10.14.2024 -- NLS -- Ranked Choice Voting's Impact on Idaho's Elections and Conservative Vote Splitting

On this episode of the Neal Larson Podcast, Neal and Julie dive into the complexities of ranked choice voting and its potential effects in Idaho. They emphasize how critical it is for voters to understand that if they don't rank multiple choices, their ballot may become "exhausted" after the first round, leaving them without a voice in subsequent rounds. Neal and Julie discuss the potential for vote splitting among Republicans, which could open the door for less popular candidates to succeed, drawing on examples from Alaska's experience with ranked choice voting.

They also touch on the growing willingness of Idaho voters to openly support Donald Trump, as the political pendulum shifts. Neal and Julie express their excitement about the upcoming election season, sharing plans to engage listeners with live interactions and hand the mic to national media when needed. Wrapping up the episode, they express concerns about how ranked choice voting could disrupt traditional party systems and add complexity to the voting process.

Transcript

Now exclusive bonus content on The Neal Larson Show podcast. It's Monday, start of another week here, and I've got a story for Julie. I have not prepped her on this, but I loved the the plot of this story, and I want to get her real time reaction here. So a town in Massachusetts issued a cease and desist to a resident in the town because this resident was putting a Trump sign on the town's water tower.

But wait, have you heard this? I haven't heard this. He wasn't actually putting a physical sign. He was projecting us. Trump 2024 up on the tower. So he's been asked to stop projecting political signs under the town's municipal water tower or face fines. Greene issued the statement after she became aware the resident was projecting the image from his residence.

On Friday, October 11th, the town of Hanson became aware of this, and it says this misleads the public into believing that this activity is sanctioned by or condoned by the town. Greene went on to say the town does not endorse candidates for any office for any political party. Officials are combating the visibility of the Trump 2024 campaign logo being projected onto the water tower with a floodlight.

However, it was still visible as of Friday evening and the cease and desist order being prepared for the violator will impose a $100 per day fine until it stops. Okay, so here's my question. Trump how to pay for it? He should pay for it. Pay the $100 every day. That is such a good idea. Yes it is. My other my other question is is this legal.

Because do they own the airspace? That's the question. Is there actually a city ordinance that prevents this guy from doing it? Right. And if you think that. That's weird. What I just said, that's not weird in big cities, you can actually own the air or the space above your building, like there are city ordinances in some cities that allow you to own atmosphere.

Yes. So that like a view can't be blocked or things like that, you can actually buy atmosphere. But if there's not a city ordinance here, he's just using atmosphere. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No I think it's a great question. They might have to actually pass an ordinance that says you can't project electronically or otherwise, an image on the city property.

Yeah. Because if he if he's just using the atmosphere and that whatever he uses gets reflected onto things. Is he breaking a law? Yeah, I don't know. It's a great question though. I love your idea, though. Have Trump pay the 100 $100 a day for that advertising? That's nothing. Oh, that is nothing. Now, the city said, that the individual's actions have the potential to cost a significant amount of taxpayer dollars, including attorney's fees, which that's their choice, though, right?

Overtime to pay highway department workers to turn the spotlight on and off each day. And the potential for having to rent or purchase stronger lighting equipment. The $100 per day fine will likely not cover these expenses. Yeah, so they're asking for $100 a day, but they're spending far more to diffuse the image. Yes. Yeah, I'm guessing that's what what it is.

So that's their response to it is to overwhelm it with light so the guy can't project onto it. So. Right. I don't know. You know, here's another great thought is could they get him for light pollution because like Pocatello has a light pollution city ordinance, right? Yeah, but that applies to light going up in the sky like I don't I don't know who's on to it.

It wouldn't matter how it was, how it's worded, but it's worded. So anyway, kudos to this guy for being creative, at the very least for him. He may end up losing the case, but man, it's an opportunity for Trump to say, I'll pay you 100 bucks a day. It'll be huge. It'll be huge. And and encourage other people to project Trump onto their water towers.

All right. Time for the podcast. And.

You know, on the show I just.

If we allow borders. Harris to win this election. Every city, every community in this great country is going to go to hell. And I'm going to grab a guy at Mountain Dew if we got one. Yeah, I'm going down. I'm gonna pound one down. Good morning. It is 807. And when it comes to episodes of the Neal Larson Show, let's hope you're going to pound one down.

How are you? Three weeks and a day away. I know if you're anything like me, I might be admitting to mental illness here on my show. During this monologue, but if you are anything like me, your brain is sort of orbiting around November 5th. That might not be healthy. Like I will openly acknowledge. This is something that I'm not defending as a healthy approach here, but at the same time, the future of the country is kind of important to me.

I happen to love the United States of America. I happen to love our traditions. I happen to love. Oh, the the the story of who we are and what we are, not just as a country, but as a people and who we are to each other. And so I just sort of had that realization that my mind often just sort of gravitates back to, how's the election gonna turn out?

Like, how do you do that same thing? Like, are you sitting in church and somebody is giving a talk about, well, and Jesus loves you and we should strive to be more like that. And then your mind goes and the election's coming up in three weeks, like I, I'm doing that a lot and a lot more lately. Maybe this episode is a support group.

Hi, my name's Neal and I am addicted to election obsession, at any rate. But here we are. And I want to. I want to talk for a moment and maybe prep your mind a little bit. Now is the time. It is more important than ever. And I will tell you that in Idaho, the most important item on the ballot is proposition one.

And I say that without any sense of hyperbole or exaggeration and you might say, well, the presidency of the United States on the it's going for Trump in Idaho. We all know, okay, that's that's just known. There's no way that Kamala Harris is going to win in Idaho. So I don't want you spending a lot of time trying to get Trump elected in Idaho.

Look, we're going to talk about Trump. We're going to talk about that. But the biggest battle that you have right now in your day to day life, when you go to work, when you interact with your neighbors, when you are on social media, with your friends who are living in and voting in Idaho, if you talk politics, now is the time.

I've been working on something and I'm not. Again, I try to be vague with things that aren't quite finished because sometimes I'll say things and people actually listen, and they might take it a little too literally or a little too seriously. But I'll just keep it vague and I will say this I've been spending an awful lot, an awful lot of time with my head in proposition one.

I've never been inclined toward it. You know what? I, not and certainly not proposition one. I will say it with this caveat in the interest of being just honest and authentic and genuine, here, I do remember when I first heard about the idea of an instant runoff. There was a moment where I said, hey, that's a pretty good idea.

You save some money, you don't have to have that subsequent election. Whatever. So you rank your vote votes and you can do it all quickly. Okay. That initially when it was presented to me, I thought, that's a decent idea. And then I forgot about it. And years went by and then the people that I disagree with on many issues became the most vocal advocates to bring it here.

And that's when my skepticism was raised. It wasn't reflexive opposition, but it was. Why are they proposing it? Because they never put forward good ideas. Rarely not, not never, but rarely. And then I dug into it. And then we had the example out of Alaska that Mary Portola essentially snuck into power. Now they would take issue with the way that I've characterized that.

But in round one, she 60% of the people voted against her. And then the way the ballots were ranked in subsequent rounds, the one candidate that could have beaten her in the subsequent rounds didn't survive the first round. It becomes very it's not as simple as counting one, two, three, four. That's what they say. And maybe on the process day of is as it's a little more complex than that, but it's pretty simple once you get your mind around it.

The voters job is to simply show up and rank. It's not to understand it or to understand the dynamics where you might get results that are very unintended. And the more I get into this, the more I am absolutely convinced, without any doubt whatsoever. This is an effort by the left to take over the political landscape in Idaho and if not, take over, have an outsized influence upon.

