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.