Will Alaska repeal ranked-choice voting? | Hour 3

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Um, just why does it seem Democrats always seem to win with rank choice voting? Um, so this is one of the other components that, uh, is cited in the honest elections project report called two roads diverge. And they talk about the ranked choice voting system. This is one of the things that Democrats are implementing where they can. Usually, it's at the local level where they're best able to get this system put in place. It's not really at the state level. We do have an example in Alaska, and I've got a story from Politico about that. Here's what the report from the Honest Elections Project says about ranked choice voting. Republican trifectas... So, again, a trifecta is when, at the state level, a party controls the governor's seat, the House, and the Senate. Right? That's a trifecta. And when a party gets control like that, then they're actually able to implement things. And as the report details, when the Republicans get trifectas, they try to erect guardrails around election integrity. They're doing voter ID laws. They're saying no mail-in ballots should be counted if they arrive after the polls close on Election Day. They're doing things like that. And Democrats are going in the opposite direction. Hence the name of the report, Two Roads Diverge. When Democrats get trifectas, they go the other direction. They start dismantling voter ID laws. For the example here, the contemporary example is Virginia. As soon as they got the trifecta this year, they ran as far left as quickly as possible, implementing all of these different changes. And that is my expectation of where any state will go when you get the trifecta for the Democrats. That's what they're going to do. And I've been saying this, by the way, I've been consistent on this. When Democrats get control, they go as far left as possible, as quickly as possible. Because they don't know if they're going to be ousted from power. So they need to go as far left as fast as possible to minimize the chances that they will suffer electoral consequences. So if you dismantle those guardrails, you get rid of voter ID, you prevent your sheriffs from cooperating with ICE. in recognizing or cooperating with the 287G programs, right? Republicans go the other direction. Democrats go the path they go because they're trying to entrench themselves in power, which should tell you something, by the way, when Republicans, by securing elections, they believe that that will help them electorally. Democrats think that if you tear down the guardrails, that will help them electorally. Make of that what you will. So the ranked choice voting system, Republican trifectas have been banning ranked choice voting. Virginia's Democrats are entrenching it. Indiana and Ohio, they both banned it this year, pushing the number of states that ban or restrict ranked choice voting or RCV is now at 19 states. and 17 of those are Republican trifecta states. In Virginia, Senate Bill 176 makes ranked choice voting a permanent option for any local election, and it repeals what was in place, which was a sunset provision, that this ability to enact ranked choice voting, this would sunset in 2031. So they got rid of the sunset provision. So just forever now, local jurisdictions will be able to implement ranked choice voting. States keep rejecting RCV because it corrodes the things integrity depends on, namely ballots that do not rank enough candidates. Those ballots get tossed out. Tabulation is centralized in a black box process and the results drag on for days. That undermines confidence in the system. So what is ranked choice? Ranked choice is this idea that we're going to do away with party primaries and people will be able to go and vote and if you've got five people on the ballot, A, B, C, D, E, I'm going to rank the candidates that I prefer. And so then they will get like a weighted score. So my number one pick they'll get like essentially five points and then I will rank everybody else and they'll get four points three points two points whatever and then when they take all of the ballots they collect all the ballots and they tally. Them all up. The person who gets the most you know first place votes second place third place fourth place they stay and then you take out whoever the candidate was that got the fewest votes and You drop them off the ballot. But anybody that voted for them as their top choice, if they voted for other people as their second, third, fourth, fifth choice, then you apportion those votes back to the remaining candidates. So in other words, I vote for candidate E. as my top choice. But candidate E is terrible. And candidate E does not get a lot of first place votes. So candidate E is now kicked out of the pool. My second choice was candidate A. So now candidate A will get my vote because they were my second choice. See, and when you say it like, oh, well, that makes some bit of sense, right? Sure. However, you can game this system pretty easily. If you are candidates, campaigns, national parties, local parties, you can game this. Because there's no party primary, if you end up with, let's say, a bunch of Republicans in a race and only one Democrat, that Democrat's going to get all of the top votes from all the Democrat voters. And then you're picking off all of the lower level ones. And so this is the problem that Alaska has. Alaska has been using ranked choice voting since 2020. It was approved in 2020. They're being asked once again on Tuesday whether or not to keep this. They've been fighting over this for six years. From Politico. Alaska voters will decide next week for the