(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . How to make elections better, with Deb Otis [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-27 This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. David Beard: Hello, and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections. David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the Presidency, from Senate to City Council. Please subscribe to the Downballot on Apple Podcasts, and leave us a five star rating and review. David Beard: What are we covering this week on the show? David Nir: Well, there is an absolutely foul, foul Republican candidate who just got into the race for North Carolina Governor. And then there is the absolutely foul GOP mega-donor, Peter Thiel, who says he is abandoning the party for this coming cycle. After that, we are going to talk with Deb Otis, the director of research at FairVote, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for voting reforms to make democracy more functional and more representative. We have a great show in store, so let's get rolling. So one of the most important races of the 2024 cycle is taking place in your home state, Beard. Why don't you catch us up on the developments in North Carolina? David Beard: Yes. The Democratic frontrunner for the open governor's seat in 2024 has already announced — that's Attorney General Josh Stein — and now on the Republican side we've got the likely Republican frontrunner for that nomination, which is North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, who announced on Saturday that he was going to seek the Republican nomination for governor. Of course, just a month ago he was telling a church service that, "God formed him to fight against LGBT rights." So you can see exactly what kind of Republican that we're going to be dealing with here. Now he is not the only Republican running for the nomination. State Treasurer Dale Folwell announced a bid last month, and an advisor for former Representative Mark Walker told newspapers that he'll also join the race, probably in May. But both these candidates are not nearly as strong as Robinson is. Folwell has trailed Robinson by 50 points or more in some of the polls that we've seen, and he's acknowledged that he's the underdog in this race. So I think given where the Republican Party and the Republican primary electorate has been, I think we should expect Robinson to be the Republican nominee for governor going into 2024. He, of course, would be the Tar Heel State's first black chief executive. He was largely completely unknown until 2018. He became a conservative celebrity in the way that so many Republicans now move into office. He gave a speech protesting the cancellation of a gun show in Greensboro, North Carolina, which of course went viral, made him a conservative celebrity, and led to him winning statewide office in 2020. Now, as you said, this is going to be one of the most high profile races in the country in 2024. There's only a few governor's races on the ballot. Of course, most of them take place during the midterms. And North Carolina is of course probably the marquee governor's race of the entire cycle. I think Robinson is a bad candidate, but of course, as we've seen in many cases, that doesn't mean he's not a candidate who can win. So Democrats are going to have to do everything they can to make sure that doesn't happen. Republicans currently have supermajorities in both of the state legislatures, so right now already they can pass whatever they're unified on. But of course that can still be difficult in some cases with a Republican governor, particularly an extremist Republican governor like Robinson. There's no limit to what Republicans in North Carolina might do. And that is just like not where North Carolina is, even if it's a slightly right of center state, it is not an extremist state like Mark Robinson is. So I'm very hopeful that Stein can run a good campaign and Democrats will be able to hold onto the governor's seat in 2024. David Nir: Yeah, we need to spend, I think, another moment or two talking about just how disgusting Robinson is. I'm going to throw out a couple of quotes from him. He said a few years ago in an address at a Baptist Church, "There is no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes, I called it filth." At another church gathering he said, "Just last year we are called to be led by men. God sent women out when they had to do their thing, but when it was time to face down Goliath, he sent David. Not DaVita, David." And he says shit like this all the time. He never apologizes for any of it. It is absolutely disgusting. It's horrifying to me that we're in a moment in American politics where candidates like this are not only capable of winning statewide office, but embraced by the GOP really from top to bottom. I mean, I think he's going to win the nomination going away. I think the one issue that really could hurt him though is abortion, because Republicans now seem to be gearing up to pass an abortion ban over the current governor Roy Cooper's vetoes, because they just won the necessary super majority in the legislature, thanks to that turncoat Democrat, Tricia Cotham, that we mentioned on the show some weeks back. And that's the kind of, "Success for Republicans that probably they will pay a price for at the ballot box." But who the hell knows? I am definitely very worried that Robinson could win the governor's race next year. David Beard: Absolutely. And we saw in 2022 that the surprisingly good Democratic successes in other states, like Michigan, like Pennsylvania, didn't show up as much in North Carolina. Republicans did gain a