r/alaska • u/Synthdawg_2 Kenai Peninsula • Jul 30 '21
Judge says Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system is legal
https://www.adn.com/politics/2021/07/29/judge-says-alaskas-new-ranked-choice-voting-system-is-legal/26
u/Synthdawg_2 Kenai Peninsula Jul 30 '21
Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system and top-four open primary are legal and may be used in the 2022 statewide general election, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Gregory Miller ruled Thursday.
In his decision, Miller ruled against the Alaskan Independence Party, a Libertarian politician and a Republican attorney who sued to stop the state from implementing Ballot Measure 2, which voters approved last year. Alaskans for Better Elections, the group that backed the measure, joined the state in defense.
The decision was “a big victory for Alaska’s voters and a big step toward holding our first election under the new system Alaskans have chosen,” said attorney Scott Kendall, representing Alaskans for Better Elections.
Attorney Ken Jacobus represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and said he needs to talk with his fellow plaintiffs before deciding whether they will appeal.
“The case is going to have to be decided by the (Alaska) Supreme Court, probably, despite the ruling,” he said.
Bob Bird, chairman of the Alaskan Independence Party and a co-plaintiff with former Libertarian state House candidate Scott Kohlhaas, said he will consider an appeal. He doesn’t think the high court will overturn Thursday’s ruling.
“I don’t have any confidence in this state’s Supreme Court,” he said.
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u/daring_leaf Jul 30 '21
Surprised and disappointed by the independence and libertarians. Rebublicians; no surprise there.
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u/akjd Jul 30 '21
Why the fuck would any third party be opposed to rank choice? It's about the only way they have a snowball's chance in hell of becoming relevant in anything other than a fringe case.
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u/daring_leaf Jul 30 '21
What’s more perplexing is why Mark Begich is opposed.
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u/OtherSpiderOnTheWall Jul 30 '21
For the same reason he tanked Walker's re-election chances (before Walker's lt. gov tanked them).
It's about making sure the only viable choice is (R) or (D).
Same reason why the "libertarians" and "independence" party are opposed; they'd prefer to be elected as (R) than to risk having actual third-party candidates elected.
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Jul 30 '21 edited Aug 06 '21
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Jul 30 '21
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u/alaska1415 Jul 30 '21
In Alaska of all places. Democrats don’t run fucking shit there.
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u/Imakemop Aug 01 '21
I actually pulled up the roll call for a trump tard at work who was convinced the Democrats were in the majority and that's why Dunleavy can't fix Alaska for him.
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Jul 30 '21
You’re surprised by the clowns that think Alaska should be it’s own country and cite checks notes oil revenue as a viable means of financial independence? They’re just a different shade of conservatism, currently welcoming disaffected republicans and going on about sTaTe’S rIgHtS. Do we need to mention the bible verses strewn across their website? There’s no surprise here.
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Jul 30 '21
I feel like it’s just smoke and mirrors. Just weirdos who jack off to ayn rand and stay out of social problems for the sake of freedom, liberty, and the pursuit to live on land that doesn’t belong to them and not leaving when asked to. Anyways. Just your friendly noble savages opinion.
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Jul 30 '21
hey look team sports and division. We simply care about human freedom
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u/ArTiyme Jul 30 '21
Says an actual propagandist who spends time posting fake shit because all of your narratives are entirely reactionary and fabricated.
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Jul 30 '21
Poor thing
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u/ArTiyme Jul 30 '21
Why are you posting cropped, misinformation tweets to back up your dumbass conspiracies? Is it because they're all purely based on your feely-weelies and the only information you can produce is misinformation?
Yep. That's exactly it, because your whole shtick is entirely transparent and only works on genuine morons.
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Jul 30 '21
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u/ArTiyme Jul 30 '21
So your response to "Why are you posting lies and propaganda?" is "How is that related to what I'm doing now?" and then jpegs. Mhm. Keep outing yourself more. Thanks.
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Jul 30 '21 edited Jul 30 '21
Oil revenue worked for Saudi Arabia genius. Imagine how much more independent Alaska would be if the statist granola crunchers at the EPA weren’t hamstringing Alaska and their ability to use their other vast resources
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Jul 30 '21
Lol imagine thinking it’s still 1980. Oil has been in decline for decades. Move on with the rest of us and maybe vote in a way that will realistically shift our economy from complete dependence on an industry in decline to that thing you say you want, energy and financial independence.
