Prop 2 Ballot Debate - How Alaska Votes On How Alaska Votes - 9/28/26

Hoffman and Gary Stevens.

So, all right, now to tonight's program. In November, Alaskans will vote on Ballot Measure 2. Here is what a yes vote will do. It repeals the open primary where all candidates appear on one ballot and the top 4 advance regardless of party affiliation. Second, it restores party primary— party-run primaries.

It will repeal ranked choice voting in the general election with one vote for one candidate. And it repeals the campaign finance disclosure rules which require group spending on Alaska elections to report their top funders.

So how did we get here? Voters adopted the current system in 2020. In 2024, a repeal measure failed by 743 votes after a recount. The sponsors gathered signatures again, and this November, the question returns to the ballot. Alaskans are closely divided on this question.

Which is exactly why we're here today. Arguing yes on repeal is Craig Richards. Craig served as Alaska's Attorney General from 2014 to 2016 and is a longtime trustee of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. He is also an Alaskan Anchorage attorney in private practice, and he represents Repeal Now, the campaign sponsoring Ballot Measure 2. Arguing no on repeal is Scott Kendall.

Scott is counsel at Cash and Gilmour Lindemuth in Anchorage and served as chief of staff to Governor Bill Walker. He was the prime author of the 2020 ballot measure that created Alaska's open primary and ranked choice voting systems. And he, and he has defended this measure in court.

So before we get to their argument or debate, here are some rules of the road. We're running a variant of the Lincoln-Douglas debate. What this means is Craig, as the side proposing the change in the status quo, is going to be affirming— is going to be arguing in the affirmative, and he will go first. Scott will then cross-examine Craig. After the questioning, Scott will get up and make his affirmative case for his side, and then Craig will have an opportunity to cross-examine Scott.

After the cross-examinations, Both Scott and Craig will have an opportunity to provide some closing remarks, and then we'll have some time for audience questions.

I just want to make sure everyone knows that Common Wealth North does not take a position on Ballot Measure 2. Our job is to put the strongest version of each argument in front of Alaskans and let you decide. One housekeeping note: tonight is being recorded, so please silence your phones. And then again, after the debate, there will be an opportunity to mingle and talk with Scott and others and Craig if you'd like. So Craig, the floor is yours.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today and debate on behalf of Repeal Now. Ballot Measure 2 in 2020 was a log roll of all log rolls. It wrapped in numerous election-related subjects in addition to changing how we count votes via changes to the primary system and adoption of ranked choice voting. It did such things as adopt true source reporting, dual reporting for both contributors and receivers of donations, required certain out-of-state disclaimers, and it separated— or put combined the running of the governor and the lieutenant governor onto one ticket. Previously, the lieutenant governor had run separately in the primary.

But there's limited time here today, so I'm really going to focus on jungle primaries and ranked choice voting, because I think, as most Alaskans are realizing, that's really what is wrong with Ballot Measure 2 and what needs to be cured. So I grew up in Fairbanks, and I have a good friend there who married a Russian lady. So he spent a lot of time in Russia, and he likes Russian humor, and he likes Russian jokes. And he often employs an old Russian joke or a quip attributed to Stalin. It's not the people who vote that counts.

It's the people who count the votes that count. And I looked it up, and Stalin didn't actually say that. Instead, it was Boris Bosnov, his secretary. And his secretary said, I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote or how. But what is extraordinarily important is this: who will count the votes and how.

And I think that gets to the heart of why we're here today. Until recently, Alaska used the traditional system of American voting. One person, one vote. The person or plebiscite that got the most votes won the election. That changed in 2020.

Liberal campaign operatives in Alaska funded by a few liberal mega donors from outside, convinced Alaskan voters to change how we count votes in order to change election outcomes. They did it through two major changes in our election laws in 2020. Uh, the traditional primary system was replaced with the jungle primary, and ranked choice voting was adopted. With jungle primaries, suddenly multiple Republicans, or, or in some case Democrats, uh, now run against each other in the general election. And this has massive consequences for election outcomes.

In the traditional American system of voting, after primaries, the party and its supporters have the opportunity before the general election to come together behind one candidate. Having multiple candidates of the same party in the general carries over the antagonism of the primary into the general election. This gives a major advantage to whichever party only gets one major candidate into the general election. Ironically, that tends to be the party that gets the less total votes. There can be little question that over time in multiple races, the less popular party is greatly advantaged by the new system of voting.

And of course, we saw that in such races as 2022 with Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, uh, sort of splitting the vote between each other and Mary Patolla getting elected. And we'll see it in 2026 when you have 3 Republicans on the ballot versus 1 Democrat, a massive advantage to the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. And of course, ranked choice voting compounds this unfairness created by the new primary system. The reason is that some percentage of voters do not rank all the way to the final round of ranked choice voting. Now, I don't know if anyone has ever figured out the psychology and the percentages of why this occurs.

I haven't seen anything on it, but I think common sense can sort of tell us what's happening. There's kind of, I think, 3 basic reasons people don't rank all the way in ranked choice voting, which changes the outcome of elections. One is certain people just make errors. They just fill out the ranked choice, you know, multiple voting systems incorrectly, so their ballot gets trashed. Some people, they don't rank on purpose, either because of the antagonism that carries over from the primary, you know, Bernadette voters aren't going to vote for Dave, this kind of thing, or alternatively, some voters probably just don't like the ranked choice voting system, so they don't participate in it.

And then certainly, there's going to be some level of confusion. Where people are just confused by the more complex voting system, so they tend not to rank. Well, whatever the purpose is, or the reason is, that various people don't rank in ranked choice voting, the outcome is the same. Not everyone's vote is counted in the final round. Their votes get trashed.

Their votes don't count. Gone are the days in Alaska where we have one person, one vote, because ranked choice voting doesn't work that way unless everyone, every time, ranks all the way through. So, for instance, in the '22 special election, 15,000 ballots were trashed before Mary Patolla won by 5,129 votes. 60% Of first-round votes went to another party other than the Democratic Party, yet she still won because 15,000 votes were never counted. Her victory was one-third— was by an amount that was approximately one-third of the number of votes that were tossed.

