Three Things to Know About the War Against Ranked Choice Voting in Alaska

Topic: Elections

Last March in Honolulu, I held an entire event to rail on the problems surrounding Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), also known in some parts as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).  It is the latest new-fangled idea that is creating and sustaining mass confusion and non-acceptance of our so-called elections outcomes, and it is already circling the drain in Alaska, where it achieved its intended purpose of retaining Lisa Murkowski in the United State Senate, where she has twice survived certain political demise in her miserable tenure there and repelling populist Sarah Palin in her U.S. House bid.

I’ve long been amazed at the willingness of the Alaska GOP to willingly hand over its state in its own legislation, comparing its actions to a fictitious scenario in which California would strip away all election cheats and tactics in place, thereby forcing it to trend to the right and potentially flip.  Alaska Republicans are the ones slinging mail in ballots from Barrow to Ketchikan and Nome to Skagway, introducing Automatic Voter Registration through the Permanent Fund Dividend, and running braindead measures to get RCV on board so insufferable politicians like Murkowski can suck the public dry another six years at a time.

Then finally – good news in Alaska broke yesterday.

Alaskans for Honest Elections met the threshold to have a referendum to ban Ranked Choice Voting appear on the General Election ballot this November, exceeding the required number of signatures by over 60%.  I broke this news online and it went ballistic.

Here are three things you need to know about the state of RCV in Alaska:

1)    Origins of RCV in Alaska

Bad things have happened in two straight presidential elections in Alaska.  In 2016, voters gave President Trump a 14.7% margin of victory, but also overwhelmingly opted to allow applicants to the Permanent Fund Dividend (oil money) to register to vote as part of the PFD registration process, thus turning Alaska into an Automatic Voter Registration state, and one of just two such states Trump would carry in 2020.  In that election, voters gave the thumbs-up to Ranked Choice Voting by 1.1%, or 3,781 votes.

Keep in mind, I have long held Alaska was the site of major malfeasance in 2020, and I’ve estimated 29,175 fictitious ballots in the state – including 12,735 in Anchorage Borough (lost by GOP nominee for the first time since 1964), where most of the damage was done in the scoring.

2)    Ranked Choice Voting Destroyed the 2022 Election Cycle