Point of View October 30, 2024 – Hour 2 : Abortion Kill Pill, Electoral College and Ranked Choice Voting

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View. And now, Hannah Dexter.

[00:00:20] I'm encouraging you if you're going to vote, and I hope you do, to be an informed voter.

[00:00:25] And one of the issues that's front and center is the issue of abortion.

[00:00:32] Kamala Harris was actually in the state of Texas last week.

[00:00:35] Basically her whole event that she put on in Houston was about abortion.

[00:00:43] How bad Texas is for having a very early abortion restriction.

[00:00:51] A really, really pro-life state here in Texas.

[00:00:55] But according to her, and according to the left, that's a bad thing.

[00:01:01] In the two years since the Dobbs decision which struck down Roe versus Wade,

[00:01:06] and especially in this election season, there is a false abortion narrative.

[00:01:10] And the narrative is that state restrictions on abortion are placing women in danger.

[00:01:16] They've got two stories to tell.

[00:01:19] One is about a woman named Amber Thurman.

[00:01:22] The other is about a woman named Candy Miller.

[00:01:24] And these stories are told and repeated across the country throughout the campaign.

[00:01:30] And the bottom line of it is blaming the state abortion bans, of course, and also the Supreme Court and Donald Trump.

[00:01:39] But both these women took the abortion pill, which we've been talking about for really years, the dangers of it.

[00:01:49] And so, you know, we want to kind of give you the truth on this.

[00:01:52] We've got a great person to do that.

[00:01:54] Her name is Ingrid Skop.

[00:01:56] And she's vice president and director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

[00:02:02] She's got more than 30 years' experience as a practicing OBGYN.

[00:02:08] And she supports, and with her research, knows that it's best to support the dignity of every human life.

[00:02:17] She's got a very scientific sort of body of work to support that.

[00:02:22] And so we're so glad to have her.

[00:02:25] Thank you so much, Dr. Scott, for being with me.

[00:02:28] Thank you.

[00:02:28] It is great to be with you today.

[00:02:30] Am I pronouncing your last name correctly?

[00:02:33] Yes, you did perfect.

[00:02:34] Good.

[00:02:35] Appreciate it.

[00:02:36] Well, that's good.

[00:02:36] So tell us, first of all, just kind of explain what these two stories are.

[00:02:41] I know that the first one, Amber Thurman, she's like 27 years old, 28 years old, and she died.

[00:02:49] But how did it happen?

[00:02:52] Yes, thank you.

[00:02:53] And also to let your listeners know, I am continuing to practice in San Antonio, Texas.

[00:03:00] So I am seeing what's going on on the ground.

[00:03:02] I am seeing the way that laws protecting unborn life are being misrepresented because every single state's pro-life law allows a doctor to perform an abortion if it is needed to protect a mother's life, period.

[00:03:19] So there is no reason at all that we should be reading, as we have been for two years, that pro-life laws will not allow doctors to provide quality medical care.

[00:03:29] That is categorically false.

[00:03:31] But that is what they're saying.

[00:03:33] That is what, for instance, the presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, is saying.

[00:03:39] And she won't stop saying it.

[00:03:41] Yes.

[00:03:42] And I would say that if this is really the winning issue that they say it is, they wouldn't have to lie about it so much.

[00:03:50] And virtually everything that is being stated in this election season is a lie.

[00:03:55] More than 96% of all abortions in our country are healthy moms and healthy babies.

[00:04:01] And yet they won't talk about that.

[00:04:03] They won't talk about the fact that we are ending unborn human life for social and financial reasons.

[00:04:09] They point at these tragic circumstances, but then they misrepresent them.

[00:04:14] And that's why we're not going to talk about the fact that we're going to talk about the fact that we're going to talk about.

[00:04:20] And I do want to point out that about 90% of obstetricians do not perform elective abortions.

[00:04:26] And most hospital systems come from a religious background, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist.

[00:04:32] So, in fact, it has been a part of obstetric practice for decades not to perform elective abortions and yet to intervene when it was necessary to protect a mother's life.

[00:04:46] And we'll talk about Amber and Candy, but I also, unfortunately, we're going to have to talk about a story here in Texas, a tragedy that just broke in the news today with ProPublica of another woman who died, not because of the state law, but because the law has been so misrepresented that it appears that sometimes doctors don't even know what the law says.

[00:05:10] Tell us the story.

[00:05:15] So, I guess we'll start with Amber.

[00:05:18] Well, tell us, first of all, I would like to hear the story of what happened here in Texas today to set the stage since a lot of people know Amber and Candy's story, but no one knows this one.

[00:05:31] I don't even know it.

[00:05:33] Yeah, yeah, thank you.

[00:05:34] It's going to break your heart.

[00:05:35] So, there was a young woman who presented to a hospital outside of Houston, and she was having an inevitable, incomplete miscarriage at 17 weeks.

[00:05:46] As described in the story, her cervix was completely dilated.

