Guests - Lisa Von Geldern, Kristen Pruett, Rick Shafton
A New Constitution, a Rigged Scorecard, a PND Trap, and Tomorrow's Elections Nobody Is Watching
Monday, June 1st — five weeks to July 4th, three weeks until early ballots drop, and 51 days until the Arizona primary. Winn Tucson opened the week with three conversations that moved from the philosophical altitude of constitutional theory down to the ground-floor mechanics of how voters get lost in the system before they even cast a ballot. Then it closed with a political analyst who came prepared with fresh polling, a 28-point Texas blowout explanation, and a blunt autopsy of what Republican consultants are actually in it for.
Lisa Von Geldern: A Replacement Constitution, a 17 Percent Error Rate, ESG Scoring Your Appliances, and a Conference That Ends Tomorrow
Lisa Von Geldern — Arizona state coordinator for the John Birch Society, twice canceled in California, and the organizer of this coming weekend's conference in Salt Lake City — came on with the kind of opening volley that makes sense if you've been on a two-and-a-half-hour conference call about the future of constitutional governance before 9 a.m.
A New Constitution Is Being Drafted
The development that prompted the conference call: deep state actors and affiliated organizations are actively drafting replacement constitutions — not one, but multiple competing versions — none of which were assembled by people with any interest in preserving individual rights. The parallel project involves attempts to merge military command structures with international partners in ways that would strip U.S. sovereignty if implemented.
"Along with what's going on with Israel and trying to merge our military so that we will no longer have our sovereignty and our individual rights and our state's rights if something like that goes through — and it's being snuck in stealthily."
This is not a theoretical warning about some distant process. It is an active effort, verifiable online, moving through the same institutional channels that have produced other slow-motion constitutional erosions.
The Home Energy Score and the Coming Social Credit System
Von Geldern forwarded Winn an article — apparently innocuous in its framing — describing a home energy scoring system now available online. Enter your address and receive an energy efficiency score for your property.
The China parallel is not coincidental. China's personal social credit score — which assigns behavioral ratings and restricts access to services, transportation, and employment for those with low scores — is being imported into American life through scores assigned to homes, businesses, and eventually individuals based on data collected from connected appliances, vehicles, and devices.
"They're going to start giving you a score based on how sound the energy use of your house is."
Winn's own experience with a new microwave — which required internet connectivity to function fully — illustrated the mechanism in miniature. She has declined to connect it. Her Fitbit and glucose monitor now require Google account sign-ups to operate the apps on equipment she already owns. She is throwing both away.
"I have no desire to program my microwave to my phone. I don't want you to know how much I'm using my dishwasher."
A washing machine repairman recently told her that a microwave he'd been called to fix at another home had stopped functioning — because the owner had not connected it to the internet for a required update. Why does a microwave need an internet update? The answer, in Von Geldern's framework, is not functionality. It is data collection.
This connects directly to the ESG scoring system that, under the Biden administration, tied access to IMF-backed banking to corporate compliance with LGBTQ promotion, DEI hiring, and environmental certification. One local Tucson resident was debanked by Chase — both personal and business accounts — for the sole offense of donating to pro-life organizations.
"They couldn't get money and funds. The International Monetary Fund would not allow banks to fund certain businesses and organizations and even small people."
The ESG apparatus is not dead. It is migrating from the corporate level to the household level. The infrastructure being built now — home energy scores, connected appliances, health tracking devices requiring Google login — is the plumbing for a system that awards or restricts access based on behavioral compliance.
The Freedom Index and Why Lindsey Graham Scored 11%
The John Birch Society's Freedom Index is a twice-yearly constitutional scorecard — free, publicly available at jbs.org — that rates every member of Congress and the Senate on how their votes align with the Constitution. The methodology: professional staff examine every piece of legislation that comes to a floor vote, assess its constitutional basis, and score lawmakers accordingly. Zero to 100. Most Democrats cluster at zero. A few exceptional cases push into double digits.
In a representative congressional session, Bernie Sanders — the independent democratic socialist from Vermont — scored a 33%.
In that same Congress, Lindsey Graham — the senior Republican senator from South Carolina — scored an 11%.
"When the GOP is supposed to be the party of the Constitution, of life, liberty, individual rights, and individual responsibility — and he's scoring 11% — that is a horror to me."
The Freedom Index doesn't care about the D or the R. It measures actual votes against constitutional standards. Von Geldern's recommendation: check your own representatives before the primary. The difference between what a legislator says in a campaign ad and how they vote on legislation is what the scorecard reveals.
