So I figured out what went wrong and it’s nothing to do with you.
I added an animation on the choices with a custom boolean so that when it is selected/focused, it scales from 100 to 110%. When it goes beyond 100%, it overlaps other boxes causing the focus to ignore them and skips them.
The solution is to go the other way: 90->100% instead.
I did follow your instructions and they worked like a charm. This was the only point I was stuck.
thank you!