Kyle Bailey on Bringing Ranked Choice Voting to Maine [11-21-19]

Welcome to the next episode of Another Way, the podcast produced by Equal Citizens, a nonpartisan pro democracy organization founded by Lawrence Lessig. But longtime listeners probably already know that, and they know that. This is Adam Icken, the campaign's manager for Equal Citizens. Before we begin today, I wanted to let you know that we have a Patreon account to support this podcast. If you become a Patreon supporter, not only will you allow us to keep this podcast going, but you'll get access to bonus episodes and other cool rewards. You can sign up by going to patreon.com that's P A T R E o-n.com/citizens now to the topic of this episode. Joining me today is Kyle Bailey. Kyle managed the historic ballot campaign that won the nation's first first statewide ranked choice voting law in Maine in 2016 and the 2018 ballot measure campaign that protected the voter approved law from legislative repeal. And in 2012, he led in state fundraising for the campaign that won the nation's first statewide ballot measure campaign for the freedom to marry for same sex couples. Kyle is the owner and president of Peach Tree Strategies, LLC and lives in Gora, Maine with his husband, State Representative Andrew McLean. In full disclosure, Kyle and his colleagues in Maine have been incredibly supportive of Equal Citizens efforts in New Hampshire and elsewhere to advance ranked Choice voting. Kyle, so glad you could join us today.

Hey, it's great to be with you, Adam.

So normally I start these interviews off with a broad analytical question, but with you I want to try something a little bit different. This conversation will obviously focus on ranked choice voting and I love ranked choice voting, but I also recognize it can be a little bit difficult to message at times. So I want to start this conversation by hearing your campaign pitch to voters and to our listeners today. What is ranked Choice voting? How does it work? Break it down as if you are door knocking.

Sure. So ranked choice voting is just a different way of electing politicians. It's a pretty simple, fair and easy voting system. So when you walk into the voting booth, instead of having to just pick one candidate, when you've got more than two choices, you get a chance to rank them so your first choice, your second choice, and so on. You can rank as many or as few as you like. And on election night, we add up the votes to see who's got the most. And if no candidate has a majority of first choices, we look to see who's in last place. They're eliminated. We have an instant runoff and what happens is the candidate is in last place, is eliminated but if you're, you're, your favorite candidate is eliminated, your first choice, your vote's not wasted, your vote counts to your second choice. And so what happens is we just have a instant runoff process where everyone has a chance to participate and have our voice truly heard so that we have a consensus winner who's really elected by a majority of voters. Rather than having someone win with 30% of the vote or 35% of the vote, it really gives us a chance to have our voices heard, to have more voice and more choice. So you get a chance to rank your choices, express your true preferences, and not have to vote based on what the polls say, or not have to worry about the spoiler effect. All that sort of BS of campaigns goes away. And a lot of the incivility of campaigns goes away too, because some of that negativity that drives campaigns around, you know, don't waste your vote. You know, don't vote for that third party candidate because, because they're splitting the vote. All that stuff about politics that, that dominates the conversation and forces the real issues, like how are we going to like, actually solve health care, how are we going to actually fix our schools? Those issues sort of reemerge and we actually have to talk about subsidy issues again. And that's why rain choiceability is so important, because it drives us back to conversations about things that really matter and how we make our communities better again. And that, that elevates our voices. And it's why it's so important that we fix our politics because we want a better political system, we want better outputs. We got to change the inputs. And that's what range choice voting is all about. And it's why I'm so passionate about, about getting it in place all across the country like we have it in Maine, right?

So again, for listeners, it's really, really easy. You just rank your candidates like you'd rank, say, ice cream. And if your candidate or whoever comes in last, if there's no majority winner, if there's no one who has 50% of the vote plus one, then the last place vote getter is eliminated and their votes are reallocated according to second choices. I mean, Kyle, it really is simple, but I want you to dig a bit more into, give us some more benefits of ranked choice voting.

Why?

I want you to just elaborate a little bit more. Why is this so critical? Why is this what you have focused two campaigns on?

