Rep. Kevin McCabe’s recent column raises serious and sincere concerns about Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), and he is right about one essential point: systems shape behavior. Election rules are not neutral. They reward certain conduct and discourage others.

Where clarity matters most, however, is in understanding what RCV actually does — and what it changes about voter consent.

RCV does not force candidates to lie. It does something subtler and, in many ways, more consequential: it penalizes clarity. Candidates who draw sharp distinctions risk early elimination, while candidates who blur differences survive longer. That incentive structure doesn’t mandate dishonesty – but it rewards ambiguity. Over time, that matters.

RCV also does not literally violate “one person, one vote.” Every voter casts one ballot. The deeper concern is more constitutional than mathematical. Under RCV, a vote’s influence depends on later redistributions that occur after Election Day, outside the direct observation of voters. Some ballots are exhausted and stop counting altogether. Others are reallocated based on conditional preferences rather than expressed consent to the final outcome.

Alaskans deserve ballots that are simple, outcomes that are transparent, and leaders who win because voters affirmatively chose them – not because they survived a process.

That is not fraud – but a different theory of consent than Alaska’s voters have historically understood.

Traditional elections produce clear, observable outcomes based on affirmative choices. RCV produces outcomes through a process of elimination and reassignment, where the final result may not reflect a voter’s actual support for the winning candidate, but rather the absence of remaining alternatives.

This distinction matters in a republic.

RCV defenders often point to civility and moderation as virtues of the system. But civility achieved by suppressing disagreement is not civic health. Alaska’s political culture has always valued forthrightness – sometimes rough, sometimes uncomfortable, but honest. A system that discourages candidates from plainly stating what they believe risks replacing accountability with optics.

The problem is not that RCV is illegal. The problem is that it changes how consent is expressed without voters fully understanding that change. In a state as large, diverse and remote as Alaska, complexity after the vote undermines confidence rather than strengthening it.

Elections should resolve disagreements – not manage them into statistical acceptability.

Alaskans deserve ballots that are simple, outcomes that are transparent, and leaders who win because voters affirmatively chose them – not because they survived a process.

That is not nostalgia. It is constitutional common sense.

The views expressed here are those of the author.

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