July 15, 2025 • 30 mins
In this compelling episode of the Must Read Alaska Show, host Ben Carpenter sits down with Phil Izon, the driving force behind the effort to repeal ranked choice voting (RCV) in Alaska during the 2024 election. Izon recounts the intensive grassroots campaign that gathered far more than the required signatures across 33 of Alaska’s 40 House districts, relying entirely on volunteers and innovative technology—without the use of paid signature gathering firms. He details the legal challenges that followed, including aggressive lawsuits led by political operatives that accused him and his campaign of fraud. These efforts resulted in significant financial and emotional strain, including six hours of deposition and substantial legal fees, although Izon ultimately prevailed in both Superior and Supreme Court decisions.
The conversation exposes the intense opposition Izon faced from well-funded, out-of-state interests allegedly aligned with maintaining RCV, and highlights what he describes as political lawfare—legal intimidation designed to suppress citizen-led reform. Izon also critiques the lack of support from Alaska's Republican Party leadership and state officials, despite acknowledgment from national conservative circles. With $15 million spent to defend RCV and millions more invested in promoting it nationwide, Izon raises critical questions about who benefits from Alaska's election system and why. He closes by cautioning the new "Repeal Now" effort and emphasizing the importance of strategic collaboration, insider knowledge, and persistence in future repeal attempts.
This episode offers a rare insider’s view into the mechanics of election reform efforts, the high stakes of ballot initiatives, and the personal toll such battles can exact.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Let's roll. Hello and welcome to the Must Read Alaska show. Here you get relevant and timely content you won't find anywhere else. You can learn more by going to mustreadalaska.com and this show can be found on YouTube, Facebook X and your favorite podcast site.
(00:27):
Let's talk truth about politics, the economy, and all things Alaska. Now the host of the show, former state legislator, combat veteran, small business owner, and all around great guy, Ben Carpenter.
Welcome to the Must Read Alaska show, friends. I'm Ben Carpenter, your host and guide on a journey of discovery of truth and independent minded thinking. Must Read Alaska exists because discovering the truth can be hard. Calls upon us to be relentless in defense of common sense, our faith in God and exceptional values enshrined in our constitution.
(01:02):
Welcome to my lecture.
We are not anti-government. We are pro-government, of the people, by the people, and for the people. And today, we have a special guest. Phil Izon has joined us. He led and authored the effort to repeal ranked choice voting in Alaska last election. Good day to you, sir, and thank you for joining me.
(01:40):
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks. Uh, it's, it's always good to like, uh, I followed must read a new guys for a long time. So it's cool to be on the podcast. Cool. Thanks for joining. I appreciate it. Um, so, uh, most recently there was a, um, uh, something in the press must read Alaska article captured the, um, settlement that the court case that you were involved in, which was, um,
(02:07):
Also related to another court case that the Supreme Court had decided earlier this year, I think it was in June. Can you give us a rundown here of the Crowley-McGee versus Division of Elections lawsuit that related to the settlement?
Yeah, so we submitted our petition signatures in January of 2024, and it takes 60 days for approval. So at the end of February, we received approval from the state of Alaska that we had met the requirements. And we were significantly over. That's the really funny part about all this, is we were so far over the minimum that it was comical to try to, their goal was to eliminate enough districts. And so you have to get 30 or 40 house districts
(02:48):
As well as a minimum. And so they weren't going for the minimum. They were going for the house districts. And so they were just trying to whittle off enough of those. And they were very strategic. The amount of work that they put into attacking the petition
Welcome to my lecture.
(03:19):
And so we had a choice to join and join the lawsuit. We had to ask the court to join the lawsuit at the time, but Kendall essentially accused us of committing fraud. And they committed to said that Division of Elections had made mistakes in the approval process of our petition. Little did they know that people had fraudulently submitted petitions and they had a list of petition requests.
(03:41):
Welcome to my lecture.
On top of that, they admitted they had eight paid operatives, essentially spying on our campaign, taking photos, doing things like that. And they're paid operatives, not just, you know, and that's pretty crazy. On another note, we had a guy that was paid by Kendall that I had accused him of, you know, it wasn't just me. He admitted that they were paid to the news. And then he went to APOC.
(04:17):
Yeah, there's no...
Welcome to my lecture.
(04:51):
Yes. And this is me personally dealing with this guy. And I remember in the APOC room, I had told him that he was questioning me. And I was like, well, you're able to lie? He's like, yeah, I'm not under oath. I'm an attorney.
It's like, yeah, of course, of course, you're able to say stuff like that. That's real. That happened in real time. You know what I mean? And he was telling the APOC board that essentially this guy was just some random citizen. It's like, no, dude, you hired him and you sent him to my campaign and you had him go in there and asked a bunch of leading questions on camera and then try to use that evidence against me. Like, what kind of crap is that?
(05:33):
You know what I mean? I would never do some crazy stuff like that. That's way over the top. A normal person would never do something like that. And to think that we should have to...
Welcome to my lecture.
(06:09):
That is, in my opinion, a violation of your rights in the state of Alaska. And so now let's get through that. We got through it. They didn't stop us from doing signatures. It got approved. He decides to come at us again. And so in this circumstance, he tells us that we committed fraud. And so we go to the court, go to superior court. I have a stack of books, of petition books that I had. And this wasn't easy.
