The National Republican Congressional Committee, which endorsed Nick Begich for Congress last week, has now awarded him help through the organization’s 2024 Young Guns program, to help him build out his campaign ahead of the 2024 general election.
“Extreme House Democrats will all be rubber stamps for San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris’ dangerous far-left agenda if elected this November,” said NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson. “Our Young Gun candidates are building winning campaigns that will help grow Republicans’ House majority and ensure the Harris-Biden administration’s destruction of the American dream is reversed.”
The Young Gun program mentors and supports candidates in races across the country and provides them with the necessary tools to run successful, winning campaigns against their Democratic opponents. It’s similar to what the local Alaska Democratic Party does for its candidates through its candidate support program., but at a much bigger scale.
“Alaskans are united in the effort to put our great state first, defend the Alaskan way of life and control our own future. Today’s recognition builds on this momentum,” Nick Begich said. “Together, we will defeat the agenda of the radical left and make Washington D.C. work for every day Alaskans once again.”
The program helps candidates reach specific goals and benchmarks throughout the election cycle to ensure their campaigns are competitive, well-funded, and are able to communicate their messages. The NRCC’s Young Guns program stared in the 2008 election cycle.
By now, most Alaskans have heard of a jökulhlaup, a phenomenon where unstable lakes are formed from retreating glaciers that can result in a glacial outburst. The Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau has created such a lake, Suicide Basin. Hydrologists estimate it contained 14.5 billion gallons of water before it burst on Aug. 5 and flooded nearly 300 homes and hundreds of vehicles in the Mendenhall Valley.
The outpouring of support for flood victims has been heartening. Local volunteers and nonprofits, state agencies, and the National Guard have all pitched in to aid in clean-up and recovery.
But, as those efforts continue, the calls for action to prevent this from occurring again become more urgent. Hundreds of Juneau homeowners face a dilemma. Why rebuild if their homes will be flooded again next year? The economic consequences of delaying a community-wide solution are unthinkable.
According to the National Weather Service, the likelihood of a similar event next August remains high. Indeed, as serious as this year’s flood was, it happened when the Mendenhall River was relatively low. If the flood had been preceded by heavy rain, raising river water levels, the consequences could have been more disastrous, possibly with loss of life.
At their August 19 meeting, Borough Assembly members listened to gut-wrenching stories from Juneau residents whose homes were flooded. Also discussed were possible preventative actions.
An initial list of conceptual approaches to reduce or eliminate the impact of future floods came with the caveat that they would require further study and regulatory exemptions (possibly even Congressional action) were they to be accomplished on the most optimistic timeline.
Suggestions include:
Suicide Basin: Relieve glacial pressure gradually by tunneling underneath Mt. Bullard allowing the basin to drain naturally into Mendenhall Lake. Another option is blasting rock into the basin to decrease the amount of water it holds.
Mendenhall River: Increase the capacity of Mendenhall River by digging channels along the river and/or dredging the river to increase its depth.
Mendenhall Lake: Use the lake as a reservoir to hold potential flood water. This would require dredging the lake, lowering the lake level with pumps, or building levees around the lake to hold more water until it can be safely released gradually.
Some options may be considered fanciful or unworkable. Certainly, the Suicide Basin alternatives should be eliminated because other basins could appear later as the glacier retreats even further.
However, there seems to be less skepticism about other possibilities among local contractors who believe that it is feasible to design a fix in a reasonable amount of time. One of them, Dave Hanna, testified that side channel excavations and levee constructions are common and effective ways of mitigating flood hazards throughout the United States. Furthermore, local expertise and capability for that work exists in Juneau.
Mendenhall Lake levees could be integrated into the trail system now being planned with the proposed large expansion of U.S. Forest Service facilities and improvements at the Mendenhall Glacier.
All these mitigation solutions will be expensive and would require a 35% local match if federal funding can be obtained. However, any federal assistance, including funding, is dependent on FEMA designating this flood as a federal disaster. FEMA officials visiting Juneau this week will evaluate and make that determination. It will require a high level of diplomacy and negotiation skills from city officials to convince them of the need for disaster funding.
