Rep. Laurel Libby- Segment 2

Thank you, Jeremy. And welcome back to Inside Maine. That's a producer, Jeremy Mixer, who keeps the wheels on the wagon. I don't know what I do without you, Jeremy, and Tony Randazzo in the newsroom. You guys keep me straight. I self-admit that I'll never get really good at this because I only do it once a month, so I need all the help I could get, and I really appreciate you guys. I guess technically this month you've kind of done it twice because you were here, what, two weeks ago? That's right. That's why I feel like I'm getting in the groove. Thank you, Jeremy. We're going to be joined by State Representative Laurel Libby, and she's going to get into a conversation. It's... Election Day, Tuesday, can you believe it? Three days away, it's upon us. And if you haven't voted already, if you voted early, fine. But if you haven't voted, which I think the majority haven't, myself included, Laurel's going to take the time to kind of walk us through the ranked choice voting, how it works. And some of the, you know, I guess some people want to use it strategically, you know, how they're going to rank their candidates of choice. And she knows it inside and out. I'm not saying she's in favor of it, but she, at least I think, is an expert in that area. So Laurel, thank you very much for taking time out with this Saturday to talk with us on Inside Maine. Well, thank you so much for having me, Sean. You know, it's one of those things that you hate to know how it works. Right. But I have to say, I have not had more questions on any topic maybe ever than I was getting on rank choice voting this spring with folks knowing we had, you know, eight candidates on the ballot in the gubernatorial primary. Of course, the number is actually seven, but the eighth was still on the ballot. And so I think folks are having a lot of confusion. And I want to make sure that people are empowered to vote and not avoid it because they don't understand what's going on. Hey, Laurel, I think we've got some line static. Can you give a call back into the program, 8799-426? Jeremy's going to get you on a different line. Absolutely. Sorry about that. Okay. Laurel be right back with us. Yeah, Jeremy forewarned me when we came in and said, got a line that's been acting up. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. What figures that it be the time? But it's very important that we hear that Laurels got to say about ranked choice voting. And you know, every time I think about ranked choice voting, I think about John McDonald. You know, the late John McDonald's that just, you know, had the John McDonald's morning show here for a couple of decades. And he was... adamant about ranked choice voting. I think everyone out there listening can have that fond smile, John's, you know, disdain for the rank choice voting. But anyway, that's where my heart goes when I think about rank choice voting is with the late John McDonald and how much he, he, um...

He certainly became an authority on that topic. So, Laurel, welcome back with us. Sorry about that. Thank you much. No worries. Loud and clear now. You go ahead. Well, you know, this spring, particularly at the GOP convention, I found myself fielding dozens of questions about ranked choice voting and how does it work. And I had a couple conversations with folks, but realized there's still some pretty mass confusion out there. And people want to know if they rank, if you choose to rank, because you don't have to rank how it works. And so at Lead Main, we ended up hosting an event called Ranked Choice Vote Decoded, and that is now on YouTube with folks want to watch that. But I'm happy to have the conversation today and talk about how it does work, because I think folks are going to walk into the polling booth on Tuesday, and many of them be surprised at what their ballot looks like. Well, back to your point, too, initially, Laurel, the seven candidates, but you're saying there will actually be eight candidates on the Republican ballot for the primary. So Jim Libby's name will still be? Yeah, correct. Jim Libby's name will still be on the ballot because when he left the race, it was too late for his name to come off the ballot. They were already being printed. And same on the Democrat side. Governor Mills, her name is still on the ballot in the race for Senate because, again, she dropped active campaigning. It was far too late to be taken off the ballot. And so both of their names on the Republican and the Democrat side will be on the ballot. Interesting. So we've got five active... Democrat candidates in the primary. And I'm going to run down through them. Angus King, the third, Hannah Pingree, Nirov Shah, Shenabellos, and Troy Jackson. So only because that list is shorter, Laura, why don't we pick on the Democrats here, if you would? Oh, boy. Yeah. Take those five. Just maybe give us a couple of scenarios where if somebody's going into the voting booth, you know, how would this? position itself as from a voting voter standpoint sure well you know whether it's five or whether it's eight is the same concept so I think if we could cover some basics real quick first folks will understand how to vote regardless of the number on the ballot first of all one question that people have is can I just vote for one candidate And you absolutely can, Sean. You can vote for one candidate by simply filling out one little bubble for that candidate, or you can vote for that candidate all the way across. Now, that does the same thing. That vote doesn't count any more or less. If you fill out more bubbles or less bubbles, it counts for that one candidate one time. Okay? And then, of course, you can rank, and you can rank all of the candidates, or you can rank two of the candidates or... four of the candidates or whatever number you want to. You don't have to rank anyone that you don't like or that you wouldn't want to see when. And so, as you say, if we want to take the Democrat candidates for a minute, if there are folks out there that have a top choice and then they have somebody that they think, well, that wouldn't be so bad, then they could vote for their top choice and then vote for their second choice and leave the rest blank.