(06:36):
I had to do six hours of deposition personally. And a lot of my signature gatherers were also deposed and had to testify in court too. But six hours deposition. And so it's really funny is I would change my outfit every hour.
And so it was a Zoom, yeah, just to mess with them. I put a Trump hat on. I had a, like, Make America Great Again hat. I changed my outfit to a tie or anti-RCV outfit every hour. For six hours, they did this. And my wife had to witness me, like, you know, it was...
(07:09):
I'll be honest, I cry a lot, man. It's stressful when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney bills and you have people accusing you of fraud and trying to damage your reputation and everything else. It sucks. And so six hours deposition is incredibly annoying, I can tell you.
And for them to grill every single little possible thing that they were trying to find. They were just trying to find anything to get evidence on that said that I did something wrong. And and so then takes me to court, you know, and testimony at the Supreme at the Superior Court for two hours as well. And then they tossed the case. We won that case so easily. It wasn't even that close. It was like very much in our favor.
(07:55):
They did take some books away from a husband and wife that collected signatures together, which was a major loss for us because they had worked really, really hard, but they didn't follow the rules. I didn't tell them to do that. That was a lot of the thing they were trying to accuse me of is that I told all these people to...
Welcome to my lecture.
(08:44):
And so they were checking all my books, 20 plus books, and I had over 2,000 signatures collected. So I collected the most signatures of any one signature gathered by a large, large margin, by the thousands of signatures more than anyone else. And I also collected over 500 signatures in a single day.
And then went on to collect over 200 signatures in a single day at a different event. And they accused me saying that that was impossible. And that the general normal at extreme is like 100 per day. So getting 500 in a day is impossible. But they had no proof. They had no proof that I did anything wrong. And I had evidence of the day with me and Sarah Palin at the Palmer train depot, her and I just hanging out collecting signatures.
(09:26):
And it's like with a huge line of people coming in the door. So it's like, yeah, I mean, the case was tossed easily, won that. But there was a lot of management piece that went behind that in regards to the signatures, like how we manage the signatures and which ones we submitted. There was a lot of pre-screening work that went into making sure that the signatures that we were submitting were qualified. And so to so much that I knew,
(09:52):
That we were going to get 33 of 40 house districts before we even submitted the signatures. And I didn't pay a signature gathering firm to do this for me. I did it all by volunteers. And then when we got the approval, it was 33 of 40 house districts. So my system had told me the exact same amount of districts that we were going to get, and the state ultimately came to that same conclusion.
(10:19):
And so... Did you end up submitting all of the signatures that you collected? I'm sorry? Did you end up submitting all of the signatures of books? No, there's about 2,000 signatures I did not submit. And those were primarily because for various reasons. I'm not going to say in this that there were deliberate...
(10:40):
Welcome to my lecture. Welcome to my lecture.
(11:08):
And I highly recommend anyone doing a petition, please, if you can, leverage my technology. If you're a conservative Republican, you can. But if you're a liberal or progressive, obviously, I won't work with you. But the point is, the goal here is that there are technology solutions that offer far more, way more advanced opportunities. And people like Scott Kendall don't even have this stuff available to them. So it's kind of cool. Interesting.
(11:37):
Well, so so the Supreme Court got involved here. Yes. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Yes. So my wife and I were we were going to Hawaii for a work related thing. And so I was back in Hawaii when the Supreme Court case was going on. And like we expect to last for weeks. And so we're like, I'm at the mechanic with my car.
(12:00):
And I'm sitting there like during the first day of deliberations, and then I get a message. One of the mechanics said, hey, you know, it's not going to be as nearly as expensive as I thought. I was like, yes. And then I got a text saying that we won in the Supreme Court. I was like, what? I was like, we didn't even, what do you mean? It just started. And they're like, yeah, no, it's already over. I was like, awesome. And so I was like, that was a good day. I was pretty happy. Mark that on the calendar. Yeah.
(12:24):
Yeah, yeah, it was a good day. It was overall is awesome, you know, and, and then they, we went on to the ballot from there. But the crazy thing is from that, you know, in the Supreme Court, there's not much to talk about, because the case was so decided so quickly, there was no deliberations, there was no testifying, there was no jury, there was nothing. It was like pure, it was so fast. It was like one of the quickest decisions in the history of the state Supreme Court.
(12:52):
And they said they would produce the ruling later. And that ruling came in June, end of June. And so that was what the Must Read article about. But then after that case, we had sued them for attorney fees because we won unanimously. We won in the Superior Court. Then we went on to win in the Supreme Court. So we should definitely be paid attorney fees.
(13:14):
And the judge originally, the Superior Court judge, did not rule in our favor on attorney fees. So we appealed that to the Supreme Court of the state, which we expected them to rule in our favor. And so obviously, they did too. And so the case was decided. And then pretty much that day, once that case was decided, or the day before, they went ahead and issued the settlement offer.
(13:40):
And the settlement was essentially, you know, that they didn't do anything wrong and, you know, that they'll cover our attorney fees. And so I said, sure. And we were only going to get maybe 60K out of it anyway. So at max without proving any kind of malice. And so 50K was a very, very sizable chunk of money. So I'm happy with it.
(14:04):
Interesting. And now you don't have to deal with it anymore. Well, yeah, that case. Yeah. And it is nice that it went in our favor. It's nice that I don't have to cover. And it doesn't cover all of our attorney bills by a large margin. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney bills, unfortunately, defending the ballot initiative and defending ourselves from malicious attacks. And reputation damage is permanent, you know.
