An Overdue Conversation: With Dan Whitfield
On October 19, 2020 we met with Dan Whitfield to discuss the Arkansas election, running as a third party candidate, the process of making changes in our political system and how people can get involved. Below is the conversation we had with Dan. We have transcribed part of the interview.
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On Issue 2:
Stacey: Dan, would you tell me about the next issue on the ballot
Dan: Yes, so it's number 2 is it's completely different from the tax on issue 1. so basically right now our state legislators have term limits. I think it was in 2014 and we voted to approve term limits. We limited our state representatives ability to serve in office for more than 16 years. so we have current term limits of 16 years. What issue 2 seeks to do is remove the 16 year term limit and instead replace it with something that sounds great on the outside which is what they were trying to do too hopefully to get past but they're changing the 16 year term limit to a 12-year term limit consecutive and then you get for years out of office and then you can run for another twelve years so it's basically a 12 on 4 off 12 on type of thing which it's really big issue because right now we have some of the highest taxes in America we have some of the lowest wages in America we have some of the worst Education Works Healthcare we have a lot of problems here in Arkansas that we really need to start addressing and taking care of but it's our state legislators who are in the position of authority to actually do something about it and they failed us because we're not getting any better so the last thing we need is to give these elected officials even more time in office when they're unable to help us as Arkansans rather than keeping them on a 16-year term and then putting in fresh blood with new ideas people who could possibly help us in the future and we have this huge problem in Arkansas where one of our state legislators are actually running unopposed.
On running as a third party candidate and government reform
Stacey: that's another thing I did want to talk about more…so we we have this system in place that makes it very difficult to be an outsider and come into it but it makes very accessible for those that are already within the inner circle of it and it almost makes it where it's it just works on it sound like a well-oiled machine however if someone new that's trying to come into that to be fresh blood and ideas right there's there's a lot of resistance that you encounter to even get your hat in the ring could you tell me a little bit about because you're very familiar with that
Dan: especially as a third-party candidate I get a little bit more. Its very tough to be an outsider and not a career politician and not have party backing to get into a campaign and start that Campaign moving in a productive manner so that you can actually win. they really got it set up our state legislators so that if you're not part of the two party system it's very very difficult to get to office which is one of the things I really wanted to bring out of my last campaign was to create a platform where people can number one look at who is representing them number two look at whether money is coming from and then look at how they been voting and then if they don't agree with the way that they been being represented they can go straight into it how to run for office that way they can start to challenge these incumbents to have been running unopposed and not representing them properly. now it's difficult that mean the best advice I can give number one is on the Secretary of State's website they do have a candidate handbook you can start reading through the handbook I want to read and it's kind of boring but there's a lot of important information in there and if you're not running with a party backing you that's the first step and if you do want to run for office in Arkansas at without a party backing you as an independent or something like that reach out to me personally my emails Danwhitcongress@gmail.com I'll help anybody run for office who wants to run cuz we need more people running but you know moving on if you're a running as a Democrat it's a little bit easier you just start going to your county party meetings and listen to what everyone has to say learn as much as you can take it all in and then you let them know your interest in running for office so it's not as bad if you're part of one of the two parties
Stacey: why did you decide to run as a third-party candidate as opposed to...you were running against Tom Cotton, who is now running unopposed presently correct?
