By MURRAY WALSH
We are gathering signatures on a petition to repeal Ranked Choice Voting (RCV.) This is not the first time we have tried this. We completed a petition in time to vote on the question in the fall of 2024 and it failed by a handful of votes.
I wrote a My Turn on the subject last time that was focused on why Republicans are victims of RCV and that Democrats – who favored creation of RCV – are the beneficiaries of the system. This time, I want to focus on why the ordinary voter, whether an active party member or not, should hold RCV in low regard.
RCV is just not natural or comfortable for voters with experience in the conventional, tried-and-true system. You went to the polling station, voted for the person you liked the best (or disliked the least) and went home to learn the result of the election that evening. With RCV, you are encouraged to rank the top four candidates from who you like the most to the who you like the least. Then you wait for two or three weeks while the Division of Elections (currently staffed by entirely competent people stuck with a lousy process to count) run their computers over and over again to finally determine a winner.
RCV is based on gullibility and trickery. It is not natural to be asked to vote for someone you do not like and that you would not vote for at all in a normal election process. Republicans figured it out in time to mount a “Rank-the-Red” campaign for 2022 encouraging their members to only vote for Sarah Palin or Nick Begich and not to vote for any others but it did not work. The key is who you vote for first. Palin and Begich split those top line votes and the Democrat won.
The result in 2024 would have been the same but the second-place Republican, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dalstrom heroically withdrew. It should also be noted that in 2024, the RCV system enabled a Democrat candidate who was a convicted felon in a New York prison, to appear on the final four general election ballot. That could not have happened under the old system.
The final criticism of RCV is that the public, including political parties cannot participate in a recount. Before RCV, a recount included the re-processing of ballots by machine (not a computer, just a ballot-reading machine that is not connected to any network) and if that was unsatisfying, it could be done by hand. Either way, the public could be physically present to observe the process. With RCV, we must trust the Division of Elections’ RCV computer algorithms and operators and there is no third party to audit the polling.
You may be inclined to say “C’mon man, we voted in 2024 to keep it, what is different now?” Well, 320,985 Alaskans voted in that election and the repeal failed by just 737 votes. A lot of people were confused. The Vote No on the repeal campaign spent $13 million dollars of mostly dark, outside money. The Vote Yes campaign never got off the ground. They were outspent 100-1 and lawyered into oblivion by the Vote No campaign. This time, we have highly skilled leaders, more resources and very motivated campaign workers.
We can do this but we still need signatures. You can help by going to https://www.repealnowak.com/ website to contribute money. We are gathering signatures in public places so keep an eye out for our people carrying petition booklets. If you would like to know when and where we’ll be, send an email [email protected] and we’ll figure out how best to connect with you. Thanks for getting involved.
Walsh is a retired land use consultant living in Juneau.
Someone, who staked out of the Costco parking lot on Saturday, asked me to sign this petition. He told me he was being paid for each signature he collects. Costco does not allow petition signature gathering on their private property and I do not want somebody to get paid for my signature. If we want to sign this petition, where can we do this where it is allowed and where somebody is not being paid for our signatures?
Right on GS. Let us know what days after work and which weekends you are going to volunteer you free time to gather signatures. I’ll be right there with you.
That is, if this is the hill we’re gonna choose to die on.
They were gathering signature at the state fair on Thursday the Republican Women’s Club . we also had a guy collecting signatures at the Jewel Lake Carrs
I have a petition book and when I got the book, I was under the impression that it was all volunteer. This might be an implant from the other side trying to make trouble for the new effort.
Indeed, the RCV system is a ‘rigged’ system of trickery.
The GOP’s greatest challenge is actually showing up to vote!
Until that ‘Rubik-Cube’ is solved, we will continue to struggle.
If there was enough volunteers campaign wouldn’t need to hire anyone, they are not rich NGO financed by dark money.
Murkowski cannot win dog catcher without rank choice voting. It will not change because power demands it.
So, what you are really saying is that the far right Republicans you are courting are too feeble-minded and ignorant to use RCV, even though it can save the State millions, does nothing more than implement run-offs without the need for a second election, and is even oreferred by the LWV? i’d never seen that admission until now!
I worked at the polls during the last election. Obviously, we assisted Republicans, Democrats, Non-partisans, Independents, and everybody else. Although I did not take data, I know that a significant percentage of all voters (i.e. all parties) had trouble figuring out how to do RCV. There were more “spoiled ballots” than ever before. These Alaskans were not feeble, ignorant, or dull. Still, some of them could not figure out how to use this crazy system. And some gave up and walked out without voting.
