The Mueller Report, Jail Deaths Bring Scrutiny, Boosting Voter Turnout

Speaker 1: 00:00 What's the next step in Congress over the Muller report and a new report about an old problem in San Diego's jails. I'm Maureen Cavenaugh and I'm jade Hindman. This is KPBS mid day edition. It's Thursday, April 18th a redacted version of the Mueller report was released this morning after a press conference held by Attorney General William Barr. Speaker 2: 00:32 As the special council report makes clear the Russian government sought to interfere in our election process. But thanks to the special council's thorough investigation, we now know that the Russian operatives who perpetrated these schemes did not have the cooperation of president Trump or the Trump campaign or the knowing assistance of any other American for that matter. Speaker 1: 00:58 President Trump had this reaction Speaker 2: 01:01 front of my friends. This should never happen to another president again, this hoax that should never happen to another president again. Speaker 1: 01:10 Now we're joined by Democratic Congressman Mike Levin to get his reaction to the report and this morning's press conference 11 represents San Diego counties, 49th congressional district. Welcome Pam Grossman 11 thanks for having me. So the report is long over 400 pages. What is your reaction to the parts of it that you've read so far? Speaker 3: 01:29 Well, I've had a chance to him quite a bit of a, I guess before getting to the substance, I would say that Congress should have received the report and been thoroughly briefed before train general bars press conference today. Uh, I felt, uh, that his press conference was partisan spin, uh, and that, uh, doing it before the release was unacceptable. I also think that the special counsel Mueller, based on what I read and some of the uncertainties really does need to testify before Congress to explain some of the report. And I think the American people deserve ultimately to hear directly from the special counsel. In terms of the substance, a couple of things stuck out to me. One obviously is that the special counsel found at least 10 instances where the president may have sought to interfere with the investigation and uh, specifically says that Trump's obstruction fail because others didn't follow his orders to obstruct. And I quote the president's efforts to influence the investigation where mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the person's who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders. I think it's important for your listeners to know that you're not exonerated from obstruction of justice just because you didn't succeed. It's the intent to obstruct justice. And Mr. Mueller makes clear multiple times if there is a lot of intense, uh, which means, uh, I think it does warrant further investigation from the Congress Speaker 1: 02:53 and from what we understand, Congress will receive a less redacted version. What does that mean to you? We'll congress be satisfied with that. Speaker 3: 03:01 Well, I'm looking forward to reviewing whatever we do get with fewer redactions and uh, you know, ultimately, uh, the redactions seem like they're sheltering the president's actions in any way. I'll, I'll work with my colleagues to try to access the full report, although I do believe that we did see, uh, the bulk of the Mr. Mueller a analysis and conclusions both factually and legally, uh, in the report that was released to the public. And it appears redactions were related to, uh, other items before the grand jury or, uh, other ongoing investigations. Uh, but, uh, you know, I think we have to put this in some context. Uh, we, we now know a of the president's reaction when Mueller was appointed to be special council, he actually said, this is terrible. It's the end of my presidency. And, and even worse than that, and my contention is that innocent people don't say this. Speaker 3: 03:53 I'm a strong believer that, uh, generally where there's smoke, there's fire, but we need to take it one step at a time. And I plan to follow the facts. I, and we're a president is quick to make decisions without the facts and fire off impulsive tweets. I think the congress should be a much more deliberative body. Uh, and again, uh, I think it's really important to remember what Muller said about obstruction, which, and I quote again, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts of the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. And he specifically says that Congress needs to make that's termination and has the constitutional duty to do so. And that's the duty that I think we all take very seriously. And you know, I think we also have to be mindful of when this was all being debated in the court of public opinion. Speaker 3: 04:46 Um, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said they were confident that the president was never going to fire. Mr. Mueller. I, and the report makes clear that that's not the case. Uh, he, uh, tried multiple times to fire Mueller and his own age, uh, save the country from another Saturday night massacre, potentially as detailed when, uh, Don McGahn threaten to quit because the president's demands the fire Mueller. And so I think we owe it to the American people to hold the presidents of the same standards as regular citizens. Uh, no president, not this one or anyone, uh, is above the law. So we need to take this day by day as we get more information. And, uh, hopefully that includes testimony from Mr. Mueller. Speaker 1: 05:27 And what do you say to the Trump supporters who are in your district who say, you know, we should move past this report and focus on more pressing issues in their opinion? Speaker 3: 05:35 Well to them I would say