[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West, you are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans, Sam Bushman with another hard-hitting edition of Liberty Roundtable Live. First half hour, an incredible guest to help you with elections. Second half hour, the Honest Money Report with Heath Perkins and more comes up.
[00:00:33] Right now, Kirk Cosby is with me, well-known as the Honeyman, a man who stands for the sacred cause of liberty, promoting God, family, and country. Welcome, sir. Buenos dias. Greetings and salutations. Howdy, howdy, howdy. Thank you, Sam. And don't ever say we're not bilingual on the broadcast today, ladies and gentlemen. Kirk's going to start learning Chinese and Japanese and see if we can't interpret more. Actually, I'm using AI to take my voice and try to transfer the broadcast into different languages.
[00:01:02] So hopefully we can make all kinds of progress with that. But our guest is an interesting gentleman. His name is Xu Yong, and he's an IT professional. He's the creator of a website called electionssimplified.com. It's a voter research website designed to help people understand their candidates, their records, ballot measures, and more. Electionssimplified.com.
[00:01:27] The question is, how can you judge candidates by their actions, by their voting record, etc., rather than just campaign advertising? They work with a small team with differing political views, and they bring together incredible research. It uses AI, folks, and so you can't rely on it perfectly, but it can give you a starting point and can lay out a bunch of things, and then you can do secondary research to verify. I've been on the site and played with it a little bit.
[00:01:57] It is incredibly accurate, surprisingly enough. For example, it mentions several of my districts and candidates and people and issues, and then it said, by the way, there's some issues in the Salt Lake School District, but it might not apply to you. That's exactly right. Salt Lake's not that far from me. It's about 35 miles, but I'm not in that school district. Now, I don't put kids in government school, so I don't really care about that very much. Anyway, but the point is, the site was very accurate and detailed for me, and with involvement from you and everybody else, it's getting better.
[00:02:25] All you do is go to the website, put in your zip code or your address or whatever you want, and it'll basically come out and, boom, show you all the details for you locally. So the site is incredibly smart. It's aware. Xu Yong, welcome to Liberty Roundtable Live. Thank you, Sam, for having me. It's an honor to be here. Hi, Kirk. You're very welcome. By the way, you're an IT professional and all that kind of stuff. Give us a little bit more of your background. Did you grow up in the United States? I grew up actually in China.
[00:02:53] I was studying in China, and I was born in China, and then I came to the United States when I was 15, so very quite early and quite critical age, and then I learned about voting in the United States when I came over here, and I was like, okay, wait. Well, here people have control over their lives because they have control over their governments, and they have a say in their life. It's such a precious thing.
[00:03:19] But then later, as I got older, became a citizen and started this voting process, I thought, wait, this is not as advertised. It's not as transparent, the information, as I thought, and there's a lot of misinformation. So I've been thinking about how we can make this such precious opportunity of voting to be something that we can have essentially power and control over.
[00:03:50] So I've been thinking about this a long time, and one day as I was driving home, since I work in tech, I just asked myself the question. Now we have been having this AI technology coming into our lives, which is a technology that we never had before. So what can we use it for? For some good. Right now, everyone is trying to make some money off it, or trying to create some just entertainment off it. I thought, what can we use it for some good?
[00:04:19] And then this idea just came to me. I didn't feel like I'd come up with it. It literally felt like it came from the outside when I asked the question. So it was very clear, because when I look at my ballot, I will see, for example, pages and pages of names. I have no idea who they are. And most of the names I don't know, and the ones I do know will be the president, the governor, and the city mayor sometimes.
[00:04:49] And the rest of the names, I just have no idea who they are. Yeah, so they have basically inside, because they made a name inside, then you kind of know maybe who they are. But you look at a ballot and you just go, man, how do I choose these people? I don't really know enough about them. And I don't think that you're alone in that. I think everybody feels that way to a great degree. So you joined up with some partners to build this website, right? Yeah, they're really just friends of mine. Some friends from since I got here,
[00:05:15] like when I came to the United States, 15 years old, and then some friends later in life. So I just talked with them, and I said, hey, I know that you guys are from very different political views. But here's a problem I have every time in the election. What do you guys think? Do you have the same problem? And they're all like, yeah, we have the exact same problem. It doesn't matter what kind of political views they hold.
