Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My next guest is a guy who most Colorado's probably
don't know, but has been very instrumental in changing some
significant things here politically in Colorado through a series of
ballot initiatives. The most recent one was about rank choice
voting and changing the primary system. And joining me now
to kind of do a postmortem on that and talk
(00:21):
about where rank choice voting is going is camp Theory Kent.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
First of all, thank you, Mandy. It's it's great to
be back.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well, let's talk about the ballot initiative that just failed.
And I'm sure you guys have had a chance to
kind of, you know, look at it from different angles
and figure out where you think it went wrong. What
do you think the issue was that it didn't make
it over the finish line?
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Yeah, yeah, Well that was very very painful loss, and
we had won five in a row, and I think
maybe there was an element of overconfidence in part. I
hate to say that words, but that's an honest response.
Three things stick out. One, it took us so long
(01:07):
to get through the title board that we didn't have
as much time for coalition building. The second, the proposal
had a bit too much complexity, and that's very clear
from people we talked to with the exit polling and
all the rest, and it was striking that we did
get to almost forty seven percent. And so that means
(01:29):
we only need to persuade three more out of every
hundred Coloradens and we're over the goal line into the
promised land. And so for a new idea, a new
concept to get to forty seven, pretty damn good. But
the reason we didn't get higher than forty seven was
the complexity. And then third, I made a mistake or
two during the campaign in terms of our running it,
(01:52):
and that very well could have made the difference in
those words, aren't any fun to say either?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, you know what, though, you can't fix what you
don't like what you don't admit, right, I mean, if
you just decided to give yourself a pass on things
that you should have done differently, than you're not going
to be any better next time. How do you make
it more simple? And are you going to take another
bite at the apple statewide or what does that look like?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
All right, Well, we have decided exactly what we're going
to do next because we're doing a listening tour across
the state, which we.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Perhaps should have.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Done before, taken a year and done that and put
it off running the initiative, but we decided, with everything
going on in the world in the country, it made
sense to sort of throw the long pass instead of
instead of relying on.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
The running game.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
And so I think that was a respectable decision, but
we didn't we didn't make it.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
The complexity was it had three parts.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
That first, an all candidate primary, everybody on the same ballot.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
People loved that. Second was top four advance and so
you not only get the the.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump far left and far right,
but to get the Jeb Bush and Amy Klobucher center
left and center right. But that was very new for people.
And then there was the third part of rank choice voting,
and that was very new for people, and so and so,
moving forward, we may do exactly the same thing. Because
we spent a lot of time and money and successfully educated.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Almost half of all of Colorado.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
We may do the same thing, but we may also
just focus on rank choice voting, or just focus on
an all open primary where every one of us voters
in Colorado gets to vote for whoever the hell they want.
Independent of party, and we don't have the system telling us, oh,
you got to be all Democratic or you got to
pick an all Republican ballad.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
That is just unfair.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
So peel off the rank choice voting for now and
go or well, okay, so peel off the rank choice
voting and go for the open primary, or peel off
the open primary and go for the rank choice one
and just separate those two things.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Yes, yes, for example, in one or two other states
they've separated the two depending on what's more popular in
their state.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Now, why are we doing this?
Speaker 4 (04:17):
We are doing it, Mandy and I boy, we feel
so strongly and the people feel this very clear from
all of our work that the people are very frustrated
with our democracy because it feels like they don't.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Get to cast real votes. We're trying to do is
restore real votes.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
And I'll go quickly through some numbers, but about nine
out of every ten districts are either dominated by one
party or the other.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Boom, that's it.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
And that typically is maybe means it's sixty percent Democratic
and forty percent.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Republican or the other way around.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Gosh, that means that forty percent of your voters are
never getting to cast a meaningful, real vote for a
legislative position because they're in the little minority party. To us,
voting puts them back in the game because they can
vote for a Republican if they're a Republican.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But then they can say, oh, my Republican's almost.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Certainly going to lose because we're the minority party, and
so I'm going to vote my number two vote for
a moderate Democrat because I hate it when someone from
the far left is elected, and that's just not representing
the entire district in the entire electorate. So that that
is one reason that for the elections, one party dominates
(05:30):
ninety percent of the time. Now, some people say, well
that's just kind of life, but that dominant party has competitions,
so what are you whining about. Well, no, in two
out of three cases, there's only one viable candidate.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
So Mandy and I'll wrap it up with this sentence.
It is literally true that eighty five percent of Colorado
voters last year did not get to cast a meaningful
vote for a legislative position, state or federal because of
his only one viable candidate on the ballot.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
And so if someone came to us tw hundred years
ago and said, hey, America, I hear you think you
want to have a democracy, I'm not one for you.
