The Battle Over RCV Begins

This week, the Secretary of State declared that the jungle primary / ranked choice voting initiative had received enough signatures to appear on the November ballot. The battle over the future of our election system starts now.

As you know, the initiative does two things: It eliminates the partisan primary in favor of a general primary in which the top four candidates, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election. The general election would use ranked choice voting to conduct an instant runoff between all four candidates until one has an outright majority. (However, the eventual winner might still not have an actual majority due to exhausted ballots.)

I will have more to say about this bad idea soon. In the meantime, here are the latest developments:

First, here are three articles from the Gem State Chronicle about the current initiative:

• Ranked Choice Voting and the Jungle Primary
• Ranked Choice Redux
• The Devil’s Bargain

More recently, Idaho GOP chair Dorothy Moon called out the initiative sponsors for shamelessly lying about what the proposal would actually do in order to fool people into signing on: Ranked Choice Voting Truth

Ron Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation as well as Idaho Freedom Action, issued a strong statement against the initiative this week: Joint Statement on Ranked Choice Voting / Open Primaries Initiative Certification

Finally, Niklas Kleinworth, policy director at IFF, wrote this morning about the Secretary of State’s determination that converting our elections to ranked choice voting would cost Idaho taxpayers another $40 million: A $40 Million Drain on Taxpayers

The Idaho Republican Party will be working to educate voters on the dangers of ranked choice voting this summer. Another organization has set up a website, secureidahoelections.org, that has really good information.

I’ll have more information soon, including the story of what happened the last time Idaho tried ranked choice voting. (I bet you didn’t know that!)

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