Shawn Griffiths
Alaska voters will once again vote on a measure to repeal its nonpartisan election system. Those fighting to preserve the system have gone to the courts to make a simple case: It’s only fair that voters know exactly what is on their ballot.
Specifically the consequences of Ballot Measure 2, which would give parties the ability to shut out 60% of Alaska voters registered as independents. This is what attorney Scott Kendall argued before the Alaska Supreme Court last week.
Ballot Measure 2 would repeal Alaska’s nonpartisan Top Four primary, eliminate ranked choice voting in general elections, and repeal campaign finance disclosure provisions approved by voters in 2020.
It would likely mean going back to a closed partisan primary system where the partisan political minorities in the state have the most say over representation and party leaders and aligned special interest groups have outsized influence over election outcomes.
The court ultimately ruled that the state’s language was “true and impartial,” ordering only one additional sentence explaining changes to how candidates for governor and lieutenant governor would run. The revised ballot language was released Friday.
But the court’s ruling does not change the fact that Ballot Measure is missing some crucial fine print.
Who Gets to Vote Becomes the Party’s Call
Under Alaska’s current system, every voter receives the same primary ballot. All candidates compete together, regardless of party, and the top four voter-getters advance. Voters can vote for any candidate they want in any race.
If they wanted, they could vote for a Republican in the state’s at-large congressional contest and then vote for a Democrat or an independent or third party candidate for US Senate in the same election.
This is freedom that Ballot Measure 2 would strip away by replacing that system with closed party primaries, which force voters to pick a party to get a meaningful vote in publicly funded elections and restrict their choices to candidates of that party.
That is, if the parties let them vote at all.
The official summary now tells voters that they would choose a party ballot “unless prohibited by the party’s bylaws.”
The actual text of the measure goes further. It says political parties may establish rules that expand or limit participation, and if a party’s bylaws exclude nonpartisan or undeclared voters, election officials “may not permit” those voters to cast that party’s ballot.
This was central to Kendall’s case.
He argued that voters should not have to piece together what restoring “political party primaries” means for their own voting rights. He told the justices that the measure gives parties the power, “at the stroke of a pen,” to prevent independent Alaskans from participating in primaries.
The state disagreed. Assistant Attorney General Laura Fox argued that the legal question was not whether judges could write a better summary, but whether the existing language crossed Alaska’s statutory threshold of being accurate and impartial.
The Supreme Court largely agreed.
Supporters of the repeal also challenged parts of the state’s wording. Attorneys for Repeal Now objected to terms including “repeal” and “true source,” arguing that some language was confusing or carried partisan implications. Those objections were also largely rejected.
It is the second consecutive election in which Alaskans will vote on repealing the system. A similar measure failed in 2024 after a recount by just 743 votes.
California Is Having the Same Fight
Nearly 3,000 miles away, California is confronting a similar dispute.
A proposed initiative called “Undo the Top-Two” seeks to repeal Proposition 14, the 2010 voter-approved reform that created California’s nonpartisan Top Two primary. Today, like in Alaska, voters can vote for whomever they want, regardless of their party preference.
The difference between the two systems is that in California, 2 candidates advance instead of 4. However, the authors of Prop 14, the Independent Voter Project (IVP), and More Choice California support expanding to a system similar to Alaska.
The California attorney general’s circulating summary says the initiative would repeal that system and require the legislature to establish partisan primaries in which each party’s winning candidate advances to November.
IVP and More Choice argue that description still leaves out the most important consequence.
In a July 21 letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta, they said voters need to know that the initiative would not merely change how candidates advance. It would eliminate the constitutional structure that guarantees every voter access to the primary.
Like in Alaska, Undo the Top Two seeks to return to a primary system in which the parties can decide who can and cannot participate.
The Supreme Court held in California Democratic Party v. Jones (2000) that when an election selects a political party’s nominee, the state cannot force that party to associate with nonmembers. It made a critical distinction between these types of partisan nomination contests from a nonpartisan primary in which voters are not selecting party nominees.
That means California lawmakers could create an open or semi-open system after Top Two is repealed. But, IVP argues, they could no longer guarantee the universal access voters have today if political parties objected.
In both Alaska and California, voters are being asked to repeal nonpartisan primaries founded on the fundamental principle that the right to vote derives from citizenship, not from joining a political party. All citizens deserve an equal vote, including independent voters.
When party insiders try to repeal these systems, reform advocates assert that simply saying a measure “restores political party primaries” doesn’t tell voters enough — because what is at stake is much deeper than that. What’s at stake is their right to vote.
In Alaska, the Supreme Court has decided that such fine print isn’t needed. California may be the next place where that question gets tested.