“You want to know why we’re polarized? You want to know why we have division?” Our featured guest Frank Garner posed this question to voters at the constitutional ballot initiative debate we attended in Helena, Montana and many similar events. “We have a system that allows for it and the pressure that is put on people… to vote a certain way.”

A Republican member of the Montana House from 2015 to 2023, Garner spent over a year as the primary spokesperson for Montanans for Election Reform, the group that gathered 200 thousand signatures and fought off four lawsuits to place two Constitutional Initiatives (CI) on the 2024 ballot. 

CI 126 proposed replacing the current primary system where voters receive a ballot from each party (then choose one to complete) with a single, unified primary ballot of all candidates from which the top 4 advance to a general election. While CI 127 would require a majority winner from those 4 candidates. 

In this episode we also hear from Kendra Miller, Strategic Advisor to Montanans for Election Reform, on the critical need for competitive elections in “the last best place.” 

“I think one of the more shocking stats,” says Miller, a data analyst with extensive campaign experience, “is that in 2022…only 6% of Montana voters effectively elected 88% of the Montana House.” 

We then visit with former legislator Frank Garner on election night and into the next day as the results slowly come on the initiatives he’s championed throughout this vast state. 

Tune in for the final results and also reflections on the challenge of election reform messaging in a state saturated with ads from the most expensive US Senate race per capita in the country. 

The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production; original music by Ryan Adair Rooney

The 2024 election results are in and clearly underscore a rightward shift in American politics. Most pundits and many pollsters did not foresee such a clear victory for the GOP. But some of our Purple Principle guests from the past four seasons have recognized the important dynamics at play behind these results. Such as Carlos Curbelo on the shift of Hispanic voters and Thomas Edsall on the longstanding drift of the Democratic Party away from economic issues and toward identity politics. 

In this bonus episode, we ask you, our Purple Principle listeners, to select your favorite guest insights using a ranked choice ballot available through our show notes and website. Please rank your top 5 of the 10 guest comments. We’ll announce the winner on our next episode and display the tabulation on our website and social media.

Link to this podcast on our website, with episode transcript and the ballot to rank your favorite insights:

👉 https://bit.ly/TPPinsights

The 2024 election may be over. But the undercurrents behind the ‘24 results are still in play and may be for some years to come. Tune in to get behind the numbers by ranking your top 5 Purple Principle guest insights for 2024.

“You meet them and you're like, ‘oh, wow, you're a good person trying to do the right thing, and there's nothing in it for you,’” says Andrew Yang, Founder and Co-Chair of the Forward Party. He’s referring to largely volunteer teams around the country that have raised the profile for election reform in 2024. “I mean, what could be more worthy of praise than that combination of attributes?”

Yang was a relative unknown upon entering the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries. But that did not last long. He energized young voters with his informal approach to campaigning and practical position on innovative policies, such as universal basic income. 

“The reason I do what I do is because I don't have that positive an outlook as to what America's future looks like if we don't get our s%%# together,” says Yang, also an author and frequent commentator on major news networks. “Like it or not, the world's future is determined very much by what happens here in the United States.”

Tune in to find out why Yang and the Forward Party support election reform in all its variations for 2024 and beyond. And why $200 million dollars spent on election reform, which is less than that spent on several Senate campaigns this year, could transform American politics for the better. 

The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

“It’s a thrilling year. It’s a tense year. I am a believer that this is a marathon,” says Rob Richie, Co-Founder and longtime Director of FairVote, the nation’s foremost catalyst for ranked choice voting elections. “There's moments of excitement– of cresting hills, of victories and sometimes defeats.”

In this Purple Principle episode, Richie recounts the highs and lows throughout the steady progression of ranked choice voting in US elections since co-founding FairVote three decades ago. For example, the successful implementation of RCV elections in Portland paved the way for the nation’s first statewide ballot passage by Maine voters in 2016. That was followed by Alaska as part of Top Four voting reforms in 2020. 

“Alaska and Maine, interestingly, those two states are ones where independents have done particularly well,” says Richie. “We've had governors be elected in both states as independents, and they're states that were always on the reform radar.” 

In 2024, ranked choice voting has moved off the radar and onto ballots in multiple states– as a stand alone reform in Oregon and as part of Top Four or Five election reforms in Nevada, Colorado and Idaho. In the same period, though, nearly a dozen GOP dominated state legislatures have outlawed RCV. 

Does that make it critical for RCV to pass in multiple states this election year? Richie, now a Senior Advisor to Fairvote, thinks RCV has a logic and a momentum all its own aside from election results.

