Alaska Legislature: Joint State Affairs, 4/16/26, 3:30pm

I'd like to call this joint hearing of the House and Senate State Affairs Committees to order. The time is 3:32 on Thursday, April 16th, and we are here in Room 106. Of the state Capitol. Please mute your cell phones today. Our House State Affairs members present include Representative St. Clair, Representative McCabe, Representative Vance, Representative Holland, Representative Himshue, and myself, Chair Carrick.

Senator Kawasaki, can you please call the roll for the Senate State Affairs Committee? Yes, we have Senator Wilkowski, Senator Tilton, uh, Vice Chair Senator Bjorkman, and Senator Gray Jackson are both excused, myself, Chair Kawasaki. Excellent. Let the record reflect we have a quorum to conduct business. Our record secretary is Cecilia Miller.

Our moderator from the Juneau LAO is Renzo Moises, and our committee aides for today's hearing are my staff, Stuart Relay and Joe Hayes from Senator Kawasaki's office. Thank you all for helping us today. Today's meeting is being called per AS 24.05.1867 6 on election-related ballot initiatives. And this statute instructs that standing committees of the legislature should host at least one hearing on each ballot initiative that has been certified by the lieutenant governor. Today's hearing is going to include testimony from sponsors of the three ballot initiatives, as well as the one opposition group that has been registered with APOC.

I would note that per the Division of Elections, The only opposition group that has organized with APOC is Protect Our Elections, and that is the organization, uh, designed to oppose the initiative relating to repeal of open primaries and ranked choice voting. There are opposition groups for other ballot initiatives. Because they are not registered with APOC, we are not hearing them today. We had also asked our, uh, presenters to not include any currently elected officials or individuals running for elected office at this time, and so those we're hearing from today are those sponsors who are in neither of those brackets. So, today's presenters will start with the sponsors of the United States Citizen Voting Act, also known as 25 U.S.C.V.

We will then hear from the ballot initiative to restore campaign contribution limits, also known as 23 R.C.F. 2. After that, we will hear from the sponsors of the ballot initiative to repeal open primaries and ranked choice voting. And finally, the Protect Alaska Elections Initiative, which is organized to oppose this ballot initiative effort. Given the number of presenters and the short time frame we have for our meeting today, we're going to ask presenters to keep their testimony to between 10 and 15 minutes and allow between 5 and 10 minutes, as much as possible if we can, for questions from committee members.

If there are unanswered questions after this hearing, members are encouraged to to reach out to individual initiative sponsors for more information. And finally, I would just note for committee members that we are joined by two of our friends from Legislative Legal to answer any politically— or, sorry, potentially legal-specific questions that come up: Andrew Dunmire and Alpheus Bullard, who are online to answer specific inquiries. With that, Chair Kawasaki, do you have any opening remarks before we begin? I do not. We should begin.

All right, let's go ahead and start with our first presentation from the sponsors of United States Citizen Voter Act, also known as 25USCV. Today we are joined by former Senator John Coghill on the phone to talk about this ballot initiative. And Senator Coghill, please go ahead and put yourself on the record and proceed.

Good afternoon, good afternoon. Senator Chair, thank you for hearing this bill, and I know it's going to— I think it'll be a good thing for the state of Alaska. So for the record, my name is John Caldwell, and I'm one of the co-sponsors of the Alaskans for Citizen Voting Initiative. And it's a petition, as you said, 25 USC and So thank you for the opportunity. I am sitting in a vehicle in North Pole between jobs, so I am enjoying the sunshine.

And yeah, I miss you guys down here. So for the initiative, people can reasonably ask, isn't it already legal or illegal for noncitizens to vote in Alaska? And so the question is, why do we need this initiative? The answer is kind of interesting. The rules, when they're used properly, I guess the rules work best when they're explicit.

And there's some ambiguity that has followed in other states, not in this state yet. So this is just really clarifying language. So the Alaska Constitution and statutes were written when the time— nobody contemplated some of the stuff that would be going on in local governments in our day and age. So, experimenting with noncitizen voting is happening. So, the language doesn't clearly say only citizens may vote.

The recent experience in other states shows that the ambiguity is exactly where the litigation begins. And so, that's what happened in the County of San Francisco, Lacey versus city. San Francisco voters amended their charter to allow certain noncitizen parents to vote in school board elections. Opponents pointed to the California Constitution language, "A United States citizen may vote," and argued that meant only citizens could vote, and argued that meant that only citizens could vote. Now, the California Court of Appeal disagreed.

And they held that this wording did not bar the city from expanding its local electorate to noncitizens. In other words, the language may assume for us citizens only, but interpreted by the court, they permitted noncitizen voting in local elections. Alaska's Constitution language on voter qualification is similar. It says every citizen of the United States may vote. In state and local elections, but it does not expressly say only citizens may vote.

So if a court in California can read that kind of wording as leaving room for local governments to add non-citizen voters, it's really— it's not hard to imagine similar arguments being made here if a municipality ever wanted to test our law. Lacey shows these arguments may succeed. So the point of 25 USC is to close that door before it's pushed open, really. The initiative takes what most Alaskans kind of already believe, that voting is reserved for U.S. citizens, and writes it into a statute in simple, unmistakable language so the courts don't have to fill in the gaps. We get to do that as legislators, or you get to do that as legislators.

We get to do that as people. It's a proactive step, actually. Really not political, in political theater or anything like that. And we're just not waiting for an Alaskan version of Lacey, that's all. So that's why we're acting.

We also have seen some ambiguity that can hurt real people. And we saw in Whittier with our highly valued Samoan American community. Here in Alaska. Some of these residents, they served our country and been in the armed forces and all. Confusion, though, over the current system where the government of American Samoa chose decades ago for cultural and historical reasons that its people would be U.S. nationals rather than U.S. citizens, and that collided with the way our voting laws are written.

That's really an unfortunate thing that happened right here in Alaska. Probably our law could have been clear at that point and solved that problem. The inconsistency between the federal statute and our state voting law played a part in the recent situation with you, though. And so this initiative helps by drawing a clear line about who may vote in Alaska, reducing the risk of well-intentioned people find themselves in troubling situations simply because the law was hard to understand or could be misunderstood. So, while some may say this could be solved if residents chose U.S. citizenship, and we recognize the pride that many feel in remaining citizens of American Samoa and U.S. nationals, with passports that reflect their unique identity.

So really, that's on them. It's important to be clear, though, that this 25 USC(b), it doesn't change who became a citizen, who can become a citizen. And it doesn't alter absentee voting. It doesn't change voter ID requirements or the mechanics of running an election. It simply clarifies that to vote in Alaska, you must be a U.S. citizen of age, a resident, registered and not registered in another jurisdiction, and that only people who meet those criteria may vote.

So the effort to promulgate and— I'm sorry, the effort for pro-immigrant and pro-citizen— many Alaskans or their parents and grandparents came here for from other countries, including my own. Uh, we followed the law and went through the long process of naturalization so they could fully participate in our democracy. So the right to vote was a milestone in their journey and in ours, uh, by clearly reserving the franchise to citizens. And so we honor that commitment and encourage legal immigrants to complete the naturalization process so they can enjoy the same right. So finally, a question as fundamental as who may vote should be decided by the people, by the people here in Alaska, not left for judges.

And so this will go out and ask the people to resolve this issue. We've already seen other state courts wrestle with nearly identical language and reach a result that Masons citizens, myself included, found surprising. So I'd rather have Alaskans speak clearly through the ballot box than have our own courts forced to guess what we meant decades ago when our Constitution was written. So in closing, the 25 USC(b) is a narrow, common-sense— it's a measure that aligns our statute with what Alaskans really already believe. And it closes legal loopholes exposed in cases like Lacey in other states and affirms the value of United States citizenship.

