How do you waste $15 million? Just ask the folks over at the Make Elections Fair Arizona. Last month, their attempt to force a California-style elections system of ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries went down in flames. Proposition 140 failed miserably with nearly 60% of the electorate voting “No.” And it wasn’t for lack of funding.
With a huge amount of money coming from out of state, the Make Elections Fair Arizona spent at least $15 million — giving them a 20:1 spending advantage. That’s right. For every $1 spent trying to defeat the initiative, the Prop 140 committee spent $20 trying to pass it! And they still lost by a wide margin!
That’s legendary. If any business idea ever failed that badly, it would be banished and never spoken of again. And that is exactly what should happen with ranked- choice voting and its ugly cousin jungle primaries (which was already overwhelmingly rejected by Arizona voters back in 2012).
Prop 140 was one of the worst ideas ever to be proposed in our great state, and it is fitting that it met its demise from a vast majority of Arizonans. Radical leftists tried to hoodwink voters into adopting this failed system. But voters did their homework.
They saw through the misleading and manipulative ads pushing Prop 140. And they said “hell no” to this failed power grab. This is a testament to over a year of hard work educating voters on ranked-choice voting and why these radical schemes must be rejected.
But it wasn’t just Arizona that rejected this nonsense. Our state joined several other states throughout the country in overwhelmingly rejecting both ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries:
—Prop 131 in Colorado was defeated with almost 54 percent of the vote.
—Proposition 1 in Idaho was defeated with almost 70 percent of the vote.
—Both CI-126 and CI-127 were defeated in Montana.
—Measure 117 in Oregon was defeated with almost 60 percent of the vote.
—Amendment H in South Dakota was defeated with more than 65 percent of the vote.
—Question 3 in Nevada was defeated with almost 54 percent of the vote.
On top of this, in Missouri, Amendment 7, which proactively prohibits ranked-choice voting, passed with almost 70 percent of the vote.
So, how much did all this losing cost? Nationally, groups pushing ranked-choice voting spent about $100 million in seven states — only to see it fail in every single one. Could you imagine spending $100 million without even seeing a hint of a victory?
Clearly, the people have spoken. Ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries would be a disastrous transformation of our elections system.
Nobody wants it. Now, it is time for California to keep its destructive policies and systems on their side of the state line.
Scot Mussi is President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing a pro-growth, limited government agenda in Arizona.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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