Drawing Inspiration From Alaska

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.

Hi, this is Adam. As I explained on last week's episode, I've been waiting to release today's interview about Alaska's adoption of top four non partisan primaries and ranked choice voting for almost two months. I recorded it about three weeks after the November election. But as we lurched from one democratic crisis to another, it never really felt like the appropriate time to post it. And I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if this is the right time to release the episode either. We're all still grappling with the recent events. Insurrectionists, many of whom appear to be white nationalists, storming the Capitol building, people dying, and the President getting impeached for the second time. But as you can tell, I decided to post the episode. Here are two reasons why. First, one of the main arguments for the reform that Alaska passed is that it would incentivize candidates and politicians to appeal to the majority of voters, not just the most dedicated partisans. And this appears to be working.

Maybe.

As I record this pre introduction, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is signaling that she is willing to buck the extreme wing of her party in order to hold the President to account. Of course, we'll see what happens, but that's a very encouraging sign for this reform. And second, it's a good opportunity to remember that democracy reform is possible, even against impossible odds. As you'll hear, the Alaska advocates overcame incredible hurdles to win this ballot measure. So as we move to fight for the for the People act in Congress and more reforms in states across the country, I just want to keep that spirit with us even in these incredibly bleak times. Oh, and one more thing. I'm not in love with the audio

quality for this episode.

I had to record it via Zoom. Yes, the dreaded Zoom call. But I hope you'll bear with it and hopefully won't blame me too much for it. Okay, now to the real introduction for this episode.

Welcome to Another Way, the podcast produced by Equal Citizens, a nonpartisan pro democracy organization founded by Lawrence Lessig. This is Adam Eichen, the organization's campaigns manager. It's been a while, and I'm really glad to bring you another interview before we begin. As always, please consider supporting us on Patreon. With your support, we can keep this podcast going. To sign up, go to patreon.com/citizens. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/citizens okay, now to the episode. Both the election and the year are all but over. While much of our collective focus for the past month has been on the President's absurd post election litigation. The victories that were won on election day to advance our election systems have been largely ignored. As longtime listeners know, advocates have increasingly relied on ballot initiatives to pursue democracy reforms, and this year proved no different. Covid may have halted some ballot initiative campaigns, but there were a few that I was keeping my eyes on, in particular those that would implement ranked choice voting in Massachusetts and Alaska. Unfortunately, the ranked choice voting measure in Massachusetts failed. And on election night, some saw the early returns in Alaska and declared that measure dead too. But as more votes were tallied, the collective mood shifted. It soon became clear that Alaska's advocates had pulled off a stunning victory, bringing the novel voting reform of ranked choice voting to a red state with a solid independent streak. This victory, again largely ignored by the media, sparked many questions for me. How on earth did they run this campaign during a pandemic? What kind of messaging was used to court Republicans? The list goes on. So to better understand how the campaign won and to dig a little bit deeper into the ballot measure itself, because it contained more than just ranked choice voting, I spoke to two of the leaders on the campaign, Scott Kendall and Jason Gren. Scott was the counsel to the yes on two for Better Elections campaign.

He is also an attorney at Holmes,

Weddell and Bercot and most recently served as the chief of staff to then governor Bill Walker. For decades. Scott has worked all across Alaska in a variety of legal, political and consulting roles. Jason, on the other hand, was a campaign co chair and communications consultant. He's a fourth generation Alaskan and he served in the Alaska State House of Representatives from 2017 to 2019, representing his district as an independent. But with that, let's begin the interview.

Hey Scott, thanks so much for joining us.

Yeah, thank you.

And Jason, welcome.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

All right guys, so this is going to be a really great conversation. It's been about three weeks now since the general election and what a week it's been, especially with the post election absurdities in the presidential race. But we're not here to talk about those absurdities now. We're going to focus on the fact that unknown to most, Alaska actually shocked the nation on election day by passing measure two. So Scott, you wrote the measure. What is Measure two and why did you decide to dedicate your effort to it?

