By BOB BIRD
The 2026 “open primary” is shaping up to be a very crowded field for Republicans. This will undoubtedly please the Left, who will run only one candidate. In the general election, which is when ranked-choice voting comes into play, a de facto canceling of RCV could happen — if the GOP survivors swallow their pride and Dahlstromize the general election.
This is a compliment to one of the actual candidates, Nancy Dahlstrom, who inspires about as much authentic enthusiasm as Mitt Romney eating boiled mutton, but she deserves credit for putting Nick Begich into Congress.
The Dahlstromization of the likely remaining three conservative candidates, whittled down to one, would guarantee that whatever pro-abortion, pro-NEA, pro-child mutilation, pro-communist Democrat is in the general election would be flattened like ribbon pasta in November.
The candidates will all be talking about resource extraction, the Green Lobby, DC bureaucrats, how fish management should not be politicized, opening ANWR and the Naval Petro Reserve. They will tout Donald Trump as a good guy.
Like the rest of us, every single conservative candidate has their flaws, but that’s OK. Yet every single one of them will miss the obvious and most important bull’s-eye, like a Thanksgiving turkey sitting atop a fence-post with a sign around its neck, saying “Shoot me!” Unless, of course, the conservative media and the voters keep up the full-court press.
The “people” are used as an abstract every election cycle. It is not much different than Marxist talk about “the masses”. Of course, it is impossible to believe that we all are on the same side. In the War for Independence 250 years ago, about a third of “the people” favored secession from the British, a third were loyalists and a third conveniently changed sides, depending on whose army was in their neighborhood.
After winning an election, the awarding of one faction’s preferred status is the usual outcome. Thus, someone is going to come out a loser: does the Left celebrate the drag-queen, Green, abortion lobby’s victory, or does the Right celebrate prolife resource extraction with school vouchers? And how about commercial, sport and subsistence fishermen? Trawlers, set-netters, drifters or dip-netters?
There is one solution to this, and it is just possible that we can force them to stop sweeping this filth under the rug, which is no longer hidden, but presents a bulge in the rug the size of elephant dung, with the accompanying stench.
What issue is it, then, that can actually unite “the people”?
It is not to promise any of the things listed above except our liberties. Freedom enhances all economic classes, and costs the beleaguered state budget absolutely nothing.
Tell me, what person does not want honest elections? What person does not give lip-service to the state or federal constitutions? What person does not want to empower the people and their instrument, the Grand Jury?
All sides brag endlessly about how free we are, even though it is increasingly obvious that it is not true. They talk about how our constitutions and Founding Fathers were so wise, but they have not read either the Federalist Papers, or the notes of Alaska’s constitutional convention.
Now, we are going to argue over the meaning of the two constitutions, and here is where the teaching moment happens. It happens when ANWR, RCV, BLM, DEI, LGBTQ, NPR-4, etc, take a backseat to what really matters: constitutional talk.
We cannot expect the citizenry to have read those documents, but those sworn to uphold them should, and they ought to understand them properly. Conservatives don’t even understand them, but most should have the integrity to begin doing so.
We do not have “three co-equal branches of government.” The legislature, as a body, is superior to the executive and judicial branches.
The constitution is not whatever the judiciary says it means. They can give advice. It may or may not be enforced. Take care of that, and the tyranny of the absurd judicial council will be emasculated, with or without a change in how we appoint judges.
It would immediately end RCV, abortion funding. And it would release home-schooling from the Judge Zeman tyranny.
Alaska’s statehood vote was flawed, and we — along with Hawaii — ought to unilaterally claim the four options that Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and the Philippines still exercise. You do not ask permission for exercising what is rightfully yours.
Federal control of 65% of Alaska’s land is obviously unconstitutional. We ought to begin by exercising what Utah and Wyoming are initiating: claiming the Bureau of Land Management lands for the state. It would only be a start, but a good one.
Election integrity is vital to re-establish confidence in government. This will involve not only cleaning up voter rolls, but also discarding the vastly distrusted voting machines and mail-in ballots.
