🗳️ Kansas 2020 Presidential Ranked Choice Primary Explained ✅❌

VIDEO SCRIPT

Hey I’m Davis Hammet with Loud Light here to discuss the new way some Kansans are voting for President this year.

Presidential Primary
To become a political party's nominee for president, a candidate must get the most delegates at the national party convention. How well a candidate does in each state determines how many pledged delegates they get. In Kansas, the political parties run this process instead of the state and for decades they used a system called caucusing to determine pledged delegates, but this year the Kansas Republican party is giving all their pledged delegates to President Trump which is common when a party has an incumbent president, but the Kansas Democratic Party is making some major changes. They’re turning their caucus into a vote-by-mail primary using ranked choice voting.

Ranked Choice Voting
Today’s election system allows unpopular candidates to win by simply getting a higher percentage of the vote than other candidates. In crowded races, this allows candidates to win with a small percentage of the vote. Ranked choice voting is a system that allows citizens to vote for the candidate they want the most without accidentally helping the candidate they want the least. It does this by allowing citizens to rank candidates in the order they prefer them. So if your 1st choice candidate doesn’t do well enough to be viable, your vote transfers to your 2nd choice. This process goes on depending on the threshold to be viable or to win. In order for a Democratic presidential candidate to win any pledged delegates, they need to win at least 15% of the vote in Kansas. There are 5 options on the Kansas Democratic presidential ballot Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Elizabeth Warren, and Uncommitted. Democratic voters will rank them 1 through 5. If their 1st choice does not win 15% statewide then their vote will transfer to their 2nd choice. This process goes on until the voter has selected a candidate that meets the threshold to receive delegates. Viable candidates then receive a proportion of pledged delegates equal to their statewide vote percentage.

Vote By Mail
The Kansas Democratic Party already planned to have an option to vote by mail in their presidential primary, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic the presidential primary will now be entirely vote-by-mail. On March 30th, every registered Democrat was automatically mailed a ballot. Starting April 10th people who registered to vote as a Democrat late or didn’t receive a ballot for any reason may request a mail ballot at kansasdems.org/2020primary. The final day to request a mail ballot is April 24th. The ballots have pre-paid return envelopes and voters should return them ASAP because they only count if they are received by the Democratic party on or before May 2nd. The ballots will then be counted using the ranked choice system and the results will be posted.

Bipartisan Curiosity
Ranked choice voting is gaining momentum across the nation and across the political spectrum. The Republican-led Kansas House Elections Committee held a special interim committee to begin studying ranked choice voting in 2017 and the 2020 Democratic presidential primary will be the first time ranked choice voting is used statewide in Kansas. Keep in mind this only applies to the presidential primary. The regular August primary and the November general will not be ranked choice. If you have any questions please leave a comment or email us. 

Thanks for liking, sharing, and contributing. I hope you’re staying healthy, safe, and civically engaged in these trying times. Until next time, Thank you so much Kansas.