[00:05:50] The baby's head was protruding through the cervix.

[00:05:53] This means this baby could not be saved, and it has always been the standard of care for obstetricians in that situation to help her labor along.

[00:06:02] That's all this young woman needed.

[00:06:04] She needed a doctor to take that small action to help complete that miscarriage.

[00:06:09] But for some reason, the doctors did not.

[00:06:12] They left her for 40 hours until the baby had passed away.

[00:06:17] At that point, they delivered her.

[00:06:19] As described in the story, she was sent home very quickly from the hospital, came back in a couple days later.

[00:06:25] She died of sepsis.

[00:06:27] This was absolutely an avoidable death, and this is absolutely an action that those doctors could have taken at the time that she presented for their care.

[00:06:40] They could have induced labor.

[00:06:43] They could have completed that miscarriage, and they could have protected her life.

[00:06:47] But they did not, and predictably, ProPublica in publishing the story is blaming Texas law.

[00:06:54] But, again, Texas law allows a doctor to use his reasonable medical judgment.

[00:06:59] That means we can use our clinical skills, our experience.

[00:07:03] We can practice according to the standard of care.

[00:07:06] And the Texas Supreme Court has affirmed that the risk does not need to be immediate, only predictable, and the doctor does not need to be certain that the woman would die.

[00:07:17] He just needs to know that she has a condition that could lead to her death.

[00:07:22] So if doctors in Texas fully understood the law, there would be no confusion.

[00:07:27] Wow.

[00:07:28] Well, we definitely need to educate the doctors then.

[00:07:32] It just seems like, though, that it's just medical common sense, especially this story that you just told us, where the baby was partially delivered already.

[00:07:44] Yes, it is medical common sense.

[00:07:46] It is the standard of care.

[00:07:48] But I'll tell you why some doctors are confused.

[00:07:51] Now, many doctors are not because many hospital systems are giving their doctors support and explaining how they can abide by the law.

[00:08:00] Ingrid, this is such an important question, and I want you to be able to give me a longer answer than we've got time in this segment.

[00:08:07] So let's go to the break, and we'll continue the story.

[00:08:13] And, you know, it's kind of a similar story with a few factual differences to Amber Thurman and Candy Miller.

[00:08:20] So, wow, there's got to be some answers to this.

[00:08:24] There's a lot of common sense in what doctors should have done here.

[00:08:27] I don't know, were they really scared or what happened?

[00:08:31] But we will discuss it.

[00:08:32] Ingrid makes a lot of common sense.

[00:08:34] So after the break, stick with us, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:08:36] We've got more on this issue with Point of View.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:04] Once students are back in school, Jeremy Adams decided to write a five-part series that proposed ideas for fixing American education.

[00:09:11] What I found so surprising was how many of the ideas had less to do with teachers in the classroom.

[00:09:16] For example, his first idea was to ban cell phones in class once and for all.

[00:09:20] When he was a guest on a radio program recently, he described what he called one of the seismic changes to classroom life since the birth of the cell phone era.

[00:09:28] Notice what happens when students are given a few minutes of free time at the end of a class period.

[00:09:33] In the past, the classroom was filled with juvenile chatter, nervous movement, or youthful gossip.

[00:09:38] Instead, the classroom is transformed into a silent void with everyone looking at their phone.

[00:09:43] You know, more and more teachers have arrived at the conclusion that cell phones in the hands of teens and preteens is nothing less than a metastasizing generational cancer.

[00:09:52] He reports that teachers are fed up.

[00:09:54] They're tired of students playing video games and watching TikTok videos in the middle of class.

[00:09:59] They're sick of the incessant cheating.

[00:10:01] They're sick of students who feign engagement but still have earbuds playing music throughout the entire class period.

[00:10:07] They're exhausted from having to repeat themselves multiple times because attention spans have been hijacked.

[00:10:12] Fortunately, school districts are setting policies that will make a difference.

[00:10:16] One school district, he mentions, requires students to lock up their devices in a magnetically sealed pouch during the school day.

[00:10:23] One state is considering a bill to ban phones on buses and inside classrooms.

[00:10:27] These are all positive steps.

[00:10:29] In previous commentaries, I've talked about the impact these digital devices are having on schools, businesses, and at home.

[00:10:35] This is one positive step in fixing American education.

[00:10:39] I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:10:46] For a free booklet on a biblical view on big data, go to viewpoints.info slash data.

[00:10:53] That's viewpoints.info slash data.

[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:11:04] Welcome back to Point of View.

[00:11:06] We were talking about six-week abortion bans and the state of Texas where we've had a tragedy happen, I guess it was reported today by ProPublica.

[00:11:18] And also Georgia both have six-week abortion bans.

[00:11:22] And, you know, another story is the story of Amber Thurman that's being told across the country right now to sort of bash the Supreme Court, bash Donald Trump, and bash states for having such restrictions on abortion.