[00:05:42] We all face the same problem of not knowing who these candidates are. So the site, ladies and gentlemen, presents candidates, votes, actions, donors. But the best part is it's all in plain language, but with ballot measure explanations, et cetera. You know, a lot of times on the ballot, the way they write the initiatives is they're confusing. Sometimes it makes it sound like you want to vote yes, but you really mean to vote no, et cetera, by the language. And so this breaks it down using artificial intelligence
[00:06:09] to make the elections easier to understand. This is really important, folks. It has records. It has research dates. Stated policy is to not endorse any candidates. You're friends, and you aren't even politically necessarily aligned, but you're friends beyond political differences, right? Yeah, because it doesn't matter what people believe. We all want the clarity in terms of information. If all we get, or most of the stuff we get is from TV,
[00:06:36] the campaign ads, vote for me, I will fight for you, just with different faces, or just some kind of smear ads, we don't really know who these people are. I think to know a political candidate or to know a person, really, you got to look at the person's actions, not what that person says, especially if the words are designed. So, when you were in China, though, what if you set up a website like this in China? Is that? Oh, you cannot.
[00:07:06] It's just, when I was there, no one I know in any circle of family friends, like the voting process just doesn't exist. It is a different system. I cannot say it's good or bad. It just has trade-offs. It's just like, you know, here is the government. It's going to tell you what to do, and you're going to do it. Sure. All right. Where does AI help in the website, and where do you got to kind of verify things and stuff like that? How do people gain trust in it, in other words?
[00:07:36] Yeah, this is something that we've been working on for a significant amount of time. So, AI, we only use it for two things. All the sources of the politician's actions, the AI does not make up or you can say generate anything. So, what the AI does is it just goes on to official websites because every time, for example, if you are a representative in the House or a senator,
[00:08:03] every time you vote on something, there is an official record. This is the bill. This is what each senator voted. So, what the AI does is it goes on to these official websites or reputable news source, and it pulls out exactly what these candidates have voted on, who they took money from, or which PAC, super PAC, if that information is available. And if it's not a voting bill, if it's just a career thing, it gets it from reputable sources.
[00:08:34] So, AI does this one thing, which is getting the source from the official sources. The second thing is AI does the translation. Just like AI is super good at translating French to English, AI is also really good at translating legal language. Like you said, valid measures written in dense legal languages into a plain language that you and I can understand. Who decides whether a candidate's actions are for or against a certain issue?
[00:09:04] What happens with that? So, we make a definition, for example, for public funding, right? Of public infrastructure, right? And if we make a definition, this is what it is, public infrastructure. And all the definitions are there on the website listed. So, the AI basically looks at the bill the candidate or the politician voted on
[00:09:29] and see, okay, for example, this bill is about putting $3 million into building this bridge. This would be for public infrastructure. So, the AI just looks at the definition and makes the label. I see. Okay. Yeah. How do you compare, say, a long-time incumbent that's got a great voting record with, say, somebody who's new to the game and there's not a record to compare? Oh, that's a great question because we thought about this a lot.
[00:09:55] For the long-time incumbent, you will have a lot more records in terms of political records because this person has just been in office for long. They have a long voting record. However, this person also has much more chances to do things that you disagree with. It could be very opposite of what this person's slogans are. And we cannot make up anything, obviously. So, for someone who has never been in an office before and they're challenging a long-time incumbent,
[00:10:25] we don't have any public information on how they voted in their legislative terms. However, we use their career records in that case. It's what they have done in their career that's related. And oftentimes, these people who run for offices, they have some side projects that reflects their areas. Yeah. For example, if I'm a businessman or an entrepreneur and I've run successful companies, then you can be pretty assured that, hey, I know at least how to manage people
[00:10:54] and I know how to make something successful. I understand somewhat about budgets and expenditures and things because, hey, I've managed businesses, so I have a good idea. What if the record's wrong or there's details missing where somebody feels like, hey, you know what, you need more information on this or whatever, Shu? For every single record, there is a report button where you can, if someone feels like this record is indeed inaccurate, they can report it and then we reveal it manually with human.
[00:11:24] Where does funding for the project come from? In other words, how do we know that we're preserving independence as this thing grows and stuff? So far, the fundings are just from me. So it's from the first run is the visa, the run, and the second is MasterCard run. So the thing is because with AI, we don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to hire a research team for all these years. So AI is able to just take the resource from the governmental websites
[00:11:54] or from the major news office too. This process is pretty cheap. Maybe the government needs to take a page out of your playbook, don't they? I'm not sure if they want this kind of transparency, this kind of light shining on to them. Well, we need transparency, but we also need to do it on a thin dime and fund things with inexpensive ways to solve problems, and that's what I'm talking about. How about blind people and people with disabilities? Can they access the site? I do believe we have the screen reader for the one. You can double check as well. Yeah, okay.
