A report alleges that backers of an effort to repeal ranked voting in Alaska violated state campaign finance rules, including by channeling money through a church-affiliated organization in a way that initially concealed the source of the contributions.

Backers of an effort to repeal ranked voting in Alaska violated state campaign finance rules, including by channeling money through a church-affiliated organization in a way that initially concealed the source of the contributions, a new report alleges.

The report, from the staff for the Alaska Public Offices Commission, recommends penalties of $22,500 for Art Mathias, a leader of the repeal effort, and around $20,000 for the church-affiliated Ranked Choice Education Association among its findings. The report alleges that Mathias, also president of the association, contributed money to the association knowing it “would be repurposed to support” the ballot group behind the repeal effort and that he gave $90,000 using the association as a “third party conduit.”

Those contributing at least $500 to an initiative application group must report that no later than 30 days after making the contribution. Mathias contributed $90,000 in late December, and in a June filing the association reported Mathias as the source of its contributions to the ballot group, the report states.

    • orclev@lemmy.world
      23·
      10 months ago

      While that would be nice, there’s pretty much no way that’s actually going to happen. I wish they would just reclassify all churches as 501c3 or similar non-profit status and repeal the tax exempt status for churches, but that will never happen because the evangelicals make massive profits which they would need to explain or donate and they currently pay lots of bribes make lots of campaign contributions.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        61·
        10 months ago

        I would be happy with just forcing them to have open books like other non-profits. Let everyone see exactly what they’re spending money on.

  • chaogomu@kbin.social
    105·
    10 months ago

    While I’m extremely critical of Ranked Choice, I’ll admit elections using it are largely immune to one single attack that Republicans love, the Ralph Nader.

    They fund someone who sounds great to the more fickle parts of the left, knowing that the candidate is completely unable to cross over into mass appeal, all so that the spoiler will siphon votes off of the main Democratic candidate, thus allowing the Republican candidate to win with less than 50% of the vote.

    In that one scenario, Ranked Choice easily performs better than First Past the Post.

    In almost every other scenario, it’s either a tie for just as shitty, or sometimes it’s actually worse than FPtP.

    Still, I seriously doubt that the people pushing for the repeal here are that concerned about the other areas where Ranked Choice falls flat as a voting system. They hate it because somehow a Democrat won.

    Which, sadly, might have come about because of one of the areas where Ranked Choice falls flat as a voting system. See, the more candidates you have in a Ranked Choice election, and the closer to viability they are in relationship to each other, the worse the system performs. Especially in elections that force you to rank all candidates.

    See, Ranked Choice advocates tell you that if your first choice is eliminated, your vote goes to your second choice. This is only true in the first round.

    If your second choice is eliminated before your first choice is, your vote skips your second choice and goes to your third. Or your fourth, or if there are no more candidates on your ballot because they didn’t last as long as your first choice did, your vote is just thrown out.

    If your second choice is the most popular candidate but just needed one more first round vote to stay in the election and win everything, it doesn’t matter. They’ve been booted in the first round and are gone.

    There’s more wrong with Ranked Choice, but ballot exhaustion and the screwiness of the eliminations is a big one.

    A system that does not have these problems is STAR. It was actually designed as a voting system by people who study elections and human behavior.

    The system is easy. You get a ballot. You rate each candidate on a scale of 0-5. How many stars? That’s it for the voter.

    The counting is easy as well. Count how many stars each candidate got. The top two then go head to head on each ballot. If I rated Bob at 5 and Joe at 4 because I like both, but Bob more, Bob gets the vote.

    The zero is important here, because there are candidates that you’ll hate and refuse to support at all, even with a 1 star, and candidates that you’ll hate just slightly less if it comes to it.

    You can rate two people the same. In the second round, that’s counted as “no preference”.

    Anyway. That got a bit long, but voting systems are something I tend to care about.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    31·
    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Backers of an effort to repeal ranked voting in Alaska violated state campaign finance rules, including by channeling money through a church-affiliated organization in a way that initially concealed the source of the contributions, a new report alleges.

    The report, from the staff for the Alaska Public Offices Commission, recommends penalties of $22,500 for Art Mathias, a leader of the repeal effort, and around $20,000 for the church-affiliated Ranked Choice Education Association among its findings.

    “The staff has made it impossible for a non-profit to make contributions to a ballot group without subjecting their donors to charges of donating in the name of another,” he said.

    The public offices commission staff report said it did not weigh allegations around potential tax deductions because that is an issue beyond the agency’s jurisdiction.

    In any event, the only government agency with jurisdiction to adjudicate tax-exempt status and the lawfulness of federal income tax deductions that may or may not be claimed, is the IRS.”

    The report from commission staff also recommended lesser penalties for reporting and other alleged violations by Alaskans for Honest Elections, the ballot group behind the repeal effort, and another group called Alaskans for Honest Government.

    The original article contains 521 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!