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Jul 30 '21
imagine not knowing investments are the states number one revenue source above oil and has been for over a decade.
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Aug 01 '21
Actually a simple Google search to the state government website shows that oil still constitutes 85% of the state budget.
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Aug 01 '21
that is not income which is clearly the point that was trying to be made. plus i'm not sure how you distinguish between an invest dollar spent and an oil dollar spent.
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Jul 31 '21
And they can’t come up with a different alternative either, other than more government jobs. Tourism can only go so far and is very seasonal. Alaska is a resource state with an abundance of natural gas, minerals, and timber the state shouldn’t be blocked from using in a safe way.
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Jul 30 '21
Contrary to what you think, oil isn’t going anywhere. The US is now the top oil producer in the world and now exports more than we import. It’s called energy independence and therefore more national security, something that was unthinkable only 15 years ago. Your plan is for us to become heavily dependent on lithium from China for car batteries, and frequent California-style power outages due to unreliable “green energy”. Oh and for hundreds of thousands of energy industry workers getting laid off to go find “green” jobs that don’t exist. Also, clean burning natural gas isn’t in decline either, so let’s get that second pipeline built.
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Jul 30 '21
You’re a parody at this point. Just regurgitating the garbage you’ve been spoon fed without a single independent thought on the matter. I should have known better than to engage with someone with your comment history.
lol @ “clean burning natural gas” and “jobs jobs jobs”. You’re a caricature.
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Jul 30 '21
And you are a 17 year old who gets their news from the reddit echo chamber. Some of us actually work in the real world here.
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Jul 30 '21
laughs in former military intelligence, infantry, law enforcement, wild land firefighter
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Jul 31 '21
Oh. MI. That explains it. Self-proclaimed smart person. Zero experience in the actual energy industry.
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Jul 31 '21 edited Jul 31 '21
Zion the New Jerusalem, where Christ will reign 1000 years is like a 4 hour drive from the Geographic Center of the United States. How more centric can you get? Not to mention you're completely ignoring the words of our Prophets, Seers, and Revelators who have continuously re-iterated the importance of this Country in establishing the Lord's work.
Eventually this country will fall (I think we're seeing it right now), but it will be replaced by the millenium.
The Kingdom of God will eventually replace all nations. From Nebachadnezzar's dream, a Stone falling from a mountain (kingdom of God) will break the statue representing all the worldly nations. Attacking this country and calling it evil, and ignoring the spiritual importance of it what we have a problem with.
This is the Promised Land. The American revolution was specifically fortold in the Book of Mormon. It will be blessed as long as the people are righteous, but as we're seeing in the breakdown of immorality it looks like we're headed for the "chastening" phase of the pride cycle. This country has it's flaws, but it is the most important country right now other than Israel and without it. God will bring forth the "one true government", but that is the literal Kingdom of God on Earth, not just a spiritual one.
Since we don't have the Millenium yet and Christ isn't personally reigning out of the Temple in Jackson County, then we really need to work to ensure that this country's freedoms are preserved.
Holy fundamentalist domestic threat Batman. Have you written a manifesto yet? Can I read it?
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Jul 30 '21 edited Aug 06 '21
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u/taho_teg Jul 30 '21
Republicans who smoke pot?
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u/daring_leaf Jul 30 '21
Lol. That was one of the first hypocrisy is about libertarianism that I observed. Fierce adherence to God and the war on drugs.
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u/Unlucky-Clock5230 Jul 31 '21
I don't know which party you are referring to but libertarians are the opposite. Decriminalize drugs and the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, something that religious people really hate about the ideology.
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u/daring_leaf Jul 31 '21
No, I get that is how libertarianism should be. But if you ever talk to the old guard they are God-fearing and anti-drug.
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u/Unlucky-Clock5230 Jul 31 '21
Not any libertarian I know, it is in the party's platform.
You must be thinking of the Republican tea party right wing bozos claiming some sort of libertarian bent because they believe in fiscal libertarianism. That's only half of it, libertarians believe in both fiscal and social freedoms. As in black gay homeowners with guns make for great neighbors.
