah, this is more consistent with the conservative fiscal policy. And then on a local issue should the federal government invest in flood mitigation projects?

'Cause it's suburban Philadelphia, I'm gonna say seven. Okay, so I have seven matches. We can go to the For You page. What it's gonna do is bring up the folks that do match. It shows that we agree on trade, cost of living, on infrastructure. If we-- I wanted to see this person's bio, I can come in here, [00:08:00] find out more information about where do they stand on all the issues.

Here it shows where they agree with me on those. Like I said, you can look at their bio. This is, AI wrote these things up. I wonder if Jennifer Williams would really be a carpenter, but there is Doylestown, it's actually in Bucks County. But it describes what she's about. There's also a this one, this particular one didn't have the public service announcement.

I'd only put the video features in a few of these. But if we go to the next round, round two, it's gonna show that, okay, we didn't have any matches. Back Fine. Here's two people that match with me. This is a better example. You can see that we're using AI to generate a message. It can show that the candidates can do announcements.

Looks like this one has a PSA. This would give them an opportunity to talk more about what they do[00:09:00]

David Pasqualone: So basically, this is a system that takes all the people who ru- might run for, say, county commissioner or a US representative, and it puts them in this pool, and you start clicking what you believe, and it shows you the candidates that line up with your belief system.

Tom Joseph: Exactly. And-

David Pasqualone: And it's not voting, it's not an election.

This is for the primary races. Is that correct?

Tom Joseph: This is... Yeah. The problem that we have is that our primaries are rigged, and I wanna... for the US House. And when I say rigged, I don't mean that we don't count right. It's just that they, the people come in for re-election with so much money from their party.

It's like, it's a cycle. They do the party's bidding. The party says, "Hey, we'll make sure you get re-elected." And that's how they get this... That's why they choose party over country. Our system is creating a market force another way to get on the election ballot. Right now, to get [00:10:00] on the election ballot, you'd either have to emi- e- enter and compete against the Democrat or Republican, or go on the general election ballot as an independent, and it's very hard to win as an independent because you've never won anything.

So this is like a five-round contest that someone would emerge from, that the public has actually picked the winner So as we proceed to what we're calling the town hall round, which is when we get down to f- the final four, we envision that the local committee will introduce new content, and the finalists will be a- have an opportunity to weigh in and provide more content.

But David, the i- the idea is we have to make this compelling and interesting. Right now, people don't really engage in elections because they're not competitive. They know who's gonna win, and they really don't... They know that their vote really doesn't matter.

David Pasqualone: I know. A lot of times, especially in public elections locally, people don't even know [00:11:00] what's up for grabs.

They don't know who's running. They know nothing about them. And what's scary is sometimes they do just go in and pick based on a name of a sign they saw, or they heard something on the news that someone was, quote-unquote, "good," or someone was, quote-unquote, "bad." Or they pick just by the party, when that is not how any of us should be voting as Americans, especially as Christians.

We should be voting based on the content of the character of an individual, and as an American, are they gonna uphold the US Constitution? And then all the other things below that are our interpretation. Some are our belief system. But it should always come down to what's best for America. So this is an intriguing system that you can actually start looking what the candidates believe and learning in a fast and fun way.

Is that correct?

Tom Joseph: Yeah, and I think there's also engagement. I picked that flood water one as an example because people say, "Hey, I don't wanna pay for [00:12:00] disaster relief until there's a disaster in my county." From some ways from the politician's perspective, they can say, "Hey, you nominated me because I said I would not fund these things.

So when we have the flood, I'm gonna vote that way, and you have to back that, that's what you sent me there to do." Right now, it's really hard for people to understand really what is a Republican or a Democrat. It seems to change on a daily basis. And so I think- Buddy ... what we want is some system of accountability.

We live

David Pasqualone: in a society that doesn't even know what a male or a female is anymore. The... And they do, but they're causing strife and chaos. So yeah to say what's a Democrat, what's a Republican, that's a big issue. And the thing is, if you actually ask the average hardworking American, "What do you believe and why?"

They're gonna give a checklist that does not line up with the Democratic Party of today. It's a radical socialist party. Not everybody, but what I'm saying the people who are the headpieces and the leaders, and it's anti-American as far as I'm concerned. So this will flush that out. I think on

Tom Joseph: both [00:13:00] sides there's- There's really little, like you said, enga- there's...

Both parties are run by their elites, and it, I think there's not enough connection between the citizens and the people that represent them, and this is my effort to make there be some accountability. And it's directly... I think swing districts tends to moderate the candidates. And if folks are in naturally uncompetitive districts, that's one thing then, but it's really gerrymandering and how people's voice are being s- stolen, and that we have, I think now, 21 states where in the House of Representatives, only one party represents that state.

