Joaqlin Estus
ICT
Alaskans adopted a new election system in 2021. Let’s compare it with the system still being used in most of the country.
Generally in the primary election, political parties — like Republicans, Democrats or Independents — pick the candidates that will go on to the general election. Parties act as gatekeepers for who gets to run.
That gate’s wide open in Alaska.
Michelle Sparck, Yup’ik, the director of Alaska’s Get Out The Native Vote, explains.
“Everyone with a dream and a hundred dollars could apply and fill out the paperwork (to run in the primary). If they were eligible, they became a candidate.” The top four vote-getters in the primary went on to run in the general election (however, after Alaska’s August primary, one of the four dropped out).
In the general election, typically, the person with more votes than any other candidate, that is, a plurality, wins, even if they fall short of a majority of 50 percent plus one.
In Alaska, candidates can only win with a majority of votes.
That’s due to ranked choice voting, a process in which voters rank candidates one to four. If none of them get a majority, the lowest vote getter is dropped.
Their second-choice votes go to the other candidates in an instant runoff. That continues until someone gets a majority.
Related:
— Alaska overhauls elections – ICT
— Will the Native vote count in Alaska? – ICT
Sparck said with ranked choice voting, candidates need to run a different kind of campaign to win second choice votes.
“I think the open primary system really opens a lot of doors and it kind of moderates people’s campaigns and positions. They have to appeal to a lot more than a fraction of their base in order to be a lawmaker of the caliber that you should be when you’re representing the majority and not just the plurality. So we’re pretty excited about the open primary system.”
We saw the new system play out in August in Alaska’s special election to fill the remaining months of the late Rep. Don Young’s term.
Representative Mary Peltola, is Yup’ik and a Democrat. She got the most votes in the first count but didn’t get a majority. Counting second-choice ballots brought her a majority of votes over Republicans Nick Begich and Sarah Palin.
Political commentator Matt Buxton with the Midnight Sun podcast said the system worked as it should.
“Almost the most important thing to me is that it really allowed the voters to kind of find their candidate of choice. “
He said ranked choice voting didn’t change the outcome. Peltola, after all, won the highest number of votes of the three candidates so would have won under the old system.
Peltola, though, Buxton said, won a majority as a unique candidate: pro-resource development, strong on gun ownership, and strong on people’s rights to privacy when making choices about their bodies, but also with a history of fighting for the right of Alaska Natives to have access to fish for subsistence purposes.
That mix “really kind of threads the needle of some of these sorts of sometimes competing, political and policy interests. And that’s kind of what Alaska needs a little bit, is that there is sort of nuance with it,” Buxton said.
Maine and several municipalities, including New York City, also use ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting will be on the ballot in Nevada in November. Voters there are deciding on a constitutional amendment that would establish a system like Alaska’s.
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