Idaho Elections: A breakdown of ranked choice voting

Idaho Matters

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In November, voters will be faced with Proposition 1. It’s a citizen initiative that will do two things if passed: it would open up all primaries in Idaho and it would create a new voting system known as ranked choice voting.

Last week, we looked at the open primary side of Prop 1, and this week we’ll tackle ranked choice voting, diving into how it works as well as the possible pros and cons.

Our panel today:

• McKay Cunningham, constitutional scholar and graduate professor at the College of Idaho
• Dr. Stephanie Witt, Public Policy, Administration and Political Science Professor with Boise State University
• Luke Mayville with the Idahoans for Open Primaries Coalition
• Trent England, the founder and executive director of Save Our States
• Jake Ball, Chairman of Idaho Fair Elections Political Action Committee

Read the full transcript here:

GAUDETTE: More Idaho Matters right now, I'm Gemma Gaudette. In November, voters will be faced with proposition one. It's a citizen's initiative that will do two things. If passed, it would open up all primaries in Idaho, and it would create a new voting system known as ranked choice voting. Now, last week if you joined us, we looked at the open primary side of prop one. This week we're going to tackle ranked choice voting. So here to explain how RVC would work if prop one passes are McKay Cunningham, constitutional scholar and graduate professor at the College of Idaho, as well as Doctor Stephanie Witt in the School of Public Service with Boise State University. I want to welcome both of you to the program.

CUNNINGHAM: Hi, Gemma.

WITT: Hi, Gemma. Good to be here.

GAUDETTE: Really good to have both of you here. So who would like to tackle a very quick definition of what ranked choice voting is?

CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. You know the silence. I like how I know.

GAUDETTE: I'm kind of like anyone, anyone.

CUNNINGHAM: I can give a very general description of it. And then maybe we can get into, like, a hypothetical because Gemma. Yeah. You know, I've been talking about ranked choice voting across Idaho in the past two weeks. Um, and what I found is, like, when you describe it just orally, um, it's a little difficult to get your mind around, but when the audience sees a sample ballot, the light bulbs go off. So I want to just put that as a disclaimer. It's kind of hard to do verbally, but very generally speaking.

GAUDETTE: Well, why don't we do this? McKay. Sorry to interrupt you. Why don't we just go then? Right to a, um, a try to do some ranked choice voting on the radio? Because we did send out a sample ballot on Facebook and Instagram, and it came from the Veterans for Veterans for Idaho and, and on this sample ballot. So if you want to if you're listening right now and you have access to social media folks, you can go on and find this sample ballot. But what it is is they have four candidates. They have apple pie, ice cream, berry cobbler and birthday cake. Okay, so my first question then how do I know if apple pie is a Republican or a Democrat?

( Veterans for Idaho Voters)

CUNNINGHAM: Um, yeah. Well, um, the the candidates can identify as a Republican or a Democrat. Doctor Witt, what do you have on that?

WITT: Well, that's a great question. I actually don't don't know the answer for sure. I believe it would be marked next to their name, wouldn't it, on the ballot the same way it is now.

GAUDETTE: Just like it normally is right now you have the R or the D okay. So my next. So my next question Doctor Witt can all these candidates, um as I said the apple pie, the blueberry, the the ice cream, the berry cobbler, the birthday cake, can they all be from the same party? Let's say all of the desserts are Republican.

WITT: I believe that is the case. If those are the top vote getters in the open primary part that you talked about last week.

GAUDETTE: Okay. And so then if oh, go ahead. McKay.

CUNNINGHAM: Oh, sorry. Gemma. Yeah, I was just. I was just going to weigh in. So if we if we posit a hypothetical, maybe not with regard to desserts, but with regard to, like, a Senate seat next election, if prop one passes, let's say it's just one seat that six candidates are all vying for. Let's say that four of those candidates are Republican. One identifies as a Democrat and one identifies as an independent. The first thing we do, of course, is we go to the primaries. And you guys have already talked about this on Idaho Matters, but it bears repeating. And that is the primaries don't don't function to just identify one Republican and identify one Democrat for the general election. Instead, an open primary as it's envisioned by prop one, just whittles down the top four vote getters. And that's all it does.

