By REP. KEVIN MCCABE
A question we get from Ranked Choice Voting advocates on social media, especially when posting signing locations for our new initiative to put RCV repeal back on the ballot in 2026 is: “Why are you doing this again?” Also we hear the occasional accusation that we’re just “sore losers” and that “the people of Alaska have spoken.”
Not so fast.
If the original process had been fair, we wouldn’t be out here doing this again. We wouldn’t be living a political version of “Groundhog Day,” organizing another signature drive to repeal RCV.
In 2019, a group called Alaskans for Better Elections, flush with out-of-state dark money, launched a petition to get RCV on the ballot. Their initiative bundled three issues: dark money disclosure, jungle primaries, and ranked-choice voting. Lieutenant Governor, Kevin Meyer, and the Division of Elections challenged it in court for violating Alaska’s single-issue rule, but the liberal courts green-lit it anyway. That decision allowed the measure to move forward, despite widespread legal concern.
Paid signature gatherers secured just enough signatures. By the time most Alaskans realized what was in the initiative, it was too late. The “Yes” campaign painted the effort as a noble cause to “end dark money” even as they used dark money to fund the campaign. The measure passed narrowly: 50.55 to 49.45%.
Then came the fallout. The Division of Elections overspent its budget trying to educate voters on RCV, yet confusion reigned across the state in the 2022 elections. We saw it firsthand at the polls and in conversations with neighbors and friends. People didn’t understand how the system worked. The result? Many votes were wasted. Many voters felt betrayed. And they were right.
The Foundation for Government Accountability has published detailed reports on how Ranked Choice Voting discards legal ballots, increases election errors, and undermines the principle of one person, one vote. They point to Maine’s 2018 Second Congressional District race, where over 8,200 ballots were thrown out and the winner flipped from Republican Bruce Poliquin to Democrat Jared Golden, even though Poliquin received more first-choice votes.
Alaska saw the same thing in 2022. Democrat Mary Peltola won our only US House seat not because she had the most first-choice votes, but because Republican ballots were tossed after voters selected just one candidate and refused to rank others. Over 11,000 such ballots were discarded, silencing conservative voices in a state that voted for Donald Trump by more than 10 points. These weren’t mistakes, these were deliberate, principle-driven votes that were erased from the final tally.
Shawn Fleetwood, writing in The Federalist, called this the dirty secret of Ranked Choice Voting, one that punishes conservatives for voting their conscience and refusing to “rank” opponents they don’t support. According to Fleetwood, RCV is “a confusing form of counting votes” that violates the principle of one person, one vote. He points out that nearly 15,000 Alaskans were disenfranchised in the 2022 special election alone.
It gets worse. In New York’s 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, the Board of Elections mistakenly counted 135,000 test ballots. It took nearly a month to sort through 19 rounds of tabulation. In Alameda County, California, a school board race was wrongly called, and the mistake wasn’t discovered for two months. The candidate who had conceded ended up being the actual winner. In Arlington, Virginia, RCV was so confusing that election officials scrapped it after just one cycle.
These are not growing pains. These are symptoms of a system designed to complicate, confuse, and obscure. They’re not bugs, they’re features.
The complexity of RCV favors one political side. In 2023, the FGA found 74 pro-RCV bills were introduced across the country, 57 backed exclusively by Democrats. Senators Michael Bennet and Angus King even introduced a bill to funnel $40 million in federal grants to states adopting RCV. Why? Because it works for them. It splits conservative votes, buries outsider candidates, and manufactures victories through reallocated ballots.
Fleetwood lays it out clearly: RCV isn’t some bipartisan innovation, it’s “a scheme of the Left to disenfranchise voters and elect more Democrats.” In Portland, Maine, a Charter Commission candidate won with just 4 percent of the first-round vote, while a Republican with five times as many votes lost. This isn’t about majority rule, it’s about engineering outcomes through redistribution.
Even when conservatives win the first round, RCV often hands victory to the Left because it counts some ballots more than once while tossing out others completely. The FGA calls this a “false majority,” manufactured not by persuasion but by exhaustion, discarding anyone who didn’t play the ranking game the right way.
In 2022, Alaskan’s started fighting back. A grassroots group called Alaskan’s for Honest Elections launched a petition drive to repeal RCV. Many were proud to volunteer and help gather signatures, working booths at the fair and Outdoors shows and speaking to hundreds of voters. People came to us. They knew what RCV had done. They didn’t need persuasion, just a place to sign.
But then came the intimidation. We were surveilled. Photos were taken. Opponents filed a barrage of APOC complaints, using legal threats to slow us down. When our petition was certified by the Division of Elections, they filed suit again to have it blocked. The case went all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court. We won.
But the money returned. Over $15 million poured into Alaska to oppose our initiative, most of it from out of state They flooded the airwaves with misinformation, even warning military voters that repealing RCV would take away their voting rights, an outright lie. After three long weeks of delayed counting, our repeal failed by just 743 votes.
We didn’t quit.
