Donald Craig Mitchell’s opinion piece on ranked choice voting appeared to be aimed at confusing voters into repealing RCV, should that question be on the ballot this November. His piece was filled with math to show how RCV can affect elections vs. the old primary system. But his binary view of the electorate fails to recognize that 44% of us are registered as U (undeclared). Registered Democrats and Republicans combined make up just over 37%. Thirteen percent of us are registered Nonpartisan, and the remaining 6% of us have chosen party affiliations matching our ideologies.
Clearly, Alaskan voters who choose to commit to either of the major national parties are in the minority. Why should the majority of Alaskan voters be forced to choose between candidates of parties we choose not to join?
I’ll agree with Mr Mitchell’s assertion that Alaska leans center-right to hard-right, but that is based only on election results from the old system, which gave us only two choices. With RCV, we elected center-right Lisa Murkowski. In Mary Peltola, we elected a center-left candidate over the far-right ones. These were not aberrations, but the system working as intended. RCV finally gives the majority of us a voice. I wish we had this system in place nationally.
— Jen Huvar
Anchorage
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