Campaign Spending and Convention Referendums: Alaska's 2022 Convention Referendum

• In Event: Law, Politics, and Development of State Constitutions in the U.S. Federal System

Abstract

Fourteen states require state constitutional convention referendums to be submitted periodically. Three of these referendums were held in 2022: in Missouri, New Hampshire, and Alaska. In this paper, I analyze and draw lessons from campaign spending in Alaska’s 2022 convention referendum. Among the 140 referendums on a statewide ballot in 2022, the Alaska referendum topped the campaign finance charts on a per capita basis on a number of criteria, with opponents far outspending supporters and a significant amount of opposition spending coming after polling indicated that the referendum would clearly be defeated. I propose a deterrence theory to explain the extraordinary amount of spending by convention opponents, which can be understood as seeking to deter potential supporters of future conventions, not only in Alaska but also in the other thirteen states with a periodic convention referendum. While this type of deterrence reasoning has been common in the campaign finance literature on candidate elections, where incumbent candidates build up war chests to deter challengers, it has been rare in the campaign finance literature dealing with referendums. I contend that spending on Alaska’s convention referendum illustrates the failure of America’s one-size-fits-all campaign finance legal regime for ballot measures, which is based on disclosure and may suffer from systemic collective action problems. I also consider reforms to fix this broken campaign finance marketplace for convention referendums.

Author

• J.H. Snider, The State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse