Published on September 11, 2023 by Juli Lucky
Pastor inflicted “substantial” public harm in alleged effort to hide funding
ANCHORAGE—The Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) released a staff report concluding that backers of an effort to repeal open primaries and ranked choice voting violated more than a dozen campaign finance laws.
Among the APOC staff findings:
- Art Mathias, founder of Wellspring Ministries and Wellspring Fellowship, President of Ranked Choice Education Association (RCEA), a Washington-based “church,” and Director of Alaskans for Honest Election (AHE), “contributed his funds to RCEA knowing that they would be repurposed to support AHE through contributions” and contributed “$90,000 [to] AHE using RCEA as a third party conduit”
- Alaskans for Honest Elections, Alaskans for Honest Government, and Ranked Choice Education Association all failed to file required reports on time, and failed to place a ‘paid for by’ on their websites.
For more information, see the full press release here and the staff report here.