I respectfully ask this committee to allow the Alaskans the opportunity to vote on this initiative. So that's my statement. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. Uh-oh. Thank you, Senator Coghill, for your testimony.

And just one small point of clarification: this is just an overview hearing. The outcome there's no outcome that comes from this hearing. These issues will be on the ballot either way, so just want to clarify that. I understand. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I understand that, but I'm also enlisting votes from those who are voters on the committee. I probably should be aware of myself, that's all. I think it's just a good common sense measure, Madam Chair. Thank you, Senator Coghill. Do we have questions?

We do. We'll go to Representative Tilton and then Senator— sorry, Senator Tilton. Oh my goodness. Oh no, no, no, no, no. That's an upgrade.

That's what we're going to do. So we'll go to Senator Tilton and then Senator Wielechowski. Thank you, Chairman Carrick. It's fine. I call myself representative all the time.

It's muscle memory that's been happening for a while. Thank you for this opportunity. Um, Senator Coghill, great to hear your voice today. Um, you just mentioned that the courts upheld City of San Francisco allowing non-citizens to vote in the school board election, and I was wondering, um, did— how many other cities across the country now allow non-citizens voting based on that ruling? Well, I mentioned, I think, two, and that's all that I'm aware of.

But this was brought to me as an issue. I agreed that we should probably tighten up our law. So I hadn't studied that. What I really probably was more aware of than anything was our Samoan community that got caught up in the ambiguity of the law. So that was really my focus.

So I enlisted these other places, but I— To be fair, I haven't studied them all. Thank you. Thank you. And Senator Wielekowski. Thank you, Madam Chair, and good to hear from you, Senator Coakley.

I miss—. We missed our days back in Judiciary years ago. Uh, if—. Would you and the initiative sponsors support a bill that did exactly what your initiative is proposing so that this could be just taken off the ballot?

I suppose so, uh, Senator. I want this put into law, but it would be nice to have the people have to deal with it, showing that it's an important thing. But the legislature gets to be the voice of the people too. So either way, if it goes into law, I'd be happy. Just clarify, that's all.

Okay, I'll go to Senator Kawasaki. Thank you. Um, yeah, it's good to hear from you, um, John. I appreciate your time here. I did have a question.

There's an October 3 memo from the Department of Law, the Civil Division, and it's directed toward Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom. It asks very specifically about what the language might look like within AS 1505-010 It says that probably the proposed bill would amend the statute to begin with "only a person who," and then end with "may vote at any election." Currently, it says a person may vote at any election who, and then subsection 1 is the "is a citizen of the United States." So, just to go off what Senator Wilkowski says, if we were to change the law, would that suffice to what you believe the intent of the, uh, petition, uh, ballot measure— do you believe that that would meet and suffice for the ballot measure request?

Yes, quite simply, yes. And, uh, this came to my attention, uh, and probably because of the Samoan community, which I think has been hurt the most over this issue. And just good process needs to be done in our voting system. With respect to those who want to become citizens, it should be clear. And so if you guys want to put that in statute, it saved me a lot of work.

Okay. I have Representative Holland. Thank you, Chair. Kerik, and thank you for the presentation today. As, you know, Representative of House District 9 with the Whittier Samoans in there, I've paid a fair amount of attention to this issue, and I'm curious about some options as it's related to the way in which we address this issue, because from my perspective, the law was not ambiguous.

This was not a question of ambiguity. Ambiguity of the law. It was the way forms were designed that didn't create proper options to someone to have the question of American national versus citizen versus foreigner available. The law was always very clear. That being said, we have had some discussions about perhaps we should recognize that American Samoan nationals that are in our communities who serve our communities, who have served our country, uh, perhaps should be allowed to vote in state elections, um, and to be able to serve on a local city council where they work, maybe a local school board.

And I'm wondering how you feel about the option of being able to recognize American nationals, uh, Samoans, for purposes of state election and state office, recognizing that Citizenship is still a clear requirement for federal office, so I'm not trying to change that, but have you given consideration to that when this was developed to recognize their role and their contribution to their communities?

Certainly, I have. My understanding is it's a Samoan-based requirement, and so I think if any one of them wanted to become a U.S. citizen, that's their choice, but there's a national Samoan referendum, I think. Maybe I'm wrong on what I'm calling it, but the clarity of they want to retain citizenship. So if you find a way to work through what they have required of them as Samoans and allowing them to vote as U.S. citizens, I'm game for that. Part of this issue was brought to my attention because of the Samoans, but then there's a national issue also of noncitizens pressing in to vote.

And so, I joined with that national group and became a sponsor of this particular law. So, initiative, I should say. So, the Samoan issue, if we can figure out a way, I'm game. But U.S. citizenship should be the goal, right? That was the goal when our Constitution was written, and that should be where I think we stick.

And the ambiguity in our language just needs the clarity. That's really all I'm trying to do. Uh, for the Samoan community, if there's a way, I'd say go for it. Thank you. Thank you.

And I'm going to look to see if we have any final questions before we move to our next presenter. I'll go to Senator Wielekowski. Are we hearing from Mr. Bullard? He is available for questions, so absolutely feel free to ask him a question too. Yes, if I could ask Mr. Bullard, Alpheus Bullard, our legislative counsel, did you do an analysis of this proposed initiative, and could you tell us whether or not you believe this change, this initiative would be a substantive change in law.

Members of the Joint Committees, this is Alfius Bullard of Ledge Legal. Are you able to hear me? We can, thank you.

Once again, this is Alfius of Ledge Legal, and I did review the initiative. And in response to Senator Lilikowski's question through the chair, I don't think that this initiative would change state law at all.

Follow-up? So just to be clear, do you believe that this initiative clears up any ambiguities that exist or is not necessary to go forward?

Through the chair, Senator Wilkowski, I, I don't know how all people interpret that particular provision and whether it would be helpful to the electorate to make clear what the Constitution already requires. I can tell you how I think a court would find, and a court would not find a significant difference. But when it comes to clarity, I don't have an opinion. Thank you. Thank you.

And at this time, we are going to move on to our next ballot initiative. I really want to thank former Senator John Coghill for joining us from North Pole today. And I noticed while we were at the end of that discussion, we were also joined by Mike Chenault, former Speaker from Nakiski. And I just want to thank him for also joining us today. We will—.

Madam Chair, committee members, good to hear your voices. Thank you very much for the hearing. Thank you. It's really good to hear from you too. We're going to move on to our second ballot initiative today, which is on campaign contribution limits.

The sponsors of the initiative to restore campaign contribution limits, also known as 23 RCF2. I would note that both State Affairs Committees passed essentially a, a bill related to this item, ballot initiative last session, and House Bill 16 is actually on the Senate side waiting for final action. So this issue is also being discussed in the legislature. Long story short. Today we are joined by Bruce Botelho on the phone to give us a presentation about this ballot initiative.

And for your information, Mr. Botelho, at the end of each slide, if you simply say "next slide," our committee aide here in the room will be happy to advance the slides for you. Mr. Botelho, if you'd like to put yourself on the record and proceed with your presentation.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Mr. Chair and Members of the State Affairs Committee assembled, my name is Bruce Pitell. I am a resident of Juneau, though I'm calling in from Cordova. I was one of the prime sponsors on the initiative and served as co-chair of Citizens Against Money in Politics. That was the group that collected signatures leading to this ballot measure.

If we could move to slide 2 that begins what prompted the initiative. Um, yes, just to briefly summarize this page, in other words, Alaska's had campaign limits for the majority of its life as a state, and the underlying philosophy behind such limits has been to protect the integrity of the democratic process by basically trying to prevent corruption or its appearance and curbing any undue influence of large donors. And to put it in another way, it aims to help ensure that political officials are accountable to the electorate rather than to wealthy contributors. Next slide.

