Alaska Policy Forum v. Alaska Public Offices Commission

Alaska Policy Forum (APF), a nonprofit that educates Alaskans about public policy, had a history of criticizing ranked-choice voting. In January 2020, APF joined think tanks from four other states to launch Protect My Ballot (PMB), a national coalition that educates the public about the practice, after confirming the coalition would not campaign in elections. Two months later, a measure that would bring ranked-choice voting to Alaska qualified for the November ballot.

APF kept publishing. It shared a PMB press release, republished a PMB ranked-choice voting video, issued its own press release about a ranked-choice voting study it co-authored, and posted an article linking to PMB’s website. None of these materials named the ballot measure. Nonetheless, Alaska’s Public Offices Commission ruled that APF had become a campaign committee, required to register, file reports, and print its three largest donors on its own materials. The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed, and APF has petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case.

FIRE filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Court to grant APF’s petition. Our brief urges the Court to grant review to ensure that the trigger for imposing such disclosure requirements is clear in advance and cannot be imposed after-the-fact. When the Court upheld campaign-finance disclosure in Citizens United, the law drew a line speakers could see before they spoke. Alaska draws no comparable line, leaving officials to decide after the fact whether they will classify communications as campaign materials subject to registration and disclosure requirements or ordinary unregulated public education.