Alaska voters are not the problem … RCV is a big problem.
Alaskan’s deserve what they vote for. Alaska has way to many low-informed voters and the responsibility for everything wrong in our state is there fault. Let’s not forget the stay at home non-voter hopping others make good decisions for them.
Thumbs up, Mr. Peterson! Can you imagine China governing itself as an American-styled democracy?
Hopefully Republican candidates are now wise to this scam. We can have only one candidate and perseverance, a normally admirable attribute, will backfire. Same with stubborness. We must have one united vote because we’ve seen the success with the Dunleavy and Begich campaigns. Remember, RCV put Peltola and Murkowski in office.
Oh the poor victimized Republicans. They only control every branch of government. It must be so hard for them to exist.
The article also claims basically that Republicans are too stupid to understand RCV. They’ve got to be the biggest snowflakes in political history.
One person-one vote was pretty complicated for ya cman?
The irony is RCV has done more damage to the Democrats than to the Republicans. You morons got 2 communists running for governor in Minnesota and New York. Have fun with that.Evil deeds will always come back and bite you in the ass. This just came back faster than I was expecting. I’m quite enjoying it. Fact is the Democratic Party is falling on its face. Clinton’s , Obama’s, Biden’s, and you wonder why the 20 somethings are going conservative. You’re a fool cman.
Again, so sensitive. Poor thing.
Unless the Republicans decide to all back out but one and then support that candidate, ranked choice voting with guarantee that whomever the Democrats put up will be our next governor, despite a most likely majority of Alaskans voting for Republicans. Ego over reality is sinking the ship! Ranked choice voting is not only a gift to the left, but should also be ruled unconstitutional.
Fergie RCV has backfired on the Dems. It’s sinking their ship.
On the contrary, those in control of the Democratic party for the past two decades starting with Obama, have been closet Neo-Marxists whose goal has been to destabilize our country and bring down our government. Ranked choice voting was one of the many effective tools they used to do this. They almost made it until the public revolted and elected Trump. Alaska is still in serious danger of getting a radical Democrat governor in the next election for one.
RCV will not necessarily guarantee a single democrat wins. Even though one occurred for AK in August 2022, spoiler scenarios are actually rare for RCV elections. AK is not likely to see another one again for a long time.
Re: It is not natural to be asked to vote for someone you do not like and that you would not vote for at all in a normal election.
For most of us, our whole miserably political lives we’ve had to hold our nose and put a mark next to a candidate we didn’t like to avoid the one that scared the heck out of us from winning. I realize that RCV still suffers this problem to some degree, but the simple plurality method is worse. Generally, it makes no sense to ban RCV but continue to use a method that is worse.
Secondly, RCV is a a preference system. When we rank candidates in any ranking method, we are not voting FOR or against any candidates. Not ranking one does not prevent that one from winning, and ranking any of them does not necessarily improve their chance of winning. Ranking a candidate you do not prefer last or close to last is your best way to ensure he or she does not win. Rank them all!
Third, why is there no discussion about re-instating the awful party primaries with corrupt sore loser laws? The main purpose of the Top-4 was to overhaul the broken primary system, not to implement RCV. It makes more sense to replace the RCV with a different voting method besides simple plurality than to discard the whole Top-4 system. Approval voting, score voting or round robin are good options.
” I realize that RCV still suffers this problem to some degree, but the simple plurality method is worse.”
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No, it is not worse.
Let’s see, with RCV, I can rank four candidates, plus a write in, all of which I would prefer to see in prison. Or, with the choose one method, I can chose the least worse of two instead of four.
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And, I will say it again, the jungle primary IS the worst part of the system put in place by BM 2 in 2020. I do not know what is broken about asking the party members to select the candidate they want to represent the party in the general election. If anything, the primaries should have been closed to registered party members only, instead of allowing the voter to select the ballot they wanted to vote on.
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Oh… this disenfranchises the undeclared voters… bummer. That is the consequences of your choice to not register with a party. Too bad.
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Look it is obvious you dislike the system that was in place, and worked for centuries, but so far, nothing you have advocated for has overcome the basic human nature factors that make the simple plurality method so awful in your mind. No system will overcome the very factors that make plurality bad. RCV, round robin, using a bingo system, picking from a hat, does not matter. As soon as the system is put in place, the parties and the candidates will start manipulating it to their benefit. Net result, the voters end up with an elected candidate the majority do not want.
When I was a Democrat (now Independent and former Real Republican) when I first voted using RCV, I read the instructions, voted as I saw fit with no problems, probably because I read the instructions