ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS SNUBS ‘ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE’
In an editorial published Saturday that slapped Alaskans in the face, the Anchorage Daily News turned its back on “one person, one vote,” and endorsed the machinations of Ballot Measure 2, which most analysts say will help liberal candidates get a stronger toehold in the state.
Critics say ranked choice voting gives some voters more votes than others, depending on how many they rank on the ballot and whether their ballot becomes “exhausted” during the counting process, which is all done by computer programmed to sort and reassign votes.
The measure on the Nov. 3 ballot also destroys the ability of Alaskans to effectively form political parties and platforms, because it takes primaries wide open.
The measure is backed by nearly 100 percent of funds from Outside liberal groups to set up an election system that clearly favors liberals. Or, as the editorial board of the ADN benignly describes it “most of the money financing the ‘yes’ side of the campaign has itself come from Outside.”
“Our elections are not serving us well,” the editorial board waxed.
That’s because radical leftists and promise-breakers are not competing well. Democrats are competing so poorly that they now try to run away from the Democrat Party just to get people to vote for them.
That’s not the system that’s broken — that is the Alaska Democratic Party, now so radical that even clearly Democrat candidates for U.S. Senate and House try to trick voters into thinking they are independents.
The editorial board believes Alaskans are stupid, and don’t vote for the candidates that the newspaper thinks they should be voting for. The paper clearly believes the new system will produce the kind of results the elites in the news business want to see, not the results Alaskans want.
Ballot Measure 2 is three paragraphs long but represents 25 pages and 75 sections of legislation that its liberal backers say would improve Alaska’s election system.
Those 25 pages were written by two Alaskans: Scott Kendall and Libby Bakalar. On Friday during a recorded debate, Kendall for the first time disclosed the name of the co-author of the measure.
Bakalar was fired by the Dunleavy Administration and has an active lawsuit against the administration for wrongful termination. She runs a far left blog and is an overachieving Twitter commenter who espouses leftist positions.
The entire selling point of the measure by these two liberal lawyers is to eliminate dark money, but it wasn’t until four days before the election that the group calling itself Alaskans for Better Elections disclosed who actually wrote the ballot measure. Not very transparent.
The ranked choice voting idea is so bad that even California Gov. Jerry Brown had vetoed a bill that would have expanded it, calling it “overly complicated and confusing” because it “deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.”
In ranked-choice voting, you don’t vote just for the candidate you want. You rank the candidates according to who you can settle for, from 1-4.
If no candidate wins a majority of #1 votes, all the ballots get reshuffled, and those with the fewest votes drop off, and that vote gets reassigned, according to a complicated formula. If you don’t pick a second choice, your ballot is exhausted and thrown out. Those who did pick a second, third, and fourth choice get to vote more than once.
On Friday, Defend Alaska Elections issued their own editorial, in the form of a YouTube video, demonstrating how Alaskans are being outspent and outplayed by Outsiders trying to take over the state and how they are fighting back:
ADN has been the paper in the OUTHOUSE for decades no surprise here, it is filled with liberals owned by liberals and the sad fact is it isn’t even good enough to wipe with!!!
I agree that dark money – no matter the source – should not infiltrate our state’s elections. It won’t be good for the gander until it is good for the goose though – the irony as I read this story is hard to not notice. I don’t think the Koch Brothers are Alaskans either.
What in the world is wrong with the Binkleys’ thinking? Are they that stupid?
Some of them are it seems.
Binkleys are really messed up in the head. Is this Ryan or his dad, Johne?
In communist Russia, they had a newspaper called the Daily Pravda, which is similar to daily news,except for that it was free. We had a local paper in Chugiak/Eagle River too, until it was taken over by the Binkleys, and now it is free but like the Daily News, it is Pravda and I will not even consider it for fire starter.
Afraid of what my friends might think if I had a copy of either laying around.
I asked that the newspaper boxes be removed as soon as I saw where they were going, years ago. When people used to bring a copy to my Cafe before Covid, I requested they take that garbage with them when they left, as I was a family restaurant. I personally don’t advertise anywhere, but any business that pays for advertisements in that waste of paper is part of the problem. Boycott them all. Hit them in the pocketbook. Then the idiots will give you a free paper, compliments of the socialists . Just saying.
In 1980, ADN could have passed as a mini-twin of Pravda. Now days, ADN is nothing but a hollow shell filled with socialist dollars/yuan/pesos and most currencies in the world. Nothing the leftist democrats and progeny do is for the people or the country. It’s all their way or the highway. There is no middle ground or compromise of any sort that they will accept. It is like the crusades, only the left is mostly atheist or ‘other than Christian’. The leftist agenda is to take control and force all others to ‘heel’. Forcefully if need be. This parody of politics and political activism serves no purpose except turmoil, chaos and anarchy. A vote for the left or any of their schemes is a nail in Alaska and America’s coffin. It’s not Alaskans trying to force us into their ‘order’. Vote well on Tuesday, Election Day, Alaskans.
I was hoping when the ADN was sold to the Binkley family they would return to representing conservative values, or at least be fair and impartial but, silly me, they are nothing more than communist supporters as before.
I had thought the same thing. I had a fleeting moment of hope. It’s an embarrassment.
“The editorial board believes Alaskans are stupid” Having been here for awhile, I’d say that is a true statement, all circa pipeline. That’s when the god, guns and bible nuts really burrowed their taproot. I never thought I’d see the day when Alaska would become the south; silly me.
That’s why I quit the paper as lots of my friends have also. I hope it goes under.
Is the ADN really Alaska’s largest newspaper nowadays? Hard to believe!
How is this rag still in business?
It has to be bleeding money.
My educated guess is that George Soros is getting his dollars funneled in there some way or another.
All across the US this is the only way to sustain the drain.
Actually, ranked choice voting might not be so bad.
With one condition. The ballot has to have a “never in a million years” choice for every candidate. If you must rank the candidates, I want to be able to let them know what complete and utter disdain I hold them in. Sorry, pretend “independent” you are not getting my vote in any way.
As to opening the primaries, sorry, totally completely and 100% disagree with that idea. If you do not have the conviction to actually join a party, you do not have the right to tell that party who their nominee should be. Either join up, or shut up.
Sadly ADN sure seems to be determined to shoot themselves in the proverbial foot. They do some great human interest stories and have a few excellent writers but that is just a front as they channel the most leftest writings of Washington Post and use a number of their in house ‘journalists’ to push their true agenda. I do hope they do not survive. They are dangerous and too many naive voters read the engineered writing and believe. Albeit that is likely the hope and intent of ADN.
Binkley and the establishment elites would love to get rid of the voter altogether. These people think you are just serfs working their land. People need to remember that.
I live on 1400 per month. I donate the price of an ADN subscription to MRAK every year. Not only to help support MRAK, but to rub ADN’s nose in it.
Reason I can spare a couple hundred per year is that I have no vices that cost money.
Comments are closed.