Democrats’ lawyer sends cease-and-desist threat to Alaska radio stations over ranked-choice voting repeal ads

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Sept. 9, 2026 — An attorney representing the campaign to preserve ranked-choice voting in Alaska has sent a cease-and-desist letter to radio stations demanding that they stop broadcasting advertisements supporting Ballot Measure 2. The Democrats are trying to take the Repeal Now  campaign’s message off the air less than two months before the election.

Thomas Amodio of Reeves Amodio LLC sent the three-page letter Monday on behalf of the No on 2 campaign. One copy was forwarded to The Alaska Story, and the letter indicates other stations have received or may receive the same legally threatening missive.

Amodio characterizes the Repeal Now advertisement as “false and misleading” and demands that the station “cease and desist running the Ad.”

Although the dispute relates to rules governing broadcasters and political advertising, the letter does not cite any specific Federal Communications Commission regulation, or even identify an FCC violation. Amodio doesn’t state what legal action the No on 2 campaign intends to pursue if the station refuses to “cease and desist.”

Instead, it places station managers on notice that the ranked-choice voting proponents are going to claim the advertisement is false,  a step that can be used to pressure broadcasters because stations have potentially more legal exposure when airing advertisements from political organizations than when airing advertisements sponsored by candidates.

Federal law generally prevents radio and television stations from censoring advertisements purchased by qualified candidates. That protection does not extend in the same way to advertisements from independent political groups or ballot-measure campaigns. Stations may accept or reject issue advertisements and may exercise their own judgment about their content.

Thus, a cease-and-desist letter is a potentially powerful political weapon. Even without filing a lawsuit or an FCC complaint, a campaign can raise the prospect of legal trouble and encourage a risk-averse station to pull an opposing advertisement.

The advertisement targeted by Amodio tells voters to support Ballot Measure 2 “to reject dark money campaign influence.”

Amodio argues that both statements are false. He, evidently, wants to define what “dark money” is.

His letter says Ballot Measure 2 would eliminate Alaska’s current “open, nonpartisan” top-four primary and replace it with partisan primaries. That’s the kind of primary that is conducted in all but 14 states. He cites the initiative’s formal title, the Alaska Department of Law’s summary and the Alaska Supreme Court’s recent decision affirming most of the ballot language.

But the dispute is partly over what the phrase “open primary” means.

Supporters of ranked-choice voting describe Alaska’s current top-four system as an open primary because all candidates appear on one ballot and voters may choose among them, regardless of party.

Repeal supporters use “open primary” to describe the system that existed before ranked-choice voting, when political parties could choose whether unaffiliated voters were allowed to participate in their primaries. For example, the Alaska Republican Party allowed people who were not registered Democrats, Libertarians, Green, or who were not registered with a different party to vote its primary ballot. Undeclared voters and nonpartisan voters were allowed to vote the Republican ballot.

Under Ballot Measure 2, Alaska would return to that classically designed  primary and single-choice general election. Parties would regain control over how their party’s nominees are selected, including whether their primary ballots are open to voters who are not registered members of the party.

Amodio also objects to the advertisement’s claim that a yes vote would “reject dark money campaign influence.” Again, Amodio wants to define “dark money.”

The current election system, adopted through the 2020 ballot initiative, combined ranked-choice voting and the top-four primary with campaign-finance disclosure provisions. Ballot Measure 2 would repeal several of those provisions along with ranked-choice voting.

Amodio contends that because the initiative removes disclosure requirements involving the original sources of certain political contributions, the repeal campaign cannot truthfully claim that the measure rejects dark-money influence.

That argument addresses what the initiative would do to existing disclosure statutes. It does not address the broader political argument made by repeal supporters: that Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system was created and has been defended through millions of dollars flowing from wealthy donors and Outside political organizations such as Unite Us, FairVote and John and Laura Arnold.

The effort to establish ranked-choice voting in 2020 was heavily financed by Outside interests, and national organizations have continued pouring money into campaigns to preserve the system. Repeal advocates use “dark money influence” to describe that larger network of Outside-funded election activism, not merely the disclosure language embedded in the 2020 law.

Amodio’s letter treats the campaign’s interpretation as an objectively false factual statement rather than political advocacy open to argument.

“On behalf of the No on 2 campaign, we demand that you cease and desist running the Ad,” Amodio wrote. “With the election fast approaching, it is of the utmost importance that you do not broadcast false and misleading Ads.”

Demand.

The FCC says it generally does not determine the truthfulness of broadcast advertising. Its guidance directs complaints about false or misleading advertisements primarily toward the Federal Trade Commission, while recognizing that broadcast stations have obligations concerning sponsorship identification and political-ad records. The FCC’s special no-censorship rule applies to qualified candidate advertisements, not ordinary ballot-measure advocacy.

For Alaska radio stations, the decision is now whether to yield to the pressure and the inferred lawsuit, or allow both sides of the ranked-choice voting debate to make their cases directly to voters.