it's the duty, the constitutional duty of the Congress, uh, to ensure that the rule of law applies to everyone including the president United States. This is an important precedent, not just for president Trump but for future presidents as well. Speaker 1: 05:52 I've been speaking to congressmen, Mike Levin, who represents San Diego counties, 49 district. We've invited Speaker 4: 05:58 Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter to give us his reaction to the report and he declined our request. A congressman 11. Thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Instead of ending interest in the Mueller investigation, today's release of the report may be starting a whole new phase as we just heard from Congressman Mike Levin Democrats and tend to press for the release of an unredacted report and have Robert Muller testify in person. As members of the press and public read deeper into the 400 page report. We can follow the trail of evidence on both the Russia connection and obstruction of justice and then decide if we agree with Attorney General William Barr that since no crime could be proved, no crime was committed. Joining me is Carol Lam, a former US attorney for the southern district of California. She oversaw the corruption case against former San Diego congressmen, Duke Cunningham and Carol, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So it's out. It's been released a couple of hours ago. The full well the redacted 400 page report. From what you've been able to read so far, what stood out to you? Speaker 5: 07:01 A couple of things stood out to me. It was a, one thing that stood out to me for sure was the difference between the attorney general's characterization of the report and the portions of the report that I was actually able to read myself. One thing that did strike me was that the attorney general was really emphasizing the positive aspects of the report for the president. But there's a lot in the report that is very disturbing. There were a lot of pieces of the report that indicated that the president had attempted to sort of create evidence that would exculpate him by instructing or encouraging members of his cabinet and staff to put things in letters or to fire people. That really didn't come out very much in the attorney general's statement. Speaker 4: 07:55 Um, Robert Mueller evaluated 10 episodes for possible obstruction of justice, but said in his report that he could not conclusively determined that President Trump had committed criminal obstruction of justice. What's the legal standard for obstruction? Speaker 5: 08:11 Well, criminal obstruction of justice of course, requires some sort of proceeding that there is an attempt to interfere with. And the, the Mueller report does set that out and it's pretty clear that there was such a proceeding. And then from that point on, obstruction is pretty broad. Any attempt to interfere with witnesses, to withhold documents to anything that keeps the investigation from a running in a, in the way it's supposed to operate, uh, you know, outside of legally defensible positions. So, uh, but, but the interesting thing, and this is what everybody was really waiting to see was whether Bob Muller declined to recommend criminal charges be brought because he was in part relying on that department of Justice policy that says you can't indict a sitting president. And it turned out, in fact, that was one of the reasons that he decided that he should not recommend criminal charges, although he was not exonerating the president. Speaker 5: 09:11 Um, and interestingly it was bill bars decision, uh, to put aside that policy. He said, he said, I'm making the decision not to bring charges and I am not relying on that policy. So that was, that was a very interesting thing to see. Our attorney general bars seem to indicate that they, the president didn't have the intent to obstruct justice. He was just frustrated with the proceedings. How much does intent to obstruct, play into the idea of charging someone with obstruction of justice? Well, that was a very curious thing for the attorney general to emphasize in his press statement this morning where a statement to the press this morning because that's really getting into more subjective views about what was going on in the president's mind. And again, remember the president declined to sit for an interview with the special counsel. So, uh, it's more of an excuse being made. Speaker 5: 10:07 It's more saying he didn't really mean it and that is something that you would hear perhaps from a defense attorney at trial, but not somebody who is necessarily trying to look at the facts objectively. It could play into a defense at trial. You could say he was just beside himself and just sort of ranting. But I, it really didn't sound appropriate for a conclusion to be made, um, in a press conference this morning. Well, I didn't Robert Mueller subpoena the precedent to find out what was in his mind? Well, I think that Bob Mahler was pretty clear in his report this morning that that was considered, but they ultimately declined to not to do it and that they ultimately declined, uh, the subpoena route because they felt that that would delay things so much because there would then be perhaps objections and negotiations that go on there. There are always very, very heavy negotiations that go on. Speaker 5: 11:03 When a president's testimony under oath is sought, you'll, you'll see it with every president whose, whose testimony or interview has been obtained. And the Mueller team ultimately decided that it would take too long and that they had enough objective evidence from other sources, uh, to make it not critical that they actually have him under oath, either in the