I will have more for you on this in the coming days, but what I have asked of this audience, or suggest, but I think I think asking is absolutely the right term, is that you tell the entire story. You don't let it just hang out there. Well, yeah, it's 276,000 independent Idahoans that are blocked from voting in the, the election.

Tell them the whole truth, say, well, they've made a choice that they can't vote in the election. They block themselves from voting because of the choice that they've made. And the way that our system works. So you can say blocked, but that isn't really accurate. It's not untruthful, but it's not accurate either. Like, it's, it's it leaves an insinuate.

And that is not, not correct. And fundamentally that's very, very unethical on on their part. And then when they present the right, you know what? I found a clip over the weekend of, Luke Mayville. He was on, TV station in Twin Falls. And he said, you know, you can if you want. You don't have to, but you can if you want to rank your choices.

And I'm thinking you did not convey to them that if you decide to not rank your choice, your ballot is exhausted after the first round and you don't have a voice in the subsequent rounds. He didn't explicitly state that. Maybe he felt that he was speaking to a more conservative audience, and they he wants them to have the notion that I'll just rank my first one, because chances are very good Democrats in Idaho or liberals in Idaho are not going to be the highest percentage vote getters in that first round.

And if all you did was vote in the first round, that gives the supporters of that Democrat more of a voice in the subsequent subsequent rounds. Do you see how this gets kind of complicated, kind of quickly. So I would ask of you, we're not going to spend all day talking about this because I'm going to tell you for the next three weeks, you're going to hear a lot about it.

There's probably going to be a lot of advertising. There's going to be increased chatter and discussion at your workplace, and you'll certainly hear more about it on here. But I'm asking you that you find ways to open this conversation and disclose the full story of what they're trying to do in Idaho, with your friends, with your coworkers, with those you associate with preposition at the end.

At any rate, welcome to the program. We have very exciting announcement. We're super, super, stoked is probably the best word for it. We're very excited. Actually. Julie and I are hosting a, debate watch party. We will be broadcasting live from the the snake River Event Center at the Shiloh Inn on election night in Idaho Falls, Lindsay Boulevard.

And we want you to come be a part of it. It there's going to be big screens up with results coming in. By the time it starts. We will start to have some East coast results. We'll start to see how the presidential race is shaping up. We'll see how some of the congressional races are turning out on the eastern part of the country.

And then as we get through the night, of course, the polls close at 8:00 here, and then you start getting results around 9:00 and 9 to 930, and then they start flooding in, closer to 10:00. So we'll see how that goes. And we'll be getting results in a timely manner because we don't have ranked choice voting in Idaho.

See what I did there? So, at any rate, you, you'll want to join us for that. I will have a sign up, but there's no action. The only action I would ask you to take right now is just pencil it in on your calendar. Plan on joining us. You don't have to come for the whole night.

If you want to pop in, hang out for a few minutes. And here's the way I'm envisioning it. I've never quite done anything like this before. Like, this is is an a new event, and there are a lot of moving parts. But Julie and I, of course, will be broadcasting, but we're going to have mics for politicians.

We're going to have mics for people visiting just listeners or politicos to step up and talk with us. We're going to try and connect. Did I say debate? Excuse me, election watch party. It's been a long week. It's been a long few months. Okay. So, thank you for correcting me. And I truly mean that. It's an election watch party on November 5th.

There will probably be debates going on. I mean, I can see that, but you know what I mean? But we'll we'll hear from our some of our listeners and people who are at the party. We're going to do our best to connect with other election watch parties around the state as well electronically and talk with them. So I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

We'll we're striving to have refreshments. We're working with, local Republicans to, help make this happen and help make it as big as possible. And so we hope that you will plan at least a portion of your night to join us and to be a part of that. We'd love to have just, rockin good time on on that night.

And Julie and I, here's sort of the nice thing about a big election like this is we do have a national media coverage option so that when Julie and I either don't have anything to talk about, which that's very rare, or if we just need to take a breather and step away, we just hand it off to the national, coverage so that we'll be available to talk here and there, with our with our listeners.

And we hope that you'll join us for for that also, Julie and I, we told the story at the end of the last hour, but I want to recap really quickly. On Friday, Julie and I went and did a vote no on prop one sign drop event, and, we had we thought, you know what? We got a few dozen signs.

This will take an hour ish. And we were starting at 11:00 and going until noon. We got there at about ten minutes before, and when we got out of the car, we all of a sudden had at least 15 to 20, maybe 25 people walking toward. Julie likened it to The Walking Dead. And so we we actually gave out the last sign we had at 1103, and we stuck around until noon because we knew people were going to be coming and checking in.

We had a few people come in. They were a little disappointed, but everyone was good about it and we said, we apologize. We we had no idea that it was going to go this fast. So based on that, we have talked about it, we've reached out and the the gears are working that we will get more signs and not just a few dozen more.

We're talking about hundreds of signs and doing another drop off. No harm. No, firm details yet that I'll pass along to you. We hopefully will have those by tomorrow or Wednesday, but you may want to just have a little time available to you on Friday in the early afternoon. I'll just put it like that. And so, a lot happening and a lot of moving parts.

We're, thrilled to to watch the response of this audience. You people are unbelievable and amazing. And I feel the love that you have for this state and for this country. And I'm gratified by it. You are amazing people. You care and you care deeply. And I love that. And we, Julie and I, we get to to see it up close when, when people stop by, they'll thank us.

They'll tell us how much they love us. They bring us gifts. They do all sorts of things. And I just want to tell you, thank you. We're we're humbled by it and and we're grateful for it. So two things Friday afternoon and election night. We want you to join us. And we'll have more details in the coming days.

It's 823. We'll take a break and be back. We got lots to talk about. Interesting weekend. JD Vance killing it in the good way. And then Tim Walz, not so much. Bit of an embarrassing weekend for him. We'll have those details ahead.

It's 828 on Newstalk 1079 Neal Larson along with Julie Mason and Julia. I want to give out some kudos to Frank Vandersloot. He is being very vocal on this, and I understand he's got some radio spots that are, being, propagated. We absolutely apprec shade and need voices like his in this, in this particular fight. He couldn't agree more.

I, I think that, I having a voice like Frank Vandersloot speak about it reflects what you and I were talking about during the commercial break. I think there is this perception out there that these extremist candidates are getting elected, and that's what needs to change. Yeah. That's not what's happening. No. And Frank Vandersloot is not an extremist.

No. We've actually disagreed with him on a few things. Yes. I would consider him a fairly moderate Republican. Yeah. If he is worried about this system, that speaks volumes. Yeah. Well, it it really does. And, like I said in my head, he's been in this whole prop know thing. Another it's filled with I get blunt sometimes they're just lying.

They wouldn't say they're lying because my definition of a lie is, are you attempting to deceive or leave out part of the truth? Okay. They may not always give out things that are factually incorrect. And they think, well, that's their standard of will just be factually correct. But if you come away with an impression that's inaccurate and that was the intent, then they're lying to you.

That's my definition. Well, when they talk about the moderate candidates, I was looking at the history. Let's just take Idaho's statewide offices for a moment. Our last four governors have been Brad, little Brad little Butch. Otter. Butch. Otter. In every race, they fended off a more conservative candidate. Yes they did. And successfully won in a Republican primary.

