KOA Headlines
10 03 24 First Choice Counts' Jason Lupo on their opposition to Ranked Choice Voting
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Earlier we spoke with the proponents of Proposition 131. Now on the KOA comment spirit health hotline, we're joined by the opposition. From first choice counts, it's Jason Lupo. Jason, thank you so much for your time this morning. Hey, thanks for having me, I appreciate it. When we look at your argument on the opposition side of things, I'm going to simplify it very, very shortly and you tell me if this is kind of where you guys stand with this. Is it the whole idea of your argument of if it's not broke? Don't fix it. I mean, there's an element of that. The attempt to put into play ranked choice voting is really an attempt to create a system that brings forth centrist, more moderate candidates. And so we're going to lose a marketplace of ideas in terms of we're going to lose the Republican platform, the Republican base, we're going to lose the Democrat platform, the Democrat ideas. And we're going to end up with a very similar group of candidates that are going to push these moderate centrist ideas. And it's really, it's where the money is going to be directed in terms of these races. Where the money goes is candidates that's probably going to win. I mean, when you have a ballot that has 48 candidates on it, like we did in Alaska with their all candidate primary, when you're competing against 48 or a candidate, then oftentimes the very low information rate, the money well went out. You know, Jason, of all the arguments you could make for being against this measure, the one you just made, I don't think is actually a saleable one. I think most people see the divide and the divisiveness in the extremes of the parties when you say, well, the most moderate ideas will come forth. I think most people would say, yes, sign me up. I think it's great to a certain degree. I mean, you probably have people that feel that way now, but when you look at this system and you look at what it's done in other states, six states have banded altogether, only two states have it in statewide races. One has it on the ballot now to remove it just two years after they put it in place. We have Alaska where 11% of the ballots that they add in their race were spoiled and tossed out. That's three times more than the ballots that are spoiled in a normal race. And so, really, we're disenfranchising voters. We have a large amount of ballots that are spoiled that are tossed out. Alameda, California, they ended up with a ranked-choice voting race where there was programming litch and they certified the wrong winner of the election. New York City had 140,000 ballots tossed out of their race. There is major issues with ranked-choice voting. And really, what it does is it's put as this way of modernizing the election, but it's such a convoluted, complicated process that many voters don't even really understand what it's going to do to our races. And I don't know if you guys are really explaining the process in terms of what the all candidate primary is and how ranked-choice voting works, but I'd be more than happy to explain that if you guys have not. Yeah. We talked about it a little bit with the proponents of this measure as well as they walk through the steps of where it goes. And we know that you and a lot of the opposition say that it's too confusing for voters. He walked it through as a three-step process. What do you see it as, and is there the confusion that you could see with having ranked-choice voting? I mean, really, we have a data point to prove that this is confusing the voters. We have three times, on average, three times more ballots that are spoiled and tossed out that are not counted in these races. The average with ranked-choice voting right now is 12%, 11 to 12% of ballots are spoiled and tossed versus the normal average election across the nation, which is about 3%. So why are we tossing so many ballots if this is an easy process? Why are voters messing it up? Why do we have this issue? And we've seen it more in disenfranchised communities, low income, English as a second language, the elderly population. Voting should not be a complicated process. Our democracy should not be a complicated process. You're able to go to the ballot box and check the person that you want to represent you. We shouldn't have this long process where you have to mark four or five bubbles and if you do it wrong, your vote's not going to count. How is that democracy? Jason, how much of what you explain are maybe earlier elections that they have sussed out some of the complexities and some of the mistakes with that? When you reference Alameda, was that the last election cycle or was that a couple election cycles ago? I can't remember the date off the top of my head. New York City was 2021. Alaska was 2022. Africa removed it, but that was back in 2010. So it's been tried and played around with for years. But I don't believe that they've had races that people are very happy with across the nation. There's not a whole lot of examples of places that have not tried to remove it right after they put it in place. And if you look at the fiscal note in the blue book, it shows that basically this is going to cost next to nothing to implement. And that's a falsity. I mean, the proponents of this bill went on to a local podcast and explained the poll that has promised a million dollars into this method of voting if it passes. That's not in the fiscal note. Colorado doesn't know how much this is going to cost through local counties in the state. I mean, taxpayer dollars are going to be funneling into this thing to make this thing happen. And it's not right that it's not in the fiscal note of the blue book. There's a lot of problems with this bill where it's initiative. Jason, with a few minutes we have left when we're looking at this, there are some several cities and towns in Colorado that use it in their municipal elections. What results have we really seen with that? And does that have any possibilities of having it more in the municipal sense? I think it's really important to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. These municipal elections are non-partisan races to begin with, right? So when we talk about runoff and where we've seen runoff, you know, take Cara Springs, a mayoral race with the four or five candidates, viable candidates that we had, we ended up with a runoff with Mayor Yemi, Mobileade, and Wayne Williams coming out of that bunch. So we do see this kind of runoff and we had two differing ideas, differing value systems represented, which is really what the proponents of rank-choice voting are trying to get to. It's a nonpartisan race, there's no Republicans or Democrats next to them, it's just the candidates are on the ballot, and you have to do your own research. Well, in a mayoral race, you have enough information to kind of make some of those decisions. I don't think by the end of the time when voters went to go vote that they didn't know who these two candidates are, but when we start taking that and we take the party system away from it and races that are not municipal and not school board races, we end up with there's a good chance that your values are not going to be represented in the general election because if you throw 48 candidates on a primary and there's eight Democrats and eight Republicans and, you know, four libertarians and a ton of independents, you're not going to know who half these people are, and you're going to start splitting up the vote to where you might not even have somebody that represents your values make it on to the general election. Right now, you're guaranteed to a certain degree that your values are represented in some way, shape, or form, and this is going to remove the minor party system altogether. There's not going to be a libertarian on your ballot, there's not going to be a green party candidate on your ballot, there's not going to be a constitution party, there's not going to be Kanye West's birthday party, right? We're going to get rid of all of the fringe viewpoints, they're not going to be represented in the general election. First choice counts, it's Jason Lupo. Thank you, Jason. Hey, thank you, I appreciate your time. It's beginning to sound a lot like the holidays. The Roku Channel, your home for free and premium TV, is giving you access to holiday music and genre-based stations from iHeart all for free. Find the soundtrack of the season with channels like iHeartChristmas and North Pole Radio. The Roku Channel is available on all Roku devices, web, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Samsung TV, and the Roku mobile app on iOS and Android devices. So stream what you love and turn up the cheer with iHeart Radio on the Roku Channel. Happy streaming! 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