grand jury or in some other setting. Let me move to the idea of contacts with Russia. The report outlines various contacts between members of the Trump world and Russia, including on page 68 of the report, the special counsel outlines Donald Trump junior's interactions with wiki leaks. Wiki leaks apparently sent direct messages via Twitter to Trump junior asking him to help them disseminate information damaging to Clinton and Trump jr followed through with those requests. How was that not coordination? Well, this is an issue that has been very troubling for prosecutors. Speaker 5: 12:03 Uh, it was, it was troubling for the Obama administration prosecutors and it's troubling for these prosecutors as well. And I have some sympathy for the difficulty here because if you look at the Julian Assange indictment, it's very clear that they were indicting Julian Assange for actually hacking into or participating in the hacking into somebody's account illegally and not for the dissemination, not for the pure dissemination of infor information because, uh, there is a first amendment protection for the press and there's a real concern that the government has about, uh, either actually are being perceived to be cutting back on the freedom of the press. It's been determined that no further criminal chargers are coming out of the Justice Department on the basis of this report. But what about Congress? Can they view this information in a different light? Well first, let me say that it's, the special counsel has indicated that the special counsel's investigation is over, but you can see from the reaction from the redactions in the report that there are ongoing investigations that are being taken up by other parts of the Justice Department. Speaker 5: 13:10 And then yes, the report actually makes clear and it is clear that Congress can go ahead with its investigations. What Bill Barr, the attorney general said, was that he was making the decision that's the justice department, was not going to pursue criminal cases against the Trump administration or the president for obstruction of justice or the, um, the Russian situation. But, uh, and Bill Barr has made this clear also in his previous writings that does not impact the ability of Congress to move ahead if it decides to, with its investigations and perhaps impeachment or the American people to take their own remedy in the form of the voting, um, electoral process. A federal judge has already said publicly that Attorney General William Barr is sewing public mistrust by his handling of the Miller report. As a former us attorney, what do you think is the reaction to all of this inside the Justice Department? Speaker 5: 14:12 My guess is that there was some dismay in the Justice Department and I listened to the press conference this morning and I was very, very surprised to be hearing what I was hearing. You know, there is a, any presidential appointee will feel at times that he or she is being instructed or it's being very strongly suggested that they say something or do something that doesn't feel quite right to them. The impression I got today listening to bill abar was that he was carrying out instructions that he was given. It seemed very atypical for Bill Barr and somebody who has worked within the Justice Department for as long as has to be saying Speaker 1: 14:52 the kinds of things he was saying in the way he was saying them and frankly to be having that press conference at all. So, um, I think he was following instructions. I think he drew the line in a different place from where I would have drawn the line. Um, and I think that the people in the Justice Department probably feel that way too. I've been speaking with former US attorney, Carol Lam. Carol, thank you very much. Thank you. Speaker 1: 15:23 This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm Maureen Cavenaugh and I'm jade Hindman. A recent story in the Guardian looks at death's inside of the San Diego County jail with four deaths in a six week span. The report brings into question something that's been asked for years, whether the sheriff's department is capable of keeping prisoners alive, particularly those who suffer from chronic or mental illness. Kelly Davis is a San Diego journalist focusing on criminal justice and vulnerable populations. She did the reporting on this story and joins me to talk about the latest. Kelly. Welcome. Thank you. How many deaths have happened recently? Speaker 6: 15:58 Well, we've had the force so far this year and those happened in a six week period between, uh, early February and mid March. Uh, but then also there have been just a spate of deaths, uh, over the last decade. A I counted at least 135 since 2009. So that's, you know, at least once a month, one death a month for, for the last 10 years. And what were the circumstances? Well, in, in the, the cases I looked at for the Guardian story, uh, you know, to that that stood out. One was a young man named Ivan Ortiz. Uh, he had, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Um, he had a history of, of harming himself and, uh, he was placed in the jails psychiatric observation unit, which is supposed to be the highest, highest level of care, highest level of observation for someone who might be at risk of suicide. But, but somehow he managed to get, uh, they, his family's told, uh, a plastic Baggie and put it over his head and use it to, to suffocate himself. And another case that was particularly troubling and another young man named Michael Wilson, uh, he had a, um, a congenital heart defect. Uh, I think his sister had told me that his heart only worked about a 25% of, of what it should. And he had recently had a defibrillator defibrillator, um, uh, put in his heart and