Turning Debate Into Dialogue

Reflections on taping PBS’ Deadlock special about a hypothetical election scenario

Two housekeeping notes before we get into this week’s newsletter.

First, for those of you working on elections, the Associated Press is doing a webinar with the American Press Institute on Thursday, September 26 on how they project winners. Since many orgs work through AP this might be of interest.

Second, I got some helpful feedback that my graphic about Mark Zuckerberg’s political evolution was hard to read. I also forgot to include him starting Fwd.us back in 2013. You can view it on Canva here and zoom in.

On with the show!

Back in July, I got an intriguing speaking invitation. PBS was going to do a special based on a series Fred Friendly started about 50 years ago. They would bring in thought leaders from all different backgrounds to debate an ethically tricky hypothetical scenario based on actual events. Would I be interested?

I didn’t know my fellow panelists until 48 hours before (and even then, there was one surprise guest—Mick Mulvaney), and I didn’t know the scenario—nor my role—until I got in the room for taping.

It wasn’t hard for me to guess the broad contours of what they’d come up with. Clearly, it was going to be about the election. Likely something around and after Election Day. I’d be playing the role of some tech employee.

I was intimidated by my fellow panelists. Among them were Scott Pelly from 60 Minutes, Jeh Johnson, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, the Secretary of State from Arizona and the former Secretary of State and now Attorney General of Kansas, and Gabe Sterling from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, who became famous for his work during the 2020 election and for calling out leaders for not condemning the threats against election officials.

Everyone was incredibly kind when I walked into the green room 90 minutes before taping. We introduced ourselves and had exciting conversations about the day's news, including what had just broken in Springfield. (Taping was the day before the debate.)

We were then led to the taping area, where three tables in a horseshoe shape were set up, with four of us at each table. The live audience wrapped around us. The moderator, Aaron Tang, started by explaining the scenario. We were in a state called Middlevania on Election Day. He began by talking to two panelists playing poll workers at 6 a.m. Throughout the scenario, Aaron walked us through Election Day and beyond.

We taped for three hours, but they edited it to one hour. You can watch it on YouTube here.

The other panelists and I at the Deadlock taping.

It was an utterly fascinating experience. Here are a few of my takeaways:

We need more senior people across sectors to participate in things like this.

In many ways, this was my dream red teaming scenario. For those unfamiliar with that term, people run through hypothetical scenarios to stress test their systems. It’s done all the time now in the tech world, not just around elections but for potentially tricky situations. A lot of red teaming is now done on AI models to ensure they don’t generate content/responses that the companies don’t want.

When I’ve typically done a red teaming exercise, it combines tech employees and civil society. You usually don’t get high-ranking officials to join. It’s tough to get Republicans - especially Trump supporters - to participate.

Because of its reputation and convening power, PBS got real decision-makers from across the political spectrum in the room. I don’t know if they tried to get someone more senior at a tech company for my role or not, but it would have been great if they could have gotten someone at the level of Nick Clegg, Brad Smith, or Kent Walker. I did my best, though. 

We need more of this. It can be so hard to get folks at these senior levels to take the time to work through these things and hear why others are making the decisions they are. We can’t do them all publicly, but I hope PBS tries to do more. I would be a regular viewer of a series like this.

You can’t fit this all into an hour.

It makes for good television, but even three hours wasn’t enough for us to work through every curve ball they threw at us - and they threw a lot. But even then, at one point, Scott Pelly and I were both making the point that the video circulating on social media that was a part of the scenario wouldn’t be the only one we had to deal with. There would be thousands. 

An excellent red teaming facilitator will tell you at the outset not to question the hypothetical and that they know there will be missing pieces. The point is to work with imperfect information because that’s what real life will be like. The producers tried to fit in as much as they could, but it still wasn’t complex enough.

We didn’t have much time to go back and forth.

Aaron Tang did a fantastic job moderating the scenario. However, after watching it Friday night, I realized that we didn’t debate or talk back and forth with one another a lot. Sure, we did some role-playing, and Aaron would ask different panelists what they would do, but we had limited time to go back and forth. One of the only times I saw that was after I gave my answer about what I’d do with the actual video of a poll worker helping a voter mark their ballot with AI-generated audio over it. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes argued why we should take it down. Mick Mulvaney countered him on that. But then we moved on. I would have killed for more back and forth on that. It was a brief but perfect example of my conversations with Republicans and Democrats.