This graph illustrates Alaska's campaign finance history. As I mentioned before, majority of Alaska since statehood has had campaign finance laws. Limits, and citizen initiatives have twice compelled lower limits. First in 1995, where sufficient signatures were gathered, but the legislature then in 1996 took action to conform to that ballot initiative. And it did so again in 2006, where an overwhelming majority of voters voters supported lower limits.

As noted here in the slide, 73% of the electorate supported lowering the campaign limits. Next slide.

The lawsuit that prompted the removal of all campaign limits in Alaska is the case Thompson the head then. It's— this slide basically reviews the history of that litigation that led the Ninth Circuit ultimately to strike Alaska's campaign limits. The lawsuit itself was initiated in 2016, and it made its way to the Supreme Court, which remanded the case back to the Ninth Circuit, basically to reevaluate the case in light of a campaign finance case originating in Vermont in 2006, Randall v. Sorrell. And I'll discuss that in a subsequent slide just to review the factors that the Supreme Court directed the Ninth Circuit to look at. Next slide.

So, the ballot measure actually has three primary features. Features. At first, it limits, uh, campaign amounts, those amounts largely set through adjustment for inflation, for inflation. It also provides a floor per campaign rather than a per-year basis for contributions. And finally, it calls for a decennial adjustment of the limits.

To account for inflation, and that— those adjustments are to be done by the Public Officers Commission. There are 11 states today that have no limits at all, but those who impose limits generally distinguish between gubernatorial races and legislative races. We've done that in this initiative as well. Some states also distinguish between House and Senate races. Almost all the limits are, as our initiative provides, done on an election cycle rather than an annual basis.

And they range from a low, which probably is unconstitutional, in Colorado at $400. Maine is the next lowest at $950. The average is is between $1,000 and $2,000, and we're on the higher end of that. But the absolute high end in terms of election cycle contributions is New York at $11,000. Next slide.

So this gives you a brief comparison of the old— pre-Thompson v. Hebden decision and with what is currently provided in the initiative should it be adopted as a ballot measure by Alaskans.

The adjustments that are reflected here are based on an adjustment through 2022. So the number will be slightly higher in terms of the old limits. When we talk about groups, we're really talking about formal political committees, candidate committees, party committees, ballot measure committees. That is defined in other APOC statutes. Excuse me.

And then non-group entities are those that don't qualify as groups but do attempt occasionally to influence elections. And the classic example for them, for that, has basically been homeowner associations and/or civic clubs. Next slide. So this is simply highlights the limits in terms of individual donation limits over the course of an election cycle. $2,000 Towards candidates other than those running as a team for governor and lieutenant governor, where that number is $4,000.

And then both group and non-group donation limits, again, $4,000 with respect to individual candidates and double that amount for the governor and lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidates. Next slide. I made the comment that the Ninth Circuit was directed by the Supreme Court to evaluate Alaska's election system. Laws based on the Randall v. Sorell 5-factor test. And those 5 factors are outlined here.

I won't go through them specifically, but simply to make the point that, as you can see, our 23 CFR 2 is in the green on all 3 counts, one, all 5 counts, one of which is, uh, absolutely, uh, not relevant to, to us in any event, um, which is, uh, a justification for having a particularly low amount. I would now move to the last slide here, which is the point that, uh, Madam Chair, you made earlier, which is that there is current legislation pending. It is Committee Substitute for House Bill 16 from State Affairs that cleared the House in April of last year and which is currently residing in Senate Rules. The point of this is simply that if substantially similar legislation, and that would be in our view CSHB 16, that the matter would be removed from the ballot as required by the state constitution. Otherwise, it will appear in November.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to make this brief presentation. Thank you, Mr. Botello, for your presentation. I'm guessing we may have some member questions. We'll start with Representative Himschoot.

Thank you. Through the chair, Mr. Botello, I'm curious. I've had colleagues say to me, well, if we limit campaign contributions, the money will just flow through independent expenditures anyway. So what would you say to that? I'm sorry, I didn't— your question came across muffled, as unfortunately most of the presentations have been.

So if you wouldn't mind, Madam Chair, if you could have Representative Hintz repeat the question. Sure. Yes, through the chair, a colleague said if we limit campaign contributions, then the funds will just go to independent expenditures. Can you comment on that?

I— the question, as I understand it, is just the— you know, there are limits on individual campaigns that they will simply end up going to IEs, independent expenditure groups. That may be true to a certain extent. I think the Alaska experience is that one does not generally see independent expenditure groups except for the largest officeholders, that is to say, in the gubernatorial race and in the Anchorage municipal mayor's race. For the most part, one does not see IE or super PACs active in legislative races. I think the other point to be made is that while one could look towards independent expenditure groups, part of the nature of them is that they are not allowed to coordinate in any respect with any campaign, and so a candidate cannot exercise the any kind of control.

And in that respect, I think there's a bit of a safety valve. And having said that, there's clearly the potential for impact that way. But I would say the Alaska experience is generally that IEs do not play a significant role in legislative or local races. With the exception specifically in Anchorage for the mayor's races. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have more questions for Mr. Botello?

I am not seeing any. Okay, I guess that was, uh, quick and easy. Mr. Botello, thank you very much for joining us today and presenting. Thank you, Madam Chair, and presenting the campaign contributions. Contribution Limits ballot initiative.

At this time, I think we're going to go to the conversation we've all been, I think, looking forward to. We have the ballot initiative for repealing ranked choice voting, and that will be followed by the opposition group as well.

And we will go ahead and start with the ballot initiative itself, which is being presented to us today by Bethany Markham. On Teams. This ballot initiative to repeal open primaries and ranked choice voting is also known as 24-ES-EG, and I would note that we are also joined today by Greg Powers, who is also available to take any questions during the presentation as they arise. Um, Ms. Markham, if you'd like to go ahead and put yourself on the record, and as you want to advance to to the next slide. If you simply say next slide, our committee aide here in the room will go ahead and advance those.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Chairman Carrick and Chairman Kawasaki. My name is Bethany Markham, M-A-R-C-H-U-M, and I am the treasurer for Repeal Now. We appreciate the opportunity to present to you today on Alaska Ballot Measure 24-E. E-S-E-G. You can go to the next slide. So we're going to dive into the history of ranked choice voting in Alaska, as that is the major component of what we're going to be talking about. Next slide.

So the way that ranked choice voting came to arrive in Alaska was by way of a ballot measure in 2020. It was known colloquially as Ballot Measure 2. The formal name was 19-AKBE, and it passed very narrowly. As you can see, it was passed by less than 1% of the vote. And in that election, the side that was trying to bring ranked choice voting into Alaska spent nearly $7 million, overwhelmingly from out-of-state sources.

And the no side spent about $579,000. You can go to the next slide. So what did 19-AKBE change? Well, there were 3 major components that were brought in. The primary piece was— well, I don't want to say the primary because that's another piece, but the major piece was ranked choice voting.

And that is the main reason for our repeal effort. A second thing that 19-AKBE did was bring in a top-4 jungle primary. And then the third thing was it changed certain campaign disclosure rules and fines. So we can go to the next slide.

So the purpose of our ballot measure is to repeal the, the ballot measure that was passed in 2020. We do not feel like that ballot measure fairly represents the will of voters. And as an example, you can see here that— make sure I'm trying to see if I can see what slide you guys are on, but okay, yeah, you're on that one. And make sure here, right? So you can see here on this slide that in the 2022 special congressional election there were nearly 15,000 Alaskan votes that were thrown out before Mary Peltola was declared the winner.

And this is even though 60% of voters cast a ballot for someone in a different party in the first round. And so after votes were trashed— exhausted is the formal term— and redistributed in subsequent rounds, then Peltola ended up winning. Even just in round 2 alone, there were 11,000 votes that were trashed in that round.