[00:12:22] Anyway, I think that there's a lot done there that's good. I think there's a little progress that can be made, but folks, for the most part, it's quite accessible in many ways, and they can work on some of the nuances of that. Kurt, do you want to chime in? Well, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity, Xu. You said you came here when you were 15, right? Yeah, yeah. And you are now a citizen of America and China?
[00:12:52] Just America. Just America. When you become an American citizen, you renounce your citizenship in other places. Oh, okay. I've heard of people being dual citizens or whatever like that. Is your family, your mom and dad here? Are they in China? Yeah, they're here. My family's here. Very good. You know, there are some people that say that basically everybody that comes from,
[00:13:19] especially communist China, is pretty much forced to be part of, like, China's spy network or whatever. Do you have a response for that? I think that is very entertaining media news things, but I think the reality is way, way more different.
[00:13:46] Obviously, things like that grabs people's attention. Yeah, you would know personally. You know, but what they say is they say, well, you know, these people usually they have got family or whatever that are still in communist China, and then they're threatened to say, look, you know, you've got to gather information, whether it's in the tech world or whatever, and relay it back to communist China.
[00:14:16] You know, so then you're kind of, at least, have you heard those things? Yeah, all the time. And I don't, I'm not surprised at all that people actually would, there would be some corporate spying that get some kinds of corporate secrets from, not just America, but from other countries. Right. And relay that technology back. Actually, my mom came here because she was a refugee.
[00:14:46] She was a Christian. I mean, she is a Christian and it was not allowed. Right. How did she get here? I don't remember. I was very young at the time. So there was some Christian organization that helped her to come here. I mean, I'm like, Hey, you know, it's, She had to escape somehow. She had to escape the political basically. Wow. That's it. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:14] So it's, it's not, it's a very different system over there. So just saying. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, you know, the other parts about the website and things, Sam, I think you've covered those. Well, you know, I don't, if she can share his screen on your, there's a button on your thing where you can show your screen. I don't know if you can do this, but it's worth a try and you can basically show us a candidate where there's a record of a candidate that tells a different story than kind of their
[00:15:44] campaign advertising. People could kind of see the site. I don't know if it's, if it's easy to do. Let's try this. I'm not sure where the button is for this screen. Towards the very bottom. Okay. If you see it, we can do it. If not, we don't have to, but there's for example, candidates where their records simply tell a different story than their campaign ads tell. And I really think of, you know, a lot of politicians that do this, you know, they basically say one thing, but then when you really see their record, it's different. All right. Is this working? Let me see.
[00:16:16] So when you share your screen, you can share a tab only like just your browser or whatever. And then you choose share. Chrome tab. Anyway, we can see it. Okay. But it's important. People understand you can go to the website. You can play with it yourself. It's free to get this information, right? Do you see it? You see that? There it is. Yep. There it is. So you can just talk us through this.
[00:16:46] We can see what you're showing. Why is it not? I can see it up there. It's a kind of a white screen. It's not very big on my screen, but anyway, do you see who your candidates really are by their track records? It says, and then you've got these different buttons and things to push. I guess. So you fill in who, who they are. And is that how that works you? Yeah.
[00:17:15] So you enter an address or a zip code. Is there any, do anyone? Your zip code. 84059. So we're going to put in 84059 for Mr. Kirk Cosby. And then we're going to show basically some of the details about his area, what he's doing, who he is. By the way, we're going to use this system on our election night coverage on November the 3rd. November the 3rd is, I don't know what you want to call it, election Tuesday. And from seven to 10,
[00:17:43] seven to midnight Eastern and five to 10 mountain time, we're going to be doing a election coverage with all of the Liberty News radio hosts. So we're going to do it on a video with Liberty round table and the big big show and more. We've got a lot of people breaking things down myself, Alex Newman, James Edwards, Lance Migliaccio, Kurt Crosby. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on of newsmakers that are going to be part of this thing. And it's incredible. So we're going to be using this system on election night as part of our coverage. We'll give them credit during the event as well.
