By TUCKERMAN BABCOCK
Scott Kendall, former 2016 campaign legal counsel for U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and later chief of staff to former Gov. Bill Walker, has designed an election system nightmare that is going to force Alaskans to pay a very heavy price this year.
The election nightmare is a so-called “ranked choice” voting system designed by and pushed by Kendall. Narrowly adopted by Alaskans after a massive dark money campaign to get us to vote yes, Ballot Measure 2 passed by just a 1 percent margin.
Never mind that the whole rotten scheme was written to try and help Murkowski get reelected, because she has zero chance of ever winning a Republican Primary election. This was overturning an entire election process just to try and help one person stay in office.
So what are the consequences of Kendall’s scheming?
- Less information available for voters. In our traditional system, the primary allowed Alaskans to choose the Democrat and Republican nominees. Now, no one will know whether a candidate is, or is not, really a Democrat or Republican. Alaskans lost the ability to nominate the party candidate. From now one, every candidate can choose whatever party of convenience they want at the moment – and nobody will be the wiser.
- The election cannot be determined by humans counting ballots. The Scott Kendall scheme requires algorithms and computers to take charge of counting. When there is a problem — and there will be problems — judges will decide our election for us.
- Scott Kendall promised his rank system would ensure every winner gets 50 percent. 50 percent of what? In every place around the country any sort of ranked choice has been tried, between 2-14 percent of the voters have their votes tossed aside before the final tally. What does that mean? Of the 100% of those that go to vote, the final tally only includes maybe 90 percent of them. So the winner wins with 50 percent of 90 percent…which is 45 percent. Does that make any sense at all?
- Scott Kendall forgot to mention that everywhere ranked choice is imposed, turnout among the elderly and people of color has declined. That is just a miserable fact. He knew it, if he did any research, but that apparently did not matter as much as trying to rig the system for his former bosses.
- Huge delays and exorbitant costs. Alaska, even under our traditional system, was the very last state to report our vote in the national election. Now, with the Scott Kendall ranked choice nightmare, we will be lucky to have a final vote count before the governor is required to be sworn in on Dec. 3. Best estimates are two to three weeks for a result at best.
- Special election fiasco. Scott Kendall also changed our special election process. In the past, we had one election and quickly filled our congressional vacancy. Alaska would be deprived of representation in Congress for a couple of months. But Scott Kendall tossed that aside and created a two election process for special elections. What does that do? A: We spend an extra one or $2 million on an extra election. B: We are stopped from filling any vacancy for 4-5 months just to satisfy the weird process designed by Scott Kendall.
- Why do we have two elections? If you use ranked choice, you only need to pay for and hold one election. The choices will all be ranked and the votes tabulated and re-tabulated until a candidate gets 50 percent. Done — no need for two elections.
- Holding an election to nominate four candidates where each voter votes once and then holding a second election to elect one candidate where each voter gets to vote five times is the most ridiculous and absurd thing I have ever heard of.
The special election designed by Scott Kendall is a waste of time, waste of money, waste of votes. He has succeeded in turning Alaska’s elections into a wasteland of needless expense, confusion, and computerized mystery. No state uses the system Scott Kendall designed, and for good reason.
The unfortunate death of our longtime congressman has highlighted the nightmare that is Scott Kendall’s election system.
Unless the Legislature acts immediately, we will be deprived of a having our member of Congress for an extra three or four months because of the horrible and thoughtless redesign of our elections by Scott Kendall. Alaskans will be asked to hold and pay for four statewide elections between July and November, millions of dollars utterly wasted.
What can be done?
At least this: Eliminate the totally pointless special election “primary” election. We never had one before and we do not need one now. One special election, ranked choice (since we must for this year) and one candidate wins with 50 percent. It’s half the trouble and half the cost. Get an Alaskan back in Congress twice as fast.
This is not about helping Democrats or Republicans. This is just doing what is right for Alaska.
Tuckerman Babcock is a past president of the Alaska Republican Party and is a candidate for Alaska Senate, to represent the Kenai Peninsula.