And they showed us what we've got. We would laugh
them out of the room because eighty five percent of
the time, our wonderful voters don't actually have a choice.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So we only have a couple of minutes left.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
But I want to ask you this voter participation in
the primaries is pathetic and anemic. And part of the
reason is because people just don't pay attention. They only
want to vote in the general election. But to your point,
their vote may not matter as much in the general election.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
How do you inspire those people?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Do you think an open primary would inspire people to
pay more attention to the primaries?
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Yes, the data is very clear that if you move
from a closed primary where you can only vote only
partisans can vote, to a semi open primary like we
have in Colorado where independence get to vote but they
have to choose a D or an R ballot, that
significantly increases turnout and engagement. That data is clear in
(07:09):
Colorado and across the country. And then when you move
from the semi open primary, which is what we have
to fully open or gosh, I don't have to choose
a D or an R. Instead, I can vote for
a Democratic governor and Republican senator because I think they're
the best people and I don't care what damn party
they're in. That also increases turnout, So the data is
(07:30):
very clear. Our reforms lead to more people voting, and
they are also more engaged because they're not voting got
a sense of obligation for the one person on the ballot.
They're actually voting with engagement because the winner is not
known ahead of time.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Right now, Mandy, you.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
And I can predict ninety percent of who's going to win,
not only before the general election, but before the primary election.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Right well, and let me just ask this before we
wrap up here, because I'm out of time. That part
of it is incredibly important to me, that getting people
to pay attention. But do you really think this isn't
going to change the hard partisans of either party? So
really this is about the sort of lost middle.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I guess we want to put the middle back in
the game.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Right now, the far left and the fire right, which
deserve their proportionate influence, have disproportionate power. We want to
put the middle back in the game, center left, center,
and center right.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Let's put them.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Back in the game and give them real votes back again.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Kent theory. I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
If you want to learn more about Kent and some
of these initiatives, there's some really interesting stuff. I'm all
in for rank choice voting, especially after watching how it
unfolded in Alaska and it worked the way it was
supposed to work when the politicians understood the game. And
that is what is the missing piece here is that
politicians are afraid of it because they don't know how
(08:56):
it works. But I would think any party that is
currently in the hopeless minority in any of these discs
would be like, yes, give me a chance to win
some votes.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Kent.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I appreciate the time today so much. Man.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I go democracy.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, go democracy. Thanks Ken. That is Kent theory.
My next guest is a guy who most Colorado's probably
don't know, but has been very instrumental in changing some
significant things here politically in Colorado through a series of
ballot initiatives. The most recent one was about rank choice
voting and changing the primary system. And joining me now
to kind of do a postmortem on that and talk
(00:21):
about where rank choice voting is going is camp Theory Kent.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
First of all, thank you, Mandy. It's it's great to
be back.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well, let's talk about the ballot initiative that just failed.
And I'm sure you guys have had a chance to
kind of, you know, look at it from different angles
and figure out where you think it went wrong. What
do you think the issue was that it didn't make
it over the finish line?
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Yeah, yeah, Well that was very very painful loss, and
we had won five in a row, and I think
maybe there was an element of overconfidence in part. I
hate to say that words, but that's an honest response.
Three things stick out. One, it took us so long
(01:07):
to get through the title board that we didn't have
as much time for coalition building. The second, the proposal
had a bit too much complexity, and that's very clear
from people we talked to with the exit polling and
all the rest, and it was striking that we did
get to almost forty seven percent. And so that means
(01:29):
we only need to persuade three more out of every
hundred Coloradens and we're over the goal line into the
promised land. And so for a new idea, a new
concept to get to forty seven, pretty damn good. But
the reason we didn't get higher than forty seven was
the complexity. And then third, I made a mistake or
two during the campaign in terms of our running it,
(01:52):
and that very well could have made the difference in
those words, aren't any fun to say either?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, you know what, though, you can't fix what you
don't like what you don't admit, right, I mean, if
you just decided to give yourself a pass on things
that you should have done differently, than you're not going
to be any better next time. How do you make
it more simple? And are you going to take another
bite at the apple statewide or what does that look like?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
All right, Well, we have decided exactly what we're going
to do next because we're doing a listening tour across
the state, which we.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Perhaps should have.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Done before, taken a year and done that and put
it off running the initiative, but we decided, with everything
going on in the world in the country, it made
sense to sort of throw the long pass instead of
instead of relying on.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
The running game.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
And so I think that was a respectable decision, but
we didn't we didn't make it.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
The complexity was it had three parts.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
That first, an all candidate primary, everybody on the same ballot.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
People loved that. Second was top four advance and so
you not only get the the.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump far left and far right,
but to get the Jeb Bush and Amy Klobucher center
left and center right. But that was very new for people.