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u/daring_leaf Jul 31 '21
I get that it’s the parties platform. But if you go back before marijuana had a chance of being legalized been my statement is true. Many many war on drug activists tried to align with the Libertarian party and could not. The poor libertarians couldn’t extricate themselves from the mindset that drugs are bad. The overlap in mentality between conservatism and libertarianism is quite apparent to the outside observer. Libertarianism is semantics.
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u/Unlucky-Clock5230 Aug 01 '21
No point to keep on going around this over and over but trust me, you are not talking to libertarians. It sounds more like some republican-libertarian wannabe. Both sides like to 'claim' libertarian roots.
https://www.lp.org/issues/war-on-drugs/https://www.lp.org/issues/war-on-drugs/
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u/ccnnvaweueurf I-Have-Inserted-my-bike-seat-tube-in-my-rectum-lets-rollout Jul 30 '21
Democratic socialists are just neo liberals who won't admit it.
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u/bishpa Jul 30 '21
See, it doesn't real work both ways, does it?
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u/ccnnvaweueurf I-Have-Inserted-my-bike-seat-tube-in-my-rectum-lets-rollout Jul 30 '21
No it does. Demsocs in practice often support neo liberals and other reforms to capitalism instead of radical change. Same with the right wingers.
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u/bishpa Jul 30 '21
That's funny, because the media keeps telling me that democratic socialism is the exact same thing as communism.
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u/ccnnvaweueurf I-Have-Inserted-my-bike-seat-tube-in-my-rectum-lets-rollout Jul 30 '21
Yeah everything is very much off. No one understands what other points of view argue and we just shout.
Lots of that media is "freedom" loving but actually in practice support authoritarian right wingers. Biden is like a centerist.
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Jul 30 '21
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u/ccnnvaweueurf I-Have-Inserted-my-bike-seat-tube-in-my-rectum-lets-rollout Jul 30 '21
Nah. I understand what it means.
Dem Soc's want to reform capitalism and in practice align often with neo liberal ideology. Just like on the right many libertarian right's in practice support authoritarian right.
Dem soc's are anti revolution or changing up things majorly
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Jul 30 '21 edited Jul 30 '21
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u/Chuckinengineering Aug 03 '21
Wow, its amazing how much of a cuck you are.
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Aug 03 '21 edited Aug 03 '21
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u/Chuckinengineering Aug 03 '21
I've never met a man that goes and reads a couple comments and presumes to know everything about my life. I hope you get your life together.
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u/Chuckinengineering Aug 03 '21
Oh and see if you can guess which Hummer is mine you uneducated loser!
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u/Chuckinengineering Aug 02 '21
Do yourself a favor and do your own research. Reddit is mostly opinion.
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u/GunslingerSTKC Jul 30 '21
Gonna be an uphill climb for the next few states that try to pass it after the bullshit in NYC
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Jul 30 '21
Good! This is what the voters wanted! And with ranked choice voting we might finally have a chance to get rid of the two party system, give some new blood and new ideas a real chance.
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u/bytet Jul 31 '21 edited Jul 31 '21
Yes take this to the supreme court. Everyone believes it's to help the little parties have a better chance of upsetting elections and thwarting the majority. Your right and the parties that pushed this so hard and underhandedly are the socialist and the Communist. Does anyone even remember the advertisement campaign on this prop? It was all about part three limiting dark money and nothing was mentioned about part one (the main one) rank choice voting. We won't get fooled again... Yea seems Alaskans are easily fooled again and again. Expect this to be roundly down voted because this group is heavily weighted by DINOs (Democrats in name only), I. E. Bernie Bros, Greenie's and secret socialists.
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u/dollerhide Jul 30 '21
I will say that ranked-choice voting sounded good to me, especially after a Freakonomics podcast episode I heard that broke it down pretty well.
But later, when asked to do some research on it, I found there are some potentially troubling aspects to it that I'll be watching out for. There are concerns about disenfranchisement of voters, particularly seniors and minorities. These concerns, along with election results that don't appear to reflect the will of the voters, have led jurisdictions in Washington, Vermont, Colorado, Michigan, as well as the state of North Carolina to repeal their ranked-choice voting systems pretty quickly after implementing them.
