This is the first of four parts in an exclusive weekly series of articles in The Fulcrum by J.H. Snider on Alaska’s 2022 periodic constitutional convention referendum. Part I describes the spending spree over the referendum. Part II proposes a deterrence theory to explain the extraordinary amount the no side spent. Part III describes the failure of the referendum’s marketplace for campaign finance disclosures. Part IV provides recommended reforms to fix this broken marketplace.
J.H. Snider, the president of iSolon.org, is the editor The State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, which provides summary information about the 14 U.S. states with a periodic constitutional convention referendum. He also edits separate websites, such as The Alaska State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, for each state that has a convention referendum on its ballot. Snider has a PhD in American Government from Northwestern University and been a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the American Political Science Association, and New America.
In 2022, Alaska’s periodic constitutional convention referendum had blowout campaign expenditures compared to all other referendums on the ballot across all fifty U.S. states. Surprisingly, a large fraction of that spending can best be explained not as a means to defeat a specific referendum, which was handily done by a 40% margin, but to preserve convention opponents’ reputation for political invincibility, thus enabling the defeat of future convention referendums in Alaska and other states without bearing the costs of a fight….