After just an hour of oral arguments in the Alaska Supreme Court Thursday morning, the justices unanimously ruled that the petition booklets for the repeal of ranked choice voting were good and the court denied attorney Scott Kendall his attempt to stop voters from being able to repeal the law he worked so hard to put into place.
The challenge Kendall had launched was due to some of the petition books being certified by a notary public who had allowed her notary certification to lapse. The lieutenant governor allowed the petition booklets to get corrected with an up-to-date notary and attorney Kendall objected to that. Kendall, a long-time ally of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, was the force behind Alaskans for Better Elections, which convinced Alaskans to have jungle primaries and ranked-choice general elections, a method that has allowed both Sen. Lisa Murkowski to stay in power and has ushered in Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola.
It was obvious judges were not favorable to Kendall and they had a lot of difficult questions for him that he answered vaguely.
“It’s rewarding the courts saw through the smokescreen the other side putting forward,” said Kevin Clarkson, attorney for the group defending the petition to get a do-over onto the ballot.
The court upheld the Superior Court’s decision and said it would file an opinion later explaining why.
The group that brought jungle primaries and ranked-choice voting has a huge war chest to try to convince Alaskans to keep the system. They and other liberal groups are already running ads saying that the system helps Republicans, but the evidence is clearly to the contrary.
The Outside dark money that the pro-ranked choice group has to spend will no-doubt impact many races on the ballot, while the anti-ranked-choice group has very little financial resources to reach Alaska voters and get them to vote Yes on this year’s Ballot Measure 2.
Previously, a judge had denied Kendall his attempt to get the question off of the November ballot, but the amount of advertising now blanketing TV and radio shows that the group trying to keep ranked-choice voting has known all along it had a weak case for stopping the voters from being able to decide if they want to continue with the scheme.