You look at the Secretary of State's race, Phil McGrane fended off, a Dorothy Moon. You look at, the, Lieutenant governor's race, you had Scott Bedke, who fended off Priscilla Giddings in the last race. Now, there are some exceptions. Janice McGee in one in a five way race. A couple of election cycles ago. And Raul Labrador defeated Lawrence, wasn't it?

But the the rule is those are the exceptions. The rule is that the moderates are winning these Republican primaries. If you want to look in just east Idaho. Stephanie Mickelson fended off a, Brett Skidmore, a much more conservative candidate. You had Josh Wheeler defeated Chad. Oh. Go ahead. No, it was Josh Wheeler fended off Brett Skidmore. Kelly.

Golden. Kelly Golden. Yeah. Sorry, sorry. I'm getting it all mixed up. That's okay. I've looked at so many names lately. But, yeah, she fended off Kelly Golden. And, you had that. You had Josh Wheeler, who defeated Chad Christiansen and then fended off Brett Skidmore. You had, Dave Lant fended off for, a more conservative candidate.

I mean, I could cite example after example where the centrist candidate, the more moderate candidate, came out victorious in the in the primary. So they're they're couching it like, well, we need to get more moderate winners in the primary. You already have that. So that's not what you're aiming for. You're aiming for something different because you already have what you say you're trying to accomplish.

And what they really want is for the people who are currently Democrats to be victorious much more often in Idaho. Exactly. They won't be called Democrats because the proposition allows them to call themselves whatever they want. They can identify with any party or no party at all. And to me, that's just obscuring things even more. Right. Right.

I mean, they've they've created a problem here that does not exist. And they've used language that makes you believe it's a bigger problem. Well, it's a they land use language to make you think there is a problem. Yeah. No one's blocked. Everyone has the right to vote in Idaho. But they say that you're blocked. They use the word injustice on their website.

There is no injustice happening in Idaho. You're not being robbed of something. There hasn't been an activity that has taken something from you. Yeah. There is no injustice yet. That word shows up twice in one paragraph on their lead page. Like on the front page. It's probably the third paragraph down. They call it an injustice. Twice. Yeah. And they tell you that the votes are blocked.

They are not blocked. So they're creating a problem that doesn't exist. And they load it with language that makes you feel like, well, we got to do the right thing here. Well, there is no there's no injustice happening. There is no wrong thing happening. You don't have to write something that's not wrong. Right? It's a system they don't like.

But it's not. It's not unjust. I would ask and I, I know it's just going to flow out there into the ether because there is no good answer to this. But if you're an independent voter, how does it harm or injure you to have to register with the Republican Party if you want to vote in the Republican Party's primary?

Like, how are you injured? What what what is brought upon you? What travesty are you experiencing? Because you got to register to vote in the Republican Party. If even if you don't believe in it, you still can. Like, nobody's blocking you from registering as a Republican, even if you hate the Republicans. Yeah, I don't align with Nikki Haley, but she calls herself a Republican.

I call myself a Republican, I vote Republican. She's going to vote Republican. I don't align with Nikki Haley. She and I are very different. She didn't do anything wrong to me. There was no injustice. No. None at all. Just because I don't match up with a candidate doesn't mean I get to claim injustice. Yeah. I want to I want to know where that injustices.

Now, they they have crafted a talking point that sounds like there's there's an injured, but there's not. And I keep making this analogy. You well, you had the perfect one. Costco. If you don't buy a membership, you're blocked from going. No, that just means you didn't choose to buy a membership to Costco. Okay, you have an option.

You want to do it. If you don't, don't. Yeah. It there's no injustice there. Yeah. So we also hear that and this is probably another talking point that I think is a fairly potent talking point on the surface. But there's there's nothing beneath it. They say well these elections are taxpayer funded. So everybody ought to be able to vote in them.

That's not even that. I don't understand that because we don't actually apply that principle everywhere throughout everything in the government. Meals on wheels might get a government grant. They probably do. Does that mean because my taxpayers went to meals on Wheels, I get to decide who is the leadership of Meals on Wheels and who they're going to deliver to and, and how they're going to run their business model and know I'm like they got a government grant because they're helping poor people.

Parties every every eligible party gets their elections paid for their primary elections paid for to to take that and stretch it to. Therefore anybody should be able to vote in any election. Just doesn't pass any kind of a logical consistency test at all. I have a whole boatload of my tax dollars that go to education. I don't use the education system in Idaho anymore.

Yeah, my children are adults. I, I know nothing to do with it other than get to vote on school board elections and then the and then the statewide election for, the secretary or the, education. Yeah. That's it. That's my that's my complete role in it. I don't get to walk in and decide what happens. Yeah. Right.

Those taxpayer dollars are going to something that I've agreed to as a community member that I'm going to help out with. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Somebody else said this, and we made this point. Medicare, government funded. You have to qualify. Well, Medicaid as well. I make too much money for Medicaid. You make too much money for Medicaid?

Yeah. But we pay for it. So why don't we get to. I mean, if that's their logic, then let's start applying it to other things. I don't know why they carve out special logic for elections. Because when you're a victim or when you claim victim status, everything's against you. Yeah. Everything. Yes. And that's true. So, again, the next three weeks, I think, are crucial that you get out.

You tell people the entire story about prop one. Yeah. I you know what I can I talk about a text we just got. Yeah. I'm loving this because we had somebody come get a prop one signed. Vote no on prop one signed from us on Friday. They were getting it because theirs had been stolen from their yard.

No they needed another one. Yeah. Right. This person just texted it and said, go mobile. Their vote No sign is in the back window of their car. I love that. You. They can't. I love it from you if it's in the back window of your car. Now, without a car alarm going off. Right. I love it. Yeah. That's a really good idea.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. (208)Â 542-1079. It's 838 will break, and, we'll return with your phone calls, with your texts and, a lot of audio to get to from over the weekend. It's a good weekend for JD Vance and Donald Trump. Interesting weekend for I don't think that. What was the kind of gun that Baretta. I don't think Brett is going to have Tim Walz be their spokesman any time soon either.

We'll be right back.

It's 844 on Newstalk 179. And Julie, there's a comet visible. Okay. And it's going to be visible for a few days. I'm even hearing from some people that say it may at some point be visible in the daytime. Wow. So I had, someone texted me an image that they took last night, and the comet was even visible through the smoky haze.

Okay, so, how late was this person awake to see it? It's visible, right after dark in the western sky. Okay. And, it's gonna grow in magnitude, like, just the brightness of it in the next few days. So I guess, look to the West, at least right now. The best way to see it is look to the West.

When he had texted me the image, it was about 15 degrees above horizon. So, just keep your eyes out. It's kind of kind of interesting. Okay. Are you nervous about this comet? Is it going to harm. No, there's no danger surrounding the comet. Okay? No, there's no there's no concern that it could hit hit Earth or anything.

In fact, where my mind goes to is scripture actually where you're laughing, but you and about half our listeners. So he's just saying he stole a whole bunch of texts. We're going to get signs in the heavens like it's like, okay, we've had massive aurora borealis displays over the last couple of years. We have comets showing up that we had no idea we're going to show up a couple of years ago and eclipses, eclipses that have happened.

Those are always predictable but they still are happening. You know couple a couple of major eclipses happening seven years apart. So like I'm not I don't deep dive into that stuff. But there is that little part of me that is like, okay, a lot of things happening in the skies right now and in the heavens. Yeah. Yeah. So did you see what Elon Musk did over the weekend with his big heavy rocket?

Yes. That was pretty phenomenal. It was. So they've Space-X has built this I don't I don't even know what you'd call it. The available the possibility that they shoot a rocket into the air and they can go and grab the fuselage and bring it back after it dislodges. Am I understanding this correctly? I don't I haven't read up on this.

