Exposing the Ranked Choice Voting Scam (feat. Brady Smith)

But is this really the case, or will rank choice voting work to further cement into place the 2 party system while disenfranchising more voters along the way? Our guest today is Brady Smith, a fellow in the American Journey Experience Freedom Rising Fellowship program and author of the article, exposing the ranked choice voting scam. Brady, thank you for coming on with me.

It's been tried. It's failed, and it's been repealed in several different jurisdictions. And, so with that example, I I don't know why it's still being pushed. Other than that, I think there's some nefarious purposes behind it, which are definitely are coming to light. So it's interesting how it it is presented as this new solution to the problem, but it's actually just a repackaged failed, process that that hasn't worked and is not going to work.

So you start with, you know, this is my first choice. This is my second choice. This is my third choice. So and then it goes through multiple cycles, which is also often termed instant runoff voting. So ranked choice voting, instant runoff voting, the same thing.

Basically, if no candidate gets that 50% threshold, then the lowest ranked candidate is taken off the ballot and the votes are redistributed based on the voters' next preferences, until you finally get to a spot where one person is getting 50%. So if that sounds complicated, it is, unfortunately. Right.

But I guess, my follow-up question, just gonna set the foundation, is what is the justification for this? Why is it even being proposed in the first place? Like, what's the official kind of narrative as to why this is being proposed?

The argument as they say, where you actually present the argument is like, why does this make sense? Or why do do some people think this makes sense? So I think it's it's very obvious, when you look at our current political atmosphere. There's so much money and so much corruption going on in elections. It seems like the person with the biggest pocketbook wins.

Often you have, you know, corporations and in different, super packs and that sort of thing, donating to campaigns, getting people in office that it doesn't seem like the people in that area necessarily want that candidate. So the the the goal so the stated goal behind ranked choice voting is to help eliminate that, to help make it more democratic is a a word often used by projects like, FairVote, and and others, that are trying to implement ranked choice voting. The idea being that, hey. If we have this where you get to choose your your first choice, you won't have to do the the politics. You won't have to think about, does this person have a chance to win?

Because even if you pick a first choice, that has zero chance of winning, at least your voice was heard, and then you were able to select the second choice, you know, if that person didn't get that 50% threshold there. So the idea, the the stated, goal of ranked choice voting often is that it will make it more, you're make it so that you're able to pick candidates that you actually want instead of ones that have a chance of winning. That's definitely one, big part of it. There there's quite a few other reasons, but I think that's pretty pretty much the main thing is that our current system, you just have to pick up this guy. You know, if if you have for instance, president is one that often gets brought up, where you've got Republican versus Democrat.

That's always what it comes down to in a presidential race. You know, forget the 3rd party candidate. Even if you love them, even if you want them to get elected, a lot of times they just don't have a a chance. So the the goal the stated goal again with ranked choice voting is that if even if they didn't have a chance, you could rank, you know, Bobby Kennedy as your your first choice. And even if you were actually Donald Trump's, you know, supporter, if Bobby Kennedy wasn't in the race, but you prefer Bobby Kennedy, you could rank 12, and therefore, your vote would still, be counted in the end.

But, again, in practice is not exactly how it works.

You're telling me that I could put, like, Ron Paul number 1, and then, you know, who was it? John McCain running in 2008 as number 2, I guess, and then so forth. And it almost seems like, yeah, that's great. Like, I can have, like, a clear conscious and not have to necessarily do the, what's what's the term, like, the lesser of 2 muscles or something. Right?

So it almost seems like when you're when it's just that sort of elevator pitch for it, it's like, okay. I get it. Yeah. Maybe I could be on board with this. And that's kind of where I was when this issue first kind of floated across, my my purview in more recent, you know, instances.

Where I'm just like, yeah. I'm not really sure what the big deal about this is. But but like I said, once you start looking into it a little bit more, it's like, oh, yeah. That this doesn't seem like a good idea. So so let's get into it.