[00:11:37] But Amber Thurman made an appointment at a North Carolina clinic for a surgical abortion, but she arrived too late for the appointment.

[00:11:44] She didn't reschedule it.

[00:11:46] She instead began a medical abortion, which is with the pills.

[00:11:49] She took the first pill, drove back to Georgia.

[00:11:52] At home, days later, she vomited and passed out.

[00:11:55] She was taken to a Georgia hospital.

[00:11:58] The babies had no heartbeat.

[00:12:00] So standard treatment there, as Ingrid Skopp said, involves intervention.

[00:12:06] You must intervene.

[00:12:07] You need an antibiotic and a DNC.

[00:12:10] But it was hours before Amber received either one of those, and she died of sepsis.

[00:12:15] So these are similar stories, Dr. Skopp.

[00:12:17] So, you know, why are they not getting the care they need?

[00:12:21] I mean, I can't imagine doctors not doing something, calling up the state and finding out what the law is or something, instead of letting them sit there for hours.

[00:12:32] Yeah, you know, it is really heartbreaking what is happening.

[00:12:35] It appears that pro-abortion advocates are willing to misrepresent the laws, are willing to confuse doctors so that doctors do not provide quality care, and as we've seen, are willing to watch women die in order to try to destroy our pro-life laws.

[00:12:56] That is the bottom line that is happening.

[00:12:59] Doctors, as you might imagine, are not attorneys, but many times the law does impact the practice of medicine.

[00:13:06] Prior to the Dodds decision, every time that happened, our professional medical organizations would make sure that we understood the law.

[00:13:15] They would provide continuing medical education videos and, you know, different sorts of educational material and make sure.

[00:13:28] That's what they're there for is to make sure that doctors know how to practice in accordance with quality care and in accordance with the law.

[00:13:35] But sadly, after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, that did not happen.

[00:13:41] Our medical organizations have given us no guidance.

[00:13:45] Really?

[00:13:46] And at the same time, this is absolutely correct, at the same time, pro-abortion media started spreading rumors that doctors couldn't intervene for an emergency, that they couldn't intervene for a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy.

[00:13:59] And I think we've all seen those articles that then have found women where doctors didn't intervene, and then they've used those injured women as a demonstration that the laws were preventing the care,

[00:14:12] when in fact it was because the doctors had been told otherwise.

[00:14:16] And apparently many doctors are not opening up the law.

[00:14:19] They're not reading the law.

[00:14:21] They're not doing their own research.

[00:14:22] They're relying upon the pro-abortion media to tell them how to practice, and we can see this as dangerous, deadly consequences.

[00:14:32] It sounds like we have another story of that today.

[00:14:36] And do you know any more about it than we've already discussed?

[00:14:41] Well, I can tell you that this woman died, I believe, a few years ago.

[00:14:48] So it didn't happen just recently.

[00:14:51] Okay, it's just coming up.

[00:14:53] It's coming up.

[00:14:54] I think the timing, obviously, is political with the election.

[00:14:58] But the blaming the Texas laws and then subsequently trying to tar and feather politicians as being the reason that this happened is obviously very deceptive.

[00:15:12] But what has happened in Texas?

[00:15:15] Again, doctors were confused.

[00:15:16] I saw it on the ground.

[00:15:18] I tried to explain to them you can intervene.

[00:15:20] You can practice the way you always have practiced.

[00:15:23] But, unfortunately, that word just did not get out to many doctors.

[00:15:27] Now, many doctors do understand how the law works.

[00:15:30] Texas does keep record of the abortions that have been performed for the life of the mother.

[00:15:35] And since the Dobbs decision, there have been 116.

[00:15:39] So it is very rare for an abortion to be needed, but it is allowed.

[00:15:43] None of those doctors have been prosecuted.

[00:15:45] In fact, there has been no doctor in the United States of America that has been prosecuted for performing an abortion for the life of the mother ever since the Roe v.

[00:15:54] way decision.

[00:15:55] So it is an irrational fear, and yet apparently there are doctors who are so fearful that they won't intervene.

[00:16:03] In the story of Jocely that we discovered this morning, she presented.

[00:16:08] She needed an intervention.

[00:16:10] The doctors waited 40 hours before when her baby finally died, they finally intervened.

[00:16:17] It was too late.

[00:16:18] At that point, she had become infected, and she did subsequently die of sepsis.

[00:16:23] This was a totally preventable, unnecessary death.

[00:16:27] There was nothing in the law that prevented the doctors from doing what they needed to do.

[00:16:32] Every doctor knows that the intervention that was needed at that point was deliberate, was to complete this miscarriage.

[00:16:39] I don't know why her doctors didn't intervene.

[00:16:41] I don't know if it was medical malpractice or it was – I mean, clearly it was medical malpractice

[00:16:47] because they should have intervened, but I don't know the reason that they didn't.

[00:16:50] But, of course, this politicized article is trying to blame our law.

