Posted on 09/09/2022 4:20:31 AM PDT by george76
In order to avoid a Republican primary, Murkowski operatives orchestrated a takeover of state election laws.
Election officials called Alaska’s special election House race for Democrat Mary Peltola over 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin last week. Peltola’s victory, despite nearly 60 percent of votes cast for a Republican on all first-choice ballots, will mark the first time since 1973 that a Democrat will represent the state in the lower chamber.
Whether the August contest was Palin’s race or Republican Nick Begich’s race to lose is an open question. Whether the Republicans’ loss was a consequence of Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, however, is no doubt, and GOP Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is the one to blame.
Murkowski’s Plot to Avoid a Primary.
In 2010, Sen. Murkowski captured re-election through a triumphant write-in campaign after losing the Republican primary to a former federal magistrate who was backed by Palin. Murkowski comfortably won a third full term in 2016 but continued to antagonize the state’s Republican base with votes to oppose restrictions on abortion, preserve Obamacare, and convict President Donald Trump in his second impeachment. Murkowski also voted “present” in the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and she upset constituents when last year she served as the tie-breaker to move forward the nomination of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who has shut down state development projects.
In other words, Murkowski did not strive to win over Republicans in a state that went for Trump by 10 points in 2020. To save her seat, Murkowski operatives devised a plan to avoid a primary by radically transforming the state’s election system. The answer became ranked-choice voting, a ballot system to rig elections in favor of the incumbent.
Under the ranked-choice ballot system, the traditional partisan primary is replaced by an open-party contest where the top four candidates advance to the general election. Voters then “rank” their preferred candidates in the ensuing race. If none receives a majority, or more than 50 percent of the first-choice ballots cast, the votes are tabulated again and the lowest scoring candidate is eliminated. The losing candidate’s ballots then count toward their second-choice pick, and the process is repeated until a candidate reaches more than 50 percent of the vote.
In August, the investigative group Project Veritas published tapes of Murkowski operatives bragging about fundamentally changing the state’s electoral system to keep Murkowski in power. Democrats, they theorized, would rank Murkowski as their number two preference, giving the incumbent senator the upper hand when the Democrat candidate is eliminated as the lowest vote-getter in a three-way race. This year the contest is between Murkowski, main Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka, and Democrat Patricia Chesbro. In 2020, Alaska voters narrowly approved the state’s new voting system after a successful campaign from Murkowski operatives put the plan before residents as Ballot Measure 2.
“While we were working on Ballot Measure 2 and voting for Ballot Measure 2, we had Sen. Murkowski in mind the whole time,” said Emma Ashlock, a Murkowski campaign coordinator, on camera. “Every single Pat Chesbro voter who ranks Senator Murkowski second, we get their votes.”
Shea Siegert, now the communications director for Murkowski’s re-election campaign, was previously the campaign manager for the group pushing Ballot Measure 2.
In the Alaska House race, Peltola won the seat with nearly 52 percent of the final vote to Palin’s 48.
...
Dark Money Provisions Were a Distraction.
Ballot Measure 2 was sold to Alaskans as an effort to impose greater transparency in state elections by requiring more information to be public about the source of campaign finances. The package eliminated “dark money” from elections, merged the state’s partisan primaries into one contest, and implemented ranked-choice voting for the general all rolled into one.
In an op-ed for the Anchorage Daily News, one of Alaska’s largest newspapers, local activist and Ballot Measure 2 supporter Kiera O’Brien wrote that the proposal would “make three critical reinforcements to our elections infrastructure.” O’Brien highlighted the initiative’s provisions on dark money first, writing, “it would illuminate dark money’s influence by requiring any group that receives over half its funding from outside Alaska to provide a disclaimer on all public communications.”
Dark money, however, continues to flourish in Alaskan politics.
In August, Joel Davidson, the editor-in-chief of the Alaska Watchman, outlined how dark money from left-wing groups is effectively “bankrolling” campaigns to oppose a state constitutional convention, which re-appears on the ballot every 10 years. Davidson highlighted a campaign expenditure report for “No on 1, Defend Our Constitution” showing that the “Sixteen Thirty Fund” donated $500,000 to oppose a re-examination of the state constitution.
