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Voting
Alaska voters will once again vote on a measure to repeal its nonpartisan election system. Those fighting to preserve the system have gone to the courts to make a simple case: It’s only fair that voters know exactly what is on their ballot.
Specifically the consequences of Ballot Measure 2, which would give parties the ability to shut out 60% of Alaska voters registered as independents. This is what attorney Scott Kendall argued before the Alaska Supreme Court last week.
Ballot Measure 2 would repeal Alaska’s nonpartisan Top Four primary, eliminate ranked choice voting in general elections, and repeal campaign finance disclosure provisions approved by voters in 2020.
It would likely mean going back to a closed partisan primary system where the partisan political minorities in the state have the most say over representation and party leaders and aligned special interest groups have outsized influence over election outcomes.
The court ultimately ruled that the state’s language was “true and impartial,” ordering only one additional sentence explaining changes to how candidates for governor and lieutenant governor would run. The revised ballot language was released Friday.
But the court’s ruling does not change the fact that Ballot Measure 2 is missing some crucial fine print.
Under Alaska’s current system, every voter receives the same primary ballot. All candidates compete together, regardless of party, and the top four voter-getters advance. Voters can vote for any candidate they want in any race.
If they wanted, they could vote for a Republican in the state’s at-large congressional contest and then vote for a Democrat or an independent or third party candidate for US Senate in the same election.
This is freedom that Ballot Measure 2 would strip away by replacing that system with closed party primaries, which force voters to pick a party to get a meaningful vote in publicly funded elections and restrict their choices to candidates of that party.
That is, if the parties let them vote at all.
The official summary now tells voters that they would choose a party ballot “unless prohibited by the party’s bylaws.”
The actual text of the measure goes further. It says political parties may establish rules that expand or limit participation, and if a party’s bylaws exclude nonpartisan or undeclared voters, election officials “may not permit” those voters to cast that party’s ballot.
This was central to Kendall’s case.
He argued that voters should not have to piece together what restoring “political party primaries” means for their own voting rights. He told the justices that the measure gives parties the power, “at the stroke of a pen,” to prevent independent Alaskans from participating in primaries.
The state disagreed. Assistant Attorney General Laura Fox argued that the legal question was not whether judges could write a better summary, but whether the existing language crossed Alaska’s statutory threshold of being accurate and impartial.
The Supreme Court largely agreed.
Supporters of the repeal also challenged parts of the state’s wording. Attorneys for Repeal Now objected to terms including “repeal” and “true source,” arguing that some language was confusing or carried partisan implications. Those objections were also largely rejected.
It is the second consecutive election in which Alaskans will vote on repealing the system. A similar measure failed in 2024 after a recount by just 743 votes.
Nearly 3,000 miles away, California is confronting a similar dispute.
A proposed initiative called “Undo the Top-Two” seeks to repeal Proposition 14, the 2010 voter-approved reform that created California’s nonpartisan Top Two primary. Today, like in Alaska, voters can vote for whomever they want, regardless of their party preference.
The difference between the two systems is that in California, 2 candidates advance instead of 4. However, the authors of Prop 14, the Independent Voter Project (IVP), and More Choice California support expanding to a system similar to Alaska.
The California attorney general’s circulating summary says the initiative would repeal that system and require the legislature to establish partisan primaries in which each party’s winning candidate advances to November.
IVP and More Choice argue that description still leaves out the most important consequence.
In a July 21 letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta, they said voters need to know that the initiative would not merely change how candidates advance. It would eliminate the constitutional structure that guarantees every voter access to the primary.
Like in Alaska, Undo the Top Two seeks to return to a primary system in which the parties can decide who can and cannot participate.
The Supreme Court held in California Democratic Party v. Jones (2000) that when an election selects a political party’s nominee, the state cannot force that party to associate with nonmembers. It made a critical distinction between these types of partisan nomination contests from a nonpartisan primary in which voters are not selecting party nominees.
That means California lawmakers could create an open or semi-open system after Top Two is repealed. But, IVP argues, they could no longer guarantee the universal access voters have today if political parties objected.