Um, Ms. Malcolm? So, the next— yes. I think, uh, given the, the broad nature of, of both of the 2 remaining ballot initiatives, we can, if it's okay with you, take questions during the presentation. I'm just going to make sure we preserve time for both initiatives to get heard today. But you do have a question from Senator Wilkowski.

Thank you, and thank you for calling in today. And just, just for the viewers who are watching at home, you, you use the word, uh, thrown out, uh, in one paragraph, trashed in the second paragraph, trashed in the third paragraph, and then you have a picture of a garbage can with a bunch of ballots thrown in it. And, and does the Division of Elections—. Is—. Are they actually throwing ballots in the trash?

That's a question for the— I'm sorry, through the chair, Senator Wielekowski, that's a question for the Division of Elections. We know that they— the term they use is exhausted and that those ballots are not counted. And that is the part of the issue that really resonates with Alaskans, that they're very frustrated about, is by knowing that sometimes their ballots don't count.

Follow-up. Do you have any evidence that the Division of Elections actually threw ballots in the trash, that they actually threw out 15,000 ballots into the trash. Because if you do, we should refer this to the, uh, to the, uh, to the Department of Justice or the Attorney General. Please tell us what evidence you have that the Division of Elections threw out 15,000 ballots into the trash. Please tell me you have some sort of evidence that shows that.

But as you're representing to the people, my name is Craig Powers. My name is Greg Powers, and I'd like to help answer that question. I'm the general consultant for the campaign for Repeal Now. It's G-R-E-G-P-O-W-E-R-S. The point that we're making here is that these ballots are as good as trashed.

If your vote doesn't count in another round, then what's the difference?

So just to clarify, if I could, not just— so you have zero evidence to back up this slide with a picture of a bunch of ballots in a garbage can, that 15,000 ballots were thrown into the trash? Just to, just, just to say, no, we're saying no, but we are saying that the ballots are effectively trashed. What's the difference if your ballot, if your ballot is not counted? What's the difference if it landed in a trash can or if it didn't? That's the point that we're making.

So you may disagree with that point, but that's the point that we're making. Thank you. And that was Mr. Powers, just for the record there. Um, we'll take one more question here and then we're going to continue the slides.

Uh, Senator Kawasaki. Oh, thank you. And then, um, just to follow up on the question, in that second paragraph it says that they were redistributed in subsequent rounds, so I'm not really understanding exactly what had happened if they were trashed or thrown in the garbage.

Through the, through the chair, um, if you look at that actual sentence, um, the ballots that were trashed are in the first sentence, and in the second sentence we talk about that the remaining votes were— there were two different things that happened. There was a number that was trashed, and we quote that number, and other ballots were redistributed, other votes were redistributed in subsequent rounds, and that's what resulted in, um, the, uh, the winner being declared as Mary Koltola. Hopefully that answers your question.

Thank you. I recognize that Representative McCabe also has a question. Let's try to go through a couple more slides and I will call to Representative—. On this one. Okay.

Representative McCabe and then we are going to move through a few more slides. Thanks, Representative Carrig. So I'm not sure who this is for, Greg or Bethany, but seems to me in this you're using trashed sort of as a colloquialism meaning that it was rendered moot or ineffective. It doesn't mean there actually throwing them in the trash, even though there is a trash can there sort of for dramatic effect. Would that be a fair statement?

Through the chair, Representative McCabe, yes, absolutely. Thank you. Trashed has multiple meanings in terms of not necessarily thrown in the garbage.

Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Markham, Mr. Powers, and And please continue, Ms. Markham. Thank you. Okay, let's see, we are on that slide.

Okay, thank you. So looking now, we have moved beyond 2020 to 2024 when there was an effort to repeal ranked choice voting. It was also known as Ballot Measure 2, coincidentally. The official name was 22 AKHE, and this ballot measure failed even more narrowly. It failed by less than 0.25%.

If you look at the funding, the campaign committee to repeal ranked choice voting, which was called Yes on 2, spent only $166,000. But the group trying to keep ranked choice voting, that said no to repealing ranked choice voting, spent almost $15 million, and that was overwhelmingly out-of-state money. You can go to the next slide. So what happened was that the repeal lost by only 743 votes, even though It was outspent 90 to 1. To us, that sent a message that many Alaskans wanted to repeal ranked choice voting.

And so we've seen that a very powerful flow of out-of-state money really was the only reason that ranked choice voting still exists in the state, and we feel, um, through our ballot measure, it's on life support. Next slide.

So Our ballot measure, which is 24 ESEG, was filed in 2024. Signatures were collected in 2025, and it's going to be on the ballot in 2026 unless you pass a substantially similar bill, as you've talked about with the previous ballot measures. Our ballot measure really only does one thing. Our intent was to do a complete and full repeal of the 2020 ballot measure that we looked at earlier. So if you go to the next slide, um, you will see the same 3 components that were in the 2020 ballot measure are part of this repeal.

So a full and complete repeal. So you've got party primaries, general elections, and campaign finance laws. So more specifically, if you go to the next slide, you'll see just one thing that our ballot measure is doing, repealing 19-AKBE from 2020, repealing ranked choice voting, restoring primaries to open to undeclared voters. So that's nonpartisan and undeclared voters. Primaries will be restored for them.

And then we're going to return to the pre-2020 campaign finance laws. Next slide.

So, um, Part of helping you understand why we should repeal is by going through some of the reasons that we've heard from voters around the state. Having collected over 48,000 signatures from voters in Alaska, we've heard hundreds of reasons. So we can't keep you here that long today, but we've compiled some of the most common reasons that we've heard from people and that we feel very strongly are the reasons why this the bill should be repealed. So, next slide. All right, on this slide, we talk about one of the most common reasons that created a little bit of mini controversy just a few moments ago, which is what the Division of Elections calls exhausted ballots.

And this is a ballot that, as Mr. Powers stated, doesn't count. Past a certain point, that person's will, that person's desires, doesn't count for a variety of reasons. And there's a couple of reasons that we've got listed here. So the first is if a person votes their conscience because there's an individual listed, a candidate listed on the ballot for whom they don't feel like represents their values.

And so they don't want to vote for them. They don't want to fill in a bubble for that person, or they just feel like they, they don't like that person, or they don't think that person is going to be a good representative. Even if they, they may agree and like them, they just don't think they would be a professional representative. For a variety of reasons, if a person wants to vote their conscience and not fill in a bubble for that person, then their ballot has the possibility of being exhausted, of being trashed after that stage of voting. And a second reason is simply if they get tired of filling in all the different bubbles on the election sheet, because as you'll see here in just a few minutes, our election ballot had a lot of bubbles on it.

A third reason, and one that we've heard a lot about from the public, is that they made a mistake when they were filling out their ballot. They simply went up a line or went down a line when they were trying to fill in all the bubbles. They missed a bubble or they missed a line, in which case that person's ballot is in jeopardy of being thrown out, of being trashed, of being exhausted. And so on the next slide here, you can see that we have a sample— well, I shouldn't say a sample, this is an actual picture of the presidential ballot that we voted on in here in Alaska. And so when people are trying to fill in all these different bubbles going across from one side to the other with over 60 different bubbles, it really is unnecessarily complex and it creates voter fatigue and confusion follows from that.

So we're going to move to the next slide now. Because we feel that one of the most important things that, um, an election should have is preserving the principle of one person, one vote. This has really been a bedrock piece of the American Republic for 250 years, and ranked choice voting doesn't preserve that. Ranked choice voting electronically tabulates multiple rounds of voting. Essentially, each round is a new vote.

And so for many people and to us, this means that one person becomes, one person gets many votes. And we believe that violates the principle of one person, one vote. You know, many Alaskans agree with us. And so that is one of the reasons we want to repeal ranked choice voting. So we'll go to the next slide.

All right. So one of the things that we find with ranked choice voting is that there are many irregularities. They're really increased compared to normal voting systems. And we have, again, many, many examples. And during research, we found hundreds and hundreds of examples, because even though ranked choice voting is only used at the state level in two states, it's used at a variety of other cities and municipalities.