Well, I think it's so critical because our political system is broken and we all know it. And it's just not working the way it should. I mean, nothing is really getting done in D.C. a significant way. I mean, you know, in 80, 90% of Americans are concerned about gun violence, but Congress can't do anything or won't do anything about gun violence in America. Something's fundamentally broken with our political process. And we can do things like solving gerrymandering, and we should. And we can do things like addressing money in politics. And we absolutely should, because there's a really, those are real problems in our politics. But we also have to peel back and understand that there's some bigger structural problems there. Politics, which is the way we actually elect politicians. So when you have just two candidates running against each other, someone's going to get a majority, 50% plus one. And it may be the candidate you like the best, and that's great. And it may be the candidate you don't like the best. And if it's not the person you like the best, at least you know a majority of your friends and neighbors wanted that person. And it is what it is. But as soon as a third candidate or fourth or fifth candidate enters that race, suddenly someone can win with 40% of the vote, 37% of the vote, 35% of the vote. And what ends up happening is actually a majority of voters can oppose the candidate who won. 60% of voters may actually not want the person who ends up winning to win. And that can have real consequences for the way we govern and get things done or not get things done. And that can matter when it comes to primaries and general elections and Congress and governorships and even the presidency. So if we don't start to think about fixing that problem of having majority elected leaders, not only so they're accountable to voters more broadly, but they have to campaign differently so that they build campaigns that aren't just about appealing to narrow factions of supporters and giving them red meat that energizes them to go to go vote for them, but actually have to like, knock on doors and talk to voters who may not agree with them on all the issues and say, I need not just your first choice, and if I can't be your first choice, I want to be your second choice. Let's talk about where we agree and don't agree. And when they have to go govern, they have to think about representing not just a narrow faction of voters, right? So that those members of Congress who are in Congress right now who, who won't sit at the table and figure out how we solve, solve gun violence issues because they feel like they're beholden to the nra. Don't just think about their, you know, NRA donors, but have to think about, you know, the voters in their district who also care about gun violence, who may not be the donors who are funding them. Right. They have to think about other people, too. And when we start to change the dynamics of who they have to talk to in campaigns and force them to reach out beyond their base and appeal to those voters for not just first but second choice rankings, to build majority coalitions and challenge the ways in which we campaign, in which they campaign for office and how they win. That's what range voice voting actually does. It pushes parties, PACs, and politicians to change the way they campaign, to reach out more broadly, to build consensus, to have to listen to voices they haven't listened to before, and to be accountable to those voices not only when they campaign, but when they govern so that they can get reelected. And they have to govern differently as a result of that process. And so we can actually start to solve problems that way. And I think that's the sort of fundamental underlying difference. And when you, when you allow that sort of competition because you're not only changing the way the campaign, but when you allow for ranked choice voting to exist, you also, you also allow that competition to exist for third party independent candidates because you remove the spoiler label. Right. So how many times have you maybe wanted to or even thought about, maybe I really like that independent candidate or I like that third party candidate, or I really like what they had to say, but in the back of your mind, you think, I can't even consider voting for that candidate, or I really like to vote for them, but I don't want to waste my vote, or if I vote for them, I might help elect a candidate the least. People think about that stuff all the time. And the problem is they feel like they can't vote for them and so they have to vote for the D or they are, or those sort of dynamics come into place. Ranked choice voting gets rid of all that. You know, you can vote for the candidate you like the best without worrying you'll help to like the candidate you like the least. And it just changes those dynamics. And the end result is it actually does help to fix our political system and those other reforms. The gerrymandering and the money in politics all complement ranked choice voting and help to fix our broken political system. But ranked choice voting does something unique that no other political reform does. It levels the playing field and fixes something unique about our politics. Structurally that no other reform really gets at. And I think that's what to me is so exciting about, about this reform. And I think other people are waking up to that and it's why it's taking off all across the country right now.

Right. And I think I want to highlight this one thing you said which has always resonated with me, which is that, you know, if you're campaigning and you see, you know, say you're in a primary or a multi candidate race and you see a yard sign of your opponent out there who maybe you agree with on some things, instead of just turning away and not knocking on the door under ranked choice voting, you should knock on that door and you can say, hey, I see that sign over there for my opponent. That's totally okay. But can I be your second choice? Here's where I agree with your top candidate. You know, these are the issues that we agree on. So maybe I don't, you don't agree with me on everything, but maybe you agree with me enough to vote for me second.

Right.

I mean, that is a radical change in, in campaigning. And you're right, I think that would greatly decrease negative campaigning because you can't alienate someone else's base.

Yeah, it cost you the election. I mean, we see it, we see it all the time. We had In Maine a 2nd congressional district race this past election cycle where the incumbent congressman ended up losing his seat. He refused to ask for second choice rankings, his primary challenger asked for second and third choice rankings and that challenger ended up winning because they asked for those rankings and went and talked to voters who liked one of the third party candidates the best. And so that willingness to sort of reach out beyond your base and appeal more broadly pays off. And the reverse is true as well, that unwillingness as a candidate to reach out beyond your base can cost you an election. And so, and voters respond to that because voters are so sick and tired of the politics of divisiveness and appealing only to narrow factions of support and the polarization that's happening in our country. I think you're absolutely right. And it's such a turn off and people are ready for this change.

Right. So, okay, I'm going to ask the reverse. What is the best argument you've heard against ranked choice voting and why doesn't it work? In other words, what do you hear most about why, oh no, we can't do that. And what do you say in response?

So the, the most frequent argument I hear against ranked choice voting is that it's Too confusing. If I knock on the door, you know, the two campaigns we were in in Maine to win ranked choice voting in 2016 and then to defend it in 2018 when the legislature tried to repeal what voters had passed, I knock on a door and talk to a voter. I'd show them what the ballot look like. I'd say, this is what ranked choice voting is. This is how it works. This is why it mattered 70% of the time. People would say, oh, that's great. I love, I love that. I think it's awesome idea. Why haven't we been voting that way? It makes total sense. They'd say, I, I get it, but I'm not sure. My, my neighbor would figure it out. And I'd say, well, funny, funny you say that because I was just at your neighbor's house and they said the same thing about you. So I think anytime there's a new idea, you know, that people, people aren't sure that other people will sort of get it because it is new and it is different. Right? And so I think that's the, I've always said they'll see anything. This is a new idea. And so there's something, there's inertia. Like we're, in some ways we're trying to roll a boulder up a mountaintop, you know, and so we've been doing that. I mean, Maine was sort of a big lift, like trying to move this boulder of a mountaintop. And you know, we're sort of cresting that mountaintop now. And I think we're going to see more and more states adopt ranked choice voting in the years to come. And this really sort of take off because people are picking up on the fact that the way we've always voted doesn't have to be the way that we vote going forward. There are other, other ways in which we can choose the politicians. There are better ways to elect leaders. And ranked choice voting is really the best alternative among those different ways because it gives voters more choice and more voice in elections. Right.

