Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Onto our next guest, because NickTreano is the executive director of an organization
called Unite America. He's written anew book called The Primary Solution, Rescuing
Our Democracy from the Fringes, aboutranked choice voting, and as I said
in the last segment, I startedthis book as a pretty solid skeptic and
I finished this book as a supporter. Not an overly enthusiastic supporter yet,
(00:25):
but a supporter. Nick, Welcometo the show. I will take it.
Good to be here with you.So I want to start kind of
in the beginning, which is whyis there an organization working on changing the
primary system? Well, I'm nottelling you or your listeners anything. You
(00:47):
don't know. Our government's broken,it's dysfunctional, it's divided. We can't
seem to solve the problems that areimpacting our daily lives and that people care
about. And in our view,the reason for that is not just that
we have a politician problem. Wehave an incentive problem right now. Our
political system rewards those who play tothe base and throw the red meat and
(01:12):
say crazy things to raise money andget relected, and it punishes those who
want to work together to actually findcommon ground. And get things done.
That is in large part because ofthe system of party primaries that we have
today. You have some statistics inthis book that are pretty shocking about the
tiny fraction of voters who actually endup and we're talking about in safe districts.
(01:36):
And a safe district is a districtthat is likely to be won by
one party or the other with morethan ten percent of the vote, right,
I mean, that's the easiest wayto describe a safe district. They're
not competitive districts. And you talkspecifically about what a tiny percentage of voters
in some of these safe districts actuallyend up sending a member to Congress.
(01:57):
And if you could, I don'tknow if you know those off the top
of your head. I meant tomark them in the book and I forgot.
Can you give us some of thatinformation? Absolutely, And I want
to talk about that problem as itpertains right here in Colorado, because Colorado's
primary problem is pretty stark when youlook at our state House. For example,
in the last election, seventy fivepercent of races for the state House
(02:22):
were not decided in November in thegeneral election, when most people vote,
they were decided in the party primary. That's because in three out of four
districts, the party primary is thewhole ballgame because there's no competition between both
political parties. So when you lookat, well, how many people voted
in the party primary that effectively determinethe winner, the answer is just thirteen
(02:45):
percent. Thirteen percent of voters castballots in meaningful elections for our state house.
So our whole argument is that itdoesn't only matter that people can access
the ballot, it is whether thatballot actually mattered. Do you have choice?
Is their competition and does who winactually represent you? And the answer,
unfortunately right now for most voters inColorado is no. The good news,
(03:07):
is there something that we can doabout that? Well, Nick,
I want to sort of throw thisout here, because I know that there
are people the first reaction to anychange this significant is always going to be,
oh, no, no, no, no, we can't do that.
It's too different. The devil Iknow is better than the devil I
don't. But you do a fantasticjob in the book of laying out the
history of primaries in the United States, and I was kind of laboring under
(03:30):
the illusion. I don't think I'dever really thought about it that primaries were
somehow set up back in the foundingfather's days and we're just following along and
tradition is what it is. Butthat's not at all accurate. But I
don't want to spend a lot oftime there. I just want to let
people know that there's a great foundationin the book because I want to get
into what we're actually looking at asan alternative to what we have now,
(03:51):
which is partisan primaries. Yeah,that alternative is if what we have today
is elections that are decided by thirteenof voters, we want to live in
a world where a majority of votersget to decide our elections. And so
the change that we're advocating for,including for a ballot measure that may appear
(04:12):
in this November's ballot here in Colorado, is to replace the two parties separate
primaries with a nonpartisan, all candidateprimary. And what that will do is
give every voter the freedom to chooseany candidate in every election. You can
vote for a Democrat for state Senateor Republican for a US Senate. You
(04:32):
have the freedom to choose, andthat will ensure that the top finishers go
to the general election and the personwho wins winds up representing the broadest possible
coalition of Colorados rather than just theminuscule amount that wind up voting in the
current party primaries. But Nick,that would mean that in certain districts there
(04:53):
would never be a Republican on theballot. How do we know? How
do you fix that? That's veryunlikely. The system that we're advocating for
here in Colorado is a top fourprimary. In many state legislative elections,
you don't even have four candidates running, or at least for accredible candidates running.