second time in as many cycles, whether they want to scramble the state's ranked choice voting system. It's ballot measure two, which would roll back a host of election quote unquote reforms that voters approved in 2020, including the state's unique all party primary and top four ranked choice general election. The guy who has been, uh, leading the effort to repeal this, the campaign's called Repeal Now. His name is Greg Powers. He says, Alaska is like this bellwether. It's a very independent state. And he says, I think Alaska rejecting it will send a message to people that says, hey, we tried it. Just stay away from this. And we think that's a really good thing for the country. This is what was referred to as the laboratories of democracy, right? By the founders, that's the point of 50 individual states. You get to experiment and try different things, and if it works, then other states can replicate it, improve upon it. If it doesn't work, then states are like, ooh, don't do that, right? That's the idea. The last-minute campaigning on the measures was upended by an unprecedented lawsuit from the Justice Department last week. Trump says he personally ordered it. Don't know if that's true, but it seeks to block state officials from certifying its Senate race if incumbent GOP Senator Dan Sullivan loses. You know why? Because a bunch of Democrat and left-wing money groups funded the campaign of another guy named Dan Sullivan to confuse voters. The holidays will. Be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. 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Uh, Mary with a followup text does the ranked choice voting amendment in Alaska use ranked choice voting? Good question. No, it does not. It's a straight up repeal. Yes or no. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, you could do like a yes, no, maybe that maybe you would, and then you would have ranked choice, but there's only, It's either yes or no. So, yeah, I don't know how you would do a rank choice on that. So from the Politico story on what's happening in Alaska, they have this opportunity to repeal their system. They were asked two years ago whether to repeal it or not. It was narrowly preserved. Critics of the current system argue it is so complicated that that it disenfranchises some voters and encourages partisan gamesmanship, pointing to the two Dan Sullivans running in the Senate race as a prime example. Yes, that's a problem, right? Because the other Dan Sullivan did not have to go through a party primary in order to get to the general. So you can have people with the same name. And by the way, The evidence is pretty clear in that case that, yes, he was obviously recruited and put in there and then apparently, like, forgot his middle initial because they have a different middle initial and he apparently messed up on some paperwork and he wrote the other guy's middle initial or something. It's weird. So, yeah, it's pretty clear what's going on there is that Democrats want to undermine Dan Sullivan's campaign by running another guy named Dan Sullivan against him. and putting both Dan Sullivans on the ballot to confuse voters. Meanwhile, it opens up the lane for the Democrat then to win because if you don't know which Dan Sullivan to vote for and you give another vote to the Democrat, then they end up catapulting above the number one. They also point to the primary for governor. where the second-place finisher, Tom Begich, withdrew in order to endorse first-place Democrat Jonathan Kreese Tompkins. That let three Republicans into the general election because of where they finished in that race, because of the ranked-choice system, right? So you had, what, five total candidates, but only four go to the general election, Begich was in there, but Begich bailed after he didn't win the primary. So he bailed that then elevates the fourth, uh, candidate, another Republican. So you have three Republicans now vying for the seat and they're going to splinter that vote. More Republicans equals advantage for the Democrat. Um, According to Politico, it's also likely tipped the results of recent elections. Many credit the all-party primary or ranked choice voting for helping GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski fend off a challenger that came from her right in 2022. And that's really why people believe this was put in place. Because the Murkowski machine in Alaska pushed this thing through and that's what that's what protected her. And they believe it helped push Democrat Mary Peltola, who's now running for the Senate to her victory over former GOP governor, Sarah Palin that same year, 2022 for the state's one house seat repeal now, which is the, uh, the effort to repeal it. Um, has been laser focused on the ranked choice voting aspect, which it says violates the one person, one vote principle. Because some ballots, without enough candidates that are ranked, are dropped off, right? So in my example that I gave earlier, right, if I go in, I got five candidates to vote for, and I pick candidate E, and that's who I like, and that's the only candidate I like, I vote E, and that's it. Well, E doesn't get enough votes. So E drops off. Well, what happens to the rest of my votes? Well, they drop off too. So none of my other choices, I didn't make any choices, but if I left it blank, I only voted for one person, maybe I didn't know I could vote for more than one person. Whatever. Now, that's the one person, one vote. I did vote, but now you are discarding my ballot. Alaska is one of the only two states that use ranked choice voting statewide with the system largely confined to local and municipal elections in Democrat jurisdictions. I