Alaska Newspaper Story on Spending for Top-Four Initiative

Alaska voters will see Measure Two on their November 2020 ballot. It is a measure that would make it more difficult for parties to obtain or keep qualified status. It ends the ability of parties to have nominees for any office other than president. Therefore, there would no longer be any method for parties to obtain or keep qualified status based on their votes. Instead, the only way would be to have registration equal to 3% of the last vote cast.

This newspaper story says the initiative has received 99.5% of its funding from outside Alaska. The main contributors are John and Laura Arnold, and Kathryn Murdoch. The campaign for the initiative is outspending the opposition by fifteen to one.


Comments

Alaska Newspaper Story on Spending for Top-Four Initiative — 23 Comments

  1. Political parties would be FREE to support any candidate. Quit fighting over the conch.

    There is no need for qualified parties when qualification is meaningless.

  2. Qualification is not meaningless. Being a qualified party means being on the presidential ballot automatically. Being a qualified party means being listed on the voter registration form, which is hugely helpful in gaining more registrants in order to remain on the ballot.

  3. I actually had a back and forth with the official campaign on Reddit, and whoever running the account either had no idea what was actually in the initiative it would seem. They kept claiming that you shouldn’t worry if any parties can’t make it into the top 4 because they can still just petition their way onto the ballot. Turns out, from reading both the local newspaper coverage and the actual initiative, that isn’t true. When I responded with sources that it seemingly will remove the ability to petition to get onto the ballot they never responded. Huh.

    Some thoughts :

    I think the anti campaign campaign “Defend Alaska elections” has been a pretty bad campaign. They’ve spent around 95% of the time attacking ranked choice voting and very little time talking about the Top 4 “primary”. Pretty stupid if you ask me, with RCV on the ascendancy in America. If they had otherwise focused on the jungle primary and how it will take away your choices and basically locked in the two party system in Alaska, it probably would have been a much more effective opposition. No idea if it will pass, but if it does, it’s because of how stupid the anti campaign conducted itself.

    Overall though this initiative is a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s obviously an attempt to fuck around with the state Republican primary there. In fact the website for the campaign directly mentions the Republican primary, and them only. I believe they’re the only one who doesn’t participate in Alaska’s blanket primary process. The RCV stuff was likely tacked on to bring out RCV activists like FairVote who don’t really seem to care about how bad a proposal is, as long as there’s some ranked choice in it somewhere. I wish FairVote would develop some standards beyond “it has ranked choice voting so therefore good”. I imagine the likely result of this will be on big ticket races, you’ll just end up often getting 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans, and the general election will basically function as a ranked choice primary for each group of partisans with the greater block winning. I doubt they’ll be much crossover rankings like the proponents expect. On the other hand, at least it allows a write in without a “sore loser” clause which is better than Washington and California’s jungle primaries and every other failed jungle primary proposal. I suspect despite the Alaska Libertarian parties support for this initiative, they’ll be forced to run write in campaigns for the big races in the general if this passes. It also has RCV without a jungle primary for the presidential race, which is kinda a big deal. So it’s kinda a wash. If I was in Alaska, I’d probably end up voting no, especially after the campaign possibly lied to me but at least compared to the Top Two initiative in Florida, there’s at least some good stuff in it. And since it isn’t a constitutional amendment (you can’t do that with an initiative in Alaska), it will be easier for the legislature to amend or repeal it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll junk the Top 4 part and keep the RCV 😀

  4. Ranked choice and approval voting don’t even need either primaries or runoffs. The method finds the winner from a field of candidates of any size or partisan viewpoints. But, it can work with them, as well, if parties are so authorized.

  5. Richard, the only three qualified parties in Alaska currently are Alaska Democratic Party, Alaskan Independence Party, and the Alaska Republican Party. So I don’t see how “third parties” would be any worse off under the new election system. If the Greens, Libertarians, etc. aren’t qualified parties under the current system and wouldn’t be qualified parties under the new system either, how can you use them not qualifying under the new system as a reason to reject the new system?

