The Alaska Public Offices Commission has ruled in favor of the complaints regarding allegations that Anchorage the pastor Art Mathias and groups he established violated numerous campaigns laws in their attempts to abolish Alaska’s open primary and ranking choices voting.
In the decision made on Wednesday afternoon, the Commission imposed civil penalties of $94,610 on Mathias and the groups he runs for not registering and not filing disclosure forms for campaigns and not putting “paid to by” the identifiers they use on their campaign videos and other materials.
Mathias, Alaskans for Honest Elections and similar groups are pushing for an initiative on the ballot that would abolish the system of voting Alaska voters opted for in 2020. The system includes non-partisan primaries and an election that lets voters select up to four candidates.
“The commission was in agreement with almost every single allegation we brought up,” said Anchorage lawyer Scott Kendall, the voting system’s creator who filed the lawsuit for Alaskans for Better Elections, an organization that defends the state’s voting system against attempts to derail it.
The largest portion of the commission’s fine was $45,000 that was assessed against Mathias himself. This was due to the transfer of a $90,000 personal campaign donation through a non-profit church affiliated with the organization that he runs and not filing reports to reveal that he was the real source of the cash.
Kendall describes it “money laundering.”
“So it’s evidently a greater severity than the other accusations, and I believe the commission handled it properly in sanctioning it at this scale,” Kendall said.
Mathias and his lawyer and his attorney, and his attorney who was the former Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, deny the $90,000 was not properly passed via an intermediary. They also argued in the APOC discussion in the month of November that Mathias’s donation to an auxiliary group of a church was mixed with other contributions, therefore when the auxiliary contributed the same quantity in the direction of Alaskans for Honest Elections to help the repeal effort It’s difficult to tell the source of the money. Mathias or any particular individual donor.
Mathias and the groups against ranked choice that he is the leader of could challenge the findings of the commission in the state court. Mathias didn’t respond to his call within the time required for this story.
Nothing the commission has done would stop a ballot initiative which seeks to end the system of voting. The opponents of the ranked choice system plan to collect signatures later this month in order to put the issue to voters.
“If they gather enough signatures and have valid, the signature will appear on the election ballot.” Kendall said.
Additionally, APOC Thursday dismissed claims about an ex- U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka and Preserve Democracy, an anti-ranked choice group she is affiliated with.
APOC is likely to rule in the near future on another complaint Kendall has filed against groups who are seeking to end the ranked choice voting.
