Speaker 1: Nick Troyano with Unit America is going to be at
Speaker 1: a debate tonight at DU I believe I looked earlier
Speaker 1: and there was still some tickets left. Nick Troyano, who's
Speaker 1: joining me now? But I've got information about it on
Speaker 1: the blog today, Nick, can we do a rapid speed
Speaker 1: round of question and answer about Prop one thirty one?
Speaker 2: Happy to Mandy first of all, tell my listeners briefly
Speaker 2: what it does.
Speaker 3: This makes two changes to our elections that will give
Speaker 3: voters a lot more choice and power in their elections.
Speaker 3: The first is in the primary instead of you're an
Speaker 3: independent choosing between a Democratic or Republican primary, and everybody
Speaker 3: gets one ballot, and you can vote for the person,
Speaker 3: not the party. You can vote for anyone of any
Speaker 3: party for any office. And then the second change is
Speaker 3: that the top four finishers go to the general election,
Speaker 3: where you have the option of ranking them, not just
Speaker 3: choosing one. And this ensures that whoever wins does so
Speaker 3: with majority support through an instant runoff process. The combination
Speaker 3: of these reforms mean that no longer will just five
Speaker 3: percent of the electorate to determine the outcome of most
Speaker 3: races and low turnout primaries but our elections will be
Speaker 3: decided in a November election when most voters cast their
Speaker 3: ballots and will get leaders who actually represent a majority of.
Speaker 1: Us because we have districts in Colorado, both Democrat and Republican,
Speaker 1: that are considered so called safe districts, so they are
Speaker 1: essentially decided in the primary.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The sad reality is I can go through the list
Speaker 3: of all of our legislative seats and with one hundred
Speaker 3: percent accuracy for eighty percent of them, tell you who
Speaker 3: will win today, a week more than a week out
Speaker 3: from when any votes will be tallied. That's because most
Speaker 3: of these legislative seats are locked for one party or another,
Speaker 3: and the low turnout primary determines the outcomes back in June.
Speaker 1: So in this system, if you did not want to
Speaker 1: rank your camp, say you've got candidate ABC and D.
Speaker 1: A is your candidate BC and D or communist? You
Speaker 1: don't want to vote for those people. If you don't
Speaker 1: vote for two, three, and four, what happens to your ballot?
Speaker 2: Does it still get counted?
Speaker 3: Your ballot absolutely gets counted. And in this scenario that
Speaker 3: none of the four candidates get an outright majority of support,
Speaker 3: it's the candidate with the least amount of votes that
Speaker 3: get eliminated, and then you look to that candidate's second choice,
Speaker 3: their supporters second choice vote, and redistribute an until someone
Speaker 3: emerges with a majority. So it's to your advantage to
Speaker 3: rank more because if it goes into this runoff period
Speaker 3: of time, your vote will still be in the running,
Speaker 3: but you don't have to.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I get asked about
Speaker 1: a lot, and I'm just going to read this text
Speaker 1: message that I just got because this really encapsulates it
Speaker 1: personally perfectly.
Speaker 2: One moment.
Speaker 1: Please, Mandy, if one thirty one passes, Colorado will be
Speaker 1: one party rule within five years, how do you respond
Speaker 1: to that?
Speaker 3: It's actually the opposite. This is going to create more
Speaker 3: healthy competition between both political parties and may even level
Speaker 3: the playing field for candidates to compete from outside the
Speaker 3: two major political parties. And that's because we have something
Speaker 3: called the spoiler effect in our current system, where those
Speaker 3: who want to vote for an independent or a third
Speaker 3: party candidate fear that if they do, they'll take away
Speaker 3: a vote from their second preferred candidate and wind up
Speaker 3: helping to elect their least preferred Under this system, you
Speaker 3: actually get to vote your values and your views and
Speaker 3: express a fuller preference of your vote.