The the actual drawbacks of this, I I you know, as you described, some advocates of ranked choice voting suggest that this is gonna help those that feel disenfranchised by this kind of you know, you pick team blue or team red, and that's it. But you argue in your article that, that this sort of system will probably inevitably lead to more disenfranchisement of voters. Can you explain that?

This guy is my second choice, and I don't really care about the others. If you don't fill that ballot in all the way, that ballot can just get exhausted, which is another word for disenfranchisement or just basically silencing somebody's vote. And we have data around this where this is a common occurrence, and it can be, I've seen, 7%, 8%, 12% of votes that got exhausted in an election. So you are further disenfranchising people by silencing their vote. So if if I am confused about what the ballot is supposed to look like, if I do it wrong, if I make a mistake, all these things can can lead to your ballot being exhausted.

And when that happens, your voice is is is, effectively silenced.

It's probably gonna end up reducing voter turnout that we've seen how this is reduced in voter turnout. Can you explain that?

A lot of it is because I'm having to rank the the number of candidates, however many may be in this race. It actually takes me longer to vote. So you got longer time at the poll, which means longer lines, which means, you know, I've got I just got off work at, you know, 5 o'clock, and I'm I'm headed to the poles. Oh my goodness. There's a long line.

Yeah. Forget it. I'm headed to home to have some dinner. So you you run into that. You run into the fact that people get to, you know, the polls and and and the and the lines long, and they just don't wanna to mess with it. But, yeah, the that lowering of voter turnout is actually it's it's provable data that we have, to show. So you can say all you want that, hey, This is gonna bring more people out. The fact is that that's not what the data supports. Mhmm.

So not only does it take longer for people to vote, it takes longer for people to actually figure out what, what just happened. So you're going through these multiple cycles of all this, you know, counting and back and forth. There is one election in. I think it was Minneapolis has one of their mayoral races. It took, based on some estimates about 30,000 man hours to count the 70,000 ballots that came through for a mayoral race.

Like, this isn't even a national or statewide race. This is a city race. Like, that is an Credible amount of time and efforts. Idaho has ranked choice voting on the ballot. It was a ballot initiative that came through its extremely negative thing.

Definitely hoping that anybody from Idaho is voting. No on Prop 1, But, with with all that that's going on there, there's actually a fiscal impact statement that the the secretary of state put out, and the numbers on it are absolutely insane. So not only are the poll workers having to work more and longer and more hours is gonna cost more money. Just everything around it is going to cost the the state and the voters, ultimately, more money, more time, more effort, and then the confusion that results from that is just absolutely catastrophic.

I mean, that that's like I I feel like that is impossible in a normal voting system, but it's somehow possible in this.

I mean, they're trying to reinvent the the voting wheel, but it's already been attempted to reinvent the wheel and it's just not worked. We've got a lot of instances where a lot of people are extremely, you know, turned off by the results that end up coming. There was a 2018 congressional race, where you had one guy who the the Republican actually ended the first round of voting with more votes than the other person, and then he ended up losing the election at the end of the day. So you you got this this this was the first choice of of most of the people, and he ends up losing the election. So it's things like that where they're just, it's confusing people.

They don't understand why their vote wasn't counted. It's interesting you mentioned that mayoral race as well. Not only that it's hit them 8 rounds and weeks weeks to to figure out, you know, out of the 10 candidates who had won, there was a 140,000 ballots that end up getting exhausted, AKA thrown in the garbage because people hadn't filled them outright or got confused or what have you. And, Yeah. I don't I don't know if, I don't know if more complexity is something that our election system is in any need of at this point.

It's just like a trick to get people in the door that are wanting to vote 3rd party so that you could put your 3rd party person at the top and then that'll be eliminated at the first round. And now we've got your vote for 1 of the main two parties. Like like I I I've talked to people about this ranked choice voting ever since the issue has, you know, come across, my desk, but, I I asked, one of these, like, experts in this in this field. I asked, like, do third parties, like, fall for this? Because it just feels like a trap to to wrangle their voters into one of these other two parties.

Yeah. And they said, yeah. Unfortunately, they do. They do feel, fall for it. That to me is, like, the most insidious part of this entire thing. Like, it's like tricking 3rd party voters into casting their vote for 1 of the 2 people that they think is evil. Like, that's that's just that's the insanity of this ranked choice voting.