(14:30):
And for me, I don't care so much, but for people like Art Mathias, that matters a lot, you know. So a lot of this has been funded. A lot of the effort to oppose the repeal of rank choice voting has been funded by outside interests outside the state of Alaska. What about the settlement for this lawsuit? Do you know who's actually paying for that?
(14:52):
No, no. Fortunately, the only money we got to see is the money they spent on the political advertising and stuff saying that, you know, rank choice voting helps veterans and that veterans won't be able to vote anymore. I even have one that's like I took this to the attorney general because it was so over the top flyer saying that rank choice voting will save your abortions.
(15:14):
It literally says that. And they mailed that to all the Native communities. They were very targeted to targeting Native communities. Low information people, like, oh, no, this is bad for abortion. And, like, that's obviously a major...
You know, misadvertisement, misinformation campaign. And I expected the attorney general to care about that. Didn't care. He said that the it's political speech as his interpretation of it. I mean, I like Trey. He's a nice guy, but I disagree immensely with that interpretation. I think that you should do your best to protect people from misinformation, especially around elections. And that is obviously definitely not anywhere near close to accurate. And like abortions and military had nothing to do with ranked choice voting.
(15:58):
But the so, you know,
In the long run, I wish I would have learned more about government process before getting into this, because I expected a lot more assistance from state government officials and from party officials, like the State Republican Party, and I didn't get any of that. And ultimately, I believe a lot of that was
(16:30):
Done intentionally to see me fail and when I didn't fail then it became an issue for them.
And so now we're in that world of the Alaska Republican Party having to deal with me on the side, acting like I don't exist. Whenever the Arizona Republican Party thanks me for all the work I've done and actively reshares my posts and my own party won't even follow me on social media or talk about me or help me in any way, shape or form. I don't know what kind of message that sends, but it doesn't send a good one.
(17:04):
Well, what is the, this, the whole outcome of this kind of shines a spotlight on just anybody. If you've got enough money under the, under the statutes and the laws in the state of Alaska can step forward and author a lawsuit, even if it's going to fail, even if you knew it was going to fail going forward, just to tie somebody up to have to defend themselves. That is possible within the laws of a state of Alaska. Well, I say, yeah, I mean, absolutely. Yeah.
(17:33):
And the crazy thing is that Scott Kendall has changed campaign finance laws and other laws in the state that make it easier. And I mean, he is the one that wrote the laws. He would know every way to attack you on those laws. And so we face the wrath of that as well. So not only do they have the authority of themselves being able to file lawsuits against you, now they have campaign finance rules that they personally wrote
(18:01):
That could be potentially in violation of our civil rights in the United States, and most likely is, and the case pending currently in federal case. But it's just sad. It's just unfortunate that people like that are able to get away with things like that.
And they do. Yeah. And as soon as they actually get their claws into a situation like this, they use lawfare and then they turn around and they can use the campaign finance rules and use APOC and file complaints there just to get to draw more money from you. And it worked. I mean, in the long run, they were successful in keeping ranked choice voting. I don't think any amount of money I spent would have changed the result.
(18:42):
My opinion, I think the result was already predetermined on that one. I don't think they were going to let me win, no matter what. Can you give us a little mark on how much money was spent on that effort? They spent $15 million this time, and that's not including their lawsuits. And so they had four attorneys attacking me for two years, so I would assume a lot. Yeah.
(19:06):
A lot of money. Then the Superior Court case and the Supreme Court case, they lost. And then they had to pay me $50,000 on top of it. So, I mean, in the long run, it's a win for them because they got whatever they were after, which was keeping Murkowski in office or keeping their Rhino establishment people, keeping people like you out of office. At a bare minimum, keep Rank Choice in place. Why? Yeah.
(19:33):
That's the question that people should be asking. Why does this group want to spend 22 plus million dollars because they spent 7 million bringing it in the first place, then they spend another 15 million defending it? Why do they want to spend 22 million dollars in Alaska? Yeah.
Well, I think it's because we're a cheap date. I think it's bigger than that, man. I think it's oil and PFD, fishing. I think the money, it's about money and control. They want that oil money. They want that PFD money. And the way to do that is to use rank choice voting, get legislators that are friendly to their efforts and their causes, and then get them elected. And once you get enough of them, then it's California, Oregon, or Washington State really fast, or Hawaii.
(20:21):
I'm really fast with that, but you, I mean, you know that there's a rank push for rank choice voting going on throughout the United States, right? I mean, you're involved in that. Yes, but it's, it's, it's depleted immensely. So the repealing it in Alaska would, would deplete it even more.
Yes. But in the long run, I don't think that there's going to be as I don't think there'll be very many states to sign on to it. There's only a handful that can. Majority of the states, like the majority are petition referendum states. There's 26 total.
(20:53):
But there's 24 that don't allow referendums. And so Connecticut's one of those, Hawaii is one of those. You can't do ballot initiatives there. And so likely to rank choice voting become an issue there is very low. Because the legislators aren't willing to make those changes
If you rewind the clock to prior to us accepting or the ballot initiative, bringing us ranked choice voting, if you back up that far, then you can see that Alaska would be the foothold for the conversation for states. Yes.