Yeah, it's really. It's a three pronged reform on making our elections better and more representative, giving more power to the voters. So the first thing it does is it goes from a closed party primary system to, to an open primary. Every candidate on the ballot, every voter gets the same ballot. And the top four move on to the general. It has a general election that's run by ranked choice voting. And we can talk about the details of that, but that's the term of art, ranked choice or instant runoff voting. And then the final component, Alaska being a significant but low population state, we constantly get money dumped into even our mayor's races, even our local state House rep races have immense amounts of money dumped on them. And so we included a provision to prohibit what we call dark money, which is ultimately money you don't know the actual source of. And we are going to. It's a statement to the nation that, you know, we can't stop you from spending your money in our elections, but we're going to know your name. And so it's really just about giving more information and power and choice to Alaska's voters. We trust Alaska's voters and Alaska, you know, sort of famously independent and shows that by the fact that 62 to 63% of us don't affiliate with either major party. And so creating an election system that represents that will and that independence was sort of the target. And the reason was much like the rest of the country, even though we have mostly independents, our local government is mired in the same ideological fights and gridlock that you see at the national level. And we're Alaskans are sick of it. Right.

And so Jason, you served in the Alaska statehouse for a bit and have a really good handle on Alaska politics. Why do you think that Alaska was so primed for this pre structural reform? I mean, it really is changing the incentive structure and the way elections are conducted in the states. So what's your take here? Why was Alaska so primed for this?

Yeah, you know, Scott mentioned, you know, the gridlock that's been happening in Alaska and for the past, you know, four, five, six years, we have been at a, a crossroads as a state facing really significant economic challenges. And I got to be a part of a group, a bipartisan coalition in the House that really was putting forward solutions. But we were stymied by the Senate, we were stymied in other ways. And I think Alaska is ready. The voters, the residents, you know, the citizens of Alaska are ready for us to move forward, even though these are some tough decisions that have to get made. But I think time after time they watched their representatives and senators go to Juneau and not have the courage to move us forward. Because they were afraid of their own election or they were afraid of being primary that term, that someone's going to outflank me from the right or the left. And so I really have to kind of talk to my base and talking about taxes, talking about smart budget cuts, those are going to scare my base. And so I just can't do it if I want to continue to win elections. And when I was serving as a, you know, I ran as an independent, you know, full transparency. I was a lifelong Republican, but decided as a representative I wanted to serve people and not party. And when I went door to door talking to people, people almost, I mean, every night, every, every time I went talking to, people said, you know, I'm more concerned about the person I send a juno, not the color of their jersey. You know, that sort of mentality. We want people who are ready to serve Alaskans, not an R or a D that's next to their name. And so I think the time, it was just kind of perfect timing with everything that was going on nationally and going on with our own state of people, just saying, look, I'm a voter, but I want to have more choices, power, when it comes down to Jewish, anything that is going to get the parties out of the way so that we can have solutions, let's give it a chance, let's go for it. And I think Alaska, as you said, we kind of maybe shocked the nation, but I don't think we shocked much of our state of approving this because there was a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who were ready to try something different and really give the power back to voters.

Right.

Scott, you were the chief of staff to Governor Bill Walker, who was the former governor, and he was an independent. And when he was running for reelection, well, there was a lot of ballot splitting there and it kind of was one of these absurd things that not

a lot of people know.

So I'm wondering, can you talk a little bit about that reelection campaign for your former boss and how that might have influenced your thinking around something like ranked choice voting?

