Tom Williams: Ranked-choice voting opened the door to election games. Repeal it.

By TOM WILLIAMS

With only a few days before Alaska’s general election it has become obvious that the scam of ranked-choice voting has enabled Democrats and out-of-state big money donors to game our elections for their own benefit.

We now know, thanks largely to the New York Times, that RCV has made it possible to win elections by using blatant lies.

Please don’t be distracted by the red herring that tries to trick voters into voting against the RCV repeal, claiming that the disclosure provision of the current law would be weakened. The real issue before us is RCV.

RCV was duplicitously sold to Alaska voters as a way to improve “democracy” and eliminate “dark money” when that was clearly not the motivating strategy of its creators.

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In 2020 just enough Alaska voters bought into that lie and barely passed the initiative into law, repealing the one-person one-vote system that had served us well for decades. While we almost repealed RCV in 2024, we must finally get this albatross off our backs this year.

What are the major fallacies of RCV?

1. Disenfranchising voters. The complexity leads some less sophisticated voters to simply not vote because they don’t fully understand how the system works, unless of course there is only one candidate of their party on the ballot. Those who do vote run the risk of having their ballot invalidated if they don’t properly rank their choices. That does not improve democracy and that was not the case when you only had to select your one favored candidate.
2. Party Boss manipulation. In our gubernatorial Primary election, it appeared that Democratic party bosses decided that the 2^nd place primary finisher, Democrat Tom Begich, should drop out, which he dutifully did, leaving only the most extreme progressive on the ballot. The irony is that the liberals sold the idea of more voter choice, but then purposely eliminated one of our choices, simply to push Democrat voters to their party bosses’ choice.
3. Divide and Conquer. There are three Republicans and only one Democrat on the general election ballot. By encouraging so many Republicans to run and eliminating all Democrats except one from the general election ballot, the RCV boosters knew they would improve their chances of sneaking their candidate into office even though their top two primary candidates combined did not receive a majority of votes.
4. Bullet voting effect. A voter who only votes for one candidate will have their vote ignored if their candidate was the lowest of the four candidates in the general election. This is exactly what outside progressive money is doing when they encourage Republican voters in the US Senate race to bullet vote for Gerald Heikes, with the intent to throw the election to Mary Peltola.
5. Promotion of Stealth Candidates. With the top four primary candidates moving on to the general election ballot, more Democrats in Republican Clothing (DIRCs) have been encouraged to run in an effort to deceive voters. This has become so evident that even the very liberal New York Times has acknowledged the lies of Mary Peltola’s campaign in recruiting DIRC “Decoy Dan” Sullivan to run as a Republican. But this also is happening at the Alaska State Senate and House level.
6. Significant election results delay. Prior to RCV, with the exception of a few close races, we knew who we had elected right after election day. Under RCV and mail delays, we will not know for weeks.

If the Democrats had any shame, they would quit pretending that RCV is good for anyone but their own power-hungry party.  Most of the money opposing the repeal of RCV is from Democrat entities and out-of-state progressives.

Alaskans need to repeal RCV  and get back to electing candidates based on their proposed policies rather than ending up with people getting elected because of a disingenuously gamed voting system.

It is very important that you and your like-minded friends vote on or before next Tuesday November 3^rd. And please vote YES on Ballot Measure 2. Let’s return to some election sanity where all parties have to run on their proposed policies, and the outcome is determined by the voters, not through voter-deception and chicanery.

Alaska has been Tom Williams’ home since 1977.  Over the past 26 years he has served as the CFO for two locally owned southeast Alaska aviation companies. He spent 18 years with the State of Alaska as an auditor, a director of two Department of Revenue divisions, and as staff to two Alaska State Senate Finance Committee co-chairs. 

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