This just in from Disco Ray.
Alaska’s Republican Party has developed a veracious appetite for trampling all over your, and every Alaskan's constitutional rights. Alaska's Republican Moderate Party, which is no relation to the Republican Party, has a made a hobby out of doing something about it. To see a complete list of lawsuits we have won on your behalf, go to republicanmoderates.com. The Republicans have changed the law four times and sued us twice trying to do us in before our movement gets to big to stop.
5,200 Alaskan voters have registered as Republican Moderates with Alaska's division of elections. We are the fastest growing Political Party in Alaska. We need to reach 10,000 if we are to fully avoid the Republican Party's endless efforts to bring about our demise. Our survival depends on membership and you can help by simply joining the Republican Moderate Party.
Aug. 13, Anchorage Daily News: Combined ballot OK, court says
PARTIES: Ruling means Greens, Republican Moderates can appear together in primary.
By MATT VOLZ
The Associated Press
Published: August 13th, 2005
Last Modified: August 13th, 2005 at 06:13 AM
JUNEAU -- The Alaska Supreme Court has struck down as unconstitutional a state law requiring separate ballots for political parties in primary elections.
The ruling, released Friday, means parties will be allowed to place their candidates' names on a single ballot, giving voters the choice of different parties for nominations in state primaries. It also could give small parties a boost in their ability to raise money and attract enough registered voters to keep their party status.
The decision is a victory for the Green and Republican Moderate parties, which filed the lawsuit against the state in 2002 after the state would not allow the two parties to combine their ballots.
"(Voters) have wider choices now than what they had with the individual ballots," Green Party chairman Larry Buchholz said. "The small parties whose rights are being trampled on get a chance to be on a more equal footing. They will never be equal, but we're closer than we were."
Attorney General David Marquez released a statement through his spokesman, Mark Morones, that said he was disappointed in the decision, but he declined to comment on the details of the case.
The state in 2001 switched from a blanket primary -- where all candidates are on a single ballot -- to allowing political parties to choose whether they want a closed primary, an open primary or something in between. The new law required each political party to have its own ballot on which only its candidates could appear. A voter had to choose one ballot out of all those available.
The Republican Moderate and Green parties in their lawsuit argued that the law violated the First and 14th Amendments and their right to associate with voters and each other.
The state argued that parties do not have a right to associate with each other through the ballot and that voters have no fundamental right to vote in a primary for all candidates.
Attorneys for the state told the court there would be numerous consequences of combined-ballot primaries, among them ballot overcrowding, voter confusion, disorderly and inefficient elections and political instability.
The Supreme Court opinion, written by Chief Justice Alexander Bryner, affirmed a lower court's ruling that the law was unconstitutional. Bryner wrote that the state's arguments were too abstract to justify restricting the rights of the Green and Republican Moderate parties.
"We think that the Green and Republican Moderate parties' First Amendment rights under the United States Constitution include a right to share a ballot and thereby to seek the participation of members of the other political party who, if forced to choose, would vote in their own political party's primary," Bryner wrote.
The state was under a court order to allow combined ballots in the 2004 primary election, said Laura Glaiser, director of the state Division of Elections. As a result, there were three ballots: the Republican ballot, a Democratic-combined ballot that registered Republicans could not select and a ballot with all other parties that anybody could choose.
The state's Democrats changed their policy in May to allow anybody to vote in their primary. That means if the Republicans keep their primary separate, there will likely be two ballots to choose from in the 2006 primary: the Republican ballot and a ballot with all other parties.
Ray Metcalfe, chairman of the Republican Moderate Party, said the ruling may put voter pressure on the Republican Party to return to a blanket primary system. Now, only voters registered Republican, nonpartisan and undeclared may vote in the Republican primary.
Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the Republican Party, said everybody in Alaska not a member of another party can vote in Republican primaries, or about 78 percent of registered voters. Republicans will change nothing as a result of the ruling, he said.
"I don't see where it has any impact of any consequence," Ruedrich said.
Ruedrich noted that the Republican Moderates aren't recognized as a political party in Alaska. Neither is the Green Party. Both, because of their size, are considered political organizations.
State law requires that to achieve and maintain ballot status, political parties must field a candidate who receives at least 3 percent of the vote in the last governor's race or that the party's registered membership equal that number.
A separate lawsuit is before the Alaska Supreme Court challenging the Greens' party status, member Jim Sykes said. Metcalfe said his group should have enough registered voters for party status by the 2006 election.
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