So a few examples here that we've cited here for you that are very recent, within the last few years. In California, Alameda County had a tabulating error whereby the person who came in first place actually ended up coming in— the first-place finisher came in third, and that's what they published. But then a couple months later, they caught that the tabulation had been a mistake, and they had to retract that, and they had to reinstate the actual winner. So that's a problem. In the New York City mayoral race, they accidentally included 135,000 test ballots, and they published those.

Those. The public inadvertently thought there were 135,000 votes that were, were not true. In Maine's Congressional District 2 race, there was a technical snafu whereby 16,000 ballots that were on a memory stick became corrupted. And so it created a real delay because they ended up having to go back and try to find and recreate the paper versions of those ballots. So there are simply more points of failure within ranked choice voting, and that's one of the reasons we feel it should be repealed.

Next slide. We also feel that it has unrepresentative results, and there are a few examples here. Again, there are many more examples that we could have cited, but we just wanted to be brief and cite a few for you. So, um, in Portland, Maine, in a city election, one of the eventual winners only had 4% of the vote at the beginning, during the first initial count. And in fact, 2 of the top 4 vote-getters eventually lost.

In that same Maine Congressional District 2 election that I mentioned earlier, the candidate that was leading by over 1,200 votes ended up losing only after over 8,000 votes were thrown out. In San Francisco, there was one scenario where it took 12— I'm sorry, 20 rounds of voting and the person who ended up winning had only 12% of the vote at the beginning. So those are just some examples of unrepresentative results which we feel like, um, Alaskans don't want. Moving on to the next slide. Alaska's always had a pretty lengthy time frame before we get our results, and it's been a source of frustration for Alaskans.

But what we've discovered since Ballot Measure 2 from 2020 passed is is that now it takes even longer. So ranked choice voting has made the problem worse, and that has created even more distrust with our election system from voters. Another issue is that the process is so complex and it's so removed from the simple idea of looking at a ballot and counting, you know, the votes for Jim versus the votes for Jane, that Alaskans feel like they're having to turn it over to to a computer algorithm and just trust that a computer programmer got it right. And we've seen in some of those earlier instances that doesn't always happen. Another thing that people are concerned about is, is hand counts.

Under this system, human hand counts are not possible because it's turned over to this black box in a computer. And so again, this is one of the reasons that voters mistrust and one of the reasons why we feel it should be repealed.

Going on to the next slide. Rank choice voting—. Miss Markham, we only have about 10 or so minutes per presentation, and I just saw we're about at that time limit for this presentation. So if you could kind of— I know it's hard to surmise, but if you could kind of breeze through your remaining slides so we could get to a few questions before moving on. Thank you, Chairman Carrick.

Yes, we were told 10 to 15 minutes, so I apologize. We were definitely at the 15-minute mark almost exactly. Exactly. So I apologize, but I will certainly go faster. I'm able to talk really quickly for those of you who know me.

So looking at the next slide here, as far as 19 states have banned ranked choice voting, and that is an indicator that many Alaskans feel tells them that the system that we have is one that is not a suited system, not a system that can be trusted or should be trusted if it's actually been banned in 19 states. They understand that if it's not broken, you shouldn't be fixing it. And they wonder why we fixed a system that wasn't broken back in 2020. Going on to the next slide. This is a summary of all of the things I just covered.

In the interest of time, I will skip over those. All right, so the, the second big component of our ballot measure is primaries, and so what we want to make sure that we're doing is returning to primaries that are open to unaffiliated voters. Next slide. So we are, um, want to start off by confronting the myth that has been perpetrated into the public, and that is stating that this ballot measure would result in closed primaries. That's 100% not the case.

Repealing 2020's 19-AKBE would not result in closed primaries, and that is really important if you look at the next slide because we're using the official definition of closed primary as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. In the 2020 ruling called California Democratic Party versus Jones, the Supreme Court stated that a primary, a closed primary, is one in which only a political party's members can vote on its nominees. So under that definition, that we absolutely are not returning to a closed primary. So we're going to go on to the next slide.

All right. So there's a really important study that was published in 2024 by the Bipartisan Policy Group. I encourage you all to check it out. And it looks at Alaska— Alaska looks at primaries around the country as far back as they track them. They determined that Alaska's primaries are what are categorized as open primaries and specifically open to unaffiliated voters.

And so after this repeal, Alaska will return to that status of open to unaffiliated primaries. Next slide.

This is the category of definitions. And so you can look here on the left under the open section. Open to unaffiliated is the category that Alaska would fall into. We'll continue on to the next slide. You can see here a praise for the sorts of primaries that Alaska has always had that are called open to unaffiliated.

Two key points here. One is that it can help increase voter turnout if you have an open to unaffiliated primary like Alaska has had. But more importantly, if you look in the second paragraph, not only can it help increase voter turnout, but people do. The, the studies show that there is increased participation when you have that sort of primary like Alaska had before 2020. And so we want to return to that.

So the third component on the next slide is disclosure rules. And the important point here is that the disclosure rules that were passed in 2020 do two primary things. They protect incumbents. And even though we were promised that the dark money would be— the valve would be shut off, that's not what's happened. Dark money still flows, in fact, in higher numbers to Alaska.

So going to the next slide, you can see here that the problem with our current disclosure laws that were passed in 2020 are that they are, um, disproportionately burdensome for small campaigns, for grassroots campaigns. Um, it ends up being a very small amount of work for, um, one of the big campaigns that get out-of-state, um, lower-48 money, but for a small grassroots campaign, it really ends up being most of the work that they do. Um, so it's a problem because it was targeted toward just the sorts of candidates that Alaska deserves, just the sorts of candidates that Alaskans support. So these big money campaigns that have teams of lawyers and accountants in the lower 48, dark money, well, it's not a problem for them, right? But for your small candidates, it is a problem.

And so we want to make sure that gets repealed. So we're going to move on to the next slide now. And again, we were, we were told that 2020 ballot measure would get rid of dark money, but then we see $15 million on just one side, in just one campaign out of the many campaigns that were held that year. So what happens is the money overwhelms the disclaimer. Your small candidates end up having to spend up to a third of their budget on the disclaimer rather than the ads they should be using to reach voters, because the disclaimer is so long.

And I'm happy to give a specific example of that, but I know we're running out of time, so we're going to get I'm going to move on there. So what, what, what is the purpose of this disclosure system? Well, the answer is that it's really just there to protect incumbents who are running sophisticated out-of-state dark money schemes. It's not here to protect Alaskan voters. We want to go back to the system that protects Alaskan voters.

So we're very pleased on the next slide that Alaskans will be able to vote on this issue once more. And this concludes our presentation. We're happy to answer questions. Thank you, Miss Markham. And just as we go to questions, for committee members' information, we have about 10 minutes for questions.

We will also run a bit past 5 PM today. I know for our Senate colleagues that's a little later than usual, but we're gonna— we're gonna run just a little bit over today just to make sure we get a chance to hear from everybody. I have Representative Himschute in the queue first, and then if people would like to just let me know if you'd like to ask a question. Thank you, Chair Carrick. And through the chair, Ms. Markham, when you say that there are a number of irregularities— it was several slides back— but a lot of irregularities, you didn't name any in Alaska.

Can you just quickly name irregularities that took place in our two elections with RCV so far?

Through the chair, Representative Hemschute, we have not gotten that far in our investigations because we have been working on collecting signatures and getting this campaign ready, but you can be sure we're gonna be doing that research and having it ready for the campaign. Thank you. Fair enough. Follow-up? Follow-up?

Thank you. And then I just also, when you say open to unaffiliated primaries, I took advantage of that. I'm a nonpartisan. I was always a U, now I'm an N, but I have voted in Republican primaries and I voted in Democrat primaries in the past.

