By Jen Schumann | Contributor, Rocky Mountain Voice
Imagine if your vote could genuinely reflect your voice. Some argue Proposition 131, the ranked-choice voting measure, can do just that.
During a Grand Junction event hosted by Restore the Balance and Colorado Mesa University, both proponents and opponents of the measure debated the proposition.
Panelists tackled tough questions about ranked-choice voting’s potential to enhance democracy, versus the risk of confusion at the polls. Following is some of the key discussion between the panel, from Phil Izon, a prominent figure in Alaska’s efforts to repeal ranked-choice voting, to Kent Thiry, who heads up the support side of the Colorado proposition.
Kent Thiry’s take on the current system
Kent Thiry, formerly the CEO of DaVita Healthcare and a vocal advocate for election reform, opened his remarks by focusing on the principles of ranked-choice voting and the challenges of the current system.
“Our principles are two and they’re very simple. Every Colorado voter should be able to vote for whomever they want in a taxpayer-funded election. The party shouldn’t be able to restrict you in any way,” he said.
“No. 2 is that in order to become an elected official in Colorado, [one should] earn the majority of support. [And] represent the majority of the district,” he added. “Not a plurality, not a minority. [These are] two very core principles, which 75 percent of Coloradans believe in with great intensity, and are kind of stunned when they see how the current system totally violates those two principles, which leads us to the problem.”
He does not find competitive balance in the present system.
“The problem is that there are very few competitive elections now,” Thiry said. “The far left and the far right, because of the structure of the system, are disproportionately powerful.”
Impact on a ‘third party‘
Maeve Sunseri, a political science student at Colorado Mesa University, brought a different perspective to the panel.
“At the beginning of our country, John Adams wrote a book called ‘Thoughts on Government’ and he says that the Congress should be ‘in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large,” Sunseri said. “It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.’ This proposition [131], we have the ranked-choice system and we also have this top-four primary system and I’m not in favor of either of them. And that’s interesting for me as someone who does study electoral reform and does want electoral reform. I agree everyone should be able to vote for who they want in an election that they pay for.”
She complains ranked-choice voting would harm third parties.
“Ranked-choice voting tends to remove the possibility of third parties,” she said. “My big problem with ranked-choice voting is that it doesn’t do a very good job at what we want it to do. And there are a lot of better options out there. If it were to pass, minor parties are pretty much guaranteed to not be on the ballot.”
An administrative perspective
Josh Daniels, a former Utah county clerk, provided insight into the implementation and operational side of ranked-choice voting.
“Personally, I first became acquainted with ranked-choice voting when the Utah Republican Party used it in their statewide nominating convention 20 years ago in 2004,” Daniels said noting “the speed and elegance of the ranked system versus what would otherwise have been a multiple-round mission that would last all day, with probably about a dozen candidates at the time.”
Over the mountains and across the plains into Hugo, Republicans in Colorado’s 4th U.S. House District would likely agree. They assembled last Spring to name a nominee to replace U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican, in a vacancy committee process that lasted for round after round. Some of those in attendance didn’t get back home until after the 1 a.m. hour.
“I’ve always been interested in it [ranked-choice voting] and I had no idea that 20 years later, I would be county clerk administering Utah’s first official ranked-choice elections administered by counties for local elections,” Daniels said. “We were concerned about public awareness and education with how ranked-choice voting would work. We gave ballots to residents in an assisted living center, with no prior education, and were blown away that they intuitively understood the ballot.”
That field test replayed during the election, he said.
“Less than 5 percent of the phone calls we received during the election year were specific to questions about ranked-choice voting.”
Election integrity and concerns with audits
Sheila Reiner, the former leader of the Colorado County Clerks Association and current Mesa County treasurer, brought a critical perspective regarding the auditing and verification process for ranked-choice voting.
“I think everyone on this stage and in this room is into improving elections, no matter what side of the issue you’re coming at. But, the thing I’m most concerned about is the audits,” Reiner shared.
She continued: “[Currently] it gives me great confidence that I can take a singular line in some data that was delivered to the state which is a part of our election results and audit it from that data line to a ballot image all the way back to a paper ballot. And the face of the ballot speaks for itself and it matches in all three places.”
She questioned how the public might handle one computer auditing another.
“It’s my belief that the only way to audit it would be with another computer algorithm that would mirror what the original tabulation software did,” Reiner said. “And I don’t know that that would be trusted.”
Phil Izon’s rebuttal to Thiry
After the event, Phil Izon, a key figure in the effort to repeal ranked-choice voting in Alaska, responded to some of Thiry’s allegations on a Twitter/X space.
Izon clarified that the repeal effort was not led by political parties, but rather by grassroots Alaskans: “I actually did not do the repeal with any political party [support].”
Izon claims the repeal effort has been a fight in every step of the process.
“They’ve thrown every type of mud that they possibly can throw at me, taken me to the Alaska Superior Court and the Alaska Supreme Court, and I beat them both times,” he said.
Izon also rebutted Thiry’s claims about voter empowerment under RCV, arguing that big money interests are driving the adoption of ranked-choice voting across the country: “It takes away the grassroots and the political party vetting process. Here in Alaska, we have a criminal on our general election ballot, incarcerated in New York, who has never been to Alaska, but he’s on our U.S. House of Representatives general election ballot this election.”
He’s concerned ranked-choice voting will play out in a similar way in other states.
“Ultimately, all it will do is give elites with money an opportunity to manipulate elections,” Izon said. “All they have to do is finance two or three candidates and then tell two candidates to drop out. And now their most preferred is most likely going to win.”
While advocates like Thiry argue ranked-choice voting gives more power to voters and reduces extreme partisanship, critics like Sunseri and Reiner raise concerns about its impact on third parties and the complexities of auditing such elections.
Izon’s rebuttal further fuels the conversation by challenging the motivations behind ranked-choice voting adoption and its potential to benefit wealthy elites over grassroots candidates.