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Aired on WDET on Monday, Nov.

6, 2017
SS: Why should people vote for you for City Clerk of Detroit?
GG: Well, first I'm thankful for the people who chose to vote for me in the primary. And I'm
encouraged that more Detroiters are stepping up and wanting to stand tall for Detroit and see
change in the City Clerk's office and that will come, I believe, because we have talked about why
trust needs to be restored in the city clerk's office, transparency and accountability with the
voting process -- making sure people know what happens to the ballot after they cast it -- and
I've been preparing to do this job for the last 12 years of my career, learning how to fix broken
systems and solve problems because we can't afford to have our voting process not work for us.
We want to have our political power back in Detroit. So people are, I believe, supporting our
campaign because they see me as the city clerk who will not only fix the system, who will not
only make the government overall more transparent, but someone who they'll be able to trust and
know that they can fix the process and can empower them.
SS: So talk a little bit about your background. You are a newcomer in the race. Tell us
your resume.
GG: Sure so I'm thankful and I'm proud to have been born on the west side. I spent the first half
of my childhood on the east side. I'm a University of Michigan-trained computer engineer and
computer scientist. I have two engineering degrees from Michigan. I was a software engineer for
Microsoft for four years, fixing problems and making technology work for people all across the
country and the world. I worked on President Obama's first campaign out in Washington State. I
started as a volunteer and ended as a social media manager for that campaign, learning how to
use technology to pull new people into the process, doing things like standing up the first text-
messaging program to recruit volunteers ever used in a presidential campaign. And that was so
inspiring, that my wife and I relocated to Washington D.C. where I got classically trained as a
community organizer, learning how to help people set and build and advance agendas on
everything from social justice, economic justice, reducing gun violence and protecting voting
rights. I worked as a national campaign director for Moveon.org where I helped to lead that 8
million-person organization in campaigns for justice all across the country. And in 2012 actually
helped protect the voting rights of 300,000 people in the state of Florida while helping to re-elect
President Obama. I came home to Detroit when my twin children, who were born on my birthday
in 2013, when they were 10 months old, my wife and I came home and I began working as the
city of Detroit first-ever director of innovation and emerging technology. In that role, I got a
chance to use everything I learned in my career to solve problems, to fix systems that were
broken in city government. And so I got to work. I wrote the city's policy on openness and
transparency, which actually should have been the city clerks responsibility, but I was doing it
in that job starting in February of 2015. I also helped fix the way the city manages and maintain
fire hydrants. I helped launch an app called Improve Detroit to make city services more
accessible. And so I got a chance to really use my experience to solve problems for Detroiters.
And so that's whats prepared me to be city clerk. But I was propelled to get into this race when
the community reached out to me after our disastrous election of November 2016. We had a
failed election. We had a failed recount. We had an audit that exposed the failures of our current
city clerk, and people said that we can no longer afford to have that kind of leadership in the city
clerk's office.
SS: So go back to problems in the clerk's office and the solutions that you would offer.
GG: The biggest problem is people have lost trust in the city clerk's office period. And I think
that's demonstrated by the decreasing voter turnout in elections. Less than 14 percent of people
voted in the primary in Detroit, which is down from the last municipal primary in 2013. Only 41
percent of people voted in the 2016 general election. So with the low turnout, we still had all
these problems. And I think part of it happens by people not understanding what happens to their
ballots after they cast them. One out of every three voters votes by absentee ballot in the city of
Detroit. Many of them are senior citizens, and they basically get their ballot in the mail, they fill
it out, they put it back in the mail and they say a prayer because they don't know where the ballot
goes. They don't know when the ballots received. They don't know what day it gets counted.
There's no transparency. Theres no accountability. So one of the things I proposed from the
beginning of this campaign is sending absentee voters a confirmation receipt back in the mail so
that they will know that the city has received their ballot and that the city is going to count it.
SS: What's your biggest challenge in winning against an incumbent that has been there for
12 years, that has the name recognition? Her job may not have been done perfectly but
they're also familiar with her and you're a stranger to a lot of people.
GG: Well I'm not afraid of hard work. And my wife and I, we believed that we could run a
campaign that just contacted Detroiters directly, that wasn't reliant in the beginning on
institutional support, that we can make and build direct relationships with Detroiters in person,
on their porches, calling them on the phone, sending them text messages, using social media,
going where people are was important. And that's how we were able to be what the Detroit News
called a surprise challenger to come in second place in the primary election, and I think the
same is true for the general. We are going to outwork anybody else on the ballot. We're going to
do that and earn peoples support. And I think you can overcome name recognition with effort
that says we're going to go where people are. We're going to call people and ask them to support
our campaign via contributions. And we're thankful that enough people have made the choice to
support this campaign to enable us to be able to build name recognition where we had none
before.
