The Wall Street Journal editorial board ventured into Alaska’s sticky politics this week, opining on how Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system has devolved and how Republicans turned it back into what is a more conventional general election.
“Alaska was supposed to be a model for ranked-choice voting (RCV), but it looks more like a deceased canary in a proverbial coal mine. It’s a Republican state that in 2022 elected Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won the first RCV race. Now more fun and games: Last week’s primary was intended to advance the top four candidates to November, yet the third-place finisher has quit. Alaskans will have a chance to repeal RCV this fall. No surprise if they say yes,” the newspaper writes, forgetting that the dark money trying to keep the system has already spent what appears to be over $1 million to convince voters to keep the ranking game going, and appears to have unlimited funding to preserve what the Wall Street Journal called “Alaska’s Ranked-Choice Voting Games.”
“Ms. Peltola was the top vote-getter, with 50.7%, in last Tuesday’s open primary. The GOP was split: Nick Begich, scion of an Alaska political family, took 26.6% of the vote. Lt. Gov.Nancy Dahlstrom had 20%. No other candidate came close, with the fourth-place finisher earning 0.6%. The way Alaska’s system is meant to work, those four would appear on November’s RCV ballot, and voters would rank them in order of preference,” the newspaper accurately described in its editorial.
But then, Dahlstrom dropped, so the Republican Party would not be divided between her and Begich.
As a result, the general election ballot will look more like a classic match between the candidates supported by their parties: Peltola for the Democrats and Begich for the Republicans, plus two unknowns.
“Republicans have learned from what happened last time, when they remained split. Looking only at first-choice votes in the 2022 special election that Ms. Peltola won, she had 40.2%. The GOP’s contenders, Sarah Palin and Mr. Begich, had 31.3% and 28.5%, respectively. Under the RCV rules, Mr. Begich was eliminated, and his supporters were reshuffled to their subsequent preferences. Enough of them didn’t like Ms. Palin that the victory went to Ms. Peltola, with 51.5%,” the newspaper accurately recounted.
“Strangely, though, this result was sensitive to the order of elimination, meaning that the final No. 1 depended on who was the initial No. 3. If Ms. Palin had been dropped instead, a strong majority of her ballots would have gone to Mr. Begich, who would have beaten Ms. Peltola,” the editorial continued.
That is how the writers tried to explain an even more complex concept: Begich was the condorcet winner in 2022, according to mathematicians who study statistics around voting. A concorcet winner is the candidate who more than half of all voters would support in a one-on-one, not a ranked-choice game.
“Nick Begich was eliminated in the first round despite being more broadly acceptable to the electorate than either of the other two candidates. More specifically, Begich was the Condorcet winner of this election: Based on the Cast Vote Record, he would have defeated each of the other two candidates in head-to-head contests, but he was eliminated in the first round of ballot counting due to receiving the fewest first-place votes,” writes Jeanne N. Clelland of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in this paper.
The Wall Street Journal wasn’t quite able to wrap its head around the math, but the writers explained it well enough:
“Not only that, he’d have won about 52.5%, a bigger victory than Ms. Peltola’s ranked-choice majority. Doesn’t that seem . . . odd? What if some Democrats ranked Ms. Palin first on their ballots to ensure that the most polarizing GOP opponent made the final round?”
The Dahlstrom withdrawal completely upended ranked-choice voting in the congressional race. So did the withdrawals of Sharon Jackson and Ken McCarty from the Senate Seat L contest, leaving room for Jared Goecker to take on the leading false-flag Republican Sen. Kelly Merrick.
“Whatever the formal rules say about a top-four competition, Republicans and Democrats could set a party expectation that only one major contender from their side will stick around for the general election. Before last week’s primary, Mr. Begich had pledged to quit if he came in third,” the newspaper said adding that if the “parties can keep the discipline shown by Ms. Dahlstrom, the final RCV vote might come to resemble a traditional head-to-head election, except with more confusing rules and no clarifying partisan primary debates.”
The Democrats in Alaska have already shown that discipline by not allowing more than one Democrat candidate in a race, which saves them the hassle of having donor dollars, volunteers, and voter enthusiasm diluted. The ranked-choice voting general election was designed for a party that has control over its voters.
Now, Alaska Republicans are getting wise to the ranked-choice game. The Wall Street Journal has noticed.
