Alaska’s ranked-choice voting has a write-in wrinkle few voters understand

By SUZANNE DOWNING

April 24, 2026 – Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system was sold to voters as simple: Rank your candidates, and the system works its way down until someone gets a majority.

But buried in the regulations is a lesser-known rule that has sparked confusion and concern about how write-in candidates are treated. The write-in candidates don’t get ranked. Thus, there are two voting systems at play.

At issue is a provision adopted by the state’s Division of Elections that applies only to write-in candidates. Under that rule, election officials first look at how many ballots ranked a write-in candidate as the top choice. If that total falls far enough behind the leading candidate by at least 0.5% then all write-in candidates are eliminated before the ranked-choice process fully plays out .

That means Alaska is effectively running two different elections methods: one for the four candidates who make it through the primary, and another for write-ins.

Alaska law, since being implemented in 2022, is clear that general elections are conducted using ranked-choice voting. The top four candidates from the jungle primary advance to the general election ballot, and voters rank them in order of preference. If no candidate gets more than 50% of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their voters’ next choices are redistributed, continuing until someone wins a majority .

Write-in candidates, however, have to meet a threshold. Before they are allowed into those ranked-choice rounds, they must clear a basic viability threshold. If they don’t demonstrate enough initial support, they are excluded from further tabulation.

In practical terms, that means most write-in campaigns never make it into the ranked-choice process at all.

Is that unfair? Not necessarily, but it is different and not well understood.

The system is a way of keeping the fraught ranked-choice voting system manageable. Without a threshold, every write-in candidate, even those receiving only a handful of votes, would have to be included in multiple rounds of tabulation. That could complicate the count and slow results, especially in close races.

But it is a type of limitation on voter choice. If a voter ranks a write-in candidate first, but that candidate fails to meet the threshold, their vote is effectively sidelined earlier than it would be under a pure ranked-choice system.

There’s also a governance question behind the scenes.

The voters established ranked-choice voting in statute, but that law did not spell out in detail how write-in candidates should be handled under that system. The Division of Elections filled in that gap by adopting regulations, including the 0.5% threshold.

State agencies routinely write rules to implement laws. But it does mean that a meaningful part of how Alaska’s elections function was shaped outside the legislative process.

So what’s the bottom line?

Alaska is not running two separate elections. It is running one ranked-choice election, with a separate qualifying hurdle for write-in candidates.

Most voters will never notice the difference. But for those who care about election mechanics, and for anyone considering a write-in campaign, it’s a detail that makes a difference.

And like much of Alaska’s bizarre ranked-choice election system, it’s one more reminder that the fine print often tells a more complicated story than the ballot summary ever did.

Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan.