Thanks for tuning in.

The OTR our guest this week is the campaign manager of a petition drive to bring so-called ranked voting to Michigan.

His name Joe Spaulding.

Our lead story, the governor gives a speech on the budget.

What did she do and why did she do it?

Around the table, Rick Pluta, Jordyn Hermani, and Simon Schuster sit down with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Bellwethe Public Relations, a full service strategic communications agenc partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com.

And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Welcome to Studio C, another edition of Off the Record.

The governor gave a speech this week.

What was the hidden agenda if she had one?

Let's take a look.

Governor Gretche Whitmer was upbeat as she urged the legislatur to finish the new state budget in time to avert a government shutdown on October one.

We can still do this on time.

But it was a more somber governor who reflected on the state's lousy economy.

This is a manmade storm of uncertainty that hits Michigan hard.

The governor did not attack by name President Trump for his tariff policies, but pledged to work to change them as the auto sector is racking up billions of dollars in lost revenue.

But it was after her speech when the Senate Democratic leader got into the act and made some news.

She accused the House Republicans of coming close to making budget agreement and then allegedly pulling back.

We make progress, and then if things do not result in actual actions, that would get us to the point where we have a budget that we can pass.

Miss Brink says it's like Lucy pulling that football away from Charlie Brown.

There are promising conversations, and when it comes time to actually put those agreements down and make them firm, thos those commitments do not happen.

Notice she does not mention House Republican Speaker Matt Hall by name, but he is the only Republican in the room negotiating.

For his part, Mr.

Speaker says this about all this.

Are you negotiating in good states?

Yes.

Is part of your tough negotiating stance coming up to the table clos to a deal and then backing off?

Are you doing that, sir?

No.

Both sides are negotiating tough but progress is continuing to.

Be made as to how this all works out.

Stay tuned, as I say.

Yeah.

Okay.

So why did the governor do this speech?

Well, I think that we have what, next week is one last full week that we have together as a legislature before the government potentially shuts down on October one.

I mean, this is crunch time.

If ever there were a moment to say, hey, everybody, we need to get in the room, we need to get serious about this, and we need to get some kind of budget done.

It's now.

I mean, frankly, it was a couple of weeks ago because everybody who I've spoken with that's been around in these past government shutdowns say it's not as if you can jus flip a switch and say that, hey, we have a budget done, we're going to avert the government shutdown.

It takes time.

Now, I don't doubt that that's being the undertaken in the background that the necessary steps are being taken to pull together a budget.

But at the same time, when you see stuff like that, it really does make you wonder if we're barreling towards October 1st, what's on the other side of that shutdown for us?

Yeah, you know, I think that also, if we're not already in the blame game phase of this budgetary impasse, I think we're on the cusp of it.

And Governor Whitmer was just in Asia for quite a few days on an investment mission.

And so I think also, you know, there's going to be those conversations where as the leader of the state, as the head of the Democratic Party in Michigan, what she utilizing the bully pulpit enough.

And so this is an opportunity for her to sort of take Republican leaders to task, remind voters that, you know, there is a caucus in the Senate, there's a Democratic control there, and that, you know, they're on a somewhat of a unified front.

Yeah.

Showing up and reminding the Democrats that she's a Democrat after getting all of this attention for talking about being a partner with House Speaker Matt Hall, showing up in the White House to meet with Donald Trump, that they were looking for a little public reminder that they ar there is a team working in the Capitol on the budget.

Other governors have gone into the caucus personally to talk to people when there's a problem.

I think that would have gotten the job done more not to tel the governor how to do her job.

And yet there you are.

You just did not know I wasn't.

I'm suggesting I sai what other governors are doing.

You if you notice clearly I said, Governor, you shouldn't have done this.

Okay.

I did not say that, Rick.

And I accept your apology.

Okay.

Anyhow, look, she's got a problem with the Senate Democrats.

Does she not?

I would say to a certain extent.

I mean, obviously, she's laid out budgetary priorities, including getting a roads deal done.

Senate Democrats haven't put forward a roads plan, which would certainly put them on the record saying, here's a policy proposal we want to put forward, even though the governor has provided one.

And so, you know, trying to provide that unified front does become a little bit more difficult, especially with the rhetoric coming from the House speaker saying that, you know, never min Senate Democrats, the governor and I can get a deal done that sort of undermines the strength of their negotiating position.

And so that's why I think the speech also had some utility for her in sort of reminding people that, you know, and where her allegiances lie.

