Former Alaska Attorney General Craig Richards and attorney Scott Kendall debated Ballot Measure 2 on Monday, September 28, at the Petroleum Club of Anchorage, in a Lincoln-Douglas format hosted by Commonwealth North and moderated by board member Jon Katchen.
The formal debate included timed speeches, cross-examination, and rebuttals with equal time for each side, followed by 15 minutes of audience questions. Commonwealth North took no position.
Voters adopted the current ranked-choice voting system in 2020. A 2024 repeal failed by 743 votes after a recount. Now the question is back on the ballot this November. Measure 2 would repeal ranked-choice voting, the top-four “jungle” primary, and certain campaign-finance disclosure rules adopted in 2020.
Richards, who represented the sponsoring group Repeal Now, called the 2020 package a logroll funded by liberal mega-donors. He said jungle primaries push several candidates from the same party into the general election and reward the side that fields fewer of them. He pointed to the 2022 special election, in which Sarah Palin and Nick Begich split Republican votes and Mary Peltola won, and said about 15,000 ballots were discarded before she won by 5,296 votes, even though about 60 percent of first-round votes went to non-Democrats. He argued ranked-choice voting “trashes” ballots when voters do not rank every candidate, and that it rewards gamesmanship over voters’ will— exampled by Tom Begich dropping out of the 2026 governor’s race, leaving one Democrat against three Republicans.
Kendall, an architect of the 2020 measure and a former chief of staff to Gov. Bill Walker, defended the system as a fit for Alaska’s electorate. He said about 64 percent of Alaskans are nonpartisan or undeclared, that those voters account for about 62 percent of primary turnout, and that 53 percent do not vote a straight party ticket. He said repeal would let parties shut nonpartisans out of primaries, that ranked-choice voting produces majority winners and stops vote-splitting, and that spoilage is at or below pre-2020 levels. He quoted a 2002 Alaska Republican Party line that ranked-choice voting is “good government at its best.”
Kendall critiqued the measure for potentially leading to closed primaries, arguing the bill’s language gives each major party the statutory power to close its primary to nonpartisan and undeclared voters. Must Read Alaska reported August 31 that the Alaska Supreme Court left in place ballot language beginning “This act would get rid of open primaries,” after an August 27 order that added only a note on separating governor and lieutenant governor elections. Repeal Now said the phrase is misleading: a yes vote would end the single all-candidate ballot and top-four advance, and return Alaska to party ballots on which independents could still vote. Kendall, in the ballot-language case, acknowledged a yes vote returns the state to those pre-2020 default primaries.
On money, Richards said the 2020 true-source rules are a one-sided reporting burden and that pre-2020 disclosure was enough. Kendall said the disclosure law is what revealed repeal-side donors, including Elon Musk at $1.5 million and Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, and that repeal would reopen anonymous giving through intermediaries. He called disclosure the antiseptic that protects elections. Richards answered that the rules are gameable and that a clean repeal lets the Legislature rewrite them later.
Must Read Alaska’s Ultimate Conservative Voter Guide urges a yes vote to get rid of the 2020 law that instituted the mess of ranked-choice voting, jungle primaries, and burdensome finance rules. Election Day is November 3.