The mysterious and unworkable system of boroughs ought to be discarded, and turned into what the Census Bureau already calls them: counties. And with it, all the anglo-saxon common law rights that pertain to sheriffs, who will be more likely to protect us from rogue FBI and IRS raids, no matter what administration is in power in DC.
And all candidates for governor ought to advertise that they will unhesitatingly wield the unique power the state constitution grants them, found in Article 3, Section 16, to end statutory and constitutional abuses by either the judiciary or the bureaucracy.
This would not turn a hypothetical constitutional governor into a tyrant, but would rather return the power of the purse, the power to define privacy, the power to limit the jurisdiction of the court, the power of the line-item veto and the power (shared with the people) of amending the constitution where it belongs — to the legislature.
Citizens, regain the power the state constitution gives us, by demanding that all conservative candidates for governor not wait for some fictional, future ideal time to fix this broken state. Make them promise:
- To Dahlstromize the general election, by dropping out to the candidate that won the most votes in the jungle primary.
- To wield Article 3, Section 16 in regards to the many myriad ways the judiciary has overthrown the constitution.
- To restore election integrity with a lieutenant governor who will do so.
Yes, the mainstream media will squeal like pigs. Outside money will demonize all of you with insufferable ads and lies. It will be a good sign, because they know their stranglehold on our state would be threatened.
What’s wrong with that?
Bob Bird is former chair of the Alaskan Independence Party and the host of a talk show on KSRM radio, Kenai.
Bob Bird: The unchecked Alaska judiciary says ‘Obey our rules, even though we don’t obey your rules’
The Party needs to unify behind one candidate!
Right on the mark, Bob. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of spoilers within the Republican Party, and the odds of moderates and right wingers within the party using RCV to spoil the other guy is significant.
So very true and spot-on Bob! The greatest challenge we face is … getting Republicans to the polls to vote.
Curiously, there are advocates for RCV that claim it ensures the “preferred” candidate wins.
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This tactic, right here, proves that claim wrong. Sure, the jungle primary could be full of dozens of candidates, but the moment it matters, the party will coalesce behind a single candidate, and any “advantage” or RCV is negated. The Dems played that game in 2022, and in 2024, the Republicans did it as well. (Yeah, every once in a while the GOP learns.)
Lmao With the current state of corruption within the GOP and the GOP reps, really what does matter? 😂😂😂😂😂
The TDS is strong in this one. The five emojis are a nice touch. We sure take you seriously.
What else ya got?
wow has bob has got the tds fever BAD!
I don’t think Bob is wrong.
Our current GOP reps vote as Democrats.
Bob is right, that is “the current state of corruption within the GOP”
The Republican field needs to be narrowed to one strong candidate. Right now, my first cut is to eliminate anyone who supports a statewide income tax to shore up the ridiculous spending for any reason. Enough is enough!
I was given excellent advice from a well known person who KNEW the Rank Choice “farce.” She suggested instead of ranking 1,2,3,..etc in each box, JUST RANK THE ONE AND ONLY ONE candidate AS YOUR FIRST CHOICE, in each catagory and SKIP the miscellaneous other (3)choices.
If you rank one candidate more than once, even if it’s for the same rank, then your ballot is considered exhausted or invalid and your vote is not counted. As long as you rank your first choice only once then your vote will be counted once…unless it needs to be counted again, or again due to ballot exhaustion as the candidate with the lowest vote total is removed from the count. Of course if the candidate you ranked only once has the lowest total votes in any of the counts then your vote disappears as if you never voted to begin with.
Exactly! One person, one vote. I “rank” my first choice only in hopes of avoiding this evil scheme. The other candidates are unacceptable; therefore, I will not “rank” them. That approach may not result in my choice winning, but I feel I have done my duty as a voter to support my “choice.”
Your rank-only-one or bullet-vote does not register as a vote of support in an RCV election. No one can vote FOR or AGAINST any candidate with a voting method like RCV. It is a preference system. RCV does not indicate support or lack thereof. You cannot prevent a candidate from winning or reduce his or her chance of winning by not ranking the person. Including a candidate somewhere in the ranking will not necessarily allow the candidate to win. Rank all of the candidates. In some cases, you may need to rank your 2nd favorite Republican first to prevent the Democrat from winning.