Regardless of the plan ultimately chosen or any other possible funding sources, it may not be possible to construct a major project before Juneau faces another flood. Therefore, a two-pronged approach that includes short-term measures should be considered. For instance, raising riverbanks with rip-rap, installing temporary inflatable levees along the lake, and stockpiling sand for community use for sandbags all could be implemented before next August.
Regulatory permitting requirements notwithstanding, the Juneau community has the right to defend itself against any potential natural disaster and should invoke whatever emergency measures are necessary to protect its citizens.
A community task force must begin working on solutions immediately. It cannot rely solely on state or federal help. Local knowledge and expertise need to be included.
Time is critical. The clock is ticking.
After retiring as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in Alaska, Win Gruening became a regular opinion page columnist for the Juneau Empire. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is involved in various local and statewide organizations.
Fairbanks North Star School Board member Bobby Burgess, husband of radial leftist Kristen Schupp, shared a post on social media calling for civility and asked all elected officials to decry the “lack of decorum,” at recent Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly meetings.
He included a link to an article in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, which discussed the lack of decorum at recent Assembly meetings that focused on a resolution that would have created mail-in elections in Fairbanks.
The irony was deep.
This call for civility from Burgess comes after Aug. 6, when Burgess drove all the way to Two Rivers to an event held by Republican Rep. Frank Tomascewski, candidate for State House 34.
Burgess, a supporter of Tomascewski’s radical opponent, tried to goad Tomascewski and yelled loudly at the representative. Burgess eventually was escorted out of the venue by several attendees from Two Rivers.
Around the same time Burgess was calling for civility, his wife, Kristen Schupp, posing as “Erin Kae” on social media, was stating that North Pole small businessman Keith Fons was a “dumbass.” Fons had called out Schupp for name calling on social media through a pseudonym, “Erin Kae.”
Kristen Erin Schupp, on social media.
Indeed, Schupp’s official voter record lists her as Kristen Erin Schupp.
Schupp repeatedly engages in name calling on social media. She also had crashed Republican women events and has tried to to disrupt meetings of the Republican women in Fairbanks.
Schupp is a major contributor of thousands of dollars to the Senate campaign of Savannah Fletcher; so is Bobby Burgess.
“Elected officials, like anyone else, deserve a baseline level of respect. When public forums are dominated by hostility, fewer people are willing to step up and participate in civic life. Stop and ask yourself: If you were on the receiving end of endless emails telling you to be fruitful and to go multiply with oneself, would you run for public office? The public sphere has become a toxic battleground of insults and personal attacks, egged on by the anonymity of social media which only serves to inflate one’s ego.
“To be clear, this is not to say that elected officials should be immune from criticism. Holding public figures accountable is a vital aspect of a healthy electorate. There is a significant difference, however, between constructive criticism and hostile attacks that leave public officials fearing for their wellbeing. It is entirely possible to disagree with someone’s policies and decisions without resorting to demeaning behavior. The focus should be on engaging with ideas and actions, not attacking people personally.
“So, how can we express our frustrations and disagreements without descending into hostility? First, we need to cultivate a culture of respect and empathy in our discourse. This means recognizing that behind every policy and political stance is a person with their own experiences, beliefs and motivations. Before launching an attack, consider whether your criticism addresses the issue at hand or if it’s merely a personal attack in disguise.
“Second, we should encourage open dialogue and debate grounded in facts and reason. Constructive criticism can be powerful when it’s focused on policy rather than personality. This approach opens the door for discussion and compromise — things that make good government work.
“Lastly, lead by example, both in public and private spheres. This means fostering environments where different perspectives can be expressed respectfully. It means encouraging others, especially younger generations, to engage in civic life with a mindset of collaboration rather than confrontation.”
The editorial cited statements made by Fons, who was not at the meetings involving the question of mail-in voting, referenced by the newspaper.
