(Some of the Dozens of Mailers Telling Me to Vote for a Candidate That Isn’t Even Running)
I was at the post office last night and someone waiting in line hollered out “Mr. Eastman, you need to fix this!” as he pointed to a trashcan overflowing with political mail. Someone suggested we pass a new law requiring all political mail be printed on burnable paper. That way you can at least do something useful with it. Actually, there’s a better solution.
Most of those political flyers are getting shipped into Alaska from the lower 48. They are coming to Alaska for one reason.
Predators look for victims who are weak and are unlikely to fight back. Our election system here in Alaska is currently broadcasting all the signals of a weak victim that can be easily manipulated if you throw enough money at it…and that money is flowing directly into your mailbox.
You may be wondering, why is all this happening in Alaska now?
The reason it is happening now is because this year is the first Alaska U.S. Senate race with a competitive Democrat candidate since Alaska switched to Ranked-Choice Voting. In the last U.S. Senate race, it was Kelly Tshibaka and Lisa Murkowski. Both wore the Republican label. The Democrat that year received less than 11% of the vote.
Under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting, the National Democratic Party has all the incentive in the world to recruit spoiler candidates to appear on the ballot and dilute support for the Republican. They reached out to every Dan Sullivan in Alaska they could find.
They even came all the way to Wasilla pretending to be a wealthy group of conservative donors in the lower 48 and tried to recruit me to run against Mary Peltola. I declined.
What is it about ranked-choice voting that invites next level election manipulation?
I was the first legislator to file the bill to repeal Ranked-Choice Voting. I was also the first legislator to win the primary election with 62% of the vote, and still lose to ranked-choice voting. In the November election, I again won a majority of Republican votes in a deeply red Republican district, but under ranked-choice voting none of that counts. I still lost.
Ranked-choice voting lowered Alaska’s defenses against electoral manipulation in several ways, some of which I experienced personally.
First, it guarantees that exactly four candidates will appear on the ballot in every federal race in November. Why four? There isn’t a good reason. It was the number that was chosen.
In the race for Alaska’s governor it means that one Democrat is up against three Republicans this year: three candidates competing for the same pool of resources, diluting each other’s support. By the way, if you try to blame any of the three for appearing on the ballot you are the fool. Under ranked-choice voting, there will always be four. If any of the three drop out, their spot automatically goes to a candidate that is even worse.
In this year’s race for U.S. Senator, we again see one Democrat up against three “Republicans”, with two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. Two of the four aren’t campaigning. Decoy Dan Sullivan was forced to drop his faux “Republican” label and is now said to be hiding out in Portland. The other candidate never even submitted his photo to the Division of Elections.
By the way, if you are a conservative voter like my wife and I, your mailbox is getting flooded by Democrat-aligned organizations telling you to only vote for the “conservative” (i.e. the candidate who isn’t running and whose name doesn’t even appear in the State Election Pamphlet).
In the U.S. House race, Ranked-Choice Voting means that the “Democrat” inmate serving time in a New York prison has made it to the top four again this year for the second time in a row. Democrats wanted to boot him off the ballot. Republicans fought in court to keep him on the ballot.
Ranked-Choice Voting isn’t just an invitation for Democrats to behave badly. It’s an invitation for everyone to behave badly. In my own race, it was Republicans. On Election Day, I magically transformed from being the legislator with the most conservative voting record to being a closet Democrat. I went from being a homeschool dad (which I still am) to being anti-homeschool. I went from being pro-life to being a supporter of Planned Parenthood.
When you are the only endorsed Republican candidate in a deep red district and you win the primary election with 62% it is difficult, as a conservative, to raise money for the general election. Those in Juneau saw that as an opportunity to spend money to temporarily create a brand new David Eastman for voters at election time, knowing that it would be difficult for a grassroots candidate to raise the money to counter their messaging in the waning days of an election. Supporters sent donations, but many of those donations arrived too late to make a difference. In the end, most Republicans saw through the mud and voted for me, but my opponent still won. She received 73% of the vote from Kamala Harris voters in my district. That was the margin of victory.
This is the legacy of Ranked-Choice Voting:
- A prison inmate in the top-four in 2024 and 2026.
- Two Dan Sullivans and two candidates with no campaigns in the top four this year.
- Millions of dollars spent telling you to vote for candidates who aren’t running and have no campaign.
Conservatives have been taught that money is to be saved and their vote shouldn’t be wasted on those who don’t reflect their values. Alaska’s ranked-choice voting throws this way of life on its head. Conservatives are told: Vote for the prison inmate to keep someone worse from getting on the ballot. Vote against the “conservative” because he is a faux candidate. Rank all three Republicans for governor even though you don’t know anything about the third one. The sad part is that this advice isn’t entirely bad. It is the result of political players trying to game a system that is incredibly vulnerable to being gamed.
If you want to shutoff the pipeline that is sending you millions of dollars of fake ads this year, there is one thing you can do today:
Vote YES on Ballot Measure 2 to end Ranked-Choice Voting manipulations once and for all.
