Ballot Measure 2 deals with returning to the partisan primary, changing campaign disclosure laws and canceling ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting will be examined below.

Before ranked choice voting, a person voted for a single candidate. In ranked choice voting a voter ranks candidates and may vote for up to four in order of preference. If a candidate receives a majority in the first counting, that candidate wins. If no candidate has a majority, the candidate with the least votes is dropped and those votes are redistributed to candidates whom the voters ranked second. If no winner emerges, it happens again. A blank ballot is one that does not have a first or second choice marked. An exhausted ballot is one where there are no more choices left on it; you noted a first choice but not a second. If a voter votes for two different candidates with the same ranking, it is an overvote. None of these are counted.

RCV is not widely used. Only three states, Alaska, Hawaii,and Maine, use the system for state elections. Thirteen states allow it for municipal elections, 19 states expressly prohibit it,and the remainder have no specific laws about it.

Does RCV favor a particular party? It does not appear to do so. Although, unaffiliated candidates have been more successful winning seats since RCV was established while Republican seats have remained constant. In the state legislature any party’s benefit depends upon how unaffiliated legislators caucus. Although it might help a party keep a candidate from winning, as last week’s Republican effort illustrate.

Does RCV affect voter turnout? It may, although the sample size is small. The average turnout in 2022 and 2024 general elections was 50%, while in 2018 and 2020 it was 55%.

Does RCV determine many elections? Few races use RCV, although the percentage is significant. In 2022, a statewide redistricting year, only 10 of 60 state legislature elections went to RCV, about 17 percent. Both the US Representative and Senate seats did go through the process. In 2024, 8 of 40 or 20% went through the process. Only two races that used RCV had a candidate that did not initially finish first eventually win.

Are many ballots canceled because of RCV? The number of ballots not counted in the final tally because of RCV rules is high. In 2022’s State Senate races, 22% of the votes initially cast did not count later because of either being blank after the first round, over voted or exhausted. For 2024 State Senate elections 11% did not count in the final tally. In House elections both 2022 and 2024 saw 16% of the votes cast not counting in the end.

Mat-Su House District 28 in 2022 is an example. There were four candidates and a total of 5,942 votes were initially cast. Of those, 1,143 were blank and 13 were over votes. Since no candidate had a majority, the candidate with the least votes was eliminated and her 863 votes were redistributed based on who the voter chose second. Of those votes, 204 went to one candidate, 201 to another, 146 to the third, and 312 were not moved because they were exhausted or were an over vote. After this no candidate had a majority, so the candidate with the fewest votes had her 1,491 votes redistributed; another 573 ballots were exhausted and there was another overvote. After this round there was a winner. Including the initial blanks, a total of 2,042 votes were not counted in the end. If the blanks were intentional, if the exhausted ballots purposely did not name another candidate, then the number of ballots not counted in the final tally is acceptable. It strains credulity that 28% of those voting did not, would not or could not use the system.

Two arguments favoring ranked choice voting are that you can have a say in who gets elected if your preferred candidate does not finish first and it eliminates expensive runoff elections. The Mat-Su example and overall rate of ballots not moving forward negates that argument. In Alaska only mayoral and school board seats where no candidate receives over 40% of the vote have run offs.

The rules, number of countings, votes canceled and other variables just add complexity. Sometimes simplicity is best. The country was built on compromise and RCV is a good example of how compromise can work at the grassroots level. We may not agree on who we consider to be the best choice, but we can agree on someone who can serve us reasonably well. Compromise is always good. It should be less about the parties and more about the candidates.