And we'll see the same thing in the upcoming gubernatorial race, as I said. I don't think you need a crystal ball to see who's going to win this election. And I'm not picking on JKT. He's running a great race. But, you know, I think we all know he's going to win.

And that's not because he's a better candidate. It's not because Democrats are more popular than Republicans. And it's not because he's got more votes, he'll get more votes in a fairly had election. It will because in this cycle, the Democrats play the game better than the Republicans. A not uncommon phenomenon if you're familiar with Alaska politics.

It's a simple fact that the candidate and party that can maximize the system to reduce competitive competition among candidates similar to themselves has a competitive advantage in the ranked choice voting game. So that— and that was certainly made clear by the fact that Begich dropped out. There could be no better demonstration that this is a game to be game-theorized. So that's what we have with ranked choice voting. A system that abases one of, if not the most important rights of citizens in our republic, the right to have one's vote counted.

And it's done for the most partisan of political reasons, to increase the chances of candidates winning that were less likely to win under the traditional system of American voting. If you can't win, change the rules. Or as the Russian saying goes, "It doesn't matter who votes, it matters how the counts are voted, how the votes are counted." Thank you.

Am I on? Okay, here we go. Craig, you said the original Ballot Measure 2 passed via logrolling, and I presume that was a reference to including campaign finance disclosures along with open primaries and ranked choice voting, correct? Among a number of other things. Then why is Ballot Measure 2 repealing these incredibly popular transparency measures?

Why would we want to go back to a system where outsiders can donate anonymously through intermediary groups? Well, Scott, you wrote it and you rolled them all together, so to complain that we're repealing what you wrote into one is a little bit like, you know, killing your parents and pleading for mercy because you're an orphan. I mean, the reason we have to do it is because when people tried to repeal before, it was complex and they didn't understand it. So the easiest way to cure the harm, the wrong here, which is ranked choice voting in primaries, is to repeal the whole thing. And we can work together to enact, reenact some of the provisions that might be worth saving, but certainly getting rid of ranked choice voting is worth repealing all of Ballot Measure 2.

So Craig, you're far too experienced an attorney to make such a foolish argument that you can't repeal whatever pieces you want. Well, you could—. First of all—. Well, you could have adopted multiple of those pieces in different bills, but you didn't. You chose to put them all together.

And you chose to repeal them all together. Why would you repeal something that over 90% of Alaskans like? And also, when you repeal it, and you know this as well as I do as an attorney, when you do this, a ballot measure cannot be substantially altered for 2 years. So that means dark money flows into this state for the next election cycle for sure. Why would you overreach when we know it is legal to have repealed just the open primary and just the ranked choice voting because it was attempted just 2 years ago?

Position, Scott, the overreach here was you jamming 15 different things in one bill to such a degree of complexity that individual Alaskans couldn't possibly have understood all the pieces of what they voted for, for Ballot Measure 2. So we're just trying to go back to the base, to the pre-1920 level, and then let's have a dialogue about these pieces individually. Let's not have some ominous bill to completely change how we elect our political leaders, you know, change our society and our people. Let's go back to where we were before, the system that worked. If you wanted to have the argument separately, why did you meaning yes on two, bundle them all together.

You have ended that conversation before it started by you deciding to include incredibly popular issues in the repeal. I mean, this is a chicken or the egg argument, Scott. You put them all together and we want them repealed altogether because we think that's the best chance of getting ranked choice voting repealed. We saw the last election cycle when you have the multiple— some things change, not things change— the debates got very confusing. We thought by repealing the whole thing and going back to basics and starting with a system that really worked in 2020, that Alaskans were more likely to focus on what was important.

And that's getting rid of ranked choice voting and getting rid of the jungle primary and getting us back to a fair and reasonable election system. So it's fair to say you're hiding from the fact that you want to repeal Alaska's ban on dark money. No, I'm not hiding from it at all. I actually would independently vote to repeal what are the very bad rules around the dark money and ballot measure 2.

I can't— we can't read that from here. Okay.

One other question, Craig. You said RCV gives an advantage to whatever party has fewer candidates on the ballot. Do you recall the 2022 governor's race and that that race included two Republicans, one former Republican running as independent, and one Democrat? And if you do recall that race, do you recall who won that race? Well, Scott, you know very well that I remember Les Bill and the governor being on the ballot.

And Mike won that one by— he actually won by a full majority, if I recall. And he won in spite of there being another prominent Republican on the ballot? Well, I think we both know that Bill was probably more taking votes from Les and vice versa. So in that situation where ranked choice voting helped—. So you don't recall that Charlie Pierce, Republican mayor of the Kenai Peninsula Borough, was also on that ballot?

Oh, I actually—. I hadn't. I do recall that there was a certain amount of scandal, so I don't think he ended up posting particularly significant numbers, but I had forgotten he was on the ballot. All right. I think my time is up.

Thanks, Craig. Thank you.

So your turn, right?

Is it just spacebar? Yeah. Thank you. Hey, first of all, thank you to everyone for coming out today. Being fully informed of what your vote means on Ballot Measure 2 is how Alaskans exercise their constitutional right to make law by initiative.

I appreciate you being here. This is super important and we're very confident you know, once you learn what the ballot measure does, that you'll vote no.

This is Alaska's current voting system. As Craig discussed, it has a nonpartisan open primary, one ballot where every candidate for every office appears on that ballot, and every voter, regardless of party or lack thereof, gets to vote. That allows voters, and as we've seen from the data, over 50%, about 53% of Alaskans do not vote a straight primary ticket. They actually want the opportunity to vote for a D, an I, a Libertarian, and they exercise their power that way. Ranked choice voting is the element that requires winning candidates to obtain a majority of all votes in the race.

And finally, there's Alaska's ban on dark money.

There's some other features to those. There's more rapid disclosure, better disclaimer on ads, and steeper fines for intentional concealment of donors. So if Ballot Measure 2 passes, as discussed in my questioning of Mr. Richards, all of it goes away. And it all goes away for 2 years. There's no going to the legislature and saying, "Well, we didn't really mean it.

We actually don't like dark money." What that means is it is immutable for 2 years because that's how Alaska's Constitution on ballot measures works. Here's another piece that is super important, and one must presume that they deliberately drafted the ballot measure this way. This measure does not just return us to party primaries. It actually explicitly gives each of the major political parties the statutory power to make it unlawful for U's and N's to vote in primary elections. That is the language from their ballot measure.

