Op-Ed: Ranked Choice Voting a Threat to Idaho Gun Rights
By Greg Pruett • June 18, 2024A new threat to Idaho gun rights has emerged: Ranked Choice Voting.
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Typically, Idahoans are focused on what is happening in Washington, D.C. for threats to gun rights. President Joe Biden and Congressmen are constantly attacking the 2nd Amendment and calling for greater and greater infringements on the right to keep and bear arms.
But Idahoans aren’t usually worried about threats to gun rights coming from our own state.
Idaho is one of the top states in the country for gun rights. Although it wasn’t always that way. When I founded the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance in 2012, Guns and Ammo Magazine ranked Idaho 32nd in the nation. Now, we rank in the top five every year.
I don’t know about you, but I want to keep it that way. We have a massive influx of political refugees as well who just left states where gun rights have been decimated. They don’t want to see Idaho go down the same path.
However, liberals in Idaho, frustrated by their inability to turn Idaho into the next California, are launching a last-ditch effort to upend Idaho’s current election system by implementing RCV. “But RCV doesn’t have anything to do with gun rights,” the proponents are going to tell you. Directly, it does not. However, indirectly, RCV 100% poses a major threat to the right to keep and bear arms.
The far-left extremists who are pushing RCV will tell you it’s about “fairness,” “turnout,” and other nonsense excuses for upending hundreds of years of “one person, one vote” elections.
I won’t get into the details and the mountain of reasons that RCV is a terrible election system. Let’s set all that aside and focus on what the organizers are really trying to do.
A few months ago, I spoke with one of Reclaim Idaho’s volunteers at a signature collection location in Idaho Falls. She didn’t know who I was, but I asked her about the effort and what they wanted to get done. After the usual pitch she was used to doing, she ultimately admitted that it would help Democrats and it would make Idaho more “moderate,” or in other words, more liberal.
That Reclaim Idaho volunteer knows that passing more solid pro-2nd Amendment legislation will be much more difficult after RCV is implemented. She also knows that implementing RCV will make passing gun control much easier. She knows that conservatives will lose at the ballot box under RCV.
The real objective of liberals and far-left extremists pushing RCV is to make Idaho more like California, get rid of conservative lawmakers, and allow Democrats to choose who should be a Republican nominee for elected office in Idaho.
And once they have achieved those objectives, gun rights are on the chopping block. They’ll tell you it isn’t, but the reality is, in places like Oregon, Washington, and California, once the liberals took over, the 2nd Amendment was one of their top targets.
Do we really think that Idaho won’t suffer the same fate if liberals use RCV to take over the Idaho statehouse?
Do you enjoy Stand Your Ground, Constitutional Carry, Campus Carry, and other pro-gun laws in Idaho? If so, RCV threatens those pro-gun laws.
Do you oppose things like Red Flag Gun Confiscation Orders, bans on certain types of guns or ammo, and other unconstitutional gun control measures? RCV will make those things a lot easier to implement.
RCV is a threat to gun rights, so ignore the gaslighting that it isn’t.
-Greg Pruett, President, Idaho Second Amendment Alliance
This Op-Ed was submitted by Greg Pruett of the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance. Op-Eds do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.
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Well said, Mr. Pruett! I can add nothing to enhance your well-written article. I will oppose any attempts that I am able to regarding passage of RCV in our state…period. Keep up the good work, Greg…signed, a Liberty member of ISAA.
I do not belong to any political party, I am VERY CONSERVATIVE, I want the gun rights the U.S. Constitution guarantees us, and I want the rest of the Constitution enforced.
Most of the presidents were elected WITH LESS THAN 50% OF THE VOTE. How many other politicians were elected with less then 50% of the vote? Ranked Choice Voting guarantees each candidate has to get at least 50% plus 1 vote to win. I am surprised the democrats want RCV.
Most people do not understand how RCV works. If there are 5 candidates, there will be 5 boxes with each candidate, marked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. For your first choice, you mark 1. For your 2nd choice, you mark 2, etc.. You can mark just one candidate if you want. If no candidate gets over 50% of the votes, the candidate that got the least votes, is dropped off, and the votes are counted again. This continues until a candidate gets over 50% of the votes.
HOW MUCH MORE FAIR CAN VOTING BE?
How much fairer, indeed? Just ask conservative residents of states with RCV. It’s the death knell to true freedom in America.
Ranked choice voting is un American and is a communistic scheme by so called liberals (communist control freaks) to take over red states.
These democrat liberal communists are so sneaky and deceptive that they can never stop coming up with schemes that take power away from the people and give them to the “elites” (globalists).
Vote NO on the communist lefts new scheme called Ranked Choice Voting if you like freedom and don’t want to be controlled by a bunch of feminist clipped haired pantsuit angry control freak woman and effeminate self hating men, etc etc etc.
RCV only helps Democrats
Now that we know it will cause Democrats to become our God how do we stop this? How do we stop this?
Vote! As often as you can. Vote, vote, vote–and get your likeminded friends and family members to do the same . . .
I’m still waiting for any assistance in preserving my gun rights. The real attack is through to courts by way of imposing challenges to your mental health and “thinking errors” courses, and officers straight up taking arms under the guise of safekeeping, (and not returning them, even after proceedings are concluded).
Article I section 11 is completely meaningless as no attorney has the balls to even challenge them.
I keep hearing and reading that people say Ranked Choice Voting is a bad idea, but I do not remember them telling why. Please explain why you do not like THE ONLY SYSTEM THAT GUARANTEES A CANDIDATE HAS TO GET OVER 50% OF THE VOTE TO WIN. Please name another type of voting that does this.
The way it is now, it is possible for a candidate to win with 40% of the vote, assuming enough voters voted for the other parties. This means the other 60% of the voters DID NOT WANT THE CANDIDATE WHO WON. It would be interesting to find out what percentage of politicians won, even though MOST OF THE VOTERS DID NOT WANT THEM.
Wake up John (cough cough I mean troll). Read the article it explains everything. If you still can’t figure it out we can’t help you. That means you’re just a democrat troll and it’s not worth wasting our time knowing how deluded and over emotional democrats are. We’d make more progress talking to a brick wall…you people think drag queen hour with children is a good idea, or x rated books in the children’s library is good. There’s no reasoning with democrats or fake republicans (rinos/closet democrats like you). Go over to the MSNBC or CNN or PBS chat boards you’ll make better progress there.