They say "all politics is local" Ever since 2016 though, it was always a difficult to not see everything in our democracy as being driven by the theater and machinations from the very top of our ruling class.

It was during this tumultuous time that a whole new generation got involved in politics at various levels, myself included.

But it was not until 2020, in the midst of yet another crazy national election year, that I came across across groups of activists fighting for the smallest offices a person could possibly run for.

It was a thing I never heard of in all my life as a citizen of this, supposedly, great republic.

And they began to show me how the crisis of democracy at the highest echelon was very much the same down here in our own backyards.

So who are these activists and just how local can politics actually get?

Woman: Are you guys cool crossing here because we're going to Cipollina, if you want to cross on this side?

There's a method to my madness I promise you, I know that we're going that way Woman: ...like no carpet floor, that is, like, practically in your own apartment.

[construction noise, banging] Int: Tell me about this primary ballot from June.

This is a ballot that you get by mail.

You have... it's divided in two pieces... that a lot of people don't understand.

They see a lot of names... And the ballot is divided into public office positions: those who are elected official that will make the laws or execute the laws of the State of New York and on the other side you have all these people who are volunteers inside the party.

One of the most important position which is County Committee, all the way at the bottom.

After that you have District Leader, then you have State Committee.

And these people basically nobody hears about them because they're supposed to be staple of their community but, at the end of the day, nobody knows them.

VO: There are three levels to the two major political parties in the U.S. You have a county-level leadership then you have the state and then the state feeds into the national The national RNC or DNC, which is the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee that handles the presidential and everything that is national.

Then after that, it's broken up by state.

So each state has their own Republican or Democratic State Party organization.

And then it's broken even further in smaller pieces, by county.

So each county has their own structure and organization.

VO: In New York City, each of the five boroughs are their own county and have their own County Party.

The Republican Party also has their County Committee.

In New York City, in particular, the Democratic Party tends to be the predominant party.

County Committees are made up of seats that registered members of the party can run for and can be voted on in an primary.

To understand what these seats represent, let's take a look at this map of New York City counties.

Each county is broken up by thousands of these small demarcations called “election districts”.

Each County Committee member represents an election district, which in New York City is usually 2 to 4 square blocks.

It's very small.

It's about 500 registered Democrats there.

There is a male and female County Committee seat representing the voters in each district.

Looking across the entire Kings for example, Brooklyn has over 5,000 such county seats that are available for election.

The number of seats available in any County Committee depends on the population of registered party voters overall in that county.

Manhattan has around 3,500 seats Queens: 2,700 And even though thousands of these seats are available for election in New York typically only half of them are ever contested and won, while the other half remains empty.

Such is the case in Brooklyn and in Queens For those empty county seats, the party leaders can appoint people to fill those vaccancies.

So the County Committee member is a person who has the power to represent the community where they got elected Then you have your District Leaders who are there to organize all those County Committee members.

The District Leaders are also elected on the ballot.

Meanwhile, the County Committee members elect a Chairperson, Secretary and Treasurers of the County Committee.

These executive positions, along with the District Leaders form the “Executive Committee”.

Executive Committee and County Committee are basically the two chambers of the County Party apparatus.

So the County Committee, as a whole, their responsibility is to elect the leadership of the county party.

The second part is deal with all business of the party: running the party, getting together to decide on the bylaws and things like that.

Their third responsibility is to fill the vacancies of a special election.

When there is an Assembly Member or Senator we need to replace and the County Committee gets together to fill the person that will replace.

And the other thing is to organize also the Judicial Convention and the election for the judges.

1 in 3 of your state legislators are chosen in special election.

That happens when someone dies, gets indicted, or has to resign.

Happens a lot in New York!

County Committee picks who the nominee will be.

So one-third of your state legislators are chosen by County Committee.

Even though the County Committee is supposed to be the deliberative body that takes on these responsibilities it is often the case that these decisions are actually made by the Executive Committee and its leadership.

In particular, the executive chairman.

also known as the “Party Boss”.

Such has been the case in Queens The Democratic Party of Queens County... it's a very closed, top-down system.

It's really just designed so that there's control from the top.

Maria Kaufer...she has told me a hearing about County Committee and these positions for the first time at an event that we did for Alexandria.

