In yet another attempt to derail the ongoing grassroots effort to repeal Alaska’s new and highly controversial ranked-choice voting system, a well-funded pro-ranked choice voting group is asking the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) to halt the signature gathering campaign aimed at putting the issue on the 2024 ballot for voters to decide.

Ranked-choice voting passed by 1% of the vote in 2020 and in a new and highly controversial era of ranked choice voting. The novel change also did away with Alaska’s traditional party primaries, a move widely seen to benefit U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whom many believe would never make it out of a Republican primary.

Ranked-choice voting opponents claim that the new scheme fails to meet its promises of increasing voter turnout or diversity, and instead confuses voters by complicating the election process, while undermining traditional majority rule and abolishing party primaries. When used for the first time in 2022, ranked-choice resulted in the lowest voter turnout for a general election since statehood.

Clarkson said the real aim of the complaint is to divert the repeal effort group from gathering signatures.

Kendall’s Dec. 4 complaint acknowledges that the anti-ranked choice group, Alaskans for Honest Elections (AHE), is on the cusp of securing the needed signatures, and he says they should be stopped due to an alleged failure to properly disclose that a non-profit group, Wellspring Ministries, is assisting their efforts.

Kendall is the former campaign legal counsel for Sen. Murkowski. He drafted and helped spearhead the ranked choice voting law in Alaska, and now spends considerable time attempting to defend it.

He provides legal counsel for Alaskans for Better Elections (ABE), a multi-million-dollar backed pro-ranked choice voting activist group. Kendall’s latest APOC complaint is the latest in a series of complaints urging the state to fine or outright stop ranked-choice opponents from getting the repeal question before voters.

Kendall specifically alleges that ranked-choice opponents have used office space from Wellspring Ministries, a faith-based group that owns a building on Lake Otis Parkway in Anchorage, where Wellspring Fellowship meets for religious services. The building also has offices, which Wellspring rents out. Kendall asserts that Wellspring is actively supporting the repeal effort, while AHE claims that renting a building from an organization does not mean the group is behind the signature gathering effort.

Kevin Clarkson, who is providing legal counsel for the repeal effort, said AHE hired a company – Top Fundraising Solutions – to gather signatures. Top Fundraising then rented office space from Wellspring Ministries.

They should be embarrassed trying to stop our initiative.

They could have rented space from “any other landlord in Anchorage,” Clarkson said. “If they had … that doesn’t mean the landlord was involved with the campaign. It just means they are renting space to a company that is providing a service to the ballot group, the expense of which was reported.”

Clarkson said the real aim of the complaint is to divert the repeal effort group from gathering signatures.

“It’s a game to them,” he said. “All they’re trying to do is waste their time, energy and money. They are desperate, frankly, because they know they are close on the signature gathering.”

In order to show that Top Fundraising was utilizing Wellspring offices, Kendall’s group sent a mole to the building just before Thanksgiving. He posed as a volunteer, while secretly recording his visit in an effort to undermine the campaign.

“The Pro-RCV Group and their attorneys will do anything to stop us,” AHE said in a statement released Dec. 5. “In this case, they filed a complaint against us after hiring a ‘spy’ they call it a plant. This was a ‘spy’ that was ‘spying’ on our campaign. They should be embarrassed trying to stop our initiative. This group has had people go into private businesses where our signatures were being gathered and take pictures and harass the business owners and employees. They have called stores to complain about our people collecting signatures. They have filed hundreds of thousands of dollars of complaints with APOC trying to get the state to put us out of business.”

Clarkson added that Kendall’s group has weaponized Alaska campaign finance laws, “twisting facts beyond any resemblance to reality…

Kendall’s complaint asks APOC to expedite his request to prematurely stop AHE signature gathering and force the group to pay civil fines before it can resume its efforts.

Kendall acknowledges that AHE has a goal of turning in the necessary signatures by Dec. 15, ahead of the Jan. 15, 2024, deadline for submitting signatures to the lieutenant governor so the repeal question can be placed on the ballot.

Kendall claims that if APOC declines to act immediately it may cause “irreversible” harm, namely that AHE might successfully gather the needed signatures and have the repeal question on the November 2024 ballot.

In response to Kendall’s complaint, Clarkson sent an opposition letter to APOC, calling the complaint an “unsubstantiated and outrageous request … aimed at trying to accomplish the illegitimate end of interfering with AHE’s ability to finish the lawful collection of signatures…”

Clarkson added that Kendall’s group has weaponized Alaska campaign finance laws, “twisting facts beyond any resemblance to reality; infiltrating moles into a third-party service company’s operation to lie and then surreptitiously recording conversations; engaging spies to make underhanded telephone calls to that same company under false pretenses and then recording conversations and twisting and distorting statements.”

Clarkson wrote that Kendall’s request for an expedited hearing revealed his “true motivations,” which is a concern that the ranked-choice repeal group is just days away from completing it signature gathering efforts.

Kendall first filed a complaint with APOC on July 5, but APOC said it does not intend to issue a decision until Jan. 5, 2024.

“We are days and weeks — and certainly not six months — away from the end of AHE’s signature petition drive and subsequent dissolution of the group,” Kendall pleaded in his complaint. “If AHE turns in enough signatures to qualify [the repeal question] for the ballot, no amount of civil penalties will remedy the violations.”

While Kendall’s complaint concludes by stating that “the public has a strong interest is knowing who is trying to petition them for their signature in support of a ballot initiative,” his own organization is currently under investigation for concealing its donors and supporters from the public eye.

In October, APOC notified Kendall that it was investigating allegations by AHE that his entity violated campaign disclosure laws by failing to register as a political opposition group, while funneling money from unidentified donors to ABE.

TAKING ACTION

— For more information about the repeal effort, call Alaskans for Honest Elections at (907) 802-8116 or email Admin@AlaskansForHonestElections.com. Additional information is available at the group’s website, AlaskansForHonestElections.com.

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