Speaker 1: That seems to be the biggest concern is that people
Speaker 1: say in Denver, they always use Denver as an example.
Speaker 1: In Denver, a Republican will never be on the ballot,
Speaker 1: to which I respond, is there a chance of Republicans
Speaker 1: going to get elected in Denver?
Speaker 2: Right now? So let's be real.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not trying to be flippant, but is
Speaker 1: there no, there isn't what I see happening here is this?
Speaker 1: If it works, Nick, and God, I want this to work, okay,
Speaker 1: because I've really toss this around in my brain, trying
Speaker 1: to look at all the potential outcomes, all the potential positives,
Speaker 1: all the potential negatives. I believe that if candidates get it,
Speaker 1: and if candidates campaign in the right way, meaning they
Speaker 1: try to cast a broad net right, they try to
Speaker 1: campaign to everyone, this could fundamentally change the way elections
Speaker 1: are in this country. Is that the only reason? Look,
Speaker 1: why did you guys launch this in the first place?
Speaker 1: What are the underlying motives here?
Speaker 3: One motive is to give voters a ballot that truly matters.
Speaker 3: You know, I've looked at my ballot today, I got
Speaker 3: in the mail. I live in Denver. Most of these races,
Speaker 3: virtually all of them have already been decided in the
Speaker 3: Democratic primary. So this reform is really about making sure
Speaker 3: that when you vote in November, you have more choices
Speaker 3: on your ballot, and your ballot actually matters. The second
Speaker 3: reason why we're proposing this reform is because it changes
Speaker 3: the incentives of candidates and elected leaders, to your point,
Speaker 3: to incentivize them to reach out to a roder coalition
Speaker 3: of voters to get elected, so that when they're in office,
Speaker 3: they're actually trying to represent a true majority of us,
Speaker 3: not just pandered to the five percent of the base
Speaker 3: of their party that they need to stay in the
Speaker 3: good graces with to stay in office. So it's good
Speaker 3: for voters and it's good for governance. And that's why
Speaker 3: we think this is a pro democracy, nonpartisan reform. You
Speaker 3: can tell a lot by an idea, a boy who
Speaker 3: opposes it, and both major parties oppose it, Ndor Bennett
Speaker 3: Lauren Bobert. What do they have in common? Not much.
Speaker 3: They want to protect their own power. This is a
Speaker 3: pro voter, pro people reform.
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't the two parties continue to decide how we
Speaker 1: do our primaries.
Speaker 3: Well, we have to disentangle the role that parties play
Speaker 3: from the role that our elections should play. Right now,
Speaker 3: to use a sort of sports analogy, we have two
Speaker 3: teams that are also deciding the rules of the league
Speaker 3: and are trying to be the umpires and enforcing those rules.
Speaker 3: We have to separate this out so that the parties
Speaker 3: are participating in our democracy, but they don't control our
Speaker 3: our elections. Our elections belong to voters, and under this system,
Speaker 3: a government run, taxpayer funded process, this will give voters
Speaker 3: a lot more choice and power in their elections. Parties,
Speaker 3: by the way, can still continue their core function. They
Speaker 3: can recruit, support and endorse candidates as they do today.
Speaker 1: The last question I have, and then we'll talk about
Speaker 1: tonight's event real quick, how could rank choice voting be
Speaker 1: manipulated by someone? And this is a common theory that
Speaker 1: I hear from listeners that they're worried somebody is going
Speaker 1: to run as a conservative and then take away a
Speaker 1: bunch of votes from an actual conservative. How do you
Speaker 1: see or how could this be manipulated? Have you guys
Speaker 1: thought about any of that?