One presumes they made that policy choice. 64% Of Alaskans fall into that category. Now, if you don't like what your primary elections produce for you now, imagine if two-thirds of the voters are blocked from voting in the primaries. That is what you'd get. Why we would allow private clubs to have control over elections that all of us pay for is beyond me, but that is something they don't want to talk about, but it is irrefutably true.

The other thing it does, it ends the ban on dark money. You don't have to take my word for it, although, um, I will give Mr. Richards credit. He openly admits it will end the ban on dark money. But this is from Governor Dunleavy's own Department of Law that says it will remove limits and allow dark money into Alaska's elections. And what that means, what dark money is, is not outside money.

What dark money is, is money that you funnel through an intermediary and then ultimately your name never shows up at APOC. Your name never shows up on campaign finance disclosures. So quite literally, the millions that are pouring into this election would come from Americans for Puppies, Alaskans for Guns, you name it, because there would be no requirement that the true sources be disclosed. There's also a number of other changes that are kind of tucked in there.

Um, ch-ch-ch.

It lowers fines for intentional concealment of donors. It removes some paid for by disclaimers on ads. It removes the requirement that an IE or a super PAC that receives over half its money from out of state to actually disclose that on their ads. All of these requirements are gone if Ballot Measure 2 passes. Here's another thing it does, which we just found out.

Um, Ballot Measure 1 just passed, which restores campaign finance limits. I think we all saw, um, how much money was flowing in our races, especially in the governor's race. Multiple candidates getting 5- and 6-figure donations because We temporarily did not have campaign finance limits. Fortunately, 72% of Alaskans brought those back. Ballot Measure 2 actually repeals the limits for governor and lieutenant governor candidates, the ones we just passed.

It would repeal them before they ever go into effect. So if you didn't enjoy seeing governor's candidates getting $200,000, $300,000 checks, guess what? Ballot Measure 2 brings that back.

Next, I'd like to discuss the kind of people that are supporting our campaign. Um, certainly money from outside has flowed in on both sides of this, but we have a cross-partisan group of leaders— leaders in resource, leaders in industry, veterans. Admiral Tom Barrett is there, Pat Pitney, Jennifer Johnston, former Republican legislator. We have a growing coalition of folks who are just focused on solving problems in Alaska, and indeed there's far, far too many to list.

And then in addition, we have some great organizational support such as Institute of the North, AFL-CIO, Sealaska, the League of Women Voters, TCC, and ARA, the Coalition of the 12 Alaska Native Regional Corporations. So Alaskans have recognized that the power belongs to them. Now let's talk about who's funding the other side. They like to talk about they hate dark money, they hate outside money. They accuse us of taking outside money.

Um, on the right there, you'll see Jeff Yass. He is one of the 20 wealthiest people on Earth. He lives in Pennsylvania. I don't know if he's ever been to Alaska. He's one of their largest donors.

Of course, you recognize Elon Musk. He donated $1.5 million himself. The only reason we Alaskans know those two donated to this campaign is because of the very law that they are trying to repeal. That's absurd, and Alaskans should be aware. And finally, the campaign's second largest donor, who is an Alaskan, was actually indicted a couple months ago for Medicaid fraud, and that contribution has not been returned.

So when we talk about who's funding what, we need to realize that Alaskans are independent. Alaskans like to have their voting power. Alaskans like to solve problems and work with one another. And, you know, we are, most of us, undeclared and nonpartisan for a reason, but also, we are very good friends with our Democratic brothers and sisters, just like we are with our Republican friends. If they have a flat tire on the side of the road, we pull over and fix it.

We're not like the rest of the country, and our voting system should reflect it. So thank you, and if you wanted any more information or who our supporters are, feel free to scan the QR code, and with that, I'll hand it over to Craig.

It's got to be green.

I need technical assistance here.

Thanks. Scott, I've always wondered, if your goal was really to have open primaries, why didn't you just adopt a system of open primaries? Why did you make it so you forced candidates from the same party to go up against each other in the general election? You could have very easily adopted a system that created open primaries, and I think a lot of people would have been fine with that. So, that is a great question, and to be honest, if I go into the Wayback Machine back to January, February 2019 when I was thinking about this, That was actually what I first did, is I looked at top-two open primaries, and what I saw was they could have, in edge cases, catastrophic results.

And we saw that this year. What would we have had in a top-two typical open primary is we would have had two Democrats on the ballot, which would be an absurd choice. That would be no political diversity. Um, so quite honestly, that's the why of it. Now, the other part of it is, um, if you all wanted you wanted party primaries, but you didn't want, you know, you didn't want to exclude U's and N's.

Why did you explicitly exclude U's and N's? Why didn't you write, we will have party primaries and a U or an N can pick the ballot of their choice? Well, I think I answered the— ask questions here, Scott.

So, do you recognize how pushing two Republicans or two Democrats into the general election gives such a competitive advantage to whatever party only has one candidate. It almost determines the race. Why? Why is that a good outcome for Alaska? Why isn't that just gamesmanship?

Well, again, I would go back to the numbers. 64% Of Alaskans are not a D or an R, so we don't think that way. Even those of us— I think I was a longtime Republican myself. I thought of myself as an Alaskan far, far above being a Republican. Now, I just disagree with your fundamental premise.

I point to the governor's race, which we already discussed. Two Republicans, one former Republican, and one Democrat. The Republican won. I point to Senator Murkowski running against Kelly Chabaka and Pat Chesbrough, the Democrat. The Democrat sure didn't have an advantage in that race.

I think she clocked in at about 6%. So I think what you see is Alaskans don't necessarily— they're not hidebound by these party labels. They vote how they want. The same ballot and the same voters elected Mary Peltola, Lisa Murkowski, and Mike Dunleavy. That shows you how Alaskans vote.

They vote for the best person for the job, party be damned. Well, Scott, it demonstrates in all of those races, the candidate that was a single-party candidate, the major candidate won. I'm going to move on here. So you said you're a big fan of the dark money provisions because it tells us, you know, the Elon Musk and Jeff Yass are contributing to our side. I wanted to ask who's contributing to your side?