(21:25):
Yeah, and they were using that as a way to get it in these other states. So they had seven states that they were pushing for last year. And so it took them about 20 years to get two states. So that's Alaska and Maine. And then they've had like San Francisco uses it. Oakland uses it. They've had little cities use it, you know, over time as well. But Oakland and San Francisco are the biggest cities.
(21:48):
Use cases of it being used all the way through. New York's just used for Democratic primary so it's not the same. It's not used for the general election, but San Francisco and Oakland are examples of that process being used for a long period of time. So Oakland's used it for 14 years and San Francisco's used it for over 20 years and I've been in touch with Democrats in Oakland to hate it.
(22:10):
And so they don't like it. That was also the guy that worked on the first recall of the mayor in Oakland. And so I can tell you that there's a lot of hate for ranked choice voting as well there. So these little places, all these little areas that I went to, I was able to establish a really good relationship with people and push back on the narrative that this was a better system. But they were using Alaska as a primary example on why
(22:37):
This was going to be great because they said Alaskans loved it. They use like exit polls with like 800 participants in it and things like that. Really small sample size surveys and all kinds of things like that. But so what I did is I created a bunch of books, animated videos, websites, all under the rank choice education umbrella. And we chose we I intentionally and I was going to make this I care because it's funny.
(23:00):
So I intentionally picked names to screw with them or mess with them. They had this group called 907 Initiative in Anchorage.
And so I created 907 Honest. And my account's like way bigger, way more popular. It gets millions of views. So they have the Alaskans for Better Elections. So I created Alaskans for Honest Elections. And now they can't even use these names anymore. So it's just that Arabella Advisors Groups, this is what they're famous for. They have billions of dollars to their disposal, raised $1.6 billion annually from donations. That's more than the RNC and DNC combined.
(23:40):
Thank you.
And these guys are just raking in money and they set up pop-up nonprofits all over the country to push these really terrible ideas. And they're looped into the Salmon State Group here in Alaska through New Venture Fund. They're tied in with the Alaska Venture Fund. They're tied in with the Outdoor Council down in Ketchikan, Sitka. They're tied in with the Alaskans for Better Elections. They're tied in with the Minimum Wage Increase. They're tied in with the New Campaign Finance Rule Petition. They're looped into all this stuff.
(24:10):
And so like once people actually realize that and they start paying attention, maybe they'll start voting accordingly. Yeah, interesting. A lot of influence coming from out of state and we just don't know it because we're not aware. No, and it's kind of, you know, unfortunate because it's not really a citizen's job to protect from this kind of thing. This is really where APOC and the state governments are really supposed to have their hands in and they're completely asleep at the wheel.
(24:35):
Keep a fair playing field out there. Yeah, a lot of other states are very aggressive in stopping things like this, very vocal, anti, against it. People like Governor Dunleavy or even AG or Lieutenant Governor, I don't care in your official capacity, but as an individual, you should have been much more vocal being against ranked choice voting, because especially once you know where the money is coming from. Yeah, yeah.
(25:00):
Should the, so there's another organization that you're not part of now, Repeal Now, that is attempting to get signatures and put this back on the ballot to repeal rank choice voting for the next election. Should they expect similar tactics to be used now? No, I, among many others, question how serious that group is.
(25:22):
We'll see. I got out of the way as just pure convenience and just to not be a spoiler. I didn't get at it because I wanted to. They didn't consult with me. I was definitely the first petition in the door. I was far more experienced. I've debated U.S. presidential candidate Chase Oliver on rank choice voting. I've debated three Oregon legislators, three Alaskan legislators, won all of these elections.
(25:46):
There's literally very few people that know more about this topic than I do. I've successfully already led it to the ballot. There was no reason for them to get involved, but
Whatever. They want to do it. They think they could do it better. More power to them. If they don't make the ballot, they better stay out of my way for 2028, though. That's all I got to tell you. Well, what I was more asking the point was, is do you think that the conditions on the battlefield? If they make the ballot, then potentially. But I don't know if anyone has a lot of faith in this organization to get it done. So we'll see. Okay.
(26:20):
Well, anything else we haven't talked about that you think we should know about from your experiences there?
You know, I think that when you're doing a petition project like this, you can expect that the majority of them fail in the United States. 70 to 80% of them fail because they don't do verification, they don't do the detail work that's required to make a petition successful. So even though I was successful as a citizen volunteer,
(26:51):
It would be advisable to consult with me. I'm an open book most of the time on topics, and I'm more than happy to help people in the state of Alaska do petition projects, but it's very advisable to work with me and not against me. Even after the insult of them running their own petition, I still offer advice.
(27:13):
And so, for example, when they first launched, I had reached out to multiple members of theirs to let them know about potential campaign finance rule violations that they had already made. And so that way they could correct them quickly because they fine you on a per day basis. And so what Kendall does is he notates your fine, he takes a photo of it and the date, and then he waits for six months before he puts in the APOC complaint. So then you don't get a day worth of fine, you get six months worth of fines.
(27:41):
And so having someone like us, like myself, that's actively looking out for people and cares enough about Alaskans to really, you know, I'm not here to, I'm never running for office. That's not my objective. I'm serious. I have business interests that are far more lucrative than anything that politics could do for me. So I have no interest in it. So this is purely self, like I'm doing this for Alaska and this has been a major challenge
(28:08):
Welcome to my lecture.
(28:33):
Welcome to my lecture. Welcome to my lecture.