And then there was the third part of rank choice voting,
and that was very new for people, and so and so,
moving forward, we may do exactly the same thing. Because
we spent a lot of time and money and successfully educated.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Almost half of all of Colorado.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
We may do the same thing, but we may also
just focus on rank choice voting, or just focus on
an all open primary where every one of us voters
in Colorado gets to vote for whoever the hell they want.
Independent of party, and we don't have the system telling us, oh,
you got to be all Democratic or you got to
pick an all Republican ballad.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
That is just unfair.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
So peel off the rank choice voting for now and
go or well, okay, so peel off the rank choice
voting and go for the open primary, or peel off
the open primary and go for the rank choice one
and just separate those two things.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Yes, yes, for example, in one or two other states
they've separated the two depending on what's more popular in
their state.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Now, why are we doing this?
Speaker 4 (04:17):
We are doing it, Mandy and I boy, we feel
so strongly and the people feel this very clear from
all of our work that the people are very frustrated
with our democracy because it feels like they don't.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Get to cast real votes. We're trying to do is
restore real votes.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
And I'll go quickly through some numbers, but about nine
out of every ten districts are either dominated by one
party or the other.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Boom, that's it.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
And that typically is maybe means it's sixty percent Democratic
and forty percent.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Republican or the other way around.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Gosh, that means that forty percent of your voters are
never getting to cast a meaningful, real vote for a
legislative position because they're in the little minority party. To us,
voting puts them back in the game because they can
vote for a Republican if they're a Republican.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But then they can say, oh, my Republican's almost.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Certainly going to lose because we're the minority party, and
so I'm going to vote my number two vote for
a moderate Democrat because I hate it when someone from
the far left is elected, and that's just not representing
the entire district in the entire electorate. So that that
is one reason that for the elections, one party dominates
(05:30):
ninety percent of the time. Now, some people say, well
that's just kind of life, but that dominant party has competitions,
so what are you whining about. Well, no, in two
out of three cases, there's only one viable candidate.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
So Mandy and I'll wrap it up with this sentence.
It is literally true that eighty five percent of Colorado
voters last year did not get to cast a meaningful
vote for a legislative position, state or federal because of
his only one viable candidate on the ballot.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
And so if someone came to us tw hundred years
ago and said, hey, America, I hear you think you
want to have a democracy, I'm not one for you.
And they showed us what we've got. We would laugh
them out of the room because eighty five percent of
the time, our wonderful voters don't actually have a choice.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So we only have a couple of minutes left.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
But I want to ask you this voter participation in
the primaries is pathetic and anemic. And part of the
reason is because people just don't pay attention. They only
want to vote in the general election. But to your point,
their vote may not matter as much in the general election.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
How do you inspire those people?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Do you think an open primary would inspire people to
pay more attention to the primaries?
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Yes, the data is very clear that if you move
from a closed primary where you can only vote only
partisans can vote, to a semi open primary like we
have in Colorado where independence get to vote but they
have to choose a D or an R ballot, that
significantly increases turnout and engagement. That data is clear in
(07:09):
Colorado and across the country. And then when you move
from the semi open primary, which is what we have
to fully open or gosh, I don't have to choose
a D or an R. Instead, I can vote for
a Democratic governor and Republican senator because I think they're
the best people and I don't care what damn party
they're in. That also increases turnout, So the data is
(07:30):
very clear. Our reforms lead to more people voting, and
they are also more engaged because they're not voting got
a sense of obligation for the one person on the ballot.
They're actually voting with engagement because the winner is not
known ahead of time.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Right now, Mandy, you.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
And I can predict ninety percent of who's going to win,
not only before the general election, but before the primary election.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Right well, and let me just ask this before we
wrap up here, because I'm out of time. That part
of it is incredibly important to me, that getting people
to pay attention. But do you really think this isn't
going to change the hard partisans of either party? So
really this is about the sort of lost middle.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I guess we want to put the middle back in
the game.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Right now, the far left and the fire right, which
deserve their proportionate influence, have disproportionate power. We want to
put the middle back in the game, center left, center,
and center right.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Let's put them.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Back in the game and give them real votes back again.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Kent theory. I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
If you want to learn more about Kent and some
of these initiatives, there's some really interesting stuff. I'm all
in for rank choice voting, especially after watching how it
unfolded in Alaska and it worked the way it was
supposed to work when the politicians understood the game. And
that is what is the missing piece here is that
politicians are afraid of it because they don't know how
(08:56):
it works. But I would think any party that is
currently in the hopeless minority in any of these discs
would be like, yes, give me a chance to win
some votes.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Kent.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I appreciate the time today so much. Man.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I go democracy.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, go democracy. Thanks Ken. That is Kent theory.
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