Goals

Two Splendid and Doable Opportunities

Better Voting Methods for Fair elections

The Montana Plan to Stop Corporate Campaign Spending

We can make a huge difference!

Better Voting Methods

Plurality Voting and Ranked Choice Voting are not good enough for America

Traditional choose one plurality voting is unfair to voters, third-parties, and independent candidates. It has fatal problems:

You can only rank one candidate as better than the other candidates. Your vote for a third party or independent candidate, will cause your preferred major party candidate to lose your vote. This will help the major party candidate you dislike. Because voters fear wasting their votes, independent and third party candidates do not have a fair chance. Two party rule is locked in.

Because we can only vote for one candidate, support for third party and independent candidates is under reported in every election. This harms third party efforts to recruit members and candidates, raise funds, generate publicity, and win elections.

For these reasons, social choice experts rank plurality voting at the bottom of the heap. Only random choice and dictatorship are lower.

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) allows you to rank every candidate. This is an enormous improvement over plurality voting, but RCV is susceptible to spoilers. Sarah Palin, through no fault of her own, spoiled the chances of fellow Republican Nick Begich, electing Democrat Mary Peltola in a 2022 congressional election. The ballots clearly showed that Begich would have beaten both Peltola and Palin one on one. Eventually, a Democrat will lose an RCV election in the same manner.

Round Robin Voting & BTR-Score

Round Robin voting methods and BTR-Score (Score Voting with a Bottom Two Runoff) have all the advantages of Ranked Choice Voting, but they not susceptible to spoilers.

As Condorcet methods, Round Robin and BTR-Score will always elect the candidate who can beat all other candidates one-on-one. In the rare election with no “beats all” winner, a tie braker will elect a deserving winner. Ramon Llull proposed the “beats all” concept in 1299. Nicolas Caritat, the Marquis de Condorcet, popularized “beats all” methods in the late 18th century.

Round Robin

You can rank all the candidates in a Round Robin election, ties are allowed. All candidates face each other one-on-one in an "instant" round robin tournament. If you ranked Ivy Independent second and Gary Green third, you vote would go to Ivy when they meet in the tournament.

BTR-Score

BTR-Score lets you rate each candidate. Give your favorite candidate a 10 and the worst candidate a zero. Rate the other candidates in comparison. Ties are allowed. Each candidate’s total score is determined. An instant runoff tournament is seeded with the scores. The highest total score earns the top seed; the candidate with the lowest score is the bottom seed.

In the tournament’s first contest, the candidates with the two lowest scores compete. The candidate preferred on most ballots wins. In the next contest, that winner goes against the next lowest candidate. This continues until a surviving candidate meets the highest seed; that contest elects the winner.

If you rated Ivy Independent a 7, and Gary Green a 3, your vote will go to Candidate Ivy when they meet in the tournament. If you gave Ivy and Gary equal scores, your vote does not help or harm either candidate.

Fair and Reliable

Round Robin and BTR-Score is as fair and reliable as it gets for single-winner voting methods. Because they are Condorcet methods, we know exactly what they will do; they need no additional testing.

The only problem with Round Robin voting and BTR-Score is that nobody knows about them. I am not aware of any American jurisdiction using either in an election.

Defenders of the status quo will say that we cannot use Condorcet voting in American elections because Condorcet voting has not been used American elections. They support plurality voting because it's flaws protect the dominant party in each state and district.

Our Goal

Introduce Round Robin and/or BTR-Score to the world by persuading a state or local government to use one of them in their elections.

Our Target – Denver Colorado

Why Denver? On Monday, August 11th, 2025, the Denver City Council came within one vote of passing an ordinance that would have put Ranked Choice Voting to a vote of the citizens of Denver. Both Round Robin and BTR-Score voting are all at least one vote better than RCV.

This is doable! We have an opportunity to improve democracy in Denver and America. Denver is a world-famous city that is our home. A victory in Denver will put a better voting voting system on the national map. We need members in Denver to contact their representatives on the city council in the new year.

the Montana Plan to Stop Corporate Campaign Spending

The Montana Plan will eliminate the power corporations currently have to make campaign contributions.

State governments create corporations and determine what powers corporations have. This is well established by case law.^[1] Under current law, most states, including Montana, give corporations the same powers as individual persons. Corporate officers also enjoy corporate immunity; this places corporations above natural persons.

The Montana Plan, also called the Transparent Election Initiative (TEI) will eliminate the power of any corporation, including out-of-state corporations, to spend money in Montana politics, including state, local and federal elections.

The Citizens United Supreme Court decision gave corporations the right to make campaign contributions, but it did not give them the power to do so. Only state governments can grant powers to corporations. The states can limit those powers as they see fit. The Montana Plan does not cancel or reverse Citizens United; it makes Citizens United irrelevant in Montana.

To learn the legal details of how this can be done, please read the annotated version of the TEI initiative. It is clear, concise and revolutionary.

The Montana Plan is Going Viral

The Montana Plan is sexier than BTR-Score. People have been waiting for this opportunity since the 2010 Citizens United decision. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (a leading candidate for governor) stated in a Denver Post op-ed “Colorado should join Montana and advance a similar concept to change Colorado law.”

Our role is to contact our state legislators and encourage them to support a “Montana Plan” for Colorado.

The Voters’ Army has an exciting future. We can make a difference and you can help just by sending messages to your elected representatives.

Send messages about BTR-Score and/or Round Robin voting to your elected representatives. Especially Denver City Council members.

Send messages about the Montana Plan to your elected representatives. Especially Colorado State Representatives and Senators.