The Dangers of Ranked Choice Voting and Protecting Parental Rights

On January 30, 2024, Kevin Lundberg and Hans Von Spakovsky joined the show. Details political obstruction of citizen initiatives on parental rights and transgender policies, revealing advocacy groups claim credit for killing measures through their attorneys Exposes how ranked choice voting leads to ballot exhaustion and marginal candidate election, with minority voters disproportionately affected according to Princeton research

Citizen Initiatives Face Political Obstruction

Start listening at 17:46 – Hour 1

Kevin Lundberg exposes how Colorado’s title board has become a partisan gatekeeping mechanism that blocks citizen initiatives from reaching the ballot. The former state senator describes his work with Protecting Kids Colorado to advance initiatives addressing transgender policies in schools and men competing in women’s sports. Despite bringing nearly 20 different proposals, the title board, stacked with political appointees from the Attorney General and Secretary of State offices, has rejected almost all of them on dubious single-subject grounds.

Lundberg reveals that One Colorado, the primary political advocacy group for the homosexual community, publicly claimed credit for killing these initiatives through their attorneys’ involvement with the title board. The documentary “Art Club,” which Lundberg helped produce, tells the story of a 12-year-old girl who was drawn into a secret LGBT club at school under the guise of an after-school art program. House Bill 1071 would force all public schools to play the gender transition game by mandating recognition of non-legal names, often without parental knowledge or consent.

“There’s a group called One Colorado, and it’s the primary political advocacy group for the homosexual community. And they said, well, the title board is rejecting this because we have gotten our attorneys involved and we’re responsible for having these killed.”

Kevin Lundberg, Former Colorado State Senator

Election Integrity Under Attack

Start listening at 36:06 – Hour 1

Lundberg details the vulnerability of electronic voting systems, referencing Professor Halderman’s sealed report on Dominion machine hackability that a Georgia judge finally allowed to be made public. The report demonstrates in minute detail how the systems can be breached and vote tallies manipulated. Colorado’s House Bill 1303 from 2013, which Lundberg called the Election Fraud Act on the Senate floor, immediately activated 300,000 inactive voter registrations and mailed ballots to addresses where people likely no longer resided.

The state’s automatic voter registration system compounds the problem by registering people who never asked to vote. When one county clerk, Tina Peters, attempted to audit her county’s machines, authorities came down on her aggressively, then rushed to change the law so clerks can no longer access voting equipment. Kim Monson shares that she has received ballots for a family member who moved out of Colorado in 2014, demonstrating that voter rolls remain uncleaned for a decade.

Ranked Choice Voting Threatens Electoral Integrity

Start listening at 73:49 – Hour 2

Hans Von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation breaks down how ranked choice voting systematically disenfranchises voters through a phenomenon called ballot exhaustion. Under this system, voters must rank all candidates in a race. When their top choices are eliminated in successive rounds of counting, voters who did not rank every candidate see their ballots thrown out entirely. In New York City’s mayoral election, over 140,000 voters had their ballots discarded by the eighth round of tabulation because they had not ranked all ten candidates.

The Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow explains that ranked choice voting helps marginal candidates with extreme views get elected, since the ultimate winner may only be the third, fourth, or fifth choice of most voters. A Princeton University study found that minority voters are disproportionately disenfranchised because their ballots are more likely to be exhausted. Alaska’s experiment with jungle primaries resulted in one of the reddest states in the nation electing a liberal Democrat to Congress. The system is so confusing that California election officials once declared the wrong winner in a school board race, discovered only through an outside audit months later.

“Ranked choice voting helps get marginal candidates elected that aren’t supported by the majority of voters. It is a confusing, opaque way of voting, and that’s one of the biggest reasons why so many people are against it.”

Hans Von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow, Heritage Foundation

The Wealthy Interests Behind Election Changes

Start listening at 87:18 – Hour 2

Von Spakovsky identifies Catherine Gale, a Clinton administration appointee, as one of the wealthy liberal individuals bankrolling the ranked choice voting movement nationwide. Their strategy involves finding the most respected Republican lobbyist in each state and paying them large sums to convince Republican legislators to support the measure. Kim Monson notes that Kent Thiry, former CEO of DaVita Dialysis, has been involved in multiple Colorado election initiatives and appears positioned to fund the ranked choice voting push.

The Heritage Foundation expert recommends visiting heritage.org for fact sheets and white papers on ranked choice voting, as well as the Honest Elections Project for additional resources. When voters understand how the system actually works, support evaporates. States that have implemented ranked choice voting, like Alaska, are now actively working to repeal it through citizen referendums after experiencing its chaotic results firsthand.