Yeah, I mean, you know, there was earlier in my career, I was Senator Murkowski's attorney when she ran as a write in candidate. So it was a little kind of preview of that was she ran a write in campaign after losing the Republican primary against the Republican and the Democrat. And so that sort of early in my career calibrated my political thinking. And then midway through his term, Governor Walker asked me to come be his chief of staff, which I did. And I saw sort of the. In addition to getting to work with people like Jason and the bipartisan majority he was part of, I got to see the kind of the magic of having a cabinet that has Republicans, Democrats, nonpartisans in it. It was literally like the NFL draft. And we could go around and say, this is the best Commissioner of revenue we could get. Forget ideology, this is the best attorney General we can get. Forget ideology. Forget who donates to which candidates, which is the way those decisions are usually made. And we had some of the best partners in our cabinet and in our administration were Democrats working with Republicans. And it was sort of incredibly magical and how the Alaska native population, which is 20 to 25% of the population, was well represented in our administration, not for the first time, but I think for the first time so significantly that they were elevated above the parties in terms of being one of the people at the table. You think about the Democrats and the Republicans, and when an administration comes in, you, you know, you lop off all the heads, you know, and the Democrats replace all the Republicans and vice versa. And instead we, you know, Governor Walker kept a number of good people who had been with the prior Republican administration, brought in some Democrats, and again, just got really focused on solutions for Alaskans. And then I watched that come down because, you know, there was a Republican challenger, as you'd expect, and a Democrat came in and said, I think there's an opportunity for me here in this three way race, I'm gonna shave off a bunch of support. And in a vice like that, there's no path to win. The way that Governor Walker won the first time was he and the Democratic candidate fused their campaigns, Governor Walker stayed top of the ticket and the Democrat became Lieutenant governor. And basically, if any Democrat willing to come in and be the spoiler, made it so there was no outcome other than the Republican governor, current Governor Dunleavy, winning. That wasn't the direct cause of me working on this project, but it was certainly instructive. But what I really saw, and I saw this through Governor Walker and I've seen it through other public officials I've worked with, is our system rewards partisanship. The more partisan you are, the more likely you're to get your party's endorsement and the more likely you are to have a shot on the general election. Conversely, as we saw with Governor Walker and we saw with some moderate Republicans who just got taken out this year, our system actually punishes statesmanship. The very things that the general election public wants a public official to do. Work across the aisle. If there's a good idea, don't attack people for nothing. Just basic civility and cooperation. Our current system punishes that. We saw, I think five or six Republicans get primaried and taken out by the party specifically because they smiled at a Democrat basically. And there's gotta be a better way than that. You know, Governor Walker worked on things that were basically visionary of where we are now. The fiscal plan, the fact that the state needs to balance its budget, all the things he said were coming. And you know, quite frankly the broad majority of the public agrees on don't matter in a two party environment. And when those parties come in like a vice, you end up with almost no base of support and no way through.

I really want to highlight the absurdity of that 2018 campaign because it really was kind of, like I said, absurd that the incumbent governor was squeezed out of the race. He had to drop out because he was accused of splitting the vote between on the left side of the aisle and under a ranked choice voting system. That's not something that anyone can be accused of because it'll be the top four candidates from the primary, regardless of party, go into the general election and voters get to rank their candidates in order of preference. And the person who's gonna come out of that race will be the person with the majority of votes. If no one gets a majority after the first ballot, then the votes are reallocated according to second preference, starting with the elimination of the last place vote getter. And so that's just a much more sane system, especially in a state like Alaska where there is this real streak of independent candidates. And the idea again that the incumbent governor would have to drop out because he's being accused of vote splitting is just one of these stories of 2018 that I really didn't think got enough points because it was just for me embodied the absurdity of the current electoral system across the country. So let's move on a bit here. What was the origin then, Scott, of the ballot initiative effort? Whose idea was it? When did the committee form? Were you the person who initiated it, who then wrote it or did someone tell you to write it? Give me a sense of where it started.

Yeah, so I sat down with the ideas because I thought my initial take on it was we just need an open primary. Because the way it was, Governor Walker couldn't actually as an independent even appear in a primary ballot. He had the choice of re registering as a Republican and probably getting taken out by a Republican. Cause the party would be against you for having Changed sides once before, or trying to be a former Republican, now independent, running as a Democrat, where likewise, you'll get taken out. So there was no path to the ballot for him, and he couldn't even appear on the primary election ballot. He just has to show up by petition on the general. So all of these handicaps that are put in place and all of these disincentives for what we already saw was gonna come, which was they were going to attempt to take out any of the Republicans who cooperated, and to some degree, the Democrats. A few of those happened as well. I was sort of completely focused on open primaries, and I looked at top two open primaries, like they have in California, like they have in Washington, I think, Oregon. And the problem was, our state, like many states, has been so gerrymandered that at any given election, Only out of 40 House seats, only seven or eight of them are at all competitive. There's Democrat seats or Republican seats. And so what you're gonna end up with was Democrat 1 and Democrat 2 and Republican 1 and Republican 2 and all these seats. And it really wasn't gonna solve the problem. Right. So then I started gravitating towards, well, okay, well, let's have it be top three or top four. And then you get into the problem of the spoiler effect. So I sort of evolved my way there. And there were people in parallel working solely on the ranked choice voting part. I talked to them, cooperated with them, and I thought they were missing the boat in that. Well, in a ranked choice voting system, if all you have is two lousy choices that the party spits out, you still haven't solved the problem. So we just kind of evolved there. I certainly had a lot of help. I guess I was one of the people with that initial germ of an idea. And then I got in touch with smart people who helped me evolve it. And once we kind of had a policy on paper, we scraped a little money together just to pull it, just to see, like, is there any appetite for this? And we found there was. And then contact with people like Jason, who's been an independent legislator, has worked on ballot measures before on ethics reform. I'd worked on ballot measures before and just kind of put a team together of just kind of Alaska first people. And then we were fortunate enough, kind of like venture capitalists, to walk around with our idea. And we actually got significant funding because people felt like we'd actually really stumbled on something.