Yes, I believe that what they have the capability of doing so to rescue those. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, he is just breaking boundaries everywhere. Oh, but he likes Donald Trump, so we can't look at anything good he's doing Julie. Yeah. Because I don't want you to talk positively about Elon Musk ever again. Okay okay. Seems because he likes Donald Trump.

We can't. How dare he. We can't examine anything positive that he contributes to humanity. Yeah, he is saying openly now that if Kamala wins that the platform that X will be destroyed, it will go away because of the lawfare that will be enacted against him. Yeah, they're coming after him. And they've basically said as much. Yeah.

Our world is going to get I mean it's already interesting, but it may get crazy some tumultuous times ahead. Yeah. Really. Really. Tumultuous times. Okay. Dennis Quaid, came out in support of Trump. Here he is at a rally over the weekend. God bless you. God bless America. I'm here today to tell you that it's time to pick a side.

Are we going to be a nation that stands for the Constitution or for tick tock? Are we going to be a nation of law and order? Or wide open borders? Which is it? Because it's time to pick a side. Okay. And it was at a Trump rally. And so, how have you been? I don't really remember because it was it's been eight years.

I almost feel like Trump has more celebrity support this time around than he had eight years ago. I think so. I think people are just becoming just getting their courage, knowing that it's okay to speak out and say, I support Trump. Yeah, I think part of that I would actually say a major portion of that is that cancel culture is not as effective as it used to be.

There used to be the ability to counsel people, not monetarily meaning reputation wise. That's kind of out the window. It just doesn't occur near as often. People cancel now by deciding where their dollars are going to go. Yeah, that's the biggest form of cancellation. And for me, you get to decide whatever you want to do with your money.

So if you don't want to support a business, don't support a business. I'm never going to tell somebody what to do with their money. Yeah, you earned it. You buy what you want to buy. You choose to not buy what you want to buy. But the ability to cancel somebody's reputation just by a rumor. That was a dangerous time period that we were living in.

Yeah. And that has shifted. The pendulum has swung back, and I think it's brought with it the ability for people to have courage to stand up and say, yeah, I'm voting for Donald Trump. Yeah. I and I would agree with that. I think that and I'm glad to see certainly the cancel culture is still there, but I, I feel like it's at about 50% of what it used to be.

It just doesn't seem as potent anymore, because I think we had some pioneers in opposing, actually, not even just ignoring it. And that's how you win. Matt Walsh is a great example of that. He didn't care that liberals were their minds were were blowing up because he said something. He writes a book about the walrus and the he just didn't care.

He's like, if they're going to cancel me, I have to agree to it and I don't agree to it. Yeah. And that that broke them. Yeah, I agree and I this is a good thing because people you shouldn't have to hide who your candidate is. That shouldn't be a lie. Like you shouldn't have to live in fear that you say, I'm voting for this person.

And I believe that people do I believe that. Yeah. We were talking with somebody on Friday when we were giving out the signs that a Trump, a very, very large Trump Vance, banner had been destroyed overnight. Yeah, we do live still in this sphere. And it takes courage. And I appreciate the people who are willing to put those things up on their property and risk the damage.

I appreciate the people who who risked their reputation, Dennis Quaid and and stand up for Trump, because the more people that do, the more that cancel culture subsides. Yes. My my deepest hope, Julie, is that people, when they put up Trump signs will also put up trail cams. And when you catch the culprits tearing down the signs and destroying them, you promptly send us the the trail cam footage.

I would love that. And then we will promptly publicize it and post it. Anyone know this person? Yes. We're happy to do that. We'll be of service to you. So another good moment. Gloria Romero is a former Democratic state senator in California. But yet there she was at a Trump rally in a Maga hat endorsing Donald Trump. I stand before you today as a former lifelong Democrat.

Previous I served as the Senate majority leader of the California State Senate. But like Leo Terrell, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. I no longer recognize today's wacko, authoritarian woke Democratic Party. So I walked away. And I know there are closet Democrats out there, too. Come on over to the sunny side of politics. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined myself joining the Republican Party under leaders like Mitt Romney and Dick Cheney.

But I was inspired by Donald J. Trump. The blue collar billionaire who is committed to putting America first. So I joined this Nueva Republican Party that only he could lead, welcoming us, us all into a big, beautiful American tent. A party that's dedicated to free speech, prosperity and peace. Great speech. Awesome. You know I love it. I you for those who don't know, he held a huge rally in Coachella, California.

Massive crowds, massive crowds that you would think he wouldn't be able to poll in California. Yeah, I think in general we just believe there's no Republicans there. That's just not accurate. You know, especially if you're you're centralized in Orange County. There there is a huge Republican movement there. And they showed up for him in Coachella. So, along those lines in attracting Hispanic support, he was also in Vegas.

And this is Myra Flores. And there was a Hispanic roundtable. Here's what she said. Let's make it clear to the Hispanic community that the Biden and Harris administration have killed our economy, destroyed our border. They have destroyed everything good that we have in our country, but they have not destroyed us. And we're going to give President Trump the biggest win in November.

Hispanics are and we're out of time for this hour. But it was a great clip. We'll have more for you. It's 855 on Newstalk 117. Also, get to your phone calls as well in the next hour right here on Newstalk 179. All right. That's it for our one. Another hour. Still ahead on Newstalk 179.

Welcome back. It's our two. It's 907. If you'd like to be a part of the program, the number to call is (208)Â 542-1079. That's the fall River propane call and text line question from Christie listener Christine. She says, hey Neal, I listened to your show driving to work every morning. That's a great way to start the day, by the way.

Thank you so much for keeping us informed, especially when it comes to this awful prop one. I wanted to be as precise as I can about the response you got from the Vote Yes team when you asked how with ranked choice voting in place, we would do the required hand recount. Could you refresh me on who said what?

I'm in my 60s. I've always voted I and I'm one who feels this election, local and national, is the most important one in my life. So, we have never personally gotten that answer from them, but I think what you might be referring to, I did comment last week. I watched on video of forum that involved Todd Achilles, who's one of the lead supporters of prop one most visible, and Trent Clarke, former chair of the party's on the executive committee.

We all know who Trent Clarke is and Trent Clarke push this issue, he said. Let's imagine a ranked choice voting environment with a situation like we had between Ben Furman and Julianne Young, where they, the state, had to do a recount because they were separated by a couple of votes initially. And how do you do a hand recount when you're talking about multiple counties and thousands upon thousands of votes?

And the answer from Todd Achilles, I will be honest, was not very encouraging. He didn't give any details. He just simply said we'll figure it out. A major gate like gaping hole in what they're trying to implement. And he answers we'll figure it out. Yeah okay. But that's like Medicaid expansion. They didn't they didn't even explain to the legislature how they were going to pay for it in the future.

It was you figure it out. This is what we want. You figure it out. And that's the honestly that might be one of my biggest problems with these voter initiatives is they make a command. But they leave it up to other people to figure out how to get it done. And the command has difficulties from step one.

Yes. Yeah. So I will find the audio. I don't want anybody feeling like I'm mischaracterizing this because I have my own strong opinions on this. I know Todd Achilles talked about apparently in like Ireland. I think they've they've done hand counts of ranked choice voting. So there's that. But but he also said I would trust the machine counting more than the hand counting.

