Anchorage Superior Court Judge Yvonne Lamoureux has ruled that Alaskans for Better Elections can have their ballot initiative.
But before they start collecting signatures on the ballot initiative petition, the State Department of Law is likely going to try to prevent those petition booklets from circulating while the State challenges the decision in the Supreme Court.
At issue is a ballot measure offered by a liberal Outside group that has used Jason Grenn, former House representative, as the measure’s local sponsor. Grenn’s attorney Scott Kendall argued the case before Judge Lamoureux last week, saying that the three parts of the ballot initiative all fall under the category of “election reform,” and therefore are not in violation of the “single subject rule.”
The judge agreed with Kendall in her ruling today.
[Read: Using Outside money, Better Elections files lawsuit]
Although the State will try to slow down the signature process while the matter works its way to the Supreme Court, Kendall’s argument is that nobody is hurt by collecting signatures. And if the Supreme Court sides with the State that the ballot measure is illegal, then the signature collecting stops.
[Read: Log-rolling at issue with election ballot measure]
The Department of Law issued a statement saying that a case known as Croft v. Parnell set up a new standard that should be used when evaluating whether an initiative bill violates the single-subject rule.
“That standard … takes into account that the purpose of the single-subject rule in the initiative context is to protect the voters’ ability to have their voices clearly heard on distinct proposals separately. Voters have no opportunity to deliberate or amend what they are voting on—it is all or nothing. We knew, because of the mixed legal precedent before Croft, that this issue would ultimately have to be decided by the Alaska Supreme Court. We are filing a request for stay pending appeal with the superior court to wait for distribution of booklets until the appeal is complete. We will also be filing our appeal in the next couple of days,” the department’s statement said.
But the judge said ballot measure laws need to be interpreted liberally and she wasn’t buying the argument that mixing campaign finance reform with actual voting reform in one ballot question is a problem.
The group is trying to establish prohibitions against independent expenditures in campaigns, which the group is calling “dark money.” But the Alaskans for Better Elections group is being backed by dark money that’s going primarily from a liberal group in Massachusetts. The ballot measure also would eliminate the ability of political parties to close their primary ballots to those registered with opposing parties. Finally, the candidates — from president on down to State House of Representatives, would be elected by a ranked system that sometimes yields a win for the second-place vote-getter.
Read the judge’s decision at this link:
Another needless loss.
Funny how they are trying to restrict Dark Money but they themselves are using outside money that they are not reporting who gives it. That is called Hypocrisy at its finest.
Clarkson is clutching at straws. His hail mary pass is to ask the Supreme Court to overturn 50 years of case law. Not going to happen.
As applied by this judge, the single subject rule is drained of almost all meaning. Lumping all of the topics together and calling it “election reform” is disingenuous. A person may be steadfastly against the limitation of campaign contributions yet equally in favor of ranked voting. A rational appelatte court should be able to recognize Machivellian aggregation of distinct issues and reverse the lower court. Having said that, I have no idea whether the Alaska Supreme Court is rational.
(Proportional representation )was used by Nazi early Hitlerite days to magnify election impact of their minor party.
** obviously…a method for minority leftist (ie Nazis)..to compound their interest to increase
control over majority.. Such ballot procedure allows them to stack votes from other minor candidates.
The Attorney general’s contention that this initiative deals with at least two discrete subjects: the primary election process, how votes are counted in a general election, financial disclosure related to campaigns, … is correct.
The Court’s inference: “The fact that the law in place now already links the topics in the same title (Title 15) reflects that there is a logical connection between campaign finance disclosure and voting.” doesn’t adhere to the rules of logic.
The fact that current statutes link the ‘topics’ reflects a ‘legal’ connection, but not necessarily a ‘logical’ connection.
Moreover, the fact that topics are ‘connected’ does not establish that they are the same ‘subject’.
The initiative is 25 pages long and includes 74 separate sections. It could, therefore, be argued that there are as many as 74 different subjects. Whatever its merits, it certainly isn’t a bill that should be considered through the initiative process.
This comment ignores the Alaska Constitution and case law.
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