A great deal of money and effort has been spent over the past several months to make the fight over Ballot Measure 2 seem more nuanced and complicated than it actually is. Fundamentally, the choice before Alaska voters is simple. Do we want to return to a system in which Alaska’s two major political parties (and their most extreme partisans) overwhelmingly control the choices Alaskans have in general elections? The bill would repeal the initiative passed by voters in 2020 and eliminate ranked-choice voting and open primaries. And it’s no coincidence that the bill’s proponents focused on RCV, whose benefits are more subtle and gradual than open primaries. That’s because Ballot Measure 2 supporters want to abolish RCV, but their real power grab is to give political parties back control of candidate selection by eliminating open primaries. Alaskans should reject that effort.
Although open primaries were not a focus when the 2020 Ballot Act that enacted RCV was passed, its benefits have since become clear and substantial. Rather than choosing candidates from one party, voters will now be able to choose their favorite among all registered parties in each election, with the four parties that advance to the general election being the most popular choices. That’s guaranteed.
In contrast, the old system rewarded the most extreme candidates who pandered to the basest instincts of party members. The clearest example of this trend was Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s loss to Fairbanks attorney Joe Miller in the 2010 Republican primary. Although his extreme positions were deeply unpopular with Alaskans as a whole, they were extremely popular among the small number of Republicans who came to vote. August. As a result, Mr. Murkowski had to launch a historic write-in campaign to block objectively bad candidates simply because they failed his party’s ideological purity test. Ta.
Under the old system, Alaska paid for closed partisan primaries with public money, but political parties benefited. Why would you want to go back to that?
Ranked-choice voting itself is also successful in providing incentives for lawmakers to focus on getting the job done rather than putting red meat into the political base. There will always be representatives representing highly partisan districts, so far-right Republicans and far-left Democrats are in no danger of disappearing from state politics, but in a significant number of races, RCV has It has made us realize that we have the best chance to win. Dominance means that it is attractive to at least some opposition voters, and that slandering them is not a wise move. The result is a realistic representation that doesn’t lean too far in one direction or turn its nose up when political opponents show a willingness to work on bipartisan solutions. Additionally, there will be four slots for each race on the general election ballot, giving a fair impact to independent candidates and candidates from parties that do not fall into the RD dichotomy.
American politics these days is even more difficult, divisive, mean, and sometimes downright dangerous than we’ve seen in recent decades. We should not reward extremists who grandstand and do everything they can to prevent our system from working. We need to encourage people interested in participating and collaborating with each other. That’s exactly what open primaries and RCVs do. Alaska is slowly bringing the rest of the country back from the brink of extreme partisan conflict, and party hacking groups that raise money from party members’ hatred of “the other side” are pushing us back to the old state. We are doing everything we can to bring it back. Broken system.
Please don’t let me. This election, vote no on Ballot Measure 2 to keep political power in Alaska with voters.