So we go to the primary with this hypothetical again, four Republicans, one Democrat, one independent, all vying for the same seat. You go to the primary and it widows down to the four top vote getters. In this hypothetical, let's say that three are Republicans and one is independent. And that's it for the primary. Then we move to the general election. And it's just one vote, like always. It's not like voters have to come in two and three and four times. It's just one vote. And that's when ranked choice voting kicks in. Voters go into the general election and they can vote for their preferred candidate, or they can vote for their preferred candidate and then rank the remaining candidates. So after that, general election occurs instantaneously, that's why it's called an instant runoff. You will know whether or not one of those four candidates received a majority, 50% plus one vote. And if one of those four candidates does, then that's the winner and we're done. Um, but if none of the four candidates receives a majority, but the instant runoff kicks in such that the candidate who received the fewest amount of votes, the fourth placed candidate, that candidate is removed, and every voter who voted for that first place candidate.

If they then ranked their second and third preference, then those preferences, or at least their second preference, would be distributed among the remaining three candidates, and that process would continue until you have at least one candidate who has a majority. And that's at least descriptively, how ranked choice voting is is going to work if prop one succeeds.

GAUDETTE: So here's my question then. So let's say that you've got these three Republicans, one independent in a Senate race, and go into the general election. I'm at the ballot box and I'm like, you know what? I really only like Republican a and I don't want to. I don't want to rank anybody else. I can do that. Right?

WITT: Oh, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. There's no you do not have to rank all of the choices if you don't want to.

GAUDETTE: Okay. So then, doctor, let's say I'm like, all right, I'm going to rank them because I like Republican a best. But I like the independent second. And then I like Republican B but I really do not like Republican C but I decide to rank it. If Republicans C you know, gets a certain number of votes. Let let's say, you know, the independent got knocked out. Does that mean that even though I don't like Republican C but I ranked Republican C that that candidate may actually get my vote?

WITT: I guess it would in the way that you describe it. And um, it is a little hard to follow live on the radio, but I. Yeah, I think so. Unless I misunderstood what you were giving as an example, if you really don't want someone to get your vote ever under any circumstance, the solution, I think, would be to not include them in your ranking at all.

GAUDETTE: So. So vote for your number one if if that is really, truly who you want to get that position.

WITT: Yes. But and then, uh, don't don't rank the candidate you just can't stand. Now, I'm sure there's a mathematician out there getting ready to tell me I've just told you wrong, but I think that's the solution.

GAUDETTE: Look, I'm no mathematician, so this is difficult for me. Um, so. So, McKay, that's, I think, where sometimes I think this seems to get a little tricky for folks to wrap their brains around is it's not the ranking. Like, I understand the ranking. It's the part about the okay, let like that that bottom vote getter is thrown out. Okay, that makes sense. Then all of a sudden it's like, but we're going to take those votes and we're going to disperse them. How how do you disperse them? Like does candidate does the does the candidate with the the you know who right now maybe had like 38% of the vote. Let's say that's the highest vote getter. Do do they get all those votes that got that that that candidate that was thrown out got I mean, I don't even know if I'm making sense at this point.

CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm following back to our hypothetical. If we have those three Republicans and that one independent candidate all in the general election. In our hypothetical, we suggested that that one independent got the least amount of votes. So that candidate is eliminated. Now we focus on the voters who voted for that independent, that candidate who was eliminated. And we look at those voters to see whether or not they had a second place preference, and if they had a second place preference, um, then those second place preferences are distributed, um, accordingly to that, that voter's preference. So let's just use one, one voter who, who originally voted for the independent. And then they said, well, okay, if my independent, uh, favored candidate doesn't win, the second candidate that I would like would be Republican A and in that instance, the independent lost. And therefore that voter's second choice is then transferred to the Republican that they wanted as their second choice.

