The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Ranked Choice Voting Is 'Spreading Like Poison,' Alaskans for Honest Elections Founder Says

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

The founder of Alaskans for Honest Elections is speaking out against ranked choice voting, which he says is "spreading like poison." "Ranked choice voting is a whole way that certain people want to redefine how we vote. It's no longer one person, one vote. It's a very complicated system where everybody's thrown into a jungle primary," Art Mathias, president and founder of Wellsprings Ministry in Anchorage, Alaska, tells The Daily Signal.  "Our House race to replace [Rep.] Don Young was 48 people trying to make it through that to become the top four. Then the top four go through a campaign to a runoff. So, if you're not extremely well-known, if you don't have a lot of money, you're not going to go any place in the race," Mathias says. Young, a Republican who held Alaska's sole at-large House seat from 1973 until 2022, was the longest-serving Republican in congressional history. He died a year ago this week on March 18, 2022. The ranked choice election for the seat was won by a Democrat, Mary Peltola. Mathias adds:  So, you end up with somebody that had only 10% in the primary actually winning at the other end. It's very complicated. People don't like it. Very expensive. It discourages voter turnout. It's not a good deal, and it's spreading like poison.Mathias joins today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the importance of election integrity, how big the movement around ranked choice voting is, and what's at stake if Alaska continues to use ranked choice voting.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Nothing else is Rees. Ranked choice voting is very complicated. People don't like it. Very expensive. It discourages voter turnout. It's not a good deal. And it's spreading like poison. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, March 16th.

I'm Samantha Sherris. And that was Art Matthias. He's the founder of the group Alaskans for Honest Elections. Art joined me at CPAC to discuss rank choice voting, the importance of election integrity, how big the movement around a lot of. ranked choice voting is and what's at stake if Alaska continues to use rank choice voting. We'll get to my conversation with art right after this. Conservative women, conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen,

and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories that are of particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to politics and policy. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcasts. And we are also problematic on social media. So be sure to follow us on Instagram. Joining today's show is Art Matthias.

He is the president and founder of Well Springs Ministry. in Anchorage, Alaska, and he's also been one of the leading voices against ranked choice voting in Alaska. Art, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you, Samantha, for having us. Of course. Now, you're part of Alaskans for Honest Elections, and before we get too far into our interview, can you briefly remind our audience what ranked choice voting is?

Well, that's a big topic. Ranked choice voting is a whole way that certain people want to redefine how we vote. It's no longer one person, one vote. It's a very complicated system where everybody's thrown into a jungle primary. So our house race to replace Don Young was 48 people trying to make it through that to become the top four. Then the top four go through a campaign to a runoff. And so if you're not extremely well known, if you don't have a lot of money, you're not going to go any place in the race. And then there's a very complicated counting.

system. You've got to vote for four people. Then they drop the fourth one off. They drop the third one off until supposedly somebody gets 50%. But every time they drop somebody off, they drop out votes. So they're disqualified or distinguished, exhausted, I think, is the word they used. And so in the House race, 17,000 people, six and a half percent were dropped off. Wow. So you end up with somebody that had only 10% in the primary actually winning at the other end. So it's very complicated. People don't like it. Very expensive. It discourages voter turnout. It's not a good deal, and it's spreading like poison.

I wanted to also just talk about how recent this idea, you know, this voting concept of ring to choice voting is in a lot. Alaska. It started, I believe, just about three years ago, 2020. First used last year in 2022. So what happened in Alaska? What happened in Alaska is a group of woke corporations, Soros-type corporations, came to Alaska, spent $7 million, telling us how good ranked choice was, and they presented it as a way to control dark money. Well, it was dark money telling us they're going to control themselves. It didn't work. We had more dark money ever.

So most of us didn't understand because that's how it was promoted and it only won by about 1%. So we don't want it. We are going to repeal it through another ballot measure that I am doing through Alaskans for Honest Elections.com.

There's our website. Perfect. I was going to ask you about that so I'm glad you told that to our listeners so they can check it out. And, you know, in terms of, you know, how big is this movement around rank-choice voting? What other states have adopted similar? The only other state is Massachusetts. It's another small state or that's we're cheap dates because we only have 700,000 people in Alaska.

So it's easy for these corporations to come in and experiment on us. And frankly, we don't like it. We're tired of it. And in Alaska, there's a huge groundswell. We've gathered half our signatures in two weeks. We have spontaneous groups coming together all over the state, forming signing parties. I've never seen a movement like this ever. I've never seen the anger.

We've been deceived. We've been sold a bill of goods, and Alaskans are angry. So we will not have any challenge getting this on the ballot. Our biggest challenge is defending it on the ballot, Because the other side are rich. They got unlimited amounts of money. They spent $7 million two years ago. They spent a million in the last six weeks defending it.

They're going to spend $15 million to get their vote out. We've got to raise $15 million to compete. So what's at stake if this isn't reversed, right? Like what's at stake if Alaska continues to use choice-ranked voting? The stakes are incredibly high. Bottom line is people with money can buy an election. They can buy candidates because it's just a name ID race. It's got nothing to do with qualifications.

The person that won the house seat this year, her ads were all about how many guns she had and how many fish she caught. There's no substance to it. The debate of ideas is taken away. So it's just fluff and money. And for the corporation's pushiness, it's an investment because they get paid back many, many, many times over by controlling our government. So it's a great investment form.

That's why they're doing it. Money and power. It's all they care about. They don't care about people or Alaska or United States. They just want money and power. So our message is to the people. but love our country. We've got to come together.

We're going to lose it. So one of the seven policy priorities here at Heritage is election integrity. And could you speak more broadly about the need to have safe and secure elections? Well, that's our basis of our country. If our elections aren't safe and secure, if people have no, no feel that the vote is not going to be counted, then they're not going to go vote. That's what happened in our general this year. we had the lowest turnout ever.

It was in, since we've been a state. And it was down 20% in all demographics. Republicans, Democrats, independents, all groups of people were down 20%. This type of voting is ranked choice destroys the incentive to vote. Because in the House race, for an example, 17,000 votes were exhausted.

How do you know your vote was counted? I don't know if my vote was counted. I could have made a mistake on the ballot. It's very complicated to fill out four lines, put these dots all in the right place. If I got a dot in the wrong place, my vote's thrown out. It's not counted.

And if I didn't vote, if I only voted for one candidate, my vote was counted once, while others had their vote counted two or three times. So this destroys our security of an honest, fair election. So people don't vote. Our voter turnout in a general election

was only 44%. This is the poster child for election integrity groups to fight what great choice is. Well, Art, thank you so much for joining us. Just before we go, I wanted to give you the opportunity to have the final thought for a conversation. Thank you, Samantha. Well, the final thought is to everybody in America.

Alaska is the epicenter. We're the ones that are repealing this. If we repeal it in Alaska, it's going to stop it in the country. So we need help. We can't fight all those rich corporations. that have unlimited money. If you want to save our country, if you want to save our nation,

save Alaska also, we have to repeal this. So please go to our website, Alaskansforonestelections.com. Give us some money. Help us in any way you can. We cannot do this by ourselves. So thank you.

Yes, thank you so much. I appreciate it. You bet. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to my interview with Art Rethai. If you haven't gotten a chance, make sure you subscribe to The Daily Signal wherever you get your podcast and help us reach even more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review.

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