Episode Transcript: Noah Praetz

Cold Open

Mara

We were actually living in an apartment about a mile from Wrigley when the Cubs won the World Series. It was amazing. It was so much fun. It was epic.

Noah

That's so funny. One of my favorite stories is that the first election conference after that…each state walks up with their delegation and the delegation leader says something. So, you know, I step up and this is the summer of 2017 and I said, my name is Noah and I'm, you know, run elections in Cook County and I'm here representing a delegation of 23, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I want to draw your attention back to that crazy night last November, and everybody started getting scared because, you know, it's a politics-free zone. And I said, I called Lance Goff at the Chicago Board of Elections, and I said, can you believe this? Hell is about to freeze over, you know? Nobody can believe that this would happen in our country. You know, and I still remember ABC News made the call, you know, at 1138.

 I forget who it was that announced it, but they said, hot shot to third, Rizzo picks it up, throws it across the first, God's with him. All like 300 people in the audience, like the level of relief. That was awesome.

Introduction

Hello, dear friends. Welcome back to What Voting Means to Me. I am your host, Mara Suttmann-Lea.

Before diving into today’s episode, I want to talk about a realization I had that relates to some of the discussion from this episode. In a book I just finished reading, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, author Gabor Mate highlights 4 A’s of healing and wholeness: authenticity, agency, acceptance, and healthy expression of anger. For human beings to live a truly wholehearted and fulfilling existence, Gabor suggests we must feel safe living authentically, exercising agency, healthily expressing anger when our boundaries are crossed—but-and-also—accept life as it is even as we strive to make changes in our own lives and for the lives of our communities.

And it sort of hit me over the head as I was editing this episode about how many of these aspects of healing and being a “whole human” are realized in our striving towards democracy. In systems of democratic governance—in theory—we can express our authentic selves: who we are, what we need and desire, through the act of voting, debate, and protest. Democracy gives us agency to express our authenticity, and the capacity to healthily express anger, not only through the ballot box but through protest and discussion in our communities. And finally—when it is done right—it models the process of acceptance for us. Elections are won and lost, and—as this week’s episode reminds us—we accept our losses and live to fight another day at the ballot box.

So it seems to me that an answer—not the answer—but an answer for when we find ourselves feeling hopeless, lost, or unmoored—is that we find ways to participate in democracy, any way big or small, to find our way back to wholeness.

This is an idea I am going to keep exploring in the coming weeks, but I was too excited about it to not share it in conjunction with this episode, where we talk a lot about how doing the work of democracy can be one of the most rewarding, fulfilling, and authentic experiences we can have as members of a democratic community. And as we talk about in this episode, the work of democracy is messy, slow, and painstaking. But the alternatives render us, I think, to systems that merely demand we survive, and not thrive, during our time on this planet.

 As you will hear in just a moment, a lot of these perspectives come up in my discussion with Noah Praetz, the president of the Elections Group whose organization consults on election operations and security for local, state, and federal election partners. In this episode, Noah and I talk about his formative years hearing stories from his parents—who marched for Civil Rights in Selma, Alabama, and his excitement over meeting Harold Washington at a young age in the city of Chicago. After working odd jobs following college, Noah shares how his first moment of self-actualization came while working as a temporary election worker in the lead up to the 2000 presidential election.

 In addition to hearing Noah’s “democracy biography,” we muse over what representation means for the constituents of election officials, and talk about the importance of institutional reverence for the health of democratic systems. Throughout the episode, we come back to the idea that, while flawed, messy, and imperfect—democracy is the best answer to the question of how we govern ourselves.

We don’t yet have financial sponsors for What Voting Means to Me, but this is your friendly reminder that this podcast is, quite literally, made possible by democracy.

Please enjoy Noah Praetz.

 Episode

 Mara

Thank you so much for being here and I'm really excited, especially having heard a couple of these little anecdotes already, to hear about your democracy story and your democracy journey. The first question I'm going to ask is the question I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your first memory of living in a democracy?

 Noah

See, Mara, that's interesting for me because...sort of voting at the democracy space, sort of access to the ballot box has been, I think, probably the most grounding part of, or the...foundational part of my entire family life. My parents actually met in Selma, Alabama during the third march. They went down as like parts of sort of young Christian students ICS from here in Chicago. I mean, they were big in the sort of civil rights movement. My dad was living in Springfield, Massachusetts, so not too far from you. My mom was from a Catholic Diocese in Joliet, you know, both on their way down there and they had just tremendous tales of sort of living all those years in the civil rights movement.