So for example, let's say Troy Jackson, for example, say that was somebody's first choice. I'm not saying either yours or mine, but say Troy Jackson was the first choice, but they thought that, you know, he comes across pro-labor, pro-union, whatever, and they look down that list and say, okay, you know, I think maybe Hannah Pingree would be pro-union, pro-labor. So maybe I'll rank Hannah Second. Is that logically kind of a Democrat would think going into the booth? I think that's logically what a Democrat might think going in the booth. I have to tell you, Sean, I've had this prediction since Nerov Shah jumped into the race. You know, on the Democrat side, maybe not so much the Republican side, definitely not myself. But there are Democrats that remember him doing these daily updates with his Diet Coke during COVID. And he made them feel so safe and wonderful. I see a world where in the Democrat side thinks they might vote for Troy Jackson because of the pro-labor thing first and then... And then go, oh, my gosh, but Dr. Shaw and vote for him second. Yeah. You know, that's my prediction. We get a lot of folks voting for their first choice candidate who might be one of the most, you know, extreme ones like Pingree or Jackson or Bellows and then vote second for Shaw and see Shaw prevail in the end. Got it. Yeah, so if somebody is ranking their candidates, which that's the option, right? You can, what they refer to as bullet vote, which I've always done, and probably you have two laurels, just, you know, just write, put your candidate, one vote, that's it. That still can, you don't have to participate in ranked choice voting. Just let me make that clear for voters. But if they do choose to rank, then they don't have to rank, they can rank any number. of candidates. If I'm hearing you correctly, so it could be two candidates. It could be the total of five down through. But it's critical that you move left to right on that ballot, right? When you tabulate, it's got to go left to right. It can't go vertical. If you go vertical, it's what happens if somebody made that mistake. If you go vertical, you know, if you go vertical and you kind of, you accidentally, what you're saying there is you kind of rank them all first. Yeah. If you go vertical, that's a big mistake, and that would make your ballot not count. And so in that case, if you make a mistake like that, or you realize you've ranked two candidates with the same number, et cetera, you make a mistake, you simply go to a poll worker and say, hey, I messed up my ballot, I made a mistake, I need a new ballot. And they will take your ballot, and they'll destroy that, and they'll give you a new ballot. You know, I anticipate there will be folks who have a confusion on Tuesday looking at all of those candidates. There could be folks who mess up their ballot and need a new one. And that is 100% totally fine. Yeah, I think I definitely, you know, for one, in this election cycle have heard a lot more, and I'm sure you have to lower, a lot more Republicans, you know, not just, you know, coming from the GOP, you know, Jason and Jim Diamond, whatever, but just in more local circles to say, you know, I am going to rank these candidates because, you know, it's such a wide field and people want to, you know, exercise their right to be able to use the rank choice voting system even though they don't, you know, like it, but it's.

