Alaska House District 6 and 29 Republicans, located in conservative Lower Kenai and in Wasilla-Sutton, have joined two other Republican district committees in passing resolutions stating that after the primary election on Aug. 20, only the top vote-winning Republican candidate for Congress should proceed to the November ballot. Second, third, and fourth place Republicans should drop by Sept. 2.
Candidate Nick Begich, who has been through a tough ranked-choice voting process in 2022, is the only Republican who has made that commitment so far. Nancy Dahlstrom has refused to say if she will drop if she loses to Begich.
District 13 and District 25 Republicans have passed resolutions that ask candidates to “drop, if not on top.” All four districts are among the dozen that have endorsed Nick Begich.
The resolutions from District 29 and District 6 say, in part, that many Alaskans refuse to take part in ranked-choice voting, and only want to vote for one candidate. Having more than one Republican candidate on the ballot in the November general election “has the potential to dilute the vote and forfeit the election to a candidate other than a Republican.
The resolutions state, “at lease one Republican candidate has publicly declared his willingness to withdraw from the race if he is not the Republican who garners the most votes in the Primary Election.” That’s Nick Begich.
The districts are directly speaking to the other three Republicans, including Dahlstrom.
Districts that have announced their endorsement for Begich now include 1, 6, 8, 17, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 33, 34, and 36.
Also, six of seven Alaska Republican women’s clubs and both of the Young Republican clubs endorsed Begich.
The Alaska primary elections used to allow Republicans to hold their own primary with a ballot open to Republicans and anyone else not signed up with an official party. But in 2020, Ballot Measure 2, backed by dark money from the New Venture Fund, passed the voters. This took away the Republican primary and created a system by which all candidates are on the same ballot.
There are 12 candidates competing for Congress and the top four will proceed to the general election, where voters are then instructed to rank them in the order of their preference. Through a tabulation system that depends on machines, the lowest voted candidate gets tossed and his ballot is awarded to whomever was the voters’ second choice.
The process of reassigning ballots in this way means that those who only vote for one candidate might have their ballot counted only once, if their candidate is not the winner, while people who rank may have their ballots counted as many as three times until their ballot joins the others for the winning candidate.
Many Republicans oppose this system and a great number refuse to participate in ranking, preferring to state their one choice and then cast their ballot.