Bob Bird preaching the antithesis of democracy to a party that has become an echo chamber for “power at any price”. GOP extremism at it radical worst.
First of all, not a democracy. We are a representative Republic where the representatives are elected by a democratic style of voting process.
Secondly, and finally, what is democratic in any way about RCV? One person, up to four votes is not democratic, it is the opposite of it.
It is good to see someone else understands we are a representative republic (for the time being), not a “democracy”. Thank you!
Dahlstromizing? You give Nancy too much credit. She is LAZY. The ONLY reason Dahlstrom dropped out of the congressional campaign in 2024 is because enough of us “outed” Dahlstrom for who she really is. She doesn’t keep her word, she doesn’t help people, and she is only interested in her self-gain in the political world. If it wasn’t for the hard working conservatives at MRAK, Nancy would have remained a candidate for Congress and Mary Peltola would have been reelected. Nick Begich III was the clear leader running up to the election. But it took a massive effort to get Nancy Dahlstrom to see that and drop out of the race. And that’s a fact.
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I will not be supporting Nancy Dahlstrom for governor. I don’t know anyone who does. She is too old for further political office. Don’t count on her to do the right thing in the face of another RCV dilemma. She doesn’t care anymore.
I agree, doc, which is why I said that she inspires as much enthusiasm as Mitt Romney & boiled mutton. But her name gives a handle to the process. And you are right, MRAK was instrumental in getting her to drop out, which is why we need to keep the HEAT on every candidate. Don’t let them wander into issues that must be secondary to liberty. Keep them on task with Grand Jury rights, election integrity (Gosh, Nancy sure fixed that, didn’t she?), unconstitutional federal control of our resources, the overthrow of the state constitution by the judiciary — and a governor’s authority to stop it dead in its tracks. It’s too controversial for them to bring it up, so they will wander away from it, unless we force them to meet it head on. Rock on!
I seriously doubt that Mike Dunleavy will be supporting Dahlstrom to replace him as governor.
Well-presented article.. Much to say about the “Unity of One”…
“And all candidates for governor ought to advertise that they will unhesitatingly wield the unique power the state constitution grants them, found in Article 3, Section 16, to end statutory and constitutional abuses by either the judiciary or the bureaucracy.”
What excuse does the Alaska Legislature have for violating Alaska Statute every year for nine years in a row regarding the PFD? It’s abusive, imho.
As for choosing a Republican candidate, why can’t the Republican Party caucus for a vote like was done in the 2024 Presidential Primary (that the State of Alaska never held)?
Most Alaska Republicans just dont care. The remainder don’t understand the game. We are the loser party. Dont believe it? Well look around.
I just hope we don’t have any paid spoilers that will keep themselves on the ballot. We can have only one candidate, or we lose it all. Hopefully the one in close second will withdraw for the greater good of the people. Not easy to swallow pride but RCV means instant doom to keep two on the ticket.
RCV will rarely produce a spoiler scenario as it did in August 2022. Alaska would not likely see such a spoiler scenario again for a very long time. Thus, it may not be a problem if some Republicans refuse to drop out.
Take out the rhetoric and political litany about Republicans and you have the intent of the RCV primary:
VERY SIMPLE: The voters, not a party will choose and determine who runs in the general.
It is really that simple.
Voters pick the candidates, what is so difficult to understand?
Wrong. With RCV computer program decides. RCV is not voting, it’s a shell game.
The 1st-stage election does not use RCV, thus RCV isn’t being used by voters to pick the four that advance to the November-stage or 2nd-stage.
I think it would be more open and more democratic if that 1st-stage were held in late September or early October, and/or if it didn’t limit to only four.
Generally, Herb makes a very good point that parties, private organizations, should not have special privilege and gatekeeper power to decide all of our choices on public ballots. Revoking this power is the whole point of the Top-4 system.