But that ability for me to vote even though that's the system that we've had, at any point the Democratic Party could write bylaws, or the Republican Party could write bylaws that close me as an unaffiliated or nonpartisan out of the primary if we go back to the old system. Is that correct?

So through the chair, Representative Hemshew. So there were— there was one, I think, 2-year instance in Alaska's history where there was one party that had a closed primary. Primary for a couple of years, but in our estimation, the likelihood of that is almost nil, because if that was their desire, they would have done that with much more frequency. I am not involved in any roles here with the— any of the parties, so I would never speak for them. Follow-up?

I would just say, you know, just for the record, as an unaffiliated or nonpartisan voter, I like being able to vote where and when I want to vote, so that would be problematic for me. My last question is about the hand counting. Queensland in 1892 instituted ranked choice voting. We did not have computers, and Australia has used the system since 1918. And don't— doesn't our Division of Elections require a certain number of ballots to be hand counted?

So this idea that they can't be hand counted is problematic. Can you explain more what you mean by they can't be hand-counted. Through the chair, Representative Emmschulte, my understanding is that they, they can do recounts, but a recount is not the same as a hand count. In fact, they did a recount in the 2024 ballot measure because that's required when a ballot— whenever a vote is, you know, under a certain percentage difference. But a hand count is one where you can have individuals physically there in the room observing, like what happened here in Anchorage.

I know some of you may not be familiar, but that's happening. That's been happening in Anchorage. But when the system is being counted in a computer algorithm, that's not something that can be seen as an actual hand count. So by hand count, I mean a physical hand count like can be done in most other elections. Thank you.

Thank you, Representative. I'm sure clarification. And I think we have just one more follow-up as a clarification. Yeah. Thank you, Ms. Markham.

I really honestly believed that the Division of Elections literally hand counts one precinct in every district. Is that not true to your knowledge?

Through the chair, Representative Himschuh. Again, being able to recount by pushing a button and sending through the, um, the computer system, I, I don't believe is the same as a physical situation where you have ballot observers from various parties standing there and various campaigns being able to stand there and look and see where ballots are being— where votes are being reallocated in some of these ranked choice scenarios. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Do we have additional questions? Senator Wilkowski. Thank you. The, the probably the biggest concern that I've heard from constituents is the is the primary aspect and the— I know you don't call it closed primary, but— so under the, under the current system, you can— a person can go in and they can vote for whoever they want on the ballot. They could vote Republican in one race, a Democrat in another race, a nonpartisan in another race.

Under—. If we go back to the system that you're suggesting, that, as I understand it, that changes. And my recollection is that changes. And so you walk in and you're handed one of two ballots. You're handed a Democratic ballot and you can only vote for the candidates on that ballot, or you're handed a Republican ballot and you can only vote for the candidates on that ballot.

And so it seems to me that that lessens the ability of constituents, people in Alaska, to vote for whoever they want, which is what I hear. And I have heard for many years that people really like— do you think it's better to close off and only let people be able to select one ballot and not be able to vote maybe a Republican in one race, a Democrat in another race, a nonpartisan in another race? Doesn't that foreclose Alaskans' choice and ability to vote for who they want to, their constitutional right to vote for who they want to? Through the chair, Senator Wielechowski, thank you for the question. I would posit that the purpose of an election system is not to accommodate the individual personal preferences of every single voter, but that a really well-designed election system is going to encourage the most voters to participate by being simple and fair.

And the opposite has happened in Alaska. So I know you say that a lot of voters like that system, but in fact, where have those voters been? Because since this system was implemented, our voter turnout, our election turnout has dropped. Just an example with the presidential election, I believe it's 6%, I think, between 2020 and 2024. We've seen a 6% drop in participation.

And so clearly our current system is not achieving better participation, and we want to ensure that voters have the opportunity to vote on returning to the former system where they felt more comfortable participating because they felt it was more simple and more fair. Thank you. Follow-up? But would you agree that under going back to the old system lessens the ability, lessens the options of who people can vote for. You get one ballot, either a Republican ballot or a Democrat ballot, and you can't, you can't pick and choose.

You might want to vote for a Republican U.S. Senator and a Democratic Congressman, and then a Republican state senator and a Democratic state house person. Doesn't it limit your ability to do that in the primary election? Through the chair, Senator Wielekowski. I believe that the best system is the one that's going to encourage the most voters, and this system has shown itself to not be the case, and so therefore we're supporting repealing it.

I have Representative McCabe, and then I think we'll probably move to our last presentation after that. Thanks. Yeah, so, um, and I don't know if this is a question or statement, but it seemed to me there was a court case— uh, Senator Wilkowski might know better than me— that to force the Republicans to open their primary to U's and N's. Right now, 24% of Alaskans are Republicans, 16%— or 14%, actually— are Democrats, and the rest are U's and N's. So I would say that if you wanted to vote a Republican ballot, become one of the 60% that are U or N or undeclared or nonpartisan.

Or become a Republican, in which case that would mean, what, almost 80% of the voters in Alaska would be able to vote a Republican ballot or a Democrat ballot. So I think that's a fair characterization. I don't know if that's necessarily a question, but—.

Thank you, Representative McCabe. I wasn't going to opine at all today. The only thing I would opine is I know for myself and many of the voters I I spoke with, after the open primary system was implemented, many people that I know, including myself, did register with a party because now we would still have the full range of options on our ballot and be able to vote that full range of options. And prior to that, myself and others were— that I know of, at least— were nonpartisan or undeclared in order to have more flexible in the primary. So I just anecdotally, I know that that's also a perspective.

Senator Wilkowski, I said last question. I think if you'd like to ask one more question or comment—. I was gonna say in response to Representative McHugh, there are a couple Democrats that people might want to vote for.

I think that's a great segue. I'm just kind of surprised with all the senators here, she's opining and instead of saying something. I—. You guys have elevated us.

Maybe.

So I just also want to recognize that Representative Eichide has joined us in the room, and thank you for being here. And, uh, at this time we'll move to our final presentation today, which is with the initiative sponsors for the, uh, initiative known as Protect Our Elections, which is the only again, APOC-registered opposition group that has organized against a ballot initiative. And so we do have that group available to present to us today. Um, today we are joined by Scott Kendall on Teams to share the perspective of Protect Our Elections, uh, initiative and to talk about concerns with the repeal of open primaries and ranked choice voting. Um, Mr. Kendall, if you'd like to put yourself on the record.

And just as with our previous presenters, anytime you'd like to switch slides, if you simply say next slide, we will go ahead and do that for you in the room.

Great. Can everyone hear me okay? We can, thank you. Thank you. And gratefully, I only have like 3 slides.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to Ms. Markham and Mr. Powers for their testimony. I'm— my name is Scott Kendall. I am testifying here from Anchorage, where I think we're enjoying third winter on behalf of Protect Alaska's Elections. Hopefully not to sort of give you sort of a campaign pitch, but really to provide good factual information to this committee about what the repeal proposed by 24 ESEG does.

So 24 ESEG, as Ms. Markham stated, will repeal all three major components of election reform passed in 2020. And I'd like to define those elements if I could, too, so we know sort of what we're giving up if we enact 24 ESEG. First of all, open primaries, as Senator Wilkowski noted, every candidate on one ballot, every voter gets the same ballot, and they can vote for their favorite in every race regardless of the candidate's partisan information or their own. And that includes, with respect to Rep. Himschute, that includes undeclared voters. Declareds and nonpartisan and unaffiliated candidates who previously could not appear on primary election ballots.

Everyone picks their favorite and the top 4 move to the general election. General election is done by ranked choice voting. Pretty simple. Voters rank their candidates in order of preference, and the winning, winning candidate has to appeal to a majority of the remaining ballots. It ensures majority winners.