Dan: he is a Libertarian Ricky Harrington who the way that you get ballot access is different depending on what party you are and the libertarian party was able to spend $55,000 to a paid canvassing company in May June and July of 2019 to get their signatures required for ballot access so there is a Libertarian running against him
Stacey: Thank you for clarifying that. So why did you decide independent was the way that you wanted to go as opposed to going a track that maybe would have been a little more easily paved for you to go
Dan: the whole reason is because Bernie Sanders woke me up to the corruption that our government he showed me how the two party system is failing us whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or a an independent a green party member libertarian or people's party whatever you are we're still having the same problems where we live in our communities were paying high taxes or making low wages and these are non-partisan issues I decided to run as an independent because at the legislative level I believe that a representative should answer to us their constituents rather than answering to a political party because the whole point of a political party at the definition by definition it is a an organization that is used to help candidates get elected to control the flow of government and that's just not what I believe our government I think our government should be controlled by us the people and not by an organization and that's what I decided to run as an independent I do have a lot of a democratic-leaning policies and I could fit in with that group of there just some things that I support that the Democratic party here in Arkansas refuses to adopt such as the federal decriminalization of cannabis nationally sponging convictions the green new deal because the climate crisis is the biggest existential threat that we have seen as a human species and of course my most important policy that I supported medicare-for-all which unfortunately the Democratic party does not support that policy
Issue 3 and Ranked Choice Voting
Stacey: I think that this is a great tie in here because I feel like as our country as a whole we are we are not feeling represented as a whole we're giving these two, essentially two choices for us to choose between and both choices are failing on a lot of fronts to represent these big issues that we are all have very strong feelings about the be partisan politics seems to have have gotten more exacerbated over definitely the last decade and I wonder the the inability for third party candidates to come and make a viable run so that there could be more voices getting onto the political stage right because right now we're being very polarized in between these two very strong opinions. I have read something about a I had read anything about ranked-choice voting right and I believe Arkansas was supposed to have it on the ballot and I have heard that it didn't make it onto the ballot you can probably shed some light on that for me but for people that do not know could you explain for me what ranked Choice voting
Dan: yes absolutely Segway into the issues if I could real quick let's do issue 3 just to keep them in order to one is that half a percent tax for roads permanent issue number two was removing term limits for state legislators and Issue Number 3 is a ballot killer initiative basically what it does is it makes it almost impossible for Arkansas to actually get ballot initiative onto the ballot to be voted on takes our voice and our choice away. now are some of the ways that it makes it harder is number one right now if you want to get a petition initiative on to the ballot you need to get signatures from registered Arkansas in the people who collect the signatures are usually people from out-of-state who do it for a living you pay them like five or six dollars to Signature whatever they'll come here no click signature for you and don't turn them in now they're not signing it themselves they're from out of state but there are allowing registered Arkansas voters to have the accessibility to sign this petition to get it turned in because they agree that maybe this item should be on the ballot for us to be voted on now one of the things that issue number three will do is it will make it so that out-of-state petitioners cannot come into Arkansas to collect signatures which makes it a lot harder to get those signatures required for ballot access another thing I think it requires petition gatherers to have a license to do it it requires someone requesting the petitions that sang the petitioners to collect signatures to get a license to do it and I think it changes it so that you have to have so many percentages of signatures from each different County or so many different counties; it makes it a lot harder so it is really tough it's going to make it hard for us to get things like a medicinal marijuana onto the ballot to even be voted on. now that's issue 1 2 and 3 those are the only issues I believe that we will see on our ballot this year and there are you a ballot initiatives that actually did get the signatures required to make it onto the ballot like ranked-choice voting but unfortunately our secretary of state John Thurston decided to use his elective authority to take those issues off of our ballots so that we do not even have the opportunity to vote on them so the first one that will talk about --
Stacey: so you said that John Thurston , even though there were required number of signatures for it to be on the ballot, decided that they were not going to be on the ballot... could you tell me who is John Thurston why was that decided to be a valid thing to do?
Dan: he is our secretary of state he's the head of Elections the person who is responsible for maintaining a fair electoral process here in our state of Arkansas which he's obviously failed to do with his ballot suppression tactics now the reason he was able to get these initiatives there were three of them pulled off the ballot even though there were more than 300,000 arkansans who signed of these petitions is he used a technicality because the wording is so confusing for issues 2 and 3 that actually tried to get those two issues removed from the ballot due to misleading interpretation of the the actual issue and it looks like the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled issue 2 and 3 will remain on the ballot even though the wording is misleading so John Thurston decided to remove three ballot initiatives off of our November 3rd ballot this year stating a technicality and to quote him and he said ,”on behalf of the sponsors this statement and submission of name serves as certification that a Statewide Arkansas State Police background check as well as 50 state criminal background checks have been timely aquired the 30 days before the first day of the paid canvasser begins to collect signatures as required by act 1104 of 2017 because Arkansas Voters First did not comply with Arkansas code and access 79601 B3 none of the signatures solicited by the paid canvassers may be counted for any purpose of the petition is insufficient to qualify for the number November 3rd 2020 general election ballot”. so what do you stating is that the canvassers it did have their background checks performed but they did not have been performed before signatures were collected so he decided at those three hundred thousand signatures didn't mean anything and made them null and void.