(05:13):
So most general elections will reflect thegreat diversity we have of candidates,
not just from the two major parties. But wouldn't it be nice to have
some choices outside the two major partiesthat could be viable as well. That's
what this system will bring about,more choice and competition, not less of
it. So how does ranked choicecome into this? So you've got a
(05:36):
top four primary that would but everybodyon the same ballot with their party affiliation.
To be clear, right, itwould have their party affiliation, and
then you would vote for for ofthose people. Top four vot vote getters
move on. Then how does rankedchoice come into play here, yep.
So you vote for your favorite inthe primary. The top four finishers go
(05:57):
to the general election. And tomy point earlier that we want elections that
produce majority winners, there's two waysof going about that. If you have
four candidates on the ballot, ifno one gets a majority, you either
ask everyone to come back to thepolls and you do a runoff election,
like folks who live in Denver,for example, familiar with in our mayoral
or you can have an instant runoff. And an instant runoff is when voters
(06:20):
rank their candidates according to preference,so that if no one gets a majority,
then there's a tabulation that has donethat eliminates the candidate with the least
support and retabulates based on those voters'second preferences. That process repeats until there
is a majority winner that best representsthe voters. Okay, so let me
just use this. So we've gotLarry, Moe, Curly, and Mandy
(06:42):
on the ballot, but those areour four top vote getters in the primary.
Now in that in the general election, Mandy comes in first. Because
if I can't meet the three stooges, I really need help and then Larry
comes in second, Moe and Curlycome in third and fourth. So we
would then go to Curly and we'dlook at Curly's voters and ever they picked
second, we would reapportion those votesto those people, and then if somebody
(07:04):
gets a majority, they win exactly. But if not, then we go
to Moe's ticket, and if theyvoted Mo first, whoever they voted second,
we then distribute that to the othercandidates until someone hits the majority.
Right, that's a great explanation.And if Mandy, I believe you can
if you want a majority in thefirst round, that's it. There wouldn't
(07:24):
necessarily be any more tabulating after that. That's how the election in Alaska,
for example, where the system wasfirst used in twenty twenty two worked.
The governor, for example, wasre elected with the majority support. There
was no need to redistribute ballots.Can you hold on for a time out,
Nick, because I want to continuethis conversation, but I got to
take a break. Can you catI have you for a few more minutes?
(07:46):
Absolutely all right, I've got NickTroiano. He's the executive director of
United America and the author of theprimary Solution reaching Rescuing our Democracy from the
fringes, trying to departisan our primarysystem, and in his new book,
The Primary Solution, Rescuing Our Democracyfrom the Fringes, he lays out very
clearly the ways that our current primarysystem rewards people who cater to the fringiest
(08:11):
part of the base because they arealso the most passionate part of the base.
Whether you're on the right or theleft, those people are going to
turn out to vote. And ina primary system, you are rewarded for
behavior that that sort of amplifies thatfringey base. And I think when you
look at some of the polling datanick about things like immigration, right,
eighty percent of Americans want something doneat the border. Why haven't we done
(08:35):
something at the border? Because ifyou are on the right, your fringe
base does not want you know,they only want a wall and nothing less.
And if you're on the left,they want open borders and nothing left.
So you've got this intractability in Congress. And this is what rank choice
voting and majority rules is designed tostop. But I want to ask a
question from the Texters because it's agood one, and I think a lot
(08:58):
of people probably have the same question. I love the sound of this.