So I don't know which you know how how all of this falls. But you know you can do I will say this within part, like Robert's Rules of Order, they actually use some ranked choice voting principles internally for for making party decisions. Okay. But it doesn't work well for massive numbers of people because it does get difficult to be able to for the very same reason.

It's very difficult to do recounts. It's very difficult to audit. Right. Well I found it interesting that his responses, the machine will do better than a human recount, a human hand count. Okay. You don't even have matching machines for this right. So you were saying I'd prefer machines to do it on. By the way, figure out how to get the machines to make ranked choice voting possible.

And yeah, let's use open source, software that anyone can hack to do ranked choice. And I'm don't quote me on this, but it's my understanding in in that particular race, Butte County actually does hand counting okay. Because there is sparsely populated county. It works for them. In Bingham County there's more population. So they they use that. So you're going to have two different systems that they're going to have to try and blend in order to do a recount.

And so I don't if they did try to answer all of the potentialities with this, an 18 page proposition probably would have been a thousand pages. Yes. And so there is I mean, we're into uncharted territory where there's a lot of things. We don't know how that's going to work out. Another big question I have that I stumbled into last week that I think is super important.

I've been warning for months that one of the biggest dangers of this proposition is that any candidate will be able to say they are a member of any party without that being accurate, there's no accuracy or verifying there. There's nothing. It's just candidate X says, I'm a Republican, and there's actually no way for a county clerk to go, are you or anything?

It's just they if it's advantageous to them to have that association, they can do that. So my question is I'm like, okay, let's sort of extrapolate this out a little further. Let's look over the horizon a little bit. If you have candidate X says they're a Republican, they end up winning their race. Are they bound to that affiliation?

In other words, when you count who's in the majority in the legislature, will that be a requirement? Because I sure hope it is. That's what voters thought you were. And so therefore, that's what you ought to be when you get sworn in in Boise in January. Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Well, and one thing that we don't talk a lot about with this is it really sweeps the legs out from the party is what it does.

Yeah. Because the party becomes less and less relevant with the implementation of the two parts of this, both the ranked choice voting and the open primaries part, it really harms the the the party system in general. That's desirable to them because their, their form of the party system that the Democrat side is so anemic. And in Idaho. So they love to make the party weaker, right?

Yeah. They just want to they just want to take control of the races. They don't care if the party because their party's already weak. They don't care. Right? Right. And and so when you sweep the legs out from the party, they can't really do much to help or to expect or to lay out a platform. I mean, you're you're taking so much power away from this, this privately organize.

Yeah. Value system. Yeah. I think there will be some in the Democrat Party that will welcome its demise in Idaho. Because your affiliation with the Democrat Party, it might help you in ten legislative districts out of the 35, it might be a benefit to be a Democrat in one of those in nearly every other legislative district.

It's a death sentence. If you want to run for statewide office as a Democrat, that's a death sentence. You want to hear it. You want to hear a nasty little statistic. Idahoans have not elected a Democrat to statewide office in 14 years. This is why they're pushing for this, the last Democrat to win. And furthermore, the Democrat was the controller.

Nobody cares. The Lisa. The least powerful state position. Yeah. Nobody cares if the controller's a Democrat. Yeah, they're just bean counters. I hate to reduce their job down to that, but that's that's kind of what they do. There. So when you look at that and, and I think it was Donna Jones actually, you cannot get elected to statewide office in Idaho is a Democrat.

You can't. That's when I say their party's anemic. Their party's anemic. It is. They're sick and tired of that. And so they've got to come up with a creative way to sneak their people and give them a fighting chance to win some of these higher offices, because the Democrat brand is so horrifically bad in the Gem State. Okay.

So I had a, as part of a church lesson yesterday. We had a conversation. The woman when people, hurl insults, they're it usually says far more about them than it does about about you. If you're the one who's getting insulted or something you believe in is getting insulted, right? Isn't that the case here? Aren't they speaking volumes about how far left the Democrat Party has shifted?

Because in 14 years, if you couldn't win a statewide office because you have shift, your party has shifted so far to the left. Maybe the problem's you, maybe it is. Maybe the problem isn't that Idaho is red. Maybe the problem is you. Yeah, but instead they won't look at that. They just got to blow up the system to try to make it work for them.

They. Yeah, that that is exactly it. Now, a lot of people would argue, because I can hear sort of the cynical portion of our audience saying, oh no, we have Democrats in there. They're just masquerading as Republicans. You know, that, you know, Brad Littler, I'm like, now they're not like, you may not like them as a Republican.

They may not be as conservative as you like, but they are leaps and bounds better than any known Democrat that's run for that office. Okay. So let let's not get into this polarized binary choice kind of thinking that, yeah, maybe you wanted Raul Labrador to be the governor. Maybe you wanted, you know, Priscilla Giddings to be the lieutenant governor.

That's fine. And and I totally support you in that. And you ended up with Brad Little and Scott Bedke. They're still far better than who the what the Democrat Party is putting forward his options. I mean, the response to that is, okay, we can talk about that. And you're correct in some situations, do you want it to be worse?

Yeah. What benefit comes from from throwing that into this argument. There is no benefit because it's just going to be worse than it already is. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, it's this is an epic fight. I think people have no idea because the other side has been pretty darn effective at reducing this down to just a couple of things.

And it's let more people vote in the primaries and it's instant runoff. And those are the two things they just want you to know and to focus on. Don't think any deeper. We got all the complicated details behind the scenes, taken care of. You don't need to know fully how it can go, but when you go down the rabbit hole and you see this for what it is, when you see that, for instance, in Alaska, you you had a candidate that could beat any other candidate in a head to head that wasn't the candidate, the one Nick Begich would have defeated Sarah Palin one on one.

He would have beaten Mary Pelton one on one. But the ranked choice voting system in Alaska, which is exactly what we're going to have, very similar, very similar, will not pick that kind of say winner there. It won't. In fact, when you have a situation that will be very likely in Idaho, where you have a lone Democrat who may not even say there a Democrat on the ballot running against a couple of Republicans, this vote splitting will go on.

And your strongest candidate in the long run in a multiple round system may actually get eliminated in the earliest round. That's how they want it. Yeah they do. That is exactly how they want it to be. And it it sets up in subsequent rounds a favorable environment for that lefty candidate to end up winning. Yep. That's exactly accurate.

I kind of had a thought while you were talking that this is like your 22 year old daughter coming home from college, bringing the guy that she's been dating for the last six months. It's the first time you medium. And in all of that, she's been telling you, oh, he's such a good guy. He's so kind to me.

He has goals that it, and you accept it on face value and everything that she's told you. Then you meet him and you get that sick feeling in your stomach. So you do a background check on him and you realize he's a convicted child molester like that, right? That's the level of this they want. They want to sell it to you with these two talking points that don't even reveal the true character of the proposition.

And they want don't ask questions. No, no no no no. He's a it's a good guy. It's a good don't ask questions mom. He's a good guy. And then you start asking questions and it starts to look real bad. Yeah. Real quick. Well yes it does, it does. And the the texture of the political landscape that they're seeking is not possible in our current system.

This is all about it's all about pulling Idaho to the left there. There is no doubt or question in my mind any more, even if I give them as much benefit of the doubt as I can muster. There is no way that this is not about pulling Idaho's political landscape to the left, even more than more than it is right now.

Right? Right now, I would say you can look at our our legislative makeup. We're one of the most largest, Republican legislatures in the country. However, from an outcomes standpoint, we're much closer to the center, even though that we're, you know, there's so many there's tons of ours. But the legislation we get probably if if you had if you had one requirement for a legislative body, everybody had to be honest and true to what they say they are.

