Alaska should abolish primaries, adopt ranked-choice voting

The editorial board of the Anchorage Daily News recently wrung its hands over the abysmal turnout for — and hyper-partisan nature of — our primary elections. The board offered no solutions, but that does not mean solutions do not exist. All that is needed is for the Legislature to muster the will and votes to enact reform — or, barring that, for the voters to reform our elections system by initiative.

Primaries are a once-good reform now turned bad. In the early 20th century the Progressive movement brought about primaries as a public interest cure for the smoke-filled room method for selecting candidates for office. In the early 21st century that reform, thanks to a series of questionable Supreme Court decisions and declining voter interest, has degenerated into a slow-moving nominating convention for partisan candidates, all held at public expense.

Combined with the insidious influence of super-PACs, the current primary system is an exercise in manipulation, where extreme candidates thrive because, for the most part, only hyper-partisan voters show up. Witness, for example, the cautionary tale of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose own Republican party threw her out in a primary in favor of extremist Joe Miller. As Mr. Miller proved, an extremist challenger is often able to dislodge a marginally less extreme incumbent, merely because the incumbent occasionally put the public interest ahead of extremist orthodoxy.

In Alaska, independents are the vast voting majority. Again, consider the example of Sen. Murkowski, who managed to salvage her political ambitions thanks to independents and moderates, who voted for her on a write-in basis at the general. For the many voters who are turned off by extreme partisanship, the primary election in Alaska is mainly a dismal, uninviting exercise. The turnout statistics tell the tale: Most independents — and, indeed, most voters — shun it altogether and stay home.

Political parties can indeed nominate candidates to carry their banner. They do not have an inherent First Amendment right to do so at public expense in partisan primaries. Primaries are created by statute, and statutes can be changed.

If the ADN editorial board sincerely wishes to see something done to lower the extremist quotient in the Alaska Legislature, encourage greater voter interest and participation in elections and overall strengthen our democratic institutions, then it should support abolishing primaries once and for all. The next step is to then press for reform by adopting a ranked voting system for the general election.

Ranked voting in general elections, whereby all candidates for a given office are assigned a descending numerical preference by each voter, allows for elimination of partisan primaries at public expense and wholesale participation by all voters in one big happy election — including, especially, independents and non-partisans. A ranked voting general election system also offers independent candidates a more realistic chance of getting their message out and perhaps getting elected

Abolishing primaries will save millions of public dollars and terminate the use of public resources for private gain by political parties. Instituting ranked voting at the general election will encourage independent voters and independent candidates to participate in democracy. Ranked voting is no magic cure for all that is wrong with our electoral systems. Dark money will continue to be a cancer and Twitter a curse. But perhaps, if we act soon enough, we might, as happened a century ago, we can make ranked voting at one general election a leap forward on the path of reform.

Scott Sterling is a past chair of the Alaska Democratic Party. His views are his own.

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