Stacey: even though they did get their background checks, they did not get it and within the timeframe designated for it to be valid
Dan: yeah you're spot-on and I think it's the reason that they decided to do this was because they didn't like that medicinal cannabis made it onto the ballot in actually passed in 2016 three years to open their first dispensary when yet they pass the casino Bill and within a day they had stakes in the ground building casinos
Stacey: interesting and so one of the things that was on the ballot initiative that did get enough signatures was Ranked Choice voting correct
Dan: correct one of the three issues that they had removed from our ballot after it received the appropriate amount of signatures now boating would rather see we were talking about a little bit earlier with the duopoly and the polarization between the two parties and people being forced to vote for a candidate they may not like or agree with because they dislike the other candidates now the recent the way that we can avoid falling into that scenario in situation where we're stuck between a rock and a hard place is ranked Choice voting so what rank Choice voting is going to allow us to do is it will actually give us some more of a voice and more of it more options when we decide to cast our votes made a previous opponents on Cotton actually wrote a big op-ed about how ranked-choice voting is bad and unAmerican and all these different things and use a bunch of lies and misinformation things like that stating that we are going to be an experiment state that no other states have done it blah blah blah well in fact 23 other states use ranked-choice voting in one form or another and I'll actually be interviewing a candidate and Main who is a green Party candidate and she actually has ranked Choice voting in her States owe her constituents will have the opportunity to either vote for her and whichever way they want without having to worry about hurting the Democratic or hurting the Republican candidate cuz they still have your candidates listed so let's do a scenario of we have four candidates we have candidate number one this candidate is the guy you like the woman you like this is the candidate that you want to vote because they best align with your values and the policies that you support; candidate number to is a candidate you really don't like but they're not as bad as candidate number 3 who you really don't like it all
Stacey: So it essentially gives you a safety right? If your first choice vote for the candidate that you like best--- should your candidate not make it n—- then your vote will roll over to your next choice
Dan: correct you can vote candidate one as your first choice candidate , then to your second-choice candidate and 3 is your third choice… if after the first round of voting the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated from the group, so say candidate number three had the least amount of votes, if you voted for candidate number three as your first choice then your second choice now goes to the two remaining candidates and it goes on that way until there's one candidate.
Stacey: excellent well and it seems like that would really open up the playing field for other voices to actually be able to be heard better for both the voters to feel like they've got more valid options to choose from as a voter and something that might better represent your own values but also a candidate like yourself or other people that don't resonate with one of the two parties to not only get themselves out there to run a potentially viable campaign because it's very difficult to get in get yourself even on the ballot —it seems like ranked-choice voting would be a really great opportunity for Arkansas but we are not going to have that opportunity this election cycle —-that's unfortunate. what was another thing that was supposed to be a thing Arkansas was going to be voting on, that we had enough signatures to vote on, but we were told we will not be voting on.
Dan: another one of those was ranked Choice voting add the next thing that he pulled off was there it was a redistricting panel so basically right now every 10 years are state legislators create the district lines for our state and are going to get to create our district lines here in Arkansas now what the initiative would have done that was removed from the ballot is it would have created a nonpartisan panel of three Republicans three Independents and three Democrats that would have handled the redistricting have our lines in our state drawn so it would have made it a lot more fair for different voters whether you're a democrat or republican or independent or whatever party your District Lines would be written by a singular party
Stacey: Are you talking about gerrymandering?
