Alaska
Alaska Supreme Court allows for potential popular repeal of controversial election system
Alaska’s Supreme Court issued a decision Thursday that will allow a question regarding repeal of the state’s controversial ranked choice voting system to appear on the November ballot.
The state’s high court upheld a lower court ruling that would allow the ballot measure to come to a popular vote.
“Having considered the record, the parties’ briefs, and the parties’ arguments, we affirm the superior court’s summary judgment order,” the judges said in their ruling.
“An opinion explaining this decision will be issued at a later date.”
The case came about after three Alaska residents, led by Elizabeth Medicine Crow, sought to disqualify the measure based on allegedly defective petitions.
RANKED-CHOICE VOTING RANKLES ELECTION SEASON AS SUPPORTERS, OPPONENTS TRANSCEND PARTY LINES IN KEY STATES
Anchorage, Alaska’s skyline (Zihao Chen via Getty Images)
Alaska’s Division of Elections certified in March that enough signatures had been collected to qualify the repeal initiative after the agency allowed petitioners to fix notarized errors in their paperwork.
In 2020, Alaska voters narrowly approved the original ballot measure — with a 50.55% majority recorded — that instituted ranked choice voting there.
The practice, praised as a way to help moderate candidates, changes the election tabulation system from a simple majority framework to one that holds multiple rounds of counting.
In the first round, totals for each candidate are tabulated, and the candidate with the fewest “first votes” is eliminated. The “second votes” of that candidate’s supporters are added to the totals of the remaining candidates, round after round, until a winner is decided.
Alaska Republicans, in particular, criticized the practice in 2022 after Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, won in an otherwise shocking upset in the red state to succeed six-decade GOP lawmaker Don Young, who died that spring at 88.
The two leading GOP candidates under the new system, former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III, the conservative scion of a noted Democratic political family in the state, collectively garnered more votes than Peltola in the first round of tabulation but still lost.
IN THE ONLY STATE BORDERING RUSSIA, ALASKA GOVERNOR SAYS DEFENSES ARE STRONG
Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, speaks to supporters. (Getty Images )
Kelly Tshibaka, a fellow Republican who lost to Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2022, previously called it “deceptive how they sell [ranked-choice voting] to the public” as a “moderating force” when it is not in her view.
She pointed to the failed candidacy of Al Gross, a Democrat turned Independent who, at times, led in the primary but dropped out, leaving Peltola, on his left, to remain.
Meanwhile, proponents argue the practice helps take partisanship out of elections.
In Alaska specifically, many have pointed to the fact both conservative Gov. Mike Dunleavy and moderate Murkowski emerged victorious in 2022.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also sung its praises after the “biggest ranked choice voting election in America” in his city in 2021, and states like Maine have also adopted it.
Ranked choice voting however, has also been criticized by Alaska conservative activists like Judy Eledge, a former schoolteacher in Barrow, which is now known as Utqiagvik.
“You basically don’t get your first choice of who you want to win, and it enables people that otherwise would never win anything,” Eledge said in a recent Fox News Digital interview.
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American flags and vote buttons (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
“It gives them enough to win and basically just destroys the party system within the state when it comes to elections.”
Some on the right do support the system, including former Virginia State Delegate Chris Saxman, now executive director of Virginia Free, an organization that provides objective, nonpartisan political information to the business community.
In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, the former Staunton lawmaker noted Virginia Republicans utilized ranked choice voting in their 2021 convention candidate selection process and ultimately won back the governorship after a decade out of power.
Saxman spoke of a run-in with a Republican consultant at a party function who decried the use of the system because the right wing could have “gone after [the more moderate Republican] Youngkin harder, but we couldn’t afford to alienate his voters.”
“I was like, ‘So, it’s a problem not to attack a fellow Republican?’” Saxman countered.
The 2024 general election in Alaska will still be operated under ranked choice voting.
Fox News Digital reached out to Peltola, Murkowski, Dunleavy and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, for comment.
If you want to minimize taxes in retirement, Alaska may be on your radar. It has the lowest tax burden of any U.S. state.
Residents also get a cut of the state’s oil wealth, courtesy of annual dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which often exceeds $1,000. But if you’re nearing retirement age, don’t start packing your bags for America’s Last Frontier just yet.
Image source: Getty Images.