An example of the type of post that Fons has made on social media critical of Burgess and Schupp:
While some people, such as David Leslie, live tweet assembly meetings on the left in a ribald fashion, Fons sometimes does so on Facebook from a conservative lens. No one, including the newspaper, appears to want to censor Leslie. Fons, however, lives in the heads of the Left, rent free.
Members the North Pole community have expressed outrage at how some members of the Assembly treat conservative testifiers. For instance, Some Assembly members continue reading their phones during testimony or get combative and attempt to argue or belittle the members of the public, some of whom drive 45 minutes to attend meetings. This is similar to how Anchorage Assembly Chairman Chris Constant treats members of the public with whom he disagrees.
With an increase of the risk of Iranian-fueled missile attacks by Houthi terrorists from Yemen, some oil tankers are being diverted away from the Red Sea route that leads to the Suez Canal. According to GCaptain.com, crude oil shipments from Russia via the Arctic Ocean may reach a new high point in coming weeks.
That means residents of Alaska’s Little Diomede, Wales, Brevet Mission, Point Hope, Nome, and other coastal communities may see a few more Russian oil tankers passing through the Bering Strait before freeze-up, as tankers race against winter. Late September is considered to be the lowest ice floe level before winter takes over. There are a few oil tankers that are designed for light ice conditions. The biggest one to ever take the northern route is on its way.
“The largest oil tanker to venture onto Russia’s Northern Sea Route, the 164,565 dwt Prisma, began its icy transit over the weekend bound for Tianjin in China,” the website reported.
Tianjin, Xingang, formerly called the Port of Tanggu, is the largest port in Northern China and serves as the gateway to Beijing. The Suezmax-class vessel Prisma can carry around one million barrels of oil, roughly same volume as the Sounion, which was blown up by Houthis last week in the Red Sea.
The tanker is said to have departed the port of Ust-Luga on Aug. 10, and should complete its trip to China in about 35 days. The Prisma is due there on Sept. 15, which puts it in the Bering Strait within a few days. That, in turn, will probably mean an increase of U.S. Coast Guard patrols.
The shorter-but-icier and possibly stormier transit time compares to 45 days for the Suez Canal route and 55 days for going around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Many other ships are taking the Africa detour due to Houthi terrorists.
“Prisma will likely be followed by up to a dozen more Suezmax and Aframax tankers this summer. Just in the past two weeks four Suezmax and Aframax tankers have received permission to travel along the route, including tankers Galaxy and Voyager. They join more than a dozen large carriers who were granted permits earlier this summer,” the website reports.
Rick Whitbeck, Alaska director of Power The Future, said “While the Biden/Harris/Walz team continues to hamstring Alaska’s resource development opportunities, our sworn adversaries, China and Russia, continue to enrich and empower each other. Alaska could be exporting LNG to the Pacific Rim, thwarting the emerging Russia/CCP advantages in the Arctic. Instead, Democrats in power wage a war against American energy and national security.”
Whitbeck called for a change in policy and leadership in Washington. “It shouldn’t be this way. A change in federal leadership is needed. If we get it in November, we’ll see the U.S. reclaim its place as the world’s leading energy provider,” he said.
Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, endorsed Alaskan Nick Begich today for Congress.
“Nick Begich is a proven conservative, a successful businessman, and a passionate advocate for Alaska’s future. In Congress, Nick will be an America First champion. This race is critical to keeping the House and growing the Republican Majority. Now, more than ever, we need principled conservatives in Congress to take on the radical left’s dangerous ideas,” said Jordan, who serves Ohio in Congress.
Begich, who has the endorsement of the House Republican Majority, is taking on Rep. Mary Peltola, the far-left Democrat who now represents Alaska. His list of endorsements continues apace, and includes Speaker Mike Johnson, Rep. Byron Donalds, Rep. Elise Stefanik, Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. Scott Perry, and Sen. Mike Lee.
Jordan has been one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken allies. He is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, which he chaired from 2015 to 2017. The House Freedom Caucus was an early endorser of Begich when he stepped into the race.