SS: Let's talk about some of that support that you've received in terms of contributions. I
know even before the primary you had donors from 48 states. You've also raised a lot more
money than Janice Winfrey as well, the sitting Clerk. So what has been the key to your
fundraising strategy, and why are people from all over the country supporting you?
GG: Well the November 2016 election was, unfortunately, an example where people saw all of
the bad reasons why Detroit elections and their failure are issues of national significance. So I
am proud and humbled that when people across the country who care about democracy, who care
about progressive values, who care about elections and votes counting, when they looked at what
happened in Detroit and they looked for a candidate to support, they chose to support the
Gilchrist campaign. I'm really humbled by that. And I'm excited because that's the result of
putting in effort, putting in hard work, especially in the primary. I spent five hours a day calling
people on the phone and asking them for $25. We had to put up a lot of effort to earn peoples
support, and I believe that voters and donors, they want their public servants to work hard for
their support.
SS: Do you ever feel like you're a few years ahead. I mean you talk about ride sharing. You
talk about technology. You talk about apps that you did at the city government. Do you
almost feel like youre ahead of the curve in Detroit to be a viable candidate with maybe an
older voting base?
GG: I think that we are where people are. Lets talk about social media for a minute. So 70
percent of people in Detroit use Facebook, rely on Facebook every day to get information. But
you know my opponent, for example, the city of Detroit's Department of Elections Facebook
page has not been updated in more than four years. It hasnt been updated since before my
children were born on Sept. 11, 2013. But so many Detroiters use Facebook including the fastest
growing demographic on Facebook, which is people over the age of 60. So I think its important
that wherever there is a Detroiter or wherever there is a Detroit resident who needs information,
wherever there is the Detroit voter who needs to be served by the voting process, the Detroit City
Clerk needs to be there: on their cell phone, on their social media, at their door, at their church, at
their community meeting, at a basketball tournament, at a football game, the city clerk needs to
be present in their community. Thats one of the reasons why one of my ideas is to make sure we
have a city clerk service center in every city council district so that the services and information
provided by the city clerk's office that the City Clerk is required to provide are more easily
accessible so Detroiters dont have to come downtown to get it.
SS: One of the things that I talked to your opponent about was what Lansing could do to
improve voting in elections in the city of Detroit. Can you talk a little bit about what you
would like to see from Lansing, how you would work with state government to make
changes that would the voters in Detroit would feel?
GG: So I will speak to Lansing but first I want to talk about what the Detroit city clerk can do. I
think that's what's most important. We have ideas for improving the process and increasing voter
turnout that are within the complete authority of the Detroit City Clerk. Doing things like making
voting more convenient and accessible, by having people vote at the polling place that's most
convenient and closest to where they live. Making sure that we're using research-proven methods
like sending people text message reminders of Election Day two days before Election Day.
Having people make Election Day plans about what time they're going to vote. All these things
have been shown by research to improve voter turnout. Those are things that Detroit City Clerk
can do without Lansings permission. Yes, I would love to see same-day registration, absentee
voting without an excuse, actual early voting be available and made possible by state law in the
state of Michigan. And I'm going to defend against things like voter I.D. laws which are proven
voter suppression tactics all across the country.
SS: What do you hear from people as you're out campaigning about their knowledge of the
role of city clerk? How much of an understanding is there among voters about what a city
clerk does?
GG: Yet most people are aware that the city clerk runs the election process. There are still a
number of Detroiters who are not aware that the city clerk is also the public record keeper of the
city of Detroit and that the city clerk is the clerk of the city council. So one of the things thats
been important to me from a campaigning perspective from the beginning has been to let people
know about the fullness of the job, to make sure that we know that all of this stuff -- being
informed, knowing what's happening at the City Council table and what was happening at the
other decision making bodies of the boards and commissions that impact our neighborhoods
every day, every week, every month and how you can participate in those -- I've been trying to
frame this as a role that's about enabling Detroiters to participate in decision making every day. I
believe that if people are more informed and if they have the experience of impacting a decision-
making process before Election Day, we will not have to twist their arm so hard to get them to
vote on Election Day. That's one of the ways that we can sort of structurally and systemically
increase voter turnout by increasing engagement day to day, week to week, month to month in
Detroit. The Detroit city clerk has the power and the opportunity to play a role in that if it's a
priority. It will be my priority as city clerk.

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