And you know, when we were doing the work in New Hampshire to try and pass ranked choice voting for the presidential primary, I mean, this is something we heard all the time from politicians. It's, it's a very condescending argument. It's a very anti voter argument that, well, voters are too dumb to understand this change, which is really as simple as 1, 2, 3. Just the simple process of ranking your candidates. I mean, we rank things all the time. You know, whether it's ice cream flavors, beer, or you know, political preference, we do that all the time. And so this idea that it's, it's, it's too complicated for voters is really elitist to me. And it never made sense. And I think that your story is right, that, you know, we always presume that, oh, well, if I understand it, but you know, maybe others won't though, because maybe I'm smarter. But really, if you dig into that, I think it's a very elitist argument and one that I don't think holds water, especially both in Maine and elsewhere. You see that voters, you know, not only understand it, but they're, they're very satisfied with this reform. So I, you know, I think that, you know, while it's a compelling argument, if you don't really dig into it, once you do, it doesn't really carry much water. But, but Kyle, I want to dig into the, you know, the real heart of this story, which is in Maine, you've done two campaigns to get this done. So let's start before 2016. So where did the idea to run into a ballot campaign for ranked choice voting come from? I believe it came in part from Maine's election history. Correct?

Yeah. So I was working on a gubernatorial campaign in 2014 with a colleague of mine, Kara McCormick, and she had been talking with Dick Woodbury, who was then a state senator and independent from Yarmouth. He had introduced legislation previously in the main legislature to introduce ranked choice voting, as had a former state representative, Diane Russell, a Democrat from Portland. And ranked choice voting legislation had been introduced in the legislature, I think every session going back about a decade at that point. This was in 2014 again. And during the time there was a gubernatorial election happening, it was a three way race. We were finding ourselves in the midst of an election where we had again, more than two candidates. And it was one of those races where people were starting to be fearful of vote splitting and a spoiler effect. And that is something that we've experienced in Maine's gubernatorial elections and in some other races going back several decades with increasing anxiety and fear among the electorate, exacerbated by the media and polling, et cetera.

And so anyway, very quickly, very quickly, it was something like 9 out of 11 previous governors had been elected.

9 of the last 11 elections for governor had been won by someone with less than a majority. And in half of those, the candidate who won got less than 40% of the vote.

I mean, that's incredible.

Long history of non majority winners.

I mean, that's absolutely incredible. I mean, talk about, you know, fertile ground To. To push an idea like this.

Absolutely. Yeah. A long history of that. And so 2014 looked like it might be another one of those elections where the winner would get not a majority because there would be vote splitting happening again. And so we were working on this gubernatorial campaign. And so Dick and Kara filed the citizens initiative and I started working with them even as the gubernatorial campaign was still playing out in the last few weeks. And we started a volunteer effort, not knowing, you know, whether there was real interest on the part of Maine people to do this or not, but believing that they're believing in our hearts that there. That there was, and starting to organize people with the help of Diane Russell and another guy who was working on the campaign with Kara and I, Finn Malanson. Within. Within 10 days before the election in November of 2014, we sent out a series of emails. Within 10 days, we were able to recruit 200 volunteers to work the polling places on election day in November 2014 and gathered over 35,000 signatures of the 61,000 that we needed. People literally stood in line on election day waiting to sign our initiatives. And we knew that we had something. People actually drove in snowstorm volunteers to get petition forms out to people the day before the election so that people collect signatures at polling locations on election day that year. And we knew we had something. And so, you know, without a bank account, without any funding lined up, without all the things that you're always supposed to do before you start a campaign on just sort of a hope and a prayer, we started to organize ourselves and I started to raise grassroots money, we started to do house parties, started to do presentations, hired a small team of people and started to get to work and ran a two year voter education campaign to explain to voters what this was, collected our signatures, submitted them, ran a campaign, did TV ads and knocked on doors, and lo and behold, we surprised the political establishment and won on election night in November 2016 by the second largest referendum vote of Maine people in the history of our state and shocked, really, the political establishment in Augusta.

Yeah, that's an understatement to say you shocked everybody. I mean, you really ran a scrappy little campaign that did what no one thought possible. And of course, I want to say as a precursor to the conversation, it does seem like this, this imagery of people driving through and canvassing in the snow is a recurring theme in the struggle for ranked choice voting that does seem to always come up, that the determination of, of folks to get this done reaches the point where you're willing to stand out in the cold and drive through the snow for democracy. I mean, this is really a committed group of individuals and I, I'm, you know, so impressed that you were able to get that done. So. But before we kind of go into the next step of the story, you know, and to our listeners who are unfamiliar with the story, believe me, what Kyle just described is merely the beginning of this crazy story for ranked choice voting. One that has a happy ending. Don't worry. I want to dig a bit more into this 2016 campaign because in some respects you were tasked with a Herculean effort trying to explain a completely unknown reform to a statewide audience. I mean, previously ranked choice voting had been implemented in municipalities, so it's a much smaller electorate. This was a statewide effort that you were trying to get Maine to be the first state to ever adopt Rancho's voting. And you had some really creative ideas for educational events. I know this. You and I have talked about them. My personal favorite are beer elections. Can you just describe to our listeners beer elections, but also just, you know, the different ways you morphed this idea of just using ranked choice voting elections in practice in different ways to educate voters?