And to Simon's point, there are some interesting, quiet developments going on.

When was the last Matt Hall media roundtable?

It's been it's been a couple of weeks.

And so are we going into a quiet have we gotten into a quiet period where things are happening, that progress is being made?

And the more, you know, incendiary rhetoric is is is getting quiet because like you said, it's crunch time.

And state employees are wondering why they have not been notified per their union agreements.

On on layoffs, that that's th administration's responsibility.

And they haven't done that.

I mean, there just a lot of signals that, you know, maybe things are getting a little more serious and a little less publicly performative, with the exception of the governor giving a speech to say know.

And that's a bit of what I was speaking to a moment ago when I said I've spoken with folks who've been around in these past government shutdowns before.

And when you're talking about needing to pull together on crunch time, I had someone tell me that basically once we get past the 15th, 15th of this month, which we have, it's pretty much certain that we're we're headed there because of the fact that it takes time to draft things, let alone to get on th same page at a negotiated budget and you're thinking about the Senate Democrats and Whitmer, who they're relatively close, at least in terms of fiscal spending, on what.

They're after their.

Names that to.

But I mean, in terms of fiscal spending, they're all over the $80 billion mark.

Meanwhile, the House Republicans have proposed a much smaller budget.

It would seem to be that they are the ones that have to d more of the coming to the table.

Who knows whether that's happening now.

But I mean, you saw Whitmer even earlier this week, and I won't say Whitmer specifically, but her departments now coming out and railing against these budgets, specifically the House Republicans, one which have been notably absent ahead of, again, this crunch time this everybody get in the room and let's figure out what we need to be doing.

I think so much of like Governor Whitmer's political brand and also perhaps her political future is being staked on this ide that she's a bipartisan unifier, that she can sort of go above this fray and bring people together.

But this is sort of, I think, a mark of a sea change, saying that I think the era of delicate diplomacy here where you're not goin to sort of take anybody to task and hope that you can bridge the divides is as we get closer to this.

And my understanding is you know, the governor's office, if you want to get this budget done, as Jordyn said, with adequate review, you sort of need something done by mid-month and that's come and gone.

And so that era is over.

What about the NIF gnawing that Miss Brinks brought up that, you know, the speaker's coming up to the line and then backing off?

Mm hmm.

Well, I mean, hasn't that kind of been his style to date?

And again I think that gets back to that quiet period and trying to work through the details.

My understanding is that even where the principals are not meeting or talking together, that the staff level that there's a lot of proposals and papers being shared or at least, you know, online being shared back and forth to try an get to the parameters of a deal.

My big question is, in order to get to something on time, it's not just what's going to be in the agreement, but what's going to be left out of the agreement to be negotiated later because there are so many urgent matters at at hand.

The bigger question is, do they just simply do a continuation budget to buy some more time like they do in Washington?

Why not?

I think part of the difficulty there is the the sort of government shutdown prevention plan that House Republican passed earlier this year, that Senate Democrat were so vehemently against that that's sort of doing a continuing continuation budget, a patch sort of seems like an aspect of capitulation there.

Well, there is because the whole point of the, you know, quote unquote, shutdown prevention plan was to create a super skinny budget that operated within the Republicans negotiating interests.

And then you negotiate outward from there, which means that, you know, for everything you get, there needs to be a concession.

I mean, it would just be a ridiculous bargaining poin for the Democrats to start from.

Mr.

Vance, the Vice President.

Why why was he and how can somebody explain this, why the taxpayer money was spent on flying him in?

Well, I mean, this is still a very competitive congressional district.

And I think also there' he has a responsibility as vice president to go out and sel the president's policy projects.

But then again, when we wen and saw this 20 minute address, he didn't really heavily discuss too much.

The actual one big, beautiful bill he sort of went to like you know, we're living in an era where our political discourse is so fractured, people' attention spans are so divided.

He went on a potpourri, a hot button topics and sort of touched a little bit of something for everybody sending National Guard troops into Detroit, for example.

Yeah, I mean, there's nothing more to say than what Simon pretty much said.

And then on top of that, doubling down on the you know, if Governor Whitmer asks, we're more tha happy to send them to Detroit, despite the fact that we are seeing historic crime levels in Detroit, I believe the lowest in 60 years, nearly 60 years.

You know, you can't talk about turning on the rhetoric while also talking abou bringing in the National Guard when your police is working in your city.

And what's the poin of showing up in Howell to talk about sending National Guard troops to Detroit?