Peltola voted against Jordan for speaker in 2023, and voted instead for New York’s Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. She ended up casting 18 votes for Jeffries, who is the leader of the Democrats in Congress.
Jordan has been a fighter, while serving as chair of the Judiciary Committee, investigating social media companies for censoring conservatives and conservative accounts. Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Jordan, admitted that the Biden Administration had pressured Facebook and his other properties to censor people who wrote about Covid, if their opinions went against the government party line.
He has been a fighter against the weaponization of the government against everyday Americans.
It wasn’t “Nice Mary” who showed up on Wednesday afternoon at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association candidate forum. It was “Mean Mary.”
It was also “Nervously reading all the answers to questions” Mary Peltola.
Rep. Mary Peltola’s big dig of the night at candidate Nick Begich came when it was her turn to ask a question of her lead opponent. Her question strongly implied that he has not paid his dues as lifelong government employee, as she has. And that everyone in the room was on her side in thinking that Begich had no right to run for Congress.
“I believe in public service. I think most Alaskans believe in public service. And I just think it’s odd that you have no record of serving the public, either on the municipal level or the state level and you feel like you can just go straight to the top.”
By implication, she was saying that all the oil workers in the room would also not have that right that she alone had earned.
Rep. Mary Peltola turns the venom on Nick Begich during a candidate forum at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association.
Begich didn’t have the chance to respond in the debate format, but in fact he served on the board of the Alaska Policy Forum, was elected to the Matanuska Telephone Association, was co-chair of the “No on One” campaign to prevent the return to high oil taxes created by the ACES tax regime, and was finance chair of the Alaska Republican Party. In addition, he has invested his own money in start-up businesses in Alaska and across the world, and helped them grow actual jobs in the private sector.
But that’s not the kind of service she meant. Peltola meant the paid government jobs she has had all her life, either elected to the state legislature, or in the many government pass-through public commission-type jobs she has had. She has held gravy train jobs paid by taxpayers. In Peltola’s mind, only those who have taken government money for decades should run for government positions.
She also criticized Begich for jumping into the race in 2021 to challenge the late Congressman Don Young.
“A lot of us in this room are wondering whether this is more about your personal ambition than the best interest of Alaska. Why do you feel like you’re more qualified than all of us, especially Don, to represent Alaska?” she asked, reading her question from her prepared notes.
Notwithstanding that Young is now 18 months deceased, having died at the ripe age of 88 during the campaign in 2022, the question was set up to pit Begich against herself, the deceased congressman, but also Sarah Palin, who Peltola said was the greatest oil advocate the state had ever had.
It was Palin who signed the punishing ACES tax regime, which was then reversed by Senate Bill 21.
ACES was a devastating bill for Alaska because it made the state look like an unstable place to do business. The progressive and unstable nature of the tax made it hard for companies to know what their costs would be. No one in the oil world liked it.
The prepared notes Peltola read from tripped her up during the forum. The candidates had been given the questions in advance, and on every question, Peltola read her answers word for word from the page.
At one point, she read the wrong answer to the question that had been given.
“I need a turn,” she demanded from the moderator, Michelle Egan.
Then she began reading her answer, before stopping.
“Wait, am I even on the right question?” she asked.
Although she wore a bolo to channel Don Young, this was not a Don Young performance. It was the performance of a 12-year-old child.
Overall, Peltola appeared wooden and stressed on stage in front of about 450 oil patch workers and legislators. Her entourage of campaign employees huddled around her afterwards. She had not won over the audience. Peltola did not flash her trademark smile except in her opening remarks, when she shouted “Willow!” as she took credit for convincing President Joe Biden to let the ConocoPhillips project go forward. That exclamation fell flat with the audience of professionals, who understand the seriousness of the investment climate they are in.
Begich checkmated her on her taking credit for Willow. He reminded the audience that Biden is on record saying he approved it only because Department of Justice lawyers told him he would lose in court, and in approving Willow, he would proceed to lock up the rest of the oil and gas fields in Alaska, something he did this summer as he locked up 28 million acres of areas in the Arctic and Beaufort Seas, and lands stretching nearly to the Bering Sea.
