Once, when discussing with a friend their penchant for speeding and the fines they were risking, they opined, “punishable by fine means legal for a price.” The sponsors of the recently failed Ballot Measure 2 apparently hew closely to this line of thinking. Shady funding funneled through a “church”? Dubious signature gathering? Lack of control of materials? Pay the money and, if you win, it was all worth it. It is amazing that tampering with one ballot can land a person in jail, but tampering with a system that puts a measure on everyone’s ballot is a monetary slap on the wrist.
If we want to dissuade this type of behavior in the future, then the Legislature needs to take action to put some teeth into punishments for this sort of unethical behavior.
— Jason Norris
Anchorage
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