Yeah, I mean totally. We were, we were, we, we were starting from scratch, you know, like range race voting existed in Minneapolis and San Francisco and then we were trying to win it in a pretty rural state like Maine. So we did a lot of presentations to any group that would basically have us explaining what it was, how it worked, why it mattered. We did a lot of try to creative mock elections from ranked choice pizza elections to rank choice flower beds to rank choice, whatever people wanted to rank choice, we were all about it. And at one point I got the idea that Maine has like a number of other states and communities across the country, sort of a booming craft beer scene, especially a lot of young folks who are trying to stay in Maine or coming back to Maine. And it's pretty supported by the community, communities here. And so we hooked up with, just started calling through craft breweries here in Maine and said hey, we'd love to do, just sort of come to the brewery one night and work with you guys. Figure out like three or four or five beers that we can do. Flight, people can buy flights and we'll bring ballots and people can buy a flight and fill out the ballot, rank their beers and we'll do a mock election, a ranked choice beer election. And we'll, you know, we're not, we're not trying to like proselytize too much, but it's opportunity for us to like, invite people in the community who are curious about what this ranked choice voting thing is they're going to vote on, you know, next November to sort of learn a little bit more about what it is and how it works. And people who may be hanging out your brewery that night, if they want to try it out, they certainly can. It's just an educational opportunity. And, you know, I don't, I don't know that like a single craft brewery said no to us. We did 40 or 50 of these around the state, and we did it a number of different times, and it really caught on and people loved them. And we got upwards to a couple hundred people at some of these breweries, and towards the end of our campaign, the media started coming to a number of our breweries, and every time there was a news story about our campaign about ranked choice voting, whether it was about the. I mean, oddly enough, whether it was about the faith coalition that was endorsing us or our Republican support or something our opponent said, the news anchors and the reporters would always refer to us as the group that did the ranked choice voting beer election. And so it was just, it just turned out great for us because if we couldn't be as American as apple pie, we were happy to be as American as beer. Yeah. And so we just, we, we were, we were the beer guys, we were the beer gals and girls, and that was ranked choice voting. And so it's just this great story. We were able to support the local beer industry in Maine and connect ourselves with beer. And it made it so simple for people to really understand how it worked. And, you know, what people saw was that at most of the beer elections, a really smooth, drinkable IPA was the winner. And everybody sort of sat back and said, yeah, I could sit around and drink that IPA with my friends. I'm pretty pleased with that. And if that's the candidate, the sort of candidate that could win a ranked choice voting election, I think we'd all survive. So I kind of get this ring choice voting thing right.

I mean, Kyle, this was genius. And I've told this to you before, is that, you know, this is so smart because not only do you give the opportunity for those who are already interested in the reform to actually try it out, to do it, to learn by doing, you know, a kind of very progressive education model, you're also getting the people who just happen to be in the brewery, people who just happen to like beer. And so it's a great organizing tactic and it just gives, you know, made People in Maine know the campaign by, as you said, the beer folks. So it was giving people, you know, a metaphor, an image to attach to the campaign. I mean, it was really such a smart organizing thing. And one thing that you told me that I just wanted to highlight is free from these ranking flower beds or beer from those initial events. You've told me in the past that people would just come up to you and say, oh, I brought people over and we had a cookie election of the cookies that I make. In other words, this idea of just ranking things spread, it naturally spread across the state. And so it was this, what initially started as a campaign organizing tactic had a life of its own. I mean, talk about an intuitive political sense right there, that people understood this is smart, this is a better way to hold elections. And to me, that is the most encouraging part of the 2016 campaign.

Totally. And I run into people nowadays. I mean, now we obviously use ranked choice voting some of our elections in Maine, but I run to people all the time who are like, oh, yeah, now we use it for X, y or Z decision making and whatever we do now. And so people just adopted it for just common decision making practices for the way they vote or whatever. I mean, it's just, it's becoming just mainstream and how people make decisions and a lot of different things in Maine. It's really cool to see. Right.

And we've. We used that in New Hampshire when we were trying to run our campaign. Okay, so. So back to the story. So, but that's not the end. So you won the initiative in 2016, but there were, There were certain folks who said, maybe not, maybe not, that the court and then the legislature essentially tried to derail the implementation of ranked choice voting. So. So pick up the story. What happened next?

