Alaska court upholds new top-four primary and ranked-choice general election

Attorneymotionnews.com ^ | 8/9/21

[cotton1706]

The top four vote-getters regardless of party will advance to the general election, where voters will be able to rank their choices using instant-runoff voting. The law will also institute ranked-choice voting in presidential elections, though traditional party primaries will remain in effect for those races. The law further sets up new financial disclosure requirements for state-level candidates.

The implementation of the new top-four ranked-choice voting system may play a key role in next year’s Senate election, where Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is facing a tough challenge from the right by former state cabinet official Kelly Tshibaka after she voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial earlier this year. Tshibaka has been endorsed by the state GOP and Trump himself, but rather than face the constraint of needing to win a Republican primary dominated by Trump diehards to advance to the general election, Murkowski is all but assured of making it to the general election ballot under the top-four system.

However, the new voting system is hardly a guarantee that Murkowski will win another term in this conservative state. If Democratic voters consolidate around a Democratic candidate whom they rank ahead of Murkowski, the incumbent could end up getting squeezed out of the ranked-choice process in the general election; if she is many voters’ second choice but few voters’ first choice, she could be eliminated before a Democrat and Tshibaka. Thus, Murkowski will likely need some measure of initial support from Democratic and independent voters in addition to more moderate Republicans if she’s to make it to the final round of the ranked-choice voting process.

[Aetius]

How is the Alaska state legislature broken down? How are things like RCV getting implemented and how are things like the selection of judges by a council not jettisoned?

And how does one get on the judicial council?

[shaven_llama]

Oh, you’ll love this. The Republicans have pretty solid control of the Senate. However, the House is controlled by the Dems despite the Republicans having more elected members because 2 Republicans and 4 Independents caucused with the Dems.

As far as the judicial council, I quote from their website:

“Alaska Constitution Article IV, Section 8 provides that the Judicial Council has seven members. Three must be attorneys appointed by the Alaska Bar Association. Three cannot be attorneys and are appointed by the governor subject to confirmation by the legislature. These appointments are for staggered six year terms, must be spread over different areas of the state, and must be made without regard to political affiliation. The chief justice of the supreme court is the Council’s seventh member and chairperson.”

So, the leftists have a built in 4-3 advantage to start.

[ByteMercenary]

Wow - I don’t see how ‘disenfranchising’ a complete ballot because all the candidates for one race are not selected would make it through a legal challenge.

Now if the computers scanning the ballots are programmed to ignore a race that does not have all the boxes checked for that particular race, but processes the rest of the ballot accordingly, might get by the legal issue. But I still think not because the injured party is now the candidate *and* the voter.