A bipartisan coalition of Alaska leaders today launched Defend Alaska Elections, a campaign group that will oppose Ballot Measure 2.
Ballot Measure 2 is a project by Outside special interest groups to throw out Alaska’s trusted election process and replace it with a flawed experiment that has already proven to be a failure in other states.
The campaign is led by Alaskan hero John Sturgeon, who twice defeated the federal government’s attempt to restrict Alaskans’ access to Alaska’s rivers winning two unanimous decisions at the US Supreme Court.
Sturgeon said that Ballot Measure 2 would disenfranchise Alaskan voters and undermine public confidence in the electoral process.
“One Alaskan, one vote is a bedrock principle of our democracy and critical to ensuring fair and transparent elections,” said Sturgeon. “Ballot Measure 2, funded by out-of-state billionaires and special interest groups that Alaskans have never heard of, would open the door to a flood of election manipulation and chaos that will disenfranchise thousands of Alaskan voters and weaken trust in our democratic process.”
Ballot Measure 2 would force Alaskans to elect political leaders using so-called “ranked choice voting” (RCV) in which voters are required to assign a score to every candidate on the ballot, or risk having their ballot thrown out.
Worse, RCV allows low-scoring candidates to steal elections and be certified as “winners,” even though they fail to win either a plurality or a majority of the votes cast. It’s a race to the bottom tier.
Opposition to Ballot Measure 2 crosses the political spectrum, with Republicans, Democrats, and Nonpartisan voters all concerned about the unwarranted attack on Alaska’s elections.
Former Senator Mark Begich (D) and former Governor Sean Parnell (R), writing in the July 23, 2020 Wall Street Journal, said “As former elected officials from different parties, we’ve had our share of disagreements. But we are united in our belief that the Better Elections initiative would be bad for our state. Alaskans shouldn’t have to doubt that their votes count.”
Defend Alaska Elections is also opposed to another radical element of Ballot Measure 2, which would throw out Alaska’s normal primary election and replace it with a California-style “jungle primary.” It would deprive Alaskans of their right to nominate candidates to represent their political party in the general election. It also serves to manipulate voters’ choices, by obscuring the political affiliations of those who do appear on the ballot.
“Our election system isn’t broken, and we don’t need Lower 48 powerbrokers to ‘fix’ it for us,” said Sturgeon. “Ballot Measure 2 replaces our simple and straightforward election system with a 25-page-long mess that isn’t fair, democratic, or needed.”
For more information contact Brett Huber at 907-312-6600
