Why I’m voting no on Ballot Measure 2

"I voted" stickers at the Alaska Division of Elections office. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Rich Moniak

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) “is a crooked form of voting. It's totally dishonest,” President Donald Trump said last week after indicating he’ll probably come to Alaska to help Sen. Dan Sullivan’s reelection campaign.

It’s not the first time the master of dishonesty inserted himself into this debate while making a pitch for candidates he endorsed. He made a similar remark at an Anchorage rally for Kelly Tshibaka and Sarah Palin in 2022.

But the main purpose of his visit then was to oppose the re-election of Sen. Lisa Murkowski. He called her “worse than a Democrat” and a “bad person,” then added Sullivan should “be ashamed of himself” for endorsing her.

He also claimed RCV was “the only way she could win.”

History tells a different story. After Joe Miller beat Murkowski in the 2010 Republican primary, she got back into the race as a write-in candidate and won the general election.

At the time I argued an “open primary in a state dominated by independent voters would serve the people better” than the closed primary system in which two-thirds of registered voters stayed home. And I advocated for a runoff between the top two primary vote-getters, “even if they’re from the same party.”

That’s a system I still prefer over asking voters to rank the top four candidates coming out of the open primary. But it’s not because RCV is too complicated or confusing. Frankly, I think that argument insults the intelligence of voters.

Repeal Now is one of the groups that sponsored the ballot initiative to repeal it. Along with being wrong about voter confusion, they claim it “delays results and often elects candidates who aren’t the true majority choice.”

Those are also bogus arguments. In 2020, four candidates for the legislative races won without a majority.  Tony Knowles, the last Democrat elected governor, won a three-way race in 1992 with only 41% of the vote. If RVC had been used, Republican Jim Campbell probably would have beaten him.

Murkowski’s won her historic write-in victory with just under 40% of the vote. The outcome wasn’t certain until two weeks after Election Day. Miller filed a lawsuit that further delayed certification of the results until Dec. 30.

The 2000 presidential race is perhaps the most famous election in which a winner wasn’t declared until well after Election Day.

The 2020 presidential election is the most infamous. Joe Biden was projected the winner five days after the polls closed. Trump lost dozens of lawsuits contesting the outcome. On Dec. 14, the Electoral College made the results official. Congress certified the election on Jan. 7, but not until after the Capitol had been ransacked by Trump supporters.

And unlike Miller, who conceded after he exhausted all legal challenges, to this day Trump still refuses to admit he lost.

Finally, consider Repeal Now’s supposedly noble cause of fighting “to protect election integrity and voter confidence.”

I’ve said it often and I’ll say it again. No one in American history has done more to undermine voter trust in our elections than Trump and party loyalists like Sullivan who let him get away with lying about 2020 and everything else.

Jonathan V. Last spent 21 years writing for the conservative Weekly Standard before Trump arrived on the scene. In an essay this week titled "Forever Lies," he argues today’s Republican Party “is permitted to live in an alternate reality where not only are they not punished politically for lying, but the system no longer even notices when they lie about specific factual claims.” He finishes with this disturbing thought: “I don’t know how this ever gets reversed.”

It won’t as long as the party continues to punish Republicans who tell the truth.

Remember, the Alaska Republican Party censured Murkowski after she voted to convict Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. Without the open primary in 2022, the party would have punished her again by keeping her from advancing to the general election.

Fortunately, Alaskans who knew she did the right thing by her conscience and for the country voted to keep her in the Senate. And this November, voting “no” on Ballot Measure 2 is how we can reward Republicans who value verifiable truths more than the party.

• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.