The Purple Principle

Election Reform in the Last Best Place? Voting Day 2024 in Kalispell, Montana

“You want to know why we’re polarized? You want to know why we have division?” Our featured guest Frank Garner posed this question to voters at the constitutional ballot initiative debate we attended in Helena, Montana and many similar events. “We have a system that allows for it and the pressure that is put on people… to vote a certain way.”A Republican member of the Montana House from 2015 to 2023, Garner spent over a year as the primary spokesperson for Montanans for Election Reform, the group that gathered 200 thousand signatures and fought off four lawsuits to place two Constitutional Initiatives (CI) on the 2024 ballot. CI 126 proposed replacing the current primary system where voters receive a ballot from each party (then choose one to complete) with a single, unified primary ballot of all candidates from which the top 4 advance to a general election. While CI 127 would require a majority winner from those 4 candidates. In this episode we also hear from Kendra Miller, Strategic Advisor to Montanans for Election Reform, on the critical need for competitive elections in “the last best place.” “I think one of the more shocking stats,” says Miller, a data analyst with extensive campaign experience, “is that in 2022…only 6% of Montana voters effectively elected 88% of the Montana House.” We then visit with former legislator Frank Garner on election night and into the next day as the results slowly come on the initiatives he’s championed throughout this vast state. Tune in for the final results and also reflections on the challenge of election reform messaging in a state saturated with ads from the most expensive US Senate race per capita in the country. The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production; original music by Ryan Adair Rooney

Our Top 10 Predictive Insights: Explaining the 2024 Election & Beyond

The 2024 election results are in and clearly underscore a rightward shift in American politics. Most pundits and many pollsters did not foresee such a clear victory for the GOP. But some of our Purple Principle guests from the past four seasons have recognized the important dynamics at play behind these results. Such as Carlos Curbelo on the shift of Hispanic voters and Thomas Edsall on the longstanding drift of the Democratic Party away from economic issues and toward identity politics. In this bonus episode, we ask you, our Purple Principle listeners, to select your favorite guest insights using a ranked choice ballot available through our show notes and website. Please rank your top 5 of the 10 guest comments. We’ll announce the winner on our next episode and display the tabulation on our website and social media.Link to this podcast on our website, with episode transcript and the ballot to rank your favorite insights:👉 https://bit.ly/TPPinsightsThe 2024 election may be over. But the undercurrents behind the ‘24 results are still in play and may be for some years to come. Tune in to get behind the numbers by ranking your top 5 Purple Principle guest insights for 2024.

Transforming US Politics for $200 Million? Andrew Yang on Election Reform

“You meet them and you're like, ‘oh, wow, you're a good person trying to do the right thing, and there's nothing in it for you,’” says Andrew Yang, Founder and Co-Chair of the Forward Party. He’s referring to largely volunteer teams around the country that have raised the profile for election reform in 2024. “I mean, what could be more worthy of praise than that combination of attributes?”Yang was a relative unknown upon entering the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries. But that did not last long. He energized young voters with his informal approach to campaigning and practical position on innovative policies, such as universal basic income. “The reason I do what I do is because I don't have that positive an outlook as to what America's future looks like if we don't get our s%%# together,” says Yang, also an author and frequent commentator on major news networks. “Like it or not, the world's future is determined very much by what happens here in the United States.”Tune in to find out why Yang and the Forward Party support election reform in all its variations for 2024 and beyond. And why $200 million dollars spent on election reform, which is less than that spent on several Senate campaigns this year, could transform American politics for the better. The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

Reform Milestones with FairVote’s Rob Richie: Ranked Choice Voting’s First Three Decades

“It’s a thrilling year. It’s a tense year. I am a believer that this is a marathon,” says Rob Richie, Co-Founder and longtime Director of FairVote, the nation’s foremost catalyst for ranked choice voting elections. “There's moments of excitement– of cresting hills, of victories and sometimes defeats.”In this Purple Principle episode, Richie recounts the highs and lows throughout the steady progression of ranked choice voting in US elections since co-founding FairVote three decades ago. For example, the successful implementation of RCV elections in Portland paved the way for the nation’s first statewide ballot passage by Maine voters in 2016. That was followed by Alaska as part of Top Four voting reforms in 2020. “Alaska and Maine, interestingly, those two states are ones where independents have done particularly well,” says Richie. “We've had governors be elected in both states as independents, and they're states that were always on the reform radar.” In 2024, ranked choice voting has moved off the radar and onto ballots in multiple states– as a stand alone reform in Oregon and as part of Top Four or Five election reforms in Nevada, Colorado and Idaho. In the same period, though, nearly a dozen GOP dominated state legislatures have outlawed RCV. Does that make it critical for RCV to pass in multiple states this election year? Richie, now a Senior Advisor to Fairvote, thinks RCV has a logic and a momentum all its own aside from election results.“Younger Americans, 50% of them do not identify with the major parties at this point,” says Richie. “So we’re going to get away from two choice politics and Ranked Choice Voting will be part of that. But whether it happens doesn't depend on November.”Tune in to learn more about the first thirty years of RCV in the USA, from college campuses to city, town and county elections, and now to multiple state ballots in the same election cycle. And check out Fairvote.org for much more info on RCV. The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production; original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

Frontiers of Election Reform (Part 2): Will Alaskans Preserve Top Four Voting?

In 2020, Alaskans passed a first-in-the-nation voting system which helped energize similar reform efforts around the country. In 2024, Alaska voters are now presented with a ballot measure to repeal this same Final or “Top Four” system that includes a unified open primary of all candidates plus a ranked choice general election. Meanwhile, voters in Nevada, Idaho, Colorado and other states consider measures to pass major elements of  the “Alaska model.”This Purple Principle episode features discussion with election law expert and reform advocate Scott Kendall, a major catalyst behind “Top Four” in the frontier state. He explains the impetus behind the initial reform in terms of the perverse motivations elections have traditionally provided to candidates and elected representatives.“We have set up a system that gives all the wrong incentives and then we're surprised when people act on those incentives,” says Kendall, a former chief of staff to independent Governor Bill Walker. “It's as though a teacher graded their students' success on how much they misbehaved in class. And we wanted to change that.”By contrast, Republican state Senator Robert Myers stands in favor of the repeal effort, noting the longstanding Alaska tradition of forming bipartisan coalitions in the state legislature. “I think  this a problem in search of a solution,” Myers told us at the 2024 Alaska State Fair. “The way it was passed… a lot of people voting for campaign finance changes didn't realize they were voting to put in a jungle primary and ranked choice voting general election.”New System, Long Tradition?Independent Alaska House Representatives Calvin Schrage and Rebecca Himschoot see the Top Four or Ranked Choice Voting system differently. They think it will preserve and strengthen Alaska’s less partisan, more pragmatic political tradition.“Going door to door on my campaign, I'm also talking to voters a lot about the initiative,” says Schrage, the House Minority Leader representing parts of Anchorage. “I think returning to the old system further empowers extreme partisan individuals to choose candidates for us.”Prior to election, Rep. Himschoot was a career educator with a window on family and community challenges in her historically low-income southeast Alaska district. She doubts she would have entered politics without the Top Four  system. “It's a planetary test,” says Himschoot. “If we can keep open primaries and ranked choice voting, we have a chance at our state getting to a better place.”Tune in for Part Two of this exploration of the frontiers of election reform. How did Alaska become the North Star for other reform efforts around the country? What seminal events laid the groundwork for Top Four  passage in 2020 and a first full set of elections in 2022? And what are the issues surrounding potential repeal of Top Four or Ranked Choice Voting just four years after initial passage? The Purple Principles is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.