he called his mom from jail and repeatedly told her that he was not getting his prescription heart medication and 10 days after he was booked, uh, he died from heart failure. Speaker 1: 17:37 So there seems to be a pattern with prisoners who are mentally ill or have chronic conditions. What have attorneys or advocates said about this? Speaker 6: 17:45 You know, they, they, they want to know why this keeps happening. Um, you know, I've spoke with, uh, attorneys who've handled lawsuits involving inmates who've, who've died in jails and uh, uh, an advocacy group called disability, disability rights, California data investigation, a three year investigation that was released last year. And both of them want to know, um, you know, why has this become, like you said, a pattern. Uh, why hasn't the sheriff's department recognized and learned from, from past deaths, you know, as to what changes, what were they can make so it doesn't happen again. And what has the jail said about this? What has their response been to these deaths? You know, they, they tell me they can't talk about specific cases, but they maintain that they provide excellent care. Do you think the rate of death happening inside the jail is considered a crisis? Speaker 6: 18:34 San Diego right now has the highest suicide rate of, of all large California counties. And a, I think a lot of people would consider that a crisis. So has the jail changed policy at all? They say they have, you know, I've been reporting on this issue for her number of years now and I've been repeatedly told that they've made policy changes, but if they have those changes haven't taken hold. Do you think the sheriff's department is in denial about these issues? You know, um, as I report these stories, I look at, um, you know, similar stories on deaths in other counties throughout the nation. And one thing I notice is, is a lot of other sheriffs, um, we'll say, yes, we have a problem. We're going to make changes. I've, I've never heard the sheriff's Department or the sheriff here admit that that there's, there's an issue and that they, um, they need to, to make some fixes. Speaker 6: 19:32 Um, and I don't know if that's because of the liability issue, but, um, I just haven't seen the same willingness to confront the problem. I'm here as, as I have in other other places. I know it's sometimes difficult to know what goes on inside of jails, but are there protocols and other jails that safeguard against deaths? Like the ones we've seen here in San Diego that may be San Diego County has not adopted? I'm not sure. I don't know if I can answer that question, but I could tell you that they're there. They're supposed to be these protocols in place. They're supposed to be safety checks, you know, for, for folks like Ivan Ortiz in the psychiatric observation unit, he was supposed to be checked on every 15 minutes. I'm just folks in your general population, they're supposed to be checked on every hour. Um, Michael Wilson should have been in the medical unit where he would have been observed more frequently. So the protocols are in place. They're written in policy. We just don't see them happening. Do you have any idea of how many lawsuits have resulted from deaths in the San Diego County jail? And I know of at least a dozen lawsuits, uh, over the last 10 years. And how much do these lawsuits costs the county? Uh, so far at least 7 million. Um, there are a number of Speaker 4: 20:47 lawsuits right now that are in the process, you know, going through the court process. So, um, you know, they, that number could definitely get higher. I've been speaking with Kelly Davis, a journalist covering criminal justice and vulnerable populations. Kelly, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Every year millions of human research subjects help create breakthroughs in medicine. In exchange, the researchers are expected to follow ethical guidelines, men to protect those patients. I knew source investigative reporter Brad Racino found that wasn't the case with a renowned UC San Diego. I doctor who for years put patients in harm's way. Speaker 7: 21:41 Today I'm going to tell you a story of a repair and regeneration of our body. Doctor Kang Zang is the chief of eye genetics at Uc San Diego where he also has a lab named after him. He receives millions of dollars in federal grants and presents his research at symposiums around the world. I'm an eye doctor. I want to cure blindness, but the U s food and Drug Administration inspected zangs research in 2016 and found several violations in a drug trial that had been going on for years. Zang enrolled people he shouldn't have in his medical trial, failed to document what happened to 25 units of an experimental drug and kept poor records on his patients. He also didn't provide a plan to the FDA to protect his human research subjects going forward like he was supposed to. Speaker 8: 22:30 The problem's identified during the inspection were significant and certainly undermined the protection of human subjects in the trial. Speaker 7: 22:39 Michael Corona is a former associate director at the U S Office for Human Research Protections, one of many federal agencies that protects human research subjects. He's now at public citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit. Caroma zeroed in on one FDA finding that half of the patients in Zang study shouldn't have been enrolled in the first place. That's a big problem. He said because the drug's Ang was testing could potentially lead to serious side effects for the volunteers like cataracts or blindness. Speaker 8: 23:08 I'm a scientific standpoint and from an ethical human Sophia protection standpoint, not complying with the enrollment criteria is a big