Sure. So we won on election night. November 2016, shocked the political establishment. You know, I thought at the time, you know, this is great, we need to be prepared for some pushback in the legislature. But. But now, you know, now we should turn our attention to making sure it's implemented well. And, you know, there's. There's good voter education and everything goes smoothly. And the hardest part was yet to come. So pretty much right away, opponents in the legislature started to work to undermine the new law, find ways to chip away at it. And eventually what they were able to do through a series of different bills was try to repeal it. They tried a number of different proposals, a number of different avenues. In the regular session of the legislature, which met from January to June of 2017, they tried a number of different maneuvers to try to kill ranked choice voting. We actually were able to really galvanize the movement we built during the campaign, and we stopped them. We surprised a lot of the political establishment that thought that, oh, well, you know, they won this thing at the ballot box and we'll just come back and kill it in the legislature. We're actually able to stop them despite them turning to the courts and trying to get the court to manipulate the court to get them to weigh in on their side, to try to give them the ammunition they thought they needed to overturn the citizen approved law, which, by the way, they did on several other initiatives that have also been approved by voters in the ballot box, which we'll get to in a minute. And we were able to stop them. And then they called a special session in late October of 2017, which they said was intended to deal with with Maine's new marijuana legalization law. And at that session, at the middle of the night, they took up a bill in the house, and by four votes in the main house, they repealed the law that voters had approved one year previous to adopt ring choice voting. And they timed it in such a way, having repealed it a full one year later in October, so that we have something in Maine called a people's veto, which is an initiative assistant citizens initiative, but it is a citizens initiative that's a constitutional referendum process that allows us to veto something that the legislature enacted, or in this case, the legislature overturned our initiative, but they did late October. And so we are allowed to basically overturn what they overturn, so restore our law. But they timed it in such a way that then we would have to collect signatures over the wintertime in Maine in order to put it back on the ballot during a June primary election with lower voter turnout, when they thought they could control who would show up at the polls.

I told our listeners that the cold and the winter would come back into the story.

It does. Yes. And so we essentially had 90 days to collect the signatures that we needed, 61,000 signatures. And so again, this is late October. We can collect signatures at the polls, as I mentioned before, in Maine on election day. So we had a November election happening within a matter of weeks after the legislature decided to repeal the law that voters had approved. We really needed that election day to try to get the signatures because we're pretty much a volunteer effort in our state. I mean, we're thousands of volunteers. We needed that election day to go get signatures in the polls when we can actually organize and reach votes. Voters and our Secretary of State by law, did not, was not required to get us our petitions by the time of that election. We really worked hard with our allies to apply pressure to get our signature to get our petitions approved by that time. So lo and behold, at about 5pm the day before the election, the Secretary of State approved our petition. So we had about six different print shops around the state prepared to print our petitions. They printed our petitions and ran the print shop, stayed open until about midnight and ran petition sheets all night long. We had several dozen volunteers picking them up and then we had volunteers driving throughout the night until about 6 or 7 o' clock in the morning, dropping them off to volunteers around the state so that those volunteers could get up in the morning and go to polling locations around the state at 6am to start collecting signatures. We had about 500 volunteers signed up to collect signatures on election day. That was November of 2017. We got again about half the signatures we needed. And then the duration of those signatures we collected in the middle of wintertime in Maine, in the freezing cold, some of the coldest winter days we've had in Maine on record in recent years, and people stood outside with hands freezing their gel in their pens, literally freezing, getting signature by signature by signature, because they knew that this was that important, this was this important to the state and that standing up to the legislature and demanding that the citizens voices be heard and that this law be protected was that important. And we got the signatures, we got it on the ballot. And then we had to fight a series of lawsuits to fight the legislature again, which tried to prevent the law from being implemented for the primary election. Because by having submitted signatures, so get this, when we submitted the signatures for the people's veto, we actually then froze the law in place as we had approved it the year previous, as voters had approved it, right until the voters could weigh in again, which meant it was the law governing the state of Maine for the June election. And it would also be on the ballot in June for voters to again weigh in on whether they wanted to keep the law, protect it in place. So the legislature tried to fight again to try to prevent it from actually being implemented in June, we also filed a lawsuit forcing the Secretary of State to implement the law. At the same time, we were running a ballot measure campaign to win the referendum to save the law. And we were running a voter education campaign to educate voters about how they would use ranked choice voting because they were about to go into the voting booth and actually rank their choices for the first time. In a primary election. This all happened in a matter of just several months over the wintertime in Maine. Right. And so the June election came and we won ranked choice voting by an even wider 8 point margin with voter support at the ballot box. Voters overwhelmingly said that ranked choice voting was very easy or easy to use. And the Secretary of State, who had been challenging to work with on the issue, and even our opponents acknowledged that voters did not have any challenges with ranking their choices, that it was fairly straightforward and it started to deliver the results that advocates like myself and others had promised that it was the change that voters had wanted. So it was, as you mentioned, it was a roller coaster ride like nothing I had ever experienced before in my life, and I hope I never have experience again.

Well, you know, if you, if you get another victory in this manner, you know, for the sake of democracy, maybe I hope you do. But I want to recap again, because this is a very confusing story to the listeners, so totally. So they collect the ballot or the signatures to get on the ballot in 2016, it's approved, the courts kind of shake things up, and then the legislature tries to repeal it. Then they initiate a people's veto which freezes the law as it was approved, meaning that the repeal of the law did not go into effect. So ranked choice voting was still the law of the land until voters could vote on it again. And because it coincided with the primary, they would use ranked choice voting for the primary that was on the ballot in 2018, and voters would vote whether or not to keep ranked choice voting moving forward. Talk about confusing. But overall, running five different seeming campaigns at once, or however many campaigns it was, you won all of them. Now, the one complicating thing here is that the court did rule in an advisory opinion that ranked choice voting could only be used for the primaries and federal elections because of a plurality clause in the state constitution pertaining to state elections.

Right? Yes, that was their determination at the time.

Right. So. So moving forward, when the law was approved, it would only apply moving forward to federal elections and primary elections for federal and state office, right?

That's correct.