Alexandria: Joe Crowley is not just the Congressman.

He's the chairman of the Queens Democratic Party, he's the District Leader.

Joe Crowley has appointed every Board of Elections judge.

Maria: AOC is the biggest example of that, you know, a newcomer comes in and it's just all these ways that the county party itself puts their thumbs on the scale to make sure that their chosen candidate are the ones that get the exposure.

Alexandria actually winning her race in a lot of ways, I feel like cracked Queens open to the concept that it is possible, that people can truly elect who they want to represent them.

Joe Crowley's defeat certainly invited a possibility of change to the local-level party, since he later stepped down as its chairman.

But this top down system largely the same even as a new chairman, Congressman Gregory Meeks, was appointed by the district leaders.

And this state of affairs can be seen in the Queens County Committee's sole activity.

Int: What exactly does County Committee do?

So there's a division between what they could be doing, based on the way it was designd and what they currently do.

And I'll speak to Queens: currently, County Committee members get invited to one meeting every two years.

So we went to the County Committee meeting in September of 2018 and we realized was very pro forma.

It was, I think, it was a total of 12 minutes the entire meeting from beginning to end.

And we really did nothing.

And we were warned that it would be like that.

And we just thought, this is ridiculous And that's the only thing that we do for the entire two-year term.

Two years later, in 2020, the Queens County Committee held their one meeting again, as per usual, for the new two-year term.

But this time, the global Covid pandemic forced the meeting to be a zoom conference.

This is a recording of that meeting It was run by the chairwoman, Vivian Cook, and Michael Reich, a lawyer and Executive Secretary of the party.

So whenever there are vacancies in County Committee seats, of which there are over 2,700 seats most of them are not filled.

So they propose a list of candidates to fill the vacancies.

This list of hundreds of names to be appointed to the vacant seats was not given to any Committee members beforehand to peruse.

Int: As you can see in the chat, some people are saying this list should be distributed in advance Maria: Right... Int: It wasn't.

Amanda Vender calling for some transparency.

Maria: Right... At one point, a member, Dan Wilson comments in the chat that one of the names on the list is a dead person.

Others echo his objection and ask chairwoman to address this before it goes to a vote.

These objections were completely ignored by the party leaders.

The list then proceeded for a vote.

Int: So you're saying none of these objections were acknowledged or even addressed and they just sort of barrel through and, ultimately what happened was they voted on it, and it passed through.

Maria: Right... Int: Obviously, that seems very wrong, but how commonplace is this kind of... Maria: That's standard operating procedure!

The Queen's Chronicle in 2018 detailed an instance where a deceased person was put on the ballot for County Committee by a local club, despite club members being aware of the person's death beforehand.

In 2016, a lawsuit accused the Bronx Democratic Party of rigging the County Committee by running dead people and people who moved away years ago.

In 2018, the New York Times reported on how some 21 people were put onto the ballot for County Committee their knowledge or consent, some not even knowing what County Committee was.

Meanwhile, over 60 people who personally and actively petitioned for their own candidacy and consciously ran for office, were disqualified by the Board of Elections.

Michael Reich responded to this New York Times report then, saying, “We are not aware of people being designated without being informed.” Vigie: Nobody who was supposed to be monitoring this monitored the chat and answered people's questions.

It was very much in my perception a scripted run.

And there were lots of other issues and concerns that people wanted to discuss and bring up that people running the show who are these appointed folks, had no interest in or care about.

It seemed a complete and utter disregard for actual members of the party.

So how does this happen?

Why is it this way?

Theo: Vigie is totally right.

What the County Committee is and what the County Committee could be are two different things.

The laws of the County Committee are very democratic, however, because they'reempty, they're able to do all this shenanigans.

For example, I nominated John Oliver.

Int: So you got John Oliver on.. Theo: So John Oliver got on the petition.

The law as it is written is that any petition that comes in at the Board of Elections is a valid petition.

They don't check anything.

JohnOliver was about that, was to put someone on theballot withour their permission, the same way you put a dead person, the same way you do that Int: So, in a way, you were doing this to kind of show people how this can happen.

And so you took aperson, and its almost like a prank, almost but you're kind of showing people Theo: Its a serious prank because John Oliver always talksabout political things And he also does this thing where he tells people to go to this website and to troll.

