Voters in at least seven states will decide ballot measures this year concerning ranked-choice voting. A handful of left-leaning, deep-pocketed donors are driving the push for this fundamental shift in elections. Yet despite a huge fundraising advantage, they seem to have given up trying to convince voters. Instead, the strategy is to distract them or — in Montana — to fool them.
There can be no doubt about the purpose of these “election reform” measures. One must only follow the money.
Perhaps it’s because RCV undermines the principle of “one person, one vote.” Depending on how voters fill out their ballots, they might be counted multiple times for different candidates, or they could be discarded altogether. The only sure winners are the dark-money groups that will gain even more power amidst voter frustration.
Ranked-choice voting is a tedious process where voters rank candidates by preference. If no candidate wins outright, a series of elimination rounds “redistributes” votes until one candidate has a majority. If voters mark their ballot for just one candidate, and the candidate doesn’t make it to the final round, those voters’ ballots are tossed out, effectively disenfranchising them.
RCV’s ability to upend would-be winners by trashing ballots is precisely why partisan elites have invested so much money in rewriting distant states’ election laws. In the 2022 Alaska special congressional election, Democratic candidate Mary Peltola got only 40 percent of first-place votes while 60 percent went to Republican candidates. After ballots were thrown out and votes redistributed, Peltola won with 51.5 percent of what was left.
Alaska only has RCV because the same liberal donor cabal packaged it into a 2020 ballot measure that they claimed would rid the state of “dark money.” No, you can’t make this stuff up. A groundswell of buyers’ remorse has put RCV repeal on the ballot in Alaska this fall.
The backers of ranked-choice voting are desperate to distract from the details of their plan. Their scheme makes voting harder, leads to longer lines and more spoiled ballots, and creates new challenges for election officials, who sometimes struggle to understand it themselves. In this fraught political moment, ranked-choice voting makes elections more complicated, less transparent, and harder to trust.
RCV backers have figured out that voters don’t like what they’re selling. A leaked memo in Arizona shows RCV supporters trying to refocus on vague concepts like “fairness.” Another memo from a pro-RCV group demands that people stop identifying “ranked choice voting” by name.
Yet the trick they’re trying to pull in Montana, using a pair of ballot measures that make no reference to RCV at all, is even more deceptive.
Proposal to Change Montana Voting Proposal
The first ballot measure would replace ordinary primary elections with one that automatically sends four candidates to the general election. All candidates, regardless of political party, would appear on one ballot. This “jungle primary” would let Democrats have a say in choosing the Republicans that appear on the general election ballot, and vice versa.
Given Montana’s political landscape, this would often result in general elections with two Republicans and two Democrats, or else three Republicans and one Democrat. Assuming all four candidates are relatively popular, a candidate might win with a plurality of less than 30 percent of the vote. That’s where the second ballot measure comes in, to “fix” the problem created by the first.
The second measure simply requires that winners be elected by majority, not just a plurality. But it doesn’t say how — it just requires the Montana State Legislature to make it so. This is the trap set by the RCV cabal. There are only two ways to comply if these measures pass: hold yet another election or use RCV.
There can be no doubt about the purpose of these “election reform” measures. One must only follow the money. As of June, a left-wing group called Article IV poured in nearly $2.7 million in support of the Montana ballot measures. The group is closely tied to former Enron executive John Arnold, a major liberal donor and prolific funder of RCV initiatives throughout the United States. In 2022, for example, it contributed over $6.7 million to a failed attempt to get RCV on the Missouri ballot.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, managed by Washington, D.C.-based Arabella Advisors, recently contributed $100,000 toward the Montana ballot efforts. That group has accepted nearly $250 million in donations from a left-wing foreign billionaire and has spent $100 million to influence ballot issue campaigns in 25 states. In May, Ohio enacted a new law to ban foreign funding for ballot measures after Sixteen Thirty Fund hit the Buckeye State with over $14 million in foreign-tied cash. Now, this conduit for foreign influence is targeting Montana.
Voters in Montana and across the nation cannot hope to match the money flowing in from out-of-state megadonors who are attempting to corrupt voting systems and manipulate their outcomes in favor of leftwing causes and candidates. Those who favor free and honest elections have a better weapon: The truth. Even those pushing ranked-choice voting seem to realize that if voters know the truth about what they are hawking, they don’t want it.
Trent England and Jason Snead are co-chairs of the Stopped Ranked-Choice Voting Coalition.
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