Right. So the battle goes on to try and expand the law as the original intent would have had to have it apply to general elections for state level races. But, you know, that's correct. You getting the majority of what you wanted, I think is incredibly significant. So then. So then. But the fight wasn't over because then Maine had to use ranked choice voting for senate and congressional elections later that year. So there was a lot of education to do to get people ready to again use it in a larger, wider electorate in the general election. Because more people would. Would turn out for the general election than a primary election, right?

That's right.

So talk a little bit about the run up to 2018 and then what happened in 2018. Because ranked choice voting actually was decisive for the first time in American history in deciding a congressional election.

Yep. So we did, we ran another voter education initiative leading up to the November 2018 election. Mail, television really just letting voters know that they'd have an opportunity to rank their choices for the first time in a. In a crowded election for the United States Senate and two crowded elections for Congress. Congress. Both of our congressional elections being multi candidate elections, those all went smoothly. Two of the three elections candidates got an outright majority. And in the second Congressional District it went to the instant runoff of frank choice voting. So I alluded to this earlier, Talking about the 2nd congressional district race, which is western Maine, sort of parts of central Maine, northern Maine and down east Maine. It's the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi. And it was very consequential because what actually happened was the candidate who got the most votes on election night. So the most votes in the first round was the incumbent Congressman Bruce Poliquin. But he got less than 50% of the vote and he was neck and neck with his challenger, Jared Golden. And there were two independent candidates who got about 10% of the vote share between them. But because no candidate got a majority, ranked choice voting process kicked in. And so the candidates who got 10% of the vote were eliminated. But voters who liked those candidates the best, their votes weren't wasted. Their ballots were counted for their second or third choices. In this case, who do they like best between Jared golden, the chief challenger and Bruce Poliquin the incumbent. And what was found through the ring fluid building processes by a 2 to 1 margin, the voters who had voted for one of those two independent candidates went for the challenger, Jared Golden. And in fact he overcame the incumbent in the instant runoff in the final round of tabulation and got a majority of the votes in that final round of tabulation and defeated the incumbent, Bruce Poliquin. And so Jared golden is now the congressman from Maine's 2nd congressional district. So ranked choice board actually changed the outcome of Maine 2nd congressional district election

and clearly in a more democratic way. In other words, the winner who should have won the winner who had the most support by the largest number of people who had the majority support. One rain choice voting worked exactly how

it should, exactly as it intended. That's right. Because there was essentially vote splitting happening among those three candidates. Voters who were more aligned politically among their ideas and values were essentially vote splitting. And so ranked choice voting allowed those voters to sort of come together and say, as a consensus, we would prefer this candidate, prefer this individual to represent us rather than this individual. And therefore, this individual was elected rather than this individual. And that individual was Jared Goldin, who was the consensus among the voters in the second Congressional District. He was the one who was preferred by a majority of voters who participated in that ring choice voting election. Absolutely. And that's what ring choice voting allows for. Right.

So I just want to take a moment to express to our listeners just how incredible this story is. I mean, this is the embodiment of what reform can look like and likely does look like in terms of you win at first, you lose, you win again. You fight multiple battles along the way, and then you still have to work to implement it. But in the end, these ideas work. There are solutions to fix our democracy. And when you have enough of a grassroots movement, because this change isn't necessarily coming from the politicians, this change is not going to come from, you know, the benefactor, the elite benefactors. This is something that we didn't, you know, wait for politicians and donors to do this, that it was a grassroots movement, largely volunteer. That said, you know, the time for this idea is now. We need a fix, and the only people who are going to do this is we the people. So they came together, they won, lost, won, fought multiple battles, worked through the process all the way to implementation, and at the very end, they saw that the reform worked exactly as intended. I mean, this is really a story that should be widespread. Every American should know this story because it gives us hope that reform is not only achievable, but it works as intended. Now, not all reform works as intended, but at least it's ranked choice voting. This worked incredibly well. But that's not the end. So at the end of 2018, after the November 2018 midterm election, you have ranked choice voting in law for all primaries in the state and for all federal general elections. So for US Senate and for Congress. But the story doesn't end there, because then Kyle and Kara and the folks at RCV Maine, the Committee for ranked choice voting, try to push the envelope even further. Kyle, you want to pick up the story?

Yeah. So one of the offices that wasn't included in the original law was the presidency. So we. And part of that was because Maine has been a caucus State. And after the 2016 elections, there was a lot of conversation in Maine, as there has been a lot of places about about moving away from a caucus system into a primary. And so the legislature had been considering that, and we decided that we wanted to push for and a lot of conversations with our grassroots base that there was a lot of support for not only leaving the caucus and going to presidential primary, but obviously that that should be a ranked choice voting primary system and that the general election itself should also be primary along with every other general election. And so we work with our allies in the legislature to introduce legislation to adopt ranked choice voting for president and the Senate president. Troy Jackson was the chief sponsor of that legislation. Now consider that the previous legislature, 128th legislature had repealed means ranked choice voting law. This is now the 129th legislature, the next legislature, where we're introducing a bill by the senate president to adopt ranked choice voting for president of the United States. And so we started to work to whip votes in both chambers. And what happened was towards the end of the legislative session, which again ran January to June, at the very end of the general session, our bill was passed in the house, and it passed in the Senate, and then it was enacted in the House and it went back to the Senate. So in the main legislature, there's technically there's two votes in each chambers that have to happen in order for something to then go to the governor. It's the passage vote and the enactment vote. It's a procedural procedural votes. And so it passed in both chambers. And then the second round vote, the enactment vote, happened in the House and the House was done with it. Then it went over to the Senate. And during the middle of all this, our secretary of state was alerted to a concern that was raised about the fiscal note on the bill, perhaps lacking what he might have viewed as not enough funds in his mind to pay for the issue. And so he raised a concern at the 11th hour.

