Alaskans will be asked on the Nov. 5 statewide ballot if they want to vote yes and repeal the state’s ranked-choice election system. Opponents of ranked voting collected enough signatures to put the question on the ballot, though they violated state campaign finance laws to get there — a rank and dishonorable start.
Alaskans would be better served to vote no on Proposition No. 2.
Ranked-choice voting, adopted by Alaskans in 2020, ensures that the winning candidates in state and congressional races have the support of a majority of voters. Nothing confusing about that, although opponents say the ballot process is confusing.
Opponents who want Alaskans to vote yes on the repeal are saying lots of other things to mislead people, but the fact remains that ranked-choice elections are about determining which candidates have the broadest support among the most people, not which ones belong to which parties or which ones have taken which pledges of political loyalty.
Under the voting system, Alaskans rank candidates in order of preference. If a candidate receives a majority of the first-choice tally — 50% plus one —he or she wins. If no one takes 50% in the first round of counting, the bottom finishers are eliminated and the votes retabulated with those voters’ second or third choices until a winner emerges at 50% plus one.
No longer will Alaskans elect public officials who have the support of a minority of voters, which has happened many times when three candidates face off in the general election and the winner takes the prize with far less than half the votes.
It happened in 1994, when Democrat Tony Knowles, at 41.1%, beat Republican Jim Campbell, 40.8%, for governor by just 538 votes, while 13% of the vote went to Jack Coghill of the right-leaning Alaskan Independence Party. The tally showed that most Alaskans did not want Knowles to be governor. Had ranked-choice voting been in effect, it’s likely most of Coghill’s voters would have listed Campbell as their second choice, putting the Republican into the governor’s office with majority support.
Ranked-choice elections are about letting voters make the decisions, not the political parties that control primaries. It’s about healthy political competition in the middle, not shouting at the extremes. It’s about real majorities, not minority rule. It creates opportunities for independent and third-party candidates to get an equal shot in November.
It’s simply about letting voters make their own decisions.
In the interest of all of the above, Alaskans should vote no on Proposition No. 2 in November.
- Wrangell Sentinel
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