(29:02):
I don't carry the weight of losing at the ballot because there's factors out of my control. We are so close and we were winning on election night and it took them two weeks to come up with the... So I don't look at that as a loss personally, but if I didn't make the ballot, I would have taken that very personal.
Yeah, I understand that. Well, thank you, Phil, for joining us today. I really appreciate it. I think it's been an enlightening conversation. Most people, if they don't engage in the process at the level at which you have, would have no idea about some of the level of details that you've shared. So I really appreciate you being willing to talk about it. Absolutely. Happy to. Thanks again.
(29:36):
Yeah, no problem. And if you enjoy what you've heard today, please head over to mustardalaska.com, hit that donate link, help us keep the lights on and have more guests like this on the show. So until next time, stay frosty, Alaska.
Let's roll. Hello and welcome to the Must Read Alaska show. Here you get relevant and timely content you won't find anywhere else. You can learn more by going to mustreadalaska.com and this show can be found on YouTube, Facebook X and your favorite podcast site.
(00:27):
Let's talk truth about politics, the economy, and all things Alaska. Now the host of the show, former state legislator, combat veteran, small business owner, and all around great guy, Ben Carpenter.
Welcome to the Must Read Alaska show, friends. I'm Ben Carpenter, your host and guide on a journey of discovery of truth and independent minded thinking. Must Read Alaska exists because discovering the truth can be hard. Calls upon us to be relentless in defense of common sense, our faith in God and exceptional values enshrined in our constitution.
(01:02):
Welcome to my lecture.
We are not anti-government. We are pro-government, of the people, by the people, and for the people. And today, we have a special guest. Phil Izon has joined us. He led and authored the effort to repeal ranked choice voting in Alaska last election. Good day to you, sir, and thank you for joining me.
(01:40):
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks. Uh, it's, it's always good to like, uh, I followed must read a new guys for a long time. So it's cool to be on the podcast. Cool. Thanks for joining. I appreciate it. Um, so, uh, most recently there was a, um, uh, something in the press must read Alaska article captured the, um, settlement that the court case that you were involved in, which was, um,
(02:07):
Also related to another court case that the Supreme Court had decided earlier this year, I think it was in June. Can you give us a rundown here of the Crowley-McGee versus Division of Elections lawsuit that related to the settlement?
Yeah, so we submitted our petition signatures in January of 2024, and it takes 60 days for approval. So at the end of February, we received approval from the state of Alaska that we had met the requirements. And we were significantly over. That's the really funny part about all this, is we were so far over the minimum that it was comical to try to, their goal was to eliminate enough districts. And so you have to get 30 or 40 house districts
(02:48):
As well as a minimum. And so they weren't going for the minimum. They were going for the house districts. And so they were just trying to whittle off enough of those. And they were very strategic. The amount of work that they put into attacking the petition
Welcome to my lecture.
(03:19):
And so we had a choice to join and join the lawsuit. We had to ask the court to join the lawsuit at the time, but Kendall essentially accused us of committing fraud. And they committed to said that Division of Elections had made mistakes in the approval process of our petition. Little did they know that people had fraudulently submitted petitions and they had a list of petition requests.
(03:41):
Welcome to my lecture.
On top of that, they admitted they had eight paid operatives, essentially spying on our campaign, taking photos, doing things like that. And they're paid operatives, not just, you know, and that's pretty crazy. On another note, we had a guy that was paid by Kendall that I had accused him of, you know, it wasn't just me. He admitted that they were paid to the news. And then he went to APOC.
(04:17):
Yeah, there's no...
Welcome to my lecture.
(04:51):
Yes. And this is me personally dealing with this guy. And I remember in the APOC room, I had told him that he was questioning me. And I was like, well, you're able to lie? He's like, yeah, I'm not under oath. I'm an attorney.
It's like, yeah, of course, of course, you're able to say stuff like that. That's real. That happened in real time. You know what I mean? And he was telling the APOC board that essentially this guy was just some random citizen. It's like, no, dude, you hired him and you sent him to my campaign and you had him go in there and asked a bunch of leading questions on camera and then try to use that evidence against me. Like, what kind of crap is that?
(05:33):
You know what I mean? I would never do some crazy stuff like that. That's way over the top. A normal person would never do something like that. And to think that we should have to...
Welcome to my lecture.
(06:09):
That is, in my opinion, a violation of your rights in the state of Alaska. And so now let's get through that. We got through it. They didn't stop us from doing signatures. It got approved. He decides to come at us again. And so in this circumstance, he tells us that we committed fraud. And so we go to the court, go to superior court. I have a stack of books, of petition books that I had. And this wasn't easy.
(06:36):
I had to do six hours of deposition personally. And a lot of my signature gatherers were also deposed and had to testify in court too. But six hours deposition. And so it's really funny is I would change my outfit every hour.
And so it was a Zoom, yeah, just to mess with them. I put a Trump hat on. I had a, like, Make America Great Again hat. I changed my outfit to a tie or anti-RCV outfit every hour. For six hours, they did this. And my wife had to witness me, like, you know, it was...
(07:09):
I'll be honest, I cry a lot, man. It's stressful when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney bills and you have people accusing you of fraud and trying to damage your reputation and everything else. It sucks. And so six hours deposition is incredibly annoying, I can tell you.