deal. Speaker 7: 23:17 Zangs I study was eventually shut down. Then you see as de came out with an audit of its own which looked into more of sangs research. It found violations everywhere. It looked. Zang and his staff failed to get proper consent from all patients. Didn't report problems to ucs, D's research oversight board lost documents, kept inaccurate records wrongly built patients and didn't complete the training required to work with human embryonic stem cells. In one study, Zang staff tested patients blood for HIV and aids without telling them against federal policy. Amy Caruso Brown is an assistant professor of bioethics at New York's upstate medical university. She's also a member of an institutional review board, a safety committee that approves and overseas projects like Zangs Brown, red, the Ucs d audit, and said, Speaker 9: 24:18 I have not seen this number of issues in the five years that I've been on an IRB. Basically, Speaker 7: 24:24 we reached out to Zang and other officials that you CSD for interviews in response, Ucs d send a statement that said the university had quote implemented a Comprehensive Management Plan to address these issues. And quote, UC SD also said it's suspended, sang in definitely from serving as a primary researcher overseeing human research studies at the school. But that means he can still apply for federal grants, publish in medical journals and train the next generation of scientists. Ucs d later told, I knew source zangs research had undergone multiple audits since 2012 which prompted his suspension in 2017 when asked if that meant the university had known about zangs violations for five years before taking action or UC SD spokeswoman would not comment further. Speaker 10: 25:14 Doctor Zang story is the latest in our new services risky research investigation and was reported by Brad Racino and Jill Castillano, both of whom joined me. Now. Welcome. Thank you. I'm Maureen. So Brad, just to be clear, all of these problems with doctors zangs research programs did not lead to any harm to the research subjects involved. We can't actually say that. We don't know. Um, uh, the problem with looking at a lot of these things is that there is there a strong federal rules that protect patient privacy. And when we look at audits or we look at certain things, a lot is left out also ucs d and its audit that we looked at only sampled a very small percentage of patient files when they looked through zangs research. So we don't know if, uh, any harm actually happened, but that's part of the reason that we wanted to come on today and also solicit, if anybody knows anything about these studies and wants to come forward. Speaker 10: 26:08 Was there any evidence that they were at risk of harm? Well, there's always a risk for harm in any kind of clinical trials such as these. There was one Zang study that involved I injections once a month and two patient's eyeballs and the drug had serious side effects such as cataract blindness. I hemorrhaging, but there is inherent risk in any kind of clinical study that you do now, Jill, when the grant or the research project is approved, are the rules and protocols of that research spelled out right up front? Yes, they always are. Everything is preapproved, including the commitment the doctors and researchers Speaker 6: 26:44 make to protecting patient's rights. That always happens upfront, but it also includes the exact details of what's going to be done in that study. They need to know in advance exactly what they're going to do and that includes how long it's expected to take and the kinds of patients that can be enrolled. So for example, in the study that Brad was talking about that doctor Zang did, if they had a pretty serious advanced case of macular degeneration, if their eyes were progressing and getting really bad, then we can take that risk and give them this drug that has potential side effects. Unfortunately, Zang did not do exactly what it said in the protocol upfront. He enrolled people who shouldn't have been enrolled in the study. Yeah. About half the subjects that were enrolled should not have been enrolled in that one study. Jill, who's in charge of seeing that these rules are followed. Speaker 6: 27:30 You know, it actually comes down to the researcher himself or herself. A lot of it is built on trust. They're supposed to come forward and say, if something's not going as planned, not part of that preapproved plan. They're supposed to go back and talk to the people who approved it and say and ask for more approval or ask them to change the protocol as they go on. The people, they're reporting that to our, the university's Institutional Review Board or IRB and they're responsible for making sure the study is going well. But a lot of it comes back to the doctor themselves and realize on, on the trust that they are going to do the right thing. Now, Brad, in terms of dollars, how much grant and research money did doctor Zang yet for these projects? Speaker 7: 28:11 So we have limited information on that as well because some of these studies were privately funded, so we don't, they're not, um, like federally funded projects where we can easily see how much went toward him. We know that for just two of the studies that looked at the Zang had gotten close to $3 million and that involves, those two studies alone involve more than 16,000 patients. So the UC SD audit looked at five studies total and then we also wrote in the story about an FDA warning letter that involved another study. So these are just six studies. Zang has been at UC SD for a very long time and has a lot of projects and not just at UC SD. He also is a researcher for other institutions including the San Diego VA or he has other studies