Right, right.

So, Jason, then give us a sense of, so what groups were part of this Campaign. What did the coalition look like to get this passed? Because this is one of the hardest parts of these reforms are very popular, but it requires explaining, especially for something like ranked choice voting. So it requires a good coalition. What was that coalition like to just

piggyback real quick on Scott's comments. When I was in the legislature, someone had actually proposed a ranked choice voting bill. And I remember listening to it in the hearing, thinking, this will never pass through a body of elected officials because this is a direct attack on how they are down here. And this was in 2017, I guess, just kind of laughing going, this is going nowhere. And so to kind of see it now kind of go through a process where they, the citizens in Alaska said, no, we want to have this be a part of how we like the people. Is really kind of cool to watch it start and how it ended. You know, I think the coalition building, to me is probably the most significant and inspiring part of this ballot measure. In fact, I was just sharing with someone the other day on our website, we have this list of supporters, and it's an amazing list of. I mean, of regular people who just care about our state to people who are serving in. Who have served in the state legislature, who are currently serving in the state legislature, and then people even nationally, people, you know, who have supported things like right choice voting and open primaries. And, you know, so the coalitions that kind of got built along the way. And Scott mentioned this, I think, you know, one of the most significant ones is reaching out and working with the Alaska Native population. I think so many times on statewide races, especially ballot measures, rural Alaska is forgotten about because it doesn't have huge voting blocks as a center like Anchorage or Fairbanks here in Alaska. But they are citizens just like us, who live in the urban areas. And I think they are either A, taken for granted or B, just put to the side because they are seen not needed. And I know early on the committee and the people working involved, it was a big priority for us to continue to reach out and even start very small and just let people know this is happening. We'd love to hear from you. Till it got to the place that there was a. You know, our group is called Alaskans for Better Elections. Well, they started, you know, a Facebook group, Alaska Natives for Better Elections. You know, we had all sorts of different groups, and it was, to me, that was a very inspiring and just cool thing to watch grow from just conversations to really making an impact on the race. It kind of gave us the open door that we needed to Talk to people in rural Alaska, where the opposition probably did what people usually do, like I mentioned about measures, just kind of forget them, not talk to them. And it did them a disservice. And I think that was probably one of the things that brought us across the board. But I know we had Fishermen for Better Alaskans. We had, you know, all sorts of little fun groups. And it was neat to kind of see just the grassroots movement to it. And, you know, Alaska is obviously a huge state, and with COVID we couldn't really have a lot of meetings and events and having these small grassroots groups and a variety of groups. I think, to me, that was really the pivot point where it got us across the finish line.

I definitely want to come back to what it was like to organize during COVID because that's something that reformers across the country are still grappling with, and it's very, very challenging. Before we get more into the campaign, Scott, getting this on the ballot was not necessarily easy. There were a good number of legal challenges. As the campaign's. As the committee's counsel, can you talk a little bit about the legal proceedings and kind of just take us through that story?

Yeah. So we filed our ballot measure. I want to say it was August of gosh, just last year. Seems like a long time ago after Covid, but we filed our ballot measure, and then the state has 60 days to review. And we knew we were up against it because you have to gather signatures and file before the next legislative session to get it on the ballot. And we had an administration that, you know, frankly, was openly antagonistic to what we'd filed. And so they came out, and as preface to that, I will say I got these ideas together, and I worked with probably the state's recognized, best elections systems attorney in the state, and she helped me draft it. We tightened it up, and the attorney general himself wrote the opinion and said, nope, we're not letting them gather signatures. It's unconstitutional. Here's why. So we were under the gun. So we had to get in front of a superior court judge. We had to expedite everything. To her everlasting credit, I mean, she turned around major litigation in 30 days and wrote a beautiful opinion in our favor and said, give them the booklets. Let them start gathering. They attempted to petition the Supreme Court to stop us from gathering. Everything about just kneecapping us, stopping us running out the clock. The Supreme Court rejected that request. We gathered our signatures just under the wire, got them in, they're accepted, and then they took Us to the state Supreme Court. And likewise at the state supreme court, we had a 5, 0 decision that it was constitutional, it was going on the ballot. But yeah, nothing came easy in this one. And they only had to win once. We had to win every time. We had to win in court, then win gathering signatures, then win in the Supreme Court, and then win the election. And so in retrospect, it feels great because everyone loves an underdog story. You know, you take on the powers that be and literally at every moment, they're aligned against you. Republicans are. Many Democrats are. All the kind of tools of the system are being used to our detriment, and we still somehow weathered it and came through.

