Opinions

Alaska and the rest of America better get wise about elections and money

Our election process is in deep trouble. No cause is more important today than salvaging our democracy, which slides toward plutocracy through increased big-money control of political campaigns. Understandably, much of the focus of both the governor and Legislature these days is on the budget but this is one of several tasks requiring legislative action without spending. Good answers to Alaska's fiscal problems will not come from elected officials who owe their election to giant donors without a push.

We are already in something of a trap since few in Juneau and none in D.C. are there without decisive support from big donors. A partner in one of the consulting firms that profit from the existing federal multimillion-dollar system suggested that a very bad Begich commercial, produced by his firm, couldn't have mattered much since the winning margin was in the thousands. Surely one (hypothetically) bad ad couldn't make a difference. He is using the wrong statistic. That election was decided by 2 percent. If one of every 100 voters changed her mind because of the repeated airing of that ad, then the election was thereby lost. One percent is not a bad campaign goal.

Mr. Duffy also opined that a loss was all but inevitable because Alaska was a red state. D.C. consultants are long on deft ads but short on local knowledge. Alaska is a purple state. The mix of red and blue independents far outnumbers Dems and Reps. Independents decide most elections.

In one sense he was right: The Senate ad war didn't make a difference. The giant, mega-dollar, D.C.-framed ads for each candidate were almost all humdrum and candidate expenditures matched, Begich even having a slight dollar edge up there in the stratosphere.

There is another factor that makes American elections something of an embarrassment to democracy: voter ignorance. That big purple cloud contains millions of people who don't know much about public policy and are persuadable by pap. Billions are now spent on vacuous political advertising carrying not a tenth of the actually useful information carried by a public television, Chamber of Commerce or League of Women Voters debate or even the state pamphlet. Most of the folks making choices from TV ads have to scrape hard for a living. They say they don't have time for politics. In this they are mistaken. Our future depends on wise political choices.

We are also said to be trapped by "Citizens United" (a title reeking of irony), the Supreme Court case that made corporations citizens with commensurate First Amendment rights. One day, as evidence of the damage accrues, the 5-4 decision will be reversed. But judicial regrets tend to be expressed only after the judge leaves the bench. We are still some years from a switch in court membership. In the meantime, we must do what we can do. To fix the system, at least partially, Alaska can lead the way by using two doors the Supreme Court left open.

In two separate paragraphs, the court's opinion suggested naively that "corporate democracy" could fix any problems created by the decision. This opening, to offer one example, allows the appropriate government authority to require that any corporation considering spending to influence a political campaign first take the question to its shareholders. Every shareholder, as an alternative, can take her share of the proposed expenditure as a dividend.

ADVERTISEMENT

The other fix allowed by the court is its permission of requirements that ads disclose at least who is paying for the ad. Did you notice the blur at the end of almost every political ad in our recent election that shortchanged existing disclosure requirements? A serious firming of those requirements can take a lot of bite out of a $100,000 ad campaign.

At the national level, the door is closing. In the recent budget bill, an amendment was included doubling the amount of money big donors can make to political parties (which funnel the money to candidates). But in Alaska there is still a chance, and this chance, before we forget, should top the state's non-fiscal priority list.

John Havelock, a former attorney general, has run for office in Alaska's distant past.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

John Havelock

John Havelock is an Anchorage attorney and university scholar.

ADVERTISEMENT