Alex Gimarc: Those ranked-choice voting ads are all bought and delivered by Outside dark money

The second round of pro-ranked choice voting ads rolled out last week. The ads exhort the listener to vote against the repeal or ranked-choice voting in November.  They trot out three arguments in support of their “no” vote:

• RCV outlawed dark money
• Repealing RCV removes the freedom of an open primary
• The repeal effort is entirely the creation of party insiders and political elites

Let’s take a closer look:

The ad is backed by three entities: Unite America, Final Five Fund, and the Action Now Initiative. 

A look into the most recent IRS Form 990 submittals for the people funding the ads find that Unite America is located Denver.  It had revenues of $8.2 million in 2022.  None of the contributors are listed.  Final Five Fund is headquartered in Chicago.  It had revenues of just over $12 million in 2022.  None of its contributors are reported either.  Our final participant is the Action Now Institute, also from Chicago.  It had $388,000 revenue in 2021.  Like the others, no individual contributors were listed.

We see that all three non-profits backing RCV here in Alaska are Outside non-profits. They do not report their contributors, while piously running an ad claiming RCV outlawed dark money. 

If RCV outlawed dark money in Alaskan elections, why are these guys able to run their dark-money-funded ads defending RCV?

The second claim is that repealing RCV removes the freedom of an open primary. This is a return to the original pro-RCV campaign in 2020. There have always been a group of our neighbors who believe they have the right to select candidates for other political parties. But do they? A political party is a voluntary group of like-minded people who select their own representation. Once that process is complete, the parties attempt to get their choices approved by the larger electorate on election day (primary, general, run-off).

The original campaign to pass RCV concentrated on this point, and didn’t go so well, so the backers focus-grouped their argument and pivoted to the promised ban on dark money in Alaskan elections, something I just demonstrated is a complete lie.

Finaly, the ad pounds the notion that all of this is something out of party insiders, the political elites. The fact of the matter is that the repeal was entirely a grassroots effort, fought at every turn by Team Lisa Murkowski and her lawfare proxies. 

In this case, it is the political elite, Team Lisa that is in full-throated support of RCV. They wrote it. They figured out how to pass it. And they want to retain it at all costs because it benefits their political future.

If RCV is such a good thing, why do its supporters believe they need to continue to lie about it and hide their funding from the general public?  We are fast approaching the point with this crowd that the only thing we need to know that proves they are lying is that their lips are moving.  

Rather than damaging the repeal effort, every time the pro-RCV side runs an ad like this, they strengthen the case in support of a repeal.  

Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.