A question from the audience toward the end was to Peltola: Why did she miss so many important votes? She responded sarcastically that she had lost her husband and mother in one year and hopes that doesn’t happen again. This was an attempt to inoculate her from criticism, but earlier in the forum, Begich had pointed out that she had encouraged her Democrat colleagues to vote against the important “Alaska’s Right to Produce” energy bill for Alaska, when she only voted “present,” betraying her state once again.
Peltola had also ducked out of the House Chambers rather than vote on a bill to force the Biden Administration to restore safe levels into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a vote that came several months before her husband and mother passed away. And before their passing, she already had one of the worst attendance records in Congress.
She left Washington to return to Bethel to process fish earlier this summer for over a week, saying it was important that she help feed her family. In reality, she makes $170,000 a year as a member of Congress and, as her children are all adults, is not struggling to make ends meet. This is the best-paying government job she has ever had, in a long string of government jobs.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board ventured into Alaska’s sticky politics this week, opining on how Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system has devolved and how Republicans turned it back into what is a more conventional general election.
“Alaska was supposed to be a model for ranked-choice voting (RCV), but it looks more like a deceased canary in a proverbial coal mine. It’s a Republican state that in 2022 elected Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won the first RCV race. Now more fun and games: Last week’s primary was intended to advance the top four candidates to November, yet the third-place finisher has quit. Alaskans will have a chance to repeal RCV this fall. No surprise if they say yes,” the newspaper writes, forgetting that the dark money trying to keep the system has already spent what appears to be over $1 million to convince voters to keep the ranking game going, and appears to have unlimited funding to preserve what the Wall Street Journal called “Alaska’s Ranked-Choice Voting Games.”
“Ms. Peltola was the top vote-getter, with 50.7%, in last Tuesday’s open primary. The GOP was split: Nick Begich, scion of an Alaska political family, took 26.6% of the vote. Lt. Gov.Nancy Dahlstrom had 20%. No other candidate came close, with the fourth-place finisher earning 0.6%. The way Alaska’s system is meant to work, those four would appear on November’s RCV ballot, and voters would rank them in order of preference,” the newspaper accurately described in its editorial.
But then, Dahlstrom dropped, so the Republican Party would not be divided between her and Begich.
As a result, the general election ballot will look more like a classic match between the candidates supported by their parties: Peltola for the Democrats and Begich for the Republicans, plus two unknowns.
“Republicans have learned from what happened last time, when they remained split. Looking only at first-choice votes in the 2022 special election that Ms. Peltola won, she had 40.2%. The GOP’s contenders, Sarah Palin and Mr. Begich, had 31.3% and 28.5%, respectively. Under the RCV rules, Mr. Begich was eliminated, and his supporters were reshuffled to their subsequent preferences. Enough of them didn’t like Ms. Palin that the victory went to Ms. Peltola, with 51.5%,” the newspaper accurately recounted.
“Strangely, though, this result was sensitive to the order of elimination, meaning that the final No. 1 depended on who was the initial No. 3. If Ms. Palin had been dropped instead, a strong majority of her ballots would have gone to Mr. Begich, who would have beaten Ms. Peltola,” the editorial continued.
That is how the writers tried to explain an even more complex concept: Begich was the condorcet winner in 2022, according to mathematicians who study statistics around voting. A concorcet winner is the candidate who more than half of all voters would support in a one-on-one, not a ranked-choice game.
“Nick Begich was eliminated in the first round despite being more broadly acceptable to the electorate than either of the other two candidates. More specifically, Begich was the Condorcet winner of this election: Based on the Cast Vote Record, he would have defeated each of the other two candidates in head-to-head contests, but he was eliminated in the first round of ballot counting due to receiving the fewest first-place votes,” writes Jeanne N. Clelland of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in this paper.