Oh wait a minute, wrong one, I gotta find it here, dag
Navitt. It was a question aboutAlaska and it said ranked choice voting just
got a Democrat in deeper at Alaskaelected, And it did. It was
the Sarah Palin race. Sarah Palinwas running against Nick ub what's his last
(09:20):
name? Bagetch? Is that howyou say it? And they had a
vicious, vicious primary, I meanvicious. And when they did rank choice
voting, the people that voted forSarah Palin first did not vote for him
second, and his voters did notvote for Sarah Palin second, and a
(09:41):
Democrat ends up getting elected. Sowhy do you think that is and why
is that a good thing? Well, let me start with just detailing three
candidates won statewide elections in Alaska intwenty twenty two, a very conservative Republican
gonor, a moderate Republican senator,and a moderate Democrat for US House.
(10:05):
With this system allowed Alaska voters todo was to pick the person, not
just the party. Right in thatUS House race, a quarter of voters
who voted for Republican Nick Begich rankedMary Peltola, the Democrat number two they
would rather have Mary over Sarah.Well, this is what democracy is all
about, allowing voters to express anuanced view, and that was enough to
(10:30):
put Mary over the threshold of winningmajority support. So what Alaska was a
strong demonstration of is how much voiceand choice this winds up giving voters.
It it empowers them over the partybosses. Well, and additionally, Nick,
I mean, if you are tiredof nasty primary battles, this is
(10:50):
going to be a situation where Republicanscannot afford to alienate the base of any
of their competitors. So it wouldit would I mean, it would stand
a reason that you would have amore civil process because you can't afford to
alienate anyone else's voters. You wouldn'thave basket of deplorables comments because you need
to possibly scoop up some of thosepeople in the election. I mean,
(11:13):
isn't that the purpose of all ofthis? What I really like about the
system is when you have general electionsthat have four candidates in it rather than
just one D and one R.To win an election, you need to
convince voters more than just that theother guy is bad. You have to
actually campaign on what you're for andthe ideas that you have a party affiliation
(11:37):
alone is not going to do thetrick to getting into office. That is
what will lead to a healthier democracy. It is also the case in talking
to some of the state legislators inAlaska who ran under this system. When
they campaigned for office, they threwout the old voter lists that told them
what doors to knock on and whichhouses is send mail to, and they
talk to everyone because they had acampaign for everybody's vote. Think it's about
(12:00):
time that we have the ability tohold our politicians accountable and force them to
have to listen to all of us, not just pandered to the far base
of one party or the other.I also think the Palin race happening early
in the rank choice voting system inAlaska, we'll serve as a lesson.
Right if you run the wrong kindof campaign, you risk that kind of
(12:20):
outcome. So, as I said, before I started your book, Nick,
I was like, I don't know, But now that I've read it,
I'm like, yeah, I'm forit. So what are we hopefully
going to have a chance to voteon here in Colorado in the fall.
Well, first sales say for thosewho want to come learn more and talk
about this in person. We'll beat the Tattered Cover next Wednesday, the
(12:41):
twenty second on Callfax for a bookdiscussion. Hope to see you there.
And second, we're going to startcollecting to signature soon on a ballot initiative
that the title Board has approved forthe Alaska style system top four primary majority
winner in the general election. Ithas to overcome a couple last legal challenges,
(13:01):
as the parorty establishments are throwing everythingthey've got at this to prevent the
voters from actually being able to votefor it. But we're confident will prevail
and Colorado could make history as thesecond state in the Union to adopt this
transformative reform. It is a simplereform, but is a powerful one because
it returns a lot of power tothe voters. I have all the information
(13:24):
about United America. I have alinked next book that you can buy.
I have a link to the TatteredCover event all on the blog at mandy'sblog
dot com. Today. Nick,I'm sure this is just the first of
our many conversations, but it isa truly intriguing idea and if you want
to have a clear picture of whatit is. Go pick up Nix's book,
The Primary Solution, Rescuing our Democracyfrom the Fringes, and I think
(13:46):
you, like me, will probablycome away going you know what it is
about. Time for a change.Nick Troyanta with United America. I appreciate
your time today, Thanks so much. All Right, we will be back
Onto our next guest, because NickTreano is the executive director of an organization
called Unite America. He's written anew book called The Primary Solution, Rescuing
Our Democracy from the Fringes, aboutranked choice voting, and as I said
in the last segment, I startedthis book as a pretty solid skeptic and
I finished this book as a supporter. Not an overly enthusiastic supporter yet,
(00:25):
but a supporter. Nick, Welcometo the show. I will take it.