In 2025, we filed again. The Division of Elections approved the new petition, and signature collection is now underway for the 2026 ballot (Must Read Alaska, 2025). This time, we’re focused, experienced, and ready. Politics and pride have no place here. Whether you love RCV or hate it, let’s at least ensure the people of Alaska can vote fairly on it,without dark money, without confusion, and without outside interference.
It’s time to bring our elections back to what they’re supposed to be: one person, one vote, clearly counted and transparently won.
Alaskans, not D.C. lawyers, not California nonprofits, and not rigged algorithms, should decide Alaskan elections. Find a volunteer, sign the petition. STOP RCV!
For one, Kevin. You have the name wrong. Must be a quality piece and you must have worked hard on the research when you can’t even remember the name of the group you supported supposedly.
It was also the name of the petition. 22AKHE or Alaskans For Honest Elections.
You would have known that if you had worked on the petition.
You don’t get to use “We” when you and the establishment abandoned our grassroots citizens repeal.
What you are doing now is not the same petition, you know that it is completely different with different language.
I wrote, led the last petition. I also dealt with 2 hours of testimony and 6 hours of deposition to win those cases, attacked relentlessly by Arabella funded attorneys, and where were you and party Kevin?
No where.
You don’t get to use We unless you do something.
I am sorry you feel such a need to get credit for this Phil. I used “WE” as in all Alaskan’s that made an effort to get out and sign the petition. “WE” all tried to get it repealed and it failed. So “WE” are going to try it again. I am sorry it failed last time. You did work very hard at mitigating the negative press surrounding the repeal effort, some of the “X” rhetoric, and at gathering signatures and all appreciate it.
But many other people also worked very hard gathering signatures, including many many republicans and women’s clubs that you seem fond of denigrating. And some Alaskans even paid to get into events just so they could sign – they are the “We” in my piece. It was a team effort.
Harry Truman said: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” I could care less who gets the credit. The only thing that matters to me is getting this repealed for Alaska.
One would think that, as hard as you worked last time, and how much time you spent in the lower 48 pushing your movie and books and doing RCV talks for them, you would be more interested in seeing it through in your home state? I hope so.
The old guard of Alaska hates Phil Izon and will do everything to bury any knowledge of him or his work. That’s what you are attempting to do and I won’t let you Linn McCabe and Kevin McCabe if I didn’t tell you that the name was wrong you would have left that too.
If you change your tune and actually show respect and be humble we can be friends again, you didn’t win anything.
My team did that. Please stop trying to rewrite history. No one believes it.
This is a very serious matter. People should enjoin this fight. Lose this battle this cycle, RCV will be spread like a virus nationwide and pedocrat fueled widespread election fraud will create bedlam in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 general election.
Thank you, Kevin McCabefor a clear and concisely written RCV piece!
I signed the petition and it felt glorious. Down with RCV! 🇺🇸
“We” did not win any court cases.
We did though:
Secured Legal Victories Against Challenges: The repeal measure “successfully defended the ballot measure with unanimous victories in both the Alaska Superior Court and the Alaska Supreme Court” against attempts to disqualify it. This involved facing legal challenges regarding signature collection integrity. He specifically states he “dealt with 2 hours of testimony and 6 hours of deposition to win those cases”
If I had made mistakes on the petition process which I was 100% Responsible for the submission and management of. Then we would not have won the Superior Court and Supreme Court Cases, if my team did not create technology solutions to screen for fraudulent books, we would not have won these cases. It was great management and a great team that won these court cases, ignoring these very important contributions is a slap in the face to me and to my team.
Kev, it appears you really pissed off Phil. What’s up with that?
It is basically an instant run-off election, which is why the MAGA GOP hates it. They can’t figure out how to mark a ballot. They can only see the R at the end of the name. After that everyone is horrible. FYI in the 2022 Election Mary had the most votes, beating Palin (2nd) and Begich (3rd), assuming their had been closed primaries Palin would have beat Begich and been the Republican nominee. Don’t let facts confuse, and certainly don’t let the dark money argument confuse you. Citizen’s United was a horrible decision that came from the GOP filing lawsuits.
Why is an “instant” run off election a benefit?
Let’s say, for a second, there is some need for the winning candidate to have better than 45%, 50%, or whatever other arbitrary percentage of the vote. (Why that is a requirement in some folks opinion, I do not know).
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Why not have a conventional run off election? The two candidates with the most votes campaign against each other for two/three weeks, and the voters roll out again and vote for the candidate they like best?
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A lot can change in a voter’s mind if they have a period of time to reconsider two remaining options, versus being forced to rank all candidates at one time. RCV takes that away from the voters.
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Talk about disenfranchising voters. I thought you leftists were all about stopping that.
Don’t be misled by a faulty runoff format; the rankings prove that Begich was the most preferred candidate in that August 2022 election. Even RCV will on rare occasion suffer a spoiler scenario. Under the old system with closed primaries, Palin would likely have won over Begich in a Republican primary, then she would have lost to Peltola in November, which is really bad because Begich would have been elected if he were the nominee. This kind of outcome is an outright election failure. Thus, the correct strategy is to keep the top-4 system, or at least some version of a system without party primaries, but abolish the RCV.