The Wall Street Journal wasn’t quite able to wrap its head around the math, but the writers explained it well enough:
“Not only that, he’d have won about 52.5%, a bigger victory than Ms. Peltola’s ranked-choice majority. Doesn’t that seem . . . odd? What if some Democrats ranked Ms. Palin first on their ballots to ensure that the most polarizing GOP opponent made the final round?”
The Dahlstrom withdrawal completely upended ranked-choice voting in the congressional race. So did the withdrawals of Sharon Jackson and Ken McCarty from the Senate Seat L contest, leaving room for Jared Goecker to take on the leading false-flag Republican Sen. Kelly Merrick.
“Whatever the formal rules say about a top-four competition, Republicans and Democrats could set a party expectation that only one major contender from their side will stick around for the general election. Before last week’s primary, Mr. Begich had pledged to quit if he came in third,” the newspaper said adding that if the “parties can keep the discipline shown by Ms. Dahlstrom, the final RCV vote might come to resemble a traditional head-to-head election, except with more confusing rules and no clarifying partisan primary debates.”
The Democrats in Alaska have already shown that discipline by not allowing more than one Democrat candidate in a race, which saves them the hassle of having donor dollars, volunteers, and voter enthusiasm diluted. The ranked-choice voting general election was designed for a party that has control over its voters.
Now, Alaska Republicans are getting wise to the ranked-choice game. The Wall Street Journal has noticed.
What the federal government gives, the federal government can take away.
Several days before permanently locking up another 28 million acres of Alaska — the size of the state of Mississippi — the Biden-Harris Administration quietly yanked the permit for the Ambler Road.
The permit had been granted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority to fulfill the federal government’s legal obligation to provide access to state-owned lands that were set aside for mining in the southern Brooks Range, in the Northwest Arctic Borough.
The Northwest Arctic Borough is home to about 7,200 people, and the per-capita income is roughly $21,000 annually.
The Biden-Harris Administration suspended the water and wetlands permit needed to fill a narrow corridor for the 211-mile roadbed that would allow trucks to go to and from the mining site and the Dalton Highway.
The permit cancellation came six weeks after the Bureau of Land Management had rejected the entire project, when the Biden-Harris Administration picked the “no build” option. By doing so, the federal government broke several federal laws that give Alaska the right to access the area.
“The Biden-Harris administration is actively ignoring a law that has been on the books for over 40 years, mandating the Secretary of Interior to grant permits for the Ambler Road, despite its political appointees being sworn to uphold the laws of the United States,” said the Institute for Energy Research. “The latest action by the Army Corps of Engineers follows an unlawful action by the Department of Interior a month earlier regarding the same project. Despite the Biden-Harris Administration’s net-zero climate policies, which call for more minerals for “green energy” manufacture, it has stopped or delayed mine development for critical minerals in other parts of Alaska and other U.S. states.”
In June, PJ Simon, First Chief of Allakaket, said, “This decision shows a total lack of respect for tribes and our way of life. We need jobs, we need affordable gas, and we need the road. Blocking this access keeps us trapped in poverty and disregards the voices of those who support the project.”
The Ambler Mining District is landlocked, surrounded by Native Corporation and federal land. Without a right-of-way, the state’s efforts to create an economy for the area appear to be dead, although litigation will surely be the next step for AIDEA and the State of Alaska.
“It’s another example of the ‘no on everything’ coming from the Biden-Harris Administration,” said Nick Begich, candidate for Congress. “Our state can’t just take this constant abuse from the colonial overlords in D.C. I will fight for Alaska, and I’ll never stop.”
Rep. Mary Peltola issued no statement about the cancellation of the already-granted permit.
AIDEA is also fighting the permit cancellation. It sent a letter to the Corps stating multiple objections to the decision.
“Not only do the permits not address the same geographic areas, but further, the BLM and the USACE right-of-way permits are not legally intertwined,” AIDEA said in its letter to the Army Corps of Engineers. “First, the USACE is bound to follow federal laws, rules and regulations. Key among these is the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, Pub. L. 96-487. ANILCA provides the owner of parcels surrounded by Department of Interior lands with a mandatory right of access over DOI lands as the agency determines are ‘adequate to secure’ the ‘reasonable use and enjoyment’ of the surrounded parcel, subject to DOI’s ‘rules and regulations applicable to access over public lands.’”