“Younger Americans, 50% of them do not identify with the major parties at this point,” says Richie. “So we’re going to get away from two choice politics and Ranked Choice Voting will be part of that. But whether it happens doesn't depend on November.”

Tune in to learn more about the first thirty years of RCV in the USA, from college campuses to city, town and county elections, and now to multiple state ballots in the same election cycle. And check out Fairvote.org for much more info on RCV. 

The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production; original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

In 2020, Alaskans passed a first-in-the-nation voting system which helped energize similar reform efforts around the country. In 2024, Alaska voters are now presented with a ballot measure to repeal this same Final or “Top Four” system that includes a unified open primary of all candidates plus a ranked choice general election. Meanwhile, voters in Nevada, Idaho, Colorado and other states consider measures to pass major elements of  the “Alaska model.”

This Purple Principle episode features discussion with election law expert and reform advocate Scott Kendall, a major catalyst behind “Top Four” in the frontier state. He explains the impetus behind the initial reform in terms of the perverse motivations elections have traditionally provided to candidates and elected representatives.

“We have set up a system that gives all the wrong incentives and then we're surprised when people act on those incentives,” says Kendall, a former chief of staff to independent Governor Bill Walker. “It's as though a teacher graded their students' success on how much they misbehaved in class. And we wanted to change that.”

By contrast, Republican state Senator Robert Myers stands in favor of the repeal effort, noting the longstanding Alaska tradition of forming bipartisan coalitions in the state legislature. “I think  this a problem in search of a solution,” Myers told us at the 2024 Alaska State Fair. “The way it was passed… a lot of people voting for campaign finance changes didn't realize they were voting to put in a jungle primary and ranked choice voting general election.”

New System, Long Tradition?

Independent Alaska House Representatives Calvin Schrage and Rebecca Himschoot see the Top Four or Ranked Choice Voting system differently. They think it will preserve and strengthen Alaska’s less partisan, more pragmatic political tradition.

“Going door to door on my campaign, I'm also talking to voters a lot about the initiative,” says Schrage, the House Minority Leader representing parts of Anchorage. “I think returning to the old system further empowers extreme partisan individuals to choose candidates for us.”

Prior to election, Rep. Himschoot was a career educator with a window on family and community challenges in her historically low-income southeast Alaska district. She doubts she would have entered politics without the Top Four  system. “It's a planetary test,” says Himschoot. “If we can keep open primaries and ranked choice voting, we have a chance at our state getting to a better place.”

Tune in for Part Two of this exploration of the frontiers of election reform. How did Alaska become the North Star for other reform efforts around the country? What seminal events laid the groundwork for Top Four  passage in 2020 and a first full set of elections in 2022? And what are the issues surrounding potential repeal of Top Four or Ranked Choice Voting just four years after initial passage? 

The Purple Principles is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney. 

“The notion of getting rid of a closed primary system in Alaska appealed to me instantly,” says former Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon who has represented Bristol Bay and parts of the Aleutian Islands for nearly two decades. “It overrode right there almost on the spot any trepidation I might have about having to rank candidates or anything else that would eventually become part of the ballot measure that narrowly passed in Alaska.”

Rep. Edgmon is referring to Alaska’s first-in-nation passage of a final or top four voting system with a unified open primary plus ranked choice general election. In this episode we examine the dynamics of the first state legislature in the country to have been elected by this system in 2022, even as a ballot measure to repeal the system has been put before Alaska voters in 2024.

We also discuss the dynamics of the Alaska legislature with Anchorage Daily News Reporter, Iris Samuels, and University of Alaska Southeast Political Science Professor, Dr. Glenn Wright. 

 “Alaska is fairly unique in that even before this election reform, we've had bipartisan and tri-partisan coalitions in the House and Senate,” says Samuels, who covers the Juneau State House. “But it has reinforced that phenomenon and made it possible for elected officials to envision doing that and not experience repercussions from within their party and from voters.” 

“If you talk to incumbent politicians,” explains Dr. Wright, “ they will tell you that they're less concerned about the primary challenge now– that before the reform that was in the back of their mind. And they were thinking not about what do voters in my district want but what do party primary voters in my district want.”

AFL-CIO President Joelle Hall has also observed what might be a similar deepening of Alaska’s cross-partisan tendencies in the two years since passage of the top four reform. 