And it really was the 11th hour here. I mean, this. I remember being in communication with you.

Literally the 11th hour. Yeah, literally 11th hour. And the Appropriations committee had already spent all the money that was on the table, so. And really sort of created a difficult situation at the last minute when there were a lot of other things happening. And the legislature, this is now the legislature was meeting till about seven o' clock in the morning. So there was a lot of confusion, a lot of chaos, a lot of communications challenges like you do when you're meeting at seven o' clock in the morning. And the House is on one side of the building, the Senate's on the other, people trying to figure out what's going on and who's passing what. And are we going to do bonds or are we not? Which ones are we doing? And you know that it just happens. And so there was limbo on our bill, and our bill essentially got carried over and stayed on the agenda. And there was a question of whether the legislature would come back to deal with bonds, to put bonds on the ballot in November of this year of 2019 for voters to consider. And at that time, would they also take up ranked choice voting. And lo and behold, they scheduled a special session for the end of August earlier a couple months ago. And. And the agenda came out. And our bill was one of three, one of three bills on the unfinished calendar on the Senate. So the House had nothing to do. It was on the Senate. And so that didn't mean it was necessarily going to get voted on in the Senate. And so a lot of maneuvering had to take place. And long story short, fortunately, our Senate president, the last act of business in the senate before they adjourned, our Senate president called a vote on LD 1083, and the Senate Democrats enacted the bill right before they adjourned. And then the bill went to the governor, who sat on the bill for the amount of time that she was allowed to and then announced her decision that she would not sign the bill, but would allow it to go into law without her signature, meaning that it would become the law of the state of Maine to adopt rank choice voting for primaries and general elections. However, the implementation date would fall at such a time that it would not be implemented for the March Super Tuesday primary. That would be the new primary for the state of Maine, but it would be adopted in time for the November 2020 presidential election in Maine and be used in future presidential primaries and general elections. So Maine is now the first state in the country, will be the first state in the country to use ranked choice voting in a general election for president, and is still the first state to adopt ranked choice voting for presidential primaries in general elections by statute. Right. We've got another big win and another win and by the way, the first win of its kind for ranked choice voting in a state legislature. So a pretty historic win for ranked choice voting. And especially considering that the previous legislature in Maine actually repealed ranked choice voting, we're pretty excited by this win as well. Right.

And so again, for our listeners, I mean, I mean, really think about this, that, you know, a year plus after the legislature Tried to kill ranked choice voting. The legislature voted to advance it for the presidential election. I mean, that is remarkable. Talking about, you know, first being ridiculed and then being accepted. I mean, you put so much public pressure. I mean, this is part of what grassroots organizing does. One of the reasons why, you know, a lot of legislators wanted to vote or felt they compelled to vote for ranked choice voting. I mean, sure, probably many of them thought it was a great idea, but there was also the concern of backlash. You have developed a movement for democracy in Maine for ranked choice voting, and they knew that you had an accountable or a base that they would be accountable to if they didn't vote for it. And the second part of this story again is even though this isn't quite as dramatic as, you know, going to the ballot, you know, twice in two years, what happened here is again, the legislature voted on it. I mean, both houses passed it, but then they didn't. The senate didn't enact it in the last possible moment. And then there was this crazy period of limbo. I remember talking to Kara during this period. We talked every day and it was, it was, you know, kind of insanity. I mean, not knowing the status of the bill that again, the democratic elect, you know, Democratic small d elected, democratically elected legislature voted to approve. And yet it didn't become law. It never went to the governor's desk. And it might never have if not for some parliamentary maneuvering by the senate president at the last possible moment of the year to get it finally to the governor's desk, who again kept everyone in limbo about whether or not she would sign it. And by not signing it, it wasn't worst case scenario because it did become law, but because of the procedure, it would not go into effect until after the 2020 presidential primary in Maine. So though that is somewhat disappointing, I think we all can agree that the fact that Maine is the going to be the first state to use ranked choice voting for president of the United States in the general election is not just something to applaud, but it's frankly historic. You know, Kyle, I was going through the election results by state from the past seven or so elections, and there have been a lot of instances in which states have elected since all their electoral votes because we have winner take all systems in all in most states, not Maine, but, you know, except for Maine and Nebraska, if you win a state by, you know, 40% and you just happen to get one vote more than your opponent, you get all, all the electoral votes. And, and that's A system that just doesn't make sense. And ranked choice voting is a perfect fix in the interim to the electoral college in a system that is producing, you know, electoral vote winners with 40% of the vote or less. And so Maine adopting that, I think, sets a really nice precedent for the rest of the nation. And I think, you know, I mean, at equal citizens, we're working to implement ranked choice voting in other states for the presidential general election. And obviously we were working on it for the primary election. And so the significance I really want to underscore is just almost too much to explain. And I certainly hope that other states follow suit. So. So that does end the story for now. I mean, you, Kara, and others in Maine are going to be writing the next chapter, but for right now, we don't have access to those chapters because we can't tell the future. But one thing I can say is that the work in Maine, this amazing story for ranked choice voting, there's a great mini documentary called the Battle for Ranked Choice Voting. And indeed it was a battle, as your story illustrates. One consequence of this, Kyle, is that other states are now picking up the mantle or, you know, they have taken the baton and are running with it. Massachusetts and Alaska are currently in the process of potentially bringing ranked choice voting to the ballot in 2020. Other municipalities are looking at it. What do you see right now in terms of the spread of ranked choice voting across the country? Are you optimistic? Do you think that Maine kind of, you know, led the way?