And for them to grill every single little possible thing that they were trying to find. They were just trying to find anything to get evidence on that said that I did something wrong. And and so then takes me to court, you know, and testimony at the Supreme at the Superior Court for two hours as well. And then they tossed the case. We won that case so easily. It wasn't even that close. It was like very much in our favor.
(07:55):
They did take some books away from a husband and wife that collected signatures together, which was a major loss for us because they had worked really, really hard, but they didn't follow the rules. I didn't tell them to do that. That was a lot of the thing they were trying to accuse me of is that I told all these people to...
Welcome to my lecture.
(08:44):
And so they were checking all my books, 20 plus books, and I had over 2,000 signatures collected. So I collected the most signatures of any one signature gathered by a large, large margin, by the thousands of signatures more than anyone else. And I also collected over 500 signatures in a single day.
And then went on to collect over 200 signatures in a single day at a different event. And they accused me saying that that was impossible. And that the general normal at extreme is like 100 per day. So getting 500 in a day is impossible. But they had no proof. They had no proof that I did anything wrong. And I had evidence of the day with me and Sarah Palin at the Palmer train depot, her and I just hanging out collecting signatures.
(09:26):
And it's like with a huge line of people coming in the door. So it's like, yeah, I mean, the case was tossed easily, won that. But there was a lot of management piece that went behind that in regards to the signatures, like how we manage the signatures and which ones we submitted. There was a lot of pre-screening work that went into making sure that the signatures that we were submitting were qualified. And so to so much that I knew,
(09:52):
That we were going to get 33 of 40 house districts before we even submitted the signatures. And I didn't pay a signature gathering firm to do this for me. I did it all by volunteers. And then when we got the approval, it was 33 of 40 house districts. So my system had told me the exact same amount of districts that we were going to get, and the state ultimately came to that same conclusion.
(10:19):
And so... Did you end up submitting all of the signatures that you collected? I'm sorry? Did you end up submitting all of the signatures of books? No, there's about 2,000 signatures I did not submit. And those were primarily because for various reasons. I'm not going to say in this that there were deliberate...
(10:40):
Welcome to my lecture. Welcome to my lecture.
(11:08):
And I highly recommend anyone doing a petition, please, if you can, leverage my technology. If you're a conservative Republican, you can. But if you're a liberal or progressive, obviously, I won't work with you. But the point is, the goal here is that there are technology solutions that offer far more, way more advanced opportunities. And people like Scott Kendall don't even have this stuff available to them. So it's kind of cool. Interesting.
(11:37):
Well, so so the Supreme Court got involved here. Yes. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Yes. So my wife and I were we were going to Hawaii for a work related thing. And so I was back in Hawaii when the Supreme Court case was going on. And like we expect to last for weeks. And so we're like, I'm at the mechanic with my car.
(12:00):
And I'm sitting there like during the first day of deliberations, and then I get a message. One of the mechanics said, hey, you know, it's not going to be as nearly as expensive as I thought. I was like, yes. And then I got a text saying that we won in the Supreme Court. I was like, what? I was like, we didn't even, what do you mean? It just started. And they're like, yeah, no, it's already over. I was like, awesome. And so I was like, that was a good day. I was pretty happy. Mark that on the calendar. Yeah.
(12:24):
Yeah, yeah, it was a good day. It was overall is awesome, you know, and, and then they, we went on to the ballot from there. But the crazy thing is from that, you know, in the Supreme Court, there's not much to talk about, because the case was so decided so quickly, there was no deliberations, there was no testifying, there was no jury, there was nothing. It was like pure, it was so fast. It was like one of the quickest decisions in the history of the state Supreme Court.
(12:52):
And they said they would produce the ruling later. And that ruling came in June, end of June. And so that was what the Must Read article about. But then after that case, we had sued them for attorney fees because we won unanimously. We won in the Superior Court. Then we went on to win in the Supreme Court. So we should definitely be paid attorney fees.
(13:14):
And the judge originally, the Superior Court judge, did not rule in our favor on attorney fees. So we appealed that to the Supreme Court of the state, which we expected them to rule in our favor. And so obviously, they did too. And so the case was decided. And then pretty much that day, once that case was decided, or the day before, they went ahead and issued the settlement offer.
(13:40):
And the settlement was essentially, you know, that they didn't do anything wrong and, you know, that they'll cover our attorney fees. And so I said, sure. And we were only going to get maybe 60K out of it anyway. So at max without proving any kind of malice. And so 50K was a very, very sizable chunk of money. So I'm happy with it.
(14:04):
Interesting. And now you don't have to deal with it anymore. Well, yeah, that case. Yeah. And it is nice that it went in our favor. It's nice that I don't have to cover. And it doesn't cover all of our attorney bills by a large margin. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney bills, unfortunately, defending the ballot initiative and defending ourselves from malicious attacks. And reputation damage is permanent, you know.
(14:30):
And for me, I don't care so much, but for people like Art Mathias, that matters a lot, you know. So a lot of this has been funded. A lot of the effort to oppose the repeal of rank choice voting has been funded by outside interests outside the state of Alaska. What about the settlement for this lawsuit? Do you know who's actually paying for that?
(14:52):
No, no. Fortunately, the only money we got to see is the money they spent on the political advertising and stuff saying that, you know, rank choice voting helps veterans and that veterans won't be able to vote anymore. I even have one that's like I took this to the attorney general because it was so over the top flyer saying that rank choice voting will save your abortions.