[00:16:55] Right.

[00:16:55] Okay.

[00:16:55] So the abortion bans, the six-week bans, the heartbeat laws save many babies' lives, and they save mothers' lives.

[00:17:04] So, you know, we're – that's not as public.

[00:17:08] It's not reported upon the way these specific cases are across the nation.

[00:17:13] But, Ingrid, I also want to ask you about the actual pills, the abortion pills.

[00:17:20] They're dangerous, and they take the doctors out of the equation.

[00:17:24] In fact, you can have – in many cases, you can get the pills without ever seeing a doctor

[00:17:31] and – or with a very, very cursory telehealth appointment.

[00:17:38] So that – I mean, what happened – approving the abortion pill back in 2000 or 2002

[00:17:47] and then loosening the requirements.

[00:17:51] It used to be 10 weeks.

[00:17:53] Now it's within seven weeks they can use the abortion pills.

[00:17:57] Do you need to see someone?

[00:17:59] No, you don't anymore.

[00:18:01] And in 2021 they made that permanent.

[00:18:03] So there's all kinds of loosening of the restrictions on the abortion pill.

[00:18:08] So it's very dangerous, isn't it?

[00:18:10] Yes, you're absolutely right.

[00:18:12] And just to clarify, Texas law does not allow any elective abortion.

[00:18:16] So it's not merely –

[00:18:17] That's right.

[00:18:17] That's right.

[00:18:18] I forgot.

[00:18:19] It was six weeks, but then it was no abortions after Dobbs.

[00:18:22] But I do want to point out that even Johns Hopkins researchers have been able to affirm

[00:18:28] that we have saved about 1,000 babies a month here in Texas.

[00:18:32] So this is clearly saving babies lives.

[00:18:34] But going back to the abortion drugs, nifepristone and nisoprostol, we've known for a long, long

[00:18:41] time these are much more dangerous than surgical abortions.

[00:18:44] Four times the complications.

[00:18:46] One in 20 to one in 25 women go to an emergency room with a complication.

[00:18:51] And despite that, the FDA has removed important safeguards over and over and over again so that

[00:18:58] now, as you stated, they can be ordered online, they can be delivered in the mail without any

[00:19:04] medical supervision.

[00:19:06] And that is how Candy Miller got the pills that killed her.

[00:19:10] So this is obviously malfeasance on the part of the FDA to not supervise these dangerous drugs.

[00:19:19] Now, Amber Thurman died of sepsis.

[00:19:21] And the FDA maintains a black box warning on nifepristone.

[00:19:26] It knows that women can get a very unusual, very virulent sepsis.

[00:19:32] That's what happened with her.

[00:19:33] So it was a predictable complication.

[00:19:36] And the fact that no one was supervising her care, that she, apparently both of the Georgian

[00:19:42] women may have been, may have mistakenly thought that they would be prosecuted for seeking help

[00:19:49] when they had an abortion drug complication.

[00:19:52] So that may have been part of what happened is that they did not go in for help quickly enough.

[00:19:57] Candy Miller got hers, ordered hers online.

[00:20:01] She got it delivered through the mail from a pill distributor in Amsterdam.

[00:20:06] She was 41 years old.

[00:20:09] Why didn't, I mean, you have to put a little bit of it.

[00:20:12] She should have gone to a doctor.

[00:20:14] She should have gone to a doctor because Georgia law allows a doctor to perform an intervention,

[00:20:19] not just to protect her life, but to prevent substantial impairment of a bodily function.

[00:20:25] If she was truly unhealthy, it is very probable that her doctor could have said, yes, the law

[00:20:32] will allow abortion in your instance because it does pose a risk to your life.

[00:20:37] But nonetheless, she did this totally unsupervised thing without consulting a doctor, and she never

[00:20:42] did see a doctor.

[00:20:43] She died at home of a fentanyl overdose after a failed mifepristone abortion.

[00:20:50] Can you imagine the pain that she was in, that she would seek out fentanyl?

[00:20:54] I can only imagine.

[00:20:56] And not seek the care of a doctor.

[00:20:57] Dr. Scott, thank you so much for kind of clarifying a lot of this for us.

[00:21:02] This is an ongoing issue.

[00:21:04] We certainly need to get doctors informed.

[00:21:06] I know you're part of doing that, and keep doing it.

[00:21:09] And we will have you back because this is going to be something that we're facing, and

[00:21:14] we've got to kind of, we've got to get our part right.

[00:21:18] So God bless you, and we appreciate your being with us today.

[00:21:22] Oh, thank you.

[00:21:23] Thank you for getting the word out.

[00:21:24] I appreciate it.

[00:21:25] And we'll be back with more A Point of View.

[00:21:30] It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority.

[00:21:36] They say men can be women, and women men.

[00:21:39] People are prosecuted differently, or not at all, depending on their politics.

[00:21:45] Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens.

[00:21:49] It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing.

[00:21:52] You feel like giving up.