GAUDETTE: Okay. Before I let the two of you go, what is the best way to get educated about how ranked choice voting might work in Idaho?

WITT: Well, both sides have put out a lot of good information. Um, there are also third party, uh, groups that that you can look at. I before I Talk to you this morning I was looking at the Council of State Governments, a nonpartisan group that has some descriptions of how ranked choice voting works in different places there. There are those kinds of links that I can share with you. You can share it out to your audience.

GAUDETTE: What we'll do is we'll get those links from you and put them on our website. I want to thank both of you for chatting with us today about this. We've been talking with McKay Cunningham, constitutional scholar and graduate professor at the College of Idaho, as well as Doctor Stephanie Witt in the School of Public Service with Boise State Public University. Boise State University have a lot to say today. Anyway, we've been talking about ranked choice voting. We're going to continue that conversation next.

[Music Break]

GAUDETTE: Let's continue our discussion about proposition one and ranked choice voting with Luke Mayville with Idahoans for Open Primaries Coalition. This is the group that gathered enough signatures to put prop one on the ballot. Luke, welcome back to the show.

MAYVILLE: Thanks for having me. Gemma.

GAUDETTE: So why did you want to put ranked choice voting before Idaho voters?

MAYVILLE: Well, the core problem that we're taking on with this initiative is that Idaho currently has a closed primary system. The best possible way to counter that and open the primary system back up so that all voters, including unaffiliated voters, really have a voice. The best way to open the primary is to have a top four primary with ranked choice voting. These two reforms, the open primary and ranked choice voting, really fit together hand in glove, and we can talk more about why they go together so nicely.

GAUDETTE: So do you believe that ranked choice voting will make Idaho elections more fair?

MAYVILLE: Absolutely. Um, currently in our closed primary election system, candidates are winning elections and then making our laws for our state based on just winning support from about 9% of the public. That's not right. People, every citizen in Idaho should really have a voice, and we should have elected officials who are accountable to all of the voters, to the broader public, not just to one small group of about 9% of the voters. Opening up the primary makes our elected officials accountable to the broader community, including all the independents who will now get to vote in the primary. And ranked choice voting really does the same thing, because ranked choice voting guarantees that the winner of the election has broad support from the community.

GAUDETTE: So look, some critics of prop one have said that by putting both ranked choice voting and open primaries on the same ballot, it's really created confusion among voters. I don't know if you heard our last segment, I think we got a little bit in the weeds with it. It can. I think it really can be a little bit confusing once you get to that last part of, you know, when you're trying to whittle down who wins that race, but how do you respond to that potential confusion among voters?

MAYVILLE: Look, I listened to the last segment and I thought things got a little over complicated there. There's a really simple way to understand this. Imagine you're a voter and you there's four candidates on your ballot. You're voting for governor, say, and and you rank candidates one through four. My first choice, second choice. Third choice. Fourth choice. Um, all that happens when the votes are counted is the very first thing is that the first choices are counted up. If anyone gets a majority, then they're they're declared the winner. If no one gets a majority, the key thing you need to understand is that the last place candidate gets eliminated. If you voted for that candidate as your first choice, your vote now goes to your second choice. That's the that's it. That's the heart of it. So I'm going to repeat that. If you, the last place candidate, gets eliminated from the race, if that was your favorite candidate, your vote now goes to your second choice. That's the whole thing. If you understand that that that's the whole process of how the votes are tallied up. And once a candidate gets up over 50% support, they're declared the winner. And so the heart of it really is making sure that the winner of our elections has broad support from the community. Unlike now where we had we're choosing winners in restricted closed primaries where barely anyone votes. And we're getting leaders who really only represent about 9% of the public.