Prevents the spoiler effect, which has elected candidates in Alaska's past with a plurality. Governor Knowles was elected twice with a plurality. Governor Hickel with a plurality. Senator Mark Begich defeated Senator Ted Stevens with a plurality. We've seen that in Alaska in the past.

The third element is strengthening campaign disclosure and disclaimer requirements. The first and most significant element of that is a ban on dark money and state elections. No more funneling contributions through intermediaries. No more dressing up your contributions by passing it through Americans for Apple Pie. If you play in our elections and you spend $2,000 or more, we will know your name.

Um, it also includes more rapid reporting of those large contributions. $2,000 Or more has to be reported within 24 hours, and there are much higher fines for failure to disclose actual sources of contributions. APOC's kind of, Alaska Public Officers Commission, APOC's standard fines are $50 a day for being out of compliance. One could imagine if someone makes a $10 million contribution and, you know, releases the information after Election Day, a $50 a day fine is a rounding error. What happened in Ballot Measure 2 was we said actually those fines can be up to the amount of the illegal contribution.

Contribution, and if we can find that it was an intentional violation, it could be triple the amount of your intentional violation. Very, very, very strong disclosure requirements. Very, very, very strong sanctions. Finally, among other things, there's the outside disclosure— or outside donation disclaimer. That means every political group that takes 50% or more of their funds from outside the state has to disclaim that.

All of those things I just talked about will be repealed under 24 ESEG. It's in their measure. We've gone through it line by line. Briefly, I do want to respond to a few of the things in Ms. Markham's presentation. First of all, the history of RCV.

She sort of left out one significant element, which is actually the history goes back much further. Some folks may remember that in 2000, we actually had a ballot measure, Ballot Measure 1, on the ballot that proposed ranked choice voting in elections. I went back and I actually pulled the statement in support. It talks about how we are electing major offices with a plurality. Elected officials are not incentivized to reach out to a broad range of Alaskans.

Candidates strongly opposed by the majority can win in a plurality system, and you can vote for the candidate you truly prefer without wasting your vote. And finally, they point out, by being allowed to rank candidates, voters gain greater influence and regain greater choice. So the, the signers of that position statement are the Alaska Libertarian Party, the Alaska Independence Party, the Green Party of Alaska, Republican Moderate Party, and the Alaskan Republican Party. This was their ballot measure in 2000. Anyone wants to see, go find the 2000 voter guide and go to page 10.

I agree with all those points. They're great salient points, and I think it's an important part of Alaska's history that even a quarter century ago folks realized we've got a problem here with this plurality system. A couple other things I wanted to talk about. Ms. Markham repeatedly said one person, one vote is not honored. I will say I understand she has that opinion, but I will say every court in the land that has considered ranked choice voting has found the opposite, including the Alaska Supreme Court, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

It is one person, one vote. It's a single transferable vote. Reasonable minds, again, can differ on whether you like RCV, but I think it's really important we ground these arguments in facts and in truth. Another thing Ms. Markham brought up was a delay in results, which I think frustrates everyone. That has nothing to do with RCV.

As, as we all know from watching the presentations, when the Director of Elections pushes the button, it takes mere seconds. The issues we have with delays in results, a lot of that is our mail system, and a whole lot of it is that our Division of Elections does not pre-process ballots. They're sitting on tens of thousands of absentee ballot envelopes that have not been processed ahead of Election Day, and then they've got to start processing them. And I— that is responsible for the delay. And we only count 55 to 60% of our ballots on election night.

Florida gets it right. They count almost all their ballots. And truly, we could count 85 to 90% of our ballots. I know that's something that's come up in the recent elections omnibus bill. I would briefly give kudos to Senator Wielechowski and Representative advance for their work on that.

I think that is going to be a quantum leap forward when the Division of Elections starts preprocessing those ballots, but it's not caused by RCV, whether or not we disagree on RCV. The final thing, and I think you touched on it last there, was can results be hand-counted? Actually, yes, they can. How do I know? I was present actually at a recount where they did the precinct hand count, and it's fairly simple process.

I will illustrate it this way. Imagine an election has 10 ballots in it, 3 candidates, and there's 10 votes. One candidate gets 4, another candidate gets 4, the last candidate gets 2. You sort them into 3 stacks. You pick up the 2 ballots for the last-place candidate and you see who, if anyone, they ranked second, and you put them in the other stack.

It's really that simple. Is it laborious? Yes. Every hand count is laborious. Take it from a person who was present for 10 days in June you know, hand-counting write-in ballots in 2010.

It's a laborious process, but can you do it? Yeah, you simply put them in stacks. That's something our Division of Elections is well equipped to do, and it's absolutely possible because Alaska has the gold standard of election security. We have paper ballots that we preserve until every single challenge is resolved.

Briefly on funding, there was some discussion of funding. And I think we all hate out-of-state funding. I think that's a reality of our low-population state. A lot of people interested in us. I would point out that Repeal Now gets nearly all of their funding from a single billionaire located in Pennsylvania.

And granted, the outside money comes in, but shouldn't we all want to have that money disclosed? Shouldn't we want all the information we can get about that? One thing this Markham said about burdens on candidates running grassroots campaigns from the prior ballot measure. That is false. There's not a single element of the prior ballot measure that impacts candidate campaigns.

The disclosure requirements are put on what we call IEs, what they call elsewhere super PACs, and only for those who donate $2,000 or more at a, at a go. So we're talking about sophisticated actors running super PACs. We're not talking about candidates. The original ballot measure put zero burdens on those candidates.

And if she finds a provision in the original 2020 measure that actually did that, I would be interested to see it. Finally, I think most significantly, as pointed out, I think, by Representative Himschoot, is 24 ESEG absolutely could send Alaska to closed primaries. And here's why it matters. 64% Of Alaska's voters, as observed by Representative McCabe, are not affiliated with either major party. They want a choice too, and this measure explicitly gives the parties the power to shut them out.

And that's further important because we've looked at the ballots from the 2022 primary. 54% Of Alaskans did not vote a straight primary ballot. They wanted pick and choose. So if you could go to the, uh, actually second slide, please. And actually, if you could pause here, Mr. Kendall, we have a question from Representative McCabe.

Thanks. Maybe go back one slide. We're going to go back to the first slide here. So, Mr. Kendall, who is Unite America PAC from Denver, Colorado? Is that, uh, what we would term outside dark money billionaire, uh, political action committee funding Protect Alaskans elections.

That is an organization based in Colorado. As I understand it, a majority of their funding does come from outside the state. And however, it's not dark money because it is all linked and disclosed on APOC. And I don't have it open in front of me, but you can certainly look at every single donor. Follow-up.

Follow-up. So, yeah. So I think the major contributor is one billionaire, actually, and it is outside dark money because it comes from Colorado. I mean, that's what we're talking about, right? Outside Alaska money is dark money.

Isn't that the, uh, um, that's to me is the kind of general definition, right? No, you could actually, um, if you wanted to pull one of the statute books off the shelf behind you, you could look at subsection 400, look at the definition definition of dark money, and dark money is essentially a donation for which you cannot find the actual source. And this money is actually sourced through APOC's website, so by definition it is not dark. So it is from outside the state, absolutely, but it is not dark money. So we just need to drop the outside and then we'll be okay?

I'm not sure what the question is, but We have another question still on our first slide there. Senator Wilkowski. Just on that, I would agree. I think, I think the big money should be out of campaigns, and, um, amen. Citizens United, I think, is really not, uh, done a lot of good for the country or the state.

Um, I, I do have a different question if I could, Madam Chair, and it's just on The two slides, one that said that ranked choice voting was complex and confusing, and another slide that talked about increased irregularities, and I'm wondering if you could just talk on those and whether there's been any data on how— whether this is complex or confusing and whether or not you've seen any evidence of irregularities. Yeah, through the Chair, thank you, Senator Wilkowski, for the question. Actually, there was some academic study done immediately on the heels of the 2022 campaign. And what that showed— they did basically an exit poll of voters and they said, how did you find ranked choice voting in a nutshell? And the answer from 83% of the voters was that it was simple.