supermajority in one chamber and then was one seat short, which they now have of course, thanks to Cotham. And I think in part of that was the idea that Cooper was ensconced as governor in the State. He was going to be governor for another two years, through 2024. And I think even though the supermajority has the ability to override his veto, that may have given casual voters some comfort in the idea that that was some protection, but that is not going to be the case in 2024. The Republicans’ far-right crazy, and that includes banning abortion as much as they can possibly do, is going to be on the ballot in North Carolina in 2024. And we have to hope that reasonable people in that state are going to be repulsed by it. David Nir: So changing gears a bit, normally when one of your party's biggest donors says he won't open his wallet anymore, you'd be pretty dismayed. But Republicans are probably more relieved than anything else about a new report that came out on Wednesday, from Reuters, saying that conservative venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, has no plans to help any candidates this cycle. Now, last cycle you'll recall that Thiel spent $15 million apiece to help two remarkably weak Senate candidates win their primaries, J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona. But after Vance and Masters won those primaries, Blake all but disappeared. Vance turned out to be an atrocious fundraiser, and Republican outside groups wound up having to spend more than $30 million to rescue his campaign when they probably expected to spend $0. Now, Vance wound up winning ultimately over Democrat Tim Ryan, but that's $30 million that could have gone to another race. And as we saw, there were a number of extremely close races, such as the Senate race in Nevada last year. It was really, though, Masters who was the disaster, because Ohio was a defensive hold. Republicans were always likely to win that seat, but Arizona was one of the states that was key to their hopes of winning back a majority. Yet just a few weeks after Masters won the GOP nomination — Arizona has these very late primaries — the major GOP groups started cutting back their TV ad reservations. They had planned to spend millions on his behalf and they saw obviously some very bad polling and simply gave up on him. The Senate Leadership Fund, which is the number-one GOP super PAC in Senate races very closely linked to Mitch McConnell, even told Thiel that they'd get back in the race if he had helped finance their efforts. But evidently Thiel told them to screw off because that never happened. And it's hard to sum up just how awful Masters was. He had this real incel energy, that's kind of tough to put your finger on exactly. I mean, don't go watching his ads and videos unless you want to throw up in your mouth. But maybe the best way to summarize him is the fact that he called the Unabomber a subversive thinker that's underrated. I mean, really, dude, what is wrong with you? How does shit like that come out of your mouth? Anyway, it was ultimately not a shock that he lost to the Democratic incumbent, Mark Kelly. But I want to point out that he lost by six points. That was the same as Vance's margin in Ohio. But Arizona's a swing state, and Ohio is a solidly red state now. So it really was a disaster pair of nominees that Thiel saddled the GOP with. It's obviously possible that he could change his mind at some point. You never know, but I'm betting that Mitch McConnell hopes he doesn't. David Beard: Yeah, and I think the recent memory of Ohio being more competitive means people underplay how bad Vance's performance was. A six point victory in a midterm with a Democratic President in Ohio, where it is now, is a pretty awful performance. Though of course, I think Masters pretty much takes the cake. I do think Masters was probably the worst Senate candidate of a not great bunch, and that was definitely in large part up to Thiel and his money behind Masters. Of course, there were a lot of bad GOP candidates. Doug Mastriano was probably the worst GOP gubernatorial candidate, and Peter Thiel didn't have anything to do with him. So it may be that we're going to have bad candidates anyway, and without Thiel's money, which works for me. David Nir: I think we are going to be debating until the end of days which GOP Senate candidate was the worst in 2022. I mean, you know what? I'm leaning toward Masters now. Previously I probably would've said Herschel Walker, but Masters lost by a much bigger margin than Herschel Walker. And the amazing thing is he is considering a run for the Senate race in Arizona next year. I mean, could we get so lucky? David Beard: Yes, please. Let's roll up the red carpet for Masters because he's got that problem that Dan Kelly in Wisconsin had, which is that he just turns regular people off. Like Herschel Walker had a billion problems and should have never gotten anywhere close to the Senate, but I think in interpersonal interactions he's probably a pleasant person to have a conversation with, as long as it's reasonably coherent, but Blake Masters seems like the kind of person you would just want to get away from as quickly as possible if you were in the same room with him. David Nir: Oh, yeah. He definitely has that run away from at a cocktail party vibe. You're totally right about that. All right. Well, that does it for our weekly hits. Coming up, we are going to be talking with Deb Otis of FairVote, a group that advocates for reforms to American voting systems about things like ranked choice voting and proportional representation, a very interesting deep dive into those proposals. So stay with us. We are