[00:21:54] You feel like giving up.

[00:21:54] But we can't.

[00:21:55] We shouldn't.

[00:21:56] We must not.

[00:21:58] As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II,

[00:22:02] never give in.

[00:22:04] Never give in.

[00:22:05] Never, never, never.

[00:22:06] Never yield to force.

[00:22:08] Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

[00:22:12] And that's what we say to you today.

[00:22:15] This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos.

[00:22:22] We can't do it alone, but together, with God's help, we will overcome the darkness.

[00:22:29] Invest in biblical clarity today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151.

[00:22:38] Pointofview.net and 800-347-5151.

[00:22:45] Point of View will continue after this.

[00:22:51] You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:02] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station.

[00:23:09] And now, here again, is Pena Dexter.

[00:23:13] Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:23:15] Every time we have an election, somebody says,

[00:23:18] we've got to get rid of the electoral college.

[00:23:21] This time it was Tim Walz, VP candidate.

[00:23:24] And there is an effort out there to get rid of the electoral college.

[00:23:28] With me to discuss it is Trent England.

[00:23:30] He is executive vice president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.

[00:23:34] And he also directs the Save Our States project.

[00:23:38] He hosts the Trent England Show podcast.

[00:23:41] And he also fills in for various hosts, including Ben Shapiro.

[00:23:45] Trent, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:23:48] Thanks, Pena.

[00:23:49] It's great to be here.

[00:23:50] It's good to have you.

[00:23:51] We've had you before to talk about this very important issue and this effort to get rid of the electoral college.

[00:23:57] But what Tim Walz said was, I think all of us know the electoral college needs to go.

[00:24:04] We need national popular vote.

[00:24:07] But that's not the world we live in.

[00:24:10] But in Minnesota, he did join the national popular vote contract.

[00:24:16] So we'll talk about that in a minute.

[00:24:18] But he had to backpedal.

[00:24:20] Apparently, that's not the campaign's position right now.

[00:24:23] Why does he want to get rid of the electoral college?

[00:24:27] Well, Pena, it was so revealing where he made that comment, right?

[00:24:31] He didn't say that in Michigan or Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.

[00:24:36] He didn't even say that in front of a group of ordinary voters.

[00:24:41] He said it to Democrat Party donors in California.

[00:24:47] And basically, what Tim Walz was saying, I think, is, you know, if we didn't have the electoral college, right, that the Democrats could focus a lot more on California.

[00:24:57] And they wouldn't have to travel around these other parts of the country trying to convince people that they are, you know, they're not trying to ban fracking and that they're going to control the border and that they, you know, they love hunting and all these things.

[00:25:12] Right. It was, I think, actually a moment of clarity by Tim Walz.

[00:25:16] And I think that's why the campaign kind of, you know, had a freak out moment getting him to walk that back because they're worried that voters in these swing states will understand what what Tim Walz is saying when he's telling, you know,

[00:25:33] these these Democrat Party donors on the coast that we should get rid of the electoral college.

[00:25:38] Why should we keep the electoral college?

[00:25:42] Yeah, well, you know, it's kind of the inverse of that, right?

[00:25:46] If we want to force the parties and, you know, we can talk about both the Republican and Democrat parties and what it forces them to do.

[00:25:55] If we want to force the parties to reach out beyond their bases and to to try to bring more people into their coalitions,

[00:26:04] then the electoral college is a really good thing. And it has been over our entire history.

[00:26:10] You know, the reason why we don't have these narrow regional political parties like you find in some other parts of the world is at least in part because we have an electoral college where you can't you just can't win the presidency on a regional basis.

[00:26:25] You have to win a lot of states spread across the whole country.

[00:26:30] And that forces, you know, the Democrats to to go out and make an appeal to voters in small towns and rural areas.

[00:26:38] It forces the Republicans to, you know, they've been very focused on winning Hispanic votes.

[00:26:45] You know, that's how Republicans really solidify Florida.

[00:26:48] It's how they're holding on to Texas and keeping Texas a red state.

[00:26:52] You know, these are these are, I think, really, really good things for our country.

[00:27:00] And, you know, if we did away with the electoral college, we would have a very different kind of politics.

[00:27:05] Well, we would. And this is really the brilliance of our founders.

[00:27:09] And yet there's always been some people knocking at the door of the electoral college.

[00:27:14] And now you have an effort. It's called the National Popular Vote.

[00:27:18] You've been fighting against that. And just tell us what it is and how you're doing in kind of blocking states from or at least convincing states not to sign that.

[00:27:30] Yeah. So I created Save Our States specifically to fight back against this national popular vote interstate compact.

[00:27:37] As you said, it's a kind of a contract among states where they they pledge that if it takes effect,

[00:27:43] they would give away all their electoral votes based on the winner of the nationwide popular vote.

[00:27:49] The attempt is to force the electoral college to just rubber stamp the popular vote results so that candidates like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore can't lose.

