this was developed by princeton math ph.d., warren smith, but essentially like a golf score where lower is better. it measures how satisfied the voters are with the system. the best in storm runoff voting. i advocate to get in amend. think very much. >>hank you very much. >> richard winger. i i hav i have been a poll worker for years. they work for very low money. there is a problem that these core of people will get exhausted, especially under the proposal in that gubernatorial years. we would have elections in june and september and november, and it is not just the poll workers, but a whole army of city employees who are out in the field helping them. i feel it is expensive and not worth the money. >> thank you very much. next speaker. take my name is jim lindsay. thank you for doing this in the summer. when i heard about this, my gut reaction was a late april fool's joke or something. we will really have more elections? that is what we need? i tried to find out what the cost was. the lowest i have seen as 3.3 million. the highest number was 4.2 million. split the difference, because

smith was out of his element. he was really used to new york and think the country was used to somebody other than a new yorker, that were used to calvin coolidge, warren harding, herbert hoover. >> if you were elected governor of new york in this time, were you a shoo-in or automatic for consideration on the national stage? >> absolutely. al smith was nominated -- it was always the favorite son candidacies. in 1920 they nominated al smith for president in 1920. it went one round. of course they dropped the votes and they go with -- eventually it was cox from ohio. in 1924 they really went out for smith. it was in new york city, 103 ballots. eventually he had to with withdraw and they had a compromise can't dat, also a new yorker. in 1928 he win it is nomination. all through history, the new york governor, this is even modern history, the new york governor is considered presidential material. if you look at the people who have run and won and those who have run and lost, you'll see new yorkers all through history. >> i'll jump in there. new york was incredibly important. there really were two key political states, new york was one of them. ohio was the

the problem for al smith is you've had eight years of republican rule, first warren harding and followed by calvin coolidge. so the republicans sort of have a leg up on the prosperity front. you have the 1920s, a boom decade for wall street, for large segments of the economy, although less for farmers and agriculture at that point. that's our second p. i think the darkest part of this election and the reason i said it really is one of the most vicious elections in american history is our third p, the question of prejudice. and al smith -- i think most americans today are probably more familiar with john kennedy as a catholic candidate. and even in 1960, that causing real stir, a real set of questions about the presidency, but al smith raised all of those questions much earlier in 1928 which already had been a decade that has been seized with a lot of questions about immigration, immigration reform, the rise of the ku klux klan and those come into play in his candidacy. >> john evers, the role of catholicism in the 1928 election, how did it play out? >> well, it was a vicious campaign. sm

richard kim, nancy giles, harry smith and dorian warren.ly these don't shift public opinion toward gun control and we just heard the congressman say despite the fact he's there because of a shooting, that's not what people sent me to congress to do. i'm here to do middle class stuff, not gun control. >> this is the result of the successful campaign by the gun lobby and the national rifle association over decades to shape public opinion. so in 1990 80% of americans were in favor of gun control. by 2010 only 44% of americans were in favor of gun control. so the mayor, mayor bloomberg is right about the fact we deserve to hear from both political candidates from president what they would do around gun control. unfortunately, we are not going to hear anything from either of them prix sicily precisely because the nra has won the debate. but there's another issue besides gun control, that's the earlier point about the culture. the question is, is violence so normalized in our culture that we are numb to it? so i think all the time about the more