joined today by Deb Otis, who is the Director of Research at FairVote, a nonpartisan organization that researches and advances voting reforms that make democracy more functional and representative for every American. Deb, thank you so much for joining us today. Deb Otis: Thanks for having me. Great to be here. David Nir: So why don't you start by just telling us about FairVote and how the organization came to be and what specifically it's fighting for? Deb Otis: Sure. FairVote is a nonprofit organization. We are working on ranked choice voting and proportional representation. We just celebrated our 30th anniversary. Our org started in the early '90s under the name Citizens for Proportional Representation, but now we are FairVote and we work for proportional representation and also for non-proportional reform, namely ranked choice voting. David Nir: So I'm so glad at the timing of having you on because we just talked about some of these issues with our guest professor, Matthew Shugart, last week, but now we have a chance to really go in depth. And I think I'd like to start with ranked choice voting because that's probably something people have heard about a little bit more, maybe are a little more familiar with, maybe they've even participated in elections using ranked choice voting, but for folks who maybe aren't familiar with it, can you tell us about how ranked choice voting works and what specifically FairVote is advocating for in terms of implementation? Deb Otis: Ranked choice voting lets voters rank the candidates on the ballot instead of choosing just one. So this is a simple change for voters. We're used to ranking other things in our everyday lives all the time. We often have a second choice. And so it's just bringing that concept into politics. It's simple for voters, but it has broad impacts. It gives voters more voice and more choice. It promotes majority winners. If your top choice does not get enough support, if your top choice is in last place after they just count up first choice preferences, last choice gets eliminated, your vote is transferred to your next choice. Whichever candidate you marked next now has your vote. So you don't have to worry about strategic voting, like, "Should I vote for the candidate I like best or for the candidate who really has a chance of winning?" This lets voters vote honestly. It also promotes positive campaigning and it's been shown to improve representation for women and for people of color. This is an election method designed for elections that are electing just one person. A lot of us in our cities or towns have multi-winner elections for city council, for example. This version of ranked choice voting is for those single-winner elections, like president, like mayor, like governor. There is another form of proportional ranked choice voting. It's called multi-winner proportional ranked choice voting. It's sometimes called single transferrable vote. It's a lot of terms to throw around, but that other one is for these legislative bodies where you're electing multiple people. The voter experience is the same, but it has different properties. David Beard: So let's stick with ranked choice voting for just one candidate, to start off. We've seen that implemented a few different ways. Debatably, runoff elections are a very simplified version of ranked choice voting with just two candidates and then we've seen a couple other systems be developed and experimented with, really, with states. Does FairVote have a specific preference or is it a broad ranked choice voting is good, no matter how it gets implemented? Deb Otis: We believe that ranked ballots, ranked choice voting is beneficial, regardless of the method, but we do have preferences between them because we rank things in our everyday life. We rank our ranked choice methods here at FairVote. I think two primary ways we're seeing this implemented is in the State of Maine and the State of Alaska. In Maine, they use party primaries, and so they use ranked choice voting within the party primaries for each party to choose their nominee. Then they get to use ranked choice voting again in the general election to choose between those nominees and any independent or third-party candidates that run. And so that preserves the party system and preserves party primaries with ranked choice voting. The other model is the Alaska model. They use what's called a jungle primary. So all of the candidates run together, candidates from different parties. So republicans, democrats, independents, third parties run in the same primary all together. That's not a ranked choice, that's a choose-one primary. And then the top four candidates go on to a general election. That general uses ranked choice voting. Now, those models are both great ways to do this. FairVote's preference is the main model, to keep partisan primaries, and this comes from the political science school of thought that parties are useful organizing tools within communities and there are benefits to party primaries that choose nominees. But I think each state may end up having different preferences about how to implement this. Both methods are good and it depends on whether the voters and the current political systems in each state prefer to keep that partisan model or to go to a jungle primary model. David Nir: So we have seen ranked choice voting come somewhat more into vogue, particularly at the municipal level. My hometown in New York City, we moved to ranked choice voting in primaries recently, just a couple of years ago. In other big cities, though, we have still seen reluctance to go in that direction. We just saw the mayoral election in Chicago where, of