Alaska voters appear to be divided on ranked-choice voting

The vote on Ballot Measure 2, which aims to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting and open primary voting system, was narrowly divided as early results were announced Tuesday evening.

With more than 230,000 ballots counted, 51.3% of votes were in favor of the ballot measure, while 48.7% were against it. Less than 5,800 votes separated the two, and tens of thousands of ballot papers still had to be counted. The result included 70.2% of counties reporting statewide.

Alaska residents adopted ranked-choice voting and open primaries as part of a 2020 ballot measure. This makes Alaska the second state, after Maine, to introduce ranked-choice voting for statewide elections. Alaska was the first state to combine ranked-choice voting with an open primary system for the top four vote-getters for congressional and legislative elections, allowing the top four vote-getters in the August primary to advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

The system was first used by Alaska voters in 2022. Shortly after the November 2022 election, a group of Alaska residents concerned about conservative Republicans’ losses in U.S. House and U.S. Senate elections launched an attempt to abolish ranked-choice voting and open primaries as a new voting initiative.

The initiative’s leaders said their work was impartial and argued that it was due to confusion caused by the new ranked selection system. Proponents of the voting method pointed to the near-universal lack of ranking errors in the 2022 election as evidence that the system was widely understood by voters.

Shortly after the initiative was approved for this year’s November ballot, the Alaska Republican Party announced it would support the measure. Leaders of the Alaska Republican Party said they wanted to regain the ability to influence their candidates through a closed partisan primary system.

Open primaries had allowed some moderate Republicans to get through the 2022 and 2024 primaries, despite being censored and rejected by party leadership. Those candidates include several representatives who were rejected by Alaska Republican Party leadership because of their willingness to work across party lines in bipartisan coalitions.

Alaska’s voting system is supported by several national organizations seeking to implement open primaries and ranked-choice voting in other parts of the country, including Unite America and FairVote.

The groups poured millions of dollars into advertising to oppose Alaska’s ballot measure, while voters in other states – including Colorado, Montana, Nevada and Idaho – spoke out about their own ballot measures that would impose Alaska-style voting systems. Early results show that voters in several of these states were prepared to reject election reform measures.

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