Alaska’s general election ballot asks voters whether they want to repeal the state’s ranked choice voting system, open primaries and a campaign finance disclosure rule. This will be Alaskans’ third vote on this set of election reforms. They were adopted by a very slim margin in 2020 and barely survived a recall attempt in 2024.
Ballot Measure 2 is simple and complicated at the same time. We’ll break it down for you.
1. What exactly does Ballot Measure 2 do?
It would repeal everything in the old Ballot Measure 2, which Alaskans adopted in 2020. The repeal does three main things:
- It gets rid of ranked choice voting. If the repeal passes, voters will fill in one bubble per race.
- It drops the nonpartisan primary election. Instead of one primary ballot that lists all candidates, political parties would have their own ballots and voters would choose which ballot they want. Party bylaws could say you have to be registered with that party to get their ballot. They could also allow unaffiliated voters to have it. Or a party could say any legitimate voter can vote in its primary.
- It removes certain “dark money” disclosure requirements for political contributions.
2. Explain that last part. What is dark money?
Dark money is a term for political contributions that aren’t traceable to a contributor.
The transparency requirements Alaskans adopted in 2020 said groups that act as intermediaries have to disclose the “true source” of donations over $2,000. To see what that means, let’s look at one celebrity contribution in the Alaska Public Offices Commission database:
This is a contribution from Elon Musk to a group called Aurora Action Network, which gave it to the Yes on 2 campaign, also called Repeal Now.
If it weren’t for the “true source” reporting requirement, the public would only know that Aurora Action Network is the biggest contributor to Repeal Now. But Aurora had to reveal its true sources of larger contributions, so we can see that Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, chipped in $1.5 million.
(There’s an irony here: Musk’s contribution is aimed at repealing the law that reveals that Musk made that contribution.)
3. What’s the basic argument for and against the election reforms?
The architect of the system, Anchorage attorney Scott Kendall, says the most important part is the open, non-partisan primary. He says it lessens the parties’ grip on selecting candidates and could diminish hyperpartisanship. He says he decided on a top-four primary to give general election voters meaningful options. Ranked choice, as he sees it, was a way to narrow the four-person field and avoid a spoiler effect, without having to hold a separate runoff election.
Opponents say ranked choice is confusing and deters people from going to the polls. They say the added step of tabulating the rankings causes public distrust in election results. Also, many Republicans miss the opportunity to hold a partisan primary, to select the best candidate at the August election and then unite behind that person by November. Many conservatives consider Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski a poster child for what’s wrong with the nonpartisan primary. They’d like a partisan primary so that they can replace her with a more conservative Republican.
4. Tell me about the money for and against Ballot Measure 2.
No on 2, the campaign defending the current election system, has raised the most — over $10 million as of the start of October. Most of it comes from very wealthy people in the Lower 48, including former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and election reform advocate Kathryn Murdoch, daughter-in-law of media baron Rupert Murdoch. Also, because of the true source disclosure, we can see that one donor to a group that’s backing No on 2 is Kimbal Musk, brother of the world’s richest person.
Repeal Now, on the other hand, has raised $2.6 million. Most of that is from Elon Musk but the group received a lot of smaller contributions from prominent Alaska Republicans and business owners.
5. Why do we keep voting on this and will it keep popping up on the ballot?
Alaska’s experience shows people around the country are willing to invest a lot of money in establishing or repealing ranked choice voting and other voting reforms. If repeal advocates narrowly lose again this time, they may be willing to try again with a new ballot measure for the statewide election in two years. The issue can keep appearing on the ballot as long as Alaskans are willing to continue signing petitions to put it there.
6. Is there a chance the reporting about Democrats’ ballot stacking will have an impact on the outcome?
It certainly could. The idea that any candidate, no matter the party, could be a top-four primary election finisher and win a spot on the general election ballot seems to have inspired political operatives to attempt to fill the spots with potential spoilers. A lot of people, including President Donald Trump and Gov. Mike Dunleavy, are blaming Alaska’s election system for allowing a second Dan Sullivan to run in the Senate race.
Kendall, though, chief defender of the current system, says spoilers were an issue before 2020 as well, in the form of third-party candidates. As he sees it, ranked choice, acting as an instant runoff, is a remedy for the spoiler effect.