[00:18:13] Elections with an S simplified.com is the website. And the real question that's answered, how do voters judge candidates by the facts, not just what they say. Yeah. So we're here on the screen. You can see after you enter the zip code, you see a list of elections there and you can see what your vote power is for each vote power basically means how much vote, how much power your vote or how much influence your vote has in a particular
[00:18:42] race for presidential race. Unless you live in a key precinct in a swing state, our vote has one 150 million, but in your city council, in smaller races, sometimes your vote could be literally the deciding vote because sometimes only a few hundred people come and vote. So you see the list of different races. Texas. And, um, let's see,
[00:19:10] you can click into one and you see what this office, what this office does. So what does this office do? You see that this office votes on how much you pay in state taxes for the state Senate District 23 office. It's voting on how much money your local and public school gets and voting on which roads and highway gets built or repaired. And you see who's running for it. Two people, right?
[00:19:40] Let's go to the Keith Grover here. And you see Keith Grover, his official sites. You see a very brief intro of what he's about. And then based on all his record, you can see what he has supported AI regulation. He supports hair healthcare, affordability, public safety and crime, housing, affordability, basically a list of things he supports and the list of things that he voted oppose.
[00:20:09] It's immigration and control opposing control, corporate accountability, things like this. And mixed records means essentially how he has some records where he voted support and he has some records where he voted opposing. And by the way, ladies and gentlemen, sometimes there are bills that are so convoluted. And if you vote against it, they use it against you. Or if you vote for it, they use it against you because there's some issues that may split how you feel on a topic. And what you've got to do is vet that candidate,
[00:20:39] vet the bill and decide if you think they voted right in those complicated situations. Right? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's, it's not so singular. I wish it was. I wish there was just vote straight up and down singular bills on topics, but that's not really the way it works is your point. Go ahead, you. So here you see the campaign finance record for him. We don't have a lot of campaign finance record. Maybe he didn't have to raise that much money or maybe just in this particular case, we don't have a lot,
[00:21:08] but for some other candidates, we have a lot because they have raised money from the pack. Also, this is just a state state Senate race. So it's not like a house or a Senator race. So you see the campaign finance record. The more local it becomes, the less information there is, or is that not right? It is true. However, it's just because when they are running for a higher up office, they are required to disclose more information. Right.
[00:21:37] So when you are not required to disclose your campaign finance information, for example, then who's going to do that? Right. Yes. And not only is it that, you know, sometimes there's not as much information available. A lot of times they don't post the information in places where it's easy for the system to grab it. There's all kinds of reasons for that. All right. Show us anything else you'd like us to kind of see. I just thought a little summary, putting it on the screen would kind of help people visualize what you're talking about a little bit. Yes. And then if you see the record here for each record,
[00:22:07] you first have the labels, the areas that you want to see this kind of records. But for each record, for example, this one, House Bill 274, you will see that it's about AI regulation. And then you see the source of the actual record itself. You can go into the source and look at the actual official document. That's about it. And so this goes on for all the things that's going on in that zip code. However,
[00:22:35] it would be better if you enter a specific address because the cities, the city line is different than. Yeah. In other words, you've got different districts and things. And sometimes if you have a city, you put a zip code, it could be that you're in a different district than your zip code. So it may not be perfect if you use zip code. And so they're not collecting your address and storing it and keeping it,
[00:23:04] but they have to use it in order to match what your district really is. So it's only as accurate as you give the information. If you say, I don't want to give the information, that's fine. Then you can just go, for example, if you go back to the beginning of the website, you could choose a state and just see the state information. If you don't want to give your personal information, they're not trying to gather information from you, but there's no way they can give you the data that you really seek unless you either hunt for it yourself and or you give them information to kind of narrow you in and filter that down for you. Right? Yeah, exactly. So you don't,
[00:23:34] it doesn't have to be your address. It can be just an address from a McDonald or somewhere. So as you click into like you, you choose which one, which candidate you like, for example, and then you will see, Oh, here you will see a sample ballot essentially of what you have picked. Shu Young. We're flat out of time, sir. He's a professional IT expert.
[00:24:00] He also created this incredible website to help every one of us break down elections, elections, elections, simplified.com is the website. Check it out. How can you know what's going on with all the different details in the elections? And how do you get education quickly? That's the answer. They work with a small team, so it's inexpensive. They fund it themselves. Of course, they want your donations, elections, simplified.com, but they don't take money from all the big people or anything else. So you can become a member and check it out.
[00:24:29] Thank you, Shu. Thank you, Sam. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Sam Bushman along with Kirk Cosby. Coming up next, Honest Money Report. God save our constitutional republic.