By CYNTHIA ERICKSON
As, an Alaska Native living in rural Alaska, I am concerned about rank choice voting. First of all, when you normally vote yes, on anything that means we want it and no, means to reject it.
Well, this isn’t what’s happening in this case. Very confusing. We have approximately 240+ villages. Do we have 240+ Dominion vote counting machines in all of our villages? There are not enough Dominion machines installed in all our villages, so ballots have to be sent to Juneau to be counted.
In 2022, there were ballots from six villages of, St. George, Levelock, Ambler, Kiana, Kobuk and Noorvik, that weren’t tabulated, in the final count. In rural Alaska there are so many more obstacles, weather, airplane mechanicals, Internet issues, bush plane’s cancelling and mail bags being lost, etc.
Another issue with RCV, is the language barrier. My dad is 94 years old and trying to explain how RCV works, to any Native elder is confusing. It’s complicated in English! It’s discouraging to elders and many people in the villages and they say, “I want the old way back!” It’s discouraging and causes many elders to not want to vote.
One thing that bothers me, was that this wasn’t started as a grassroot effort by Alaskans. We didn’t have any issues with our voting system. Why change something that wasn’t broken? One vote. One candidate. Straightforward, honest and simple.
Another frustrating thing for me, is the outrageous amount of money from out of state, put into and spent in Alaska trying to push and convince Alaskans we want RCV. Why? I went to the Alaska Public Offices Commission website and there are more than $12 million donated from New York, California, Washington D.C., etc. to advertise and pay people to push ranked-choice voting on us. That is a lot of money!
But, what was surprising and appalling to me was they gave Alaska Federation of Natives $50,000 to push the Vote No agenda at AFN. Why didn’t they invite the Yes on 2 team, to attend and educate our people on both sides? It would have been nice to hear both sides of the issue.
If this was such an awesome, super great voting system why aren’t all of the other states using it, not only Maine and Alaska? Why are they trying so hard to keep RCV in Alaska? it’s unfortunate we changed our system, that was never broken.
I hope you join me, in voting Yes on 2 and go back to what worked perfectly! One vote. One candidate.
Don’t let outside people and money, try to convince and buy us off. We don’t trust and we don’t want ranked-choice voting!
Cynthia Erickson is a resident of Tanana.