“One of the ways that we are really different is that we have always come to a bipartisan coalition at the end of every decade,” observes Hall, a legislative lobbyist for nearly three decades. “Redistricting happens. Then slowly the two parties claw back to roughly even. So it's accelerated what is already a normal path in Alaska where we gravitate towards these coalitions.

But our final guest on this first of two Alaska episodes, Rep. Alyse Galvin of Anchorage, cautions that these post reform dynamics have not yet translated into legislative action. That’s partially because senior house leadership has blocked several bipartisan legislative efforts, while others were vetoed at the executive level. 

“if we don't allow this to play out a bit more, I'd say one more cycle, maybe two,” says Galvin, previously a two time candidate for the US House, ”then we're really missing a big chance to get things done that will give Alaskans hope.”

Tune in for five different perspectives on the first legislature in the country elected by final or top four voting as citizens in four other US states (NV, ID, CO & MT) consider passing the Alaskan model for less divisive elections toward more collaborative governance. 

The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

Election reform is officially on the ballot for voter approval in Colorado this year. This “Top Four” voting system is similar to the Alaska model of a unified open primary plus ranked choice general election. But there is a catch to this Colorado ballot measure, and it came via the state legislature in the final moments of the 2024 session. 

“Well, the last couple of days of the legislative session are very hectic,” says Jeni Arndt, a three term Democratic House Member in Colorado before her election as non-partisan Mayor of Fort Collins. “And you don't know every amendment that you're voting on in the last few days. But this was clearly an orchestrated effort to put in a poison pill.”

The amendment in question requires at least 12 Colorado municipalities to pass and implement ranked choice voting elections before the state can do so. Thus it could delay citizen-will on this issue until at least 2028, even if voters overwhelmingly pass the initiative in November. 

“When our legislature waits and passes a law with very little debate that no one basically really knew that that was in the bill,” says Republican State Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, “that's wrong.” 

Senator Kirkmeyer has not yet taken a position on the Top Four voting in Colorado. Both nationally and in Colorado her party has come out against any form of ranked choice voting. By contrast, Democratic opposition or concern around election reform has been more nuanced.

“I think the folks who brought the amendment, I've worked closely with them on lots of different things,” says Democratic Senator Chris Hansen, a former House Member and former candidate for Mayor in Denver. “I think they were trying to make sure there was not an implementation issue with ranked choice if that moves forward in November.”

Executive Director of Denver-based Unite America, Nick Troiano, is not so sure. He sees similar motivations behind both GOP and Democratic tactics in preventing or delaying these increasingly popular reform measures.

“The fact that they went out of their way in a midnight effort to try and undermine the people's will not only demonstrates the potential impact of this reform,” says Troiano, author of The Primary Solution. “But it also demonstrates the problem that we're trying to solve, which is politicians are largely in it for their self-interest.”

Was this Colorado amendment a self-interested poison pill or an effort to make RCV elections go smoothly once implemented? Tune in for three viewpoints on this question and make up your own independent mind.

And stay tuned for more upcoming episodes on the various ways party and legislative leaders in multiple states begin pushing back on nonpartisan election reform momentum in 2024, a potentially historic year for depolarizing ballot initiatives. It’s all part of our season long series on state and district level reform from Washington DC to Alaska with a record number of states in between, including Idaho, Nevada, South Dakota, Arizona, Oregon and now Colorado. 

The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

“I've sat in rooms where we as Democrats have high-fived when a Libertarian party candidate gets into a competitive race,” recalls former Oregon House Speaker Dan Rayfield. “That's not democracy.”

“And Republicans high five when a Green Party candidate gets into the race,” says Rayfield, currently running for Attorney General in Oregon. “That's not democracy.”

Dan Rayfield is describing the spoiler effect of plurality voting, where a third party candidate with minimal support can determine the election outcome. Rayfield joined forces with Oregon-based campaign manager, Mike Alfoni, to do something about that spoiler effect. Namely, to promote ranked choice voting (RCV) first at the county and then the state level. 

“I love the impossible, which is why I did this in the first place,” says Alfoni with reference to the legislature’s recent passage of RCV for state and federal elections. Oregon is the first state in the country to do so. “And because everyone told me we couldn't do this, and then we did it anyway.”

How did Rayfield and Alfoni blaze this Oregon trail for RCV? It took many years of patient effort in and outside the legislature, such as building a supporting network of community groups. And it took compromise, such as agreeing to remove state level legislature elections at the request of County Clerks. 

Tune in to hear more about first-in-the-nation Oregon, the prospects there for citizen ballot passage in November, and whether this Oregon trail could be followed by other reform leaders and legislatures around the country seeking to depolarize our politics. 

