An Open Letter To Those Wanting To Run For Office

Dear Applicant, 

Thank you for your interest in representing the people of your district or State. 

My name is Paula Poundstone, and I have spent the last fifty days of 2025 making, and posting videos, asking viewers what they want the elected representatives to fight for in 2026, and beyond. I’m just a goofy comic, and a voter. This is obviously not a scientific poll.

These viewers, however, are thoughtful, and engaged, and I am certain they will vote, and encourage others to vote. 

The response I got the most was that people want decency in our Government. Many want Trump, and his enablers out. It is not possible to have decency in our Government as long as Trump, or anyone who spread his lies, or refused to remove him in the past, remains in office. 

We don’t want to be lied to. We want enforceable ethics rules, and we want them enforced. Why are we having anyone take an oath, if the oath has no meaning? 

We want fairness. I’ll give you the whole list of what my viewers said were their most important issues, and you’ll see that if you boil them down to their essence, we want FAIRNESS. 

Therefor we must TAX THE RICH. No more loopholes. No more 99% walking around with their metaphorical buckets waiting for the unimaginable wealth of the 1% to trickle down. It doesn’t. But what pours down, what we’re drenched in is a feeling that we’ll never. We’ll never count, we’ll never have power, we’ll never have justice, we’ll never get through one set of bills before we are drowned by another. 

It’s all of a piece, of course, without voting rights, we’ll never be able to tax the rich. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and John Roberts know that, which is why The Voting Rights Act has been dismantled plank by plank. My viewers want Voting Rights Protections re-established, and some want Supreme Court Justices to have term limits.

None of us understand why it’s okay for them to lie to the Senate in their confirmation hearings. Again, why have hearings, and oaths, if nothing happens when the oaths are broken? 

We want the E.P.A. re-established. We want to be worthy to be back in the Paris Climate Agreement. How stupid would we have to be to think we can have health, and the pursuit of happiness without a healthy Earth and atmosphere? 

And many of us want Universal Health care. We want real science to guide our Center for Disease Control, and our Health and Human Services Department. Let scientists do science, not a self proclaimed “science guy.”

I’ve told you the demands that those surveyed cited the most frequently. Here, for your edification, is the list that I was able to compile, in no particular order:

Overturn Citizens United, adopt Universal Health Care, regulate AI, restore relationships with other countries, get rid of the electoral college, Decency from the top, Ethics guardrails, Improve public education & teach civics, protect the ACA, restore the voting rights act, provide a living wage, tax the rich, equal rights, break up monopolies, make keeping an oath the law, provide voting drop boxes, keep the separation of Church and State, have scientists be in charge of science, provide affordable housing, protect women’s rights, restore USAid, LGBTQ rights, Veteran rights and services, protect National Parks, trans rights, tax churches, restore relations with Canada, Impeach Trump, Protect Unions, Restore the White House, Put Trump in jail, Law makers not allowed to trade stocks, make a humane system for immigration, Supreme Court term limits, Protect Medicare, Protect Social Security, Protect Medicaid, Make Politicians be sworn in to speak publicly, Anti-trust laws, Address climate change, restore the EPA, restore the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, get rid of “for profit prisons,” and pay Congress minimum wage.

Feel free to write to me at paula@paulapoundstone.com. I’m happy to help anyone who wants to work for these things.