(15:14):
It literally says that. And they mailed that to all the Native communities. They were very targeted to targeting Native communities. Low information people, like, oh, no, this is bad for abortion. And, like, that's obviously a major...
You know, misadvertisement, misinformation campaign. And I expected the attorney general to care about that. Didn't care. He said that the it's political speech as his interpretation of it. I mean, I like Trey. He's a nice guy, but I disagree immensely with that interpretation. I think that you should do your best to protect people from misinformation, especially around elections. And that is obviously definitely not anywhere near close to accurate. And like abortions and military had nothing to do with ranked choice voting.
(15:58):
But the so, you know,
In the long run, I wish I would have learned more about government process before getting into this, because I expected a lot more assistance from state government officials and from party officials, like the State Republican Party, and I didn't get any of that. And ultimately, I believe a lot of that was
(16:30):
Done intentionally to see me fail and when I didn't fail then it became an issue for them.
And so now we're in that world of the Alaska Republican Party having to deal with me on the side, acting like I don't exist. Whenever the Arizona Republican Party thanks me for all the work I've done and actively reshares my posts and my own party won't even follow me on social media or talk about me or help me in any way, shape or form. I don't know what kind of message that sends, but it doesn't send a good one.
(17:04):
Well, what is the, this, the whole outcome of this kind of shines a spotlight on just anybody. If you've got enough money under the, under the statutes and the laws in the state of Alaska can step forward and author a lawsuit, even if it's going to fail, even if you knew it was going to fail going forward, just to tie somebody up to have to defend themselves. That is possible within the laws of a state of Alaska. Well, I say, yeah, I mean, absolutely. Yeah.
(17:33):
And the crazy thing is that Scott Kendall has changed campaign finance laws and other laws in the state that make it easier. And I mean, he is the one that wrote the laws. He would know every way to attack you on those laws. And so we face the wrath of that as well. So not only do they have the authority of themselves being able to file lawsuits against you, now they have campaign finance rules that they personally wrote
(18:01):
That could be potentially in violation of our civil rights in the United States, and most likely is, and the case pending currently in federal case. But it's just sad. It's just unfortunate that people like that are able to get away with things like that.
And they do. Yeah. And as soon as they actually get their claws into a situation like this, they use lawfare and then they turn around and they can use the campaign finance rules and use APOC and file complaints there just to get to draw more money from you. And it worked. I mean, in the long run, they were successful in keeping ranked choice voting. I don't think any amount of money I spent would have changed the result.
(18:42):
My opinion, I think the result was already predetermined on that one. I don't think they were going to let me win, no matter what. Can you give us a little mark on how much money was spent on that effort? They spent $15 million this time, and that's not including their lawsuits. And so they had four attorneys attacking me for two years, so I would assume a lot. Yeah.
(19:06):
A lot of money. Then the Superior Court case and the Supreme Court case, they lost. And then they had to pay me $50,000 on top of it. So, I mean, in the long run, it's a win for them because they got whatever they were after, which was keeping Murkowski in office or keeping their Rhino establishment people, keeping people like you out of office. At a bare minimum, keep Rank Choice in place. Why? Yeah.
(19:33):
That's the question that people should be asking. Why does this group want to spend 22 plus million dollars because they spent 7 million bringing it in the first place, then they spend another 15 million defending it? Why do they want to spend 22 million dollars in Alaska? Yeah.
Well, I think it's because we're a cheap date. I think it's bigger than that, man. I think it's oil and PFD, fishing. I think the money, it's about money and control. They want that oil money. They want that PFD money. And the way to do that is to use rank choice voting, get legislators that are friendly to their efforts and their causes, and then get them elected. And once you get enough of them, then it's California, Oregon, or Washington State really fast, or Hawaii.
(20:21):
I'm really fast with that, but you, I mean, you know that there's a rank push for rank choice voting going on throughout the United States, right? I mean, you're involved in that. Yes, but it's, it's, it's depleted immensely. So the repealing it in Alaska would, would deplete it even more.
Yes. But in the long run, I don't think that there's going to be as I don't think there'll be very many states to sign on to it. There's only a handful that can. Majority of the states, like the majority are petition referendum states. There's 26 total.
(20:53):
But there's 24 that don't allow referendums. And so Connecticut's one of those, Hawaii is one of those. You can't do ballot initiatives there. And so likely to rank choice voting become an issue there is very low. Because the legislators aren't willing to make those changes
If you rewind the clock to prior to us accepting or the ballot initiative, bringing us ranked choice voting, if you back up that far, then you can see that Alaska would be the foothold for the conversation for states. Yes.
(21:25):
Yeah, and they were using that as a way to get it in these other states. So they had seven states that they were pushing for last year. And so it took them about 20 years to get two states. So that's Alaska and Maine. And then they've had like San Francisco uses it. Oakland uses it. They've had little cities use it, you know, over time as well. But Oakland and San Francisco are the biggest cities.
(21:48):
Use cases of it being used all the way through. New York's just used for Democratic primary so it's not the same. It's not used for the general election, but San Francisco and Oakland are examples of that process being used for a long period of time. So Oakland's used it for 14 years and San Francisco's used it for over 20 years and I've been in touch with Democrats in Oakland to hate it.