So when you look at a ballot and you see the numbers, folks, and the better part of that is we actually look at the ballot spoilage rates, which means ballot that effectively did not count, and the spoilage rates were as low or lower than the prior election under the conventional system. So the people think it's simple, and in practice, the error rate was no higher. So that's the answer. So I appreciate the question. Thank you.

Just the second part on that. Follow-up? Yeah, the other part of the question was just on increased irregularities. There was a slide saying that there— this led to increased irregularities, not necessarily in Alaska, but I'm curious if you— if there has been any evidence of that in Alaska. Uh, through the chair, Senator Wielekowski, none that I'm aware of.

And I've actually was involved in a recount that I think came down to 6 or 7 votes, and I was also involved in the recount of the prior repeal ballot measure that came down to 743 votes. And from what I could see, the division performed performed flawlessly. You could disagree, of course, with how the system works, but there has been zero evidence, as close as I follow things, that there's been any irregularities whatsoever. There hasn't been one proposed by a losing candidate, and there hasn't been one upheld by any court of law in the state of Alaska.

Thank you, Mr. Kendall. Um, if you'd like to go ahead and continue and, as likely as not, since there's two slides, conclude your presentation. We'll take any additional questions at the end. Yeah, thank you, Chair Carrick. So what this slide shows is that essentially political parties— and this is, this is an excerpt from the actual measure— and this, what this shows is that through a mere bylaw change, the parties can change the rules for our primary.

And if you would go to the next slide, you can see the outcome of that.

Any party, through a change of their bylaws in the prior year, can make it illegal, illegal for an undeclared or nonpartisan voter to vote in their primary election. To answer Representative McCabe's earlier query, there is no Alaska case case on point that says they can't do that, and this ballot measure would put that in place. I would offer that that's an intentional choice. They're not just repealing— this is the affirmative language that they chose to propose and that they gathered signatures on. So this is a policy choice that the proponents have made to empower both political parties to shut out 64% of our voters.

It's at least possible, and it is not as though they are not interested in primary elections because we actually, again, look back at those 2022 election results and the category of non-party voters actually made up 62% of primary voters. They're essentially showing up in proportional numbers. Now you're talking about taking an already fairly low primary electorate and cutting by two-thirds who they can pull from. That doesn't sound like democracy. That it doesn't sound like we'll get better, more representative results.

And again, that is in their measure. You've got the measure as an exhibit to this hearing. If you want to go to page 14, look at Section 35. It's there in black and white. Um, and I would say if parties don't intend to close their primaries, and if the proponents don't intend for parties to have the power to close their primaries, Why is this language in the ballot measure?

So I want to sort of go through a brief conclusion now and just sort of talk about the policy reasons behind these elements, not in a campaign sense, but sort of more broadly speaking.

First of all, everyone— I think I heard Representative McCabe and Senator Wilkowski agree strongly— we want money out of politics. That's a Citizens United problem. We can't do that in Alaska, but we What we can do is force everyone who participates in our elections to show their name. And this measure, at sections 6 and 16 of their measure that you have in this exhibit to this hearing, repeals the ban on dark money. It says it is okay if I take $1 million, give it to Americans for Puppies, and Americans for Puppies gives it to an IE in Alaska, and no one knows I exist.

Why would we do that? 24 ESEG also repeals a requirement that $2,000 or more donations be reported within 24 hours. That's Section 11 of their measure. Why wouldn't we want our voters to have timely information about contributions? 24 ESEG dramatically reduces or repeals fines.

As I was talking about, it takes it from the amount of the donation or triple that amount for intentional violations and reduces it to just $50 a day. If I'm going to donate $1 million, I could care less about 10 days of a $50-a-day fine. Why would we repeal that? Again, these are all intentionally repealed. That's Section 9 of the measure.

So looking broadly at this system, going— stepping back from the campaign disclosure, but looking at the actual election system here, the biggest thing it does is it pushes competition to November. Open primaries allow public officials like you all to do the right thing. You've probably all had the experience of working on a policy that's important. You know it's the right thing to do. You know the public broadly supports it.

But you've got a loud minority that's opposed. No longer does that loud partisan minority have the ability to take you out in a primary for, for something you know you should do. You can both do the right thing and know that you will be on the ballot in November where constituents all constituents will be heard. And we heard earlier from Senator Coghill, who I greatly admire, I consider a friend, and I think his, his example is one of the, one of the primary reasons why this system should be kept. He had won the last primary, the last primary before this system went into place.

10% Of his constituents voted in the Republican primary. 10%. And half that number voted to remove him. He lost by 14 votes. 5% Of his constituents decided that the other 95% would not have the opportunity to vote for him in November, and I think that is a terrible outcome.

Now, he has to go and he has to win in November, but that is a terrible outcome. That's undemocratic for 5% to decide for the other 95%. All of you were elected under this system. All of you represent your district's voters and you represent them well. All of you received majority support from your constituents.

That's a mandate to work in your constituents' best interests. To the extent you're concerned about any of the individual elements of 24 ESEG, so maybe you hate ranked choice voting, but you think the open primary is a good idea, or you like the dark money disclosures. One thing you all should keep in mind, this is an all or nothing deal. This passes as a package and it cannot even be changed before the next election cycle. Ballot measures cannot be altered significantly for 2 years.

That means if these changes are made, closed primaries for the next primary election, dark money with no sanction, and only— and we would have again plurality voters who would be electing people without necessarily majority. This is the third time voters have been being asked to weigh in on this, and I think it's time to put this issue to rest. And one final thing I will say is, you know, the young voters— think of the future and the young voters who by and large love the system, and think of this statistic, which surprised me: 22%— 22% of Alaska's registered voters today have never had the chance to vote under any other system than this one. And with that, I'll just I know we're running late, right up to 5 o'clock. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to take them.

But again, I really appreciate it. Thank you, Chair Carrick. Thank you, Mr. Kendall. Do we have any final questions for Mr. Kendall at this time? Seeing none around the table, I just want to thank all of our presenters again.

Today we, on 4 different ballot initiatives that Alaskans will have an opportunity to vote on, to vote on come this November. We heard today from some of the petition sponsors. We heard from Bruce Botelho. We had Mike Chenault available for questions. We heard from John Coghill.

We heard from Bethany Markham and for questions from Greg Powers as well as from Scott Kendall. Thank you all very much for being here today and for speaking with our joint House and Senate State Affairs Committee to satisfy the requirements. Again, just as I stated at the beginning, this hearing is just informational. It doesn't affect the outcome of any of these ballot initiatives, and it doesn't affect that they all— all 3 will be on the ballot in November. Do we have any closing comments from members?

We'll go to Representative McCabe. Thanks, Chair Carrick. Yeah, and I would just comment, and I'm sort of surprised Mr. Kendall didn't know about it, but there was a Supreme Court case that forced Republican Party to open their primary, to use an— it might have been Zawacki, I can't get that far into it on my cell phone, but it was a 1990s, maybe '92, '93 case, and it did— we had closed, the Republicans had closed the primaries, and the Supreme Court case forced us to open it. So thinking or saying or indicating or opining that this will cause us to go back to a completely closed primary would sort of go against court precedent. So I just want to make sure that got on the record.

Thank you, Representative McCabe. Are there any other closing comments today?

Seeing none, Senator Kawasaki, any closing remarks? All right, that will conclude our business for today. I think both House and Senate State Affairs have hearings in next Tuesday, um, at our respective regular place and time. And that will just lead us to adjournment. This joint hearing of the Senate and House State Affairs Committee is adjourned at 5:04 PM.