So basically I was trolling the troller.

The Daily News reported extensively on this “Queens Machine” run by this law firm which gives them control over the County Party and, by extension, the Judicial Nomination process.

Their cozy relationship with the judges gives them exclusive access to practically all the surrogate court cases in Queens.

a virtual monopoly that has raked in tens of millions of dollars for these lawyers.

In 2018, then-candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reflected on her own experience with the surrogate court, when her father died in 2008 without a will.

According to The Intercept, she witnessed first hand how attorneys appointed by the court to administer an estate can enrich themselves at the expense families struggling to make sense of the bureaucracy.

The New York Times once referrd courthouse machine in Queens a, quote, “Ponce de Leon's own spring, an eternal source of easy money for the politically wired.” It's part and parcel of the way it's constructed, that most people are going to try and hold on to their job.

That's human nature.

You know, they re going to try and hold on to whatever power they have.

But is that really what's in service to the greater good?

I had heard about the Queens Machine and it's not the only machine out there.

But I live in Queens, I heard about it for a very long time, and you know what?

I was just busy living my life you know, working, raising a family.

I didn't want get involved in politics—that's politics.

And I thought “just forget it”.

But that was pivotal, I think, for many of us, was November 8, 2016.

Once Donald Trump was elected, I knew that something was very very wrong with our political system.

That just knew we had to do something.

So New Reformers is...we are the facilitators but we are actualy here to uplift and put in our District Leaders and our other folks.

We stand on your shoulders.

Émilia: New Reformers—they are working to elect reform-minded progressive activists and organizers to these party positions within the Democratic Party.

I urge everyone in this room to run Find someone else, tell that person to find someone else.

Five different positions, put in the work.

Let's make a difference.

Come on, folks.

So this gendered way of doing politics has got to end.

It is absolutely wrong.

A7933 is a bill that Jessica has that would allow for non-binary folks to run for party office.

All of you should be calling your assembly members.

And that's a lot due to Émilia and David Siffert who helped us to draft that language, so please give a round of applause to Émilia.

I'm like an old car salesman.

And all I'm doing is, I'm recruiting people to see if they are the activists.

They're, you know, they went to vote.

They're standing in the line.

That's big.

But are they willing to do the next step up?

Rep My Block replaces the lawyer that will give you all the paperwork needed to get on the County Committee.

You have a dashboard that tells you a summary: how many voters, how many signatures, how many days to go before the petition.

You see in here, you have to do it manually and do everything.. You see in here you have to doi manually and do everything... Rep My Block gives you the petition already filled up.

The reason you're running for County Committee is enormous, could be anything.

It could be there is not enough parking we need to have a solution—whatever it is, you have decided to get involved because you feel that something is not right in your neignborhood.

The next neighborhood or the next street over, another person is doing exactly the same thing.

And so the idea with RepMyBlock is to make that magic happen.

Saying this person and this person, can they work together?

It's not something that was taught in civics class.

It's not like when you go to register they give you a pamphlet on how all this works.

I realized that to change the environment in my neighborhood, around the world in the United States, and everywhere else You'll start at County Committee.

You cannot change the world, if don't change County Committee.

Int: Like many others, I too ran County Committee in 2020.

I got on the ballot and won my race, as elected member Queens County Democratic Party, I've seen what happens here firsthand and can say that, indeed, when so few people people participate in this system, it is easy for the powerful few to take advantage of it, for democracy to die in darkness While this story takes place in New York there are County Committees all across this country.

Republican or Democrat, you have the ability to step into this process, the most fundamental building blocks of our republic.

And it's not just voting that makes democracy.

Running for office is the other piece of it.

Everyone should be able to do both.

And both are often suppressed by the same forces.

So it's up to you to not only ask question: “what is County Commitee?” But also, “how do I get involved?” <phone ringing> Voicemail: Hi, this is John.

Leave a message, and I'll get back to you.

Hi John, this Theo Chino.

I've called you many times in the last year.

I'm a person who put you on the ballot as a Judicial Delegate for the Democratic Party.

We're doing a movie now, documentary, about the whole process, and how dead people can get on the ballot.

And I hope in February of this year you'll run with us for for County Committee.

Take care, and it was a pleasure trying to activate you.

Take care, bye.