Anchorage retiree Susan Klein is a progressive and a fan of ranked choice voting. She thought that, come November, she’d be able to choose her favorite of the two Democrats in the governor’s race and rank the other, without worrying about splitting the vote. If her favorite came in last, she knew her vote would be redistributed to her second favorite.
But then, last week, her options shrank: Democrat Tom Begich withdrew and endorsed the other Democrat, Jonathan Kreiss Tomkins.
“I'm really disappointed because to me, the whole point of ranked choice voting is to have two or more choices to vote for,” Klein said. “And when Tom Begich dropped out, it meant that I only have one choice to vote for, because I'm not going to vote for the Republican choices.”
A big promise of ranked choice voting was that two candidates of the same party could compete on the November ballot without one acting as a spoiler. But, after Begich’s withdrawal from the governor’s race on Friday, some observers wonder if the system lives up to the billing.
Klein’s frustration started in July, when Democrat Matt Schultz dropped out of the U.S. House race and endorsed independent candidate Bill Hill. Klein wished the Democrats had trusted their voters to make use of the rankings.
“It just seems like we're saying we want ranked choice voting, but when we get choices, we're not going with them,” she said.
The Democratic withdrawals send a confused message, Klein said, especially because another measure to repeal ranked choice is before voters in November.
Tom Begich rejected the idea that ending his campaign is any knock on ranked choice, or makes a case for the repeal, known as Ballot Measure 2.
“I've heard that argument, and I don't buy it. I'm a ‘vote no on 2’ person,” Begich said Monday in a phone interview. “In fact, I'm wearing the button right now as I go to the post office.”
Begich said the election system Alaska has used since 2022 — which includes an open primary and requires disclosure to reduce dark money in state elections — is working. Among other things, Begich said, it makes candidates less likely to tear each other down.
“There was not negativity between myself and the other Democrat during this campaign. We were generally positive toward each other,” he said. “That is a direct impact of ranked choice voting. People move to reasonableness under ranked choice voting.”
Both he and Schultz cited competition for money as a reason to bow out. Begich said raising funds as the No. 2 Democrat was going to be tough. And, he said, he saw data that convinced him that the chance of a Democrat winning the race was much higher if there was just one on the ballot.
Alaska’s election system has proven to be more popular among voters on the left. Alaska conservatives often rail against it, saying it’s too complicated and unfair to Republicans. When a Republican candidate drops out and endorses the other, it’s sometimes seen as voluntarily recreating the partisan primary that they wish was still in effect.
In theory, ranking would neutralize the spoiler effect. In practice, many Alaska voters don’t rank.
To the architect of the election system, attorney Scott Kendall, the candidate withdrawals don’t signal a problem. He points out that both Tom Begich and Matt Schultz endorsed others.
“If either of those candidates had truly had sincerely-held differences with the other candidates, they absolutely should stay in and keep bringing those differences forward,” Kendall said. “But that's not what they said.”
Kendall said the election system was never meant to discourage altruistic behavior, or to force like-minded candidates to compete for months when one doesn’t have a realistic shot at winning.
A staunch defender of Alaska’s current voting method, Kendall maintains that the problems people find with it were often the same or worse before 2022. That’s true, he said, of voter disappointment when a favorite candidate drops out.
“Let's talk about other systems that don't use ranked choice,” he said. “Well, under the closed primary, you've got Bernadette (Wilson) versus Jonathan (Kreiss-Tompkins),” he said, referring to the top-finishing Republican and Democrat in the governor’s race. “That's all you've got. Those are your choices. Period.”