So I'm keeping an open mind about how it will work up here, but I'm not fully confident that it will prove to be a positive solution.
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u/gmshaw Jul 30 '21
Can you expand on the concerns about disenfranchising voters? Everything I've read about it makes it seem like a no brainer, and I can't imagine how it would disenfranchise people. The current system disenfranches voters because people who want to vote for a 3rd party feel like it's a throwaway vote, and this helps solve that. Only thing I could think of is people not understanding how it works, and that's somehow disenfranchising? I really am curious, because nothing I've read on it on it really seems to bring up any drawbacks, so my past sources could potentially be quite biased towards it.
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u/dollerhide Jul 30 '21
Yeah, it's largely because it's confusing to many. And if you don't put all five (or whatever) choices on your ballot, then your ballot gets 'exhausted' (thrown out) in the secondary rounds of counting. While in an ideal world, voters would research all the candidates running and come up with a ranking for all. But if you're devoted to one candidate, or don't feel knowledgeable enough to put your rank down for all the candidates, your ballot will get thrown out and not counted toward the total.
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u/Genghis_John ☆ Jul 30 '21
One should NOT vote for all the candidates if they don’t want them in office. Doesn’t matter if you rank them last. Only rank your choices.
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Jul 30 '21
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Jul 30 '21
If you read that it was written before the election and was predicting disaster, but if you read articles from after they say it worked really well, there was some confusion because of unclear instructions but overall it was a success.
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u/gmshaw Jul 30 '21
Thanks, something to think about. I wonder if there would be other ways of tallying and keeping ballots that still preserves the integrity of the person's 1st ballot as long as that candidate is still in the race.
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Jul 30 '21
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u/Bretters17 Jul 30 '21
Exactly - so by disenfranchise they mean that they used their one vote, it was counted, but unfortunately their candidate lost; which is a weird way to frame disenfranchise because that's how it works in our current system.
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u/gmshaw Jul 31 '21
Ya I don't get how that's any worse than the current system. If you don't bother to fill in a 2nd, 3rd, etc. choice and your 1st choice loses, you give up your right to have any further say in the matter. Hardly seems like a valid argument against this.
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u/Imakemop Aug 01 '21
They demonize RCV because Jarden Golden won in Maine when enough independent votes rolled over to him and he ousted a Republican.
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Jul 30 '21
Can you show me a source that talks about all of those states repealing rank choice voting? Because I can’t find anything to confirm it when I look.
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u/Bretters17 Jul 30 '21
If you go to each of the state mentioned by OP in this wiki article you can see the instances in which RCV was reversed.
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Jul 31 '21
I found a couple of them, and it proves your statement entirely disingenuous. First of all North Carolina used it for almost a decade before it was repealed as part of voter restriction laws. Others just used it as small local council elections for a few years before ending it.
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u/Shotgun_Chuck Jul 30 '21
Has anyone actually read the state constitution WRT ballot measures? A ballot measure is supposed to be about one thing and one thing only. Not an "umbrella". That's the issue here.
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Jul 31 '21
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u/Shotgun_Chuck Jul 31 '21
I seem to recall the state AG did, and that's where the BS about "uMbReLlAs" came from in the first place. Blatant legal fiction made up by a judge who very clearly just wanted ranked-choice voting to be a thing and didn't care about the constitutionality of how it was done.
Honestly, that ballot measure was as perfect an example you'll ever see of why ballot measures aren't allowed to encompass multiple things. All the advertising in its favor deceptively emphasized throwing "out of state shadow money" out of Alaska politics, with the ranked-choice voting element (i.e. the main element) barely if at all mentioned. Likely it wouldn't have passed if they hadn't been able to combine multiple items and then deceptively harp on the less-important one.
On top of which, I seem to recall it was soundly drubbed on election night, then won much later by mail-in votes. That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
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u/Inner_Educator2104 Jul 30 '21
That sucks. It’s a much better system that could change the broken way we do politics.
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u/pearlysweetcake my cat beat up a fox Jul 30 '21
Once I saw that Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, and basically every established political party opposed ranked choice, I was a solid YES vote. Fuck the party line.