The 17 Percent Error Rate and 35 Contested States
On election integrity, Von Geldern brought data from a self-funded, volunteer research network that has examined election results across 35 states. The analysts — 94 of them, kept anonymous to protect their employment (they work for Sandia Labs, Wells Fargo, Chase, and similar institutions) — are kept blind from each other to prevent coordination.
Their finding: the average ballot error rate across the 35 states examined is 17 percent.
The legal standard under the Help America Vote Act: 0.008 percent — one error per 125,000 ballots. Beyond that threshold, certification is unlawful and certifiers are supposed to be held legally accountable.
"This has been going on for a long time. It's in the voter rolls. It's in the machine. It's why we've got to go back to ballots, we've got to go back to paper, same-day voting."
Her framing of the convenience argument: "Freedom is not convenient, folks. If you want convenience, go move to North Korea or China. They make things very convenient — you are told exactly what to do, and if you don't comply, you die."
The Conference: Last Day to Register
The John Birch Society's annual conference in Salt Lake City is this weekend — Friday night through Saturday — at the Radisson downtown. Von Geldern noted that people can still register through Tuesday (the conference's Monday call set the head count deadline).
The speaker lineup:
Friday night: A panel of state legislators on the theme "Why Fight City Hall When You Can Be City Hall" — with specific speakers presenting their personal stories about running for and winning elected office. A second session will demonstrate how to use the Freedom Index scorecards effectively, including how to leverage them in conversations with reluctant or unreachable members of Congress.
Saturday: Peter Tickton — a Florida-based Trump ally who went to school with the president and will speak on election integrity. Phil Lyman — who ran for governor of Utah and narrowly lost to Spencer Cox in a primary that Von Geldern believes was stolen. Robert Brown on the dangers of an Article V constitutional convention. David Iverson on the strategy of electing constitutional legislators. JP Cortez of the Sound Money Legal Defense Society on precious metals and Arizona's legal recognition of gold and silver as currency. Catherine Austin Fitts on fighting back against central bank digital currencies.
Conference registration: jbs.org/conference/slc26
Conference costs cover meals only — not airfare or hotel for the speakers. Everything is donated time.
Kristen Pruett: PND Traps, Inactive Rolls, Coalition Building, and Why Moms Are the Movement
Kristen Pruett — member-at-large of the Pima County Republican Party and field representative for Turning Point Action — joined with ground-level intelligence about voter registration that every precinct committeeman in Pima County needs to hear before June 22nd.
The Party Field 14 Trap
On the Arizona state voter registration form, every required field is marked in red. There are several of them: name, address, date of birth, ID number, citizenship declaration.
Field 14 — party affiliation — is not marked red. It is not technically required to process the form.
"If they don't complete field 14, if they don't mark a party, they're automatically put as PND — party not declared."
The practical consequence: Pruett estimated that a meaningful portion of people who believe they are registered Republicans are actually PND because they rushed through a registration form or participated in a drive where the facilitator didn't emphasize that field. PND voters can vote in the primary — but only if they proactively call the recorder's office and request the ballot of their preferred party. They will not automatically receive a Republican ballot on the early mail list.
The DMV has been automatically moving people to PND status in some cases. California transplants who are conservative but work in medicine, education, or military — fields where professional exposure to lefty colleagues makes party affiliation feel risky — frequently register Democrat or PND rather than Republican. The registration numbers in Pima County, Pruett noted, increasingly reflect not ideological alignment but a complex calculation about professional risk.
The Voter Roll Cleaning Reality
Pruett addressed the disorientation many voters have reported: showing up at the polls or receiving information suggesting they've been removed from the rolls.
"The cleaning of voter rolls impacted all parties, not just the Republican Party — that would be too obvious."
When rolls are cleaned, inactive voters get flagged. When inactive voters are moved, it artificially depresses registration numbers across all parties. Some of what looks like a surge in independents is actually a byproduct of the cleaning process, not organic political realignment.
Her advice: check your status now, not the week before the election. Go to my.arizona.vote, verify your registration, your party, your address, and your ballot status. The last day to update or register for the July 21st primary is June 22nd. Early ballots drop approximately June 24th.
Turning Point Action and the Coalitions
Beyond her Pima County GOP role, Pruett works with Turning Point Action's coalition structure — bringing together groups organized not around party affiliation but around specific values-based concerns.
The current active coalitions in Pima County:
Moms Coalition — focused on children, ESA scholarship programs, parental rights in education, and medical parental consent. "Moms are concerned about what's going on with the kids and the ESA programs right now."
