A new report from the Honest Elections Project highlights sweeping election integrity reforms passed in conservative-led states this year—but Alaska was not among them.
According to the report, “Securing the Vote 2025: States Make Major Gains Banning Foreign Funding and Ranked-Choice Voting,” legislatures in 17 states considered bills in 2025 to stop foreign nationals and foreign-funded groups from bankrolling state ballot measure campaigns. Eight states—including Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri—ultimately enacted laws to close the loophole that allows foreign money to influence ballot initiatives. Meanwhile, six more states joined a growing list of those banning ranked-choice voting (RCV), a system that critics say confuses voters, delays results, and undermines confidence in elections.
But despite being one of the top targets for outside spending, Alaska lawmakers failed to advance any such protections. The state has already seen more than $5 million in foreign-tied funding, much of it routed through the left-leaning Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark-money group that watchdogs say has served as a pipeline for foreign-linked contributions. The group, heavily backed by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, has poured over $130 million into ballot measure campaigns across 26 states, including efforts in Alaska to shape election laws.
The Honest Elections Project report warns that this loophole allows foreign actors to influence constitutional amendments and ballot initiatives, even though they are banned from donating to candidates or political action committees. That influence has been particularly evident in states like Michigan and Alaska, where major ballot initiatives funded by the Sixteen Thirty Fund reshaped election rules.
Alaska also stands out as one of only two states using ranked-choice voting statewide. In 2020, voters narrowly adopted the system, and in 2024, despite dark money propping it up in the minds of voters, they came within just 700 votes of repealing the process that disenfranchises voters through ballot exhaustion and creates unusual outcomes in which the candidate with the most first-choice votes can still lose. The report notes that since 2022, 17 states have banned RCV, while Utah is set to end its municipal pilot program this year.
The Alaska Legislature has not acted to ban ranked-choice voting on the municipal level, and Juneau and Anchorage are in the early stages of adopting it for local elections, despite the fact that local races rarely have more than two people running for any given seat
Across the country, Republican-controlled legislatures passed more election-related laws in 2025 than in the prior year—405 compared to 224 in 2024. Most focused on expediting results, preventing noncitizen voting, and closing loopholes that allow foreign interference in ballot campaigns.
Yet Alaska’s Legislature has yet to act. That inaction leaves the state exposed both to dark money from groups like the Sixteen Thirty Fund and to a voting system increasingly rejected by states across the country.
With another repeal effort underway by the group Repeal Now, the fight over ranked-choice voting in Alaska is far from over. But without legislative action, the state remains vulnerable to the same outside influence that lawmakers elsewhere are moving swiftly to shut down.
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