like how Politico calls it blue-leaning jurisdictions. No, they're not leaning blue. They're Democrats. State Republican parties and conservative groups have fought ranked choice voting nationwide. voters rejected measures to adopt the system in five States in 2024, while Republican led legislatures have enacted bans elsewhere. The practice is now prohibited in at least some elections in 19 different States. Repeal supporters stress that it simply goes back to the voting system that they had prior to 2020. Um, Craig Richards, a former Republican Alaska attorney general and the attorney for the repeal now crowd says, my personal position is that the current primary rules adopted with ranked choice voting in 2020 create a system that is highly gameable and highly disadvantages, whichever party has multiple candidates, right? So this idea that, Oh, anybody will be able to run. Not really, right? It actually just moves that sort of behind closed doors where the parties then back one candidate, right? They will make deals with other candidates inside their party so they don't enter the ballot in order to get the opposing party to have more candidates put their names on the ballot. It's just a different way to game the system. It's not better. In fact, it's worse. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to Calendarmetals.com. That's Calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. Next up, we have illegal immigrants who are detained. Do they have a right to a bond hearing? This was a question being litigated through the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled 10. To 7, no. They do not. They don't. Nope, they do not have a right to a bond hearing. That's a win for the Trump administration. But I know gas prices, so stay home. Judge Corey Wilson, a Trump-appointed judge, wrote in the court's opinion that immigrants who have entered the U.S. without legal admission, so illegal aliens, are entitled only to rights established by Congress, which does not include bond hearings. Wilson wrote, quote, Because petitioners have never been admitted to the United States, due process does not entitle them to additional proceedings beyond what Congress has provided before they may be detained pending removal. Wilson added, even if they were admitted lawfully, they would still not be entitled to bond hearings, quote, Even assuming they were, procedural due process would not entitle them to a bond hearing to assess dangerousness or flight risk, factors that are immaterial to petitioners' detention under the law. Further, the duration of their detention presents no constitutional defect requiring habeas relief to correct it. Why? Well. Congress has given illegal aliens other rights, including a right to a formal removal hearing, a right to counsel, a right to present evidence, a right to appeal a decision, and expedited removal. This is the system that Congress created. And so you've got leftist lawyers, some of whom have a wardrobe change to a black robe, And they've been trying to create this argument, this narrative that illegal aliens are being denied due process. We've talked about this many times over the last few years, especially after Trump got back into office and has been doing the deportations, really escalating deportations. And what you keep hearing from Democrats in media, but I repeat myself, is they're violating these people's due process rights. But they're illegal aliens. And there's an entire section of law that spells out what that due process is. And what the Democrats are trying to argue is that due process rights for U.S. citizens apply to illegal aliens. And what the Fifth Circuit in a 10-7 ruling says is no, they do not. There's this whole other body of law that applies to illegal aliens. Now, seven judges did dissent, including U.S. Circuit Judge Leslie Southwick, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007. Southwick wrote that immigrants have a right to be free from physical restraint. In other words, detention, right? The opinion comes just before the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a case called Rony v. Barbosa da Cunha, which asks a similar question over the federal mandatory detention statute and whether it applies to longtime immigrants who have been arrested in the United States. So if you come to the U.S. Illegally and you stay here for a really, really, really long time, then you somehow get the protections of a U.S. Citizen, even though you are not. Right? It's this idea that, well, they've been here a long time. They've gotten away with it for 20 years. So they get the rights. I believe that's in the constitution. There was a, uh, judge on the panel. This was one of the 10 judges, um, that, uh, ruled in favor. Although I see will Chamberlain is saying that this was an 11, six ruling. Uh, but, uh, The Daily Signal says it was a 10-7. But anyway, one of the concurring judges in the majority named James Ho, he wrote, quote, a nation ceases to be a nation if it can't protect its borders. That is correct. You are not a country. You're not a nation. If your borders are open, there are no borders. You're not a nation. Congress has chosen to police our borders by detaining illegal aliens found in our country pending their removal proceedings. Right? That is true. According to our dissenting colleagues, however, illegal aliens have not only a de facto constitutional right to remain in our country unlawfully, but an incentive to make this their home. That's because, to quote the principal dissent, in other words, the The opposing judges, in their opinion, according to them, once an alien has, quote, acquired a domicile or residence