 So it was always coming in the background that while democracy is sort of painful and frustrating, like sort of the only way that sort of a multicultural society can attach legitimacy to government. And it's the only hope certainly in our country to share power, especially as our political spectrum widens. So it's always been there.

 My first political memory, I think, was probably 1982 or 1983 Harold Washington, I think, being elected in Chicago. So we were here then and they were big in sort of Chicago politics. 49th Ward first saw up by Loyola, the Rogers Park area. Oh, yeah. I'm working with the upstart alderman there, David Orr, who I later would go on to work for. You know, and he led this sort of...council wars in Chicago, the African American block versus sort of the old white democratic machine block.

 And I remember meeting Harold, coming off of a stage at Grant Park, and like, I was six or seven, and I'm like, I'm never washing this hand again. You know, that was, that was my political memory. You know, it was, it's been an interesting transition. I found myself like a sort of, sort of more political, more kind of striding as a young person.

 Then I started doing elections and realized as I climbed the ladder inside the kind of clerk's office, all of a sudden when I sort of had the reins of power, I realized, holy cow, I can't be political. So two things were happening. One is there's sort of an integrity or sense of integrity that I need to bring to the job so that all stakeholders can trust the decisions that I make.

Mara

When you shared about your first memory of politics, being political…that captured my attention, but I do want to go back a little bit further and ask you if there's other anything else that you would be able to would like to share about the stories your parents told you about their marches for civil rights because, what I hear and what I see in the story that I, what I know of you so far is that there's this really powerful thread of your parents literally protested and fought so black Americans could have the right to vote and now you are doing what you do. And that's so powerful to me. So if there's other stories or if there's anything you'd like to share about how you feel that may have shaped--and maybe it didn't--but may have shaped sort of the trajectory of your life. I think that would be just so cool to hear.

Noah

Yeah, it's hard. So last Christmas I got them a Story Worth. So they get a prompt like once a week where they're like writing their own like autobiographies. I can't wait. We're getting to the point where we get to bundle it up and I get to read them all. And it would be good to have some of those stories.

I guess I would say--you know--I took four or five jobs out of undergrad. I thought, “oh it'd be fun to do this to sell computers or to trade options or you know or to learn to trade options or bartender,” you know but nothing was home until summer before the 2020 election.

In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I mean, I was still hitting some of those basics of food and shelter, but for the first time in life I realized what in this profession I could also get self-actualization. I could have a sort of impact on the world and hit that sort of pinnacle of his hierarchy of needs. And so I knew pretty quickly that this is where I wanted to stay. And so I would walk out of the office, trudge down State Street into the law school, you know, take my night class, oftentimes go back to work depending on the time of year. But I knew within a...probably a month.

And as a temporary worker in the summer of 2000, you know, it was typing voter registration cards, but it was also going down to the Dirksen Federal Building, to the naturalization services. And it just sort of all came together for me that this was a place that was very sort of there was a, feel the need to serve, right? There was a sort of patriotic angle to it.

I think this is the one sacred, if you will, or if you can call it secular institution sacred, like sort of so foundational to this country. It just checked all the boxes for me.

Mara

I'm nodding and smiling so much because I just know exactly what you mean. When I think about my own work and the work that I do from the angles that I take in terms of working with American democracy and supporting it.

That's so incredible. I have a quick clarifying question. I think you had said 2020, you meant 2000 earlier.

Noah

This was right around 2000. Yeah, yeah. Ooh, a very formative. I was like, I'm pretty sure you meant 2000. Yeah. Well, there are these two like, two big points, right? Or I guess, yeah, where trajectories change significantly post-2000 and then post-2020. Yep. Yeah, it's kind of eerie. That's a bookend on my kind of professional career, I guess. Yeah. Now I'm outside in the support workspace.

Mara

And it sounds, what I'm hearing is that your parents, in sharing what they've shared with you about their own experience, instilled the values that drove you towards that self-actualization of sort of, this is the work that I want to do that is meaningful. Is that, am I understanding that correctly?