The computer only Counts what the voter puts on the ballot!
Not a RCV supporter, but that is a fact!
How do we know for a fact, Herb, that the computer, which runs on proprietary software, into which anyone, any time, can stick a thumb drive of unknown provenance, only counts what the voter puts on the ballot?
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How do we know what was counted, or whether fractional counting occurred, especially when the ballot audit trail’s lost in the counting process?
The ballot or ballot rankings are available to the public. We can use them to run any algorithm to count votes and redistribute vote tallies according to rankings, and we can check to see if the numbers we get are the same as what the state got.
Ballot ranking results are machine-produced, you get only what the machine says it counted.
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Machine runs on proprietary software which means election observers don’t know how its source code works, which in turn means they can’t tell if it’s been altered, modified, hacked, or changed permanently, temporarily, or on cue, to fudge election results.
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No audit trail verifies what the machine says it counted, which suggests, yes, you can use algorithms to massage numbers but no algorithm will give you credible decision criteria from unverifiable data.
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Only 5% of ballots are hand-counted and compared to machine count to see if both sets of numbers match, but nobody seems to know what happens if counts don’t match exactly or are off by, say, a little bit.
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Point is, RCV proponents can tell you how RCV should work, but not how it did work, which seems like a fatal flaw in their argument, don’t you think?
The instant runoff calculations are often described as a black box, but they are really more of a fish bowl. They can be verified to be accurate and fraud-free because all of the ballots/ballot rankings are made available to the public.
If many of the ballots themselves are contrived to begin with, that is a different issue. On the other hand, 5% of ballots counted is one heck of a lot of ballots. If there’s enough fraud to alter the outcome of most elections, it ‘s highly unlikely that a 5% count will miss it. Only a very, very close election might be close enough to miss the fraud that would alter the outcome. Those are very rare.
May have to agree to disagree before we run out of writing space.
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Don’t know about validity of ballots and ballot rankings generated by proprietary processes without audit trails.
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We don’t know what’s made available to the public versus what might be held back, concealed, lost, you name it.
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Remember what Bronson’s team saw while watching Election Central 24/7.
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Contrivance or fraud may be external, machine-generated, or both, we’ve no way of knowing.
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We don’t know if the 5% sample size is statistically valid; if they used the formula for calculating sample size and margin of error for large populations with standard 95% confidence level, so results can be trusted.
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Traditional voting and hand counts may not be perfect, but at least observers know of what they’re seeing and uncertainties described above are not so problematic.
Not difficult to understand at all.
However, the problem is not the primary, it is the outcome of the primary.
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The top four vote getters go onto the general election.
What if the top four candidates are all from one party? No, saying that is the will of the people is a garbage response because the voter turnout for a primary is garbage. One party could easily say the outcome of the jungle primary to benefit that party.
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Sorry, but the correct approach is each of the political parties have the right to select which candidate represents that particular party in the general election. The voters registered with that party get to select via the primary process. Do not like who is selected to represent your party, well vote for a candidate from a different party in the general. Running as a member of that party, and you do not win the primary, run a write in campaign, have a third party select you to run as their candidate, run as an independent.
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The jungle primary IS the main problem with RCV.
Re: “Dahlstromize the general election, by dropping out to the candidate that won the most votes in the jungle primary.”
Due to the exacerbated vote-splitting in the blanket 1st-stage election in August, the Republican candidate with the most votes may not be the most preferred one, so having all of the other R’s drop out might be a mistake. Keep in mind that in August 2022, Begich was the most preferred candidate in spite of the fact that he received less 1st place votes than the other two candidates in the August RCV election, and in spite of the fact that he placed 2nd behind Palin in the mail-in 1st-stage election (“primary”). Had the “Dahlstromization” rule been followed in that special election, Palin would have been the only Republican challenging Peltola in the August top-2 runoff and would have still lost. Had Begich been chosen to run against Peltola in that top-2, he would have won.
Also, don’t assume that Republicans will lose if none in the top-4 drop out. A spoiler scenario for RCV is actually very rare and may not happen again in Alaska for a very long time.
