While Alaskans remain split over ranked choice voting, voters in other states reject it

As Alaskans voted on whether to keep the state’s open primaries and ranked choice voting system, voters in other states resoundingly rejected voting reform initiatives modeled after Alaska’s, early results show.

In Colorado, Idaho and Nevada, ballot measures sought to implement open primaries and ranked choice voting, a combined system first adopted by Alaska in 2020 and used in 2022. The measures were failing in all three of the states.

In Colorado, early results showed 55% of voters had rejected an initiative to implement top-four ranked choice voting. In Idaho, nearly 70% of voters rejected a similar initiative. In Nevada, 54% of voters were against top-five ranked choice voting.

Related initiatives are also failing. In Arizona, nearly 58% of votes counted as of Wednesday were against an initiative that would have eliminated partisan primaries. Oregon voters also rejected an initiative that would have implemented ranked choice voting in statewide elections. Washington, D.C., was the only place where ranked choice voting saw success on Election Day, with a majority of voters choosing to implement the voting system.

Alaska became the first state in 2020 to implement a voting system that combined ranked choice voting with open primaries. But shortly after the 2022 election, a small group of Alaskans launched an effort to repeal the voting reform, gathering enough signatures to put the question before voters on the November ballot.

That ballot measure was too close to call after initial results were tallied on election night. With tens of thousands of ballots left to be counted, 50.9% of Alaskans were in favor of the repeal effort, and 49.1% were opposed. The gap between yes and no votes was around 4,300 ballots.

Leaders of the repeal effort said the voting system was too complex, and bemoaned the fact that it appeared to disadvantage conservative GOP candidates. Leaders of the Alaska Republican Party, which advocated in favor of the repeal, said they sought to reinstate a partisan primary system that would be more favorable to candidates who closely adhered to the party platform, rather than candidates willing to work across the aisle.

Organizers of the initiative, including Wasilla resident Philip Izon and Anchorage insurance broker Art Mathias, were found earlier this year to have repeatedly violated Alaska’s campaign finance laws by funneling their spending through a tax-exempt church and failing to accurately report their funding sources to the state.

Meanwhile, the campaign opposing the repeal effort was backed by several national organizations promoting ranked choice voting, including Unite America. That campaign reported raising $14.8 million while the repeal campaign raised just over $130,000.

Izon, who led the signature-gathering effort for the ballot measure but was largely uninvolved in the campaign to support it, said Tuesday that he thinks the close result, despite the massive funding discrepancy, is indicative of public skepticism over the election reform.

“I think it was a user experience thing. You can spend a lot of money on marketing, but if your product is subpar, then you’re not going to be able to sell it to people,” Izon said Monday.

Izon also said that Alaska’s experience with the voting system — and the effort he launched to repeal it — had influenced other states’ interest in adopting it.

“I think I made quite an impact in many of those states that voted on it, so it looks like they’re all going to reject it,” said Izon.

Scott Kendall, an Anchorage attorney who was one of the authors of the 2020 initiative that put in place Alaska’s election reform, had a different view of what led to the failure of other states’ initiatives. He said it was at least in part because the election was “historically partisan,” and the advocates for the reform in other states “really struggled to get cross-partisan support.”

“If they were in a Democratic state, major Democrats and Democratic interests came out against them. If they were in a red state, the same thing on the other side,” said Kendall.

Kendall said the results could point to the uniqueness of Alaska’s political landscape. Though Republicans have reliably won most statewide elections in recent years, a majority of voters are unaffiliated with a political party, and Alaskans are accustomed to seeing bipartisan coalitions in the state Legislature.

“We are more independent,” said Kendall. “Maybe the rest of the country has to catch up with the way we are.”

FairVote is one of several national organizations that supported Alaska’s voting system and the effort to implement similar reforms in other states.

“Changing the status quo is never easy. Entrenched interests — including several state parties and an increasingly well-organized national opposition — pushed back hard on this year’s statewide ballot measures,” Meredith Sumpter, chief executive of FairVote, said in a written statement Wednesday.

Sumpter said supporters of ranked choice voting “have to make a stronger case on how RCV benefits voters and elected officials alike.”

Kendall said the national groups that support ranked choice voting and open primaries will likely have “some kind of reckoning” in response to the ballot measure failures.

“Probably, the movement will adapt,” said Kendall. “People who work in this space really do believe the Alaska system is the north star.”

Opponents of the repeal initiative in Alaska include Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, and several legislators from both sides of the political aisle.

Murkowski said Wednesday that the benefits of ranked choice voting were evident in the results of legislative races this year.

“You had some individuals who are viewed as more moderate, more willing to work to build consensus through some coalitions, step forward and win,” said Murkowski. “So if this is repealed and we go back to the closed primary, I think you will see a return of both greater control by both parties, and you could see an erosion of the effort to try to bring greater cooperation into your legislative process.”