Because even if that wasn't th headline, that was a headline.

And, you know, if you're going to do that, then, you know, maybe, you know, you should have the chutzpa to show up in Detroit and do it.

In the governor's response was, no.

Did she say no?

No, she said, not necessary.

They're not looking for it.

Well, even better than that.

How about the mayor of Detroit who sat in his chair and said not no, thanks.

Right.

You know, so whatever.

All right.

Let's let's let's first of all, before we go, it's.

Almost like a mike Duggan campaign, you know in-kind campaign contribution.

I'm sure he'll get the bill for that, too.

Right.

Bruce Patterson, former state lawmaker.

Ricky we had the honor to cover you.

His past.

Yeah.

You know, he was a piece of work was.

He was a large man, both in terms of his physical presence and his personality.

He had a handlebar mustache.

I mean, think sort of a William Howard Taft sort of look.

And he you know, he was a very proud of being a member of the legal profession.

He was not afraid to get in your face.

But you could he could also be a charmer.

I called him Cousin Brucey.

Or you could because of the of the DJ.

Yes, but of course he didn't.

He's an opera fan.

He didn't know who Cousin Brucey he was.

He was a disc jockey in New York.

For those of you that didn't listen to radio in New York, anyway, I grew up listening to.

I called him Cousin Brucey, and he said to me, What does that mean?

So I explained it to him, and then he told me all about opera now.

So it was an even exchange.

Our best to Phyllis, his wife.

He knew he was fun to cover.

He truly was.

All right, let's see what Joe Spaulding has got to say about ring voting and there you go.

Mr.

Spaulding, welcome to Off the Record.

So the obvious question is, in 25 words or less, explain running, voting go.

Wow, that's two ways.

One.

Sound like it helps if you're adding if you're thinking about adding, not thinking about adding ranking to voting, but actually thinkin about adding voting to ranking.

Because ranking is something that folks do every day.

So there's not a lot of difference in terms of difficulty when it comes to ranking candidate in an election, when it comes on and ranking lik maybe your five favorite movies for instance, and third ranked choice voting itself.

I think we.

Should probably quickly explain tha the whole point of ranked choice votin is that you ranked your choices, but then the bottom ones get dropped and the votes are reassigned to the candidates who are remaining.

Right.

And I got tripped up a little bit by counting words, but.

When you're put it a district, you weren't even close.

Yeah.

So, no.

The voters would rank ranked their candidates in order of preference 1 to 3 if their first candidate can't win.

Their vote still counts for their second choice.

And the way that those would get tallied up is the the tallies would come in on election night and the candidate that has the fewest votes, they would not be eligible to win.

And the people that selected them first, their votes would still count, but they would count for their second choice and they would repeat this process until someone has more than 50% of the vote.

And so when you say they would repeat this process, that to me sounds like this goes far beyond Election Day, correct?

That's not really the case.

We're finding that more than 70% of ranked choice voting elections, the results are found on the night of the election.

So for if I'm a voter entering the ballot box and we have ranked choice voting in Michigan, there's five candidates on the ballot.

I go one through five.

I don't have to come back and reassess my votes.

I don't have to do I don't have to do anything extra as the voter know.

And so there's you know, it's.

Also.

Called instant runoff voting.

And one of the really good ways to kind of understand how you can kind of condense that all into one ballot is the military overseas in states that do use runoff elections in the south, they do use ranked choice voting because it essentially has the voter telling how they would vote in any given runoff situation.

And so what problems in the existing system would ranked choice voting solve?

This is a really important question.

Right.

And sort of slow and straight in across the plates.

Oh, well.

I appreciate I appreciate it.

Now, right now, voters are actively punished when they're given more choices in an election.

So having a third candidate run an election effectively means the winner only needs 34% of the vote.

To win a fourth candidate means they only need 25%.

And so that creates a specifi type of accountability problem.

But actually, we're finding that there's a bigger problem that we're kind of addressing with ranked choic voting that we're experiencing as a nation right now when it comes to the increase in political tension and in, you know, aggressive rhetoric leading and spilling over into political violence.

And one of the things about ranked choice voting that's super important to know is that it changes the incentive from a zero sum negative campaign incentive towards an incentive towards building collaboration and building coalitions with other folks, meaning voters, and talking to them about issues because they have to build a 50% coalition in order to win at the end of the day.

So strategically, you don't want to trash the other candidates too much so that you can attract your their supporters further on down the ballot.

That's exactly right.

