The deadline for candidates to withdraw from Alaska’s Nov. 3 general election is Monday, Aug. 31, and there is a strong argument to be made that many GOP candidates who finished the primary behind another Republican should consider quitting their race, whether that be in the governor’s contest or those for the State Legislature.
The main argument stems from the fact that Alaskans will be forced to use the controversial ranked-choice system, in which voters have the option to rank as many or as few candidates as they choose.
In ranked-choice, if no candidate wins a majority of the first-place votes, the contest proceeds to round 2, in which the fourth-place candidate is eliminated and all their second-place votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates as “first-place” votes. If this, too, fails to give one candidate the majority of “first-place” votes, then the third-place candidate is eliminated, and their second-place votes are redistributed as “first-place” votes to the remaining top-two candidates.
The problem is that many voters simply do not rank candidates but prefer to choose just one candidate on the ballot. If their choice is eliminated in the first round, then their ballot is tossed out and no longer counted in future rounds.
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In races that include two or more Republicans along with at least one Democrat, this splits the GOP vote between candidates, which can result in hundreds, if not thousands, of votes that would have gone to a Republican candidate being tossed. Meanwhile, if there is only a single Democrat, there is little chance that any Democratic votes will be thrown out.
Even advocates for ranked-choice voting admit that a large portion of voters simply choose not to rank candidates.
According to research by Fair Vote, a left-leaning organization that favors ranked-choice, only 68% of voters actually rank multiple candidates, while 32% do not. Conservatives, in particular, are less likely to rank candidates than liberals.
Given that there are 50 races for the State Legislature, many of which include multiple Republicans along with one or more Democrats, it might be wise for some of these GOP candidates to consider quitting before the Aug. 31 deadline.
14 Comments
Consider the implications of a blanket request asking all Republican candidates to drop who did not place first in a non-binding primary (a glorified taxpayer-funded poll really). One implication is that Republican-backed candidates will be pushed to spend more money on a non-binding primary, leaving less money for them to spend in November when it counts. Another implication is that, even if cross-over Democrat votes pushed another Republican candidate forward in the primary, the candidate who garnered the most Republican votes should still, on that advice, drop out. That leaves the Democrat-backed GOP candidate on the ballot and the Republican-backed GOP candidate not on the ballot. In my last race for state house I received the majority of Republican votes but 73% of Democrats who crossed over on Election Day voted for my opponent (Jubilee Underwood). In the current primary one might expect the same trend to hold true. Should I withdrawn because Democrats crossed over to vote for my (less conservative) GOP opponent? How does that help conservatives?
If you lose this race in your attempt to get back in the legislature is serving in the legislature Your only way to serve Wasilla in leadership? There are other ways in Wasilla for Republicans. Today’s Wasilla Republicans had been neglectful to raising up their community’s next generation to vote Right.
David,
All good points. The argument, however, is not that ALL Republicans should withdraw from EVERY race in which there are two or more Republicans. Rather, the GOP candidate with the fewest votes in the primary should withdraw IF there is a Democrat still in the race in the general election. In the case where two (or more) Republicans are running against each other, with no Democrat in the mix, I suppose it doesn’t make sense for a Republican to drop out.
But you raise an interesting point about cases when the primary results in a RINO (or less conservative) Republican finishing ahead of a more conservative Republican. In that case, I suppose the two GOP candidates would fight it out in the general, and hopefully not wind up handing victory to a lone Democrat in the race. However, if two conservative Republicans are running, it makes sense for one to bow out and throw their support behind the other.
Ultimately, all this gamesmanship is the product of the intentionally convoluted Ranked-Choice Voting system. To end this RCV mess, vote “Yes” on ballot measure 2.
Agreed – Vote Yes on ballot measure 2 to end Rank Choice Voting. Alas, there is no one size fits all solution that cannot be weaponized against conservatives. Every election is different just as every candidate is different. What works in one setting will not be ideal in another setting. Creating additional hurtles like “you have to place first in a primary” may sound great the first time you hear it, but don’t expect the establishment to rally around conservative candidates even if they do make it over all of the hurdles put in front of them. The establishment loves to move the goal posts just as the conservative is about to win “yeah, you won the primary but you should still bow out because…(insert bogus pretext for refusing to support the conservative candidate)”. We are not commanded only to be innocent as doves, but also to be shrewd as serpents.
Well said
They should, but they won’t. And their selfish, hard hearted stupidity is the perfect ingredient to create enough election insanity to inspire more Alaskans to throw RCV out in November.
It is hard–very hard–to get thousands of voters to vote in lock step. We will win if everybody does “this” is not a reliable strategy. Let’s remove this cancer in Alaska called RCV. We have another chance to do it this November.
I am Gretchen Stoddard running against Cathy Geissel in Dist 9 and 10 in South Anchorage. I am staying in this race where Cathy is listed as the leading “Republican,” and she palms to join the Democats in Juneau. I hope you will vote, tell your friends, and support me. Thanks!!
Or we spend the next two months educating the voting populace on the importance of actually ranking while we have an RCV system. (And hopefully we’ll vote it away in November!) If we do have two Republicans in the governors race until November, that seems to be the most important thing to focus on. Come Monday, get over your fears if Bronson is still in and start educating your neighbors how to advance a conservative candidate within the system we currently have. If our short RCV history tells us that “most conservatives don’t rank,” let’s work to change that!
Bronson will be known as the 2026 spoiler, and rightfully so! Just look at Lisa Murkowski she didn’t keep her word and she is the most loathed women in Alaska. If you can’t trust his oath as a candidate then how will you ever be able to trust his leadership? This has got to be a really disappointing for Bernadette who took her opponent at his word.
In house district 29 we had a different scenario. Sadly even very highly intelligent people can be low info voters. I have already spoken to half a dozen at least conservative voters who went to vote and did not even know who our current sitting representative was. Granted, he was recently appointed when George Rauscher was appointed to Mike Showers vacated senate seat. He is now our incumbent and has done a good job in his short tenure and would be a very good representative to keep in office. I can see now by the numbers that likely many, many voters made the same mistake – they voted for a vaguely familiar last name. There is another chance before the general election for voters to read and make an effort to educate themselves. I would say the conservative candidate in district 29 who did not get the most votes should absolutely not drop out. The candidate who did get the most votes, in my opinion, cheated, as he has declared residency in more than one district and has ran in those other district(s) for previous office.
Raucher needs to answer for the pedophile that he chose to be his chief of staff!!!
Joel, the redistribution of votes only happens if voters ranked more than one candidate. If a voter only voted for one person, then their vote does not proceed past the first round. Their vote “stays alive” and is assigned to their next choice of candidate if they ranked more than one candidate.The votes are not just redistributed among the candidates in a willy-nilly fashion. Ranking candidates in the governor’s race would be of great benefit to the voter’s candidate of choice, since the votes from the least preferred candidate would “be stacked” onto the count of their next preferred in each round of counting. RCV voting is horrible in my opinion, but it is what we are stuck with until we can get it removed.
Whew! I am so glad Bronson decided to stick with the race. It makes me hope for much better than what we have for governor and gives me a feeling there is challenges don the road that will be met with purpose and courage. Thanks BRONSON!!!