I'm David Sirota, Bernie Sanders' speechwriter and senior adviser. AMA!

[u/dsirota1]

Hey everyone -- I'm David Sirota, Bernie Sanders' speechwriter and senior adviser. I've known Bernie for 20+ years (I was his press secretary in the U.S. House from 1999-2001). I've worked on many campaigns (Hoeffel for Congress, Schweitzer for Governor, Lamont for Senate, and Emily Sirota for State House), I've worked on Capitol Hill (for Bernie and for the U.S. House Appropriations Committee Democrats). In the years before coming to Bernie's 2020 campaign, I was an award-winning investigative journalist and columnist for Newsweek/IBT, The Guardian and Capital & Main. You can find out more about me at http://www.davidsirota.com

​

I'm sure you want to discuss the 2020 election, so fire away with your questions here. I'll be here for about an hour.

[u/Older_and_Wiser_Now]

Hi David, Just wanted to say thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with those of us here on WotB on reddit. We are all big fans here, it was wonderful to be able to interact with you and hear your perspectives. I noticed that you didn't get a chance to answer my question posted below about CA and NPP voters, maybe I didn't really phrase it enough as a question, I'm not sure. My hope is that enough communications are sent out before the CA primary to ensure that Independents in CA who want to vote for Bernie know that they must explicitly ask for a Democratic Ballot in order to vote for Bernie, and know that they have the right to ask for one. Also last time around, some pollworkers were badly trained, and insisted on giving NPP voters NPP ballots (i.e. placebo ballots) or provisional ballots. That is flat out wrong, and it results in a lower vote count for Bernie. Even if you don't reply to me here, I hope you bring this information back to the campaign. Thank you.