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Thursday, November 10, 2022

How Wisely Did The No Constitutional Convention Campaign Spend Its Money?

The Alaska Constitution requires a ballot measure on the ballot every ten years, asking voters whether there should be a new constitutional convention.  This year Alaska held the sixth such election.  

Those pushing for an election had two main goals:

1.  To make abortion illegal by either cutting out the Constitution's privacy language, adding new language that would outright ban abortions and/or say the privacy section doesn't cover abortions.

2.  Make the process for choosing judges more political so they could get judges who will not interpret the privacy clause to allow abortions.

There were any number of additional far right goals that they would love to tamper with if they got the chance.  

The measure lost decisively on Tuesday.  Mail-in, absentee, and questioned ballots are likely to make the No vote even higher and there's no way they could change the outcome.  

 

An Anchorage Daily News article today tells us:

"Defend Our Constitution dominated spending 80 to 1.

They recently reported spending $4 million and raising $4.7 million. The donations came mostly from Outside organizations like the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which is based in Washington, D.C. and has been described as a left-wing dark money group.*

Convention YES spent about $50,000, usually from small contributions from individual Alaskans, allowing them to make small ad purchases."

So, how effectively did both sides spend their money?  It's hard to know.  But since we've been voting on this question every ten years now since 1972, we can at least look at the margin of victory for the NO vote over the decades:


Alaska Constitutional Convention Question (1972)
ResultVotesPercentage
Defeated No55,38965.49%
Yes29,19234.51%
From Ballotpedia

Alaska Measure 1 (1982)
ResultVotesPercentage
Defeated No108,31962.93%
Yes63,81637.07%
From Ballotpedia

Alaska Constitutional Convention Question (1992)
ResultVotesPercentage
Defeated No142,73562.70%
Yes84,92937.30%
From Ballotpedia








2002 was 72% No;  28% Yes.  [This image from Alaska Division of Elections because I couldn't find the 2002 election from Ballotpedia.]


Alaska Ballot Measure 1
ResultVotesPercentage
Defeated No17956766.59%
Yes9007933.41%

Alaska Ballot Measure 1

ResultVotesPercentage
Yes62,98530.15%

Defeated No

145,93769.85%
From Ballotpedia   2022   [These numbers will change when all the mail-in and absentee ballots are added in.]

So, the highest NO vote has been 72% NO in 2002.  The lowest No vote was 62.7% in 1972.  

I'm guessing they could have spent $2 million and still defeated the measure soundly.  Probably $1 million.  The extra $2-3 million could have done the state a lot more good spent on the governor's race and a few of the state legislative races.  

I suspect a lot of money was wasted in this campaign.  Sometimes you don't know, but in this case we have ten years of election results suggesting Alaskans aren't interested in a Constitutional Convention.  


*I'd note that "has been described as a left-wing dark money group" is just troublesome language.  Use of the passive voice allows you to say something happened without saying who did it.  "Has been described as" could be pinned onto nearly any phrase.  And 'dark money group' is a short hand cliche that means 'bad'.  I'd bet half the readers would have trouble giving an accurate definition and they certainly wouldn't all define it to mean the same thing or in a way that would accurately describe the Sixteen Thirty Fund.  

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