course, the two winners in the primary that moved on to a runoff only represented a, oh, I don't know the number off the top of my head, only represented a fraction of the overall vote. Do you see RCV growing in popularity in the big cities? Deb Otis: Absolutely. Ranked choice voting is the fastest growing reform right now. It's used in the largest city in seven different states. And so when we talk about these cities, like Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Houston, these are places that are currently not using ranked choice voting, but they're encountering some problems in their local elections. So I absolutely see support for this growing. Chicago, and Denver, and then Houston coming up this fall used two-round runoffs. And so this allows them to get a majority winner, even from a crowded field, but there are a lot of pitfalls with two-round runoffs. First, you're holding two rounds of the election. It's two different electorates. It's a different set of people that show up for each of these elections. If you have runoff elections, often that second round is really low turnout. It can decline by as much as half. This also extends the campaign season. And these top two runoffs really allow the campaigns to focus on just one opponent in the final round, and that's where the negativity comes from. Get maybe more outside fundraising and the campaigns can end up with a lot of mudslinging. I think we saw this in the Chicago mayoral runoff between Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas, the two candidates who made it into that final round. They had that extra month of campaign season to focus just on each other. And I think that that sort of negativity and mudslinging extends the campaign season and can be a difficult environment for voters. And then we could look to Philadelphia as another example. Philadelphia does not have a runoff, but they're also doing mayoral elections this year. They have a six-candidate democratic primary right now, where the field is very divided between a lot of strong, qualified candidates. Someone could win that with 20% or 30% of the vote and only a fraction of a fraction of the electorate would end up choosing that winner. And so all of these major cities are not using ranked choice voting yet, but we see a lot of reasons why support continues to grow for this reform and I certainly see it expanding into more of these major cities. David Nir: What are some cities that have really openly been discussing this or maybe even have legislation in the works to move to this kind of system? Deb Otis: There is legislation right now in about half of the states. Some of those are looking to do local options bills, where cities and states can opt into it. It clears the red tape to let them opt in. Some of the states are looking at doing it for presidential primary nominations, which I'm excited about. At the city level, we already had two ballot measures this year, two cities that vote in March that adopted or expanded ranked choice voting. That's Burlington, Vermont, and Redondo Beach, California. And so I think we're on track for many more adoptions over the coming years. David Nir: Now, one of the things we mentioned briefly that we want to get more into is the legislative side of things, where you may be electing multiple members. We talked some about this last week at a more theoretical perspective, but give us a brief summary of how those systems work, where you have a single transferrable vote system and multiple-member districts. Deb Otis: Multi-member districts are just a better way to elect our legislatures. Right now, we elect Congress through single-member districts. And so for each district, no matter how much diversity of thought you have within that district, only one person wins. Only one person is going to represent that whole district. There could be a group that makes up 45% of that district, but gets 0% of representation. When our elections are winner take all in these single-member districts, no wonder our politics is becoming so contentious. Multi-member districts are a way to get people more representation and break down that gridlock. One of FairVote's key reform priorities is called the Fair Representation Act. This is a piece of legislation that would change the US Congress to be elected from multi-member districts. Districts would be three members, four members, or five members. It varies by state, depending on how many seats each state has. And we find that that's a number of representatives that is both manageable for voters and allows for proportional outcomes. So if you have a multi-member district and proportional voting, you are likely to, in a five member-district, elect members of both parties. I mean, you can have different racial groups gaining representation, where you might have members of multiple different groups each representing the same district. And so, more voters will feel like their voice is heard and that they have someone looking out for their own interests in Congress. And we get to express our honest preferences on the ballot, and create some incentives for legislators to work across the aisle. I can't promise that this will make everything sunshine and roses. We will still live in a polarized society. But if you have a group of Republican and Democratic legislators representing the same constituents in the same district, they will at least have each other's phone number. They will at least have some issues that they can work together on for their constituents, and I think that would help. David Nir: So I'm very intrigued by the Fair Representation Act. What I'm really curious to know is whether there's any actual support for this on Capitol Hill. Deb Otis: The Fair Representation Act in the last Congress was introduced by Representative Don Beyer of Virginia, and it had seven co-sponsors. And so, of course, seven co-sponsors is not enough to get something passed just yet. We do expect this legislation to be reintroduced later in the year. And this is a longer-term goal, of course, but we think there's real momentum. 