What if the problem with American democracy isn't that the system is broken, but that it's working exactly as intended, just not for you?

Travis Misurell, founder of FiNC (Future is Now Coalition), has spent years watching civic tech efforts try to fix democracy by building better tools. Every one of them failed. His argument: they got the sequence wrong. You don't build the technology and hope a movement follows. You build the movement first and let the technology follow.

In this episode, Travis walks us through the FiNC framework — the Digital Politics Hub, the Up/Down lens, the citizen survey, and the long-term vision of a citizen-owned civic internet where no billionaire, party, or corporation can ever take control. One share per person. No exceptions.

But we also push on the harder questions. If the system is rigged by design, what does building inside it actually accomplish? When AI aggregates open-ended citizen responses into actionable insights for candidates, what gets lost in that translation? When you surface every candidate with equal presentation, are you being neutral or are you making a choice about what equivalence means?

Travis comes back to the same place: intention. Not left or right. Not the policy. The intention. Whether a candidate is in it for you, or in it for the people writing the biggest checks.

FiNC is betting that if citizens can actually see that distinction clearly enough, the rest follows.

It's an ambitious bet. This is the conversation around it.

Learn more about the Future is Now Coalition:

Mentioned:

• • OpenAI donating to stop Alex Bores’s campaign for NY congressional seat