that have also happened. Speaker 6: 28:53 Millions and millions of dollars. A lot of money. Jill, this is a highly renowned researcher. Okay. Doctor Zang, and yet he's been suspended from doing further research at Uc San Diego. Has either the school or the doctor commented on why or how these ethical lapses happened? No, we would really like to get to the bottom of that and talk to somebody to clarify how this all went down, but unfortunately we have not been able to get an interview and have a real conversation with anyone. We reached out to a number of people at UC San Diego including the doctor, the doctor's boss, who's the director of the eye institute where he works the head of the office that protects human research subjects at SD. None of them granted us interviews. We did talk to a spokesperson who provided us some statements and some clarification, but is now no longer Speaker 10: 29:42 providing us any additional clarification, so we're kind of stuck with what we know at this point and we'd like to get to the bottom of what really happened here Speaker 7: 29:50 in your lengthier, I knew source piece on this subject. You talk about how doctor Zang is case is emblematic of the lack of oversight in human research projects. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so half I would say half of this story is about Zang and it's about these audits and these research violations in the risks, but the other half is really putting it into the context of what Jill and I are. I've spent months looking at and what we hope to keep reporting on, which is there is a larger system in place that has been there for years and years to protect these patients. And there are millions of patients every year than enroll in these kinds of trials. And the system is designed, it's well intentioned, but there are serious gaps. It's a patchwork of, of systems at the federal, local, state agencies, academic institutions. Speaker 7: 30:32 Um, and so there are a lot of ways where the system can break. There's a lack of communication between different institutions and agencies. There's also institutions like, like, like UC SD that have a lot of money involved in this and a lot of prestige and reasons why they don't want this to come forward. So in an and the system also realize that as Jill had said on self reporting, so we don't even know how much of these noncompliance, um, things have happened over the years because unless we find them, we don't know. I've been speaking with our new source reporters, Brad Racino, Anjell Castillano. You can read more about their investigation at, I knew source.org thanks a lot. Thanks so much. Thank you. Speaker 10: 31:24 But California voters choice act was passed in 2016 as a way to modernize elections by giving people more flexibility on how they vote. The act allows voters to decide how, when and where to cast their ballot and now researchers are trying to find out if the flexibility of voter's choice act is changing. Who is voting? It's a university of California San Diego study called the new electorate project professor and chair of Uc San Diego's department of political science dad cows or is leading the research professor cows are welcome. Thanks Jen. So why is it important to know who's voting and how the voter's Choice Act could impact that? Well, this act is one of the biggest voting changes to come to California that nobody knows about. So it was only adopted by five counties in, in the 2018 elections. Five more. We'll adopt it in 2020 and it could be coming to San Diego sometime at a, in an election near you. Speaker 10: 32:18 Uh, and it really changes. It changes the, where we vote for moving from neighborhood polling places to more centralized vote centers. So we'll offer more services but be spread out a bit more thinly throughout counties. And, and every voter would get a vote by mail ballot, uh, automatically, even if they hadn't asked for one. And so all of these combined, uh, are, are going to transform the way our elections happened from, from what I grew up with, which is voting down the street at the local elementary school or in someone's garage to a more modern system. And the really important questions that we wanted to ask for one, how does this affect turnout overall and to how does it work for groups that have traditionally turnout at lower rates in California? So does it make our, our elections both, uh, a bigger electric, but also a more representative electric. Speaker 1: 33:03 And, and as you mentioned in the 2018 elections, there were five counties in the state, uh, who made the switch to voting entirely by mail and through votes centers. Um, what did you find in terms of how that impacted turnout and how did the, the turnout in those counties compared to other counties? Speaker 10: 33:19 Yeah, so we can pot, we compared the boost and turnout that these five counties, Sacramento, San Mateo, Nevada, Napa, and Madeira, we combine, we compare their boost in 2018 compared to 2014 with the boost that we saw in, in the rest of the state. Uh, it was important to look at that, those comparisons, because this was a huge high turnout election. More than half of voters turned out in this midterm. And so we wanted to, to look at at sort of whether these five counties went on a different trend from the rest of the state. What we found is that when we looked at voters overall, we saw about a three percentage point increase in turnout due to the voter's choice act. So that the rise and turnout was steeper from 2014 to 2018 in these counties that adopted the law than it was in all the other counties of the state. And in the private is about a four percentage point increase. Speaker 1: 34:08 Hmm. And could the increase in