The sprawling campaign behind the failed voter initiative to repeal Alaska’s open primaries and ranked-choice voting system has continued to lie to the public about how it was funded and how it spent money, state campaign regulators found this week.
In a new order, the Alaska Public Offices Commission — the state agency tasked with overseeing political campaigns — hit Alaskans for Honest Elections and several associated groups with a new round of fines totaling $156,000. That’s on top of a $90,000 fine levied against the group last year, which was upheld by a Superior Court judge.
That comes as the organizers behind the effort, which voters narrowly rejected in the 2024 election, have already launched an effort targeting the measure in 2026.
The group has been accused of a long list of violations of Alaska campaign laws that include late, incomplete, misleading or altogether missing reports covering their financial activities, as well as a scheme to filter money through a fake church. That last charge landed campaign head Art Mathias, a right-wing organizer, with a hefty personal fine.
During hearings on the complaints, conservative organizer Phil Izon claimed the missing and inaccurate reporting wasn’t an attempt to deceive voters but “just incompetence.” In separate proceedings, he also conceded that the signature-collecting had been a mess and wouldn’t have reached the ballot had the Division of Elections not allowed them to fix otherwise fatal errors.
APOC commissioners didn’t buy the argument then and didn’t buy it now.
“We impose the maximum statutory penalties because the respondents, who are all controlled by Mathias, Izon, or both, have proven themselves shockingly poor at complying with their reporting obligations throughout their campaign advocating (for the initiative),” it explains. “None of the respondents provided reports are anywhere close to accurate about the amounts and sources of their campaign spending before the election.”
The decision against reducing the fines is a clear message that patience has long run out at the oversight agency. It’s not atypical for APOC to reduce penalties by a massive amount, recognizing that many errors in reporting are due to inexperience with reporting. It notes that the group did nothing to fix its reporting, and continued to violate the law.
“The egregious and widespread extent of the respondents’ reporting violations is even more clear when taken one by one. Honest Elections has rarely filed a report on time, made significant errors in all its quarterly reports, and left unpaid previous penalties assessed for violations,” the report explains. “The Ranked Choice Education Association (the fake church) contributed more than $65,000 to the (initiative) effort and even now has reported little of the details, failing to file a single quarterly report out of five that are long due.”
That all said, it’s not clear that the fines will ever be paid.
According to the finding, APOC commissioners recognized that Izon and Mathias had already dissolved or planned to dissolve the groups found of wrongdoing. That possibility has loomed over most of the proceedings. Disgraced former Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson made that case while arguing against the latest round of fines, claiming that would moot the complaint altogether and should bar them from issuing fines.
“We disagree,” APOC replied in its order. “Deciding this matter provides relief by solving the question of liability even if the respondents’ dissolutions hinder enforcement and collection. This decision vindicates the public interest in enforcing the campaign finance and disclosure laws to maintain the integrity of elections and form the electorate. The claims are not moot.”
Under the order, the groups have 30 days to pay the fines or 15 to appeal them.
Attorney Scott Kendall, who helped author the open primaries and ranked-choice voting law and worked on the complaint that led to the latest round of fines, said that he’s hopeful that the groups don’t completely duck liability because he said it would lay the groundwork for groups to ignore the state’s campaign laws in the future. Mathias, for example, faces a direct fine of $11,000 for continued failure to clean up reporting.
Kendall said Alaskans should keep the fines and behavior detailed in mind as the groups pursue another repeal effort.
“The supporters of repealing Alaska’s election system continue to break the law to conceal their donors,” he said. “With a total of nearly $250,000 in fines, they are now among the worst campaign finance violators in the history of Alaska. Now, these same characters are launching a new repeal effort; only this time they’re also attempting to repeal Alaska’s ban on dark money as well. It’s clear that — in addition to imposing closed party primaries on Alaskans — they also want anonymous Outside money funding campaigns in our state. It’s embarrassing. Why the hell would Alaskans trust these clowns to change our elections when they’ve shown they’re incapable of even following the law?”
The order
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 Bluesky.
