Ballot Initiatives Challenge Ranked Choice Voting and Protect Parental Rights

On May 22, 2024, Donna Tompkins, Linda Bisset, and Trent Loos joined the show. Discussed two ballot initiatives for parental notification of gender incongruence and biological sex-based sports participation, explaining the signature collection process and timeline Explained Kent Thiry’s initiatives to implement ranked choice voting and eliminate party nominations, and detailed counter-initiatives filed by The Good Initiatives coalition Discussed inflated voter rolls and the. Parents Fight Back Against Gender Ideology in Schools Start listening at 16:34 – Hour 1 Donna Tompkins describes the grassroots effort to place two common-sense initiatives on the November ballot. The first measure would require that biological boys compete only in boys’ sports and girls only in girls’ sports. The second initiative mandates that schools notify parents within 48 hours if their child expresses gender incongruence. Tompkins explains that the signatures deadline is the end of July, with the group aiming for 200,000 signatures to ensure a comfortable buffer against potential challenges. She emphasizes that signing the petition does not indicate how someone would vote, merely that they believe parents deserve the right to decide these issues at the ballot box. “It’s really disturbing to think that anybody would think that parents shouldn’t know what’s going on with their minor children at school.” Donna Tompkins, Protect Kids Colorado Wealthy Progressive Bankrolls Election Overhaul Start listening at 29:16 – Hour 1 Linda Bisset sounds the alarm on Kent Thiry’s well-funded campaign to fundamentally change Colorado elections. The former DaVita CEO has filed multiple ballot initiatives that would institute ranked choice voting and eliminate party nominations, effectively destroying the function of political parties in the state. Bisset and fellow citizens responded by creating The Good Initiatives, filing three counter-measures: Initiative 201 to prohibit ranked choice voting, Initiative 202 to preserve party nominations through caucus and assembly, and Initiative 278 to close primaries. She notes that nine states have already banned ranked choice voting due to its complexity and the way it often results in winners who were not the first choice of voters. The fiscal impact concerns Bisset as well: estimates suggest ballot printing costs of eight dollars per ballot, plus expensive software licensing, would burden county budgets. More troubling is that ranked choice voting requires centralized vote counting, creating security vulnerabilities in data transfer. “And if you like your political party, what Ken’s theory has in store for us is will obliterate the need for political parties.” Linda Bisset, The Good Initiatives Election Integrity and the HAVA Act Start listening at 73:42 – Hour 2 Trent Loos addresses broader election integrity concerns, noting that voter rolls appear inflated across the country. He points to the Help Americans Vote Act of 2003, which requires counties to maintain and provide voting records for 22 months, yet he has found no county with a success story in complying with this federal mandate. Kim Monson connects the dots between Colorado’s pre-registration of 15-year-olds, the proliferation of ballot boxes on college campuses, and the difficulty in auditing elections. When young voters move between ages 15 and 18 without updating their addresses, ballots still generate an...