I usually ignore Rich Moniak’s excursions into misdirection, although most are written well enough to seem logically convincing to the unwary. His July 12 column about ranked choice voting (RCV) is different. It is not a well-reasoned point-by-point defense of RCV and that may be because it is not possible to present such a thing.
Rather, he offers an inaccurate and idealized explanation of RCV, and then wanders off to criticize the people who organized the petition against RCV. He goes further afield to attack the Electoral College, then targets Trump (obligatory, these days I guess) and finally gets back to where he started.
Moniak says that America’s problems stem from the political parties having direct control (except in Alaska, for now) over the primary process — the process by which candidates are chosen to be on the general election ballot.
RCV and its ugly sister, the “open” primary, (RCV/OP hereafter) are not the creations of a well-meaning, but largely hidden, group of academic process nerds. No, these foul creatures are the product of Democrats operating behind dark money organizations and who present themselves as noble unaffiliated experts seeking to improve the system, tamp down partisanship, and reduce party control.
Well I am a Republican and want my party to be able to choose our nominees for the general election ballot for any state or federal office. I do not want to control or influence the selection of nominees for any other party. Such behavior is considered ill-mannered among Republicans.
Democrats do enjoy messing around in Republican business. They got Bill Sheffield elected governor in 1986 by crossing over to vote in the Republican primary.
Democrats are far more organized, disciplined, and devious than Republicans. The Dem rank-and-file are more gullible and obedient than the R base. They hoodwinked Alaska into voting RCV/OP into existence and then, in 2022, made darn sure there was only one prominent Democrat on the June 11 special election primary ballot. Al Gross, a fake Independent, ran in that election to fill Congressman Young’s remaining few months in office. In that special election primary, Sarah Palin netted 43,601 votes; Nick Begich 30,861; Al Gross 20,392 and Mary Peltola 16,265 votes.
Gross then mysteriously disappeared from the scene, leaving two Republicans and just one Democrat to advance to the August special general election ranked choice ballot, where Palin and Begich split their votes and Peltola won. The same thing happened again in the regular primary and general elections.
Under the old primary system, there would have been just one Republican and one Democrat on the ballot.
The Dems are continuing to show rank-and-file discipline: There are 10 state senate seats up in 2024. In eight of those 10 primary races, the disciplined Democrats are running just one candidate in each race. Multiple Republicans, however, are running in six of those ten state senate primary races.
All 40 Alaska State House seats are up in 2024. Out of those 40 races, only three of them (districts 15, 38 and 40) feature more than one Democrat running in the open primary.
Democrats lecture us that competition is healthy, but to win elections in a state with 143,599 registered Republicans and 73,539 registered Democrats, they needed a workaround. With RCV/OP, they can watch Republicans bleed money to cannibalize each other while they prohibit competition within their own party. This leaves them with ample resources and just one Democrat candidate for each race on the November RCV ballot.
It is satisfying to note that national Democrats avoidance of competition has left them with Joe (the Doomed One) Biden as their apparent nominee for 2024.
To be clear: RCV/OP is not the manifestation of some benevolent third party or mysterious force of political nature. It is a Democrat-produced contrivance that gives that party more leverage because of the obedience of its members. We have a chance this fall to throw it out. If you have any sense of fair play and any hope of transparent government, you will join me in voting to do just that.
• Murray Walsh is a semi-retired consultant in Juneau.