If there were to be future ones, it would be great if the panelists could discuss them more.

Tech was only a portion of the story.

They didn’t introduce me to the story until a little over an hour into the taping. My portion of the video lasts all of five minutes. There were two other times I talked in the taping that didn’t make it to air, but they were more about the situation than what I would do as a tech employee.

Was the fact that this viral video showing potential fraud was spread on Election Day a big part of the story? Yes. Was it the sole focus of the scenario? No.

Some people think these situations can be fixed if a platform magically knows the right call to make about a piece of content and does it. That dream scenario does not exist. Many other people are a part of how news spreads; this special did an excellent job of highlighting that. It's with remembering as we go through the next few months.

Side note: I get why they had the stereotype of me being in a fancy office drinking a fancy coffee drink. But it did irk me a bit as we don’t have offices nor do I drink chai. A more realistic scenario would have had me in a windowless, smelly and crowded election war room, but still with good coffee. Just stuck with me about the stereotypes that people might come into situations like this with.

Experts had strong values and deep knowledge.

I liked how the producers mixed things up for the panelists. Many of us played characters that represented what we do in real life. That allowed folks like Gabe and the Secretaries of State to explain the nuances of counting the votes and any appeals. A nuance that the panelists playing poll workers didn’t know. That helped to show how things can get confusing quickly.

Another tricky area for most folks was handling interpersonal situations with different people. Not those in the room but the hypothetical voters and poll watchers (different than poll workers.) It was difficult for everyone but Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, who played a local pastor. He only made a small part of the final product. Still, throughout the conversation, he had many good suggestions for how to diffuse the situation, which is a great example of the importance of engaging with community leaders.

Much of this showed that what some think are tricky situations aren’t that tough of a call for the experts. Scott Pelly and Astead Herndon, a national politics reporter for The New York Times, who were both playing journalists in our fictional state, had no qualms about reporting on a public conversation by a Middlevania elector who was thinking about switching his vote. Mulvaney and Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, playing members of the Middlevania State Legislature, were clear on how they would vote to ratify the results. Jeh Johnson - who was playing the incumbent presidential candidate - was clear about not trying to lobby electors to change their votes.

The cameras and live audience have their own impact.

At the end, we were all asked if we had a message for the viewers about what we had just gone through. My panic responsibly line did not make it into the final airing, but many of the panelists talked about how they weren’t sure what to expect going into the exercise. Fontes spoke about how he and Kobach agree on almost nothing and had never met in person before. Yet, they spent three hours sitting next to one another and could calmly talk through the scenario unfolding. 

However, when I left the taping, I couldn’t help but wonder how the presence of cameras and an audience had changed the scenario unfolding. We didn’t get to see any of the panelists put under real pressure to make a certain decision like we all know it happens in real life. Yes, we didn’t know the situation ahead of time, but that wasn’t enough to create the high-stress, sleep-deprived state many folks will be in when these decisions are actually made. 

I’m not questioning the decisions the panelists made in the room. Not at all. Just that there’s only so much you can do in a mock scenario like this. Real life is much more tricky.

There’s hope. We can turn debate into dialogue.

We need more of this behavior modeled to citizens by our leaders and this type of transparency. I left the taping feeling hopeful that a group of folks like this could get together, and it didn’t devolve into a shouting match. Instead, it was smart, well-intentioned people trying to do the right thing - even if we didn’t agree.

Many of you are probably already running into this with family, friends, and co-workers as the election heats up. I certainly am. Some people choose to shy away from politics altogether. I take pride in that I can have conversations with folks across the political aisle about what is happening. I try to listen and understand their perspective versus trying to change their mind. I try to give them other ways to look at the situation, but I don’t try to be right. I know it’s ok to disagree, and it’s important to be respectful. Usually, we can find areas of agreement.

Those of you working at a tech company on elections know that most people don’t know everything you are doing. At most, they’ve read a few headlines. Have some talking points prepared so you aren’t fumbling for something in the heat of the moment. It’s also ok to say you can’t talk about it and ask to change the subject. Or point them to other resources to learn more. 

Overall, more transparency in the decision-making process, not just by tech execs but also by the media, campaigns, political parties, election officials, and others, is crucial to restoring trust in our elections. This special was just one example of how that might be done. It was an honor to be a part of it.

DEADLOCK is a co-production of GBH, Andrew Lack and Room 608. It is streaming on: pbs.org/deadlock, YouTube and the PBS app.

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