Dan: Exactly, it was a gerrymandering bill is what it came down to
On not feeling heard; The Politics of Mental Health
Stacey: People not feeling heard--- people are not feeling like politics is at all responsive to them and and whatever level it is that you as a person if you feel unheard in your relationships with your partner if you feel unheard at your your work environment if you feel unheard on a larger level, lets say on the political scale you start to develop a lot of potentially toxic coping mechanisms with that right like you get angry, you get resentful,.... I am not hearing you Dan
Dan: oh yeah and depressed and stressed and all these other aspects that affect all of the different parts of our lives and how we interact with our children and our spouses in our co-workers and the people around us even in the grocery store I mean these are all shoot aspects that really drive us and affect us and it it's a big mental health concern and I don't think enough people are talking about how much stress and depression that the corruption can cause how many people that decided to sign saying one of the other initiatives that didn't make it onto the ballot because of covid-19 was recreational cannabis cure in Arkansas as well as expunging cannabis convictions here in Arkansas I mean thousands of people that you know these issues are affecting their lives had sinus petitions and then they don't even get the choice of the chance to vote on them and I mean it's depressing
On American Healthcare
Stacey: it's stressful and makes everything seem futile like what's the point of even trying with these these sorts of Endeavors you know and and I think you trying and just now I was reading recently because we're it were actually working on a article for a newsletter about the politics of mental health and the Affordable Care Act is going to be potentially coming up to the Supreme Court to be ruled on its constitutionality and should the Court rule that it is unconstitutional in some aspect that could be very impactful for a lot of Americans but also a lot of Arkansas…. and before the Affordable Care Act was put in place there is 48 million people in the country that were uninsured and since the Affordable Care Act has been put in place there are only Thirty point four million uninsured so that's almost 20 million people that have now how to access to insurance and health care but not just Healthcare the Affordable Care Act also created a standard where Health Care coverage insurance companies not only had to provide the same level of coverage for let's say like your medical cost and surgeries but mental health is covered at the same level as those that put mental health as equally important as our physical health which was in a new thing because there is a lot of insurance company didnt cover it at the same rate so I know here in Arkansas we have what's called Arkansas Works program and that is our version of the Affordable Care Act that's how Arkansas signed into the Affordable Care Act and we at Affinity counseling see many clients that use the Arkansas Works program it's a wonderful program it's extended Mental Health Coverage to a huge number of Arkansasans and I wonder if you could talk to me a little bit about the Affordable Care Act and the importance of having having National Health Care coverage for Americans are also particularly important since we're in a pandemic in the time of Coronavirus
Dan: ya so the Affordable Care Act had some bad parts of it but it was mostly good and one of the really good things it did was it insured tens of millions of people who previously did not have health and medical insurance and like you said it brought the mental health aspect into it as well because enough people aren't talking about how an unhealthy that's not a great way to say it play declining mental health will lead to physical declines in your own body and we need to make sure that people have the ability to seek that mental care when they need it who can't afford to go spend $100 an hour $200 an hour or more to talk to a therapist or someone who they can help get that stressed out because not everyone has someone to talk to and we really need to make sure that and some of the great things that the Affordable Care Act did was it made sure that people with preexisting conditions were able to get medical insurance which was a huge issue people were losing their lives because they had a pre-existing condition and they couldn't get medical insurance and then they couldn't get an operation that they needed to live and these are really real issues that Americans have been facing for decades so the Affordable Care Act took care of these issues it allowed people with pre-existing conditions to get Healthcare it brought the mental health aspect to the physical health aspect as well I want two things of course that I didn't like about the Affordable Care Act was the individual mandate where if you did not have health insurance do you get fined $600 at the end of the year out of your taxes I didn't agree with that at all I don't think taxing people for not being able to afford Healthcare is the correct solution and I was okay but one of the very very very very very very very very few things that I agree that Trump did was to remove that individual mandate I think that was a good idea but again the Affordable Care Act in reality was written by pharmaceutical companies