That means there's 30, 40% of the voters that feel they don't have a voice and can't weigh in. This allows, say, you run this in a red district, this allows a, a liberal to say, "Hey, I'm gonna push for a pinker candidate," and vice versa in a blue district. And I think that is really my goal, Dave, is we can create two moneyless factions, one pink, one baby blue, that [00:14:00] kind of stabilize Congress, allow negotiation to occur.

This, I think, is really where we need to head to make Congress work again, and Congress just isn't doing its job.

David Pasqualone: So are there any counties in the US that have adopted this, or is it still a prototype at this point?

Tom Joseph: This is where I said I've only... The, the next stage of this is I liken this to launching a business because I think if you launch a third party, you're gonna fail.

And, I see this as a disruptive technology that in my repurposing of the election system, a super PAC is our venture capital firm, that they actually come in and they back, They have to put the money up to say that, these are the 20 red districts and the 20 blue districts that we're gonna go after.

And they would also be able to market this, go into the districts ahead of time, tell them, "Hey, this is... We're gonna run this contest. If you're interested in being a candidate, download the app. Here's what you need [00:15:00] to do. If you're interested in being on the local committee to help officiate, make sure this is free and fair here's what you do."

But we want this to be driven by the districts where they are. The, the party is really just providing the app, and the, the super PAC really acts as a way to in a nonpartisan way restore the people's w- voice. Because they're saying, "We're gonna back the candidate that the citizens elevate." The super PAC doesn't pick the candidate, the, the people do.

They just say, "We're gonna come up with a really efficient way to market this, across maybe 20 or 40 different districts."

David Pasqualone: So who is the... the checks and balance of the Constitution is a beautiful thing. What are the checks and balance of this app to make sure one party doesn't get control?

Because I agree with you on the uni party. The uni party controls both parties, but when it comes to whoever is managing this software, how do you make sure it doesn't exclude people who deserve to be there, and it doesn't [00:16:00] include only people of their bias?

Tom Joseph: Number one, we're having the local committee run the district.

But we're planning to interface to an application called Votes. Votes ties into the do- the voter records. And we go through a verification process to make sure that photo ID, not only photo ID, David, we're gonna make su- sure people either present their face or their fingerprint to do the kind of authentication that they do with the bank or with Venmo or gambling app or whatever they do.

We have so much security, just in the world today- To get a job at

David Pasqualone: McDonald's you need an ID. Yeah. But not to vote? That's a

Tom Joseph: bullshit system. Yeah no, our system we're gonna make sure that there's a, a government ID, picture ID, that your face matches up. I didn't show it happening on here.

I should... I don't know if we still have the demo up. But when you actually sub- No, it's still live. I'm showing you in this one, it's ranked choice. When you submit, it's saying, "Hey, confirm the rank." It's saying facial verification. Now, we don't actually do this here, but we're saying at this point [00:17:00] before your vote is submitted, you're gonna have to provide either your face or your fingerprint.

But the, the demo's kind of giving people the f- the idea of how this works. In this particular version of the final four, we're using ranked choice. We're gonna eliminate the fourth person, re-rank 'em, come up with a consensus top two. Then you can vote for either one. You submit. Do again a facial verification, and we can re-run the demo.

So this is just... and there's different things, that you could filter this by policy. You'd find out which of the candidates agree. So if you just picked a policy, you could go down and say, "Oh, okay, all these candidates agree with me on policies." So there's a bunch of different ways that you could search it.

You could search it by location, who lives near me. All the different ways that you might wanna find somebody you might wanna support. One of the important things that we look at is using a thing called approval voting in the early rounds, is that approval voting allows you to vote for everybody you approve for, and it's a way to, again, to make sure the [00:18:00] the field represents you.

So if people only can vote for one person, they tend to wanna vote for the winner. And approval voting allows you to vote for underdogs and, other people that say, "Hey, I love it." But who knows? They may go viral. They may, make it to the top 20, make it to the top 10. Ultimately we feel like if people are weighing in based on the issues, that the candidate that emerges is gonna be at the center of the bell curve for that district, and the center of the bell curve for gerrymandered districts, not ruby red or navy blue.

It's gonna be pink and baby blue

David Pasqualone: Got you. So for us as Americans who vote, we're thinking this is like what you said, the American Idol of pre-election voting. It's getting to know who's running. It's getting to filter through it. It's actually a great way to know the candidates and centralize the research.

So that's, that is from the public's perspective. Is that correct, before we move on [00:19:00] to your perspective? 'Cause the next question is, Tom Joseph, as the creator of this, what can we do to help you to get it seen- Sure ... and re- get it realized?

Tom Joseph: Yeah. The current system, it's interesting. I'm sure like everybody, you get bombarded by with text messages to donate.

And w- The parties don't use technology to find out what you want, what you need. And so your question was that this is for the public. This is a tool. The parties have tons of money. They haven't put any tools in place to make sure that they're hearing what we want. They only wanna hear what the super donors want.