voter turnout just be attributed to competitive races are hot button topics that put, you Speaker 10: 34:15 know, really pushed people to the polls. Right. So that's why we looked at comparing that 2014 to 2018 boost in these two groups of states because this was a really high turnout election. We had a historically low turnout election in 2014 but then with Donald Trump and all the energy that we've seen in our electrode in the last few years, we saw a big boost in 2018 across the board. But we saw an extra boost in these counties. And in our study we also took a few steps to, uh, to control for things like the level of competition. How many tight races were there in a county. We measure that for each county in each year. Going back a few election cycles, ran a, a multivariate statistical model and, and basically it didn't change anything. We still saw the same boost when you controlled for what was going on and how competitive races were in a county. Speaker 10: 35:01 And we also ran separate models where we controlled for what the partisan trends where, how was voter turnout among various demographic groups? Well, it paralleled the rise rises that we saw in voter turnout overall. So for the vote young voters, so those 18 to 24 we saw the same kind of boost about, you know, three to four percentage points, uh, and, and perhaps even more in the primary. Uh, and we saw this in, in just about every county that adopted it for Asian American voters, or at least ones who had, who had names that they could be clearly identified from voter rolls. As, as being Asian American, we, we saw parallel increases to the same turnout, same kind of trends, same thing for Latino voters. Uh, so, so what this reformed did was it kind of lifted all boats in turnout, or at least these three groups that we looked at as well as voters overall. Speaker 10: 35:52 And so then as the reform expands to more counties, are you able to predict what the impact may be? I think we are because there's still, most counties in California are not adopting the reforms. So, so really what we have is we've kind of got this, this, this kind of control groups, right? Think of this as like a drug study. Some people take the placebo and then some people take the drug. We can compare the, the counties that didn't adopt the reform with the ones that did in the same elections, featuring the same national political trends, the same hot political issues of the day and see if you get a boost and turnout in the adopting counties. So the voter's choice act is an attempt to modernize elections. How modern are they without being able to just cast a ballot through an APP? Do you see that happening in the future? Speaker 10: 36:37 You know, that's a dream that people have been talking about for a long time, but there are a lot of, they're both state regulations, but there are a lot of concerns right over making sure that digital divides don't get reflected in a political divides, uh, making sure that security work. So I don't think we're going to be voting, uh, on computers in our hands for a while. But if you do go to these voters centers there, it's a different type of experience than, than your neighbor's garage. And they're able to, you're able to vote at any precinct across the county. They're able to, to process, uh, you know, someone who's not registered to vote, they can register on that same day and they can process that well. And so it is a bit more of a high tech experience than, uh, than our old polling place. How do you see the findings of your project being used in the future? Speaker 10: 37:18 This is just one part of, of, uh, about six or seven different research projects looking at various voter reforms that are happening in California now. Ones that change the timing of local elections or make other changes so so we're just trying to put this information in the hands of the general public and in the hands of elected officials so they can make their new policy decisions with data. I've been speaking with that. Cows are the electorate project lead who is professor and chair of Uc San Diego's department of Political Science. Professor Cows are, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm jade Hindman. I'm Maureen Kevin on the film consortium's Third Annual San Diego film week started last week and wraps up on Saturday with the film awards. KPBS arts reporter Beth Armando speaks with filmmakers. John Freeman and Koren la gear whose film capture screens tonight. Kerensa you have a film called capture that's going to be screening during film week. Tell me what the film's about. Yes. Capture is a suspenseful 15 minutes psychological thriller. It's about Speaker 11: 38:36 a photographer who finally decides to reveal his deep dark passion to his girlfriend and once he does that, he can't come back from that decision. He's going to have to live with the consequences, but it's not forever. Speaker 12: 38:51 I'm not clamoring for attention or approval from wealthy art collectors. Deeply personal, artistic expression intended only for very few to FRC. Speaker 6: 39:03 John, you worked on this film as well and we'll be screening it. So what were the challenges of making this film? Speaker 13: 39:10 That's a very good question actually. I feel like there are quite a lot of challenges mostly in just trying to figure out locations and trying to get everyone organized. I mean it's really just me and Karen's it producing the whole thing and working with the talent and sourcing the crew and sourcing the actors and working out schedules. We ended up turning my entire living room into a studio and like making three or four different lakes setups in there just because it was easier than trying to source locations for