We probably have a 5545 outcome, 55 Republican, 44 or 45 Democrat. That's probably the legislation that we'd be getting, if everybody were honest. Right. So still probably center right, but much closer to the center than what the partizan makeup would indicate. So just go ahead and get involved in this tug of war, because if they win, it's going to be a violent yank.

It is to the left. Yeah. You're we're going to have lots and lots of little surprises in in the future. All right. It's 923 on Newstalk 179. If you'd like to join us on Facebook Live, you can do that by texting live to (208)Â 542-1079. Back up to this. Okay? See do do bada bing bada bing bada bing bada boom.

You know it's so fascinating listeners, but we have a very noticeable drop in listeners on Friday. And we attribute that to the site. Yeah. We think it's all jobs. Yeah. That it's just fewer people listening. I might be able to chart where people are listening from like with IP address. Yeah. But we can't like drill down to exact locations.

It's more like cell phone towers, you know, or whatever. But.

Someone said this, and I've been trying to make this point to their instant runoff argument. Doesn't hold water. A true runoff is only between the top two candidates in vote count. This system allows them to eliminate the candidate who gets the most initial votes. That needs to be emphasized. This is not an instant runoff. It is a manipulate of the voters.

That that is so true. Yeah. So true. Nothing wrong with that comment. And I also, you know what else I like about an actual runoff versus an instant runoff. You have about a month to consider a binary choice. You take the top two. They run in December. Yeah. Maybe one of you maybe let's say there was open primaries and no ranked choice voting.

Yeah. Let's say there was open primaries. And then they they carried forward two people or four people and the top nobody got 50%. So they take the top two when you runoff 30 days later between those people. Yeah. It's very similar to Georgia the way Georgia does it. They almost always have a runoff of some sort in Georgia.

Okay. At least I would have an opportunity, especially if my the third place winner in those top four was my top choice. I gotta now figure out who do I want to vote for. Yeah. Give me the 30 days. Let me do a little more research and go what's the worst. What's the least of the two evils.

Yeah. Right. Left. Yeah. That's right, that's right. Yeah. CNN, I also had another this is more a psychological observation. When you're in a ranked, when you're voting in a ranked ballot, your first choice is the object of your true intent, right? Yes. Like you're picking a winner. I think quite often your subsequent choices can feel like protest votes or symbolic votes or whatever.

And I think that's why one of the reasons Mary Pitolo won the battle between Begich and Palin got kind of nasty. So they went in thinking, okay, I like Begich, but Sarah's been kind of nasty. So I'm choosing Peltz as my second choice. But you're thinking Begich is going to be the winner, right? Yeah, it's a little bit of a mind band.

Yes it is. And and I think the there are psychological paradigms that shift when you have a ranked choice vote that it just doesn't feel as real. The two, three and four that's just down the line and you don't count it like this is a very this potentially is a very real vote with real consequences. Okay. I can totally buy into that because I think that's one of the reasons we can't truly listen to polls and why Donald Trump always outperforms the polls, because people on a phone call or whatever don't want to say they're voting for Trump.

But when it comes down to it, yeah, they actually will vote for him. Well, you might you might do the exact same thing going, well, my guy is going to win anyway. It's a false, you know. Yeah. Bravado. My guy is going to win anyway. So doesn't matter who I put for two and three. And I want to send a message to Sarah Palin.

So she's not going to be my second choice. Yes. Yeah, but but if you were faced with a situation where it was Sarah Palin versus this liberal Democrat, you're going to be like, I got to go with you. Okay, I'll hold my nose and vote Sarah Palin. Yeah, absolutely. Why do I keep saying I'm going to delete this bumper music and don't I don't know, it's a little catchy.

Why do I see, like, beehive hairdos and whatever that thing there's that I don't.

Welcome back. It's this dance, is it? If there's only showing only Facebook Live cut to just see the dance. Okay. Gotcha. So Julie and I were having an interesting discussion about other problems with ranked choice voting. They. Well, we actually had someone text in making the point that I've made before, which is they call it an instant runoff, which it's not it's not an instant runoff is you take the top two and a month later you run them against each other, so you get a fifth, a true 50% winner.

That's not what this if, if it were, if you wanted to really have an instant runoff you would simply eliminate everyone from the ballot except for the top two vote getters and then find a way to pit them against each other, some, some legitimate way to do that. But they they don't do that. The the phrase instant runoff doesn't have a bad connotation.

No, it it doesn't. So there's another another quirk. This gets a little bit deep, but it's very important and very relevant. And this guy that I've been talking about, the marquee day Condor, say he he studied this extensively. Late 18th century French mathematician. And he studied these ranked choice voting schemes. You can have a set of ballots and within one set of ballots, you can have the electorate choose apples over bananas, bananas over cherries and cherries over apples.

So there's no clear winner. There's no clear winner there. It's like the game paper rock, scissors. There's always one scenario or candidate that can defeat another one. So you got to go to other ways to decide how to do that. It's that's called a Condorcet loop. And it it can be kind of a mess to try and navigate through that.

And so ultimately the Marchi de Condor say he, he didn't like ranked choice voting. He didn't like the instant runoff because of these quirky, weird problems that that can arise. Luke Melville, Todd Achilles, the other proponents of it, they they present it as this is the only fair way to do this. And I I'm sure they know about these dynamics we're talking about.

They're smart guys. They've been studying this for a long time, but it's in those quirky dynamics that it gives their liberal candidates that they like a fighting chance at victory. Like we accuse Luke Marvell of a lot of things. I don't think he's lazy. Oh no not at all. I think he has worked this, this initiative system as effectively as someone can.

The you know actually you know what I don't like about him. They're likable. That's part of their danger is that they're very folksy like both Luke Melville and Todd Achilles. You, you listen to them every interaction we've had with them, they have never they've never been nasty or mean to us. No, they're very much liberals.

They are I would say they're far left. But they're not like AOC. They don't they don't project as being unhinged. They're they're methodical. They have a very steady tone. They they look fine. They're, you know, I wouldn't say they're just sensible. Yeah. They're very presentable. They're like, you know, guys, you'd go have a barbecue with or whatever.

But when you look at who they support and the ideas that they are bringing forward, that's what you should pay attention to. And I think they are effective at what they're doing and they've gotten where they are in Idaho politics because they kind of bring that following. They bring a certain their personalities bring a certain level of comfort that people like.

But an overhaul of the election system is certainly a big reward for being likable. You know, you've got to really, examine what's going to happen if this if this thing passes. There's one other element to this whole idea of a ranked choice voting versus instant runoff. And this is the part we talked about during the break.

One of the things that I realized, and I think we saw this in the Alaska ranked choice vote, your first choice is a very real vote with intent. Typically you go there and your first choice. You're proud of them. You want them to win. You think they are going to win your second, third and fourth choices almost feel more like symbolic votes or protest votes or they're more ethereal because in your mind, the winner is your number one, right?

And so in the case of Alaska, we'll use a real life example. I can imagine, after a really hard fought race between Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, that their respective followers probably didn't like each other very much. So you had a number of people who voted for Nick Begich that are like, Sarah's made me mad. I'm not going to make her my second choice.

I'll make her my third choice. I don't like her at all. So third year she's my third choice. And as a protest, I'm going to vote. Mary Tola is my second choice. So you kind of feel like you have the latitude to do that in a ranked choice environment. And I would say, don't do that. If you're going to have ranked choice, you got to put that aside and imagine binary races, because if they had been presented okay, if you don't like Sarah Palin right now, you want to list her third.

