Paulette Simpson: It’s time to end the mess

By PAULETTE SIMPSON

Oct. 25, 2026 – First, a clear-eyed look at that “Open Primary.”

A Democratic candidate on the 2024 general election ballot for our U.S. House seat had never set foot in Alaska. He was also serving a 20-year prison sentence in New York.

Under Alaska’s Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) system, the imprisoned felon made the ballot fair and square, and the embarrassing stunt made national news.  The jokester is on Alaska’s general election ballot again this year.

A last-minute entrant into the U.S. Senate race with the same name as Alaska’s current Sen. Dan Sullivan also appeared on our August 2026 jungle primary ballot and has advanced to the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

The confusion created by two “Dan Sullivans” on the same ballot for the same office was likely the point of the candidacy, enabled by RCV.

Prior to RCV, clown-like candidates never could have advanced to a statewide ballot. Both major parties would have made sure of that.

The most repeated misleading argument used by RCV defenders is that voting YES to repeal RCV would return us to “closed” primaries and those awful party bosses.

Many seem to forget – or purposefully ignore – the fact that before the adoption of RCV in 2020, all independent voters (those registered “non-partisan” or “undeclared”) could vote in the Republican Primary.

The only Alaskans not allowed to vote in the Republican Primary were members of other parties.

It’s just basic common sense that independent voters be allowed to choose the primary in which they want to participate, but party members may only vote in their own primary.

That is the system voting YES on 2 will return us to.

Now let’s talk about that ranked choice general election that continues to confuse so many voters.

The voter learning curve for RCV is steep and not at all intuitive.  Alaska elections are now at the mercy of terms most people have never heard of.

To understand how RCV works requires learning a whole new vocabulary.

What’s an “algorithm?”  An “exhausted” ballot?  “Tabulation” rules and rounds? “Spoiled or invalid ballot?” “Transfer and elimination rules?”

An RCV election is conducted on a computer where ballots are eliminated in multiple rounds. It takes longer to deliver results because tabulation is multi-round and often depends on processing absentee ballots before final rounds are run.

Who wins?  It’s complicated.  The candidate who captures 50.1% in first round or the candidate who ultimately survives the transfer and elimination rules, after having captured a majority of the active ballots in that round.  The more “rounds” employed in counting, the more votes each individual voter casts.

The landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 took major steps to curtail voter suppression. RCV masquerades as motherhood and apple pie but functions as a sinister form of voter suppression.  It does that by tossing out your ballot if the system confuses you, or even if you just want to vote your conscience.

Thousands of Alaskans who show up to vote every year have their ballot not counted in the final round for one reason or another.  That’s the cynical reality of RCV.

Elections should be simple, straightforward and inspire confidence – not create chaos and erode trust.

If we vote yes on Ballot Measure #2 on November 3, the unwieldy “jungle primary” and the perverse ranked-choice voting algorithm used in the general election will go away.  Elections will once again be open and accessible to everyone.

That’s the way it should be.

End the mess.  Vote YES.

Paulette Simpson lives in Douglas, Alaska.