A ballot measure that would repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting and open primary system has very narrowly failed, according to final unofficial results released Wednesday by the Division of Elections.
The final margin for Ballot Measure 2, pending certification, is 664 out of 340,110 votes, with “No” outpacing “Yes” 50.1% to 49.9%.
Nice! I hope RCV continues to spread
I still wish more alternative voting systems were being considered. RCV is the conversation-dominating option, but it’s a far cry from the best, and I’d much rather Score or Approval Voting got passed than RCV basically anywhere.
I haven’t looked too deep into all the options, but from my view they all have advantages and disadvantages. At the very least RCV is better than what most places in the US. Riding the wave of popularity might be the only way to get things changed too.
RCV is definitely better than FPTP, but basically everything is. From what I’ve seen, the only thing mathematically worse than what we have now would be a random pick.
I strongly prefer Approval because ranked voting systems in general tend to have glitches. Unranked ones still suffer from issues due to strategic voting, but no moreso than their ranked counterparts. From there I prefer Approval to Score and others simply because Approval is easy to explain (“vote for as many as you want instead of just one” — there you go, one sentence!) and thus easier to sell to people who don’t understand it.
Still though, there’s a lot of options for sure. If you’re interested in learning more, there’s a couple of interactive articles about voting systems I came across (one while writing this comment); this first one by Nicky Case is a great starter, and this followup by Jameson Quinn gives a bit more detail for some stuff, particularly about strategic voting.
It’s been a while, but doesn’t approval carry a very heavy risk of ‘unfavorable’ outcomes where a less popular candidate wins if everyone votes normally? I remember it seemed to reinforce two candidate contests and encourage simply voting exactly like we do now (with the similar outcomes).
-Reading into it more, that happens because if you vote for your second favorite, they may beat out your favorite, but if you do not vote for any but your preferred, you won’t risk spoiling your own vote. This of course can lead to neither winning and a third candidate nobody wanted winning, similar to first past the post.
I think that RCV, being fairly widely used now, seems like a pretty good alternative to first past the post, and while it’s not perfect, doesn’t have those obvious strategic voting issues that Approval has. I’d still take approval over first past the post. Might even take a dice roll over first past the post honestly.
Edit - for disclosure, I’m also iffy on approval voting because it’s constantly referred to in a way that makes it sound like it’s a kind of panacea, paired with a list of why x other voting method doesn’t work. It’s also being pushed by conservative groups all over the US, which raises my defenses for better or worse.
Thanks for the info. I had read the Nicky Case summary previously but not the Jason Quinn one. I’ll check it out after work today, but from how I read it Nicky’s conclusion is we need to try thing is real world scenarios. Honestly I am down for any alternatives, and agree that approval would be better than RCV. I think there is a situation where you can pass some kind of election reform like RCV, see if it works, then either vote for a new method or keep it based on the real world info. Well, I see that situation as previously possible. I’m really not sure what the next 4 years will bring, but I do know what they’ve said they want to do, so…
Thank you for sharing these links. I was a proponent of IRV, but it’s clear to me now that it doesn’t offer a significant improvement over FPTP. Quinn’s 3-2-1 scoring method is a lot more attractive to me now.
This election was a massive loss in general. Only alaska and DC voted in favour and a half dozen others voted against and to ban.
That is disappointing. At least some places are wins.
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I don’t think that is a call out. Pretty sure it supports the statement. They said they were an advocate for repeal. Repeal would mean voting yes on the ballot measure. So no on 2 having 14 mil was against repeal and that’s supporting their statement.
You’re right, I misread it. I’ve deleted the comment to avoid misleading anyone else.
The wording isn’t exactly clear, but it doesn’t say what you think it does. Alaska approved ranked choice voting and open primaries in 2020. Leman was part of Yes on 2 which was an effort to repeal RCV and go back to closed primaries. Outside groups helped fund the opposition campaign to say no to the repeal. The group trying to enact the repeal raised very little funding. So what he said isn’t contradicted by the numbers presented.
I’m dissapointed that there seems to be so much impetus to go back to first past the post in Alaska. That might slow down efforts elsewhere in pushing for RCV.
Yeah looks like I misread it. I deleted the comment so no one else gets misled by me.
Either you’re misreading or I am misreading, because going by this, Yes on 2 is the campaign in favor of repeal – i.e., the one Leman is in favor of – and the latter paragraph is backing up what he says by saying No on 2 spent more than Yes on 2 by a 100x difference.
I’m misreading lol. Comment deleted so no one else is misled.
Why such a close margin? What don’t Alaskans like about RCV?
If I remember correctly one of the first major elections using RCV resulted in the person who overall got the most first choice picks losing the person who overall get the most second and third choice pics. So it worked as designed in that the winner was the person with over 50% of the vote, but it really upset all the people who had supported the person who would have won under the previous first past the post system.
I don’t think that makes sense. In both RCV and FPTP, if a candidate gets over 50% in the first round then they’re the winner. In FPTP if no candidate gets over 50% then there’s usually a runoff. I believe that’s why rank choice voting is also known as instant runoff voting.
Some jurisdictions using FPTP may do a runoff if there’s no winner with a 50% mandate, but most do not. Split votes such as 45/40/15 with 45% declared the winner can and do happen.
I just found this article that I think explains what happened. In a previous RCV election, the Republicans got 60% of the first round vote, but still lost. That was because it was split between more than one Republican as a result of their unusual primary election system that sends the top four candidates to the general election. Basically, they spoiled the election for themselves. The tight result of this referendum is probably more of an indictment of Alaska’s top four primary system than RCV.
Ah, thanks for finding the facts. So the first election had a surprise result. It worked exactly as designed, and either people didn’t understand that could happen or they’ve since been convinced it was contrary to what they wanted.
Given the whole goal of RCV is that outcomes are satisfying to the largest number of people you’d think this result wouldn’t have had a backlash like what we’ve seen.
I’d bet the losing party was behind the measure, and I’m somewhat happy to see it fail. I hope that means the majority of people were in fact satisfied.