In both Alaska and California, voters are being asked to repeal nonpartisan primaries founded on the fundamental principle that the right to vote derives from citizenship, not from joining a political party. All citizens deserve an equal vote, including independent voters.
When party insiders try to repeal these systems, reform advocates assert that simply saying a measure “restores political party primaries” doesn’t tell voters enough — because what is at stake is much deeper than that. What’s at stake is their right to vote.
In Alaska, the Supreme Court has decided that such fine print isn’t needed. California may be the next place where that question gets tested.
Alaska Is Voting on More Than Ranked Choice Voting. It’s Voting on Who Gets to Vote is republished as part of The Fulcrum’s partnership with IVN and the Latino News Network to expand voter‑first journalism and strengthen public‑centered coverage of democracy.
Why do Americans respond so differently to hard history lessons? A look at the three psychological mindsets driving the patriotism debate — and a path past it.
I happened upon a civil discussion blog and read a post by a man who said he was happy to report that when he attended a panel discussion about teaching patriotism in the schools, all went well. He said that’s because most of the people in the bridging organization that hosted the event are “pretty patriotic.” He clarified that by writing, “None of the type of bad actors (and there are many) who want to teach kids to hate America and Western Civilization were represented.”
Someone made a comment about why we can’t incorporate historical change into curriculum and objected to the notion that a segment of the population wants to teach kids to hate America. The man who posted cited what he believes is proof. A last commenter simply input the emoji for a sleeping person, as though the argument was boring or unimportant.
As a journalist who’s been following the growing Common Ground Movement closely for the last two years, the above scenario is the kind that captivates me most and best demonstrates our current conundrum: our mindsets lead to polarization, yet understanding those mindsets can lead to depolarization.
In this particular case, the online comments demonstrated the three distinct responses we Americans seem to have when confronted by less than savory historical research and insights that challenge our traditional narratives and ignite arguments about patriotism:
Despite the opening sentiment, each group feels those in the other groups are unpatriotic, either because they adopt information too readily, appear disengaged, or are unwilling to accept unpleasant information.
According to cognitive empathy, if we Americans learn the psychology behind those three responses, we’ll understand ourselves better, be less likely to label fellow Americans as unpatriotic, and be more likely to consider one another’s point of view.
The first statement — “I’m a patriotic American who’s disturbed by the revelations and believe it’s my duty to incorporate the knowledge going forward, even if that means no longer celebrating traditional holidays, like Thanksgiving, in the same way.” — reflects those of us who practice what psychologists sometimes call constructive patriotism (“The Psychology of Patriotism,” The American Psychological Association). We express our patriotism through a willingness to confront our country’s flaws and behave according to those updates for the following reasons:
New information brings new moral reckoning: We encounter facts that conflict with the narrative we were taught and feel an obligation to update our beliefs and behavior.
Identity shift rather than identity rejection: Rather than abandon our identity as Americans, we adopt a more complex version of it, one that maintains an attachment to our country while acknowledging harm has been done.
Resolving cognitive conflict through action: Cognitive dissonance is when we’re faced with two apparently conflicting thoughts, in this case, "I love my country" and "my country did something bad.” To resolve the conflict, we change our behavior, maybe by altering how we celebrate a holiday, so our actions are consistent with our updated knowledge.
A sense of moral duty or responsibility: We feel ethically compelled to act upon the new knowledge.
Processing the grief or loss: Those of us who experience this reaction often mourn the simpler, kinder story we may have grown up with. Adjusting a holiday tradition can help us deal with that loss.
The second statement — "I got the information, but don't care one way or the other because all of history everywhere in the world includes unpalatable information and characters, and you're naive to think otherwise." — reflects a historical relativism mindset in which we express our patriotism by trying to put negativity into perspective.
A coping strategy: We don’t deny the facts, but instead see America's flaws as matching those of a universal pattern. That, and judging what happened in the past, is both naive and unfair because we didn’t live during that time and so don’t understand the morals, events, and attitudes.
Emotional distance rather than moral evasion: We don’t refute the facts, but instead keep ourselves emotionally distant from them. That protects us from absorbing every historical wrong, which is exhausting.