in America, it no longer matters that they are breaking the law to be here. Their detention becomes an offense to liberty at its core and an affront to freedom at its most basic, namely freedom from physical restraint. Right, so again, he's pointing out that what the dissent opinion is arguing is that if you're here long enough, then you're allowed to stay. Then you're allowed to get these extra rights. And you can move about freely. You can't be detained. But that's not what the law says. The law says if you're here illegally and you get picked up, you get detained pending your removal proceedings. And then if you get removed, you're out. That's what the law says. And what the dissent is saying is like, no, no, no. If you're here illegally and you're here for a long time, long enough to set up a residence, which is actually not a very long time at all, but like you're able to set up a residence, you find somebody to sell you a house or rent you an apartment, and then you live here for a little while. Well, now you're allowed to bail out. And we all know that if you're here illegally, you're definitely not a flight risk because you would never go someplace where you're not permitted to be, you know? This we know about illegal aliens. They would never, they would never leave an area, go into an area unless they had permission to do so, right? He goes on to say in his concurring opinion, alas, such passion for liberty has been lacking when U.S. citizens have been detained for expressing opinions disfavored by government officials. And then he cites a whole metric boatload of cases where that has in fact happened. He says, my point is not to relitigate those cases, but to contrast the dissenting votes in those cases with its views today. It's to point out that liberty wasn't favored for citizens who seek to vindicate their constitutional rights, but it is cherished for illegal aliens who seek to violate our national sovereignty. In other words, he's calling the dissenting opinion judges hypocrites. They are applying a double standard. It's okay to put people in jail to detain them for opinions that but it's not okay to detain people who are here illegally. We have another court ruling regarding immigration. This from the Supreme Court, although it's not really a ruling, it's a non-ruling. The Supreme Court, this by the way is from SCOTUS blog. SCOTUS is the acronym for Supreme Court of the United States. SCOTUSblog.com by Amy Howe. The Supreme Court yesterday declined to restore a Biden era regulation that allows immigration judges to suspend some deportation proceedings. So this is something that Biden put in place. Trump took away people sued because we all know you may win the election, but you may not govern as a Republican, right? Remember we learned this with, uh, What was it that Barack Obama put in place? Was it the DACA or something? I forget. Like he did something and then Trump tried to undo it. Or maybe it was the, maybe it was a travel ban. I forget what it was in his first term. Obama did something with his phone and his pen. And then Trump came in and undid it. And then the courts were like, no, you can't undo an executive order like that with another executive order. You can't do that for, you know. In a brief unsigned order, the court turned down a request from three cities and a group, activist group, this group that provides legal services, as Amy Howe describes them, provides legal services to immigrants. Don't know if that's legal or illegal, maybe both. Don't know. But they had sought to pause an agreement that was made between Texas and the U.S. Department of Justice, which threw out the Biden rule. There were no dissents there. from any of the Democrat-appointed judges on the Supreme Court. Okay? There were no noted dissents here. The regulation at the center of the dispute, which provides what is known as administrative closure. That's what they called it. That's what the Biden folks called it. Administrative closure. It was adopted by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the EOIR, or as I call it, the ORR. And this was done in 2024. Under this rule, immigration judges may suspend deportation proceedings. For example, if you want to allow a crime victim or a witness to seek relief, like asylum, they could do that from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That's a separate agency, right? So, they could suspend deportation proceedings in certain cases. Well, Texas sued. They called this administrative closure rule, quote, one part of the Biden-Harris administration's campaign to undermine our immigration laws. It alleged that. The EOIR does not have the authority to adopt the administrative closure rule. Instead, it said federal law requires an immigration judge to at the end of a proceeding to decide whether an alien is removable or not from the United States. That's the law. A few hours after the case was filed, the DOJ and Texas asked the judge to enter a final judgment for the state. They both agreed. And what did this prompt? Accusations of a collusive agreement. So Democrats do know what a collusive agreement might look like, which is amazing to me. Because for years, when they've been entering into these collusive deals with their own Democrat attorneys general and justice officials, like here in North Carolina over our election law during the COVID pandemic, they couldn't sniff out a collusive agreement. They had no idea what this was about. But in this case, oh, no, no, they could spot that one. And the Supreme Court turned them aside. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete Kaliner show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.