Alaskans have had two elections under ranked-choice voting (RCV), and we’ve had two great lessons on how awful a system it is. Fortunately, someone stepped up to do something about it: Phil Izon of Alaskans for Honest Elections. On Monday, the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) released their interview with Mr. Izon, describing in detail how RCV was pushed on Alaska, how he decided to fight back, how he got a repeal on the ballot for this fall — and in so doing provided a blueprint for other states faced with this terrible idea.
One man, it seems, can still make a difference.
AMAC Action: How did ranked-choice voting come into being in Alaska?
Phil: Ranked-choice voting was pushed in Alaska with 99 percent out-of-state money. It came from a citizens’ initiative. They flew people from out-of-state to Alaska to get signatures [from people] that were not Alaskans. They were not citizens doing the citizens’ initiative. They were out-of-state people. Paid signature collectors. They spent about $7 million getting it on the ballot and getting it approved. They won by half a percent. They lost [on] election night, and then after mail-in voting and absentee voting, they won by half a percent.
And so that’s how ranked-choice voting came to Alaska.
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And here’s what he did about it:
AMAC Action: I take it ranked-choice voting is not very popular in the state of Alaska?
Phil: We collected 43,000 signatures and we turned [them] in a month early. We battled George Soros and friends the entire time we were [gathering] our signatures.
So, I would say that no, Alaska really didn’t like it because they helped us get this project done.
Here’s the onion:
AMAC Action: What was the minimum requirement of signatures and how many did you end up with?
Phil: We needed 26, 000 and we got 43,000. And it’s certified, it’s on the ballot, it’s all set to go. It’ll be on the ballot November 5th. It’ll be vote “yes” to repeal ranked-choice voting from the state. [Hopefully] we’ll be the first state in the country to get rid of rank choice voting.
Alaska’s referendum laws were changed to add extra requirements to get an initiative on the ballot; in 2007, the law changed from just requiring a minimum number of signatures to requiring not only that but a set percentage of the votes cast in the last election, and a minimum percentage from at least 30 of 40 state House districts. That’s a tough row to hoe in a state the size of Alaska (my wife and I drove to Palmer to sign the first day petitions were available), but Alaskans for Honest elections got it done, and as I’ve noted, the repeal will now go on the ballot. Unless I miss my guess, we’ll dump this bad system and go back to our original closed-primary, one-man-one-vote system.
Now, this is important to the rest of the country, not just Alaska. There are efforts to push this bad idea on the rest of the country, state by state. There will be billions of dollars from all the usual suspects (let us mutter the word “Soros” softly amongst ourselves) pushing this effort.
Now, Phil Izon has provided the rest of the country with a blueprint of how to fight it.