And so the main legal challenge, or at least the one, the big one at the end, was whether or not this violated the single subject provision of the Constitution. Right. The idea that because this was, you know, this was a sweeping democracy reform bill that touched on the primary system, campaign finance, and ranked choice voting, that it violated that single subject provision. But ultimately the judge said that's not a concern.

Right.

Yeah. The state's argument was unique and I dare say kind of made up because there's a single subject rule and it applies to legislation in the state. And I mean, as Jason knows as a legislator, I mean, there are many, many bills that tackle criminal justice reform from 10 different angles, tackle the budget from 10 different angles. As long as there's a cohesion, there's a single broad subject, those are okay. Our Constitution also says that the people's power by initiative is co. Equal with the legislatures with certain carve outs, but largely. And the state said in spite of that, no, this is different. We believe that somewhere out in the ether is a new rule that says we're just not going to let ballot measures have the same power that the legislature has. And the Supreme Court said, Basically, we've got 50 years of case law here on the subject. Give us a break. It was a very strong decision in our favor. So ultimately, the single subject being election reform, the whole legislation being 20 some pages long and being contained in a single title out of the Alaska statutes, I think the Supreme Court reading between the lines of their opinion, they didn't think it was a particularly close call. That attack was the best they could come up with to keep us off the ballot. And it wasn't good enough.

And it really did come down to the wire. I mean, it's amazing. I remember reading the news stories and being in touch with some folks that you already had the signatures in hand before that Final decision. So basically, is that correct, that basically you had already collected the signatures and you were actually already certified. If the Supreme Court of Alaska Superior Court said it was good, then you were already ready to go and ready to go to the ballot and run that campaign. So you were well prepared regardless, or, you know, assuming the judge would rule in your favor?

Yeah, yeah, they had. They had attempted. The state had attempted to prevent us from getting the signature booklets and tried to put a stay on the judgment, which said, hand them over. They failed at that. And so we did get the signatures. But again, you know, kudos to the state Supreme Court. We briefed that thing in 60 days, had argument, and weeks later they gave us our decision. Actually, my Supreme Court argument in that case was the last time I wore a suit, it was just pre Covid, it was late February. So last time I put a suit on. Hopefully my suit still fit after Covid. But at every stage, the wheels of democracy, the wheels of the system worked the way they're supposed to work, that no one can get into power and be above the law. And it was, as part of the journey, a part of the story. I think it's incredibly refreshing that, yeah, the courts did the right thing at every step and the machinery worked the way it's supposed to work.

So. But you mentioned Covid, and I want to bring it back to what it's like to organize during COVID And Jason, so you mentioned how difficult it was and how your ground operation was largely halted. Give us a sense of what it was like to organize. Because other ballot initiatives across the country were largely put on hold because they couldn't meet the signature requirements or, you know, maybe they went down, you know, beforehand, or they just, the organizers decided, let's not do it this year. So what was it like? What were the main strategies used? And, you know, how did you. Did you have any people going door to door? Yeah.

