The sprawling campaign to overturn Alaska’s fledgling open primary and ranked choice-voting system—which is led by a group called Alaskans for Honest Elections—broke several state election laws and caused “substantial” harm to the public, campaign finance regulators said in a report this week.
The findings come from a staff report by the Alaska Public Offices Commission following accusations that Alaskans for Honest Elections, its organizers and several groups in its orbit failed to report their activity in a timely fashion, failed to include accurate “paid for by” disclaimers on their communications, failed to register in the first place and in one case illegally filtered money through a Washington-state church.
The staff report recommends the commissioners impose $59,205 in fines out of a statutory maximum of $343,000. Most campaign fines in Alaska are set per day, resulting in sky-high maximum penalties that are regularly reduced. Still, nearly $60,000 in fines is high by even APOC standards.
The bulk of the violations relate to reporting failures by Alaskans for Honest Elections—the leading ballot group behind the initiative to repeal Alaska’s open primary system—affiliated group Alaskans for Honest Government, Washington-state based “church” Ranked Choice Education Association and conservative activist Art Mathias, who is one of the key initiative sponsors. Most of the violations revolve around the failure to register with the state before making expenditures, failing to make timely reports and failing to include proper disclosures on campaign materials.
While Alaskans for Honest Elections was the only group registered to campaign, the investigators found Alaskans for Honest Elections and the Ranked Choice Education Association spent resources advocating for repealing open primaries and ranked-choice voting. The groups argued that they were only talking broadly about ranked-choice voting and its alleged dangers, but investigators found they fell under the scope of election laws because of the timing, lack of history of working on the issue and several instances where the two entities explicitly urged people to sign the petition to get the initiative on the 2024 ballot.
It was a $90,000 contribution by Mathias filtered through the Ranked Choice Education Association that drew the most concern. Alaska campaign law requires that people backing campaigns must disclose their names, but Mathias initially hid his identity on the reports by first giving $90,000 to the Ranked Choice Education Association, which turned around and contributed the money to Alaskans for Honest Elections.
“A contribution must be made in the name of the true source of the money or thing of value – a person may not contribute using the name of another; or use a third-party conduit,” explained the report. “On these facts, staff concludes that the weight of the evidence establishes that Mr. Mathias contributed his funds to RCEA knowing that they would be repurposed to support AHE through contributions as needed and thereby violated (state law).”
While the original complaint accused Mathias and his allies of setting up the Ranked Choice Education Association in order to obtain tax breaks for its contributors, the APOC report notes that it’s well outside the scope of its power to investigate. Alaskans for Better Elections, the group that filed the initial complaint, said in a news release that it has since filed a complaint with the IRS.
Publicly, Mathias has claimed that he’s personally contributed $100,000 to the campaign and raised as much as another $400,000. The investigation suggests those claims were vastly overstated, and most support came from Mathias rather than a larger effort.
Under the letter of the law, the maximum penalty for masking his contribution is equal to the size of the contribution, $90,000. Mathias could face another $8,300 penalty for failing to personally report the contribution to the state regulators as is required.
On that front, the APOC staff recommended fines amounting to $22,500 against Mathias and another $19,935 fine against the RCEA. While that’s a reduction from the statutory maximum, the staff said the seriousness of the violation should stop any further reductions.
“Staff does not recommend further reduction because, given the size of the contribution, staff believes that the harm suffered by the public was substantial,” it said.
The outcome of the investigation will be left up to APOC commissioners to decide at an upcoming meeting. It’s also possible that the group could appeal any fines to the court system, and the group has already brought on disgraced former Attorney General Kevin Clarkson as its legal counsel.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