Who contributes to AB? Who are your major contributors? There's Mark Merrill, who's a He's a—. No, I want your 3 largest, 3 largest contributors. I would have to check, quite honestly.

I don't balance the books, but they're fully disclosed. Okay, well, the ABE Foundation, to your C4, that's fully disclosed? It's not on your Form 990-Fs? C4 is a nonprofit, Craig, as I think you understand the difference between a ballot group and a C4. Okay, no, I'm building to that.

Okay, so you don't disclose your C4 money, to which you take your salary, and which you also pay your fees? Craig, I am not on the board of ABE, nor my staff. I have represented them in court when organizations like the one you I represent have attempted to invalidate our, our campaign transparency and have attacked the voting system. I'm supposed to get the 4 minutes. All right.

So, Noan Yes, who are the major contributors that earmark money to Unite America to, to, uh, Noan Yes, who are essentially the major contributors that you're funneling through Unite America? Every single donor is disclosed on the APOC report. So every single donor to Unite America is also the people that are funding money to to basically change— how to save money to change our election outcomes. So are you willing to say who the 3 largest contributors to Unite America are that have earmarked funds going to Alaska? I do not have that information at my fingertips.

You don't have that information. But the dark money disclosure rules, they sure work great. So it's a good thing we're not repealing those. I mean, you could pull up APOC if you're incredibly curious. I think you're smart enough to do that.

Again—. You can't find it, Scott. The people donating to No On 2 actually want the disclosure to stay in place and have not hidden while Elon Musk and Jeff Yass are again donating to repeal the very law that would give them to go. Let me get to my last question here. Sure.

So I just don't understand how can you look at the absolute clown show that is our governor's race this year and possibly defend jungle primaries and ranked choice voting? How do you stand before Alaskans and say this is a reasonable, responsible outcome where voters' intentions and desires are really being honored? I think we had some of the highest turnout in our history. I think we have a politically diverse selection of choices. And I think one thing ranked choice voting cannot solve for is candidate quality.

We've seen two elections run under the system. When incumbent Mike Dunleavy ran, he got 50.5, I think, in the first round. He ran a solid, disciplined campaign. So your questions are for the candidates. Ask them why they run the campaigns they do.

Ask them why they, why they drop out or don't drop out. That's not a question for a system, that's a question for the community itself. Okay. All right. Sorry.

Closing remarks. Scott gets the burden.

So why, if your campaign is proudly repealing all three primary elements of No On 2, why is every single advertisement only talk about ranked choice voting? Why hide the ball on the fact that nonpartisan and undeclared voters could— and that's a matter of fact, that's statutory law— at the whim of a political party be excluded from primary elections? Why hide that fact if you're proud of it? And don't— I think it would be disingenuous to say the parties won't do that. They've never done that.

Of course they won't do that. In South Carolina and in Texas and in Louisiana, Republican— state Republican parties have all sued to close their primaries. So closing primaries is very much in vogue right now. It's like Chekhov's gun, you know, no, there's a clause in law for a reason. I think everyone would fully expect that one or both of the parties would exercise it.

And again, why would, why would you repeal the dark money element if, and I understand your personal position is that you would individually repeal the dark money element, but make the case to this room that allowing anonymous contributions into our elections makes sense.

And finally, I want to touch on something you said, um, ranked choice voting trashes ballots or, or shreds them or does something of that nature. Um, that's simply untrue. I trust our Division of Elections. I know that's not true. Every vote is tabulated in every round.

What happens with a vote when a, a person decides You know, ranked choice voting asks you the question of, if your favorite candidate cannot win, do you have a preference between the remaining candidates? Sometimes voters do not. But it puts you in no different position at all than if you had voted for the third place candidate in the old system. And finally, I guess I would ask you to grapple with, if ranked choice voting is some sort of progressive ploy, why did, in 2002, the Alaska Republican Party along with the Alaskan Moderate Republican Party, the Green Party, and the Independence Party, sponsor a ballot measure in 2002 that would have instituted ranked choice voting in Alaska. And I'll read you from their ballot statement.

I guess I would ask, what has changed? They said they were curing the fact that elected officials don't reach out to a broad range of Alaskans. They said high offices don't have a majority requirement. And it makes it possible for candidates to win with a low percentage of votes. They also pointed out that with ranked choice voting, you can vote for candidates you truly prefer without wasting your vote or worrying about splitting the vote.

When you rank candidates, voters gain greater influence and regain some of the greater choice. And finally, in closing, they said, Ranked choice voting is good government at its best. We will elect candidates who have the support of a majority and who are more likely to listen to all Alaskans. And we can save tax dollars. Again, signed by the Libertarian Party, Independence Party, Green Party, Republican Moderate Party, and Republican Party of Alaska.

If it was a good idea then, sponsored by the Republican Party, how can it be a terrible liberal idea now? That was close. Oh, we got plenty of time. You can get up there and close your— like— No, I'd rather leave time for Audience questions. Thanks.

Thank you.

I would love to address the dark money issue. So first of all, we had a pretty good and comprehensive finance disclosure regime pre-2020. In fact, in my opinion, it functioned a lot better than the one that got adopted in Ballot Measure 2. And I say this having had the pleasure and opportunity to be against Scott in now what has to be almost a half dozen lawsuits fighting over all this stuff. And in pre-2020, individuals who donated more than $500 to an IE or ballot measure group whose primary purpose was to influence Alaska elections had to do 30-day reports.

And then if it was then 7 days, they did 24-hour reports. This is pretty comprehensive reporting. It doesn't capture everything, but it was a good, solid reporting rule. And it worked, and it was more strict than a lot of states. And of course, the Federal PAC rules also apply.

Anybody gives money to a federal PAC has to file quarterly reports, et cetera, et cetera, and more so when it comes to the primary and the general election. So, we had a good regime. What the dark money rules did is, in my opinion, they just created a reporting schlog, and it's a very one-sided reporting schlog, as I'll discuss. Now, whenever you have additional reporting, there's always a tradeoff of value and disclosure versus the burden of disclosure. And the 2020 rules, as an attorney who has lived this and litigated it and watched it and watched my clients time and time again get sued and hauled into court for what are very minor technical deficiencies, um, I believe we should get rid of true source reporting and dual reporting.