So if I if I you know, Rick, if you and I were voters in an election in Jordyn and Simon here were running and Simon's my ride or die, you know that going into it, you know, I'm never going to not vote for Simon first, But you really, really want me to rank Jordyn second.

The worst thing you could say is that to me is that Simon is a jerk.

If you want me to rank Jordy second.

Not that I would ever.

Say that, you know, no one would ever say that.

I don't know necessarily.

It's a political science literature we've seen so far, supports like ranked choice voting, producing more moderate candidates.

But in the places that we've seen, ranked choice voting in the U.S.

and Maine and Alask and New York, these are sort of political environment that are a little bit out there.

They're a little bit unique.

Last year, we had five different states have ranked choice voting on the ballot.

All of them rejected the proposal.

What's going to set this campaign apart?

So this is actually my secon statewide campaign in Michigan and my first statewide campaign, I ran a strategy for voters, not politicians, on their anti gerrymandering campaign.

That was a grassroots ground up effor that was started by volunteers.

And they built up that that coalition and built up that volunteer army and went out and got all the ink on paper with just volunteers.

Now, I don't know if that ranked my vote.

We're going to be able to get all of our signatures with just volunteers.

But I do know where we came from and rank my vote.

We started by four volunteers that worked with voters not politicians.

Does this mean you're revertin to paper petition circulators?

We're not reverting to petition circulators right now, but we have all options on the table.

We want to get this thing on the ballot, but how many names on our petition?

Well, petition programs don't normally track that information live.

We have a briefing note.

Earlier this week, we disclosed that number.

Yeah.

So right now we know that the number is in a pretty wide range.

It's between 70,000 and 150,000.

That's based on the number of sheets that have gone out, come back and request for more going out.

You know, shooting for.

The raw signature count we're shooting for is over 600,000.

We need to get over 44 or 446,000 to get on the ballot.

Does this mean you're not on target, then?

So from a percentage standpoint, like if we were supposed to be getting the same amount every month, then we wouldn't be able to meet that goal.

Right now.

But the the organization is rapidly growing and the rate of growth indicates that we are going to be able to get that right.

What's the problem in other states?

Was it a lack of organization?

I think it was more at the end of the day, you know, these are propositions that got on the ballot.

But if you get on the ballot and you don't have that grassroots authenticity, which money can't buy, it' a lot harder to sell to voters.

And the voters know the difference between an authentic grassroots movement and not.

And so that's why I'm wanting to share this to the point.

I guess, the same question is, does that mean that in other states where this has failed, that there was not grassroots authenticity?

Well I don't know about the specifics of every single one of the campaigns in terms of the grassroots authenticity.

But I do know that a lot of them were funded the traditional way where there is somebody that has a lot of cash that wants to get an issue pass through.

And, you know, they're the ones that start the campaign in a specific spot.

You know, even i they're authentically in state and they care, sometimes it's a lot harder.

You really have to do the wor on the ground and do grassroots work like rent, like my vote has done.

You know, we've been around since 2019, founded by volunteers, and we've been working at different municipal level until this year, getting ranked choice voting passed in different cities.

So while clearly part of your pitch here is an identity as a non partizan grassroots organization, I think we're seeing this increasingly being drawn into partisan fights.

House Republicans have legislation that would ban ranked choice voting.

There's an increasing level of conservative infrastructur out there in the country that, you know, talks about ranked choice.

Voting is rigged, choice voting that it's socialistic.

It's going to confuse voters.

How can you avoid getting drawn in those partisan battles?

Well, that's a that's another really good question.

You know, the there's always when you try to increase the voice and choice for voters, there's always pushback on the opposite side from folks that do not want to see those changes made and really ranked choice.

Voting is something that we do not get challenged on by our opposition.

Is the incentive switch from negativity towards collaboration building.

And so folks that have spent their careers tearing people down and getting elected doing it, I understand why they don't like ranked choice voting and why they come at it.

So Republicans are against it.

You're going to have to ask the Republicans specifically that are against it.

Did you get that idea?

Where did I get the idea that folks that folks negatively campaign and get elected because I live in America, Right.

Well, who's who Isn't that both parties doing it?

Yeah, absolutely.

Like like this is this is seen as a winning campaign tactic.

The consultant tell their their clients to use.

And they know that when they say go negative, go negative hard and will spend a lot of money on it, they know that they're going t lower voter turnout doing that.

They just think they're going to lower it more for the other guy, which is the whole point of the incentive tha we're trying to switch.