200 scholars signed an open letter last fall, calling for proportional representation for Congress. Portland, Oregon, just became the largest city to adopt proportional ranked-choice voting in multi-member districts. Organizations like Fix Our House and Protect Democracy have also become active on this topic, and we partner with those organizations to advance this goal. So we certainly see momentum towards this. David Beard: So of those seven sponsors, are those all Democrats? Do you have any Republicans? I assume in terms of process here, probably Democrats are going to be easier to get onboard and then the Republicans may be a tougher hill to climb over time. Deb Otis: All of the co-sponsors currently are Democrats. We also see a case for both parties, including some upside for Republicans. Before coming to Washington DC to work for FairVote, I lived in Massachusetts. They have nine representatives. All nine of them are Democrats, and that's been true for years now. There was recently some analysis out of a group from Tufts University showing that even if you tried to gerrymander a map that would deliver a fair outcome for Massachusetts Republicans, it would be impossible to do. We see that a third to sometimes almost half of Massachusetts voters vote Republican. The state elects Republican governors, for example, but zero congressional representatives because the population of Republican voters is not concentrated in one area of the state where you could draw Republican-friendly districts. It is impossible to get fair representation for Republicans there. And so we think Massachusetts Republicans have a lot to gain from this. In the same way that Oklahoma Democrats have a lot to gain. That's another single-party state. There are plenty of voters supporting the opposing party, but they currently have zero power to elect a candidate of their choice. David Beard: Now, I think a potential objection that you might hear, that does have an answer, is around the Voting Rights Act, or at least what's left of it. Obviously, we've seen the Supreme Court slowly degrade the Voting Rights Act over time, but I could certainly imagine some folks objecting to the idea of eliminating majority and minority districts. But I think the system has a good, or even better, replacement for it, right? Deb Otis: Yeah. The Fair Representation Act is very much aligned with the spirit of the Voting Rights Act. That is, the opportunity for minority communities to elect candidates of their choice. We have a long history of doing that through single-member districts that are drawn to be majority-minority districts. Ever since the Voting Rights Act, for decades that has been successful at improving representation. But it feels like we are in a political and legal environment that is increasingly hostile to these sorts of voting rights remedies, and it's a good time to look for other possible solutions. We can do this without having to draw single-member, majority-minority districts, because with the Fair Representation Act, multiple people represent each region. Here's how. Every group who crosses the threshold wins a seat. So if we had a district with five members, the threshold to win a seat is 17%. So this can finally create the conditions for a multiracial democracy that better reflects our population. In a five-member district, you could have a variety of different groups, each having power to elect one of the representatives in that group. This would drastically expand the regions of the map where, say, Black voters have the power to elect a candidate of choice. Right now, those regions are limited to places where majority-minority districts were deliberately drawn. So, the Fair Representation Act, I think, ends the zero-sum districting that we're in right now, where one group has to lose in order for another group to gain representation. It's time to get away from that mindset. David Beard: Now, let's dream big for a moment and go to a place where the Fair Representation Act has passed and all 50 states have been implementing a multi-member district, single-transferable vote model. That's definitely going to change how American politics functions. I think particularly looking at the two major parties, they really rely on the current winner-take-all system to keep their dominance. How could you imagine this playing out in American politics? Would we see these parties fracturing into a more diverse, multi-party system? Deb Otis: First of all, I think we expect shifts to happen over a period of a few years and not immediately. This is a transformative change, so voters and campaigns and the media might take a few election cycles to realign to this new normal. I think the fracturing of the two major parties into multiple, into more parties, is one possibility, but it's not the one that FairVote thinks is most likely. I think a key benefit of the Fair Representation Act is it allows for more diversity within the major parties. I think there are a lot of voters right now who align with one of the two major parties, but don't feel like they are perfectly represented by that party's full platform. And I think in a multi-member district, you could have multiple Democrats and multiple Republicans on the general election