By MARK SOMERVILLE
Recently, I attended a candidate forum for District 36 and Senate Seat R candidates in Glennallen. The forum was hosted by Copper Valley Chamber of Commerce. The president and vice-president of the Glennallen High School Student Council asked the questions, and three students from the Government Studies class kept the candidates accountable for their response times.
One of the candidates who opposes the repeal of ranked-choice voting (i.e. opposes Ballot Measure Two) based his opposition on how, under RCV, we all get to vote for our preferred candidate. That statement really struck a chord with me. I’ll be kind and chalk up this candidate’s logic to youthful naivety. However, the other candidate who also opposes repeal of ranked-choice voting via Ballot Measure Two didn’t have naivety as an excuse, and yet he also fell on that same logic-sword.
One of these candidates was running as a Democrat and the other as “Undeclared.”
My first time voting as an Alaskan was back in 1986. But you don’t have to recall our history back that far in order to understand what having voter choice really means. Just reference the election directly preceding the RCV debacle and one can see ballots with Libertarians, Alaska Independents, and Greens.
I wondered: Do these two candidates in Glenallen’s candidate forum even know what a petition candidate is?
Let’s look at the ballots for this year, 2024, vs. 2022. All I see are Republicans, Democrats, and chameleon “undeclared” candidates. And even worse, there are a maximum of four choices for any ballot except president. I don’t see how this result, which is a direct outgrowth of RCV, provides for more choice or allows voters the option to vote for who we truly want. If Ballot Measure Two fails and ranked-choice voting is retained, we will never see Libertarian, Green, Alaska Independent Party (AIP), truly independent, or even petition candidates ever again. We will be stuck with just the two dominant parties.
For sure, the two candidates at the Glenallen forum also lamented how under ranked-choice voting they don’t have to throw away their vote on a single, less popular candidate, but could now pick their “top” choice (I guess to appease their conscience) and yet still have a second shot at electing their back-up candidate. Talk about victim mentality! Who is to say a Libertarian candidate isn’t electable? I even remember some Alaskan Independence Party candidates that gave other candidates a run for their money. Or when Wally Hickel joined the AIP party to win the governorship against Arliss Sturgulewski—who had won the Republican primary.
If I remember my history, the Republican Party was once an upstart party in Alaska.
Freedom of choice is not a gift from government. It is to be protected from the government. Freedom exists in protecting us all from the tyranny of the majority.
Until ranked choice voting was passed, all Alaskans had the power to cast their vote for the candidate they preferred. They could peaceably assemble with other like-minded Alaskans as members of formal political parties to elect their own champion from the slate of general election candidates. They could choose to stay independent of party politics and work to get a candidate on the ballot by petition or run for the office themselves. They could even just wait and see who to choose from at the general election and if totally unsatisfied, write in a candidate.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski won re-election that way. But now she is a senator, not truly elected by popular vote, but shoved down the people’s throats through ranked-choice voting.
So if you believe ranked choice voting is the best option for Alaskan’s voting freedom, or represents democracy at its finest because we all get to choose the candidate we want, then I suggest you go to the Division of Elections website and look over the ballots for your District from past years and see what real choice and democracy meant back then. Before too long, we may not remember what true democracy actually looks like.
Mark Somerville has been an Alaska resident since 1984 and is a Biologist He lives in Kenny Lake and describes himself as a registered Republican.
I’m a 400 generation Alaskan and believe he is 100% correct. One thing he didn’t mention was the influence the media plays. To many believe everything that the media spins. People need to be informed and get involved.
I do not understand your comment on Lisa Murkowski. The fact is she had the most popular votes in each election in 2022. It is possible that with a closed primary she could of lost the republican primary. But that would not go with your idea that closed primaries give us more candidates.