And if we're going to have those kind of requirements, that they get reenacted by the legislature in a meaningful and fair and balanced way that isn't so burdensome on the people that have to report. Um, the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that the average Participant in the American democracy that contributes funds shouldn't have to hire a campaign finance lawyer to be able to give money. And that's almost where we've gotten to this point under Ballot Measure 2. I resent repeal now. They got hailed before APOC, multiple complaints.

They had to, you know, spend dozens of my time and pay me to my time to litigate over these small, little complicated nuances. And that was after they had hired Cheryl, who's a professional person that does this for a living and understands it really well. It's virtually impossible for an individual Alaskan to be a major donor or receiver of donations in this state without third-party professional help, unless they've done it a bunch of times, 'cause the system's so complex.

So, from my point of view, good riddance to bad bureaucracy in terms of Ballot Measure 2 and the dark money reporting. And if we're gonna readopt— readopt something like that in the future, let's do it, but let's do it balanced. Because what happened with the way the dark money provisions were written is they're completely one-sided. They're very gameable. So, the reason I asked Scott the questions related to who's the contributors to the different groups he's involved in is because he understands the rules, so he knows how to funnel the money so he doesn't have to report them.

And good for him, right? It's a system. It's how it works. It's a game. But there's no reason our elections should be a game.

Our elections should be transparent. They should be easy to follow. And everybody should be able to understand not only how to participate as a donor, but as someone that is actually actively involved in the electioneering process.

So the other slides that I got a kick out of with Scott was his billionaires, our billionaires are worse than his billionaires, I think is what those slides basically come down to. Because let's face it, that's what this is. It's too bad it's what it is, but it is what it is. You know, in 2020, a group of activists in Alaska wanted this ranked choice voting. They went down to the lower 48.

They got a bunch of really wealthy people, a couple, however many, I don't even know, to fund millions of dollars every year supporting this ranked choice voting thing. They had millions and millions of dollars in 2020, millions and millions of dollars last election cycle, millions and millions of dollars this election cycle. And finally, of course, the group that's trying to overturn it last time tried to do it with local money. And guess what? Everyone that's ever tried to, you know, put an oil tax initiative on the ballot, learn pretty quick, it's hard to win these things if the other side has 15 times the amount of money you do.

So it's pretty clear that if you're gonna play in a game where one side is funded by billionaires, you gotta find your own billionaires. So, final thing here is I called ranked choice voting a game theory. And that's why I really dislike it, when you bring it down to it. It's because who wins is not who people vote for in a rational, normal way. Who wins is who is able to game the system the best.

And I looked up what that means. I left my notes here.

So when I say game theory, I don't mean a game in the sense of you're playing basketball or Monopoly or something. I mean game in the game theory, the John Nash kind of way. And in game theory, a game is defined as any situation in which multiple players make decisions that result in outcome affecting each participant. And that's what we're getting with jungle primaries and combination ranked choice voting. The decisions the candidates make decide who wins, oftentimes over how people vote.

So no better example of this is Tom Begich dropping out of this race. It virtually guarantees, because the Democrats could coordinate themselves better than the Republicans could, that the Democrats are gonna win this gubernatorial race because they played the game better. And what is not offensive to me that they play the game better, I've certainly played a few in my day, What offends me is that we have an election system that rewards gamemanship. Thank you.

Thank you, Craig and Scott. You guys did a great job. You're formidable opponents. We're now going to turn to you all to see if you have any questions for Craig or Scott. I do have one request.

Make sure they're questions. We're not— really interested in hearing long statements, so please have questions for our opponents, debaters. And one more round of applause, one more round of applause for our debaters. Fantastic. Opposed to both parties, you guys all said we voted for ranked choice voting.

We did not vote for ranked choice voting. If you look at the no on 2 right there, it does not say no on ranked choice voting. It says no on dark money. And when we voted it in, we voted overwhelmingly, both parties, to get rid of dark money. It wasn't—.

There was ranked choice voting was a little note at the bottom of it. And I don't like the fact that this was all piled together with multiple— with ranked choice voting, dark money, and campaign— all the other campaign finance stuff. Just to reiterate, what was the question here? The question is, is why does that sign not say anything about getting rid of ranked choice voting? And what the hell are all of these things doing compiled together on the same ballot?

That's pretty good, right? Thank you.

I think that's equally for both of us. It's your initiative. Well, fair enough. So I'll restate what I said earlier. The, the reason that Repeal Now is repealing everything across the board that Measure 2 adopted is because they strongly feel strongly about ranked choice voting.

They feel strongly about jungle primaries, and they felt the best way for Alaskans to understand the need to repeal was to not repeal something partly, because then you end up, as happened last cycle, with 50 conversations about 50 different things. In our point of view, it is much more effective and clean to repeal all of the bad bill, all of the 2020 measure, and come back and correct it down the road if that's what we want to do. But trying to do it, trying to parse it out and repealing this piece and that piece was demonstrated, I think, the last election cycle, is not a successful strategy.

So I'm going to intuit that part of that question was why were they originally proposed together. Okay. Yeah, and I think it's a great question. And to be honest, you know, I'm someone who worked with you know, a lot of different folks. I'd worked for Ted Stevens, I'd worked for Don Young.

I worked for Ted Stevens the year he lost, in fact, under the spoiler effect to Mark Begich. He lost to Mark Begich by 3,000 votes. A candidate ran to the right of Ted on the issue of choice, 'cause Ted was a moderate on choice. He got 13,000 votes. You know, with ranked choice voting, Ted actually would've won in 2008.

So these experiences accumulated of how do we get back to Alaska first politics? And so I thought that the closed primary in a state with 64% unaffiliated was a mistake. And I thought ranked choice voting is what you need to prevent, you know, the gamesmanship that Craig referred to. I think it's gamesmanship when Democrats were always trying to get an AIP or a Libertarian into the race, and the Republicans are always trying to get a Green Party candidate into the race. That's the gamesmanship under the old system.

So I wanted to cure for those things. So when I was putting that together, the final piece of it was, how do we get back to the way things used to be in Alaska when I first started working in politics? And it was, We are being overwhelmed by this outside money. It's popping up here, it's popping up there. So the idea was, give voters the choice to vote for whoever they want in every election, and give them information in real time about who's trying to influence their vote.

