The Alaska Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that it will uphold election reforms voted into law by Alaska voters in November 2020. The Court held that the reforms passed in Ballot Measure 2 do not violate Alaska’s Constitution and will be implemented for the 2022 primary and general elections.
The Alaskan Independence Party, for example, argued that certain aspects of the law violated the constitution, particularly the implementation of ranked-choice voting and a nonpartisan primary election.
AIP Chairman Bob Bird previously told KSRM:
“To be recognized as an official party, you have to have a threshold of something like 3% of votes in the general election. If you have two strong Democrats who are running against two strong Republicans in the primary, a Libertarian or an AIP or Green candidate isn’t going to make, probably make, the threshold. That means we don’t even get into the general election anymore.”
The Supreme Court, however, upheld the law in its entirety, agreeing with the State’s Division of Elections and Department of Law, which defended the changes and sought to move forward with them in this year’s elections.
Jason Grenn, Executive Director of Alaskans for Better Elections says:
“We should all be proud to live in a state that fought so hard to stand up for the will of the voters. We look forward to continuing our work reaching out to Alaskans how this new system empowers voters all across our state.”
Bird also says:
“We have a corrupt judiciary and a judiciary that had a direct hand in creating the successful proposition 2, which was negating the legislative requirement that witness signatures were necessary on absentee ballots.”
Scott Kendall, Counsel for Alaskans for Better Elections stated that the law was written with Alaska’s Constitution in mind:
“Many local and national legal experts reviewed the proposed changes to ensure its constitutionality before we ever presented anything to the public. These changes were based on the laws and traditions of Alaska, and we had full confidence that Ballot Measure 2 was constitutional. Today’s ruling confirms this, and we thank the Justices for their careful, but swift consideration.”
Officials at the State Division of Elections are in the process of working to implement voter education as the Primary Election and General Election approach later this year.