While the general election vote count is still winding down, it’s not too early for conservative Alaskans to begin calling on both the Alaska Republican Party and individual lawmakers to make a strong push to pass election reforms in the upcoming legislative session.

The current citizen-led initiative to repeal ranked-choice voting is a great start, but we must also lean heavily on lawmakers in Juneau to take up other reforms such as mail-in voting safeguards, ballot harvesting and transfer, signature verification mandates, voter registration improvements and more. Legislators should also be pressed take a serious look at how we tabulate votes. Do we really need Dominion machines, or are there creative ways to recruit and train election workers so that we can follow the lead of the Mat-Su Borough and do hand-counts only?

The legislative session starts in January. Between now and then Alaskans need to work with our representatives – new and old – to ensure that voting integrity and reform bills are a high priority. Dozens of these bills were introduced in the last session but every single one languished in various committees.

Everyone should be able to agree that there is nothing more important in a representative democratic republic than fair, open and transparent elections. That point must be driven home over the next weeks and months so that it emerges as a high priority when legislators convene in Juneau.

The views expressed here are those of the author.

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