Colorado election reformers face conservative critics in Proposition 131 debate • Colorado Newsline

“Prop 131 is about giving voters more voice, choice and power in our elections,” said Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America. “It’s about giving us the power to vote on our true preferences. … It’s about the candidates representing all of us. It’s about our leaders delivering better results on the issues we care about.”

Under the proposed system, all candidates for each office would compete in a single, open primary that would produce the top four vote-getters. The general election would be decided by ranked-choice voting, a method in which voters rank as many or as few of the four candidates as they like, eliminating candidates with the fewest first-place votes until one candidate receives a majority. The system would apply to elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, governor and other statewide executive offices, as well as the state legislature.

Jason Lupo, a Republican activist from Colorado Springs and former candidate for the state legislature, is the founder of First Choice Counts, one of two issue committees registered to oppose Proposition 131.

“This is a way to eliminate the progressives, it’s a way to eliminate the conservatives and go back to centrist values,” Lupo said. “Yes, I’m a pretty far-right conservative, but I still believe that the discourse that the far left brings has value.”

“The goal of ranked-choice voting is to find more centrist candidates,” he added. “It’s about who will comply with the wishes of interest groups and lobbies.”

The man who provided much of the financial firepower behind Unite America’s efforts, former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry, insisted that “nothing could be further from the truth.”

“We value the broad range of ideas in different political philosophies,” Thiry said. “While we don’t want all candidates to live in the middle of the political world, we want them to be able to meet in the middle when common sense requires it. And that doesn’t happen as often as we need.”

Thiry, who previously funded successful efforts to open Colorado’s primary elections and establish independent redistricting commissions, serves as co-chair of Unite America and has donated nearly $1.5 million to Colorado Voters First, the issue committee supporting Proposition 131 supports. The group also has six- and seven-figure contributions from Walmart heir Ben Walton, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Kathryn Murdoch, the daughter-in-law of right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

A conservative backlash

Two polls conducted last month showed Proposition 131 on track to be approved by voters, but both suggested the measure is significantly more popular among Democrats than Republicans.

A poll published by Colorado Voters First and conducted by Keating Research found that 46% of Colorado Republicans supported the measure, 30% opposed it and 24% were undecided. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of registered Democrats said they supported the proposal, with 19% undecided and just 14% opposed. An independent poll by Colorado Community Research surveying voters in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District also found a wide partisan divide: 56% of Democrats and independent voters supported the measure, compared to just 32% of Republicans.

Nationwide, Republicans have led a movement to ban ranked-choice voting at the state and local levels, and at least five bans have been passed by Republican-controlled states this year, according to NPR.

The election results in Alaska, which became the first state to use a top-four voting system in 2022, helped fuel the right-wing backlash. In the state’s only congressional race, voters elected U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, the first Democrat in 50 years to represent Alaska in the House, while moderate Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski defeated a more conservative Republican challenger. With support from leading Alaska Republicans, an initiative planned there in 2024 aims to repeal the system just four years after it was approved.

In addition to ideological concerns, opponents of Proposition 131 have also raised issues such as cost, implementation challenges and the potential for voter confusion. Candice Stutzriem, another Republican activist who spoke against the measure at Thursday’s debate, said the ranked-choice counting process would shift power from local county officials to a more centralized and less accountable system.

“How is this supposed to happen in the truest sense of the word?” Stützriem asked. “Are we going to physically take these ballots to (Colorado Secretary of State) Jena Griswold’s garage and count them there?”

But Troiano said most Colorado counties already use voting software compatible with ranked-choice voting, and fears about logistics and voter confusion are belied by Alaska’s experience.

“There is no state in the country where it is more difficult to conduct elections than Alaska,” he said. “Over 85% of electoral areas are not connected by roads. Twenty percent of the population is Alaska Native, which means ballots must be translated into nearly a dozen different languages.”

“Our opponents are right on one point: the electoral system we propose is not perfect,” Troiano added. “But there is no electoral system. That is a fact. The choice is not between a perfect system that could exist and this proposal. It lies between what we have today and this proposal.”