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Take Back Action Fund posted this blog regarding Utah County Auditor/Clerk Joshua Daniels presenting to the Wisconsin Elections Committee Hearings regarding Final 5 voting.
While you need a subscription to WisconsinEye for the recording of the entire 3-hour hearing, below we link to just a few of the outstanding highlights.
In all, Wisconsinites from across the state showed up for the hearing, and while there was only time for a few to speak, everyone in attendance was allowed to submit information regarding their residence and their support of or opposition to Final 5. At the end of the hearing, the Committee Chair shared 72 registered in support, with none opposed.
To note just a few of the outstanding presenters:
Rep. Tony Kurtz, a Republican State Representative from Wisconsin and former staff member for US Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), kicked off the hearing by talking about how it could help address the frustrations Americans feel with Congress.
Katherine Gehl, who wrote the highly acclaimed book The Politics Industry after running a $250 million food manufacturing business in Wisconsin (yes - they made cheese!), systematically and effectively responded to all objections raised against moving to a Final 5 voting system (top-5 primary/instant runoff general), including this segment discussing how under this system, a Republican state like Alaska will bring out more people to choose their Republican US Senator next year.
Daniels, the Election Clerk for the biggest Republican County in red Utah, talked about how they removed Dominion Voting Systems prior to their election and implemented an updated system, based on their Republican conventions. He also refuted the objection that asking voters to fill in their second and third choices was too confusing, by reporting that they actually took sample ballots into a nursing home, where residents filled out the ballot without even an explanation of how the ballot worked. The ballot itself was so intuitive so the residents filled it out correctly with no explanation.
As reported earlier, Daniels took Take Back Action Fund President John Pudner on tours of the mail-in facility in the summer of 2020. Pudner has regularly cited Utah as the standard of how secure mail-in voting should be done, contrasting it with neighboring Nevada, whose system mails ballots directly to huge lists of inactive voters. After a career in conservative policy and political campaigns, Daniels worked with his predecessor Amelia Powers Gardner for other true political innovations, including a comprehensive cleanup of voter rolls and state-of-the-art signature matches to prevent voter fraud in mail-in ballots. His testimony was a powerful argument for why we need instant runoffs, and how much common sense they make to voters.
Take Back Action was proud to be a part of this important step forward for Final 5 Voting - giving voters more choice and voice in elections.
For more on TBORA's efforts on Final Five, please click here.
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