That's it. That's why it was put together.

Anybody? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Hi, Jim Minnery. I'm asking Scott Kendall a question.

One of the—. I'm a conservative Republican, but one of the interesting things that I found is that some liberal friends and rumblings going on as to why they're voting yes on 2 is 2 words: Tom Begich. And what they've asked me is, if this whole thing was supposed to be about choice, more choice better, then what just transpired is very bitter in their mouth right now because they elected, they thought, Tom Begich, and the system forced him out. What's your response to that? I mean, I, I did not support what Tom Begich did.

I thought he could have stayed on the ballot, and that would have presented a, a more balanced slate. I think, you know, I know Tom. I worked with him in the legislature. I found him to be an honorable man. And what he said publicly was, when I came in as the second, uh, vote-getter as a Democrat, I could not raise money.

So I don't want to go through this. I can't tell him to go through that. I do agree with you. I understand the angst of folks dropping out. I think Tom should have stayed in.

But, you know, I also thought Kelly Chewbacca should have dropped out a few years ago, and she didn't. She contended with Senator Murkowski. So it's— you can't control for candidate quality, and you can't control for the candidate's choice, but you can prevent them from manipulating the system, so to speak.

Two more down there. Thank you. We're going to come to you. A couple of— first, a quick historical note and then a couple of questions for Craig. It started as blanket primaries in 1947.

I'm Senator Matt Clayman from West Anchorage.

No statements, questions. Right, no. But this becomes a three-part question then. Why aren't you all talking about the history of blanket primaries dating back to territorial days? We've had blanket primaries from '47 to '60, went to some kind of an open primary where— or closed primary as we call it today for 6 years, then went back to the blanket primary and stayed with that to '92.

So really the long history of Alaska is to have blanket primaries where you get one vote on one primary. And I guess really it's a question for Craig. Why, why do you want to go against Alaska history in terms of having single vote primaries where all the candidates are on one ballot? Well, I don't think that's anybody's— I don't, I don't— I think actually Repeal Now is fairly agnostic on the open primary issue. So I'm not going to give their position.

I'll give mine. I thought that— I thought it worked just fine in 2020. The Republicans had a ballot. You could take the Republican ballot or you could take the Democrats that combine with all the smaller parties and take their ballot and you could vote your slate. However you wanted.

I thought that was a perfectly fine system. To me, the harm of this is not whether you have all of the pri— all of the parties on the same ballot, or whether you split them up into two ballots. To me, the harm here is that you're forcing people of the same party to run against each other in the general. And just the way the game plays out, sometimes that hurts Democrats, sometimes it helps Democrats, sometimes it hurts Republicans, sometimes or, you know, whatever, but over time, it's going to definitely end up hurting Republicans because they tend to get more votes. So to me, I don't like it, not because the primary is open or closed, or you got 2 ballots or 1 ballot or so on.

I don't like it because it's changing our election outcomes in this very gamemanship sort of way. And my other question is, why are you misrepresenting and misstating the Constitution? Because in Article— in Section 6 about initiative, about ballot initiatives that pass, it specifically says it may be amended at any time. There's a 2-year ban on repeal in Section 6, but there is not a ban on amending it. So why are you misrepresenting the Constitution as a seasoned trial lawyer like yourself?

I don't think I ever said that you can't amend it. I think Scott did. You said it. Okay. Well, I think I took it from Scott, so that's my answer.

I should find better lawyers to listen to. That's my mistake. Where are you going to find one? Hi. I'm going to try not to make this a statement.

But we have had crazy governor elections in the past. You both worked for a governor who went and got a lieutenant governor after the primary. We had Governor Hickel, who took Arlister Jeluski's lieutenant governor and ran in the general for Alaska for independence. So my question is, define gaming.

Did you say define aiming? Gaming. Gaming. So I mean, the fact— yes, there were games before. And I'm the one that, going back in history's time, I'm the one that filed the petition to have Byron drop out of the Democratic Party and join Bill, right?

So no stranger to gaming. The games were played. But I just think under the ranked choice voting model, the games have gotten entirely more prevalent. You picked a couple of very good examples, which were not great outcomes in the grand scheme of democracy, probably, when you get down to it. But we're beginning to see it occur more and more and more often under this system, and it's more and more prevalent.

And I think the actual value of an individual voter's vote is diminished by this system.

I'm Patricia Baum, and I have a question.

Why in Ballot Measure 1 did you limit someone like me to $2,000 but let the unions and PACs give 4 times that much? Is that not fair?

Is that not unfair to me? I'm— Does that not conflict with the whole idea of dark money? Well, first of all, I'm not sure. You asking about Ballot Measure 1, which just passed in August? Right.

As I understand—. It promotes, it promotes actually dark money 4 times for the PACs to give without disclosing? Well, first of all, as I understand it, the old campaign finance limits were struck down by the Ninth Circuit because they were too low. They violated the First Amendment. So as I understand the limits in Ballot Measure 1, they were indexed up for inflation so they would be constitutional.

So they started with the prior campaign finance limits, which I believe were passed in 2006 or 2008 via ballot measure, and they indexed them up. As to your question with dark money, I think perhaps you don't really understand. Dark money is money for which the donor has been concealed. It's not necessarily PAC money or other forms of money. It is money that has been funneled through the Humane Society or Americans for Jobs or some other group, and so that the actual person who put the money into that group does not show up on the the donation.

But as far as a question about Ballot Measure 1, I think it's a little outside what we're talking about, but I'm happy to talk to you afterwards if you have questions.

And Miss Richards, you had some really good points, but most of your argument seems like it's either bad or good for one party or the other, the current system. And for those of us who couldn't care less Rotary pick or the Harley owners group pick my candidates, the Republicans or the Democrats. So for those of us who are truly nonpartisan, what does your side offer? So first of all, it can help both. It can help any member of any party, right?

I did argue that it tends, I think, to help Democrats more than Republicans over time, but that's not really the force of my argument. It's not that we should want to help the Republicans, although I tend to vote Republican more often than not. My point is really that it just creates a system where the people that would normally win in a traditional election aren't winning. I mean, it's doing that because it's changed the way we're counting votes. And to me, it's not that the people that aren't winning that, in my view, probably should be winning under a fair system.

