Not many seats in the 2024 general election in Alaska went through the ranked-choice voting machine on Wednesday evening. Only nine were contested enough to get to the tabulation phase.
The presidency had already been decided, as more than 54% of voters chose Donald Trump.
For the congressional seat, Nick Begich had a lead going into the ranking process and he maintained that lead. Under the regular voting system, he would have won anyway.
Then we get to the Senate and House races for the Alaska Legislature. There were nine that had more than two candidates, and after the ranking took place, the leaders were still ahead. Not a single one of them flipped to the second-place person.
Take Senate Seat D, now held by Republican Jesse Bjorkman. He had 47.82% of the vote before ranking and edge over 50% after the Democrat votes from Tina Wegener were distributed to him. The final tally was Bjorkman 9,800 and Carpenter 8,113. Bjorkman had 54.74% of the final ranked-choice vote, but he would have won under the regular voting system as well.
The same can be said for Senate District F, where Sen. James Kaufman had the most votes before ranked-choice tally, as well as after the tally on Wednesday. The exact scenario played out for Senate District L’s Kelly Merrick, House District 6’s Rep. Sarah Vance, House District 28’s Elexie Moore, House District 36’s Rebecca Schwanke, House District 38’s Nellie Jimmie and House District 40’s Robyn Burke.
In other words, the primary and the general election provided the same results in Alaska as would have happened under normal election rules — one person, one vote.
The ranked-choice process itself was on the ballot as a ballot measure, but with the help of at least $15 million in Outside dark money pouring into Alaska to help Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s pet project, it failed to be repealed by 664 votes. Clearly, Alaskans do not prefer it, but they were told it would keep abortion legal and other strange promises.
All the cost — in the millions of dollars of state money — and all the delay, yet the result was the same as it would have been under regular voting.