The repeal of ranked-choice voting will be a question on the November ballot in Alaska.
Ranked-choice voting fundamentally contradicts conservative principles by introducing complexity and expanding bureaucratic control. That, in turn, undermines both electoral transparency and the foundational concept of a republican form of government.
Alex Gimarc’s spot-on Must Read Alaska column discusses the characteristic comparisons of organizations such as the Conservative Majority Fund. Frankly, this organization strives to connect local and state political adventures to D.C. power and control models, which ensure the continuation of federal centralization and the erosion of states sovereignty.
As contemporaneous evidence, please look at the Nancy Dahlstrom campaign and its top-down support.
From a conservative perspective, the so-called Conservative Majority Fund is a classic example of neo-conservatism and, at the least, an effigy for the continued expansion of the federal bureaucracy.
Ranked-choice voting represents a deliberate departure from conservative values, which prioritize simplicity, transparency, and accountability in governance. By making it harder to verify election outcomes and necessitating a move away from transparency, RCV risks placing too much power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and the election-related technology they oversee, thereby undermining the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees every state a “Republican Form of Government,” as outlined in Article IV, Section 4. This promise is rooted in the idea that elected officials should be directly accountable to voters. RCV complicates this relationship by allowing for election outcomes where a candidate who was not the first choice of most voters can still win.
Additionally, RCV tends to favor mediocre candidates over those with strong values. As evidence, look at the election of Mary Peltola to Congress.
Public trust in computerized voting processes is at an all-time low, particularly after the 2020 presidential election, where concerns about vote-switching with computer driven voting machines were widespread. RCV’s complexity makes it very suspect, leaving contested and tight elections unresolved to the public’s satisfaction.
With that said, RCV requires sophisticated software to sort and analyze votes, creating a significant dependency on computerized systems. This reliance raises concerns about whether votes are being processed correctly, as there is no straightforward way to verify the results, particularly when compared to traditional ballots that only need to be counted once, not counted, sorted, and counted again.
Ranked-choice voting is a pathway to dehumanization by subconsciously emphasizing vote aggregation, rather than candidate principles and values. The mechanical nature of RCV reduces the importance of individual candidates’ integrity and policy stances, instead prioritizing how votes are mathematically tallied and redistributed.
Such a system distances voters from the core values and beliefs that typically guide their choices, potentially leading to a more impersonal, numbers-driven approach to elections.
From a constitutional perspective, ranked-choice voting may also infringe upon First Amendment rights, particularly the right to free political expression through voting. The system’s complexity can deter voter participation and engagement, suppressing voter turnout and clarity. Is this a violation of the right to freely express political preferences?
The U.S. Supreme Court has emphasized that political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, subjecting such laws to “strict scrutiny.” It is questionable whether RCV meets this burden or if it suppresses political speech.
While ranked-choice voting was adopted through a plebiscite in Alaska, voters were misled by promises to eliminate voter polarization and dark money influences. The Guarantee Clause of the U.S. Constitution, ensuring a republican form of government, is challenged by RCV’s potential to produce election outcomes that do not reflect the majority’s first-choice preferences.
The implementation of RCV in Alaska affects a wide range of groups, from voters who must navigate a more complex system to political parties, candidates, and unelected officials who gain greater control over the electoral process. This debate is not just about voting mechanics but also about broader principles of democracy, representation, and governance.
Quoting Alex Gimarc’s noteworthy column, “Any time someone tells you a change in election law is for your own good, will simplify anything, or will save money, don’t believe them.”
I say, if you’re looking to employ more unelected bureaucrats, ranked-choice voting is the camel’s nose under the tent of public service employment opportunity.
This upcoming election may demonstrate what real conservatives think about our voting process and its sacredness to liberty.
Michael Tavoliero is a resident of Eagle River and writes for Must Read Alaska.
