A handful of people gathered at an south Anchorage church on Thursday evening to launch an initiative to signify signatures that aims to end ranking choice voting and return to the method Alaska used to choose its candidates.
The new system that Alaskans utilized at first in 2008 and which combines the open primaries with an overall vote that lets voters rank as many as four contenders.
Art Mathias, a longtime Anchorage resident and the founder of Wellsprings Ministries, is a supporter of the repeal effort. He told his supporters that a ranking choice puts the whole country in danger.
“Literally in danger,” he said. “If we don’t get rid of with rank choice voting We will never be able to elect another conservative and then we’ll be able to count on Outside corporations coming in and buying our candidates , and purchasing our election.”
Mathias has announced that he’s contributed $100,000 to the campaign The fundraising campaign raised nearly $400,000 people outside of the state.
People who support ranked choice say it gives citizens the ability to vote freely, and not worry about the possibility that two candidates they love could split their vote.
The system is prone to favor consensus-based candidates and reduce the influence that political parties have. However, it’s not certain that ranked choice puts conservatives in a position that is disadvantageous to liberals. In the year 2000, Alaska re-elected its Republican governor and also elected 32 Republicans to the 60-seat Legislature.
Ranked choice influenced the outcome of only 3 Alaska races. In two of them, the results of the polls favor Republicans. In every other race the candidate who received the most votes from first choice remained in the lead, even though the votes of the losing candidates were distributed according to voters’ preferences.
Mathias along with other guests at the Kickoff event framed the repeal campaign into culture war terms in mocking the left’s acceptance of transgender individuals.
“They keep on claiming that a man could get pregnant, until we believe in it. Are you convinced?” Mathias asked, creating a chorus of no. “How absurd could this really be? We must not just let this go. We must stay committed. We must be involved, or it’s going to become more difficult. How many pronouns can you use to describe yourself?”
The other speakers were Republican campaigner Michael Alfaro, a North Carolinian who has had success fundraising for Trump’s presidential campaigns. Alfaro has said that former governor. Sarah Palin was to be the keynote speaker, but Palin didn’t show up. Her former campaign adviser, Jerry Ward, said she was flying and didn’t make it at the right time.
The campaign will require 27,000 signatures to place the motion on the ballot in 2024.
A poll conducted by Alaska Survey Research last month found that the large majority Alaska voters would reject a rank choice if the issue is asked in the next election.
