What Happened to Ranked Choice Voting?

Happy Tuesday! We’re looking forward to today’s Dispatch Summit and to meeting so many of you in person. If you see us, come say hi! 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• President-elect Donald Trump on Monday reportedly named Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida as his national security adviser. Waltz, a retired Army Green Beret, was previously critical of the former president, particularly for his comments about prisoners of war, though in recent years has been a prominent and loyal Trump backer. Waltz has taken an aggressive line on China and has been a member of the House Armed Services, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs Committees.
• Trump announced Sunday night that Tom Homan—the former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first Trump administration—will become the “border czar” in charge of border security and Trump’s much-anticipated deportation plan. “I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post making the announcement. It’s unclear exactly what form Homan’s position will take, but the announcement suggests he’ll assume a White House role that doesn’t require Senate confirmation.  
• Trump on Monday said that Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and chair of the House Republican conference, will be his nominee for U.S. ambassador to the U.N., representing the first Cabinet pick of the incoming administration. Stefanik became an outspoken defender of Trump’s stolen election claims in 2020 and ascended to House leadership when former Rep. Liz Cheney was removed as conference chair in 2022. If she were confirmed to fill the post, Republicans would be down a vote in the House until a special election could be held to fill her seat.  
• Trump also announced his second Cabinet pick on Monday, tapping former New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin to serve as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. “He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards,” Trump said in a statement.
• Multiple outlets reported on Monday that Trump is expected to name Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as his nominee for secretary of state. Rubio—who’s generally considered a foreign policy hawk, though earlier this year he voted against a foreign aid package that included funding for Israel, Ukraine, and the Indopacific—was a staunch critic of Trump when he challenged him for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015 and 2016, but has more recently backed the former president and was considered as a potential running mate earlier this year. If Rubio were nominated and confirmed, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, could appoint someone to fill his seat until at least the 2026 midterm elections.
• Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced Monday that “there is a certain progress” in the U.S.-brokered ceasefire talks with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist organization in Lebanon. But a spokesperson for Hezbollah said Monday that neither the group nor Lebanon had received an official proposal. Saar’s comments came the day after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the terror group had largely been defeated on the battlefield. Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at northern Israel on Monday, and the Israeli military issued more than 20 evacuation orders for areas of southern Lebanon. 
• The Israel Defense Force (IDF) said Monday it had expanded a humanitarian zone in southern Gaza to include “field hospitals established since the start of the war, tent compounds, shelter supplies, and provisions of food, water, medicine, and medical equipment.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued an ultimatum to the Israeli government on October 13, saying Israel had 30 days to increase aid or face restrictions on U.S. military aid. The deadline is Wednesday, and the IDF did not specify how much additional aid would be opened up by the zone’s expansion. The volume of aid flowing into Gaza in October reached the lowest monthly levels since December, according to data from the Israeli agency in charge of facilitating humanitarian relief in Gaza.

Ranked Choice Voting Rankles

On Monday we wrote to you of the recriminations and finger-pointing among Democrats as they grapple with their election defeat last week. In short: It’s ugly.

But ranked choice voting advocates also suffered a pretty serious shellacking on Election Day, though they’re managing to be much less fatalistic about it. “It was a false start down a pathway that people do not like,” Linda Templin, the executive director of Ranked Choice Voting for Colorado, told TMD. 

Ranked choice voting has been hailed by its proponents as a reform that could fix democracy. It’s often accompanied by the adoption of “open” primaries (where any voter can vote in either party’s primary) or “jungle” primaries (where candidates from all parties on a list advance to a three-, four-, or five-person runoff). But in seven of the 10 places where voters decided whether to adopt it, ranked choice voting lost. Alaska’s measure is still awaiting a call, although it looks likely to lose there, too. 

Voting reform advocates’ limited success is indicative of what may be a discouraging trend for them: difficulty translating the growing success …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our 1,535-word item on what the election means for ranked choice voting is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• Francis Fukuyama wrote an open letter in Persuasion to billionaire businessman Elon Musk, potentially the leader of a future Trump administration commission on government efficiency, on how to make government more efficient. “You will never be able to run the government the way you run your companies,” Fukuyama wrote. “But you can do a lot to make it more efficient. The trick is to avoid simplistic moves like mass layoffs and the closing of entire agencies.” Fukuyama outlined several misconceptions about government inefficiency: “Many conservatives believe that government bureaucrats have too much discretionary authority and use it to enact a liberal agenda, thereby eluding democratic control. This does occur in some instances. But the real truth is rather the opposite: bureaucrats spend way too much of their time complying with hundreds of rules mandated by Congress, rather than using their independent judgment to make decisions that lead to good results for citizens.”
• Writing for Texas Monthly, Benton Graham investigated one Texas high school that has two separate mascots. “In nature, bobcats and deer rarely clash,” he wrote. “A bobcat might attack a fawn, but the feline predator is too small to present much threat to an adult deer. At Comfort High School, the peaceful coexistence of the two animals exceeds that in the natural world. This is because the school, located about fifty miles northwest of San Antonio, has two mascots: a bobcat, for the boys teams, and a deer, for the girls teams.” Over the course of his investigation, Graham discovered additional Texas schools with multiple mascots, “but even if Comfort isn’t alone in having two mascots, the story behind its sports split matters,” he noted. “That tale goes back almost a hundred years, to the school’s girls basketball team at a time when the squad had just one basketball to play with and the girls wore white blouses and black bloomers as uniforms.”

Presented Without Comment

Associated Press: Mattel Says It ‘Deeply’ Regrets Misprint on ‘Wicked’ Dolls Packaging That Links to Porn Site 

Also Presented Without Comment

GOP Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee to NewsNation on Wednesday’s congressional hearing on unidentified aerial phenomenon (aka UFOs):

I think we’re gonna learn some things. It’s peeling back the layers of an onion.

Also Also Presented Without Comment

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington on whether she would continue her support for getting rid of the Senate filibuster once Republicans control the Senate in the next term.

Am I championing getting rid of the filibuster now when the [GOP] has the trifecta? No. But had we had the trifecta, I would have been.

In the Zeitgeist

Jazz legend and alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson died Saturday at age 98. Sixty years ago at the Birdland Jazz Club in New York, Donaldson played in one of the first—and considered by many the greatest—live jazz album recordings, A Night at Birdland.

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Kevin explored (🔒) what John Adams got right and wrong about democracy, and the Dispatch Politics crew reported on the factions vying to influence the Senate leadership race.
• On the podcasts: Sarah and David discuss the Vacancies Reform Act and who owns engagement rings on Advisory Opinions. 
• On the site: Stirewalt checks in on the Senate’s shenanigans, and Alex Muresianu takes a look at Congress’ plan for the coming expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.