No, I mean, it gave sort of everything to sort of the idea that...Well, we've got a lot of problems. We still do. The ballot box gives folks the opportunity to change direction. And thankfully for, you know, 200 plus years, we've always chosen the ballot box. And you know, we, these are contentious times, but they're not the most contentious of all of our times. And even, you know, in 2020, people went to the ballot box. And while there are sort of hints of violence in the background, which make it nerve wracking and kind of the future is a bit murky, all signs point to the fact that once again in 2024 people will go to resolve their issues at the ballot box, and if they lose, get back up and get ready to fight another day at the ballot box.

And like that, that American norm, I think, is the most important thing. It's somewhat divorced from the actual administration of elections. And so election officials don't have a tremendous amount of agency in that norm.

The highest return on investment they can get is to just run a great election as flawless as possible. Don't let stupid little mistakes be used to undermine the sort of sanctity of the institution. That said, like, they've got these ascendant duties, I think, to put out information.

I think just I don't know that they can they'll ever drown out other people but they've at least got a have their theory of the case available so that when voters are looking for information they can find the voice of election officials the official voice now in some quarters that'll automatically come with a minus and that's okay.

Mara

Yeah. It's such, I want to take us down this thread for just a second because this is something I think a lot about and I would be curious to hear your thoughts. It's such an interesting thing to reflect on what democratic representation means for elected election officials or even for election officials who are appointed because they're appointed by people who are elected. So the traditional way of thinking about representation is policy responsiveness and you know there are other conceptualizations that are out there, descriptive representation, symbolic representation, but that substantive representation of I have a seat at the table there's policy responsiveness.

It doesn't really apply to election officials in terms of policy adoption or even really, as you were saying, there's a pretty prescribed set of things that they do in terms of implementation. It's not really a question in there. I just wanted to see if you had any thoughts on that.

Noah

Yeah. The NVRA, right, was at 92, pretty instrumental law but implemented just so differently across the country and barely implemented in some states. But they get off kind of free because they're not a swing state, you know, and all eyes would turn to a place like Ohio who actually did a really good job of it. Like one policy, like preference that went all the way to the Supreme Court, you know, in the Husted said case.

So when it comes to election officials, like they can slow walk laws and policies they can do it bad they can do it they can do it good that's the those so in terms of you know uh kind of that return on investment from a um like that political that theory of representative government like they've got a little bit there, but I’m increasingly sort of interested in the other theory that folks are voting not necessarily on what government can give back to them but like on who they want to be their face. Yeah. Like to vote against their own financial interests or their own for all kinds of interest, but what they are voting for is like, this is the, this is who I, this is what I want America to look like. This is what I want America to look like in my neighborhood. Yeah. Uh, and so like what drives voters is very different, you know, than I ever understood it to be. And that's okay. I mean, as long as they continue to come to the ballot box to, to whatever, whatever they're voting for or against like do it at the ballot box.

Mara

That's so helpful. And it's just one of those fascinating little puzzles to think about. You know, of course, yeah, they're not a part of a legislative body in the same way that Congress or state house and senates are. And so we don't expect them to make policy, but they're still elected. And it's just so interesting. It's so interesting to hold that tension in my brain at least.

Noah

It is really different. Like all politics is local, right? Is that Tip O'Neill? At the end of the day, and while it's increasingly nationalized our language, like once you take office, you still got all those local little battles to fight and partnerships to make, and you got all those like little hurdles, and so even if you get good policy or bad policy,

That's just the beginning of the journey. Yeah. Effectuating it is where the rubber meets the road.

Mara

I feel like I'm I want to move us towards that the big question, which in so many ways has been implicitly answered in some of our discussion. Before I get there, though, we have talked a little bit about the professional career trajectory. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Anything you'd like to share about how you got to where you currently are now?

Noah

I mean, I think, and I tell young folks this all the time, people that, you know, I teach at the University of Chicago and at DePaul, people ask, I say, you know, there's so much low-hanging fruit in elections. Like there's almost basic due diligence to move from a maturity level, you know, that's pretty low to significantly increase, whether that's in like a cybersecurity domain, right, or communications domain, or just going into a spot and like building a whole new program to really educate your observers or to write standard operating procedures. There's so much low hanging fruit because we're so under resourced that folks that want to get into this business, that are willing to work hard can come up really quickly. You know, the opportunities to have a meaningful career and do provide meaningful change are huge. And I, you know, despite, you know, how frustrating it is for us or current election officials, I just hope that folks still want come into this industry because they can make meaningful, meaningful change.