Right.

So you have an outside sugar daddy or sugar momma who's putting the money in this thing.

I mean, no.

Tell me why you then draw that response.

Well, because we're a grassroots organization.

We're we'r we're funded by our volunteers who go out ther and work really hard every day.

It's a real hard grind.

And if you go out there at any festival in Michigan, you're going to see our guys getting ink on paper and they're volunteers doing that.

And they're also, you know, a lot of them are putting their money where their mouth are.

They really believe i the change that we're offering and they believe in the future of Michigan, where we can lower the temperature by changing that incentive over.

When we hear about Michigan and Michigan's elections, we constantly are told as a part of a, you know, security side, that we have a very decentralized elections process.

So how does ranked choice voting vibe or how is Michigan potentially unique in that aspect?

So this is really good.

This is another really good question because all the approach that ranked by vote took towards building our our petition program and the policy itsel was to take into consideration a lot of things that the election administrators have been talking about.

Something that goes along wit our proposal is that we would be moving the primary date back from August to June.

That gives them a little bit.

Election administrators, a little bit more of a breathing room.

I think that a lot of even elected officials are kind of aware of that.

Something else that the policy does is that we're focused on just the top of the ballot right now.

So we're talking about the US president, U.S.

Senate, Governor, AG, Secretar of State, and then US Congress.

And because we're dealing the top of the ballot, the changes that that will be brought by the proposal ar fairly uniform across the board.

So, you know, Michigan has this every state has this issue.

Michigan, it's pretty egregious where as you go down the ballot, the districts don't overlap.

So school districts don't overla with county commission districts don't overlap with state House districts.

It's fairly bad in some of th precincts in Michigan only have there's some precincts that that's the only precinct where that ballot is used.

Unique ballots and things.

No.

Let's look at the election, the primary election in the Republican primary for governor way back when when Rick Snyder won with 33%, 34% of the vote with this had been, if division is possible, Rick Snyder wouldn't have gotten the nomination.

So it's really, really difficult to tell how an election would have been decided if it if we used ranked choice voting without having actually used ranked choice voting there.

The thing that we do know is that it does create a level playing field.

And like Simon said, the places that have used it so far, states like Maine and Alaska, which are two of the more independent states in the country.

And so what we do see is that there are more candidates running across the board.

And so if you're running an election that is ranked choice voting, it's it's hard to say who would have won because there might have been a more diverse slate o candidates from the beginning.

And then the coalition that comes out from that and the politics that come from that are completely different wher we're changing that incentive.

And so if you make it so, it' a little bit risky to be doing a character attack on somebody that kind of changes the whole dynamic of the politics.

And we see that in the data that comes out in places like Alaska and like Maine that do have ranked choice voting.

The voters there do notice a a perceivable reduction in the temperature of the politics.

You know.

So two related questions.

Voting is largely of a matter of culture and habit in terms of how you go about doing it.

You're used to going to the same voting place, things like that.

How long do you think it would take for Michigan voters to get used to the new way of voting?

Should ranked choice voting be adopted?

So that's a that's another really, really good question.

One of the cool things about the policy, again, a consideration for the election administrators, is that it doesn't really roll out until 2030 is when it would be implemented statewide.

And that gives an ample amount of time for education.

Secretary of State is both mandated by law and actually a really good at educating voters on their options.

Another provision of the policy makes sure that voters are of our our our petition policy, make sure that voters are adequately informed about any changes in election law.

Big names that are behind this signature could put on the front of this campaign to get some of some mojo.

I mean, like we're talking to a lot of people across the state, we are starting to collect endorsements.

But if you look bac to like voters, not politicians, most of their endorsements got released, you know, in 2018 as they were approaching the election.

For us, our focus is getting ink on paper in the field.

Setting aside big names for a minute, what about the people who are actually goin to be administrating the system?

When you talk to policymakers about about ranked choice voting, one of the things that they say is a concern for them is how officials would administrated.

Do you have any county clerks on board now?

You have less of 25 words.

Go.

We're definitely talking to county clerks.

We have clerks that are on board at the municipal level where our conversations wit county clerks are still ongoing.

But we want to make sure that they're comfortable with the change that this.

Mr.

Spaulding, thanks for doing our program.

It's good to see you Oh, it's great seeing all you.

This is won-this is wonderful.

Thanks for having me.

We appreciate that.

See you for more Off the Record next week right here.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Bellwether Public Relations, a full service strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com.

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