Alaska Supreme Court allows for potential popular repeal of controversial election system

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Alaska's Supreme Court issued a decision Thursday that will allow a question regarding repeal of the state’s controversial ranked choice voting system to appear on the November ballot.

The state's high court upheld a lower court ruling that would allow the ballot measure to come to a popular vote.

"Having considered the record, the parties’ briefs, and the parties’ arguments, we affirm the superior court’s summary judgment order," the judges said in their ruling. 

"An opinion explaining this decision will be issued at a later date."

The case came about after three Alaska residents, led by Elizabeth Medicine Crow, sought to disqualify the measure based on allegedly defective petitions.

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Anchorage, Alaska's skyline (Zihao Chen via Getty Images)

Alaska’s Division of Elections certified in March that enough signatures had been collected to qualify the repeal initiative after the agency allowed petitioners to fix notarized errors in their paperwork.

In 2020, Alaska voters narrowly approved the original ballot measure — with a 50.55% majority recorded — that instituted ranked choice voting there.

The practice, praised as a way to help moderate candidates, changes the election tabulation system from a simple majority framework to one that holds multiple rounds of counting.

In the first round, totals for each candidate are tabulated, and the candidate with the fewest "first votes" is eliminated. The "second votes" of that candidate’s supporters are added to the totals of the remaining candidates, round after round, until a winner is decided.

Alaska Republicans, in particular, criticized the practice in 2022 after Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, won in an otherwise shocking upset in the red state to succeed six-decade GOP lawmaker Don Young, who died that spring at 88.

The two leading GOP candidates under the new system, former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III, the conservative scion of a noted Democratic political family in the state, collectively garnered more votes than Peltola in the first round of tabulation but still lost.

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Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, speaks to supporters. (Getty Images )

Kelly Tshibaka, a fellow Republican who lost to Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2022, previously called it "deceptive how they sell [ranked-choice voting] to the public" as a "moderating force" when it is not in her view.

She pointed to the failed candidacy of Al Gross, a Democrat turned Independent who, at times, led in the primary but dropped out, leaving Peltola, on his left, to remain.

Meanwhile, proponents argue the practice helps take partisanship out of elections. 

In Alaska specifically, many have pointed to the fact both conservative Gov. Mike Dunleavy and moderate Murkowski emerged victorious in 2022.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also sung its praises after the "biggest ranked choice voting election in America" in his city in 2021, and states like Maine have also adopted it.

Ranked choice voting however, has also been criticized by Alaska conservative activists like Judy Eledge, a former schoolteacher in Barrow, which is now known as Utqiagvik. 

"You basically don't get your first choice of who you want to win, and it enables people that otherwise would never win anything," Eledge said in a recent Fox News Digital interview. 

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American flags and vote buttons  (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)

"It gives them enough to win and basically just destroys the party system within the state when it comes to elections."

Some on the right do support the system, including former Virginia State Delegate Chris Saxman, now executive director of Virginia Free, an organization that provides objective, nonpartisan political information to the business community.

In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, the former Staunton lawmaker noted Virginia Republicans utilized ranked choice voting in their 2021 convention candidate selection process and ultimately won back the governorship after a decade out of power.

Saxman spoke of a run-in with a Republican consultant at a party function who decried the use of the system because the right wing could have "gone after [the more moderate Republican] Youngkin harder, but we couldn’t afford to alienate his voters."

"I was like, ‘So, it’s a problem not to attack a fellow Republican?’" Saxman countered.

The 2024 general election in Alaska will still be operated under ranked choice voting.

Fox News Digital reached out to Peltola, Murkowski, Dunleavy and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, for comment.