Mara

Yeah, me too, me too. I see in so many of my students, and there's a bit of a selection bias because I have students who are taking political science classes. But if it's not in the space of elections, they do that drive for that self-actualization you were talking about to do something that is meaningful and that matters is really there. It's quite amazing. And so I hope so too. I hope so too.

Noah

It's really, you know, especially in the realm of election administration, it's important. We need it. We need more folks. And certainly that becomes much more difficult given the environment that election officials are facing currently, unfortunately, to be chair of the county, they get to gavel in the county board meetings, right? Take the minutes, and elections was like a side job. It was done, but it was tolerated. It wasn't the driver. I think that balance is shifting and like the elections part of work. I mean, you got some states where you just do elections, but by and large, you're doing about vital statistics, birth, death, in Michigan.

My friend Tina talks about like, the secondary registration.

Mara

Yes, Tina Barton, yes?

Noah

Yeah, yeah. So, all to say, like, I think America's eyes are on elections, like it's getting the attention it deserves, and recognition that it's probably the hardest job in county government. You've got the biggest IT portfolio, the most required competencies, the highest level of risk for doing something wrong and having sort of high consequences. So I think the folks have got a tough chin and are willing to bring excitement and tirelessness to it can make just huge impacts over a short period of time. And I think it's attracting a new sort of group of people who are willing to put it all out there for our democracy.

Mara

Yeah, I agree. I do see that. I do see that. And I hope to see it more and do my best to encourage the young adults that I teach.

Noah

Yeah, like the pipeline is a real issue. I know, I know. Get people in and get them in where they've got a baseline of understanding that's pretty high already. So, I'm liking this too, like the apprenticeship model of professions where you come in and you become the blacksmith, but not until you've like forged iron for a few years. And we've got to shift that a little bit so that when you come in, you already sort of know a little bit about what you're doing.

Mara

Absolutely. And it certainly is not enough. You know what I'm saying? You can only cover so much in a semester, especially when we're talking about however many jurisdictions. I lose count. It's what, 6,000 different plus 10,000? I mean, we say like 11,000 and it's just, like I do some contracting work for it. For CISA, we use 11,000 because I mean, you could take it state like Texas, 254 counties, 80 or something of them. Have the offices split where the tax assessor administration, vestiges of a time gone by. And another office does the administration of the voting process. Arizona's similar, split between a recorder and election administrator. Between the split duties, and then all of the upper Midwest and New England, where you do it, right? You got all these little towns. Yep. And then a single polling place, the hamlets that are running elections..

Mara

It's, it is maddening. It's especially maddening when you're trying to, as Leah Merivaki and I are trying to do, track down every single social media account for, and not that there is, you know, going to be one for every jurisdiction, but it's like, okay, we didn't find one for this jurisdiction, but didn't we find one? It's such a bear, but it's awesome. I love doing it. In any case, I digress.

So I do want move on to that big question, which again, I feel...so much of the sentiment has been encompassed in what you've shared, but I will ask it. What does voting mean to you?

Noah

In a multicultural sort of society, it is the one and only place that you move the nation in whichever direction you're going to go. And silence is a vote as well, right? Not showing up as a vote. And it means I'm fine with wherever we go. I don't care which direction you're going to move. And so, you know, an interesting thing about the sort of low turnout talk of the, you know, the early odds or like 2012 was the idea. In my mind was like voters were—if you take a sort of economic view of what they're doing—they see low return on investment because we're fighting over, we had been fighting over relatively narrow range of the political spectrum compared to you know, multi-party democracies in Europe, where the range of topics were significant, you know, the people would come in and you would see fairly significant shifts in public policy, and they would be effectuated quickly. So there were sort of the return on investment was pretty high.