The problem is, is just that we've got a system that is creating outcomes that are different than what I think a more fair election cycle would create. I think people's votes should count. I don't think people's votes should be trashed, and I think it's important that we have a system whereby parties have the ability to get one candidate up and run one candidate, and they're not forced into this position where they have to run multiple candidates. Because again, it doesn't necessarily hurt Republicans over Democrats. I'm sure there are races where it's hurt Democrats too, but there's no question that this dynamic changes the outcome of the game, and I don't think it should.

One thing I wanted to say in response to Mr. Weddleton's comment, because although I was a longtime Republican, I'm now a nonpartisan, is sort of reflecting off your question. One of the things I think has improved greatly in our open nonpartisan primary is the 64% of us who don't affiliate with either party, when we run for office, we actually get to run in the primary election. Under the old system, you had to travel the state collecting signatures, and then you just got onto the general election ballot and no one had ever voted for you in any primary at any time. And I can't think of anything both more punitive to those independent candidates but less democratic as well because the voters had never chosen those people. They just popped up out of the ether.

That was the old system. I think the new system that doesn't advantage or disadvantage any party relationship or lack thereof is just more fitting to Alaska's unique demographics.

Hi, Shelley, former gubernatorial candidate and senator. Question is for you, Scott. The data clearly shows that ranked choice voting disenfranchises various sectors of voters: minority, seniors, those whose first language is not English, and those with a lesser education, because the mechanics are confusing. And it's also because now instead of 2 candidates for race, they have to study up on 4 candidates. A lot more information to know when they walk into the voting booth.

So my question is, how are you okay with disenfranchising so many Alaskans? And then a separate little quick question unrelated to that. You boasted that ranked choice voting would reduce negative ads and mudslinging. And I don't think it has. Do you think it has?

Thank you, Senator. That was actually an excellent question. Well, first of all, it is. It's a very good question, especially the last part, which I'll get to last. So first of all, where you say it disenfranchises minorities, people who have English as a second language, the disabled, I take that very personally.

Not that you're accusing me of something, but I was raised by a single mother. She was struck down by polio as a child. I was raised by a disabled person. One of the things I would really like to work on is making our special needs voting work better for Alaskan voters, because quite honestly, we make it the hardest to vote for the—. For—.

By the people who we should make it the easiest for. So that resonates with me. I will say, we have studied the data, and the spoilage rates since this system went into effect are at or below what they were before. And I will also point out that AFN, the ANCSA CEOs, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, the NAACP, almost every major group representing a minority community in the state has actually supported us in, in both enacting the open primaries and ranked choice voting and in keeping it. So I think the proof's in the pudding.

They have found it to be more representative, and we have not seen the spoilage rates, because certainly that is something that would concern me. And then I, um, With respect to multiple candidates, we've always had multiple candidates. We had, you know, again, we had the split vote when Senator Stevens was defeated by Mark Begich. When Tony Knowles was elected both times, he was elected by a plurality because we had multiple— we've always had multiple candidates because we have the AIP, we have these other political traditions in the state. And finally, to your last point, it was truly my hope that it would reduce negativity in campaigning.

I think we all see the trajectory that this centuries, unfortunately, on with neighbor hating neighbor and so forth, which I don't subscribe to. Um, I, I love my friends across the political spectrum. I love people who voted for and against Donald Trump. I, I don't subscribe to that. So I would hope that it would reduce it.

I think we have seen through social media and otherwise it hasn't reduced it. But what I will say is it disincentivizes it, because when you do engage in negative campaigning, you are not as successful. And we have seen that. But thank you, that's a great question. And not to pick on anyone in particular, but I'm going to start a rule called the state senator rule.

That's one person, one question.

So if you could state your name and— Hi, my name is Paul Butera. I don't remember your name, but you said that you're disappointed with Begich dropping out. And so my question is to Craig, and that is, how would Yes on 2 have made that a different result? Because my understanding is that that would have just been a closed primary, and the person who got the most votes, which in this case would have been JKT, would have progressed on to the general election. So how does Yes on 2, how would that have changed that outcome for the better in the scenario that you were describing?

Well, it would have changed because it would have been JKT versus whoever the highest vote getter was. So it would have been one Republican versus one Democrat, whereas what we have now is, let's call it discipline, because that's how I view it. The discipline in this particular instance of the Democratic Party was they were able to get they're a second person to drop off, which means you now have 1 Democrat against 3 Republicans. And just the nature of how people don't rank all the ballots just almost guarantees JKT wins. So that, that's the answer is, I mean, if you did, because one party did it and one party didn't, it almost guarantees their victory.

And I just don't think elections should be won and lost on that sort of thing.

I, I think the voters, not not the people playing the game, should determine who wins elections. Hi, I'm Jean Creighton. I work with North Star Group these days. Who is doing the education on ranked choice voting? Like, who has been doing it?

Who's continuing to do it? Because I'm sure people are confused. And I'm just wondering how we're dealing with that confusion. Well, Scott's got the 501. Why don't you tell them, Scott?

The state of Alaska has actually done a really good job at it. There is a group, an educational group called Alaskans for Better Elections that has educated. We've also seen groups like AFN, the League of Women Voters, multiple nonprofits engage in it. But what you say, in terms of, I know most people must be confused, is simply not the voter experience. Quite honestly, we have seen at or below the spoilage rates we saw under the old system because believe it or not, Alaskans can just count to 4, and when you are presented with 4 choices and it says rank them in the order you prefer them, people can go 1, 2, 3, 4.

There's— I mean, you can think about it and you can try to make it complicated in your head, but under ranked choice voting, you literally cannot harm your first choice by ranking other candidates, because the only time your vote transfers to your second or your third choice is when your candidate is in last place and mathematically cannot win. So it really is however you understand the tabulation process or so forth, if you rank the candidates in the order that you support them, your vote will be represented. It isn't, you know, I didn't love how many presidential candidates there were and staring at that grid, to be honest, but there's nothing we can do about that. The presidential election exists in its own sphere, but I sort of reject the premise of the questions that Alaskans can't count to 4. That has not been the experience nor is that what the data supports.

Randy Illidge. First off, thanks Commonwealth North for doing this. But I've noticed that ever since Mr. Kendall spoke that his screensaver is still up on the screen. So I know that that might be an oversight. I just wanted to bring it to your attention.

