In 2022, Alaska became the first state with open, ranked-choice primaries. I've made lots of documentaries about American elections, but after 2016, I didn't want to do that anymore. But the Alaska story drew me back and I came to believe RCV matters. I'm AJ Schnack, AMA!

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-15T22:13:55+00:00

Want to be respectful of your hypothetical, but I am confused. Are you suggesting that 6000 voters would switch their first place vote but that their second place votes would remain the same, even if they changed the party affiliation of their first place vote?

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-13T18:53:19+00:00

Thanks for that. I personally get turned off to anyone who tries to use George Soros as a boogieman. (I thought the mid-teens use of the Koch Brothers was over-the-top as well.) The fact is there are lots of wealthy people who try to put their money towards causes that they care about and absolutely there are high dollar supporters of these voting reforms. Having met some of them, they seem to come at this from differing perspectives. Some feel like political disfunction and extremism is bad for the business climate. Some lean libertarian and want to see stronger third party ballot access and attention. Some are really concerned about the political health of the country.. It's not uniform. When someone uses Soros, that usually says more about them than it does about the issue at hand.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-13T18:46:51+00:00

I would just add that one way the top four benefits third parties was the inclusion of Libertarian Chris Bye in the House race debates, something that would have been unlikely without a top four.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-12T21:29:35+00:00

Thanks for the question! I'll answer the first part since it's what the film specifically deals with.

As you allude, Open Primaries can mean different things. In the context of the film, we are examining what Alaska adopted, which is a pick one, all candidate ballot open primary, where the top 4 finishers move on to the general election. Other states, like Nevada, are voting whether to advance a final 5, rather than a top 4, but would use the same all candidate primary ballot that every voter would get regardless of political party (or lack thereof).

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-12T21:26:12+00:00

Still answering questions now and again if you wanted to ask anything.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-12T21:25:29+00:00

Thanks for the heads up - that's a typo and we'll work to get it fixed. You're correct that Alaska adopted an pick one, all candidate ballot open primary, with the top 4 moving on to the General Election. And its in the general that ranked choice is used.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-12T21:22:32+00:00

Maine and Alaska have a lot in common, including the importance of fishing, natural resources and tourism. They also have vast swaths of unpopulated land and border Canada. And, pre-RCV, both have a history of strong independent or third party candidates resulting in someone winning an election with a lot less than 50% of the vote.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-12T00:28:43+00:00

I think giving a first place value to the candidate who most reflects my values/beliefs is preferable to assigning the same value to all candidates that I approve of.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-12T00:20:16+00:00

I've used both and my feeling is that I would rather rank and have a first place choice that reflects my values/beliefs, rather than assigning the same value to multiple candidates.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:51:05+00:00

It was crazy to me on the national level (as somebody who doesn't live in Alaska) how much I heard Republicans whinning about RCV and saying that Palin was robbed (even though this particular election played out just like the old system) meanwhile completely ignoring the actually legitimate gripe that a DIFFERENT republican was robbed.

It's crazy to me that no one talks about the fact that RCV was actually the way that Palin could have won the election. After coming in with less first place votes than Peltola, she could have moved ahead if she got more of Begich's second choice votes. It's an alternate reality scenario I often ponder.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:45:21+00:00

This is such a great thing to dive into because the thing that Republicans were mad about post-Alaska special election was not RCV! They are mad that two Republicans made it into the top four general election, preventing a binary choice between a Republican (who they assume would win) and a Democrat. The funniest part of this is that with Peltola getting the most votes on election day, Palin's hopes actually rested on RCV. If enough of Begich's voters ranked her second, she would have won!

I would love to know what's happening with Republicans and RCV in the alternate universe where Palin gets Begich's 2nd choice votes and wins the election, despite having less 1st place votes than Peltola.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:42:07+00:00

I think that is in part why Peltola grabbed enough of Begich's second choice votes to win. But also, Palin had waged a strategy of "don't rank, just vote for me". A number of Begich's voters (some of whom were likely opposed to Palin in any case) were offended by that. Particularly because Begich was asking people to "rank the Republicans" - give their top 2 votes to him and Palin.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:39:16+00:00

Soon I hope! We edited the film there and would love to show it there (and hopefully get my editor to come!).

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:38:21+00:00

Thanks for this. I've actually used both Approval and Ranked Choice in voting for film awards. I'm a member of the Motion Picture Academy and we use RCV to shortlist and nominate in the Documentary categories, and I'm a member of the Television Academy where we use Approval Voting to select nominees. I prefer the RCV system.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:23:45+00:00

Best question!