You know, here, I think voters smartly recognize like, well, we all may yell at each other really loudly about politics fighting over rather narrow range. And even if our guy gets some powers, like the structural setup of the Senate, and, you know, and the Senate versus House means that, you know, the minorities parties are so powerful that they can be such a check on victory, that the idea that you would see anything happen quickly, of substance, you know, became really foreign, the norms, the use of filibusters, things like that, in my opinion. And what we see more now is sort of a little more excitement, I think, because the policy prescriptions, the divide between them are significantly more than they were 20 years ago or 30 years ago. We're fighting over a bigger range of kind of political turf. And because of that, sort of voters are recognizing now, “I can have my say,” and that's why I think you see increased turnout, increased activism. And it's still the only way. Yeah. If we don't do it this way, if we don't share power this way, then we're back to human basics, which is just the biggest guy with the biggest stick, Game of Thrones…

Mara

Oh, let's not get into that show and how much I was frustrated by the way, by the way it ended. It ended with the Electoral College. Can we just say that? Can we say? Sorry. That's great. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I and I, I guess I'm just butchering quotes all over the place today. Who said it? Winston Churchill. Democracy is the worst form of government except for everything else. Am I getting that correct? Well, you couldn't agree more.

Noah

Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't wrong. Like, you know, it's slow and it's frustrating and you're always compromising and yeah, I think that sentiment was right that you know, once you have that power, you're forced to make the least worst decision. And there are echoes of that through history with Dr. King; the arc of the more universe is long, but bends towards justice. The idea is that it's slow and prodding and frustrating, but what it does, and then certainly the way we've set ours up with a pretty powerful kind of minority party voting block is that it sort of prevents rapid vacillations between sort of populist movements. It keeps us on a fairly narrow and stable long-term trajectory.

You know, that we sort of rely on ingrained institutions to be very stable even if the political leadership at top isn't. And we saw that even through 2020 and in fact the stability of those institutions probably are the primary thing that kept us from tipping over the edge. And so to the extent I've got any worries about the future, it's like the stability and reverence with which we hold kind of our institutions more so than the political rhetoric or language. And it's not just elections. I mean, walk into hospitals now or school board meetings. There's a lot of discontent.

Mara

College classrooms. It's been okay. But yeah, yeah, I know. And you've just hit on, I think, one of the biggest reasons why I want to do this the work of putting out there is to generate, if possible, a reverence for the institution of democracy and to show what it means to people. Because I think that when we know why something is valuable, why others value it, why it is important, and answering that question and answering that what voting means to me question, I just have never seen a way in which it doesn't extend beyond Republican, Democrat. And it's just so nice to hear you share these sentiments because they resonate with me so deeply and I appreciate what you said about in a multicultural, multi-directional, multi-contextual, whatever, you know, a nation of immigrants. How else do you do it? And that's really powerful. That's just going to sit with me for a while.

Noah

The interesting thing, so much like, the major parties have always had their sort of elites, right? And they've been shifting alliances of sort of the middle and under classes, different sectors who would sort of align with different elites, but the elites always had this: the norms, the recognition that we'll build our alliances, we'll make our case, we'll have the election, and if we win, we win. If we lose, we'll back off, and we'll act in a way that recognizes that in four years, it could all switch.

As a victor, we won't press every advantage we've got. As a loser, we won't hold up every spoil captured victors should have—to show to the American people that there's a return on your investment. Policy does change yes but not drastically that but we don't flight constantly will be in power next year.

Those norms are the things that got a hold. Yeah, we continue the mechanics of elections and counting the votes Forever. I mean my concerns with our democracy are not in the election official offices, you know, that's whether that's sort of our elites will Hold true to that covenant that they've made 250 years ago.

Mara

Yeah and I think one of the last things I'll say is that it's emphasizing the elite and the leadership responsibility there is so important. Because when I look at the folks who don't vote because they feel like it doesn't matter and feel like democracy isn't working, as much as I want them to see the value of this act, I also understand. And the valuing of those institutions has to come from leadership and not like, I'm forcing you to value this, but that reverence. And it's, yeah, that's such an important point.

Before I let you go, is there anything else you'd like to add that I missed? Anything I didn't ask about that you think I should ask about?

So, I'm going to go ahead and start with this one: I should have scripted out like what are my I usually like if you're doing a press interview, right? You say, okay, I need my What are the three points? I got ten seconds here. I got 20 seconds or it's a long form article I got five points I can get in and I didn't do that Here, I feel like we could talk for five hours. I don't have a through line sentiment that I don't think I probably kicked to death already with you.

Mara

Yeah, that's, and that's okay. To me the through line is very clear and this has been such a pleasure. Like really, this is just- Yeah, well it's fun. Thank you, thank you, thank you.