Speaker 3: Well, there's no perfect system, but ranked choice voting in
Speaker 3: general elections will reduce a lot of the gamesmanship that
Speaker 3: we see today. Republicans sometimes run and support Green Party candidates,
Speaker 3: and Democrats do the same with libertarians to peel off
Speaker 3: some votes and manage themselves in the general election. That
Speaker 3: won't be possible or much less likely under this current system,
Speaker 3: because voters can still rank a second preference. Likewise, there's
Speaker 3: been plenty of stories about how Democrats have spent millions
Speaker 3: of dollars within Republican primaries to support the most extreme
Speaker 3: Republican to advantage themselves in general elections. That too, is
Speaker 3: greatly mitigated under this new system because four candidates will
Speaker 3: get to the general election. So, again, no perfect system,
Speaker 3: but this proposal actually reduces a lot of the gamesmanship
Speaker 3: that we see today.
Speaker 2: All right, Nick.
Speaker 1: Freyano with United America on the show. Right now, I lied,
Speaker 1: I have one work because this text just came in.
Speaker 1: Another common thing not true. Once your candidate is eliminated,
Speaker 1: if you haven't ranked either candidates on your ballot, your
Speaker 1: ballot is exhausted and your vote is not counted towards
Speaker 1: the final vote tabulation?
Speaker 2: Is that accurate?
Speaker 3: That is and That's what I did say earlier, which
Speaker 3: is why I think we encourage people to fill out
Speaker 3: their full ballot. But you have to compare it again
Speaker 3: to the current system. If you vote for saying independent
Speaker 3: our third party candidate, you don't have the ability to
Speaker 3: put a second choice if that candidate doesn't win and
Speaker 3: your current vote is exhausted. So relative to the current system,
Speaker 3: this allows people to have a much fuller and much
Speaker 3: more powerful say and who represents them.
Speaker 2: Let me make sure that I am clear on this.
Speaker 1: So your first initial vote doesn't count towards the tabulation
Speaker 1: if you don't rank the other candidates.
Speaker 3: No, No, your first choice absolutely does.
Speaker 1: So your vote count, you just don't. You don't weigh
Speaker 1: in on anything else. If you choose not to correct.
Speaker 3: If that race goes to a runoff, and if you
Speaker 3: choose not to rank any of the candidates that are
Speaker 3: in that runoff, then of course your other preferences don't count.
Speaker 3: It's almost like you're voting here in Denver and the
Speaker 3: mayor's race, and the race goes to a runoff. If
Speaker 3: you don't show up the second time, your vote doesn't count.
Speaker 3: So we would encourage you to do that under this system.
Speaker 3: The only difference is instead of asking you to come
Speaker 3: back to the polls again, we allow you to to
Speaker 3: rank your backup preferences at that time.
Speaker 1: Nick Treyona is my guest. Nick, we're almost out a time.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what's happening tonight at you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're squaring off against some opponents of Prop.
Speaker 3: Thirty one. We're looking forward to a good conversation and
Speaker 3: debate about this topic. And I think the biggest difference
Speaker 3: between proponents and opponents of the system is how much
Speaker 3: we trust voters. Do we trust them with more power
Speaker 3: in our system? Do we trust them that they are
Speaker 3: capable of ranking candidates one, two, three on their ballot?
Speaker 3: Proponents say yes, and that this is going to be
Speaker 3: good for voters and good for the state of Colorado. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nick TREONO, I appreciate what you guys are doing. I
Speaker 1: am a solid yes on Prop one thirty one, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to encourage others to do the same. What
Speaker 1: we've got now For the person who said we'll have
Speaker 1: one party rule in five years, yeah.
Speaker 2: Look around. That's what we have now in Colorado.
Speaker 1: And the incompetence of the Republican Party is not going
Speaker 1: to change that anytime soon.
Speaker 2: Nick, I hope the debate goes well tonight.
Speaker 1: And hopefully we'll talk after this passes about what it's
Speaker 1: look like. Since the Democratic and Republican legislature decided to
Speaker 1: ban this before the voters even had a chance to
Speaker 1: vote on it, we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 3: Thanks, Mandy.
Speaker 2: That's Nick Torewna with Unite America.