Alaskans deserve better than ballot hanky-panky

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that the warring entities in Alaska politics will look to seize any potential edge, no matter how small — or, at the very least, deny it to their foes. You can find examples everywhere, but the most striking example this past week was the fight between U.S. House hopeful Alyse Galvin and the state Division of Elections about a one-letter change to the November ballot.

In fairness, this isn’t even the first court fight over that one letter. It started in 2017, when the Alaska Democratic Party sought the ability to nominate independent candidates and support them with party infrastructure. The party prevailed in court, overcoming state arguments that the practice would confuse voters. But what was left unresolved in that decision was how the Division of Elections would deal with such independents on the ballot — and that’s what Galvin’s fight in court this past week was about.

You’d be forgiven if you’ve read the headlines about this week’s fast-tracked legal battle and wondered what the big deal is. Removing a single letter from the ballot, although small in scope, could have an outsized impact on the election, as it ruins months of political spin by Galvin and Senate hopeful Al Gross. Politically, Alaska doesn’t follow a traditional red-versus-blue pattern. Although Alaska leans conservative, it also boast a deep independent streak. Owing to the state’s roots as the “Last Frontier,” many Alaskans are rightly wary of being stuffed into neat political boxes. Candidates that emphasize their independence can generate mass appeal here, and in this election cycle, both Galvin and Gross clearly sought to use that nuance to their advantage by personally registering to vote as “non partisan” instead of as Democrats, even though their positions clearly align with the Democratic Party. This change, they hoped, would allow them to be listed on the November ballot as independents, helping them secure votes from those whose sympathies don’t lie with major parties or who didn’t understand that they are candidates nominated by the Democratic Party. It was a game of political hide-the-ball that almost worked, but was countered by a last-minute change in ballot design that the state rolled out this week.

In 2018, under Gov. Bill Walker, the Division of Elections printed the names of candidates, their registered party and the party that nominated them. It was a subtle distinction, but one that the candidates — and their opponents — felt gave them a boost, given that most Alaskans are registered nonpartisan or undeclared, more than twice the number who identify as Democrats. It was a new and novel form of political gamesmanship in Alaska elections. What’s clear is that Democratic Party-nominated candidates perceived it as an advantage, and Republicans who are their main opponents aren’t about to roll over and concede it.

Thus it wasn’t too surprising this year when the Division of Elections, under a Republican administration, opted to omit the candidates' personal party affiliation, stating only their names and the party that nominated them — drawing a closer connection between the candidates and Democrats. That, too, was political gamesmanship, even if the Division’s ostensible justifications were more benign, such as concerns about the width of the ballot. It’s the sort of endless push-pull of partisan politics that makes Alaskans outside the orbit of the two major political parties want to scream.

So what’s a fair solution beyond this year? The back-and-forth battle raises the more basic question: Why print any party information on the ballot at all? The principle behind ballot listings is a valid one: convey basic information to voters in the little space available and give them a sense of where candidates stand and whose team, for lack of a better term, they’re likely to be on. Does printing a candidate’s personal party registration give a better sense of their politics than the party that nominated them? In some cases, perhaps. In others, as with Galvin and Gross this year, it’s clearly an obfuscation meant to provide more distance between the candidates and the Democratic Party that nominated them.

There is, after all, an existing avenue whereby independent candidates can avoid any association with political parties — appearing on the ballot by petition. It doesn’t clear the field for a two-candidate race, and it doesn’t allow for support by party infrastructure, but it does allow for that important “Independent” moniker regardless of how the ballot is designed. That seems the path a candidate would choose if they were truly independent of any party.

If that’s not an acceptable solution, there’s another option: Pass a law — by an initiative, if necessary — removing party identification from the ballot altogether. Doing so would remove the crutch of falling back on party preference, and require candidates to educate voters better on the merit of their ideas. After all, the party identifications as they exist now aren’t as helpful to voters as they think. Some independents are Democrats in everything but name; some Libertarians are Republicans. Some Democrats, by policy stance, are moderate Republicans, and the Alaska Republican Party itself is divided between two vastly different factions. Why not make the candidates themselves convince us where they stand, without relying on the party system to do that work for them?