(22:10):
And so they don't like it. That was also the guy that worked on the first recall of the mayor in Oakland. And so I can tell you that there's a lot of hate for ranked choice voting as well there. So these little places, all these little areas that I went to, I was able to establish a really good relationship with people and push back on the narrative that this was a better system. But they were using Alaska as a primary example on why
(22:37):
This was going to be great because they said Alaskans loved it. They use like exit polls with like 800 participants in it and things like that. Really small sample size surveys and all kinds of things like that. But so what I did is I created a bunch of books, animated videos, websites, all under the rank choice education umbrella. And we chose we I intentionally and I was going to make this I care because it's funny.
(23:00):
So I intentionally picked names to screw with them or mess with them. They had this group called 907 Initiative in Anchorage.
And so I created 907 Honest. And my account's like way bigger, way more popular. It gets millions of views. So they have the Alaskans for Better Elections. So I created Alaskans for Honest Elections. And now they can't even use these names anymore. So it's just that Arabella Advisors Groups, this is what they're famous for. They have billions of dollars to their disposal, raised $1.6 billion annually from donations. That's more than the RNC and DNC combined.
(23:40):
Thank you.
And these guys are just raking in money and they set up pop-up nonprofits all over the country to push these really terrible ideas. And they're looped into the Salmon State Group here in Alaska through New Venture Fund. They're tied in with the Alaska Venture Fund. They're tied in with the Outdoor Council down in Ketchikan, Sitka. They're tied in with the Alaskans for Better Elections. They're tied in with the Minimum Wage Increase. They're tied in with the New Campaign Finance Rule Petition. They're looped into all this stuff.
(24:10):
And so like once people actually realize that and they start paying attention, maybe they'll start voting accordingly. Yeah, interesting. A lot of influence coming from out of state and we just don't know it because we're not aware. No, and it's kind of, you know, unfortunate because it's not really a citizen's job to protect from this kind of thing. This is really where APOC and the state governments are really supposed to have their hands in and they're completely asleep at the wheel.
(24:35):
Keep a fair playing field out there. Yeah, a lot of other states are very aggressive in stopping things like this, very vocal, anti, against it. People like Governor Dunleavy or even AG or Lieutenant Governor, I don't care in your official capacity, but as an individual, you should have been much more vocal being against ranked choice voting, because especially once you know where the money is coming from. Yeah, yeah.
(25:00):
Should the, so there's another organization that you're not part of now, Repeal Now, that is attempting to get signatures and put this back on the ballot to repeal rank choice voting for the next election. Should they expect similar tactics to be used now? No, I, among many others, question how serious that group is.
(25:22):
We'll see. I got out of the way as just pure convenience and just to not be a spoiler. I didn't get at it because I wanted to. They didn't consult with me. I was definitely the first petition in the door. I was far more experienced. I've debated U.S. presidential candidate Chase Oliver on rank choice voting. I've debated three Oregon legislators, three Alaskan legislators, won all of these elections.
(25:46):
There's literally very few people that know more about this topic than I do. I've successfully already led it to the ballot. There was no reason for them to get involved, but
Whatever. They want to do it. They think they could do it better. More power to them. If they don't make the ballot, they better stay out of my way for 2028, though. That's all I got to tell you. Well, what I was more asking the point was, is do you think that the conditions on the battlefield? If they make the ballot, then potentially. But I don't know if anyone has a lot of faith in this organization to get it done. So we'll see. Okay.
(26:20):
Well, anything else we haven't talked about that you think we should know about from your experiences there?
You know, I think that when you're doing a petition project like this, you can expect that the majority of them fail in the United States. 70 to 80% of them fail because they don't do verification, they don't do the detail work that's required to make a petition successful. So even though I was successful as a citizen volunteer,
(26:51):
It would be advisable to consult with me. I'm an open book most of the time on topics, and I'm more than happy to help people in the state of Alaska do petition projects, but it's very advisable to work with me and not against me. Even after the insult of them running their own petition, I still offer advice.
(27:13):
And so, for example, when they first launched, I had reached out to multiple members of theirs to let them know about potential campaign finance rule violations that they had already made. And so that way they could correct them quickly because they fine you on a per day basis. And so what Kendall does is he notates your fine, he takes a photo of it and the date, and then he waits for six months before he puts in the APOC complaint. So then you don't get a day worth of fine, you get six months worth of fines.
(27:41):
And so having someone like us, like myself, that's actively looking out for people and cares enough about Alaskans to really, you know, I'm not here to, I'm never running for office. That's not my objective. I'm serious. I have business interests that are far more lucrative than anything that politics could do for me. So I have no interest in it. So this is purely self, like I'm doing this for Alaska and this has been a major challenge
(28:08):
Welcome to my lecture.
(28:33):
Welcome to my lecture. Welcome to my lecture.
(29:02):
I don't carry the weight of losing at the ballot because there's factors out of my control. We are so close and we were winning on election night and it took them two weeks to come up with the... So I don't look at that as a loss personally, but if I didn't make the ballot, I would have taken that very personal.
Yeah, I understand that. Well, thank you, Phil, for joining us today. I really appreciate it. I think it's been an enlightening conversation. Most people, if they don't engage in the process at the level at which you have, would have no idea about some of the level of details that you've shared. So I really appreciate you being willing to talk about it. Absolutely. Happy to. Thanks again.
(29:36):
Yeah, no problem. And if you enjoy what you've heard today, please head over to mustardalaska.com, hit that donate link, help us keep the lights on and have more guests like this on the show. So until next time, stay frosty, Alaska.
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