"One Person, One Vote": Finally, a film that explains the Electoral College in an engaging way

The last step that “One Person, One Vote” director Maximina Juson needed to complete her documentary on the Electoral College was to film the ceremonial certification of the states’ electoral votes. She’d spent the previous months following Colorodo-based electors from the two major political parties, as well as a pair representing the Green Party and Kanye West. 

At the time, Juson recalled to Salon, “I didn't have major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, but I had frequent flyer miles” and her equipment. She imagined she’d capture some footage on the ground in D.C. of protests and counterprotests, and that would be that.

We know now that January 6, 2021, turned out much differently than anyone predicted. “Never in a million years did I imagine that I would be witnessing the first non-peaceful trends transfer power in American history,” she said. “After years of researching the electoral college and then to be delivered to a moment where the history was unfolding before my very eyes was, there's just no words for it.”

But it also speaks to the timeliness of this project – a documentary that explains on a granular level how the Electoral College works, why we have it, and why it’s so difficult to get rid of. This institution affects all Americans, yet so few of us understand its intricacies. And after she finished editing her documentary, Juson realized that it served another purpose, too. “What we haven't seen in the analysis of January 6,” she said, “is what the Electoral College did to bring us to that moment.”

Juson says her debut feature is informed by her being the child of a peacekeeper.” My mom worked for United Nations peacekeeping mission,” she said. "I went to the UN school, and I graduated inside the UN headquarters.”

This informs the push for understanding reflected in “One Person, One Vote,” which resists what might be a common urge among fellow documentarians to paint one party as less reasonable than the other. Instead of featuring politicians, Juson focused on the regular people who form the grassroots of political movements. 

Premiering a little over a month before the 2024 presidential election as part of  PBS' "Independent Lens" lineup, “One Person, One Vote” joins several documentaries about the political system. Most profile its major players and the societal toxins pushing us to the brink.

Not only is Juson’s documentary non-partisan to a refreshing degree, it is bighearted and even humorous at times. A few scenes she captured on January 6 are frightening, however, especially her recording protesters threatening her and hemming her in.

In July, when I sat down with Juson and two of her subjects, Polly Baca, a Democrat who worked closely in every presidential election since 1960, and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb, who is also the Dean of Columbia Journalism School, it had been 48 hours since an assassination attempt had been made against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.

To Cobb, that moment proved the import of works like “One Person, One Vote” that aid citizens in comprehending our democracy’s structure. “The idea of democracy has gotten lost in so much of what we see going on in our politics right now,” he said. “And when people lose faith in democracy, they gain faith in their guns. We start shooting at each other."

He added, “We put together a group of people, and we run for this office because we have an agenda, and we want to see those things achieved. And if you don't have faith that that can happen nonviolently, people start looking for violent ways to get what they want. They don't just abandon the thing they want. They try to get it through other means that are ultimately more destructive to everyone.”

“We the people are better off in a democracy if we really understand how our democracy works,” Baca told me, further explaining that she participates as an elector even though she’s on the side of doing away with the Electoral College. 

“Now, there are positives and negatives, and I can argue both sides of whether or not it's good to have the system we have,” she said. “The reality is we just have it. And so you have to learn how to use it and how to participate in it, and what it really means in terms of how well we represent the folks, the common citizen.”

Baca continued, “Every single American, every single person in our country, ought to take a course in how the elections really work, and how you can become engaged and be a participant in this process."

During the Jan. 6 riot, Juson was mugged while filming. Half of her footage was stolen.

Nevertheless, she also said that the people who helped keep her safe were QAnon followers who shielded her from more aggressive people, reminding those surrounding her of Juson’s right to free speech. Even in this darkest hour, she told me, there was evidence of the good in the unlikeliest settings.

The most hopeful feedback she’s received from community screenings, Juson said, is that people congratulated her on making an instructional film on the Electoral College that isn’t boring.  

Part of the credit for that feat is due to her thoughtful inclusion of subjects beyond the usual experts, which was guided by the understanding that most American voters have never met an elector.

“One of my main goals in this film, was to put a human face on the Electoral College, because right now, it's this opaque process that's somewhere over there and really distant from the actual voter,” she said. “And I thought the best way for people to learn about the electoral college would be through real-world elector and through real-world grassroots activists that are working for and against Electoral College.”

Fortunately for Juson, Colorado had several examples of major issues at play related to the Electoral College. 

In 2019, its statehouse made Colorado part of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which, if enough states representing 270 electors join, pledges to award all of their electoral votes to the winner of a presidential election's popular vote. Colorado's voters reaffirmed the decision in 2020. As of April 2024, seventeen states and the District of Columbia have adopted the compact, jurisdictions that comprise 209 electoral votes.

But the film's strongest draws are the four electors Juson followed, beginning in the fall of 2020. There’s Baca, Derrick Wilburn, a Republican conservative ready to cast his electoral votes for Donald Trump; Patricia McCracken, an elector for the Green Party; and the documentary’s main comic relief, an elector for Kanye West named Kit MacLean.

“I’m hoping this changes the course of my destiny. I’m hoping this is my calling,” MacLean says in the film. “And maybe I’ll meet a Kardashian or a West. Maybe this will be what skyrockets my career and my life.”

“He’s actually a Sasha Baron Cohen type,” Juson told me, predicting the reactions of viewers who might see in MacLean the fall of civilization – because his act really is that convincing, and he really was a Kanye West elector. Juson posts the paperwork to prove it. 

Balancing the information download and the levity are artful animations and reading of the Framers’ words debating the intricacies of devising how states’ electors would be designated. 

For that, Juson cast Black actors to add emotional heft to historical statements, and to make it impossible to ignore the reality of the Electoral College’s origins in slavery. 

“They say that it's about protecting small states,” Juson said, “But I went to the records of the federal convention, and I worked with a lead historian."

She was directed to the documentation of the five-month private convention that had been closed to the press so that delegates to speak candidly about slavery. “It was very powerful to me to read the actual words unspun, straight from the source,” she recalled, adding that as a spoken word artist, the language had a Shakespearean quality. 

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

That inspired Juson to juxtapose the humanity of Black people against the words that sought to dehumanize them. Just as importantly, she said, it keeps the viewers’ attention. “It's just so poignant and so powerful to hear those words coming out of Black people, who were not given a seat, not given a voice when the Constitution was being written yet were being used for more political power.”

By combining artistry with straightforward information, Juson hopes that “One Person, One Vote” allows the audience to feel not simply more aware of our political process but engaged to actively take part in it. As part of that, she hopes that it helps forward the idea that Americans are more alike than separate, as our extreme partisanship would lead us to believe.

“My job is to say, how do we take a moment and listen to each other, even though we don't agree? I went into it with a curiosity to learn, an effort of understanding, because we're not taking that time to understand each other,” she said.

“I think that's a good exercise that we all need to try,” Juson concluded, “because what's happening right now is not working.”

"Independent Lens: One Person, One Vote" premieres at 10 p.m. Monday, Sept. 30 on PBS members stations nationwide. Check your local listings for precise time slot information.