As a nonprofit, the group is not required to reveal its donors.
“Aside from Sixteen Thirty Fund, the ‘No on One, Defend Our Constitution’ has been primarily funded by unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers based out of Washington, DC, American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association of Alaska,” Davidson reported. “Each of these groups have donated $50,000. Additionally, the AFL-CIO national union federation has pumped in $50,000 in outside money. Together, these groups have contributed $700,000 of the $821,181 in contributions that No on One has reported thus far.”
Murkowski’s own campaign is funded primarily by outside interests from the lower 48. According to public finance data compiled by OpenSecrets, nearly 85 percent of the senator’s contributions has come from out of state. Only 15 percent came from Alaskan residents in the current cycle. Less than 5 percent of the senator’s financing has come from small-dollar donors. More than 88 percent has come from large individual contributions or political action committees.
Trump-endorsed Republican Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka, on the other hand, has raised less than $17,000 from political action committees amounting to less than 1 percent of her financial support while she remains far more reliant on in-state support, according to OpenSecrets.
In other words, Ballot Measure 2’s provisions on dark money were toothless red herrings to convince voters that its primary purpose was to reform campaign finance as opposed to protecting the incumbent.
A Blueprint to Takeover Elections Nationwide.
The ballot system is becoming the go-to measure to reform American elections by left-wing activists who obscure simplicity in the contest. The multiple rounds of tabulation after election day left Alaskan voters in the dark on the winning candidate for weeks until a candidate garnered more than 50 percent of the ballots cast in August.
The system not only robs parties of their ability to nominate the candidates of their choice, but the mechanism adds layers of complexity to an otherwise simple process for conducting elections.
Alaska and Maine are the only two states to use ranked-choice voting for their elections, in addition to nearly two-dozen cities across the country. In November, voters in Nevada will decide whether to adopt the same system, and efforts are underway in Virginia and Arizona to implement similar ranked-choice voting schemes. More campaigns are almost certainly in the pipeline to reform state elections under a ranked-choice system as incumbents such as Murkowski survive true accountability.
I have always believe rank- choice voting is very likely Unconstitutional.
According to Steve Deace, Iowa turned red by getting rid of primaries. He says that should happen everywhere and replace them with conventions or caucuses.
Fitting indeed
“rather than quitting, as she did when she was governor...”
I hear that a lot. Did she quit because the left was inundating her with frivolous lawsuits that would have bankrupted her family?
How much are the RATs paying him to stay in?
Palin kind of doomed herself when she got a Democrat elected governor of alaska.
How many of those Palin voters were Dems? I live in Los Anchorage and am unaware of any support for Sara Quitter,
This ranked choice crap is just that....crap.
We lost the closed primary and now the Dems have a clear path to perpetual victory.
“I live in Los Anchorage and am unaware of any support for Sara Quitter,”
I lived in Anchorage for 20 years and have a LOT of friends up there still. Please don’t believe the MSM; Sarah is loved there by many/most.
But the caucuses and conventions are still held separately by the parties. The Alaska ranked choice scheme eliminates any separate party selection process and lumps all candidates together on one voting slate.
Not an expert on Iowa, but they voted Red for Trump in the general election which is still a choice of the major party candidates in a normal voting process by the citizens. And they've been electing Republican Senator Grassley for decades.
I think separate, closed primaries is a better way to select candidates than caucuses or conventions. Now those might be better than open primaries in some states.
Re: 15 - She knew the rules. She agreed to play by the rules. She lost.
She’s a sore loser and should work to change the law instead of complaining and doing little else.
This violates 1 man 1 vote. The politicians are giving your vote to whoever they want.
Don’t know all the particulars, but it looks like:
One man gets THREE VOTES.
What the heck kind of an election is this anyway?
The politicians will keep counting till their candidate “wins”.
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