  6. @ Nick: It could be possible under top 4 for the nominees to be 2 Democrats, 2 Republicans, and no one else. It could even be 3 from 1 party, and 1 from the other.

  7. @WalterZiobro, my comment was more in response to Richard’s comment that “Qualification is not meaningless. Being a qualified party means being on the presidential ballot automatically.” No minor party currently gets on the presidential ballot automatically, so that point seems irrelevant.

    Also, I agree with Jim’s comment that party labels will be mostly meaningless. Any candidate of any party will have equal access to patriciate in the first round. Then the four best candidates (as deemed by the voters) will get to move forward to round two.

  8. Alternative parties have been able to get on the presidential ballot automatically as recently as 2016. In fact, the LP expected to be qualified for the presidential ballot this year until that was derailed by a questionable ruling(see http://ballot-access.org/2019/08/01/alaska-says-libertarian-party-is-not-ballot-qualified-for-president/) and the Alaska Independence Party is recognized but chose not to nominate a presidential candidate.
    With this Top 4 system it will be more difficult to maintain recognized status and more difficult to build a party organization while at the same time doing nothing of consequence to diminish the standing of the establishment parties.

  9. NO party *qualifications*.

    —-
    EQUAL ballot access nom pets for INDIVIDUAL candidates, partisan or inde [for legis offices] / nonpartisan for exec/judic offices.

    PR legis / Appv exec/judic — pending Condorcet

    TOTSOP

  10. From the article that Richard links to, it says that most of the spending FOR the ballot measure comes from independents, while most of the spending AGAINST the ballot measure comes from Democrats/Republicans. Most commenters on here seem to think the ballot measure will help the two established parties. Unless the Democrats/Republicans are playing a super secret game of 9-deminsional chess, why would they be spending so much money to defeat a ballot measure that you think will benefit them?

  11. The Libertarian Party stayed on the Alaska ballot in 2016 with its high vote for US Senate. In 2014 it passed the vote test with its fairly good vote for Governor. In 2012 it passed the vote test with a good vote for US House.

    Similarly, in the 1990’s and early 2000’s decade, the Green Party enjoyed qualified status because of its high vote for Governor or US Congress. It never had enough registered voters to qualify under the alternate registration test. All that would be swept away by the initiative.

    As to why the Republican and Democratic Parties oppose the initiative, it is because the initiative deprives them of the core function of political parties, which is to nominate candidates. Independent and minor party candidates have enjoyed considerable success under the existing Alaska election law. If the proponents of the initiative really cared about minor parties, they would have written their initiative to make it easier for a party to obtain or keep recognized status. But they don’t care about minor parties.

  12. I mean both parties fought against the top two primary in California, and yet third parties and independents rarely ever make it to the general election, and never do for statewide races. The Dems and Repubs don’t hate jungle primaries because they think they’re going to lose their power, they hate it because they have to spend extra money and time fighting among themselves. It creates major headaches for party bureaucrats and leaders who have to spend extra time managing the process and strongarming the weaker candidates out of running to make sure their party makes it to the second round. The reality is the point of jungle primaries is not to expand party choice, but to turn general elections into intraparty races, in the hopes that the more “moderate” candidate will be voted in. It’s pretty obvious that they’re hoping to turn the general elections in Alaska into big intraparty Republican races, in the hopes of dis empowering the Trumpian elements of the local party who have more clout within a partisan primary process. So of course third parties and independents hate these systems, by their very design they come at their expense even if that’s not the main purpose.

    Plus it’s more appropriate to say that a faction of the Alaska Republican party supports this, in particular I believe one of the main organizers of this initiative has close ties to Lisa Murkowski.

  13. “The Dems and Repubs don’t hate jungle primaries because they think they’re going to lose their power, they hate it because they have to spend extra money and time fighting among themselves”

    Exactly.

  14. How many X 3 [60 pct] vs Z 1 [40 pct] in any top 4 primary —

    with Z winner ??? —

    on top of rigged gerrymander districts.