The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production; original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

In 2024, Nevada voters will see a ballot Question 3 strikingly similar to the question on Final Five voting that passed by 6 points back in 2022. That’s because a constitutional amendment must be passed by voters twice in succession, according to Nevada law. 

And should voters approve Question 3 again this year, Nevada will become the second state (after Alaska) to implement this ambitious electoral voting reform system including a unified open primary and ranked choice general election.  

“After we won,” recalls Cesar Marquez of Nevada’s first passage of Final Five Voting in 2022, “Sondra, Doug, and I and so many others, we felt, okay, we now have two years to talk about ranked choice voting.”

A former Tesla Engineer, Marquez is referring to his colleagues Doug Goodman of Nevadans for Election Reform and Dr. Sondra Cosgrove of Vote Nevada. 

We learn how Goodman, a retired military veteran, began working on election reform in the Silver State a decade ago.  Initially, Goodman lobbied extensively for legislative action before pivoting to the ballot initiative process. He recalls: 

“One of the questions I was posing to business leaders at the time was, if you had a more open electoral system, could that be a tiebreaker if a company was considering moving to Nevada?” 

Sonda Cosgrove,  a history professor at Southern Nevada College, soon joined Goodman in that effort. She had noticed an alarming and counterintuitive trend in her efforts at Vote Nevada. Yes, more voters were registering to vote. But they were not voting in larger numbers. 

“And so we started realizing that they were being turned off right at the get-go in the primary,” says Cosgrove.” That's when.. .they were just kind of opting out.”

Marquez joined forces with Goodman and Cosgrove to place Final Five Voting on that 2022 ballot. But he came at political reform from a very different direction. 

“The first thing I'll say is that I never liked politics, I still don't like politics,” admits Marquez. “ My background is in engineering, and I've worked in manufacturing for my whole career.”

What do a military veteran, academic historian and engineer turned reformer have in common? 

Is ranked choice voting best demonstrated by a “rank the drink” event in English or “rank the taco” evening in Spanish?

The Purple Principles discusses these and other election reform questions in this latest episode of our season-long state election reform series. We began in Idaho then traveled to Washington DC, Alaska, South Dakota and Arizona, before landing here in Nevada.   

The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

“Everybody likes to think about these reforms as being revolutionary,” says Paul Johnson, former Mayor of Phoenix, now Co-Chair of Make Elections Fair AZ, on the record number of state level election reforms in play this year. “They’re not. City governments have been doing these reforms for about 50 to 60 years.”

Johnson, a former Democrat turned Independent, is leading a third attempt at opening primary elections in Arizona to independent and unaffiliated voters through a 2024 citizen ballot initiative that also amends the state constitution to allow ranked choice general elections. He’s joined in this effort by GOP strategist Chuck Coughlin, a veteran of hundreds of candidate and issue campaigns in the Grand Canyon state and now treasurer at Make Elections Fair AZ.

“The very basis of our thinking is that if you're going to use taxpayer money to run an election,” says Coughlin, “you have to treat every voter the same. You have to treat every candidate the same. I mean, that is a principle part of our American jurisprudence and the way we govern ourselves.”

In this episode, we learn how Johnson and Coughlin initially hoped to pursue the Alaska election Final Five Voting model of a unified open primary plus ranked choice general election. Ultimately, they decided on a measured approach with higher probability of success.

“We did five statewide surveys trying to see if we could get that done, which would be a Final Five open primary, " says Coughlin. “I concluded in June of last year that that was not possible.... Paul and his colleagues came back and said, ‘Hey, we just want to do an open primary.’”

Listen to the episode as Chuck and Paul share the data behind their incremental approach to election reform.

We also hear how two political rivals (Paul & Chuck) joined forces in advocating for more sensible elections and pragmatic representation in the highly polarized state of Arizona.

“I always liked to tease Chuck that the only job that he had in the governor's office was to destroy my career,” says Paul Johnson of two Gubernatorial campaign losses to candidates supported by Coughlin. “And he likes to tease me back, he did a pretty good job.”

Is this the year Arizona voters embrace the principle of treating all voters and candidates the same in their elections?

In fact, this Arizona amendment could precede further general election reform via the legislature or citizen ballot process. Opening party-run primaries could even happen in the near term.

This episode is part of our season-long non partisan election reform series. Previous episodes have visited Washington DC, Idaho and South Dakota. Upcoming episodes travel to Nevada, Colorado and Alaska. 

The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.