You know, I think we recognize how lucky we were to have signatures gathered by January, kind of have that end of it wrapped up before, you know, the COVID pandemic hit. And, I mean, it was talking to other reformers around the country. It was disheartening to see so many great measures kind of stop in their tracks because they had to stop. They couldn't get the signatures in time. And so we recognized when that was happening, like, whoa, we were really lucky. And two, we're going to have a spotlight put on us. I mean, we knew that because if one tenth of the ballot measures are going to make it this year and we're one of them, then we're going to get some extra attention. And so we got to, you know, do this right. In fact, we had a. There was a beer tasting festival in Anchorage, I think in January or February. We said, okay, this is probably going to be the first of, you know, 100 different events that we're going to end up doing. Because you talk to ranked choice voting people who have done this before, like, oh, you need beer tastings and cookie tastings and all sorts of these things to kind of get people kind of in the, you know, the flow of ranking things and understanding how the voting works. That was it. That was our, like our one big event. And we didn't really get to do too many more. You know, we were at, we were lined up to do festivals, lined up to do state fairs, lined up to do, you know, everything, you know, in the summertime in Alaska, people are outdoors and so that's where you get to meet people, you get to talk to people one on one, you get to go door knocking and all of that stopped. And as a candidate, you know, I really relied on going door to door and talking to people face to face. If I couldn't have done that, you know, there's no way I would have been able to, you know, pull off the victory. And so I think at the beginning, those first spring, March, April months, we kind of thought, okay, this is just a, you know, a challenge for us, but by July we'll be okay and figure this out. And obviously it never came back. We were never allowed to do the big events or allowed to do any gatherings. And so we had a lot of play in the digital media space. Our website is, I've had so many different people tell us how, just kudos to how our website was that perfect balance of lots of information but not in the weeds and very easy to use, but not elementary. And so I think we put a lot of focus on social media and websites and digital ads and things like that. But gathering people, talking to people from a state like Alaska where, you know, you can't just drive to a lot of these, you know, anything off the road system you have to fly to and fine was a challenge. Meeting with large groups was a challenge. And so, you know, the experts we've become on zoom and everything else, you know, you know, and phone and text and everything was relied on in probably tenfold what we probably would have had to do if we would have gone the traditional route. Did it hurt us at the end of the day? In terms of, you know, our vote count perhaps, you know, not being able to have those one on one stories, talk to people, have big events, to be able to explain what we're doing. You know, ultimately we're very happy that we crossed the finish line victoriously. But, you know, it definitely was a challenge. And it, I think in other states it might have been easier to do something like this, to be able to travel, to be able to have billboards, to be able to be in a bigger media market to share what you're doing. There was a lot of just hard work and grassroots type of work that had to be done. But also the big emphasis in the digital space. It's a kudos to the team and the passion of everyone who was on board.

Right.

And it was a very narrow victory. So all of that hard work really did pay off. I mean, that was largely probably the margin of all the elbow grease that you put into organizing during COVID in a very difficult situation of doing it virtually all digitally really did pay off. And it does, you know, go to show that when you know our listeners today and if you read it in the news, right, that these reforms pass, it's not that they're just put on the ballot and they just magically pass. These are really very intensive efforts, especially during COVID And so here's another question for you both. I want both of your takes because I think that you'll have different perspectives here. One of the most challenging parts for reformers is appealing to both sides of the aisle. And you guys are in Alaska and you know, as you already prefaced here, it's a very different state politically. But at the same time, you know, what messages were you using and how did you connect with Republican voters who at least in the lower 48 are usually kind of the ones that are harder to get on board with reform, not because they don't agree with it, but because there are a lot of party leader cues that often will say vote against this. Because what we find is that voters of all political stripes want these reforms. But oftentimes there are roadblocks to getting people to listen because we're all on the same team here and we all want a better democracy. But it's challenging, is challenging to get past the media bubbles and the other ways that divide us. And so, Scott, I want to start with you. What is your take on this? How did the campaign reach Republicans? What was your messaging?