Good to be here with you.So I want to start kind of
in the beginning, which is whyis there an organization working on changing the
primary system? Well, I'm nottelling you or your listeners anything. You
(00:47):
don't know. Our government's broken,it's dysfunctional, it's divided. We can't
seem to solve the problems that areimpacting our daily lives and that people care
about. And in our view,the reason for that is not just that
we have a politician problem. Wehave an incentive problem right now. Our
political system rewards those who play tothe base and throw the red meat and
(01:12):
say crazy things to raise money andget relected, and it punishes those who
want to work together to actually findcommon ground. And get things done.
That is in large part because ofthe system of party primaries that we have
today. You have some statistics inthis book that are pretty shocking about the
tiny fraction of voters who actually endup and we're talking about in safe districts.
(01:36):
And a safe district is a districtthat is likely to be won by
one party or the other with morethan ten percent of the vote, right,
I mean, that's the easiest wayto describe a safe district. They're
not competitive districts. And you talkspecifically about what a tiny percentage of voters
in some of these safe districts actuallyend up sending a member to Congress.
(01:57):
And if you could, I don'tknow if you know those off the top
of your head. I meant tomark them in the book and I forgot.
Can you give us some of thatinformation? Absolutely, And I want
to talk about that problem as itpertains right here in Colorado, because Colorado's
primary problem is pretty stark when youlook at our state House. For example,
in the last election, seventy fivepercent of races for the state House
(02:22):
were not decided in November in thegeneral election, when most people vote,
they were decided in the party primary. That's because in three out of four
districts, the party primary is thewhole ballgame because there's no competition between both
political parties. So when you lookat, well, how many people voted
in the party primary that effectively determinethe winner, the answer is just thirteen
(02:45):
percent. Thirteen percent of voters castballots in meaningful elections for our state house.
So our whole argument is that itdoesn't only matter that people can access
the ballot, it is whether thatballot actually mattered. Do you have choice?
Is their competition and does who winactually represent you? And the answer,
unfortunately right now for most voters inColorado is no. The good news,
(03:07):
is there something that we can doabout that? Well, Nick,
I want to sort of throw thisout here, because I know that there
are people the first reaction to anychange this significant is always going to be,
oh, no, no, no, no, we can't do that.
It's too different. The devil Iknow is better than the devil I
don't. But you do a fantasticjob in the book of laying out the
history of primaries in the United States, and I was kind of laboring under
(03:30):
the illusion. I don't think I'dever really thought about it that primaries were
somehow set up back in the foundingfather's days and we're just following along and
tradition is what it is. Butthat's not at all accurate. But I
don't want to spend a lot oftime there. I just want to let
people know that there's a great foundationin the book because I want to get
into what we're actually looking at asan alternative to what we have now,
(03:51):
which is partisan primaries. Yeah,that alternative is if what we have today
is elections that are decided by thirteenof voters, we want to live in
a world where a majority of votersget to decide our elections. And so
the change that we're advocating for,including for a ballot measure that may appear
(04:12):
in this November's ballot here in Colorado, is to replace the two parties separate
primaries with a nonpartisan, all candidateprimary. And what that will do is
give every voter the freedom to chooseany candidate in every election. You can
vote for a Democrat for state Senateor Republican for a US Senate. You
(04:32):
have the freedom to choose, andthat will ensure that the top finishers go
to the general election and the personwho wins winds up representing the broadest possible
coalition of Colorados rather than just theminuscule amount that wind up voting in the
current party primaries. But Nick,that would mean that in certain districts there
(04:53):
would never be a Republican on theballot. How do we know? How
do you fix that? That's veryunlikely. The system that we're advocating for
here in Colorado is a top fourprimary. In many state legislative elections,
you don't even have four candidates running, or at least for accredible candidates running.