I don't control the screen, Randy, I promise.

That was the question? All right.

Craig, I think you're probably best positioned for this one. So I think sort of the tacit defense or the defense of the dark money repeal of that provision was sort of predicated on complexity and complexity in terms of compliance. And you sort of intimated that it has a disparate impact on maybe your clients versus Scott's. Can you just explain a little bit more about what the, what the issue is, you think, there? Yeah.

So I think I first started by saying we had a perfectly good disclosure regime in 2020. So it's not like we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. But in terms of— it is— there's ways, like in many things in life, to game the current dark money system. And I just use— I'm picking on Scott here because he's my opponent in the debate. And the way they do it is one system, right?

So they— the ABE funnels its money through a 501, which is a nonprofit. And as long as they don't actually go so far as to push electioneering, say vote for this or vote for that, they have the ability to put in a lot of money and not disclose donors for things like overhead, Scott's salary, paying for legal fees, that kind of support. And the other way that ABE does it is they use mega donor PACs, United America. So what they do is they have all the contributions going through this huge massive PAC that contributes to all these things in the world, or in America, I don't even know where, but it's impossible really to follow the money. The dark money rules don't work because you can't see when people are giving money to United America whether that money's earmarked for Alaska.

Or is my client is using a PAC that is Alaska-specific, so we know everything and we know the donors are all coming through the PAC because of the way that PAC's set up. And maybe next time around people will do it differently and follow Scott's approach. I don't know. But my point is the idea that this current system eliminates dark money as it's defined or in any way, you know, solves the problem of knowing where the money's come from, just, I think, just observably isn't accurate.

Yeah, briefly touching on that, maybe a show of hands. How many people in this room have individually donated $2,000 or more to a Super PAC?

Congratulations, the rule does not apply to you. It only applies to people who donate $2,000 or more to a Super PAC. And again, as Craig said, Donors sometimes work through PACs, and as Craig's own— or pardon me, Yes On 2's own donors have, Elon Musk did not write a check to Yes On 2. He wrote a check to America PAC, which wrote a check to Aurora Action Network, which wrote a check to Repeal Now. So again, the only reason we know these people donated at all is because of the dark money disclosure.

Otherwise, we would have a report that just says Aurora Action Network, and we wouldn't know where the money came from. So, you know, everyone seems to funnel through these donor-advised PACs. That's something they do. I mean, the good news for Alaska is when you open up the report on APOC, there are all the donors listed. Whether or not people are interested enough to go look is another matter, but at least the press can.

The press can look. They can report as they have reported. I think they do a good job, and I think quite honestly, I closely align myself with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who says, "Disclosure is the antiseptic that will preserve our elections." When they allowed unlimited money through Super PACs, they said, "Transparency is key. Money is speech, but transparency is key." And I agree with that sentiment. Transparency is key.

Okay, we're running out of time. We'll just have time for one more question. One more question, and if If I could maybe give it to Judy Brady, who was one of the original Commonwealth North executive directors. So if I could do the honor. Thank you.

Thank you. This was a great program. It was a great idea and two wonderful speakers. And I was laughing a little bit because I was thinking of Governor Hickel and Governor Egan.

And I was executive director under both of them and then the first woman president of Commonwealth North under both of them. And you can imagine Governor Hickel and Governor Egan listening to this and deciding, you know, what they thought about how to handle this. They both thought, interestingly, the same thing on any issue, that everybody got to speak and everybody got to vote. So if you were in some way prevented from voting, they would not like it. They would do something about that, and they could.

So I think that's real important, that everybody gets to speak and everybody gets to vote, and there's no doors to keep people from voting. So that's the only thing I would say, that they would enjoy this. And we would enjoy having them. And there would be a lot of more issues raised.

And Judy, sorry, because that was a beautiful statement. We have one last question. And if I could— Introduce yourself, please. Yeah, thank you. And thank you to the presenters.

I'm Bob Butera. And I'm a nonpartisan voter. And I vote in primaries every year. And every year I have to decide which Which primary, prior to the change, which primary would I vote in? Because I want to choose a Republican in one race and maybe a Democrat in another.

I was prevented from doing that. I love the new system. How would you defend taking that away, the open primaries? And this is to Craig. Yeah, well, it's like I said earlier, I, I don't feel that strongly about the ballot because I've been in the situation where I've had to pick as well.

I voted before 2020, and sometimes I picked the Republican ballot, sometimes it'd be the Democrat. I didn't find it that offensive myself. Um, but that being said, that doesn't go to the real harm that I'm talking to you about ranked choice voting. The real harm that I'm talking to is, um, we could have adopted a system that just opened the primaries and put all of the parties on the same ballot. And frankly, I would be perfectly fine with that.

I think that would be a fine system, but that's not what we did here. We put everybody on the same ballot, but then we force multiple candidates for the same party into the general, and that's really what rigged the game. That's really, in my mind, what takes what was a fair and reasonable election system and turns it into game and chips. So that's not only my thesis here, it's what I generally believe, is that we've developed a system that doesn't necessarily lead to the people that should win winning. It leads to a system that those that game the system well win.

Sometimes. Yeah, real briefly, and I think, Bob, you raise an excellent point, and what I found was interesting was I had a lot of people push back about this changed open primary, because they're like, only people in the parties want to vote. And we actually looked at the data. So 64% of Alaskans don't belong to either major party, and they actually account for 62% of turnout in the primary election. So they are showing up roughly proportionally.

So imagine our low turnout primaries that are at 24, 25%, and all of a sudden going down to 8%. I think that would be tragic because a minority would be deciding in most races who won the race, because that's typically the election of consequence. And finally, I point to a very poignant one for me, which was in 2020 when Senator John Coghill, who I disagree with on a lot politically, but I think is probably one of the finest human beings I've ever met in politics. I really love John, and he was unelected in his primary election because 5% of his constituents voted against him. And I just think that's a tragedy.

People like John Coghill should be on the general election ballot so that all voters can have their say.

So that concludes our debate. I really want to thank Scott and Craig who spent a lot of time preparing and I think did an excellent job. Thank you.

And thank you for your terrific questions. We're done? All right. Take care.