Voting on Voting: The Impacts of Alaska’s New Ranked-Choice Voting System
By Harper Chambers ‘24
This year, in the reliably conservative state Alaska, voters approved ranked-choice voting by 0.6% of the vote and fewer than 4,000 people. Alaska Ballot Measure 2 offered an alternative to the plurality voting systems used in a majority of states. In ranked-choice voting systems, voters list the candidates in order of preference. Other localities in the US previously adopted the system. In 2016, Maine authorized ranked-choice voting for state-wide elections, and in the 1950s, Cambridge, Boston, Minneapolis, St. Paul, San Francisco, among other cities also instituted ranked-choice voting. Abroad, Australia and Ireland experienced success with nation-wide ranked-choice voting, and local elections in the United Kingdom and New Zealand also adopted the system.
With the new ballot measure, Alaska instituted “top-four” primaries for state executive, legislative, and congressional offices. Without regard to party, the four candidates with the most votes in the primary advance to the general. The primary process in ranked-choice voting differs based on locality, but the process in the general election remains consistent. The election board requires candidates to receive a majority of the votes, 50% plus one, as opposed to a plurality. In a plurality or winner-takes-all system, the candidate with the most votes wins. As such, a candidate with 30% or 20% of the vote can hold elected office with support from considerably under half of their district.
Elections requiring a majority occur throughout the US. For example, the presidential election requires a candidate to receive a majority of electoral votes. Some states, including Georgia require anyone running for a state-wide position to receive a majority of the votes to win. When candidates fail to receive a majority in the general, the state holds special runoff elections. A notable example is that this year, Georgia is holding runoff elections for two US Senate seats in January. Unfortunately, runoff elections cost the jurisdiction money and typically have lower rates of voter turn-out.
Ranked-choice voting systems solve this problem by voting for the runoff election during the general election. Voters list the candidates in order of preference, and when no candidate receives a majority of the votes, the runoff is automatic. The single candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. If an individual’s first choice candidate was eliminated, their vote is allocated to their second choice candidate, and the process is repeated until a single candidate receives a majority. In polarized political environments and stark two party systems, rates of second choice voting are low. Nonetheless, ranked-choice voting eliminates the costs of runoff elections and allows third-party voters to voice their party support without feeling their vote was wasted.
Unfortunately, ranked-choice voting can squeeze moderate candidates with wider bipartisan appeal out of the runoff election—known as the center squeeze effect. In a group of candidates aligned near the center, the moderate with the widest appeal is eliminated first. The left-most candidate receives large support from liberal voters, and the right-most candidate receives large support from conservatives. Despite the broad second choice support for the centrist candidate, the diversity of first-choice voters squeezes the centrist out of the election, and their votes are reallocated.
Although political ideology is multidimensional, the liberal-conservative or leftist-rightist simplification of the US political system plays into the center squeeze effect. Of course, there are systems such as approval voting that can fix this challenge. However, on the whole, replacing the existing plurality systems with majority systems ensures that the most broadly accepted candidate with respectable first choice support wins. Majority systems also prevent candidates with narrow support from holding office. The standard US party primaries often force a two-party Democrat-Republican general election even if the individual state is largely one-party. Ranked-choice voting in primaries, such as Alaska’s top-four primary, helps ensure the general election candidates are more representative of the state’s voters.
Ranked choice voting seems to benefit a large portion of the political apparatus. Its adoption benefits state offices by eliminating the cost for extra elections and recounts. Political parties avoid losing due to problems with lower voter turnout. As for the candidates, the adoption of ranked-choice voting reduces the amount of time for campaigning–the extra month between the general election and the runoff. An extra month sounds small, but during that time, the candidates receive larger proportions of state-media coverage because the media already declared the winners of other positions. To match this, candidates are under pressure to raise tens of thousands of extra dollars to fund their campaigns for longer. Additionally, in a narrower field, candidates are put under intense scrutiny to distinguish themselves as voters focus exclusively on runoff elections.
Despite the benefits to candidates, in the US, the adoption of ranked-choice voting refines a well-established election system rather than overturning established practices. Other voting systems including proportional representation display prominence and success in European countries; however, the United States, despite partisan division, votes on individual people. This discontinuity with other democratic states propounds important questions surrounding US elections systems. Should candidates require a majority instead of a plurality? Should runoff elections become automatic through ranked-choice voting? The implementation of ranked-choice voting and future legislation and ballot measures allocating for ranked-choice voting will answer these questions. Going forward, Alaska, Maine, and the 14 other states with active bills to introduce ranked-choice voting will decide and demonstrate the possibilities of a more refined voting system in the US.