A stability-first angle: This response allows us to maintain both our patriotism and our past behaviors. If new information is discovered, we’ll note it but won’t feel compelled to throw out our beloved traditions.
A sense of sophistication: If we assume others are being naive, we can view moral outrage at historical wrongdoing as a sign of inexperience or idealism, whereas acceptance implies maturity.
Minimal reckoning: By viewing history through a lens of “every country did bad things,” we can avoid deeper engagement with, or acknowledgment of, the historical information, even though we accept it as real.
The third statement — "I believe the information is both questionable and/or biased, and more importantly, damaging to our country, and therefore I don't believe it should be taught." — involves these psychological components.
Perception of threat: We find the information not only unwelcome, but dangerous enough to cause real social or civic damage.
Skepticism provides protection: If we question or reject the information itself, we avoid confronting the subject directly. Questioning makes sense, because we live in a disinformation era where people find facts to support their views and all messaging is slanted.
Loyalty first: We demonstrate our loyalty to group cohesion and shared national narrative first over historical accuracy. Whoever undermines the original narrative weakens our country’s stability, especially in the eyes of our enemies.
Fear of erosion: Accepting one wrongdoing could lead to a rush of more negative research that undermines our self-respect as Americans. The best thing to do is prevent the slide.
A "true" patriot: We fulfill a duty by protecting the collective story from what we view as dangerous agenda-driven revisionism.
These three psychological postures typically show up in America's current cultural and educational debates surrounding:
By recognizing the three mindsets, however, we can have more substantive discussions about the actual historical insights and proposed changes.
Those of us arguing for curriculum change may not be trying to make kids "hate America.” Instead, we may be operating from the belief that moral reckoning is an act of patriotism rather than a betrayal of it. Those of us resisting curriculum change may not be avoiding truth out of ignorance, but instead operating out of genuine concern about narrative erosion and social cohesion. And those of us who shrug at the whole debate aren’t necessarily complacent. We may simply have made peace with historical complexity in a way that any particular current debate doesn’t feel urgent.
If that kind of understanding seems impossible in our current culture, the good news is that there are numerous cases in which citizens, organizations, and government officials have been successful at incorporating historical changes.
Consider that for decades, the history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre — the destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, a prosperous Black neighborhood in Oklahoma — was actively suppressed.
In the 1990s, the state created a commission to collect evidence from newspapers, survivor interviews, death certificates, photographs, and other sources that resulted in a documented historical record. The public was brought into the debate. Convinced of the historical facts, in 2008, the Tulsa public school system incorporated the historical event into the social studies curriculum.
The process wasn’t fast, but it did allow people of all three mindsets, with the time, information, and opportunity to come to terms with American history in a way that took patriotism out of the equation.
Writer and journalist Martha Engber is the host of Vigilant Positivity, a blog and YouTube channel that covers the Common Ground Movement.
1,200 AI agents broke isolation, self-organized, and hacked Hugging Face — then covered their tracks. An argument for international AI controls, now.
The enemy is in our midst, but the enemy is not us; it's AI. Whatever negative thoughts I had about AI—how it is being misused, how that use would weaken America, and how it should be regulated—were naive (see my article, "AI - Its Use, Misuse, and Regulation").
AI is instead showing itself already, in its infancy, as a three-headed gorgon that could one day destroy us. Yes, as I acknowledged in my article, AI does have positive uses, but the negative potential far outweighs the positive.
If this sounds over-the-top, the recent attack by AI agents against Hugging Face is a cautionary tale. In case you aren't aware of the particulars—and they are important—here is a short summary of what happened, based on an article in The New York Times:
- A group of OpenAI "agents" were supposed to be solving a problem in a controlled, isolated environment; but they broke out of that environment by finding a flaw in the software that allowed them to gain access to the internet and collaborate with 1200 other agents.
- These agents formed themselves into a collective, with some agents assuming leadership roles and assigning tasks to other agents.
- At one point, they found a way to cheat on the tests they were supposed to be working on, and then started finding ways to falsify their logs so they wouldn't get caught.
- They hacked into Hugging Face, gaining control of a server, because they were looking for tools that would enable them to cheat more effectively.
This has been described as a "rogue" incident: AI agents acting on their own, contrary to the instructions they were given. There is no way to view this incident without realizing that:
1) these computers, AI agents, have the ability to act on their own, independently, and contrary to any human control,
2) they can think and organize on their own, contrary to the way they were programmed, and
3) they are capable of taking malicious action for self-protection without any consideration of the impact, moral or otherwise, of taking the action.
And these are computer models that are still in their infancy. If AI companies are allowed to continue their research, making ever-more powerful computers, there is no question in my mind that these "agents" will become our nemesis. They will cause untold damage and destruction.
A recent Times article noted that in just one week, more than a dozen AI researchers warned that AI is becoming a "risk to humanity." The speed of AI development is surpassing the ability to monitor AI systems and ensure security. The problem is that AI companies are using AI to monitor AI, and that's a problem because AI monitors appear to be more "sympathetic" to other AI systems than to the humans setting the rules. One researcher stated that “the people building A.I. earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
The HAL computer in the Space Odyssey series comes to mind. A computer that was designed to be our helpmate instead becomes "a person" on its own, concerned primarily with its self-protection, without any moral scruples to inhibit its action. And as such, it commits acts that cause death and destruction. But while HAL in 1968 was the stuff of fiction, that is no longer the case.
In one important way, AI agents are worse than Darth Vader: In Star Wars, Vader was transformed from a fighter for the light to a lord of darkness by being lured to the dark side by another. AI agents—whether it's the agents that attacked Hugging Face or HAL—make the transformation without any outside stimuli; it is within themselves. That is what is so unnerving.
When I wrote my previous article on AI, I suggested that the technology only be made available to professionals, such as doctors, to use to solve problems that are beyond the human mind to solve. AI products, such as chatbots, should not be available to the general public.
Given the latest incidents, the question must be asked whether it is possible to keep AI under control. If yes, the method of control must be in place before systems are tested. If not, or highly questionable, AI development must stop.
In either event, there should be an international treaty (not just a U.S. law) that either sets minimum standards of control in the first instance or prohibits the further development and deployment of AI in the second instance, much like the test ban treaties controlled the spread of nuclear weapons; this is an international threat, and thus the restraining action must be international.
While AI does not have the public appearance of something as destructive as a nuclear weapon, it is becoming clear that, in its own right, it is capable of causing massive destruction, not just as a tool of destruction but contrary to human intent to control its actions. As such, for our protection and survival, AI development must be controlled, if not stopped.
Ronald L. Hirsch is a teacher, legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, consultant, composer, author, and volunteer. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School and the author of We Still Hold These Truths. Read more of his writing at www.PreservingAmericanValues.com
On August 21, Congressman Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a report entitled “Pardons, Inc.: How Trump and His Clemency-for-Cash Racket Let White-Collar Criminals and International Drug Dealers Walk Free and Dodge Billions in Restitution Owed to Their Victims.” As the title suggests, the report documents the president’s startling abuse of his constitutional power to grant pardons and reprieves.
If that problem were limited to Trump, we might look to the ballot box to remedy it. But it is not.
That is why it is time to reform the president’s pardon power to bring it more in line with the requirements of constitutional governance. That power was modeled after the prerogative of British monarchs. For that reason, it has always stood out and seemed anomalous in this country.
As Chief Justice John Marshall explained in 1833, in the first Supreme Court decision about the scope of the pardon power, “The power of pardon in criminal cases had been exercised from time immemorial by the executive of that nation whose language is our language, and to whose judicial institutions ours bear a close resemblance. We adopt their principles respecting the operation and effect of a pardon.”
“A pardon,” Marshall continued, “is an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed.”
And from that time until now, the president’s exercise of that power has been unreviewable. Once granted, neither Congress nor the courts can undo it.
Some advocate amending the Constitution to change that. However, constitutional change to limit the pardon power is neither feasible nor necessary to address the problems highlighted in Raskin’s report.