shooting. So actually now that I think about it, the hardest part was definitely writing. Speaker 6: 39:40 Talk a little bit about how this film came about because this was part of a project where kind of the writing prompt came from. So say we all and a local writer, Speaker 13: 39:50 the film came about from the um, film con whore competition and essentially what happens in the phone con horror competition held by the San Diego film consortium is that, so say we all will supply a prewritten scripts from one of their writers and script short story, short story. Thank you. And then it needs to be adapted into a screenplay and it turned into a film in two months. And uh, so you get a story and it's a horror story in this case because that was the theme of the competition and we got our story and then it was all about adaptation. Speaker 6: 40:21 You mentioned the film consortium. How does that play a role in filmmaking here in San Diego? How has that helped you or provided you with some networking? Speaker 13: 40:31 I mean, I've been a part of the film consortium from its very beginning, what you think was five years ago now it has done what he has set out to do from the very beginning, better and better every year. I can promise you that I would not be where I am now without the film consortium. As a filmmaker. I can make a living right now making movies, doing what I love. I make a living, making art. And I got that opportunity to wreckly from the film consortium. They gave me opportunities to meet other filmmakers. They gave me opportunities to enter film festivals. They gave me opportunities to get resources such as, um, other like such as crew and locations. And they even gave me other opportunities that I didn't even need yet. But I know I will, such as entertainment lawyers and I mean, you name it, like everything from the legality to the fun of it. Like they kind of have been a huge resource for me personally and from my understanding, a lot of other filmmakers. Speaker 11: 41:23 And so how about you? I mean, I've wanted to be in the arts, performing, filmmaking, acting, singing, all of it my whole life. But I think, and I'm also a native San Diegan. So, uh, when I think back to my younger years, it felt like I kept searching for my tribe and couldn't find them. Now I have a great tribe. Um, some of them came from projects I did here in San Diego, but all of us are connected through the consortium. It's wonderful to finally feel like there are other people who speak your language in terms of your love and passion for the art form and to be able to go to events and run into those like minded folks on a regular basis and collaborate or see their work and become inspired. So I'm very appreciative for that. Speaker 13: 42:08 And for people who may not be familiar with film week, what is this? What can people expect from it? It's essentially one whole week of various film festivals that screen pretty much everyone who's entered over the last year. And then after that film we get leads up to what's called the film awards, where they essentially have San Diego's own like Oscars and the choose what the community has decided and what a panel of judges have decided are the best of. Speaker 11: 42:32 I would add to that just it's means so much to see your work on it, how it's intended on the big screen and it's such a nice thing to get to go and see your own work or support others in their, their work on the big screen and that's a huge part of it. And to share it with friends and family and becomes an event. You know, you'd have a whole week where you can tell friends and family, I was in a movie, I made a movie and it's going to be playing here at this time, on this day at this place is right. Speaker 13: 42:59 Anything else you want to add about the film consortium or a film week? I mean, if you're new to town, every time I meet someone who wants to get in the film or they're new to San Diego at, which happens a lot, you know, I always encourage them to just go on the Facebook pages and just start posting and go to the events. And that's the easiest way to break into anything going on in a San Diego. Find your people just like Kearns. It said, San Diego is very, very friendly and open to newbies and professionals. And the one thing this place has that a lot of other places that are making movies don't have as a community. Speaker 11: 43:29 I certainly echo that because I drive up to Los Angeles on a regular basis for work and opportunities. But the thing is, when I have an idea for a movie or project, I don't feel like there's anywhere I can turn to in Los Angeles to actually make that a reality. So I actually come back to San Diego. Um, well I live here as well. I split my time between the two, but I know that in San Diego is where I can make my art or collaborate with others to actually make an idea of mine come to fruition. There's a community here that you can start making your baby steps and building up to hopefully paid positions and whatnot, but people are doing this for the love of the art. All right, well I want to thank you both very much. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 4: 44:08 That was KPBS arts reporter Beth Armando speaking with filmmakers, John Freeman and Caressa la gear, their film capture screens tonight at 9:00 PM at landmarks Hillcrest cinemas as part of film week. Speaker 11: 44:27 Coming up on KPBS evening edition at 5:00 PM on TV, Speaker 14: 44:32 more on reaction to the release of the Mueller report, and join us again tomorrow for KPBS mid day edition at noon. And if you ever miss a show, you can find them a day edition podcast on your favorite podcast app. I'm Maureen Cavenaugh and I'm jade Hindman. Thanks for listening.