<\/a>Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is the first to sign a petition Nov. 17 in Anchorage for a ballot initiative to repeal ranked choice voting. Palin, a Republican who lost the U.S. House race to Democrat Mary Peltola in this months election, is among those arguing a Republican would have been elected to the seat with a closed party primary — instead of an open primary where the top four candidates advance — and without ranked choice voting. (Sara For Alaska \/ Twitter)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Palin, a week before the ranked choice results were announced, made headlines by being the first person to sign the petition seeking an initiative to repeal the counting method by the 2024 general election.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Ranked choice voting is the weirdest, most convoluted and most complicated voter suppression tool that Alaskans could have come up with,” she said during the signing event in Anchorage. “And the point is, we didn’t come up with this. We were sold a bill of goods.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
But if ranked choice voting altered the outcomes, post-election surveys suggest Alaskans — who approved its implementation in 2020 — widely supported the results.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
An exit poll shows 92% of respondents said they were instructed sufficiently about how ranked choice voting works and about 90% percent said the process was simple, Sen.-elect Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, said during Friday’s press conference announcing the new coalition in which she’ll the majority leader.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Sixty percent felt the races were more competitive,” she said. “We certainly saw a diversity of people winning the races. It wasn’t one party or the other.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Two state House races in particular were won by Republicans on second- and third-choice ballots after Democrats seemingly were in position to win them when the first-choice ballots were tallied, which in turn means a presumed bipartisan majority in that chamber has been cast into uncertainty unlikely to be resolved by the start of the session in January. While the current results have Republicans winning 21 of the 40 seats, one race separated by four votes is headed to an automatic recount and then at least some GOP members will weigh if they want to align with the most partisan members of their party or enter an agreement with Democrats.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
But while Giessel cites the high comprehension and satisfaction of residents participating in the exit surveys, a critical number is the voter turnout of about 44%, which is well below the next-lowest turnout of 49.84% in 2018, with rural Alaska in particular seeing declines.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“We seriously need to look into that and find out why,” she said. “It’s possible people in rural areas looked at people on ballot and said ’I like all of these’ and just didn’t go to the voting booth.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
It is possible attacks by opponents of ranked choice voting questioning its integrity and alleged complexity deterred some people from voting, said former Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho, who co-chaired the group Alaskans for Better Elections that advocated for ranked choice voting.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Early on there was confusion about how ranked choice voting worked,” he said. “There was a lot of noise in certain circles about ranked choice voting, and I think that may have had some impact on people’s willingness to turn out.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
On the other hand, while the number of candidates running in the statewide races was much higher than normal due to the open primaries, that also meant “giving the Alaska electorate a wide range of choices and individual views about our government and our society,” Botelho said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“We saw a higher number of candidates in higher races than we had in years,” he said. “The interesting thing that happened as well is there were a lot of races where multiple candidates from the same parties advanced.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
A surprise is the number of people who did not rank any candidates beyond their first choice, Botelho said. That proved decisive in the special U.S. House race in particular, where a high percentage of Republicans favoring either Begich or Palin left their subsequent choices blank, allowing Peltola with about 40% of the first-choice vote to achieve an eventual majority.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I think if one looks at many of the races here that was decisive, but I think it also illustrates one of the great aspects of ranked choice voting,” Botelho said. “You have the opportunity to rank candidates and you also have the opportunity to vote for the candidate of your first choice without being compelled.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t