Yeah, I'm totally optimistic. I think Massachusetts and Alaska both have a good shot. I think that there's a handful of legislatures where it's got a good shot potentially in their next round. You know, Minnesota is a place where there's been a lot of activity on rank chase voting in recent years. They've got a governor who's deported. You know, it's really interesting to see how we've got several states that are going to use it in their primaries this next cycle. I mean, somewhere like Hawaii where Democrats are going to be using their presidential primary process, Democrats dominate the state of Hawaii. If they like using it in their presidential primary, they could very easily decide to expand it to use it in other elections there as well. So I think there's a lot of opportunity. I think more and more places are as you. As you see ranked choice sort of used in more and more places, other places are going to start to follow suit and grassroots movements are going to pop up and a number of cities and counties and states, and I don't think, I don't think you can stop, I don't think you can stop this movement. I think people are going to demand this change and I'm excited to see, excited to see this spread all across the country because I think it's the change that we need to give more voice to the people and fix our broken political system.

Right? And as you guys proved right, I mean, you don't need a professional network of experienced campaigners. I mean, obviously you and Kara and others had a lot of political experience, but you didn't have money, you didn't have an infrastructure. In other words, this kind of campaign, it's not easy. But a dedicated group of citizens can do remarkable things in states where there are ballot initiatives and where there aren't ballot initiatives, a long sustained campaign to educate voters and politics, politicians can also work. And, and there is one question I want to pose to you before we end this podcast. I guess there are two if we get to both, but one is one of the consequences. As so as amazing as the general election in 2018 in Maine using ranked voting was so the way, you know, the fact that ranked Ears voting worked exactly as intended. One of the consequences though was that the Republican was in the lead on election night and after the re tabulation of votes, again, exactly as it was supposed to, the Republican lost. And that led the Republican Party into a little bit of a tailspin. They lambasted the law, said, you know, this is rigging the rules. This is trying to manipulate election results. And as a result, in a lot of pockets, there are Republicans who now take this as a Democratic ploy. Big D Democratic play. But you and I know this is a nonpartisan reform. There is no clear evidence that this is going to benefit the Democrats over the Republicans. This is just a small Democratic reform and it just in that circumstance, the Republican just wasn't as popular. The Republican should have lost. But they have taken this one example, this one data point and said ranked choice voting is bad. So Kyle, what do we do? How do we reframe this to tell Republicans, at least on the grassroots level, don't be scared. There's no reason to believe this is just a big D Democratic point. This is a small D Democratic point.

I think, you know, I think, look, in every state that's pushing ranked choice voting, different coalitions are advocating for, I mean, in some places like Utah, Ms. Ranked Choice Voting has been pushed by Republicans for decades. I mean, Republicans have been using it in their party process for a long time. And so different coalitions are supporting it and posing it in different places for different reasons. And I think what will happen in the state domain, for example, is as elections play out, different candidates will see different opportunities with ranked choice voting to campaign differently in order to find their path to victory. And so people are going to want to win elections. That's why they run for office, because they want to win and govern. And so if you actually want to win and you want to govern, then and ranked choice voting is the method that's used in your election and you're going to figure out a way to win that election with ranked choice voting. And so you can only sort of play the old system a couple of times before it's. You realize it's not going to work. It's just not going to work for you. And so I think the operative class figured that out pretty quickly last time. I don't know how many more cycles they can run. Those who choose to run campaigns the old way are going to have a hard time staying in business if they keep losing elections. So I think what will just happen is as more primaries and general elections play out, they're going to have to change the way they run those campaigns and see that it's different and it's not a scary thing, it's not a threatening thing. And in fact, it works and it delivers on some of the promises and it's not a bad thing to have to go to talk to voters who always agree with you on the issues. And in fact, maybe it's actually healthy for our democracy. And so I think it just needs time to play out. In Maine and on our campaigns, we always had Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Greens, Libertarians, from our committee itself to our volunteers to our staff. I mean, we were always representative of the state of Maine. That's who we are. And you know, I think there's a lot of polarization in our politics right now, and a lot of folks try to make issues polarizing because they think it benefits one side or the other. And, and they'll always be folks who try to do that and they can make that attempt. But the truth is, you're absolutely right. Ranked choice voting is a nonpartisan reform that doesn't benefit anybody but voters. Right. Regardless of they're part of your ideology. It really is about improving our politics and it really is blind to party. Right.

And I think that is a great place to end. Kyle. Kyle, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you so much, so, so much for your work in Maine. I mean, I think again, for listeners. You can understand after hearing Kyle why this is so important and also the amazing effort that the folks in Maine put into getting this passed. It was not easy, Kyle. I don't wish it upon my worst enemies. But in the end, you won. So thank you so much, Kyle, for joining us and thank you for your work.

Thank you.

This has been another way. See you again next week.

Sa.