and health industry so what we need to do is we need to move away from that we even with the Affordable Care Act we still know for fact today that the number one cause a bankruptcy in America is medical debt and 70% of the people who filed bankruptcy for medical debt have medical insurance although the Affordable Care Act was able to help some people get medical insurance it also is extremely expensive for others I talked to people who had to pay like $1,800 a month they were quoted for their Affordable Care Act are there Obamacare and it's just insane how expensive it was possible Healthcare it has to also be affordable it needs to be affordable and accessible and to finally put people's lives above the profits of Corporations and Industry and I think it like you were saying nationalize Healthcare Medicare for all which is a terrible name we should call healthcare for all is the way to go it's really the only option that we can look at that's finally going to put people before profits we've tried different private methods for over a hundred years nothing's changed people are still losing everything you can be a working-class American you know go to work every day for 40 years pay your taxes pay all your bills on time have your medical insurance do everything right and you get sick and you lose it all so many people have just gotten cancer and lost their life savings within one year of being diagnosed so many people and these are huge issues that are affecting all of us because when your next door neighbor is unhealthy and you know you and affects us all you feel their pain you need to help them or that it's just we've got to try something different trying the same thing over and over again is the definition of insanity expecting a different result it's not going to happen so Medicare-for-all is I think what our next step in transition needs to be we know 37 out of 38 modernized Nations have some form or another of Universal Health Care
Stacey: are we are we the one out of 38 countries
Dan: we are the only modernized nation on our planet that does not offer some kind of universal public plan being a nationalist Healthcare System
Stacey: So….There’s those that would say that government doesn't have a role to play in telling people what to do with their health care, that if we if we nationalized health care that it's going to cause massive debt for a country, that it's going to lead to people having to wait much longer to receive care but we have examples of 37 other countries of where they're working this out so I would I and I don't know if you know this data or not but where do we rank next those these countries as far as health of their citizens and such. Do we have data that shows that this is a functioning system for these other countries.
Dan: okay so right now the United States ranked twenty-seventh in the world for healthcare we are the richest nation history of the world but when it comes to Health Care were ranked 27 now among the 37 modernize Nations who have some uniform or another of universal healthcare everyone's got their own you need to model that works for their own Society so we don't have to just go and copy the country who has long wait times and things like that and there have been Canadian doctors who gone on town halls for Medicare-for-all and talked about it and wait times will not increase —- maybe if you want to get plastic surgery or something like that or a you know something for Aesthetics that's not necessary then it might take a little bit longer like maybe a few weeks or a month to get that procedure scheduled because someone who's actually you know might die needs that slot in front of you. all in all it's going to save us money I've been hearing a lot in the debates in Arkansas here this year I'm unfortunately there aren't any Democratic candidates who support Medicare for all at the moment here in Arkansas so when I was listening to these questions about Medicare for all these debates the Republican incumbents Medicare-for-all go bankrupt us like you said it's going to cost us 30 trillion dollars unfortunately since the Democrats don't support it they didn't know how to counter that but the truth of the matter is yes Medicare for all over 10 years will cost about 30 billion dollars
Stacey: Im sorry Dan did you say 30 billion or 30 trillion
Dan: I'm sorry you're right and it is truly not billion since the Democrats in our state don't really support Medicare for all they don't know all the facts when the Republicans say it's going to bankrupt us it's going to cost 30 trillion dollars per year they're right medication while they're right half of their half-right medicare-for-all will cost 30 trillion dollars per year but what they refuse to say is that our current private system will cost us 34 trillion dollars over 10 years so will actually save about four trillion dollars by switching to Medicare for all day they love to conveniently leave that fat cows and fortunately and bring it closer home here in Arkansas what Medicare for all means for us as Arkansans is the average income the household income in Arkansas is about $40,000 per year one of the lowest staff ranks in the cold country with the average income of $40,000 per year the way we pay for it cuz nothing is free is you will pay 4% of your income after $9,000 per year towards your medical insurance for Medicare for all if you're making $40,000 a year you