(05:13):
So most general elections will reflect thegreat diversity we have of candidates,
not just from the two major parties. But wouldn't it be nice to have
some choices outside the two major partiesthat could be viable as well. That's
what this system will bring about,more choice and competition, not less of
it. So how does ranked choicecome into this? So you've got a
(05:36):
top four primary that would but everybodyon the same ballot with their party affiliation.
To be clear, right, itwould have their party affiliation, and
then you would vote for for ofthose people. Top four vot vote getters
move on. Then how does rankedchoice come into play here, yep.
So you vote for your favorite inthe primary. The top four finishers go
(05:57):
to the general election. And tomy point earlier that we want elections that
produce majority winners, there's two waysof going about that. If you have
four candidates on the ballot, ifno one gets a majority, you either
ask everyone to come back to thepolls and you do a runoff election,
like folks who live in Denver,for example, familiar with in our mayoral
or you can have an instant runoff. And an instant runoff is when voters
(06:20):
rank their candidates according to preference,so that if no one gets a majority,
then there's a tabulation that has donethat eliminates the candidate with the least
support and retabulates based on those voters'second preferences. That process repeats until there
is a majority winner that best representsthe voters. Okay, so let me
just use this. So we've gotLarry, Moe, Curly, and Mandy
(06:42):
on the ballot, but those areour four top vote getters in the primary.
Now in that in the general election, Mandy comes in first. Because
if I can't meet the three stooges, I really need help and then Larry
comes in second, Moe and Curlycome in third and fourth. So we
would then go to Curly and we'dlook at Curly's voters and ever they picked
second, we would reapportion those votesto those people, and then if somebody
(07:04):
gets a majority, they win exactly. But if not, then we go
to Moe's ticket, and if theyvoted Mo first, whoever they voted second,
we then distribute that to the othercandidates until someone hits the majority.
Right, that's a great explanation.And if Mandy, I believe you can
if you want a majority in thefirst round, that's it. There wouldn't
(07:24):
necessarily be any more tabulating after that. That's how the election in Alaska,
for example, where the system wasfirst used in twenty twenty two worked.
The governor, for example, wasre elected with the majority support. There
was no need to redistribute ballots.Can you hold on for a time out,
Nick, because I want to continuethis conversation, but I got to
take a break. Can you catI have you for a few more minutes?
(07:46):
Absolutely all right, I've got NickTroiano. He's the executive director of
United America and the author of theprimary Solution reaching Rescuing our Democracy from the
fringes, trying to departisan our primarysystem, and in his new book,
The Primary Solution, Rescuing Our Democracyfrom the Fringes, he lays out very
clearly the ways that our current primarysystem rewards people who cater to the fringiest
(08:11):
part of the base because they arealso the most passionate part of the base.
Whether you're on the right or theleft, those people are going to
turn out to vote. And ina primary system, you are rewarded for
behavior that that sort of amplifies thatfringey base. And I think when you
look at some of the polling datanick about things like immigration, right,
eighty percent of Americans want something doneat the border. Why haven't we done
(08:35):
something at the border? Because ifyou are on the right, your fringe
base does not want you know,they only want a wall and nothing less.
And if you're on the left,they want open borders and nothing left.
So you've got this intractability in Congress. And this is what rank choice
voting and majority rules is designed tostop. But I want to ask a
question from the Texters because it's agood one, and I think a lot
(08:58):
of people probably have the same question. I love the sound of this.