We do have a lot of candidates to get elected, time after time after time, and people hate them. They don't want them in office, but it just seems like we can't get better choices. And, really, I think what it comes down to is it's very easy to try to find the easy way out. You're trying to look for, okay. This will solve it, instead of being, more introspective and thinking, no.

Maybe I need to go do some work. Maybe I need to mobilize people in my community where we're actually putting people on the ballot. That's the beautiful thing of living in the constitutional republic is, the republic the whole the side of a republic is that we get to elect representatives. They have to represent us, and that is the the whole thing about it. We're not just given choices if we choose to go make a choice, if that makes sense.

So you you can't just expect the party to to give you the perfect candidate every time. You have to get involved. Each individual citizen has to get involved and take that action. And it's it's it's not fun. It's not necessarily fun to go to a GOP meeting or or a, you know, a local county meeting or something like that.

They're not particularly fun type of events to go to. Sure. But if you actually care about this country and if you actually care about the future where we're headed, that's the type of effort. That's the type of sacrifice that's that's required. And, honestly, it it's not that big of a sacrifice.

I was, listening to a podcast the other day. They were talking, quoting Thomas Paine and the the whole, American crisis and then the whole thing about the sunshine patriot. I I can't quote it, but I I highly encourage everybody go look that up. The the the contrast of what those patriots went through versus us having to go to, a local, party meeting. But that's that's no there's no contrast.

There's no comparison between those two things. So I would highly recommend people to to stop looking for solutions to something that works and instead try to, you know, go go a step back. Go a step fur back from the from the where the actual election takes place. Figure out how we can get some good candidates on the ballot. That's the starting point. That's really, I think, what people need to focus on.

No. No. That's the wrong solution. So, yeah, like, we can totally acknowledge that there are problems with the system. Is this the right, solution to that problem? No. It is not. So last question. This this seems like it's getting a little bit more traction. Is that the case? Is this proposed system kind of catching on across the country, or is it just some isolated cases? What's the current kind of makeup of this ranked choice voting?

So there's Alaska and Missouri are actually, Alaska is going to repeal it potentially here in this upcoming November 5th election. Missouri is looking at banning it completely, which Missouri would join. I think it's 10 at least 10 other states that have ranked choice voting ban throughout the state. So that that's good. You know, we're we're looking at Alaska was one of the, one of the forebearers of ranked choice voting.

They've actually have it for quite a bit. There's been a lot of dissatisfaction with the results that have come through that. So it's very interesting to see them. 1 of the the the initial ranked choice voting proponents, now going back and repealing it potentially. So we'll see how that election goes.

We got Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado, that are all kinda looking at I I believe it's Colorado. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure, but they're they're looking at at implementing ranked choice voting. So we've got 4 states where it's on the ballot of whether or not they want ranked choice voting. So it's really important if you live in in those states, and it that that that's just on on a state level. I'm sure there's municipalities, on a smaller level that are potentially looking at this too.

So if this is on your ballot, make sure that you get educated about it, educate your friends, because it's it's one of those things that especially you get, you know, flyers in the mail from the proponents of this, which is another whole aspect of this where we've got, it's very lopsided. The the proponents of ranked choice voting are spending 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars. The the anti ranked choice voting is under a 1,000,000, so it's around $600,000 that's had been spent on this sort of thing. So it's it's just pitiful, the the anti ranked choice voting. The the amount of push is going for ranked choice voting is very disturbing because, like I said, it's all lopsided.

It's all coming from one side of the aisle, and I think it's pretty obvious which side of the aisle that is. So it's very important to get educated, get out there, and and vote if this is something that's on the ballot in your area.

But after working on it with you and reading your stuff, it's become very clear that this is definitely an emerging threat when it comes to our voting system. But Brady Smith, like I said, author of that Blaze article, exposing the ranked choice voting scam, and also a fellow of the, Freedom Rising Fellowship program, the American Journey experience. Thank you for coming on with us today.