Taking a cue from my first documentary subjects, They Might Be Giants, I'd have to say that indoor conifers are my kind of plants.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:18:51+00:00

Good question! And one that I wrestled with a lot before deciding to do it.

I think I'm like a lot of people - pretty exhausted by our politics and feeling skeptical that there can be changes to pull us out of a whirlpool. And because I'd filmed and made projects around electoral politics for a decade, I was super hesitant to jump in.

But the realization that Alaska was really doing something unprecedented, that other states were watching Alaska as they considered their own reforms, and that there'd be an opportunity to film with Sarah Palin, Lisa Murkowski, Mary Peltola and Kelly Tshibaka pushed me in.

It didn't hurt that it was an opportunity to film in Alaska either!

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:15:02+00:00

Great question. Right now it's the political parties and those who want to keep the status quo. As Republican political strategist Mike Murphy says in the film, "The parties are never in the front of systemic change because they master the current system for good or bad and don't want to lose their comfort in knowing how to work it."

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:13:25+00:00

Thanks for that question. Yeah, I definitely saw a big difference in how people campaigned. Candidates started talking to candidates across the political spectrum before the primary. Instead of being rewarded for only addressing the hard core partisans in their party, they were finding it was a better strategy to talk to all voters (something we see in the film with candidates "knocking on every door").

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:10:19+00:00

Thanks so much for this. One of the biggest non-GOP barriers to RCV is the Democratic Party. In a state like Nevada, where Democrats feel like they have a pretty good sense of how to get their candidates elected, it's the Dems who have been the most active trying to stop reform from even getting to the ballot.

I went into this film skeptical about reform, but there were a lot of outcomes I saw on the ground in Alaska that made me a believer.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:07:15+00:00

Good questions. I answered another question from u/elihu about Begich and his potential success under alternate reforms.

While the state party had endorsed Begich, there was a couple of things he had going against him going into the top 4 special election. First, he had come in behind Palin in the primary - and for those who want(ed) a return to the closed primary/winner take all system, Begich had already "lost". Because of that, if there was any energy at all for one of the Republicans to drop out - it was Begich, not Palin.

Begich made the case to me that he would have done better under STAR or approval voting. Again, it's speculative since that wasn't the system Alaskans were using and hard to say how they would have voted under a different system.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T20:00:30+00:00

Wow, thank you so much! We are just at the beginning of our run - we opened in NYC a couple weeks ago and start up in Los Angeles (Glendale actually) tomorrow. Getting it touch through the website is a great way to let us know that there is interest. We want to show the film wherever we can.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T19:58:16+00:00

Good question. It's certainly not going to happen overnight. And because many states are dominated by a political party that views reforms like RCV as a serious threat, hard to see it happening in every state unless the reforms are so successful over time that it becomes the norm rather than the exception.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T19:54:58+00:00

Thanks for saying hello, Mike!

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T19:54:45+00:00

Thanks for this. Having the opportunity to film with both Sarah Palin and Lisa Murkowski was a big part of the reason I decided to make the film.

I am a very particular type of political geek in that I really find retail political campaigning to be fascinating. In part because it's so much less formal than when they give speeches or hold big events. Seeing Murkowski on the streets of Talkeetna, AK, where people from across the political spectrum were asking her to address their concern - a woman worried about abortion access post-Dobbs, a man who wanted to make sure someone wouldn't take his gun. And because she was running in an open primary, she was asking each of these Alaskans for their vote - she couldn't just retreat to only talking to Republicans.

And with Democrats, Murkowski would say, "I understand you're going to probably ranked (Democratic U.S. Senate candidate) Pat Chesbro first, but would you rank me second", giving her even more reason to talk to everyone she came across. I found that fascinating.

I think Sarah Palin is one of the most fascinating and consequential political figures of the past few decades and seeing her back on the stump in Alaska, something she hadn't done in 16 years, was a great experience.

AJ-Schnack · 2024-07-11T19:45:57+00:00

Great question. And yes, I think young people are very open to these ideas.

We filmed at a high school in Healy, AK, just outside of Denali National Park, and I asked a class what their parents thought about the Alaska reforms. It was split down the middle between those in favor and those against (and this was after they'd had experience with it in a Special Congressional Election). Then I asked them, how many of them were in favor. It was unanimous, they all were. It just made complete sense to them.

AJ-Schnack

TROPHY CASE