I have little faith that Alaska voters will repeal RCV. I hope I am wrong.
Kevin, where might we find both the text of the bill you introduced or co-sponsored to ban RCV and the voting record on it?
The legislature is prohibited from doing anything with a citizens initiative for two years after it becomes law. So this last year was the first year we could do anything.
‘https://www.akleg.gov/basis/Bill/Detail/34?Root=HB%20%2019
Sponsored by Rauscher. It does not have a prayer of even getting a hearing in State Affairs.
Thanks for replying, for talking with constituents who don’t always agree, but damn sure appreciate your energy and willingness to talk about stuff.
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Guessed as much about likelihood of a hearing, thought was to get RCV-repeal opponents on record.
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In lieu of repeal, might defunding or pausing funding pending forensic audit of RCV processes be options?
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Recommend you and Izon kiss and make up. Okay, just make up. Voters lose this fight to restore election-system integrity, what else matters?
Lisa Murkowski can’t win her primary election if we don’t have RCV.
Restoration to the minority parties to determine who will be on the ballot disenfranchises more than 50% of Alaskan voters. That McCabe is unfair. Further restoration to the uniparty decision ensures a battle of the lesser of two evils.
Nick won. The Guv won. Both using RCV. Did they have to work harder? Yes.
Alaskan voters this is about control. Its about preventing everyday Alaskans from participating in the governance of this great state as potential candidates. Its cleaner and easier for the Dems and Repubs to control the election outcomes.
Many of you wonder and comment why Alaska isn’t getting better? Because the status quo reigns. Big money is on the line and if a series of commoners were to win…. the McCabe’s, Bishop’s, and Hoffman’s would suffer. Feckless adventures like AIDEA and other PFD pilferers would lose money.
Respectfully, decline to sign. You and children deserve more and better options than the lesser of two evils.
Sigh…
Another whiner attempting to blame the failure of their extremist agenda on the alleged incompetence (alleged by right wing radicals, to be clear) of their ‘base’, rofl, and attempting to unnecessarily increase the cost of elections.
The only extremists I see are democrats. I guess it’s “der reich” thing for democrats to blame anyone but themselves.
Kevin, are you saying that over 11,000 ballots were tossed and Peltola won in 2022 because Republican voters ranked only one candidate in first place? If true, that is a travesty foisted on 11,000+ voters.
It should have never passed now other states like Michigan think it’s a good idea and are trying to get it there we need to repeal this as soon as possible as possible
One of many reasons that I hate rank choice voting is the fact that the winner is decided by computer, by an opaque algorithm that cannot be audited and cannot be verified by any recount. “Just trust us”, election officials tell us. Yes, so says every tyrant and abuser of power.
Also, if rank choice voting is so great, why does EVERY overwhelmingly radical leftist-dominated polity in the US, such as California, New York, and Washington state, refuse to implement RCV in THEIR jurisdictions?
Kevin McCabe and Linn McCabe most of the data and research was stuff that I’ve already done. You stole my work, Linn has even asked me to help her with talking points. The election costs alone were directly from my research. In other States I’m referenced and celebrated. Here you hide me like a Leper.
Phil,
Um no. I have been working with FGA on RCV since my first few months in the legislature. I think you were still focused on pot shops or move the capitol or something. In any case no one is “hiding you” You do a great job of broadcasting what a great guy you are – you certainly don’t need validation from me. You can have all the credit you want Phil. I simply don’t care. I just want to keep the main thing, the main thing. Lets get rid of RCV!
This is how you can spot rigged Dominion voting, they rig the numbers for a very narrow victory. Ranked Choice is only part of the problem. As long as we use Dominion voting machines they can still be rigged.
I like the open primaries. I think the representatives that are elected better represent their communities. Joe Miller won the republican primary but lost to a write-in because he did not reflect the opinions of the majority of Alaskans. Peltola and mark Begich lost because Alaskans are more conservative.
Many communities vote always elect a conservative or liberal. In those areas the best conservative or liberal ideas should be heard, and the then voters get to decide.
I don’t vote for someone because they have the right letter next to their name on the ballot. I listen to their ideas and evaluate them based on how they try to make Alaska a better place to live.
Trust the voters!
After reading this, I had to laugh. What a big whiny baby—still looking for excuses to explain your party’s lackluster performance instead of facing reality.
If ranked choice voting really discriminates against anyone outside the bland middle ground, then how do you explain Governor Mike Dunleavy’s 2022 reelection under RCV? Or Rep. Nick Begich III’s 2024 win? Neither man exactly screams consensus-builder or centrist pushover. Do they really represent the dreaded beige mush of Alaska politics? Or is that just another strawman trotted out to distract from the fact that voters made their choices freely and fairly, and your side simply didn’t come out on top?
Ranked choice voting isn’t the problem here. The problem is your refusal to accept what Alaskans actually want at the ballot box.