Let's put the your ranked choice ballot aside and just say, if it were Sarah Palin versus Mary Pelton, how would you vote in that binary race? Most of the Nick Begich people in that scenario scenario probably would be like, I don't want the Democrat in there. I'll hold my nose. I'll vote for Sarah Palin. So she really wasn't their third choice.

It was just they felt the latitude to protest and make her a third choice. And yet that's a huge danger with ranked choice voting is that you don't take your two, three, and four choices seriously enough because those can instantly turn into very real votes with real consequences. I think that's what I would the word I would use is it's all unintended.

Yeah. And they like it that way. Yeah, that's part of it. They want the the second choice and the third choice and the fourth choice to be confusing and to be muddled and to be because that means they're going to get what they want out of the race. Let me can I, can I present this to you because I've like I said, when I tell you what I'm about to tell you, you're going to go, whoa, you have been really obsessed with this.

He has been obsessed with it, by the way, and I like I like to present what if scenarios. If, for instance, let's say you don't vote for people, let's say our elections were based on who we hate. Okay. That's a terrible thing. But just for the sake of a, an intellectual exercise, if Alaskans had been asked who would be, the one candidate you definitely don't want to win this, I would guess it would be Mary Pell Tola that would have won that, or lost.

You know what I'm saying? She would have gotten the most votes for the least wanted candidate. I mean, you had 60% of Republicans voting against her. This is made a little more complicated because it was actually a libertarian that got like 1% of the vote that got eliminated in the first round, but it was such a minuscule amount.

It's almost like, okay, you didn't even need it, didn't shift it to scratch. So when we say bigots, she lost in the first round, it was technically the second, but it would have been the first. So so that it's just a little bit more complicated that way. But I would bet you most Alaskans would have said, I don't want her.

That would be my negative choice there. Would that be a legitimate way to eliminate someone in a ranked choice environment? List in order who you want one through four, but then list in order who you don't want one through four, and the automatic winners are you're actually your first losers in that. In that situation, I would love to see it just to identify the patterns of how people are voting, because that is so ultimately confusing with this.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's let's just look at something simple from 2020. Something that didn't work out. Like it typically works out is that the down ballot votes did not match Joe Biden. Yeah. And consistently that has been true for years. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons that people look at 2020 and go, there had to be some shenanigans because how did how were there so many votes for Joe Biden?

And then you can't even come close to equating in those individual states votes that match that. Yeah. In their state races. Yeah. Right. Okay. That's confusing. And it feels like something's off, right? When you're when you're looking at that and going, that doesn't match up. Yeah. I feel like the voting in Alaska does that on a regular basis, since they've brought in ranked choice voting.

You can't understand voting patterns. It's because everything's so confusing and messed up. Yeah, there's not typical voting patterns in ranked choice voting because it throws a wrench into how everyone does everything. Yeah, and it's for that reason you have to go, is that healthy? Is that healthy that somebody who consistently votes a certain way? Now we can't figure out why they voted that way because ranked choice voting was thrown into the middle of it.

That can't be healthy. No. And please raise your hand if you think 2020 was healthy for our nation. Oh my goodness no. There are so many people who don't believe in the electoral system anymore. We're all a little twitchy about this race now. Yeah, and now we're going to throw ranked choice voting in there and make it even more twitchy.

Yeah, no, it's not healthy. It isn't healthy. It isn't healthy. People get primaries. They get, binary choices. They get single votes. But when you start adding layers of complaint, you know, I feel like it's super condescending. In the voter guide that Secretary Phil McGrane put out, they said this as simple as counting to four. That's what they tell the voters.

It's as it's as simple as counting to four. If it was, you would have results that very night. Maybe you might say the process. Yeah. You're right. That's a that's a great point. But you might say the process for the voter is simple as counting to four. But to understand the what you need to understand how the votes are counted, to do all that requires a tremendous amount of, of, more thought in addition to that.

But they don't view the voters as thinking creatures. They think them as look, if you've learned to count to four, you can show up and vote. And then just trust us with the rest of this. Yeah, we've got it. And I think most people are like, well, well, actually there are a number of people that are like, okay, that's good enough for me.

I'll just show up and vote. I'll count to four and I'll just trust that everything is on the up and up after that. And those are the people that want government to take care of them. Yeah, I don't know, I don't eat, I don't either. I want to I want to understand. Yeah. Okay. Someone just asked Julie, we get these questions over and over again.

That's fine. In ranked choice voting, are you required to vote in a two, three, four choice? No, you're not required. You can vote one. That first vote will count, but then your ballots exhausted or at least that race, your ballot is exhausted and you don't have a voice in the subsequent rounds. Yep, you're disenfranchizing yourself if you if you don't choose not to fill in every box.

Yeah. Or every bubble, then you are automatically removing your ballot from being counted in round two, potentially. Round three. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I think sometimes maybe people have gotten confused because we've, we've said your your ballot will be tossed after that or it's thrown out or whatever. It's exhausted. Like they don't throw it in the trash can.

Literally. But your vote no longer matters has any relevance. Yes. It doesn't. Your your first vote is counted. And if you if you don't get to a 50% threshold with any of the candidates after the first round, they go to that next round, and your ballot will not have a voice in that that next round of counting. So, yeah.

Can you put the same candidate in every spot? No, no, that's been one of my things. Why can't I allocate 100% of the power of my vote to one candidate? This does not let you do that. So you're actually, if you want your ballot to make it through all of the potential rounds, you actually have to allocate a portion of your vote to somebody you don't want serving you.

Yes. Yeah. People are catching on. We got the exact same question. Can you put the same candidate for all rankings? Nope. In other words, if you want your ballot to count your vote to count fully, you're gonna have to cast a vote for, for, politicians you don't like. You're going to have to allocate some level of support for people you may thoroughly disagree with.

Let's give a very common possible scenario here okay. We had Raul Labrador, Tommy Ahlquist, Brad Little all run against each other. And then there was a Democrat that year, Okay. That could fill all four spots right there. That could fill all four spots. They move on to the general. I'm going to tell you, I'll openly say it on air.

I would have never wanted to allocate any of my vote for Tommy. All quist or for the Democrat. Yeah, but if I want my ballot to make it through the subsequent rounds, I'm going to have to. Yes. And we can. We know based upon the primary that there would have been multiple rounds in that race between Brad Little, Raul Labrador, Tommy Ahlquist and the Democrat.

We would not have had a 50% winner. Yeah, there's no possible way. Yeah. And so there would be some subsequent rounds in that, and I would have had to have given my vote to two men that I didn't want to give any of my vote to. Yes. Yeah. So, how they actually could do this, there would be a court challenge, but I want to go back to my idea.

What if in a race you rank them one through four and then you you had another category for that was listed as oh, hell no. And like, you could put you could scratch off that, but it would just be another column. And if you had any candidate that had that reached like 50%, all hell knows, then they're gone.

They're gone. And maybe that's your first round. You get rid of the all hell no. And then they could rank the rest of them. Can we just keep it the way it is? I don't want to know. Hell, no, I like them. I just want to keep it the way it is. I agree with you. I totally agree with you.

But if we have to have something new, I'm going to advocate for an oh hell no column. Are y'all with me? And wouldn't you kind of want to see the results of the oh hell no vote? No, not if I was on the ballot. Well, you're not going to be on the ballot any time soon ever. Nor nor will I, because they say things like, we need the oh hell no ballot.

All right, we're going to take a break. (208)Â 542-1079 if you'd like to join us, that could be our flagpole. Should there be a hell no column on the ranked choice voting ballot? We'll be back. Okay.

