Unite America Statement On Initial Results Of Election Reform Ballot Initiatives

As of midday Wednesday, here’s the latest on the record number of election reform initiatives on the ballot this year:

• Wins: Washington, D.C., passed their open primary initiative, North Dakota protected the ballot initiative process, and Arizona defeated a ban on open primaries.
• Setbacks: Open primary initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and South Dakota, Oregon’s ranked choice voting initiative, Ohio’s anti-gerrymandering initiative.
• Still waiting: The open primary repeal in Alaska has yet to be called. Unite America is aggregating results here.

Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano issued the following statement on these initial results:

“Let’s start with the good news: Voters in our nation’s capital overwhelmingly passed open primaries and ranked choice voting, charting a course toward better representation and more functional government. Voters in Arizona and North Dakota also rejected efforts to make passing ballot initiatives harder, and to enshrine party primaries into the constitution. In total, more than 6.6 million Americans across nine states cast ballots in favor of election reform.

“I won’t sugarcoat the rest: Although we knew that passing these initiatives would be an uphill battle, the results so far are not what we’d hoped. While plenty of Democrats and Republicans support our reforms, the political establishment and its aligned special interests do not. Party elites fought tooth and nail to defeat these initiatives and defend the status quo, from misleading ballot language in Ohio to millions of dollars in opposition spending in Nevada and Montana.

“As we await the remaining results on election reform initiatives, Unite America is committed to the long game and doing the work required to fight for systemic change and for elections where every voter’s voice is heard. Every successful movement from history, from marriage equality to women’s suffrage, faced setbacks. They didn’t give up, and neither will we. 

“Voters across the political spectrum are frustrated by their lack of choices on the ballot and don’t think their government represents them. At the same time, large majorities of voters believe in our two principles of reform: that every eligible voter should have the freedom to vote for any candidate in every taxpayer-funded election, and candidates should have to win a majority to take office. 

“At the end of the day, democracy can’t endure if our elections continue to be controlled by the fringes of both political parties in low-turnout party primaries. We remain committed to solving the Primary Problem and giving voters better representation.”

Examples of opposition from the political establishment in open primary initiative states:

• The Democratic and Republican Party apparatus spent more than $15M across multiple states to fight reform. 
• In Ohio, the Republican Secretary of State wrote misleading language for the anti-gerrymandering initiative that says a new commission would be “required to gerrymander the boundaries to favor either of the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio…”
• Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, a co-sponsor on a federal bill to promote ranked choice voting, strongly opposed election reform in his own state: Colorado’s Proposition 131.
• Groups associated with the far-right of the Idaho GOP used over-the-top rhetoric and imagery to paint an absurd picture of how Proposition 1, Idaho’s open primary initiative, would affect the state.
• Republicans and Democrats alike spread misinformation across all states about open primaries and ranked choice voting. One of the most common is that these new systems are too confusing for voters, and therefore result in more mistakes and invalidated ballots. This is not backed up by the data: In Alaska’s first use of their top-four election system, 99.9% of ballots were cast accurately; and according to several studies, ballot error rates are similar under ranked choice voting as they are in traditional elections.

More information on opposition can be found in Unite America’s pre-election memo and our Media Toolkit.