It’s rank to mislead voters this way about ranked choice

By Larry Persily

Advocates of the ballot measure to repeal Alaska’s open-primaries voting system and replace it with closed primaries controlled by political parties are throwing out multiple misleading claims, hoping that something will stick in voters’ minds and give them a victory.

It’s no surprise that supporters of Ballot Measure 2 are doing everything they can to avoid telling Alaskans what’s really at stake in the Nov. 6 election.

Yes, the ballot measure would revoke Alaska’s six-year-old ranked-choice voting system, in which the top four finishers in a single, totally open primary compete in the general election to determine who has the most support among the broadest number of Alaskans. Voters can rank their choices in the general election to determine the winner.

The Repeal Now campaign says ranking is confusing to people and should be tossed out like spoiled leftovers. If they left it at that, it would be an honest campaign. Wrong, but honest. But politics being what they are, the Repeal Now effort is stretching and even breaking the truth to win over voters.

Supporters of the repeal effort are advertising that a vote for Ballot Measure 2 would “bring back open primaries,” which is about as far from the truth as lower diesel prices.

The fact is they want to get rid of nonpartisan primaries, where all candidates compete against each other regardless of their political parties. They want to go back to the old system, where Republicans and Democrats ran in their own primaries, at state expense, which the parties could limit so that only party members or unaffiliated voters could cast ballots. Repeal Now says that qualifies as “open” since the parties could, if they wanted, open their primaries to unaffiliated voters.

That’s not open, it’s closed to voters who don’t pass a political test. That’s not open, it’s partisan, which is precisely what’s wrong with American politics. Partisanship is an excuse to put the party’s agenda and position of power above all else. That’s what Repeal Now is all about.

The campaign in support of the Nov. 6 ballot measure also is playing hide and go seek with the public. While they stomp around about how confusing it is to understand ranked-choice voting, they don’t bother telling people that a big part of their initiative would repeal several campaign finance disclosure requirements in state law.

The Repeal Now website makes no mention that the ballot measure would kill off campaign finance transparency rules adopted by voters in 2020 to ensure that campaigns disclose the real source of political spending — the person or entity that supplied the money. It’s dark enough in Alaska much of the year; the last thing we need is to allow more dark money to influence public policy decisions and cloud our future at the whims of wealthy campaign donors.

And the ballot measure also could eliminate for candidates for governor and lieutenant governor the campaign donation limits that Alaskans just approved by an overwhelming margin the August primary. 

So think about what should be open and what should be disclosed and how supporters of closed primaries want to rewrite the rules to benefit political parties and rich contributors. Then shut the door on their campaign and vote no on Ballot Measure 2. 

• Larry Persily is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel, which first published this column.