ballot, not just having those choices in primaries. These would be voted on by the entire electorate. I think there's space to have, say, a progressive Democrat and a centrist Democrat representing the same district. So there's more space for ideological diversity within the parties, and I think that's a good thing. Once again, folks representing the same district have a reason to collaborate and to work together on some issues. So I think we're creating space for that. And I think it's not a problem here. I think it's a good thing. I'd say Alaska is instructive about the way that voters engage with multiple members of parties on the same ballot, because they had their top four ranked choice voting, where many elections had, say, two Republicans on the general election ballot, along with a Democrat or a third party or an independent. And we found that about 80% of voters ranked within their own parties, but about 20% crossed party lines to rank maybe a Republican first and a Democrat second, even when there was another Republican on the ballot. And so I think there is an interesting opportunity here for Democrats who can have some appeal with Republicans and Republicans who, vice versa, can have appeal with some groups of Democratic voters who might cross over. So I think this just creates more space for these different ideologies which already exist, but currently don't really have a home in our politics. David Nir: I want to follow up a little bit on that. How would these more moderate candidates emerge from primaries under the more main-style system of preserving partisan primaries with ranked choice voting and then followed by a general election? Deb Otis: Parties would get to nominate multiple candidates. If you're in a five-member district, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party could each choose to nominate up to five candidates. And so, voters would see multiple Republicans and multiple Democrats on their general election ballot. Not every party would nominate that full number, of course. They have the option to do so. And then for states like Alaska that want to do away with partisan primaries, they can have a jungle primary. So all the candidates run in one primary, and then they would nominate twice as many candidates as there are seats to fill. So in a five-member district, they could nominate 10 candidates. They would be the top 10 candidates who came out of the primary, regardless of party. David Nir: So then why might more moderate candidates emerge from those primaries, the ones you were alluding to hypothetically a moment ago, who might have crossover appeal, the centrist Democrat who might win Republican votes or vice versa, when you would still have partisan primaries and the incentives seem like they would still remain largely the same? Certainly, in Republican primaries, we've generally seen the most conservative candidates win. And often in Democratic primaries as well, the candidates who are more progressive tend to win. So what would make it more likely that moderates might emerge into that general election? Deb Otis: It's as simple as nominating multiple candidates from each party. When the parties get to nominate only one candidate, like in our single-winner elections, there are clear incentives for these candidates to run towards the extremes. But when multiple candidates are coming out of the primary, you're likely to get... Say, if you had three Republicans coming out of a Republican primary, you get more diversity among those three Republicans. And then all three of those would have to face the general electorate. All voters, not just primary voters, would be choosing between those three Republicans as well as the Democrats on the ballot, any independents and any minor parties on the ballot. David Beard: To take an example of this, which I think might help clarify a little bit, often we see in a Republican primary, we've seen these sort of far-right, Trumpy candidates go up against often still very conservative, but more establishment candidates. And the Trumpy candidate gets maybe 60, 70% of the vote, and the more establishment candidate on the Republican side would get maybe 30% of the vote. Now, obviously, if there were slots for 2, 3, 4, 5 Republicans, that 30% of the vote that was voting for an establishment Republican, would likely get one or two candidates through to the election, is the idea, right? Deb Otis: Absolutely. David Beard: Get one or two candidates through to the election is the idea, right? Deb Otis: Absolutely. Yeah. And then the general electorate would decide which of those Republicans or possibly both of those Republicans, possibly the Trump wing Republican and the establishment Republican could both win a seat. David Nir: Circling back a little bit more broadly to ranked-choice voting, we have seen a fair bit of Republican hostility recently. There were a lot of Republicans in Alaska who were particularly salty about how the special election for Don Young's house seat turned out, which of course Mary Peltola wound up winning, and there's a movement there now to put an initiative on the ballot to repeal their top four system. We also saw it in North Dakota recently that Republicans in a legislature passed a bill to prohibit ranked-choice voting. That was actually vetoed by the Republican governor there, and the legislature wasn't able to override it. We haven't really seen this kind of hostility from Democrats toward these kinds of reforms. Why do you think that the GOP seems to have greater opposition to these kinds of changes? Deb Otis: I think right now, it looks like national Republicans are really aligning against ranked-choice