GAUDETTE: Well, we're getting we're and our elections because of this closed primary, is that we are basically being in a state that tends to be, you know, I mean, it's a Republican majority. I mean, we tend to make those decisions in the closed primary. I mean, for example, you can take former Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin. She won that her primary to become lieutenant governor with about 28% of the primary vote.

MAYVILLE: Yes. So that. So let's walk through that. The former lieutenant governor won the closed primary election with 20, 28% or whatever. That was just of the voters who participated in the closed primary. And that was only about 20% of the total voters. So when you really drill down, it turns out that the lieutenant governor won that election with support from probably something between 5 and 7% of the voters. And then, as you said, Gemma. She then went on to a general election where she's just head to head with a Democratic opponent. And because we are in an overwhelmingly Republican state, she sailed to victory. So it's a broken system. We're electing people who don't truly represent the broader community and aren't really in a position to solve the problems of the larger community, because they get elected and reelected with just a tiny sliver of the population supporting them.

GAUDETTE: Mhm. A recent Boise State University poll found support for an open for an open primary, but not for ranked choice voting. The poll found 34% of Idahoans in favor of ranked choice voting and 50% opposed to it. I mean, Luke, again, do you attribute this to that confusion over how this system would work?

MAYVILLE: I personally, I was very critical of the way that poll was designed, and we have not seen that same kind of opposition to ranked choice voting, either in the in the private polling that we've done for our own campaign or when we've knocked, we've now knocked over 150,000 doors across the state of Idaho. We have over 2000 volunteers working on this and generally it on on ranked choice voting. It's closer to 50 over 50 in terms of support and opposition. And and generally, once people hear a simple explanation of how it works, they really warm up to it. And they like the idea that this is a way of guaranteeing that the winner has broad support from the community, and doesn't just represent one small sliver of the of the community.

GAUDETTE: Luke, I only have about a minute and a half left with you, and I do want to quickly get to this question. The Secretary of State joined us earlier in the program today, and we did ask him about his estimate of what ranked choice voting would cost the state to switch over to new voting machines. He put it somewhere between 25 to $40 million. You told the Idaho Capital Sun, there's a cheaper way to do this with voting software. Um, what is your response to that?

MAYVILLE: Well, in the time since the Secretary of state did his analysis, uh, there's been some follow up research done by national experts, including a county clerk, a former county clerk in Utah who actually oversaw ranked choice voting in his county. So he really knows his stuff here. Um, and what they concluded was that it could be done in a very fiscally conservative way, um, by just using simple software upgrades. And that software has, in fact, the the Secretary of State has pointed to it not being certified by a certain federal agency, but in fact, that software has been approved in federally accredited labs. And therefore, what the what our experts in Utah and elsewhere have concluded is that it is ready for use in Idaho. And if we can make those basic software upgrades, the cost of this will be much closer to what it cost in the state of Maine, which was about $500,000 total, or which which amounts to about $0.50 per voter. And we think whether it's $0.50 per voter or whether it's a little more than that, that's a very worthwhile investment for making sure that we're securing the right of every Idaho citizen to participate in our elections.

GAUDETTE: Well, Luke, as always, appreciate you coming on the program and talking about this. We've been speaking with Luke Mayville. He is with the Idahoans for Open Primaries Coalition talking about proposition one, but in particular ranked choice voting. We're going to continue our discussion about ranked choice voting in Idaho right after this quick break.

[Music Break]

GAUDETTE: More Idaho Matters. Right now I'm Gemma Gaudette and we are continuing our discussion about proposition one and ranked choice voting with Trent England, the founder and Executive Director of Save Our States, as well as Jake Ball, chairman of Idaho Fair Elections political Action Committee. I want to welcome both of you to the program.

ENGLAND: Glad to be here. Thank you.

BALL: Yeah. Thanks.

GAUDETTE: Jake. Let me start with you. For folks who aren't familiar, what is the Idaho Fair Elections PAC?