While I agree with your position, it illustrates why jungle primary and RCV need to be abolished.
Like it or not, we are (mostly) a two party system. We need for those parties to be able to determine their standard bearer (closed primary). Barring that, choose ONE via convention. We cannot count on integrity to overcome ego in all cases.
Likewise, ranking is one of the worst things ever foisted onto Alaskans.
So, Bob. Who do you currently see as the leader for Rs for governor?
Thanks.
A convention or a closed primary using plurality voting may not choose the one Republican candidate who can beat or is most likely to beat the Democrat in the general election. For example, Palin got more votes than Begich in blanket election leading up to the RCV special election in August 2022, but had Palin dropped out, Begich would have won. Had Begich dropped out leaving Palin to run against Peltola, Palin would have lost. We know Palin would lose in this scenario because she actually did lose to Peltola in a one-to-one runoff. So it seems you have it somewhat backwards. RCV (or perhaps approval voting?) may be a more reliable way to choose a nominee.
Another problem is that the limited and small number of voters in the primary may choose a candidate who fails to beat the Democrat even without vote-splitting/spoiler choosing a “losing” nominee. Perhaps the Republican Party should use public polling to find out which Republican candidate is most likely to win in November?
Note also that spoilers are somewhat rare for RCV elections, so having anyone drop out may be unnecessary.
“A convention or a closed primary using plurality voting may not choose the one Republican candidate who can beat or is most likely to beat the Democrat in the general election. ”
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Let me check this.
I thought the benefit of RCV is the candidate most preferred by the public at large gets elected. Now… it is about ensuring your party selects a candidate that is more capable of beating the other party? Isn’t that exactly the type of electioneering that RCV was supposed to eliminate/
We are not talking about RCV in this case. We are looking at the results of a simple plurality election to decide who should drop out and who should be the single nominee. Due to vote-splitting, the vote totals of the first-stage plurality election are a very unreliable way to make this decision.
Agree with Bob. We must have one Republican who is not a RINO, but a conservative that is smart, dynamic, energetic and brutal to the onslaught of leftist candidates and media. We have to fight to win, or we’ll end up with some blue-haired Affluent White Female Liberal who will force boys onto girls sports teams into girls bathrooms, and otherwise kibosh every conservative value that we hold true.
RFK Jr is credited with saying something along the lines of; we must put our political differences aside and focus on what matters the most – OUR children which are OUR future. Government must stop interfering with child rearing; especially in Alaska. We must unite for the future generations. We must stop AI from taking over. We must stop indoctrination of children in schools. We must overcome PACs like George Soros from controlling elections. RCV must end! Mail in ballots must end. Alaska Voter Rolls must be cleaned up. Voter ID, paper ballots and supervised hand counts. No more banana republic primaries and elections!
The estimated cost to raise a child in the U.S. varies significantly, but a middle-income family can expect to spend around $318,949 for a child born in 2025, which includes expenses from birth to age 18. Costs can differ greatly depending on factors like location, with some states being much more expensive than others.
President Lincoln is credited with saying -“A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. He is going to sit where you are sitting, and when you are gone; attend to those things, which you think are important. You may adopt all policies you please, but how they are carried out depends on him. He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. All your books are going to be judged, praised or condemned by him. The fate of humanity is in his hands. So it might be well to pay him some attention.”
If the Republicans want to win more elections stop running Uniparty candidates.
Selective memory masochists never tout the massive money machine from outside, that twice bought simpletons votes to increase corruption in our elections.
The 2020 scam stated RCV would eliminate “dark money” , while using the same to buy idiots votes. Wash, rinse, repeat in 2024, with filthy, greedy media accomplices again laughing with their lucre to the bank. May you RCV peddlers choke on your vomit that you eat and spew daily.
Right on Bob. Nothing like a bit of conspiracy with my morning coffee! Voting machines! Mailed ballots! Danger everywhere!
Bob Bird – a non-republican who cost Ted Stevens his re-election telling the GOP how to run its candidates. Priceless. 🙄