Again, I want to write more about the elections happening in 2016 than any other rational person would or should.  Here are five things I’m watching for in Alaska on November 8th.

1. Presidential Election: According to some people, prior to the announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Vice President, Barack Obama was targeting Alaska as a state that he could potentially win.  I’m not sure how much I really buy it but there’s that.  In 2012, Alaska had the third highest % for Libertarian Party Presidential nominee Gary Johnson with 2.46% (behind only New Mexico and weirdly Montana).  7.45% of the votes cast in 2012 for Congress in Alaska were for a third Party candidate including 5.19% for the Libertarian Party nominee. In 2014, this actually increased to 8.07% of the Congressional votes were for third party candidates including 7.61% of the vote being given to the Libertarian Party candidate.  If the Presidential vote goes the way that I believe it is going, the election will be called prior to the polls closing in Alaska.  But if Gary Johnson is going to get close to 5% of the vote nationally for the Libertarian Party, he is going to need a strong showing in Alaska.  I don’t think he is going to be able to pull enough votes to give Hillary Clinton Alaska’s electoral votes, what I am interested in is the ceiling of Gary Johnson both nationally and in the state of Alaska.
2. Alaska’s At Large Congressional District: Don Young (R) is running for re-election, again.  He won in 2014 with 51% of the vote and 142,572 votes compared to 41% of the vote for Forrest Dunbar the Democratic challenger.  Dunbar received 114,602 votes.  There were a total of 279,741 votes cast in the 2014 Congressional race.  This was only a slight decrease from 2012 where 289,804 votes were cast.  Young lost 43,000 votes from 2012 to 2014.  The Democratic challenger gained 30,000 votes from 2012 to 2014.  The Libertarian candidate Jim McDermott gained 6,000 votes from 2012 to 2014.  If you’re trying to make an argument for a Congressional upset, then you are probably making an argument that the Democratic candidate’s gains are real, the Libertarian candidate makes a slightly bigger jump with Johnson’s coattails, and possibly slightly depressed Republican turnout.
3. Ballot Measure 1: This Ballot Measure would essentially allow for universal registration for voting through the dividend fund.  I do believe that we should have universal voting registration because it helps to make voting even easier.  The criticism of the measure is that it would cost extra money and that the people who are going to be registered are more or less lazy, as there are many different ways to currently register to vote.  In Alaska, it is likely that many voters do not have driver’s licenses but are a part of the permanent dividend fund.  I think that this measure passes and we are getting one step closer to universal voting registration.
4. Alaska State Senate District H: There’s not very many competitive state legislature races in Alaska.  Democratic candidate Bill Wielechowski is running for election in District H of Alaska.  He won re-election in District G in 2012 with 56.2% of the vote against Republican Bob Roses.  His district was changed when the redistricting process went through and it was changed to District H.  I’m only bringing him up as it is potentially the closest State Senate election in Alaska on November 8.
5. Alaska House of Representatives, District 21: Again, there’s not very many competitive elections in Alaska. District 21 is the exception and is being targeted by the Republican State Leadership Committee.  The current representative is Democratic Party’s Matt Claman.  He won election in 2014 for District 21 with 3,849 votes winning the election by 90 votes over the Republican candidate Anand Dubey. In 2014, it was more likely to be a Republican year but as we saw with Young’s Congressional election, it seems that many Republicans didn’t vote then.  Claman is running for re-election and is a slight favorite for re-election but it’s possible that he loses to Marilyn Stewart because there’s some money and time being spent to flip the seat. This one will be fun to watch on November 8th and possibly later.

In my never ending struggle to write more about the 2016 elections than any other website (and only having one writer), I’ve decided to highlight 5 elections in every state to watch on November 8th.  They can be as big as the Presidential election in the state or something as small as as state House of Representative district.  It’ll go in alphabetical order.

Alabama

Sadly, there’s not very many interesting elections in Alabama this year.  There are 14 Amendments on the bally for some reason.  That’s what we’re mainly going to focus on since the Congressional Districts are not competitive.

1. Amendment 2: The first Amendment that I’m looking to see if it passes is Amendment 2 for the state ballot measures.  The Amendment would prohibit state park funds from going to other portions of the budget.  The idea is that it will keep the parks open and keep the funding for them within the parks system.  There doesn’t seem to be much of an opposition to the Amendment.  The reason that it is interesting to me is that it is an affirmative step to help save what should be important to many people.  The Alabama budget is sort of a mess so this may have larger impacts on Alabama’s budget.
2. Amendment 6:  Alabama Impeachment Amendment – this Amendment would change the Alabama Constitution to require a two-thirds supermajority vote in the Alabama State Senate for conviction and impeachment of a state official.  Currently, the Constitution only requires a majority of the state senators present for voting for conviction and impeachment.  The impeachment Amendment came up because of the potentiality of impeaching Alabama Governor Robert Bentley.
3. Amendment 8: This amendment, if passed, would allow for “right to work” policies to be enshrined in the Alabama Constitution.  Currently, Alabama is a right-to-work state.  There’s not really any danger of Alabama switching from a right to work state to a non-right to work state so it is only codifying the policy that is already in place into the constitution.  Right-to-work is already enacted by statute.  If the amendment passes, which it is likely to do, if they did decide to change the state from right-to-work, it would be much more difficult.
4. Amendmet 13: Guys, there’s really not a whole lot in Alabama that’s interesting to follow.  This amendment would prohibit future age restrictions for government official positions exempting judicial positions. This would potentially impact trustees of the public university systems as there is currently age restrictions on university trustees.
5. Martha Roby’s race in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District: Roby was one of the first Republican members of Congress to renounce their support for Trump.  She is running in a very safe district in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District.  She has not backed away from her renouncement of support for Trump.  What I’m interested in watching is how many votes it costs her.  Only 157 of the Congressional votes in 2014 for her district were write-in votes.  I’ll be interested to see if that increases or decreases from her principled stand.