subtract 29 leaves you with 4% of that is $440 I mean to pay $440 to cover your entire household for the entire year from medical dental vision mental health all these different things but nobody's breaking it down like that they're not explaining the cops are just saying well nothing's free nothing's free we had nothing but that's how much it's going to cost us money and when you look at the Working Class People like my wife tonight we were paying $860 a month to cover my wife myself and our daughter $860 a month for Blue Cross Blue Shield with a $1,500 deductible so we had to pay Blue Cross $11,000 in the year before they would help us at all would we be willing to pay 4% of our income absolutely most definitely another way to look at it for the lower-middle-class would be if you make $100,000 a year it would come down to a hundred thousand minus 2971 about 4% of that breaks down to about $237 a month so if your family is making $100,000 a year you pay $237 a month
Stacey: Youre going to pay substantially more for your medical insurance more than that for almost any other insurance that you would have currently. So yeah I was reading a thing that was talking about how healthcare costs are taking a full half of Americans income, I mean it takes a full half whatever it is you're making to have somewhat adequate care through the year. I don't have this to site and Source right now but I absolutely 100% know its true because I also have friends-- I had a nursing friend and you would think someone in the nursing field would have access to good quality affordable health care but for her and her family they were paying $900 a month--- which is of money--- and when her daughter needed to get her tonsils taken out the insurance company was disputing some of the things that they were going to pay for on something as as routine as tonsils being stuck out. so I think that's what your talking about here these this kind of information is something that a lot of people don't have access to an are unaware of would you be able to share with me later this information where I can direct other people to it so that they can research it for their own selves
Dan: yeah absolutely and information that I'm just coming up with…the Bernie Sanders team hired a group of Brilliant Minds getting paid a lot of money to do this research and you can find all their research on Bernie Sanders website and I’ll link it to you (click here) how we're going to pay for it cuz that was one of the questions about how we're going to pay for it and it breaks everything down how much we're going to pay for it how much it will save us and all these different things that are really important. it doesn't even talk about is under Medicare for all our prescription drug prices will be capped at $200 a year so if you go and you fill your first prescription say for insulin cause your type 1 diabetic and January and you pay more than Tori it's more than $200 and then you pay your $200 in the rest of the year all of your insulin is at no cost to you huge we have so many families that they're spending either between 600 to 1,200 to almost $2,000 a month depending on insulin and on different things for the devices that you require when you have type 1
Stacey: yes that is another provision that was in the Affordable Care Act is making prescription cost more affordable although there's still quite a bit higher than many many other of those 37 out of 38 other countries. People still want to go across state line...across country lines I mean... to get Mexico or to Canada to get more affordable prescriptions that they can bring back over here which but my back and we are really wanting to to help to raise awareness and to be people that are helping to do to create a conversation so that we can start talking that what this change look like looks like because like you said all of these countries have a different model and each me it is very some work better than others if we have the opportunity to look at these different models to look at facts and information that we already have available and start discussing what something new would look like said to have that conversation and begin that process and I really appreciate you didn't come in and not only talking with us today but also I'm going ahead and starting that groundwork for people like yourself that wants to become changemakers that wants maybe get into the political process some shape or form the shape it from that direction and helping to share what your experience was like and and hopefully give people some inside information so they'll have an easier road to walk later on , so thank you for that
Dan: and thank you so much for inviting me today I do appreciate the opportunity to talk about especially these issues I'm with early voting starting we need to make sure that everybody knows what they're voting on before we have to go down and especially when the wording is so deceiving that it actually gets taken to court there's obviously a problem so thank you for that opportunity I do appreciate it
Stacey: we appreciate you. At some Point in the future maybe we can we can talk more politics with you and you can update us some things going on in Arkansas if that would be all right
Dan: yeah I'm always here just let me know whenever
Stacey: all right well we will do that and I appreciate you so much. thank you for joining us today
Dan: you have a good day