Faith Coalition — organized around the fundamental rupture of COVID church shutdowns. "One of the huge flaws during COVID was they shut down churches but left the bars open and Home Depot." The faith coalition is organized around the principle that religious practice is not a privilege the government can revoke in the name of public health.
Healthy Americans Coalition — focused on health freedom, medical choice, and MAHA-aligned policy priorities.
Latinos Coalition — built around values overlap with conservative policy on family, faith, and security, recognizing that the Democratic Party's assumption of Hispanic voter loyalty is being challenged in every cycle.
The organizing philosophy is consistent across all four: find what triggered your involvement. Fuel that. Connect with others who share it.
"People that get involved in politics very rarely just love politics without having a core reason why. Everyone has their reason why. Mine was the destruction of my city."
The Primary Is Critical Even in Uncontested Races
Pruett made the case — firmly and specifically — that even races with no Republican primary opponent still require votes from Republican voters.
Congressman Juan Ciscomani has no primary opponent. The temptation is to say: he'll get through, I don't need to vote. This is exactly the wrong calculation.
"You need to vote. Get in the practice. See what else is on your ballot."
The November ballot will be significant in length — multiple legislative referrals, citizen initiatives, bond measures, contested statewide races, and down-ballot decisions. A primary election is the rehearsal. Voters who don't show up for rehearsal often fail the performance.
For the secretary of state race specifically: Pruett reinforced the message that has been consistent on Winn Tucson for months. Arizona's voter rolls have documented problems. The office that manages those rolls and the state's election procedures is the office Alex Kolodin is running for. The difference between Kolodin and Adrian Fontes in that office is the difference between an Arizona that enforces citizenship verification and an Arizona that actively resists it.
"The fraud has to stop. We're gonna educate you on what is there, who you need to vote for, and how to change Arizona back to a red, prosperous state."
Tina Peters and the Double Standard
Pruett addressed the Tina Peters situation in Colorado — the former county clerk convicted for her actions related to election integrity investigations, sentenced to nine years but not required to serve additional time beyond what she had already served.
Her concern was the asymmetry in how similar violations are prosecuted based on political affiliation. Tom Crosby — a Cochise County Supervisor — is still under attack by Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays for actions related to the 2020 election, years after the fact. The prosecutorial pattern, in Pruett's analysis, targets election integrity advocates selectively while leaving equivalent conduct by opposing parties unaddressed.
"We currently have a Cochise County Board of Supervisors member Tom Crosby still under attack for the 2020 election by Chris Mays. If you think that's only happening in Colorado — Tom has not been convicted. This case is a way that people who want to use it against Republicans are using it to raise money."
Her standard: "I'd like to see that kind of rigor applied across the board, not just on Tina Peters."
The instruction for every voter in Pima County: early ballots go out June 24th. The primary is July 21st. June 22nd is the last day to register or update registration. Don't wait.
Rick Shafton: New Jersey Is the New Minneapolis, Cornyn Was Never Going to Survive, and Spencer Pratt Needs to Stop Making It About the Fire
Rick Shafton — East Coast political analyst, pollster, and one of the sharper diagnosticians of Republican electoral strategy — joined for the show's final segment with tomorrow's California and New Jersey primaries already in motion and several specific predictions ready.
New Jersey: The Left Is Testing Law Enforcement
The weekend riots in New Jersey — organized around immigration enforcement — had Shafton's immediate analysis: this is a strategic test.
"The left is testing Holman and Mullen to see if these guys are going to crack. And I don't think this is going to play well for the Democrats."
The underlying political logic is difficult: defending illegal alien criminals. The Democratic Party is trying to frame it as a Hispanic civil rights issue. Shafton's assessment is that the framing is not working — particularly as the party moves further left and survives primarily on anti-Trump energy that is not transferable to other targets.
"Once Trump's out of the picture, they have nothing. They're going to try to transfer that hate over to JD Vance or Marco Rubio. It's just not going to work."
Two Democratic primaries in New Jersey — the 12th and 8th congressional districts — are potentially competitive for far-left candidates. The 8th district in particular has a complex electorate: a large Arab-American vote, progressive Hoboken types, and a broad coalition of voters who dislike the Menendez family for a variety of reasons. Shafton offered one of the most unambiguous personal assessments of the broadcast: Bob Menendez is one of the few people he has met whom he genuinely dislikes as a human being. The gold bars and the car and the legal proceedings were not a surprise to anyone who had watched him closely for years.
"Eventually these people almost all of them get nailed sooner or later. Karma comes around."
Cornyn: A 28-Point Blowout That Was Already Written
On the Texas Senate results — Paxton over Cornyn by approximately 28 points — Shafton's take was revisionist in the most useful sense: the outcome was already determined six months ago, and anyone doing honest polling knew it.