    IE one more MATH MORON *reform* by MATH MORONS.
    —-
    NOOO primaries.
    PR and APPV
    TOTSOP

  15. There is only one mathematically perfect voting system.

    It’s one-man-one-vote, one whole vote per paper ballot, and it bring pure proportional representation every time.

    It is the Hagenbach-Bishoff Method, Hare and/or Droop Quotas, and the mathematics for exact percentages electing under PPR using the math has not been improved since around 1900.

    The new United Coalition USA has been bringing the correct math for pure proportional representation Electoral College since 1992 and it works fine. Anything less than PPR for electing names is no good.

    The Ogle Method (or “count the tics”) for decision-making is the best and most perfect decision-making process because every item gets prioritized and must attain 50% plus one vote to be considered approved.

    On November 3rd our team starts fresh and we attract team players under one stack of paper ballots under the pure proportional representation (PPR) Electoral College.

    Despite the fact that the founders of google launched off our backs in October 1997, blocked the team and the unity, our team functions perfectly on a sub-atomic scale.

    See our team now, after more than twenty-five consecutive years of pure proportional representation:

    PPR Electoral College
    http://www.pprelectoralcollege.com

    The 2016 Johnson/Weld Libertarian Party campaign blocked our team, that brought only about 18% female names, and thus blocked all factions with 50% plus one vote or less of voting power.

    Libertarian Party women have no voting power because us men aren’t doing a good enough job.

    http://www.allpartysystem.com/electoral-college.php

  16. What percentage of membership does the Libertarian and Green parties currently enjoy in Alaska?

  17. @RW,

    Alaska lists all political groups on their registration form.

    The smallest, the Alliance Party with a mere 15 registrants managed to qualify its presidential candidate for the general election ballot.

  18. @RW,

    Keeping track of party membership and organizing their nomination processes converts political parties into quasi-governmental agencies. This is not a legitimate governmental activity.

    The government should not care about political parties. Find me anything in the constitutions of the United States or any of the states that say they should care.

  19. How many State consts mention political parties — esp primaries / conventions ???

    — blatant violations of no title of nobility clause — 1-10 ???

  20. “Keeping track of party membership and organizing their nomination processes converts political parties into quasi-governmental agencies. This is not a legitimate governmental activity.

    The government should not care about political parties. Find me anything in the constitutions of the United States or any of the states that say they should care.”

    To take that one step further, it’s why primaries should not be ran by the state and privately funded/organized.

  21. 1963 Mich Const – party primary / convention stuff words

    2-4 [part]
    (2) Except as otherwise provided in this constitution or in the constitution or laws of the United States the legislature shall enact laws to regulate the time, place and manner of all nominations and elections, to preserve the purity of elections, to preserve the secrecy of the ballot, to guard against abuses of the elective franchise, and to provide for a system of voter registration and absentee voting. No law shall be enacted which permits a candidate in any [[ partisan primary ]] or partisan election to have a ballot designation except when required for identification of candidates for the same office who have the same or similar surnames.


    5-21
    The governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and attorney general shall be elected for four-year terms at the general election in each alternate even-numbered year.
    The lieutenant governor, secretary of state and attorney general shall be nominated [[ by party conventions ]] in a manner prescribed by law. In the general election one vote shall be cast jointly for the candidates for governor and lieutenant governor [[ nominated by the same party ]].
    Vacancies in the office of the secretary of state and attorney general shall be filled by appointment by the governor.
    —–
    8-3 [part]
    The state board of education shall consist of eight members who shall be nominated [[ by party conventions ]] and elected at large for terms of eight years as prescribed by law. The governor shall fill any vacancy by appointment for the unexpired term. The governor shall be ex-officio a member of the state board of education without the right to vote.

    Note – the party conventions stuff is unconst. — Various court cases 1976-1980s- see 1988 Mich law for independent candidates.


    MUCH worse in other State consts ???

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