That's who they respond to. So yes- Yeah, and I do wanna

David Pasqualone: bring something up. Everybody has got these political texts, support me." Ladies and gentlemen, you don't know who you're supporting. You could get a text that says, "Support candidate X, Y, Z," and that money is going to their com- competition, 'cause it's a total lie and scam.

[00:20:00] Or worse yet, it's saying, "Support X, Y, Z if you want freedom," and you're like, "Yeah." And you give your $100 or your $1,000, you max out whatever, $4,000, and you gave it to a terrorist cell, again, totally lying. So please do not give to these text message sources. That's my public service announcement. Yeah, do your

Tom Joseph: search, yeah.

Go to the web, find, make sure you're supporting somebody you really

David Pasqualone: agree with. Yeah. So is that- ... is that another problem, Tom, that your software can control? Could it properly route the donations, or is that just we're staying out of that?

Tom Joseph: We're... i'm trying to create a system where candidates never have to raise money, and I can tell you how it works.

One is that the, the nominating system's moneyless, so they're not allowed to have a candidate committee. They're not allowed to raise money. Once they win the contest, the super PAC provides the general election, the media campaign. The candidate committee is run by somebody on the local committee.

They're the treasurer. And they just run the ground campaign. They empty that committee at the end of the election [00:21:00] cycle. So this system's designed that once they go to Congress, they never have to raise money. They just come back, go through the Free and Equal system again. It's ridiculous that we send, our representatives, we pay them to go raise money from people that don't even live in our district.

So that is such a huge conflict of interest that they're out raising money from donors that really don't have anything to do with the constituents that they're supposed to represent.

David Pasqualone: Before I stop the screen share and we wrap up this interview, is there anything else you wanna show our viewers in the app?

Tom Joseph: Ah, nah. I, if they're curious, they should go to MainStreetParty.org. Go to a page called A Brand New Way. There's a couple things on there. One is there's a really good synopsis of how the nominating process works. There's a one-minute video that also gives an overview, and then you can click on the thing that looks like a cellphone and play with the app.

One thing you have to do is you have to actually enter your [00:22:00] name, your birthdate, and your address before it will accept your ver- You have to go through a faux verification of your device. But basically, a, your device can be a secure ballot box. It's a secure banking tool, so you know, people wanna steal money way more than they wanna steal votes.

David Pasqualone: Yes. All right, Tom. And if someone wants to reach you, give us that website again.

Tom Joseph: MainStreetParty.org. America's Main Street Party. This is... If you wanna check out how the whole thing is really designed and some of the research behind it, there's a website called WilsonsFountain.us. And this is a lot of the work that I did with these kids in Philadelphia, kids, young adults, go to Penn, Drexel, Temple, Haverford, and Swarthmore.

But they're all different research looking at really what's the impact of free and equal elections. How would that impact Congress? Can we get to a multi-party or multi-faction Congress? And I [00:23:00] believe we can, that one of the things, the, the money binds the parties. And if you take the money out of it, that there could be...

it's easier to get to more factions, and that people can represent, their location, not this national agenda.

David Pasqualone: Absolutely. So ladies and gentlemen, you're hearing about this maybe first on our show, but always do your due diligence, do your research, check out Tom's website submit any questions you have or ideas.

He's still in the, the growth phase. You could be giving ideas that are helping him help America. So make sure you're engaging that way. And Tom, any other information, questions, any other statements or final thoughts you want to leave our listeners before we wrap up this episode?

Tom Joseph: No, just say that, I- if you want to find me on LinkedIn, I'm the founder of BookMinders.

40 years ago, I pioneered remote first accounting. To me, there's a parallel between building a secure system and carving some new ground on doing outsourced [00:24:00] accounting and building another type of accounting system where you're counting votes instead of dollars. But, same thing, security, do something innovative to change the way people people vote.

David Pasqualone: Absolutely. And again, ladies and gentlemen, you hear so much ridiculousness in the world, but just two plus two is always four. If I walk across the border, Canada's not going to let me vote in their election, and they're some of the weakest country they're weak. They don't even have guns at the border, right?

So if you're not going to go to China or Russia, why the heck on this green earth should you, people who come to America and vote in our elections? Especially since 99 out of 100 of them hate America and they're trying to make it like their country, yet they came to America and fled their country.

Total hypocrisy. So anyways, Tom, I love the concept. I love the idea. I hope it turns out great and we can do a follow-up episode when people are actively using this and just hopefully grow it out, and so it's helping [00:25:00] support America and the Constitution.

Tom Joseph: Yeah. Our goal is for, get this in place for 2028.

David Pasqualone: Awesome. All right. I appreciate you. Ladies and gentlemen, like our slogan says, Listen. Do. Repeat. For Life!. Don't just listen to great content, but do what you have to do. Repeat those into good, healthy habits each day so you can have a great life in this world, but more importantly, in eternity to come.

Tom, thank you for being here with us today, brother.

Tom Joseph: Thank you.

David Pasqualone: All right. It's been a pleasure, and we will see you in the next episode. Ciao!