"I pulled out in Texas about six months ago and it was obvious John Cornyn was not getting re-elected under any circumstances. There was no circumstances this guy was going to win. The Trump endorsement just made it instead of a 15-point blowout a 30-point blowout."
The alternative reading — that Cornyn lost because he blocked the SAVE Act — is, in Shafton's analysis, incomplete. The SAVE Act certainly didn't help. But the filibuster math is the real constraint: Thune doesn't have 51 votes to eliminate it, and without eliminating it, the SAVE Act cannot pass. Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tillis, and Susan Collins represent the hard floor beneath which Republican vote counts cannot go regardless of leadership preference.
"You can't make Lisa Murkowski vote for something. Let alone Tom Tillis who doesn't care. And Susan Collins who's afraid of her own shadow."
His blunter assessment of the money side of the Cornyn campaign: consultants with $90 million in the bank spent it because that is what consultants do with money.
"The Democrats are focused on winning. Our consultants are focused on how much money they can make. They'd rather lose and make money than win and not make money. I learned from Democrats — I just want to win."
The problem is systemic: a consultant who wins makes enemies. A consultant who loses can blame the candidate, pocket the fee, and move to the next client. The incentive structure does not reward victory. It rewards continued engagement.
Spencer Pratt: Stop Making It About the Fire
Tomorrow's LA mayoral primary is set up for a Pratt-Bass runoff in November. Shafton was confident about the runoff but offered a sharp critique of Pratt's campaign focus.
"My concern is how many people relate to someone whose two-million-dollar house burned down. There were 7,000 of those. But what about the people who can't afford a house at all?"
Pratt has made the Palisades fire and the failed response his signature issue. Shafton's argument: he's made his point. The footage of the ruins, the signs, the van parked on the lot — it worked to generate name recognition and fundraising. Now he needs to talk about what affects the average Angeleno: the homeless population outside their building, the crime rate on their commute, the schools their kids attend, the cost of everything.
"Once he gets to the general, the Democrats are going to dump another bazillion dollars into that race. He needs issues that speak to people who aren't fire victims."
Karen Bass, meanwhile, has no record to run on. Her only play is personality attacks on Pratt — which is not a strategy, it's a symptom of having nothing else. Pratt raised $2.8 million in the period from April 19th to primary day. Bass raised $283,000. The money signal is clear.
California Governor's Race: Two Democrats May Emerge
On the California governor's race, Shafton's read was sobering: Steve Hilton and the sheriff — Chad Bianco — are splitting the Republican vote, and current polling suggests two Democrats may advance through the jungle primary to the general election.
"I don't know. I haven't followed that one as closely. But the polling is showing it could be two Democrats."
California as a political entity is its own country within the country, and what happens there rarely translates cleanly to the other 49. But the structural lesson is transferable: when the right doesn't consolidate in a jungle primary, it can be shut out entirely.
Tom Massey, Baby Boomers, and Who Actually Votes in Primaries
On the Kentucky primary, where Thomas Massie was defeated — a result that surprised many who viewed him as a reliable conservative — Shafton offered a pointed observation: the voters, not the political class, decide who is conservative. If the voters in a district perceive a candidate as the less conservative option, that perception governs regardless of what any national commentator says about voting records.
"It's not what you or I think that's important. It's what the voters think. It's what we do in polling."
He followed with a broader critique of political consultants who dismiss religious and traditional voters as unsophisticated.
"Baby boomers — who's voting in your primaries? Baby boomers. So when they trash baby boomers, who are they alienating? Their own primary base."
The consultants who sneer privately at "crazy Christians" are managing campaigns in states where those voters are the margin. The structural misalignment between the professional Republican political class and the actual Republican primary electorate is, in Shafton's analysis, a deeper problem than any individual race result.
Early ballots in Arizona drop June 24th. The primary is July 21st. The registration deadline is June 22nd.
Winn Tucson airs Monday through Friday, 9 to 11 a.m., on KVOI 1030 The Voice. Starting this week: candidate interviews. Come meet the people running for office.
JBS Salt Lake City Conference — Friday night through Saturday: jbs.org/conference/slc26 (last day to register Tuesday)
Freedom Index — free, at jbs.org: check your congressmen and senators before you vote
Voter registration check and update: my.arizona.vote | Last day to register: June 22nd | Early ballots: June 24th | Primary: July 21st
Turning Point Action coalitions — Moms, Faith, Healthy Americans, Latinos: contact Kristen Pruett through the Pima County Republican Party