His point was that she WON as a write-in candidate…something she (nor anyone else) cannot do in the RCV system. This is a good argument pointing out that RVC gives LESS freedom to vote for whoever you want…not more.
very good Kasey, that lays it out perfectly
According to the Alaska division of elections anyone can be a write in candidate. They need to file a letter of intent for the votes to be counted. They have up to around 5 days before the election to file. I do not see write in candidates being eliminated by RCV.
Mark everything the Democrats do and say is Anti Democracy yet somehow in their twisted logic they think they are saving democracy. The complete failure of or school system teaching history is part of this and the other part is these 1970 Berkeley hippies teaching in our university’s. If the communists take over they will be the first ones executed.
What do you mean the “complete failure of or school system….” In Dems eyes, it’s been a raging success. They feed the children Kool Aid after recess, then eliminate recess and feed them more Kool Aid; they spoon feed them myth after myth about US history, anthropogenic global warming, the demise of polar bear populations, then end of reindeer herds — take another drink of Kool Aid — that six year old children she be taught to masturbate (Joycelyn Elders, look it up!), that girls are boys and boys are girls, that there are 53 (and counting) ‘genders,’ that it’s okay to ignore your parents and get an abortion without their knowledge regardless your age. Here, have another Kool Aid. (Whew!)
The litany goes well-beyond the very items I’ve raised here. It makes me ill.
Thank you Mr. Somerville.
Great article and very true. Under the ole system a republicans, Undeclared and Non partisan could all vote in Republican primary. That adds up to 82% of all Alaskans. Dark money spreads nothing but lies and 7 million of dark money has come into No on 2 group.
Think that says it all! Ever worse is using our Veterans as their reason. Shame on all of them!
Vote YES on 2 and repeal ranked-choice voting, the largest leftist political scam ever foisted upon Alaskan voters. 🇺🇸
Great comment, on point. No more RCV in Alaska! We are not the dumping ground/proving ground for outside experiments. Same with the upper atmosphere seeding that has been done all summer, from the Wrangell Mountains, through the Valley. Time for outside interventions to cease here in this State. People outside think that we do not realize that Alaska has become a dumping ground for all kinds of weird ideas just because we have a small population. It is time to get involved and say no to outside intervention and influence! First stop, move the capital out of Juneau as the population voted back in the ’80’s. Of do not allow outside lobbying into our State unless publicly published.
The United States must be returned to a Republic. Our Constitutional Rights must be fully restored. Rogue NGOs, corporations and federal agencies must be reigned in. The United States needs reform a local, state and federal level. Reform must include term limits, independent background checks for all offices, campaign funding reform and voting reform. Ranked Choice Voting/Cheating must be repealed. All Alaska Elections should return to in person voting with voter ID based on bonafide registered voters excluding illegal aliens. Votes in Alaska should be hand counted, no more hackable devices from foreign companies. Media should be held accountable for their election interference. Ban all PACs aka dark money! In the United States, PACs are a political action committee which is a tax-exempt 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition.
We all must keep getting the message out to vote yes on ballot measure 2 while the no-side’s deceptive ads are flooding the airwaves. Since the yes-side has very few funds and the no-side has around $8 million of outside dark money to try to sway the undecided, it’s up to us. I’ve created a series of 30-90 second clips you can share to help. Won’t cost you a dime and only takes a brief moment to do. You can find the series on my page here: Facebook.com/AKShelleyHughes Thanks, everyone! WE CAN DO THIS!
It seems that what this post is really objecting to is the top 4 primary, which means only 4 candidates are in the general election, so some small party candidates might not make it to the general. True, but that would be improved by running the primary with RCV too, which would pass on the top 4 with the most support instead of potentially splitting the vote the way it works now. Then any candidate with a snowball’s chance of winning would be in the general.
Complaining about the “tyranny of the majority” seems misplaced. Isn’t the idea of elections that the majority rules? It’s only tyranny when minority rights are not respected. You know what’s worse? Minority rule, with majority rights not respected and that’s often what you get with “good old” plurality-wins elections.
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