Oh wait a minute, wrong one, I gotta find it here, dag
Navitt. It was a question aboutAlaska and it said ranked choice voting just
got a Democrat in deeper at Alaskaelected, And it did. It was
the Sarah Palin race. Sarah Palinwas running against Nick ub what's his last
(09:20):
name? Bagetch? Is that howyou say it? And they had a
vicious, vicious primary, I meanvicious. And when they did rank choice
voting, the people that voted forSarah Palin first did not vote for him
second, and his voters did notvote for Sarah Palin second, and a
(09:41):
Democrat ends up getting elected. Sowhy do you think that is and why
is that a good thing? Well, let me start with just detailing three
candidates won statewide elections in Alaska intwenty twenty two, a very conservative Republican
gonor, a moderate Republican senator,and a moderate Democrat for US House.
(10:05):
With this system allowed Alaska voters todo was to pick the person, not
just the party. Right in thatUS House race, a quarter of voters
who voted for Republican Nick Begich rankedMary Peltola, the Democrat number two they
would rather have Mary over Sarah.Well, this is what democracy is all
about, allowing voters to express anuanced view, and that was enough to
(10:30):
put Mary over the threshold of winningmajority support. So what Alaska was a
strong demonstration of is how much voiceand choice this winds up giving voters.
It it empowers them over the partybosses. Well, and additionally, Nick,
I mean, if you are tiredof nasty primary battles, this is
(10:50):
going to be a situation where Republicanscannot afford to alienate the base of any
of their competitors. So it wouldit would I mean, it would stand
a reason that you would have amore civil process because you can't afford to
alienate anyone else's voters. You wouldn'thave basket of deplorables comments because you need
to possibly scoop up some of thosepeople in the election. I mean,
(11:13):
isn't that the purpose of all ofthis? What I really like about the
system is when you have general electionsthat have four candidates in it rather than
just one D and one R.To win an election, you need to
convince voters more than just that theother guy is bad. You have to
actually campaign on what you're for andthe ideas that you have a party affiliation
(11:37):
alone is not going to do thetrick to getting into office. That is
what will lead to a healthier democracy. It is also the case in talking
to some of the state legislators inAlaska who ran under this system. When
they campaigned for office, they threwout the old voter lists that told them
what doors to knock on and whichhouses is send mail to, and they
talk to everyone because they had acampaign for everybody's vote. Think it's about
(12:00):
time that we have the ability tohold our politicians accountable and force them to
have to listen to all of us, not just pandered to the far base
of one party or the other.I also think the Palin race happening early
in the rank choice voting system inAlaska, we'll serve as a lesson.
Right if you run the wrong kindof campaign, you risk that kind of
(12:20):
outcome. So, as I said, before I started your book, Nick,
I was like, I don't know, But now that I've read it,
I'm like, yeah, I'm forit. So what are we hopefully
going to have a chance to voteon here in Colorado in the fall.
Well, first sales say for thosewho want to come learn more and talk
about this in person. We'll beat the Tattered Cover next Wednesday, the
(12:41):
twenty second on Callfax for a bookdiscussion. Hope to see you there.
And second, we're going to startcollecting to signature soon on a ballot initiative
that the title Board has approved forthe Alaska style system top four primary majority
winner in the general election. Ithas to overcome a couple last legal challenges,
(13:01):
as the parorty establishments are throwing everythingthey've got at this to prevent the
voters from actually being able to votefor it. But we're confident will prevail
and Colorado could make history as thesecond state in the Union to adopt this
transformative reform. It is a simplereform, but is a powerful one because
it returns a lot of power tothe voters. I have all the information
(13:24):
about United America. I have alinked next book that you can buy.
I have a link to the TatteredCover event all on the blog at mandy'sblog
dot com. Today. Nick,I'm sure this is just the first of
our many conversations, but it isa truly intriguing idea and if you want
to have a clear picture of whatit is. Go pick up Nix's book,
The Primary Solution, Rescuing our Democracyfrom the Fringes, and I think
(13:46):
you, like me, will probablycome away going you know what it is
about. Time for a change.Nick Troyanta with United America. I appreciate
your time today, Thanks so much. All Right, we will be back
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