BALL: Oh, we're just a little, uh, political action committee that was formed in July. And our purpose is to educate Idaho voters with regard to what prop one actually is. And our main thesis is that, um, prop one is bad for Republicans, Democrats. It's really bad for independents. And it is essentially a system that decreases voter choice and is not, uh, doesn't work in other parts of the country where it's been tried. And it's just a bad policy altogether.

GAUDETTE: And Trent, what is Save our States?

ENGLAND: Yeah. So we're an organization. We've been around about 15 years, originally created to defend the Electoral College. And we also have taken on this issue of ranked choice voting, because we think it's a real threat to just simple, fair, honest elections.

GAUDETTE: Um, Jake, you've called ranked choice voting confusing and expensive, Inexpensive and quote. Absolutely wrong for the state of Idaho end quote. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you you believe that?

BALL: Well, let me tell you, in Idaho, we have a really great electoral system. Right now, we have four legal political parties Republican, Democrat, Constitution and libertarian. All four political parties have a guaranteed slot on the general election ballot, which I believe is great for democracy and also helps all voters have a choice in the general election. Another thing that is important is that Idaho has direct ballot access for independent candidates, which means if you are an independent candidate not affiliated with a party, you don't have to compete in that primary election. You go directly to the general election ballot. So in any given Partisan election in the state of Idaho, there are slots for those four political parties and independent candidates with ranked choice voting you could end up in a scenario with some some places in the state of Idaho where you have all Democrats on the ballot and no Republicans, for example. Or on the converse, some areas where you have all Republicans and no Democrats to vote for. It's the same system that the jungle primary creates in California, where in many statewide races, you only have candidates from one political party to vote for. And in the end, that simply decreases voter choice. When I show up to to a general election, I'm a Partisan Republican, and I have no problem saying that. But I appreciate seeing, uh, candidates from the other other political parties and independent candidates on that ballot.

GAUDETTE: Jake, Can I can I just can I just push back a little bit on that, though? And that is that there is an argument out there, though, that when we have a closed primary, which the Republicans have a closed primary, we are a supermajority Republican state. It's nice to say, well, in the general election, everyone has a choice. You can have a Republican and a Democrat and and an independent, you know, on the ballot. You make your choice. In Idaho, a lot of times that choice has already been made in the primary. It's closed. It's closed.

BALL: I push back on that.

GAUDETTE: It's closed. No. Go ahead. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because it is a closed primary. So if we really want a democratic system, shouldn't we have our primaries open to anyone who is, who is, who has the ability, the legal ability to vote?

BALL: Yeah, well, the primary is open to anybody who has the legal ability to vote.

GAUDETTE: But, but, but but the Republican primary is not.

BALL: It is open to.

ENGLAND: Anybody who registers as a Republican.

GAUDETTE: True. Anyone who registers a Republican candidates.

ENGLAND: That's that's correct. Just like you can only vote in Boise if you live in Boise. You can only help choose the Republican candidates or the Democrat candidates if you actually affiliate with that party. That's a been a very basic democratic principle in the United States, going back for more than more than a century, going back beyond even the history of primaries where party members chose their own, their own candidates for the political party. I mean, people should get involved. I think what we're really you know, what you're really saying is that we need people to care enough to get involved with the political parties that nominate candidates. And, you know, maybe in states like Idaho, the Democrats need to nominate candidates that are more palatable to more Idaho voters.

GAUDETTE: And can I just say that Trent, I know your group says that that ranked choice voting does make it harder to vote and harder to count the votes. And you and you say it also makes it less transparent. Can you talk a little bit about that?