The cost of retiring in Alaska
In addition to stunning scenery, Alaska boasts breathtakingly low tax rates. The total tax burden is just 4.9% when you account for all the taxes the state levies. There’s no state personal income tax, so you don’t have to worry about part of your retirement distributions or Social Security check going into state coffers.
There’s also no state sales tax and a flat property tax rate of just 1.07% of an owner-occupied home’s value. And Alaska hasn’t experienced the dramatic spike in home prices that’s occurred in much of the U.S. since 2020.
But out of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., Alaska has the fifth-highest cost of living. It’s topped only by Hawaii, California, the District of Columbia, and Massachusetts.
Life in Alaska is about 25.1% more expensive than the U.S. average, according to the Council for Community & Economic Research (C2ER) survey. Some costs that are significantly higher than average in Alaska:
The high cost of living may be part of the reason why people 65 and up account for just 13.1% of Alaska’s population. Only Utah has a smaller share of retirees.
Quality-of-life considerations
Money isn’t the only factor to weigh in choosing a retirement destination. Climate, recreation, transportation, and proximity to loved ones are other considerations.
You may find aging in place difficult, given the relative isolation, or find yourself spending more money on travel when you visit loved ones. If you’re thinking about retiring to Alaska, consider renting for a year or two first to see if you’re well-suited to the Last Frontier.
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Alaska
Youngest Alaskan woman convicted of murder could see case reexamined under new Court of Appeals ruling
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – After the murder of three Anchorage residents — a husband, wife and the wife’s sister — in 1985, Winona Fletcher was sentenced to 135 years in prison for her role in the grisly killings.
She was charged in the case when she was just 14 years old.
Now, following a new court of appeals ruling, she has the chance to have her case reexamined.
Last year, the Alaska Court of Appeals found that when sentencing juvenile defendants, the trial courts must consider on the record how juveniles are fundamentally different from adults.
On Aug. 9 of this year, the appeals court came to the conclusion that that decision is to be retroactive, and thus should also apply to past offenders — including Fletcher.
“We agree with the superior court’s conclusion that the Fletcher decision should be fully retroactive to those cases on collateral review, where juvenile offenders have received the functional equivalent of a life without parole sentence,” the ruling stated.
Fletcher and her 19-year-old boyfriend were sentenced for the murders of Tom Faccio, 69; his wife, Ann Faccio, 70; and Ann’s sister, Emelia Elliot, who was 75 years old at the time of her death.
With the conviction in the case, Fletcher was the youngest female to ever be convicted of murder in Alaska.
Fletcher’s attorney, Marcy McDannel, said that the state’s court of appeals is following a broader national trend regarding harsher sentences given to youth offenders, which she said started with the U.S. Supreme Court. She said that while Alaska is far from the forefront — and is actually lagging behind — she believes the state is unquestionably moving in the right direction.
“This decision recognizes the science that says that children don’t have fully developed brains and are very much at the mercy of their environment,” McDannel said. “That has a huge impact on their behavior, and that needs to be taken into consideration when deciding how we treat children, even when they’ve done something terrible.”
Suki Miller, however, disagrees. Miller serves as the executive director of Victims For Justice, which was founded in 1985 by Janice Faccio Lienhart and Sharon Faccio Nahorney, the two daughters of Tom and Ann Faccio.
Miller said that every time there is a new hearing of any kind, it retraumatizes victims and their family members, making the process of moving forward and healing nearly impossible.
“They’re always talking about, maybe, that they’ve been in there for a long time,” Miller said. “Victims are dead for a long time, they don’t come back, they don’t get second chances, they don’t get hearings, they’re gone.
“So it’s really hard for victims to go through that, and hear the different types of rehabilitation that the offender was able to have when their loved ones will never have that chance.”
Resentencing for Fletcher under the new criteria is currently scheduled for December 2024.
McDannel, who said Fletcher’s original sentence is now unconstitutional under Alaska statute, said the state is making efforts to have the Alaska Supreme Court review the court of appeals’ decision before the resentencing, which could potentially hold the process up for an undetermined amount of time.
She added that she’s hopeful the courts will allow the process to move forward, to give Fletcher the benefit of the appeals court’s ruling.
Copyright 2024 KTUU. All rights reserved.
Alaska
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