voting, but the picture is a lot more complex than that. It continues to have plenty of support from Republicans at the state and local level. Republicans in Virginia, for example, used it in their nominating process to nominate now Governor Glenn Youngkin from a crowded field that had the potential to get contentious, but it didn't really. And they used it in several congressional primaries this cycle to choose strong nominees that would be putting the party's best foot forward in the general election. And so, there's I think still cross partisan support here. But at the national level, there certainly does appear to these arising opposition. I think some of this comes from the loss of Sarah Palin. We have seen Palin and her allies really coming out strongly against ranked-choice voting. The repeal effort in Alaska is not coming from the state legislature. The folks who won in Alaska using ranked-choice voting, it is a Republican-dominated state legislature, and they are not pushing the repeal effort. That effort is coming through a ballot question where fundraising is coming from Sarah Palin allies. It is not from folks who are currently in power in Alaska. The voters asked for ranked-choice voting and the state legislature has decided that they want to keep it or at least don't want to repeal it. And I think that those are the key signals that we're looking for right now. David Beard: One thing we can always count on for national Republicans is to want to manipulate the electoral system to their benefit. So, as soon as they think that ranked-choice voting or multi-member proportional systems could get another Republican elected somewhere, you might see them come around real quick. Deb Otis: I think that's very true. I think we can look to examples like Massachusetts that we already talked about, where Republican voters are currently shut out of representation. There's not really a chance that they can even have a fair shot in Congress. I think one of the challenges of doing advocacy for this work is I really believe it will be better for everybody. But whichever side I'm talking to tends to want to hear how it will be better for them only. So, that's a fine line that we walk. I think this solves a lot of the structural problems in our elections so that everybody gets a fair shot, and I think for all of the politicians that are in it to try to improve things and to try to deliver good results for their voters, this is a sure thing. David Nir: You talked a little bit about ranked-choice voting, possibly reducing contentiousness in elections. And I remember a few years ago in Maine when the state moved to using RCV there that in the Democratic primary for governor, a couple of sort of maybe second-tier candidates did something interesting, which you don't typically see in American politics, which is that they encouraged each other's supporters to rank the other one second. And my understanding is in other countries that use this sort of system, these kinds of alliances you tend to see happen more often. In New York City where I voted in the mayor's race a couple of years ago, it seemed like candidates had not yet come around to this understanding of how these kinds of coalitions or alliances could benefit them. And it was particularly frustrating because I think that the two candidates I like the most — I really felt that Maya Wiley, Kathryn Garcia should probably have done that. And had they done that, I think Garcia might have moved past Eric Adams in the final set of tabulations. So, I'm curious to hear how you see this kind of thing unfolding, because it requires learning a new way of doing politics. I just think that your average American political consultant probably is really scared to tell their client, "Oh, you should cross-endorse this other candidate." I mean, what if you lose? Deb Otis: I think that's a great point. Political consultants do tend to pick up on these strategies pretty quickly, but there can be a period of realignment when the system changes. We've seen about a dozen examples that I know of candidates cross-endorsing each other or campaigning together on a ‘rank us number one and number two’ strategy. I think this is a natural improvement over that kind of campaigning that happens in our choose-one elections also. All of the time, candidates endorse one of their opponents. They drop out of the race. They say, "I can't win. I'm dropping out. I encourage my supporters to vote for so-and-so." In ranked-choice voting, a candidate can do that without having to drop out of the debate, not get their voice out, not keep connecting with voters that show up in debates. They can continue to be out there and let the voters choose, let the voters still show support for them if they want while still cross-endorsing a similar candidate to help build power for their community. David Nir: We have been talking with Deb Otis, the Director of Research at FairVote. This has been a fascinating conversation. Deb, before we let you go, can you tell listeners how they can learn more about your work and follow FairVote and you as well? Deb Otis: Yes. You can find us at Fairvote.org. We are on Twitter, @FairVote, and I am @DebTheOtis. David Nir: Deb, thank you so much for coming on The Downballot this week. Deb Otis: Thank you. It was great chatting with you both. David Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to Deb Otis for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcast and leave us a five star rating and review. Thanks to our producer Walter Einenkel and editor Trevor Jones. We'll be back next week with a new episode. 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