[00:28:00] So basically almost all of the blue states have signed on to national popular vote.

[00:28:06] You know, Minnesota was one of the holdouts.

[00:28:09] But as you mentioned, Tim Walls signed Minnesota on last year.

[00:28:13] Maine was another holdout state that joined this year.

[00:28:16] Unfortunately, we have been very successful keeping red states and purple states out of the compact,

[00:28:22] which is good because they can't there just aren't enough blue states for them to put it in effect without winning some purple or red states.

[00:28:30] But they are at 209 electoral votes.

[00:28:33] They need 270 electoral votes to put it into effect.

[00:28:36] That would control the outcome.

[00:28:37] That sounds like it's getting a little scary.

[00:28:40] No, that's that's right.

[00:28:42] I mean, it's the unfortunately Democrats have made some gains in state legislative races over the last few election cycles.

[00:28:48] And that has allowed them to to add some of these states like like Maine, like Minnesota.

[00:28:55] You know, our elections.

[00:28:57] I mean, it is even though it's stressful, it is kind of a system and a process to be celebrated because you have all kinds of things.

[00:29:06] I mean, you have media markets in New York, L.A., big cities.

[00:29:11] And then you have and if you if you just left it to them, you could just be on the media and never do anything else.

[00:29:18] And you could win.

[00:29:19] But you also have door to door retail politics.

[00:29:22] You've got candidate forums.

[00:29:24] You've got all kinds of things going on across the country.

[00:29:27] And so, you know, it's just such an American thing to have our elections the way they are.

[00:29:34] We completely change that without an electoral college, though.

[00:29:37] Well, that's right.

[00:29:39] And states would lose control over elections.

[00:29:42] You would you would have to nationalize control of elections if we didn't have an electoral college, because you just you can't be adding votes from, you know, say, Georgia and California together unless the voters in those states are casting ballots under basically the same set of rules.

[00:30:00] You know, you need a similar set of rules for things like recounts if there was a possibility that we would need a nationwide recount, which if we had a national popular vote, that that certainly would be the case.

[00:30:10] So, yeah, you know, our whole system of pushing power down into the states, letting states experiment, trying to keep power out of Washington, D.C., frankly, keeping presidents from being in control of presidential elections.

[00:30:25] All of those things are results of having an electoral college that we would lose if we had some form of a national popular vote.

[00:30:32] So this election, Trent, if if the left gets control of all branches of government or two out of three, then do you foresee that they're going to go back and try to pass?

[00:30:47] I forget the number of the bill, but the one that gives the federal government control of our elections.

[00:30:54] Do you foresee that?

[00:30:56] So, yeah.

[00:30:57] So it was I mean, in the previous Congress, I think it was H.R. 1 and S.1.

[00:31:01] The very first priority.

[00:31:04] That's right.

[00:31:04] It is definitely very high on their priority.

[00:31:07] I think that Republicans in the Senate would stand strong against that.

[00:31:12] It seems like Republicans are going to hold a majority in the Senate anyways.

[00:31:16] But no, that I mean, that is a top priority for Democrats.

[00:31:20] And, you know, it just goes to this ideological divide that we have where, you know, they think that bigger is always better.

[00:31:27] Right.

[00:31:27] They don't like the electoral college.

[00:31:28] They don't like states being in charge of elections.

[00:31:30] They don't really like states being in charge of anything, which I just think is so short sighted.

[00:31:35] Right.

[00:31:35] And, you know, obviously, if if the election doesn't go their way and Donald Trump wins, then they will spend the next four years fighting to keep Washington, D.C.

[00:31:45] from having control of policies in states like California and New York and Vermont and places that are run by Democrats.

[00:31:53] But they always revert to this position that, you know, federal control is better than state control.

[00:31:59] I just think it's so it's so short sighted.

[00:32:02] We have had a great political system by keeping power at the state level where, you know, California can be California.

[00:32:11] People can decide whether they want to live there or not.

[00:32:14] Texas can be Texas.

[00:32:15] Oklahoma, where I live, you know, can be Oklahoma.

[00:32:17] Oklahoma. And that's it.

[00:32:19] That's a good thing.

[00:32:20] It means more Americans win because we don't have to have, you know, the whole country decide whether to be California everywhere or Texas everywhere.

[00:32:28] Right.

[00:32:28] When when we allow this, you know, different states to opt into different kinds of policies and different kinds of politics,

[00:32:37] that means a lot more Americans get the kind of government that they want.

[00:32:41] And that's a that's a good thing.

[00:32:43] It's part of why we've been so successful as a country.

[00:32:46] So I also want to ask you, and this is going to be after the break, about ranked choice voting,

[00:32:54] because, you know, it's it's kind of been proven to be a bit of a disaster in Alaska.

[00:32:59] And first, I'll let you explain that after the break.

[00:33:02] But now other states are wanting to adopt it.