Yeah, I mean, one of the most successful things we did and I think we succeeded at this until maybe the Very end when really the attacks started to pile on us. But we kept it nonpartisan the whole time. One thing I can be very proud of is every presentation. If I was presenting to a progressive group, I wasn't walking in there saying, and your guys are going to win. And I was. And likewise with, you know, perhaps, you know, maybe resource, you know, resource development type groups or more conservative groups or Republican groups. I was saying the same thing. I was saying all this system does is make the outcome more representative of what the most voters want. That's it. You're going to have to trust the voters with me if you want to support this. But I'm not going to shine you on. I can point to, I mean, I could point to an aberrant outcome where the Democrat won because of vote splitting. I could point to the same for Republicans, but that wasn't the point. I was like, you know, don't look backwards, look forwards. How do we want decisions made? And do we want a very slim minority of people, the most partisan minority? Absolutely, in the driver's seat of our elections because that's where we are. 5 to 10% of the electorate drives who's going to win all these races because they show up for the primaries and is that a good system? And so I'm proud that we kind of kept that all along. Now, of course we got attacked again and again and people made it partisan towards the end, but I think that was the key to our success. But I mean, in retrospect, it's sort of amazing that we pulled it off. Because even though there's a ton of independence in Alaska, I mean, think about the fact that the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor in 2018 both came out against us vociferously. Now when you have that, and together their support added up to 95% of the vote, you'd think, well, holy smokes, how do you get through that? What it shows you is a lot of those people are holding their nose and voting in the system they got, but wasn't necessarily a resounding support for either of those. We were also the only election, to my awareness, that a no vote was endorsed by Alaska Right to Life, the leading anti abortion group and Planned Parenthood. They both said, vote no. Why? It's got nothing to do with choice. I mean, I could make a fair argument that considering 65 plus percent of Alaskans identify as pro choice, this is actually a good reform for women's rights. But the fact that both of them weighted in showed that all of these tools that are supposedly policy focused, have been hijacked by partisan interests. They went that direction because they got cues from the party leadership, the people who are in control that this is what we want. And so we really built, as Jason covered earlier, we built from the bottom up. We got a business leader, we got your eye doctor to endorse, and then we started getting mayors to endorse and then we started getting state representatives. And you saw that result in our margins. One of our big early endorsements was the speaker of the House, Bryce Edgman, first Alaska native speaker of the House, kind of an icon in rural Alaska. He came on board, all of a sudden we were legitimate because a lot of the gap we had to jump over was the belief gap. We could sit down. If I could sit with you for a half hour, I could convince you this was better. What I couldn't do is convince you it was possible as these people came on and we saw that in the election results. For example, Kodiak is one of the House districts in Alaska, Republican district represented by a Republican, although she's pretty moderate crusty fishermen. Are we going to get them on board with high minded election reform? And their representative, Louise Stutz endorsed us. And lo and behold, on the absentee ballots start coming in, we're taking 75% of them. So we sort of, we got thought leaders, we got people who people trusted and that was enough for us to get the foot in the door. That one, it was good and two, it was possible and that, I mean, if there's a way we built the win, it really was through coastal and rural Alaska, through those validators.

Jason, what do you think?

I think I'll add one of the pivots this summer that really, I think piqued the normal Alaskans interest in this is during a debate or during some newspaper editorials. Both parties, especially on the Republican side, the party later said if this passes, this will put political parties in Alaska extinct. And people kind of said that doesn't sound too bad to me. You're kind of Alaskan who just is the independent who just wants to have good neighborhood and good education and a good job, who doesn't really think about politics and thinks party politics are, you know, it's just, it's about keeping power, you know, et cetera. When they said that, I think kind of said, okay, tell me more. How does this actually impact me and how will this give me more power? And that kind of gave us the opening to talk to normal people who maybe don't think about politics all the Time to say, okay, if parties are kind of the gatekeeper or kind of the challenge to success, what we want to, what we deem to. To be successful as governance in our state capitol, if they're out of the way, that sounds like a good thing. And that was kind of, I think, a quote that got utilized to a lot of people going, yeah, I'm not red or blue. And so this sounds like something I can get behind. Tell me more. Maybe I'll check out the website or when I see the ad, I'll at least listen this time. And that was something, obviously we can't. We didn't know it was coming. You know, we didn't. We can't plan for. But it really was true. I think it, I mean, when you, when you look at what the reform is trying to do, it was saying, look, party bosses, you can't, you know, you know, carve out who you want as a candidate just because they're the most Republican or most Democrat. People who want to run are going to get to run and they're going to get the same, same platform and same, you know, voice that you have, or as a voter, you're going to have even more voice because now you get to, you know, elected officials are going to have to come to you to talk about the issues and can't just rely on slogans. And so that was kind of a strange, kind of funny pivot that happened that I think we haven't as a, as a team talked about. But it really was something that kind of came out of left field that we said, let's go with it. And people really, people really understood what that meant. That was. That was a fun way to kind of talk to conservatives and Democrats.

And I should say that Alaska is no stranger to passing democracy reform by the ballot. In 2016, Alaska passed automatic voter registration. It was one of the first states in the nation to do it. It was within the first. I think it was the sixth in the nation to do that. So Alaska was on the cutting edge of automatic voter registration. And so this is just, you know, now Alaska is the second state to use ranked choice voting for state elections and federal elections. So it's very exciting. So one last question, which is, how do you think this is going to affect the future of Alaska politics? And do you think there are going to be more ballot initiatives proposed in the coming years in Alaska?

