Suzanne Downing: Ranked-choice voting didn’t cure Alaska politics. It helped politicians escape accountability

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Aug. 2, 2026 – Four members of Alaska’s bipartisan governing class took to the pages of the Anchorage Daily News last week to tell voters how wonderfully ranked choice voting is working.

Sen. Cathy Giessel and Reps. Bryce Edgmon, Ky Holland and Zack Fields want Alaskans to vote no on Ballot Measure 2 in November and preserve the jungle primary and ranked-choice general election system.

Their argument boils down to this: Ranked choice voting produces broad-minded public servants who rise above politics, build coalitions and solve difficult problems.

Have they looked outside their bubble  lately?

The Legislature has proposed budgets Alaska cannot sustain, repeatedly reached for taxes, failed to protect the Permanent Fund dividend, and allowed the state’s most important economic project in decades — the Alaska gasline — to become trapped in procedural games and partisan maneuvering.

If this is ranked choice voting’s model of enlightened governance, voters are entitled to ask what failure would look like.

The four lawmakers begin by declaring that legislators must serve all their constituents, pass balanced budgets, strengthen the economy and leave Alaska better prepared for the future. Those are admirable words, yet their record is something else.

The bipartisan majorities they celebrate have pushed spending beyond dependable revenues and weakened Alaska’s investment climate. Companies are getting cold feet about coming to Alaska.

They have failed to deliver a durable fiscal plan. And despite Southcentral Alaska’s approaching natural gas shortage, they cannot pass legislation needed to advance the gasline without attaching taxes, mandates and political ornaments that threaten the project itself.

“Disagreement does not have to lead to paralysis,” they write. Yet paralysis is precisely what Alaskans have watched them deliver.

The authors also attempt to wrap today’s legislative coalitions in Alaska history, arguing that cross-partisan governance is one of the state’s defining traditions.

But today’s arrangement is not the same as the coalitions of earlier decades. Historically, rural Democrats sometimes joined Republican-led organizations because doing so gave their districts influence, committee positions and a meaningful seat at the table. Today, Republican legislators elected by conservative districts cross over and simply hand organizational control to Democrats. Those Democrats then set the agenda and decide which bills live or die.

That is not “working across the aisle.” It is transferring power across the aisle.

Ranked choice voting makes that maneuver easier because it weakens the most direct mechanism voters once had for holding politicians accountable: the party primary.

Under the old system, Republican voters could decide whether someone seeking the Republican nomination actually represented Republican principles. Democratic voters could do the same with their candidates. The nominees then competed before the entire electorate.

The current jungle primary has turned party labels into little more than self-selected decorations. A candidate can campaign as a Republican, use the Republican brand to win votes, organize with Democrats in Juneau and then return home claiming to be bipartisan.

There is no meaningful Republican primary in which Republican voters can review that record.

That is not broader accountability. It is accountability avoidance.

Political parties are imperfect institutions, but they perform an important function. They tell voters something about a candidate’s principles, alliances and likely governing agenda. When party labels cease to mean anything, voters lose information and politicians gain camouflage.

No Alaska lawmaker illustrates that problem better than Sen. Cathy Giessel. Giessel is elected from a district that reliably supports Republican candidates. Yet in Juneau, she has repeatedly helps organize coalitions that put Democrats in control. Now she has co-authored a defense of ranked choice voting with Zack Fields, a former Alaska Democratic Party employee and one of the most openly partisan Democrats in the House. There is hardly a Democrat member more partisan than Fields.

That partnership tells voters far more about the true purpose of this election system than all the gauzy language about consensus and trust.

Giessel, Edgmon, Holland and Fields claim the open primary forces candidates to appeal to a “broader cross-section” of voters and protects Alaska from extremism.

Whatever that means … The word “extreme” has become a convenient label for voters who expect elected officials to keep their campaign promises.

Alaskans voted for Donald Trump in 2024 with about 54.5% of the vote. They did not choose him because he was an indistinct creature of the mushy middle. They chose a candidate who told voters what he believed, drew sharp distinctions and promised a clear direction. That is also democracy.

Voters are allowed to prefer candidates with defined principles. They are allowed to participate in political parties. They are allowed to expect a Republican to govern like a Republican and a Democrat to govern like a Democrat. Compromise may be necessary after an election, but voters should know what each side is bringing to the negotiation.

The legislators’ suggestion that repealing ranked choice voting would reward people for “playing politics” is especially insulting.

Politics is not inherently corrupt or shameful. It is the process through which citizens debate competing ideas, form alliances, persuade their neighbors and choose a direction for government. The answer to bad politics is more transparency and accountability—not an election system that blurs responsibility so thoroughly that no one can tell who is in charge.

And who, exactly, is playing politics here?

Is it the voter who wants a straightforward ballot and identifiable party nominees? Or is it the politician who runs under one label, governs with the opposing party and then praises an election system that protects that arrangement?

The authors say ranked choice voting has produced “durable solutions.” Name them.

Where is the durable fiscal plan?

Where is the sustainable budget?

Where is the long-term answer to Cook Inlet’s declining gas supply?

Where is following the law on the statutory formula for the Permanent Fund dividend?

Alaska’s bizarre election system some organic expression of our independent frontier character. It was engineered by political professionals and promoted with millions of dollars from Outside interests. It passed in 2020 by the narrowest of margins. When Alaskans voted on repeal in 2024, ranked choice voting survived by just 743 votes after being vastly outspent by Outside dollars.

Now voters will decide again.

Across the country, 19 states have prohibited ranked choice voting in some or all elections. Alaska remains one of only a tiny number using it broadly for statewide contests. Those states did not reject the system because their voters are incapable of understanding it. They rejected it because elections should be direct, transparent and accountable.

Ballot Measure 2 would end Alaska’s jungle primary and ranked-choice general election system and restore party-specific primaries and traditional plurality elections.

That would not end compromise or prevent lawmakers from working across party lines. It would not force legislators to hate one another or bring Washington-style warfare to Juneau. We send them there to negotiate with each other. That is their very job.

Restoring normal elections would simply restore a clear line of responsibility between candidates, political parties and voters.

Ranked choice voting has not rescued Alaska from dysfunction. It has weakened political parties, blurred ideological distinctions and given politicians more room to escape accountability for how they govern. It has also created far more rancor and division in Alaska politics. Look no farther than those who support ranked-choice voting — they are all Democrats to the core.

This November, Alaskans should vote YES on Ballot Measure 2.

One voter. One candidate. One vote.

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

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