[00:33:06] And I guess the other question I will ask is, is this sort of a law abolishing the Electoral College just a way for the left to get control and for things to be more top down?

[00:33:20] I mean, it sounds chaotic to me.

[00:33:22] But, ladies and gentlemen, we'll do that after the break.

[00:33:25] Before the break, I want to mention to you that at our Web site, we've got a banner that gives you all kinds of resources about elections, election central.

[00:33:36] So I want you to go there during the break and check it out.

[00:33:39] And we'll be right back with Trent England.

[00:33:43] You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth.

[00:34:01] Welcome back to Point of View.

[00:34:02] My guest is Trent England from Save Our States.

[00:34:05] And, Trent, before we get to ranked choice voting, I do want to ask you to tell us how people can find out if their state signed on to the national popular vote,

[00:34:15] that sort of pledge, which will actually require them to pledge their electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote in elections.

[00:34:24] It seems crazy to me.

[00:34:25] But how can people find out where their state stands?

[00:34:30] Yeah, yeah.

[00:34:31] They can go to saveourstates.com and just click on the Electoral College tab there.

[00:34:36] We've got a map, and it says where each state is in that process.

[00:34:39] And if there's legislation pending in their state, it should have that information there, too.

[00:34:44] So saveourstates.com.

[00:34:45] So do states pass laws requiring the electors to do that?

[00:34:50] How do the states adopt it?

[00:34:53] What they do is they pass a law that will take effect if it's passed by enough states that they control 270 electoral votes.

[00:35:00] So even though we've got 17 states that have passed this, it's not technically in effect in those states right now.

[00:35:07] It's just kind of sitting on the books waiting to see what other states do.

[00:35:12] And it would change how presidential electors are chosen.

[00:35:14] So they would be chosen not based on the vote in that state but based on the nationwide popular vote,

[00:35:21] and that would have the effect of giving those electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote winner.

[00:35:27] Wow.

[00:35:27] Sounds crazy.

[00:35:29] Okay.

[00:35:29] Ranked choice voting.

[00:35:31] This is from The Wall Street Journal.

[00:35:33] No election system is perfect, but Americans being lobbied to adopt a new one might want to look at the potential downsides.

[00:35:41] Alaska, Trent, has definitely had some downsides, haven't they?

[00:35:45] That's right.

[00:35:46] I mean, Alaska, it's playing out right now.

[00:35:48] They've used it in one election cycle so far.

[00:35:51] This is the second, and they are trying to repeal it.

[00:35:53] They have a repeal measure on the ballot right now.

[00:35:56] And, yeah, it's led to all kinds of weird outcomes and people trying to game the system by affecting how many candidates wind up in the general election

[00:36:07] and who those candidates are.

[00:36:10] It's really, you know, frankly, from a policy perspective, it's fascinating to watch all this play out

[00:36:16] because the people pushing ranked choice voting claim that, oh, it's simple,

[00:36:20] and it just means that voters are going to have more choices and be able to better express their opinions.

[00:36:26] And what we've seen in Alaska is that it doesn't necessarily mean that voters wind up with more choices.

[00:36:32] They certainly don't wind up with more sort of meaningful choices.

[00:36:36] You know, the system was sold up there as a top four ranked choice voting system,

[00:36:41] so they were always going to have four candidates in the general, and everybody gets to rank them.

[00:36:45] But what we've seen is that there aren't always four candidates who want to run,

[00:36:49] and there certainly are not always four serious candidates.

[00:36:52] They have somebody on the ballot for Congress in Alaska selected through this top four ranked choice voting system in the primary

[00:37:01] who is sitting in a prison cell in New Jersey.

[00:37:06] I'm not sure if he's ever even been in Alaska.

[00:37:09] You're kidding me.

[00:37:10] No, I mean, you know, the guy had threatened to kill a whole bunch of people and their families and all this stuff,

[00:37:17] and he's one of the candidates elevated by this strange, you know, top four primary,

[00:37:22] and now he's in the ranked choice voting election.

[00:37:24] And the New York Times said that he might throw the election from the Democrats to the Republicans because he's a Democrat,

[00:37:32] and two Republicans dropped out of that race because they didn't want to take support away from the other Republican who got more support.

[00:37:40] I mean, if it sounds confusing, it is confusing.

[00:37:43] It's just a big mess, and I think that voters up there are going to repeal it, but we will find out next week.

[00:37:49] So there are other states.

[00:37:50] Idaho has a proposition that we create a top four jungle primary.

[00:37:55] That's what this really is, is a jungle primary.

[00:37:58] Nevada, Arizona.

[00:38:00] Yeah.

[00:38:01] Montana has a couple of measures trying to push ranked choice voting in a surreptitious way.

[00:38:06] It doesn't do it directly, but it's trying to force the state to go that way by creating a top four primary.

[00:38:12] And South Dakota has a top two jungle primary, so it's top two.

[00:38:17] It doesn't have ranked choice voting in it, but it is one of these jungle primaries.

