Written Testimony
To Georgia Senate Ethics Committee
Sen. Max Burns, Chairman
Scott Walter
President, Capital Research Center
January 22, 2024
Chairman Burns, Vice Chairman Williams, and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the honor of testifying. I’m Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, a think tank that specializes in identifying special interests and the money flows they use to push state and federal policies.
We track the special interests that aim to influence how Americans vote, including efforts to introduce ranked-choice voting, or RCV.[1] Though this scheme was first used in America a century ago, it was largely forgotten until tens of millions of dollars began to be put behind it in the last several years.
Like many special interests, the donors pouring money into this election scheme frame it as a “nonpartisan” idea. But the cash behind RCV demonstrates that is not true. Left-wing Democrats are its largest boosters.
You may or may not decide RCV is desirable. As an out-of-stater, I won’t presume to tell you what’s best for Georgia. But please don’t fall for false claims that centrists or nonpartisans are the main backers of RCV, or that lots of conservative donors support it.
Left-wing megadonors who’ve put cash behind RCV include Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency tycoon who was the second largest Democratic Party donor in the 2022 cycle, behind only George Soros.[2] Second, Katherine Gehl, former head of Gehl Foods, is almost certainly the largest single donor to RCV campaigns. She was a bundler for Obama,[3] though she now donates to some Republicans she needs to pass RCV laws. But it’s almost impossible to find her giving to Republicans before 2018.[4] She also supports the group Democracy Found, among others.
Ebay billionaire Pierre Omidyar is another major donor to RCV. He’s a megadonor to numerous left-wing causes and probably the largest donor in America to so-called NeverTrump efforts.[5] On election issues, he not only supports RCV but also such dubious policies as expanding vote by mail.