Alaskans for Honest Elections — the sprawling campaign to repeal Alaska’s open primaries and ranked-choice voting system — has been accused of yet another round of not-so-honest tactics by opponents as it nears the deadline of its signature-gathering process.
Pro-RCV group Alaskans for Better Elections says it has fielded several complaints about misleading claims and other confrontations with the initiative’s signature gatherers. Those range from inaccuracies about how the election system works to the suggestion that signing the petition is a way to show support for RCV rather than help repeal it.
Alaskans for Better Elections has taken the unusual step of setting up a streamlined process for people who might have misgivings about signing the petition and want to remove their signatures. Under state law, signers of any petition may withdraw their signature by filling out a form with the Division of Elections. That form can be delivered via mail, fax or email. However, this must be done before the petition booklets are submitted to the state, which is expected sometime Friday.
John-Henry Heckendorn, a partner with Ship Creek Group that is working with Alaskans for Better Elections and worked on the 2020 voter initiative that created the system, said it’s an unusual step for the campaign to take but that it’s merited given the unusual tactics.
“People have come to the campaign saying they felt like they were duped into signing this and were asking what recourse they have,” he said. “We’re responding to people who are telling us that they felt they were misled. [We have] no issue with their right to attempt a ballot initiative or gather signatures, but they don’t have a right to break the law, they don’t have a right to abuse private property, and they don’t have a right to spread misinformation or lie to people or trick people.”
Alaskans for Honest Elections, its organizers and other groups have faced several complaints accusing the group of skirting state campaign disclosure law. State regulators with the Alaska Public Offices Commission agreed, levying nearly $95,000 in fines against the group for inaccurate and incomplete disclosures as well as a scheme to filter a $90,000 contribution through a church.
In the midst of those complaints, it was revealed that Alaskans for Honest Elections had turned to a paid signature-gathering effort rather than the volunteer-driven effort that had dominated much of the year. While the group has publicly signaled confidence about the petition, it appeared they were going to fall short of the Alaska Constitution’s requirements for voter initiatives.
The Alaska Constitution sets the bar for a voter petition to signatures equalling 10% of the turnout of the previous statewide election — about 26,000 signatures in this case. The group has claimed it has far surpassed that figure with more than 41,000 signatures, but it’s the second part of the Alaska Constitution’s requirement for petitions that appears to have tripped up the group. The Alaska Constitution also requires petitioners to collect signatures equal to at least 7% of the last election’s turnout in 30 of the state’s 40 state House districts.
In communications presented to campaign regulators last month, people involved in the campaign conceded that they hadn’t hit that benchmark in several Anchorage-area districts.
As the deadline has neared, people have reported seeing campaigners in more progressive parts of the city, including outside of the New Sagaya grocery store in downtown Anchorage.
One of those people would be Catherine Coward, a physical therapist who raised her concerns with the campaign but is not otherwise connected to it. In an interview with The Alaska Current, she recounted running into signature gatherers outside the grocery store Tuesday evening. She said she declined to sign the petition when first approached but said she had some misgivings about the interaction, so she returned to ask them about their support for the repeal.
She said the interaction didn’t go particularly well, with the petitioners repeating many of the inaccuracies that conservatives have made about the system, such as your vote not counting if you don’t rank all the candidates or that it’s a violation of one person, one vote.
“You’re telling me — and presumably other people — that the reason ranked-choice voting is bad is because if you only vote for one person, they will throw your vote out? That’s just not true,” she said, adding that she even had a third interaction with the group in the parking lot. “It got a little heated … but I feel really strongly when you’re collecting signatures for something, you need to be telling people the truth and not giving them misinformation.”
She said the argument escalated with, at one point, one of the campaigners accusing them of being liberals who “love vegetables and gay people.”
“Things spiraled downhill from there,” she said, laughing, “in a kind of funny-if-it-weren’t-so-disturbing sort of way.”
Amber Lee, a communications consultant who previously worked on RCV educational communications ahead of the 2020 ballot initiative but has no current work with them, also ran into another signature gatherer outside the grocery store. She said a man claimed that it wasn’t an effort to repeal the initiative but described it as an advisory vote to allow people to show their support or disapproval of the system.
Again, Lee said she knew it was wrong but that arguing with the signature collector proved fruitless. She says she hopes there could be some kind of repercussions for that kind of tactics.
“I think it’s really disingenuous to get people to sign things they have no idea about. Ballot initiatives are notoriously confusing enough without just lying about it,” she said. “People who aren’t in the political world would have no idea the guy was lying because they don’t track what ballot initiatives are out there. Ballot initiatives are complicated … I guess that is a place where people can get away with a lot because unless somebody like me hears it and just happens to know the people working on it, where would it go?”
Alaskans for Honest Elections is expected to turn in its signatures on Friday, which is effectively the last day that the group can turn in their signatures to appear on the 2024 ballot due to the weekend and holiday between now and the start of the legislative session. The Division of Elections will have 60 days to review the petitions to ensure that the signatures meet the standards, and once that’s completed, challenges can be brought for an additional 30 days.
It’s still unclear just where the campaign stands, but Heckendorn said the reports from people running into the signature gatherers — as well as the fact that they’re still gathering signatures — don’t bode particularly well.
He noted that Alaskans for Honest Elections was cleared by the state Division of Elections to begin gathering signatures on Feb. 8, 2023. Meanwhile, the minimum wage initiative that was filed on Tuesday was able to collect its signatures in just four months.
“They’ve had the longest runway to gather signatures of any ballot initiative campaign, at least in the last decade in Alaska,” he said, noting that the number of signatures required is lower than usual given that the last election was a midterm with low turnout. “The bar for qualification was especially low for this campaign. Relative to all the other initiatives that have been filed in Alaska, this should have been one of the easiest to qualify, and the fact that the two days before they’re supposed to submit their signatures, they’re running around downtown Anchorage and lying to people about what their petition does, those two things don’t square.”
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.