Alaska’s Ranked-Choice Voting Travesty

Alaska’s first two ranked-choice elections were embarrassments, marked by complexity, confusion and delay. But, oh, for the good old days of mere humiliation. This year operatives finally cracked the many devious ways the system can be outright gamed. Alaska is now the poster child for dirty-pool politics.

Alaskans won’t know until the end of August which “final four” candidates for each office will be on their ranked-choice November ballot after this week’s jungle primary. Residents will need that time to recover from the trauma of a monthslong campaign in which they were not valued as “we the people,” but duped and confused, treated as pawns in a seedy game.

*** The Senate race featured the last-minute entry of a retired elementary school teacher with a history of supporting Democrats, including Mrs. Peltola. He happens to be named Daniel Sullivan—the same name as the Republican incumbent—and filed, just before the deadline, to run as a Republican. The decoy insists he isn’t trying to confuse voters, and isn’t working with Mrs. Peltola or her supporters. Yet his filing documents were handled by an Anchorage Democratic consultant, and his campaign logo is a near replica of Sen. Sullivan’s.

Doppelgangers have run in other elections but, again, Alaska’s system dramatically increases the spoiler potential. In a jungle primary teeming with candidates, voters struggle to focus on individuals or disputes. Every name is dropped on one big ballot. The Sullivans were adjacent this year, with the decoy candidate listed first....

With 80% of the vote counted, Mrs. Peltola has 64,000 votes and Sen. Sullivan has 57,000. No. 3? Decoy Dan, with 3,200 votes, who didn’t campaign and has only 12 donors (not including himself). Alaskans will be even more confused when they have to “rank” the two Dans in November.

“What concerns me is not that fake Dan got 3k votes but that Peltola got 64k and the real Dan only got 57k. Does not bode well for November”

I think this the case all over the country in the primaries.

We can only hope that these results are because of low turnout and/or the Democrat activists showing up disproportionately than what will happen in November.

Results point to an uphill battle for the real Dan Sullivan. The second two will be non factors based on the votes received and I suspect both will drop out.
I posted the info below a couple of days ago.

131,910 valid ballots cast in the 2026 primary. (Don’t know how many blank or rejected ballots there are — with rank choice, there are usually a higher number of overvotes).

This 60,000 below the total ballots cast in the 2022 primary. And 134,090 who voted in the 2022 general election.

Pop: 736,081
Registered Voters: 600,489
Ballots cast in November 2022 Senate Race: 266,560
Ballots cast in August 2022 Senate Race: 190,458

In 2022, Lisa M was running against several Republicans so it is difficult to compare to 2026. This is the top four in the primary advanced.
Republican Lisa Murkowski (incumbent) 85,794 45.05%
Republican Kelly Tshibaka 73,414 38.55%
Democratic Patricia Chesbro 12,989 6.82%
Republican Buzz Kelley 4,055 2.13%

Final Round Candidate Votes Percentage
Murkowski, Lisa 136,330 53.70%
Tshibaka, Kelly C. 117,534 46.30%
Chesbro, Patricia R. 0 0.00%
Kelley, Buzz A. 0 0.00%

Buzz Kelley withdrew after the primary.

Alaska appears to have very poor voter participation. 135,000 votes could win the election outright.

Alaska Voter Reg breakdown Dems: 69,792 Libs: 6,098 Reps: 141,851 Nonpartisan: 81,636 Undeclared: 297,084 * Also have 11 minor parties that have very few each.

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