[00:38:20] And on the positive side, Missouri and also Arizona, they have measures on the ballot in Missouri to ban ranked choice voting completely.

[00:38:30] In Arizona to ban these jungle primaries, which would have the effect of banning ranked choice voting.

[00:38:36] So Arizona voters have got, you know, they've got a choice.

[00:38:39] They can go for ranked choice voting, or they can effectively prohibit it in their state with these two different ballot measures.

[00:38:46] So is there an agenda here?

[00:38:49] Because, I mean, I kind of go with the precept of if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[00:38:55] Was it broken?

[00:38:58] No.

[00:38:59] I mean, I think that putting the kind of putting the most charitable interpretation on the motives of these people pushing ranked choice voting,

[00:39:06] they feel like our, you know, our parties have gotten very extreme and our politics has gotten very mean and nasty.

[00:39:15] And so they think that ranked choice voting is a solution to that.

[00:39:18] But what they don't, I think, realize is a couple of things.

[00:39:21] One is politics ebbs and flows, right?

[00:39:24] I mean, American politics has been much nastier than this.

[00:39:27] After all, we had a civil war.

[00:39:30] So, you know, we've seen our politics worse.

[00:39:33] We've also seen it a lot better when our parties were stronger and healthier.

[00:39:36] And frankly, one of the things that has caused our political parties to weaken and I think to kind of allow our political discourse to spin a little bit out of control is the last round of reforms pushed by the same kind of people, in some cases, actually the same people pushing ranked choice voting.

[00:39:56] When they pushed all these campaign finance restrictions that weakened political parties and caused most of the money to go to outside groups that are a lot less accountable.

[00:40:05] And so they're, you know, a lot more willing to say, you know, kind of maybe more scurrilous or inflammatory things than the parties would.

[00:40:13] I mean, these reformers, to the extent that things are broken, what they need to do is look at what they did and how their past reforms have failed, not double down on those failed reforms.

[00:40:26] I think that's what ranked choice voting is.

[00:40:27] I think it would make things even worse.

[00:40:31] And certainly we have seen the folks pushing it, you know, particularly in places like Maine and Alaska and Idaho and Montana.

[00:40:39] They do have a partisan agenda.

[00:40:40] The money's all coming from the left.

[00:40:42] It's flowing into states in hopes that they can skew the politics in those states a little bit more to the left.

[00:40:48] And they've been successful so far in Maine and they've had some success in Alaska as well.

[00:40:53] So, Trent, since you watch voting, this is a more general question.

[00:40:58] You know, a lot of people are worried about fraud across the nation and just kind of dicey things happening during this election season.

[00:41:09] I know some states, many states, including ours, have shored up their voting laws.

[00:41:16] They were already pretty good, but they're better.

[00:41:19] Georgia certainly has done that and other states.

[00:41:22] So what do you see out there?

[00:41:24] I mean, I know none of us can really predict whether there'll be voter fraud or not.

[00:41:27] Well, actually, we can.

[00:41:28] There will be.

[00:41:28] But how much of it do you think there'll be?

[00:41:32] Well, as you say, Pena, a lot of states have improved their laws.

[00:41:35] And we have a lot of people.

[00:41:39] I mean, you know, tens of thousands of volunteers across the country, I think, who are engaged in poll watching and, you know, other kinds of activism to make sure the election is honest.

[00:41:50] There's always election fraud.

[00:41:52] It just happens.

[00:41:54] And we need to do the best we can to prevent it.

[00:41:57] Most of the election fraud that happens out there is at the very low level of, you know, people casting a double ballot or something like that, which is, you know, is terrible.

[00:42:08] Those things should be prosecuted.

[00:42:10] They almost never are.

[00:42:11] It also is very unlikely to sway an election.

[00:42:14] So, you know, the two important things that people can do to combat voter fraud, I mean, one is it's kind of too late in this cycle.

[00:42:22] You've got to be short because we only have a half a minute.

[00:42:25] Yeah.

[00:42:25] It's, you know, be a poll watcher if you can.

[00:42:28] And then just vote.

[00:42:29] Get everybody you know to vote.

[00:42:30] That's, you know, if it's not close, they can't cheat.

[00:42:33] Well, there's the wisdom from Trent England.

[00:42:35] Trent, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:42:38] Always a pleasure, Pena.

[00:42:39] Thank you.

[00:42:39] Okay.

[00:42:40] Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was good advice.

[00:42:42] Be a poll watcher and vote.

[00:42:45] Those are two very good things to do to influence what happens in this election.

[00:42:50] Also, let me ask you, have a great evening.

[00:42:53] And, Steve, thank you so much for all you did today to get this busy show together.

[00:42:57] And also, thank you, Megan and Karen, for pulling together the website.

[00:43:03] We got a lot of help here at Point of View.

[00:43:04] God bless you all.

[00:43:05] We'll see you tomorrow.

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