it's available. So they, I think there's going to be a higher percentage. I've got a question, Laurel. So one of the genesis behind this was they wanted a plurality, you know, through a different means, right, through this ranking system. But they want to get over that 50% threshold and say, oh, that means that, you know, this person's got the majority of people that support him or her and this is going to make it better to get things done. So. If you've got the five candidates, and let's say that for the sake of the discussion, Chanabelle's the first to get knocked off, her votes get distributed amongst the remaining candidates. And correct me if I'm wrong, but to get to 50%, then her total... Her total vote count, let's say she got 5,000 votes, for example, those come off the total vote. Is that correct? So that way there, the aggregate, so if they had 100,000 votes in the Democrat primary, slowly but surely you're going to take those votes away. So when the 50% threshold is reached, now you're talking maybe it's only 70,000 votes that you're cussing that 50% on, which I think that's where people wouldn't follow that. Right, right. So just to be clear, the votes, the ballots that are exhausted are ballots where somebody didn't rank a second candidate. So let's say, for the sake of the numbers you're talking about, let's say that out of those 5,000 ballots, 5,000 ballots cast for Shenabellas out of the total 100,000. And let's say that 3,000 of those ballots, those folks ranked someone's sex. Now those ballots move to that second choice individual. Those are reallocated as though there's been an instant runoff. And then the 2,000 folks who just ranked one candidate, they were all in for Shennebello's. Those ballots get set aside and those are exhausted. And that is the number that is no longer considered in the denominator. So we went from 100,000 to 98,000 for the sake of this discussion here. I think that's one thing that people. had a hard time connecting. It's like, how do we get to 50% if we didn't have it to begin with? You know, how does that math work? And you may not. You get to a fake 50%, 50% of that 98% and that 98 is going to continue to diminish as candidates get knocked out of the running. And so it is not getting to a true 50%. It's a 50% of the ballots that remain. That's right. And I think that's a really important point. Again, it's kind of like debunks, you know, these, you know, everyone will play nice and, you know, get over that 50% and everything's going to be collaborative and, yeah, we know how that's. So, Laurel, I also wanted, if I could, take advantage of your time now that you're with us to kind of shift into the current... Senate, U.S. Senate race. And this has been so much, you know, talked about the platinum campaign. And so my question to you is, Janet Mills is, right, Governor Mills is still on the ballot. And along with, there's another candidate, too. I'm sorry, I'm not going to think of his name. But there's going to be three candidates appear on that U.S. Senate ballot. So.

Did you ever think, Sean, that you see a day where Republicans are now the feminist among us. Right. Right. That's a good, really, no. Laurel, I appreciate you offering that perspective. No, you're absolutely right. That, that's a great way to say it. It's, I just, you know, my heart kind of sinks when I just see the. And I don't think they're done yet, but, you know, these things that come that you're just glaring. And this was, you know, my opinion. But I think he's, you know, kind of said, hey, I did this. You know, I wasn't 100% the alcohol and the PTSD. And really tried to come say, hey, I'm coming clean. And I'm not happy about the way I was. I'm a new person or whatever. I think, that could be wrong, but I think. after the Tuesday, he's going to shift into the typical Washington, D.C. denial mode of, that's not right, that's not true, the line that set me up, this political, you know, shenanigans. I think the campaign's going to shift hard right after Tuesday and go right into complete, I don't want to talk about it. None of it's true mode. Maybe. I mean, he's already kind of made that shift, though, with these latest allegations, made that shift. And if you hear the things that he's saying, you're right about the Me Too type of thing. Well, I guess it's Me Too and believe all women, except if they are of the wrong party. And then you can completely dismiss what they have to say. The thing is that I don't want to get lost in all of this, Sean, is that Graham Platner. is one of the most extreme liberal Democrats in our state. And I don't want the policies that he advances to get lost. Look at where we're at after eight years of Democrat control with Governor Mills in the governor's mansion and the Democrats in control of Augusta. We have the highest electricity cost increases. across the entire country. We have taxes that have been increased 32 times on working class families. We have just disastrous policies that are increasing cost of living. And that's what Graham Platner wants to take to D.C. to inflict on the entire country. Right. No, you're absolutely right, Laurel, you know, to hear him. And then you're in... I appreciate you offering that insight is we're in this minutia and this drama and all these things. And like you said, let's just kind of clear the clouds and look at, okay, what are his policy stances, positions? What does he really believe in? What is he going to try to do if he is elected to... you know, in terms of it's going to impact the people of Maine and the country and geopolitically too as well is a lot of disturbing. I always, and I take it like with Governor Mills too, we're all products of our environment. You know, whatever our environment is, we're products of our environment. And when you look at Governor Mills growing up with the hippie days, being out in California and protesting and being part of, you know, railing against the establishment, and then the irony is,

Now, like Bernie Sanders, the same thing. Now they are the establishment, you know. And Bernie's trying to package it to say, we're going to take the establishment down. You are the establishment. It's just crazy that we're seeing history repeat it. So, Laura, we're going to, geez, come up against the break. But thank you very much for taking the time. And I know you've got a lot to do with Saturday. People respect you and have a lot of, you have a lot of credibility. So thank you for being with us. Well, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it, Sean. You have a great weekend. Yeah, and don't forget to vote on Tuesday. That's for all our listeners out there. Absolutely. Get to the polls and make your voice heard. Thank you, Laurel.