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How do you waste $15 million? Just ask the folks over at the Make Elections Fair Committee. Last week, their insane attempt to force a California-style elections system of ranked choice voting and jungle primaries went down in flames. Prop 140 failed miserably with nearly 60 percent of the electorate voting “No.” And it wasn’t for lack of funding.

With a huge amount of money coming from the pockets of out-of-state billionaires, the Make Elections Fair Committee spent at least $15 million—giving them a 20:1 spending advantage. That’s right. For every $1 spent trying to defeat the initiative, the Prop 140 committee spent $20 trying to pass it! And they still lost by a wide margin!

That’s legendary. If any business idea ever failed that badly, it would be banished and never spoken of again. And that’s exactly what should happen with ranked choice voting and its ugly cousin jungle primaries (which was already overwhelmingly rejected by Arizona voters back in 2012).

Prop 140 was one of the worst ideas ever to be proposed in our great state, and it is fitting that it met its demise from a vast majority of Arizonans. Radical leftists, out-of-state billionaires, and scheming consultants tried to hoodwink voters into adopting this failed system. They spent millions. They potentially misused taxpayer dollars to support the initiative. And they even had to resort to duplicating signatures to qualify for the ballot in the first place.

But voters did their homework. They saw through the misleading and manipulative ads pushing Prop 140. And they said “hell no” to this failed power grab. In fact, our efforts to dismantle Prop 140 were so effective that the Make Elections Fair Committee actually sent an email earlier this week admitting as much. This is a testament to over a year of hard work educating voters on ranked choice voting and why these radical schemes must be defeated.

But it wasn’t just Arizona that rejected this nonsense. Our state joined several other states throughout the country in overwhelmingly rejecting both ranked choice voting and jungle primaries:

• • Prop 131 in Colorado was defeated with almost 54 percent of the vote.
  • Proposition 1 in Idaho was defeated with almost 70 percent of the vote.
  • Both CI-126 and CI-127 were defeated in Montana.
  • Measure 117 in Oregon was defeated with almost 60 percent of the vote.
  • Amendment H in South Dakota was defeated with more than 65 percent of the vote.
  • Question 3 in Nevada was defeated with almost 54 percent of the vote.

On top of this, Measure 2 in Alaska, which repeals the state’s ranked choice voting system, appears to be headed toward passage. And in Missouri, Amendment 7, which proactively prohibits ranked choice voting, passed with almost 70 percent of the vote.

So, how much did all this losing cost? Nationally, groups pushing ranked choice voting spent over $100 million in seven states—only to see it fail in every single one. Could you imagine spending over $100 million without even seeing a hint of a victory?

Clearly, the people have spoken. Ranked choice voting and jungle primaries would be a disastrous transformation of our elections system. Nobody wants it. Now, it’s time for California to keep its destructive policies and systems on their side of the state line.

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This article was published by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and is reproduced with permission.