ENGLAND: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this this is really what struck me when I first started looking at ranked choice voting, is that it is. It's sort of relatively easy to describe in theory, right, when we're talking about ice cream flavors or, you know, animals or something. But when you talk to actual voters in the ranked choice voting experience, it is. It's simply a more demanding system. Right now, people might say, that's good. They might say that's bad, but it is a more demanding system because you're expected to know not just who you want to win, but who your second and third and fourth choice is, which is a lot more information about the candidates. It takes a lot more time to vote, but it's really a big challenge on the the sort of post voting side, right? The the counting of those votes, making sure that it's done in a transparent way, and then being able to prove to voters that the system is actually honest and fair because it's so dependent on technology. I mean, the only practical way to to run a ranked choice voting election at at large scale is to feed it all into a computer and then trust what the computer tells you. Uh, I just have real concerns that in 2024, in the United States of America, in Idaho, right, or anywhere else, this is not the direction we want to take our elections to make it harder for voters, and just a lot harder for everybody to understand and trust what the results are from that, that process.

GAUDETTE: Trent, do you think it would be more palatable for folks who might be on the side of voting no on this, if these two issues had been separated, if there had been something for open primaries, which in Idaho, when when you look at surveys in Idaho, the majority is is open to open primaries. The sticking point is this ranked choice voting. So is that, in your opinion, a larger issue than an open primary?

ENGLAND: I think that's I think that's right. I think it's very telling that as much as the folks pushing prop one want to talk about open primaries, that's not really what this is. It's not a closed primary. Right. But but when when we in the election policy space talk about open primaries, we typically mean a primary election that's open to all voters, not a top four. You know, people call this a. California style all candidate primary or a jungle primary. Um, this is not what Idaho used to have. And and I think you're right, Gemma. I mean, I understand the argument, even though I pushed back on it. Right? I get it that we have a lot of people who, for whatever reason, feel like they don't want to participate with the parties except to to help choose the party nominees. Um, I mean, I think it would be a lot better for Idaho voters and frankly, just a lot more honest if the folks pushing this were just pushing that an open primary, a return to the open primary system and having a debate about that, because, I mean, ranked choice voting is is a big election change, and it shouldn't be lost in the conversation about who gets to vote in the primary election. I mean, this is, you know, as the secretary of state talked about, I mean, this is a potential $40 million, very complex transformation. Uh, and it means that that voters have to learn to to think about their votes in a different way and try to understand what the process means in a, I think, a very different way.

GAUDETTE: So this is for either of you, Jake or Trent, because, you know, in Idaho we have a very large independent electorate. And and I have lived in Idaho for a very long time. And it is I think there is a pride in being an independent in Idaho. And there is an argument to be made that that independent voters don't want to to register Republican, but they do want to be able to vote in an open primary. So are we disenfranchising a large majority of our electorate when you know, the the issue is, will then go register as a Republican. And I hate to cut you off, but I only have about two minutes left.

BALL: Yeah. Gemma. I you know, I sympathize with that. And I think that if you were to if proposition one were to return, actually return Idaho primaries to they to the way they were prior to 2012, I think you would have broad support. What's happened here is that prop one does not return Idaho primaries to an open primary system like we used to have, that did not require pre-registration with a party to participate in all but the Democrat primary. And that's been kind of the, I guess you would call it even a bait and switch in terms of what this actually is, is that it is not an open primary, it's an all candidate. Jungle primary is what I call it. And if it were a system that did return us back to the prior to to to the prior, uh, electoral system, I think you would have broad support, but this is not the same thing, first of all. And when you put ranked choice voting on top of it, it just becomes it's it's confusing, it's overwhelming. And it is a radical change to our entire election system. It's not just an open primary initiative. It is a complete transformation of our entire election system from tip to tail.

GAUDETTE: I want to thank both of you so very much for a lively conversation. Thank you. We've been talking with Trent England, the founder and executive director of Save Our States, as well as Jake Ball, chairman of Idaho for Fair Elections political Action Committee. Thanks so much for listening to Idaho Matters. Boise State Public Radio and Idaho Matters are members of the NPR network. It's an independent coalition of public media podcasters. You can find more shows in the network wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Gemma Gaudette. We'll see you tomorrow.