Campaign Spending Law & Politics for Constitutional Convention Referendums: A Case Study of Alaska

Fourteen U.S. state constitutions, including Alaska, require that at periodic intervals the people have the right to call a constitutional convention via a referendum. Alaska’s period is every ten years, and its last such referendum was in 2022. Its referendum illustrates certain latent tendencies of convention referendum law and politics, including severe collective action problems and corresponding campaign finance imbalances that campaign finance disclosure laws have not rectified. On a per capita basis, Alaska’s convention referendum had the fourth highest combined “yes” and “no” contributions and highest “no” and dark money contributions among the 140 U.S. state ballot measures across 38 U.S. states in 2022. High spending by the “no” campaign continued even after the “no” campaign knew it was essentially assured of victory. Such spending may be designed to deter future “yes” campaigns in Alaska and other states.