Free Republic

Washington, D.C. council members voted to approve funding for ranked choice voting July 14 in the first of two votes on the District’s budget. The measure, known as Initiative 83, would allow unaffiliated voters to participate in the party primary of their choosing and gives voters the option to rank candidates on the ballot from their most desired contender to the least. The winning candidate must receive more than 50 percent of votes to advance as the elected official. If no candidate wins that majority, then an “instant runoff” occurs: The candidate who received the fewest first-choice rankings is eliminated,...

The New York City mayoral Democrat primary race results have shaken the political world.Candidate Zohran Mamdani, described as a Marxist Muslim, was five months ago languishing in also-ran territory at one percent in the polls. A most recent poll then showed him, to pundits’ surprise, beating erstwhile-front-runner (a whole week ago) Andrew Cuomo after the eighth round of ranked-choice calculations. But it was wrong.Mamdani won the first-round tally by more than seven points and will assuredly be the Democrat nominee.How did this happen? There are many reasons, but the overriding one is something overlooked, something indispensable, something that is a...

President Donald Trump criticized Democrat Socialist Zohran Mamdani after he took the lead in New York City’s Democrat Mayoral primary, calling him a “communist lunatic.” In a post on Truth Social, Trump criticized Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for “backing him” and “groveling over him.” “It’s finally happened, the Democrats have crossed the line,” Trump wrote. “Zohran Mamdani, a 100% Communist Lunatic, has just won the Dem Primary, and is on his way to becoming Mayor. We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous.” “He looks TERRIBLE,...

The New York City mayor's race is this way by design. The polls showing that Zohran Mamdani, a socialist and Muslim terror supporter who only became a citizenship in 2018, could become the mayor of New York City, where his compatriots murdered thousands of Americans, may or may not be true, but there’s no reason why they wouldn’t be. Mamdani is up against Cuomo, a repulsive and widely hated figure that opponents of the Muslim socialist are only getting behind because the alternative is even worse, and then Mayor Eric Adams, whom much of the city probably right believes is...

Monday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said she had “many questions” about the success of President Donald Trump’s military strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities. Cooper asked, “You’re somebody in Washington who’s, you know, people on both sides of the aisle consider a straight shooter. You have your what you believe in and you stand by it, sometimes it’s out of favor, sometimes it’s in favor with your own party. Do you think it was the right move by President Trump to order air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities given what we have seen now as...

Breitbart News @BreitbartNews Lisa Murkowski says that if the balance in the Senate goes from 53-47 back to 50-50, she's open to joining with the Democrats to give them the majority From Galen Druke 3:14 PM · Jun 23, 2025

New York City could sleepwalk its way into electing a socialist mayor, thanks to ranked-choice voting. New York City — the city that never sleeps — may be two weeks away from sleepwalking its way into advancing an open socialist in the mayoral Democrat primary. Voters would have ranked-choice voting to thank for the assist. Zohran Mamdani, a New York state assembly member and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has promised everything from a rent freeze, free bus fare, and government-owned grocery stores. His socialist utopia would put the Empire State exodus on overdrive as productive taxpayers...

Rep. Abe Hamadeh said ranked-choice voting is pushed by corporate interests and confuses voters.. Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., is joining forces with a fellow freshman lawmaker to renew efforts in Congress to outlaw ranked-choice voting nationwide. Hamadeh and Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, recently introduced the Preventing Ranked Choice Corruption Act that would amend the Help America Vote Act to ban ranked-choice voting. The bill pairs Begich, whose state uses ranked-choice voting, with Hamadeh, whose state has chronically dealt with issues of election integrity, and voter trust in ballot counting. "Ranked-choice voting destroys 'one person, one vote' in our country and...

Rep. Abe Hamadeh and Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) have introduced an election integrity bill in the House of Representatives to prohibit ranked choice voting in federal elections. Hamadeh’s Preventing Ranked Choice Corruption Act seeks to amend the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to end “the confusing and disenfranchising voting scheme of Ranked Choice Voting,” a press release from Hamadeh’s office states. The undemocratic scam of Ranked Choice Voting goes against the principle of “one person, one vote,” allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference and triggering an automatic runoff election based on the ranked totals if a candidate...

We're trying again to repeal ranked-choice voting here in the Great Land, and the process has now passed its first hurdle. The petition has been drafted, and the process of gathering signatures is starting now. In 2024, the repeal effort failed by a narrow margin - fewer than a thousand votes - despite being outspent massively by money from Outside. But there's a new team running the initiative this time, and they are taking a different approach. The second effort to repeal ranked-choice voting began its next big phase on Saturday, with the signature-gathering effort launched at the Governor’s Prayer...

West Virginia and Wyoming took major steps toward securing their elections by passing prohibitions on the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV). On Tuesday, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed into law SB 490, which stipulates that “[n]o state, county, or local elections office may use ranked choice voting or instant runoff voting to conduct an election or nomination of any candidate in this state for any local government, statewide, or federal elective office.” Any “existing or future ordinance” adopted by a local government promoting the use of such a system would be declared void under the measure.Often referred to as...

Two national liberal organizations are expressing their frustration that Idaho crushed Proposition 1 by nearly 40%. Prop 1 was meant to be a turning point in Idaho for liberals. It would have implemented a California-style jungle primary by putting all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, onto one ballot. The top four vote receivers then move on to the general election, where Ranked Choice Voting determines the winner. Idahoans overwhelmingly rejected the measure despite nearly $5 million being spent to promote the false narrative that Prop 1 would have “restored open primaries.” Two groups that helped push the measure were nationwide...

Effort to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting still holds narrow lead By Liz Ruskin & Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media - Anchorage - November 6, 2024 Ballot Measure 2, the effort to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting and open primaries, was winning slightly as election results continued to come in early Wednesday, with about 97% of Alaska precincts counted. Wednesday results showed Ballot Measure 2 ahead by 4,289 votes, out of a total of more than 256,000 ballots cast. That’s a margin of less than 2 percentage points. The other initiative on Alaska voters’ ballots, to increase the state’s minimum...

The Idaho Supreme Court has issued an opinion that dismisses Attorney General Raul Labrador’s lawsuit against the Prop 1 ballot initiative. If enacted this November, the Prop 1 initiative would implement a “Top Four” primary process and change the general election process to Ranked-Choice Voting. Labrador, in his lawsuit, said the initiative’s organizers gathered signatures fraudulently and that the initiative violated Idaho’s “one subject” rule for initiatives. A summary of the opinion states that the lawsuit was dismissed on procedural grounds. Here is the summary, which is from court staff and not direct quotes from the opinion itself: “Today the...

In 2023, a coalition called Idahoans for Open Primaries, made up of mostly leftist groups led by Reclaim Idaho, submitted a proposed ballot initiative to impose ranked choice voting and a top four blanket primary on the state of Idaho. They decided to call it “Open Primaries” despite that moniker having nothing to do with the content of the initiative itself, likely because open primaries polls well with voters while ranked choice voting does not. The Attorney General’s office issued an opinion on the content of the proposed initiative that called out several problems: It violates the single-subject rule, presenting...

America’s founders believed direct democracy was a slower, more indirect path to tyranny. To prevent this, they avoided establishing an “elective despotism” and designed a system that filtered democracy through representative legislatures. Popular ballot initiatives didn’t exist until the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. Now, progressives use ballot initiatives to turn red states blue, including a proposal to abolish primaries altogether. What is the Republican Party’s response? As Democrats work toward creating a permanent political majority at the national level, their extremism has intensified popular backlash in nearly half the states, making them even redder. Currently, Republicans hold...

“Prop 1, the Ranked Choice Voting and Open Primaries ballot initiative, qualified to be on the general election ballot this November. If Prop 1 passes, this will be the end of the Idaho Democratic Party. The promise of Prop 1 is to allow Democrats and Independents to have a voice by choosing Republican candidates, but it also means the Republicans will be voting for Democrat candidates. This includes precinct committeemen (PCs) who elect the leadership of the Democratic Party. Imagine a concerted effort by Republicans to run for Democrat party Pc races (or maybe this is already underway). Same play...

A group of top business leaders sent a letter to President Biden Friday urging him to end his reelection campaign in the wake of his poor debate performance last week. As of Friday morning, the letter was signed by 186 people who said they were fearful about the future of the country. **SNIP** In the letter, the group said it admires the president’s decades of service and noted his legacy will be known as one that rescued democracy from a large threat. “To ensure that legacy is cemented, we ask that you pass the torch of leadership to the next...

In a recent episode of The Purple Principle, a podcast that examines democracy and polarization from a nonpartisan lens, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said that while he was skeptical of ranked choice voting at first, he now sees it as a meaningful solution to elect candidates with the broadest appeal. "I resisted ranked choice and different initiatives that would weaken the two political parties," he said. "Now I don't see it as weakening the parties as much as forcing the candidates to say, 'We've got to appeal to a broad swath of the American electorate." Many voters may not...

Imagine a Super Bowl referee bending the rules to give his favorite team the win. Few would call that fair. Yet that is precisely what the Left wants to do to America’s elections. From noncitizen voting to lawsuits inviting activist judges to rewrite our election laws, left-wing activists are taking every opportunity to change elections permanently for partisan gain. Their latest tactic is to undermine the basic principle of “one person, one vote” with a new scheme called ranked choice voting. As we speak, liberal special interests are leading a sophisticated national campaign to push ranked choice voting in nearly...