Ranked-Choice Voting Is a Failed Experiment. Alaska Can End It This November.

I launched the first campaign to repeal ranked-choice voting (RCV) in Alaska in 2024. That was less than two years after the state’s first RCV election, which came after Alaska voters approved a ballot measure to adopt the system. Most voters in the state were just learning about RCV and its many problems. Maine was the only other state using RCV, which was also used in a few cities and other local governments around the country.

The 2020 ballot measure for RCV was coupled with a ban on so-called “dark money.” Many Alaskans supported the measure for that reason, not considering the effect that RCV would have on elections in the state.

The 2022 election results after the first use of RCV were revealing. Voter turnout dropped significantly as many Alaskans, especially older and Native residents, were frustrated with the process. Some had their ballots rendered void due to errors or confusion. Even my grandfather, an educated and successful small business owner, had trouble understanding the complex system. Seeing my friends, neighbors, and close relatives struggling with the new system sparked my desire to repeal it.

Without any outside financial backing, I recruited hundreds of my fellow Alaskans for the petition drive. We worked tirelessly to collect over 42,000 signatures from 34 of Alaska’s 40 voting districts. In the end, 37,043 signatures were verified despite the opposition aggressively challenging the signature books. This was thousands more than we needed to qualify our repeal measure for the ballot. In fact, our signature drive was the most successful grassroots petition effort in Alaskan history.

To counteract our purely grassroots effort, pro-RCV groups dumped around $15 million (much of which was “dark money”) into their “no” campaign, outspending us by 100 to 1. On election night Yes on 2 was winning by 4,000 votes and for well over two weeks after, we were ahead by a comfortable margin. But as the vote counting dragged on, the “no” votes eventually appeared to take the lead. The extremely close margin triggered an automatic recount, which resulted in our campaign to repeal RCV losing by just 743 votes. Just think about it: it took $15,000,000 and weeks of vote counting for the pro-RCV side to eke out a win. Spending $93 / vote compared to the grassroots $0.93 / vote just to come to a dead heat weeks after the election? It is the closest statewide election in Alaska’s history.

Now, Alaska voters have another chance to put an end to this electoral nightmare. Alaska is a bright red state that President Trump won by almost 15 points in 2016 and just over 13 points in 2024. That’s what made it a perfect target for RCV advocates. RCV has a long and documented history of shifting politics to the Left. In red states like Alaska, it benefits “moderate” Democrats like Mary Peltola, but in already blue areas like Oakland, New York City, and San Francisco, it drags politics to the far Left. Perhaps this explains why the Communist Party USA endorsed the system in 2024, calling it part of their “struggle for democracy.”

Due to RCV campaign strategies like cross-endorsements, decoy candidates, and running out of state incarcerated prisoners, candidates with little to no chance of winning join a race to drive support for other candidates. Progressive organizations like FairVote claim that this makes politics less toxic, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was able to win his primary with the help of cross-endorsements from his far-left friends, allowing him to overtake more moderate candidates. As a result of his RCV-fueled win, New York City is experiencing a crime surge and losing billions in tax revenue because of socialist governance.

Alaska’s Senate race shows just how easily gamed the system is. The race has become surprisingly competitive because progressives in the state were able to run a candidate with the same name as our current senator, Dan Sullivan, which according to the New York Times investigation was orchestrated by Mary Peltola. Their plan is to confuse voters in the ranking process to increase Mary Peltola’s chances of winning. This scenario would be almost unimaginable without RCV.

Voting "Yes" on Ballot Measure 2 is the only way to reject this failed experiment and ensure Alaskans aren’t stuck with a system that has disenfranchised them through ballot exhaustion, unnecessary complexity, delayed results, and a lack of transparency. My underfunded grassroots campaign almost took down the well-funded RCV movement in Alaska. Every day Alaskans who show up to vote and encourage their friends and family to do the same can now finish the job. But just know even if we fail again in 2026, I will return to repeal it again. We cannot allow ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries into the United States, and we must work to remove it where it has found a host. We are not fighting local neighbors and political parties. We are fighting Fortune 500-like organizations (e.g. Arabella Advisors), We don’t win these battles without lots of support and help.

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