Yeah, I'll say. I think we are going to see better and more cooperation in our legislature almost immediately. I say that based on the atmospherics and the fact that they literally have to come to the table and figure things out before. Before we run out of money in this state. But also, I've had conversations with many representatives who've said, finally, I couldn't publicly support you, maybe, but now I don't have to go through this game of one decision for the party and one for my constituents. Now I can just say, I represent district, whatever, and this is what they want. And so I think it's gonna be a refreshing change. It doesn't mean partisanship goes away, but it means we've removed all the perverse incentives that these legislators have where they have to balance the right decision with their ability to come back again next session and make more good decisions. And those are legitimate conflicts they felt. And so I think that shift is going to be kind of almost immediate.

And there's already talk about potentially Lisa Murkowski, the senator there, potentially being able to buck her party more because she's not afraid of parts of her primary or other primary challenge, rather. So that'll be an interesting dynamic to watch. Jason, what do you think? Do you think that Alaska politics will change?

I had similar conversations that Scott mentioned of people who I served with, who were Republicans, even Democrats, who said, I wish I could just run as an independent. That's really. I really want to do what's best based in what the legislation in front of me based on data, based on analytics. But I gotta have that party support when I run next time. So it's gonna be really hard for me to do this. I mean, that was. Those are real conversations I had. With that eliminated, now you have legislators who go, what's the best policy? What's best for Alaska? And that is incredibly free as an elected official to do just what's best for the state as a whole, as opposed to a party in your little district in your little neck of the woods of Alaska. I mean, it's. I really do. I mean, I wouldn't have been involved and been a co chair and volunteered my time if I didn't believe that this is going to move Alaska forward with good, good governance out of our state capital. So I'm excited. I really am. And truthfully, I'm, you know, I think we're up in Alaska. We're isolated a lot of the time. Scott and I, you know, the past week after we've, after we were. We won this thing. I mean, I've talked to groups in Arizona, Oregon, you know, Adam, yourself. I mean, we're talking to groups all over the country. Who are going, we're excited. Tell us. More like this. Like, you know, tell us, tell us. You know, there's no secret sauce because every, you know, location is different. But, man, people are excited to go. You know, here's one state, here's two state. How do we get to five states? How do you know? How do we. How do you know it not just might be rcv, but other reforms? I think people really are inspired by this, and I think we haven't really fully swallowed that yet. As a team. It's. It's pretty exciting, and we love talking about it, but it's also exciting to see what other states want to do, and hopefully this is a springboard to a lot of different places doing similar reforms.

Yeah, I mean, I think that we were all watching this from the lower 48 and crossing our fingers because it is a big deal, guys. I mean, it really is a big deal. And I do think we're going to see a proliferation of more of these creative ballot initiatives across the country. I mean, we've already seen it in 2020, 2016, 2018, and ranked choice voting is just becoming more and more of a popular idea. And I think that what Alaska showed is that it's not just a popular idea, but it's one that can be enacted into law. So. Any final thoughts, Scott? Jason, before we sign off here, not

too much, I think I would say every state's different, but reach out, you know, we have, you know, I'm not saying we've got the answer to any state's particular problems, but I think what we put together is going to be remembered as a toolbox that lets voters solve their problems. And I think when you look at the reforms like that, and you don't say, well, this will help the right, this will help the left, but really just about making it work in a, in a rat, you know, just rationality, you know, this combination of reforms, having looked across the country, might be the most rational attack on political dysfunction that we've seen in the country, and we're really hopeful that it catches on.

Jason, final thoughts?

Yeah, you know, I think for people who are involved with, you know, politics in their localities, city, state, whatever that means, just, you know, to ask people, you know, is this working for me? Is this working for my neighbor? Is this working for my city? You know, are we. Are we, you know, just ramming our heads against the wall over and over and over because of the system that we currently have? If that's the answer, you know, is there a better path forward. You know, our committee's name was Alaska for Better Elections. It wasn't Alaska for Perfect Elections. It was just better. There has to be something that we can do to improve it for the people who live in our state. So, you know, we found a system that worked within our constitution and that was going to lead to better governance. That's the goal. And I think if people want to change the dynamics in a positive force, it's definitely possible. And Scott and I and all the other people on the team love talking about it and we'd love to talk to others if people have questions. And hopefully we hear from more people and get people inspired to do what's next.

Well, I hope our listeners took a little inspiration from you guys today. So, Jason, Scott, thank you so much for joining us today. I encourage our listeners to look up more about measure two and how it's going to change Alaska politics. So thank you guys so much.

Thanks a lot.

Adam.

This has been another episode of Another Way. See you next time.

Sa.