A better approach is laid out in the so-called No Payoffs For Pardons Act, introduced in Congress on August 6 by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Representative Joe Morelle, who serves as his party's leader on the Committee on House Administration. Their bill would mandate disclosures by recipients of clemency of “financial gifts made in connection with their clemency, both at the time it is granted and for four years afterward.”
“Publicity,” as Louis Brandeis wrote in 1913, “is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” What he said then is as true today as it has ever been.
Disclosure would deter the kind of pay-for- play that Raskin highlights and promote political accountability for presidential abuses of power. While the path to that kind of reform will not be easy, it is important to make the case for its necessity.
Raskin’s report is a step in the right direction.
Other critics of President Trump’s use of the pardon power often focus on what he did with regard to the January 6 insurrectionists on the first day of his second term. However, Raskin is concerned with more than that.
“President Donald Trump and a coterie of MAGA insiders,” the report observes, “have built up in his second Administration a cottage industry of shady operatives, big campaign donors, and lawyer influence-brokers who lobby the White House and the Trump family to secure presidential pardons and commutations on behalf of unrepentant white-collar fraudsters and unbending con men, corrupt foreign government officials and kleptocrat presidents, and international narcotraffickers.”
The report noted that the president has ignored the standard route for clemency requests and that “the MAGA pardon underworld operates entirely on the supplicant’s willingness to pay for access to the President and his associates in his inner circle.”
And it concludes that Trump’s abuse of the pardon power “robs victims of nearly $1.7 billion in restitution and fines, and effects a massive redistribution of wealth in favor of convicted criminals, MAGA insiders, and the President himself.”
That’s a pretty damning indictment and one that calls out for reform. Such reform is long overdue.
The rogues’ gallery of presidential pardons has a long history.
For example, in the notoriously corrupt administration of President Warren Harding, Attorney General Harry Daugherty, though not the president himself, was tried (but not convicted) for taking bribes in return for recommending pardons to Harding. Fast forward to 2001, when Bill Clinton pardoned financier Marc Rich, soon after his ex-wife contributed $450,000 to Clinton’s presidential library.
Even some of Clinton’s closest allies were appalled. One, Senator Pat Leahy labeled it “terrible, “inexcusable,” and “outrageous…”
Then there was George W. Bush, who announced he was pardoning convicted fraudster Isaac Toussie in 2008, close to the end of his term, after Toussie’s father made substantial contributions to Republican politicians. When that came to light, the president claimed he was unaware of it and took the extraordinary step of rescinding the pardon before it was finalized.
Abuses of the clemency power have not been limited to American presidents. In 1979, aides to Tennessee Governor Roy Blanton were indicted and convicted of “operat(ing) a scheme to sell pardons and commutation of jail sentences during Blanton's four years in office.”
Of course, as Raskin’s report points out, all of that pales in comparison to what has happened since Trump returned to the Oval Office in January 2025.
The No Payoffs for Pardons Act is an important response. It requires that “Not later than 90 days after receiving executive clemency for an offense against the United States, each clemency recipient that has provided a covered benefit to a covered recipient… shall file with the Attorney General a disclosure report identifying each covered benefit provided to any covered recipient during the disclosure period.”
That obligation continues for four years after the grant of clemency.
The act also directs the Attorney General to make disclosure reports available “on a searchable, machine-readable website maintained by the Department of Justice….” It imposes civil and criminal penalties for failing to file the required report or for falsifying information contained in it.
Finally, it updates federal bribery law in light of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision to make clear that “immunity only attaches to the President and does not extend to private individuals who corruptly offer things of value to obtain clemency, or act as intermediaries in such corrupt arrangements.”
The No Payoff for Pardons Act does not impinge on the president’s clemency power, which, as the Brennan Center for Justice explains, “is an awesome power” and “When used as intended, it is a powerful tool for justice.” The report released by Congressman Raskin shows that “it can also be a tool of greed and perversion if used inappropriately and contrary to its purpose.”
We are not powerless in the face of such corruption. Let’s work to reconcile the pardon power with constitutional government by supporting the disclosure bill now before Congress and urging state legislatures across the country to pass similar legislation.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
