How Ranked Choice Voting Impacted Alaska's Election Results
As a follow-up to my previous article about ranked choice voting (RCV), I want to highlight some takeaways after seeing Alaska’s 2022 election results. What lessons can we learn, and what practical application can we draw from seeing ranked choice voting in action?
1. Without ranked choice voting, the U.S. House and Senate elections would have gone to a runoff
In the race for U.S. Senate, neither of the top two finishers—Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Kelly Tshibaka—gained over 50 percent of first-choice votes. In an ordinary election, voters would have had a few weeks to reevaluate those top two candidates before voting in a runoff.
Who would have won that runoff? We’ll never know for sure. With ranked choice voting, the majority of eliminated Democratic candidate Pat Chesbro’s (whom we rated Liberal) ballots picked Murkowski (rated Moderate) as their second choice, giving her the victory without a runoff.
It was a similar story with the race for U.S. House. In an ordinary election, a runoff would have occurred between the top two finishers: Mary Peltola (rated Liberal Conditional), and Sarah Palin (rated Verified Conservative). It would have been interesting to see who voters would have chosen. As it was, enough second-choice votes from eliminated candidate Nick Begich went to Peltola, which put her over the 50 percent mark necessary to win.
Instead of having a runoff between the top two finishers, voters had to evaluate all the candidates and rank them on Election Day in order to have a say in the second or third rounds of counting.
2. Thousands of ballots were exhausted
In the U.S. Senate race, 9,086 voters only ranked candidates who came in third or fourth place and were eliminated after the first and second rounds of counting. Also, 54 ballots had overvotes, meaning more than one candidate was ranked at the same level, and did not count.
Therefore, 3.5 percent of voters did not have a say in the final contest between the top two finishers. Would they have chosen to vote for one of those candidates in a regular runoff? We’ll never know.
In the race for U.S. House, the number of exhausted and overvoted ballots was even greater: 14,823. That’s 5.6 percent of voters who did not participate in the final round of counting.
3. The combination of an all-party, top-four primary and RCV diluted the conservative vote in the U.S. Senate race
2022's all-party primary allowed the top four candidates, regardless of party affiliation, to advance to the General Election. Then RCV allowed Democratic voters to vote first for a Democrat, then for a moderate Republican, defeating the conservative Republican in the Senate race. In effect, RCV allowed voters to vote for their preferred candidate and against their least preferred candidate by overwhelmingly ranking a moderate as their second choice.
4. Three state House races resulted in the candidate with the most first-choice votes losing
In state House districts 11, 15, and 18, the candidate who placed second in the first round actually ended up winning after receiving more second-choice votes from the eliminated candidate.
In all three of those races, the number of exhausted ballots was greater than the margin of victory for the winner, which means that the outcome might have been different if those voters had ranked more than one candidate.
How would those voters whose ballots were exhausted have voted if given the chance to participate in a traditional runoff? Who would have won a runoff (or a traditional party primary) between Murkowski and Tshibaka? What about a head-to-head contest between Palin, a conservative, and Peltola, a liberal?
The point is, with ranked choice voting, we’ll never know for sure.
That’s why I encourage you to be alert to movements in your own state, city, or county supporting ranked choice voting. It may come up in your own state legislature or be on your ballot this year or next.
Not all election processes are created equal. Alaska gives us insight into how a ranked choice system leaves us with crucial unanswered questions and changes how we define the winner of an election.
