Robert Seitz: ‘No on 2’ is based on lies. Vote ‘Yes on 2’ to support more truthful elections

By ROBERT SEITZ

The advertising and postings of the Vote No on 2 group are extremely dishonest and very misleading. There is no freedom that would be denied when Ranked Choice Voting is eliminated. Ranked choice voting did not prevent Democratic party leaders from encouraging Al Gross from removing himself from the ballot for the general election in 2022.  

My experience has been that active members of the Republican Party in each district are the part of the process to encourage various party members to consider running for the Alaska House or Senate races and are diligent to ensure that the potential candidate does reflect and follow the Republican party platform and is a person of integrity. By eliminating the closed primary process, the ranked-choice voting process interferes with the ability and opportunity for individual district party members to make sure the potential candidate is fully and completely vetted through the normal primary election process.

Bill Popp’s commentary on the history of open and closed primaries in Alaska does not tell the whole story. The reason the Republican Party keeps going back to closed primaries is because they get tired of Democrats purposefully voting for weaker or less skilled Republican candidates so that the Democrat candidate would be a more desired candidate in the general election.

One of the reasons the problems of Alaska don’t get solved is because those involved are not working on solving the problems that need to be solved. Balanced budgets are easy to achieve.  Don’t over spend and increase the production of oil from the North Slope.  

Maybe if we get to 1 million barrels per day through the pipeline again that would help a lot. Get some mining projects permitted and into production. Extract our resources to build wealth. Once we have revenue provided, with production of our resources elevated to an effective level, the concern for taxes is greatly reduced. If we can get the revenues maybe then legislators will become less obsessed with destruction of the PFD distribution and return to routine distribution with no arguments. Ranked- choice voting does not in anyway assure the next legislature will work on the problem you care about.

Ranked-choice voting is confusing to most voters and does not result in quick results. The real work needs to be done through discussions between elections and between legislative sessions.  School funding would be a lot easier to work out if our school systems were not so distracted by all the foolishness that has been thrown into the mix of things that teachers have to deal with beyond reading, writing and arithmetic along with history and other necessary courses. The Mat-Su school district is doing fairly well getting the scores to increase for their students because they have a school board focused on the right topics.  

More money is not the solution. Motivated students and dedicated teachers with strong backing from parents, does work every time. Alaska was always first or second in the nation academically when I was in school in the 1940s and 1950s. And that was during a time of population growth so we were always behind in having enough schools and classes tended to be a little larger than the 25 students that many are saying is ideal class size.

When I was in my 20s, I was a registered independent because I was a typical independent Alaskan. Then someone told me that if I was not a part of an organized political party I would probably not get involved in the political processes. I accessed myself and determined that I was more Republican than I was Democrat so immediately changed my registration. While I was mildly active during my life in political processes, I did not get deeply involved until my work no longer required me to travel and spend much time on the North Slope.  

I am now involved and I find that ranked-choice voting is counterproductive in the process of selecting the best candidates to serve elected office.

Instead of independent voters just waiting for candidates to be selected or to volunteer to run, they need to be involved in the process of encouraging people to be candidates and to be involved with preparing then for the role of service. Those who are already registered with one of the parties need to become active and involved so we can attract more and qualified people to become candidates.   

Ranked-choice voting just complicates the process so that the best candidate will lose out to which every candidate the dark money that has proliferated this election period at the direction of the elites in the background. 

Some people like ranked-choice voting because they don’t have to work very hard and just need to vote without really verifying that their candidate really is what they claim to be. They are lazy voters.  Voting is not the same as eating or shopping. Shopping and eating are more immediate, and if I don’t get what I want I will go somewhere else next time. Voting is for a season, we can’t afford to have our second or third choice, need our first and only choice.  

Vote Yes on 2. Get rid of ranked-choice voting.

Robert Seitz is a professional electrical engineer and lifelong concerned Alaskan who usually writes about energy issues for Must Read Alaska.