In Alaska, a campaign supporting an initiative to repeal top-four ranked-choice voting (RCV) submitted 41,895 signatures on Jan. 12. The initiative could appear on the general election ballot in Nov.
In 2020, voters approved Ballot Measure 2, which replaced partisan primaries with open top-four primaries and established ranked-choice voting for general elections, including the presidential election. Ballot Measure 2 received 50.55% of the vote.
A ranked-choice voting system (RCV) is an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. Ballots that ranked a failed candidate as their first, or highest choice, depending on the round, are then reevaluated and counted as first-preference ballots for the next highest-ranked candidate in that round. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of ballots. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority.