Our Facebook chat is popping off today. Oh, is it really? What are they saying? Well, paddling Dan's back in, so there's a lot of back and forth going on. But my favorite is, I'm going to read it verbatim from Lisa. Thanks to these ass clowns. We have less money, but they want more taxes than.

Nice. That's very funny.

Oh, I'm sorry about your bangles over the weekend. Yeah. It was. There was such a weird vibe. You were saying that. Is it like the. There were multiple moments where you could hear a pin drop in the arena, which is weird. With the crowd that size. It's like. It's like they gave everyone a quaalude as they walked in the door.

Like it. It was weird. And I don't want to rip on the bangle fans, but I will tell you, you know, and I, I did my job like I always do, and I, I feel like I typically do a pretty good job of getting the crowd involved, and I enjoy at night, but there was just something, the energy was just, was just off.

And I don't know, you know, Portland State was winless coming into that game. And I wonder if there were a lot of people that just thought, we got this one in the bag so they didn't get all that invested in it, didn't feel like it was going to be this really big competitive game. And so I think, you know, if they had come and it was Weber State or Montana State, like maybe the energy would have been better a little bit higher even.

Yeah. So again, and I say it with gentle effect, but I think most people who were there would be like, yeah, the energy was really, really low. Yeah. So I was telling Neal about the Oregon, Ohio State game. If you guys missed it. It was, Saturday night. That was a heck of a game. Yeah. Came down to the very last second.

Forced a penalty that Oregon chose to commit. Change the clock. At the end of the game, they purposely put 12 men on the field to get that penalty call, and it ate up some time on the clock, and they couldn't have done it if there hadn't been appropriate field position. But there was then they they put 12 men on the field.

Penalty happened. It was it was pretty crazy. And Oregon went on to win. So those two have swapped positions. Oregon used to be number three, Ohio used to be number two. And now Oregon's number two. And Ohio's number three. Okay. Yeah, it was a great game. Anything in the NFL? I did not watch a stitch of football yesterday.

Oh, really? Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't even I guess Joe Burrow had a pretty great game last night I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. My daughter sent an obituary that apparently is getting a lot of attention. A local one. No, I don't think so. There's not a Robertson funeral home, is there? Not that I know of. Okay, I'm going to I'm going to send you a screenshot and Facebook.

Read the first paragraph, but you can't send it. Well, I'll open it on my phone and Facebook can send it to you in a text. Okay. I'll just do that. I mean, I don't know if it's funny or. Well, our phones aren't talking. What? Yeah. Oh, there it came. This is going to be fake. It's not. It's like a real funeral home and a real obituary.

I'll send you the actual obituary. Okay? Like I can't be not genuine about this. I have said people can do funerals however they want to. Yeah, you can do it on obituary however you want to do that with some flair for sure.

950 is it really 951 yeah, we've talked a lot. Oh my goodness. We're going yeah, we're going to have to take final. Yeah. Oh can I just say, can I have a little story. Can I tell a little story. So we had some, unexpected visitors yesterday from out of town. Thrilled to have them. They stopped.

They stopped in. See, my mom, my mom lives with us. Anyway, we had not planned anything too extensive at all for dinner. Like it was one of those Sundays everyone's busy. Maybe it was pancakes. It might have been pancakes. It might have been a turkey sandwich. Like it? It was not going to be anything with a lot of flair, but they were there and and we're like, okay, we got it.

We got to make some dinner here. What are we going to do? So I looked in the fridge and we had plenty of soft tortillas, both the big ones and the street taco size. And I thought, do we have ground beef in the freezer? And I asked my wife and she's like, oh yeah, we do. From Grand Peak's prime meat.

So we pulled that out. We didn't do the traditional thawing, had to use the microwave a little bit, but we within like 20 minutes or so we had cooked up the delicious ground beef, had tacos for everybody, ate out on the deck and it was perfect. And it was so nice to have that. But the ground beef is just delicious.

It's just great. Just perfect love that worked out well. Love that I, I cannot do anything but second, what you've said, I love Prime eats.com. My freezer still has some, meat left in it. It also gives me a lot of comfort, you know, reading the stories about the people who struggled during, the different hurricanes and not having enough food and and and supplies.

Yeah. I'm grateful that coming into this winter that I will always have meat in my freezer because of GPS Prime News.com, whether it's the ribs or the French dip or the, pot, sesame chicken or fajitas, whatever, they've got a lot. Yeah. So deep fry meats.com last segment just ahead. We'll wrap it up right here on Newstalk 107.

I will also take we got a phone call waiting. Don't hang up. We'll take your call on the other side okay. And amen Amen Amen. That's my impression of the you know, although you didn't hear it because they've mine is out the bumper music. They're like, what is he doing? What is he going. So in order to be in compliance with our podcast, I can't put any licensed music into the podcast.

So with our board, we're able to minus that out. That's why it might sound a little sanitized once in a while or a little clinical. So yeah, but you get us on the commercials, so that's worth it. That's true. We try to make up for it. The taco block local guy has the pat. Oh, I've never heard of the taco block.

What's a Taco Bell? I don't know what that is. Someone texted it in. If you love tacos, you should look up the taco. Blah for. Oh, yeah. Okay, I'm looking it up. I've got the. Okay, here we go. Taco block.com. It's a Denver a Denver taco food truck restaurant. Well, if it's Denver, how does a local guy.

It's Colorado's favorite taco truck. But it's a patent I, I could it be, could there be a different thing called a taco block. All I wrote was taco block. And that came up immediately. Didn't even have to think about it. Okay. What's going on on a Saturday Night Live? They are going after Kamala Harris. It was great.

Funny. It was fun. I mean, they went after Trump too, but it it was it's what it should have been. Yeah. This time it was so funny. Are they sensing Kamala is not going to win like I think so. And they need to know. Yeah, they did their part. I was telling Neal earlier, Dana Carvey, it is not just the words and the way his words sound.

He has got the body positioning down perfect. The staggered walk like the the walk that stiff, you know, short step walk. My favorite thing that he does is he copies Biden by putting his hand on his nose and going like this. Oh, it's so good. Yeah, it's so funny. It's. And, Kamala Harris calling Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe.

But oh, he's back, he's back. Joe Biden 956 just a couple of minutes left. We're going to jump right to the phones. Caller welcome to the show. How are you today? Very good. Thank you very much, Neal. Yeah. Saturday morning, at the, market in Pocatello, there was an elderly gentleman, pushing prop one.

And, he assured me that, if you only vote for one person, the first ballot that that will be counted in subsequent ballots. It was my understanding that's not true. Is that, no. Factual there? No. I think your ballot is exhausted after your first vote. That's what I thought. Yeah. And I mentioned that to him and he said oh he's researched it and he said that's not true.

And so he's telling people that I don't think that's true. We interviewed a gentleman from Mountain State's policy. It's a think tank and he's done a very, in-depth study of ranked choice voting, comparing Alaska, Idaho, everything. It reads like a research paper. We asked him that question in that interview. He said, because he explained the term exhausted and and we kind of had a back and forth with some of our listeners about it right after the interview that why do you have to use the word exotic, blah, blah, blah.

He absolutely said in that interview that it will be exhausted. Yeah. All right. Well, they're spreading misinformation and, so that, people, will not tell us the truth about ranked choice voting. Yeah. Well, we have we have multiple examples of that. Everyone have a wonderful, wonderful Monday. Julie and I are back tomorrow right here on Newstalk 179.