Alaska ranked choice voting, explained

Alaska has a new election system this year. We teamed up with the Anchorage Daily News to explain how it works. Here’s what to expect when you vote.

[@oscarsoto8428]

I heavily appreciate the Mean Girls reference with “She doesn’t even go here!”

[@Lilo-A]

What I like more than rank choice voting is having the governor and lieutenant governor running on the same ticket. It eliminates potential problems when the governor is out of town.

[@akairborne]

Good video. I would clarify that this is for statewide and national elections, not local. So mayor, assembly, etc. are conducted per local or borough law.

[@whaterverman479]

There is no way Palin lost in Alaska. More people actually ranked her first the problem is the dems ranked her last causing her to lose. Shitty system

[@akairborne]

@@whaterverman479 it's a great system because it's going to exclude extremists and make politicians actually move to the center.

[@logicbomb3579]

Simple concepts are difficult for me, this must be a scam!

[@pdxcorgidad]

"She doesn't even go here!" is the best line. I don't laugh out loud often, but holy hell that was amazing.

[@RA-om8ck]

More like Nancy Pelosi.

[@alexanderx33]

Penguin just has alot of feelings

[@6violet6]

concerned about the diagrams not actually showing consecutive rounds and especially by diagram showing 4 of 8 wins while words say "more than half wins"

[@nathankinman7753]

But 4 polar bears 2 penguins & 2 owls..... That's still not a majority. A majority does not mean 50%. A majority means ABOVE 50%. ..... Maybe first see if any of the other 50% ranked the bear as a "3rd" choice, and then see who had the least votes in the beginning between the owl and the penguin, eliminate that loser, and let the other face the bear in a runoff on a later date.

[@dancooper3066]

I watched it once and I'm confused.

[@user-bq3bf5ev6v]

Funny how Alaska adopts Rank voting when their RINO senator is about to lose!

[@eyescreamcake]

RCV elected the wrong person, again. Begich was preferred by a majority of voters over every other candidate, yet was eliminated due to vote-splitting.

[@nathankinman7753]

My sympathies from Texas. I wish we had RCV, and as a Libertarian, I'm gunning for it. However, hopefully this system will cause more people to turn out and vote, and get rid of Sen. Lisa and her ilk.

[@duckshepherd]

@@eyescreamcake Whether or not that’s true, under Alaska’s former system, Begich would have also lost, because Sarah Palin would have won the Republican primary. It would have been Sarah versus Mary in the general election, which Mary would have also won according to ranked choice voting results of how many Begich voters would rather vote for Mary over Sarah. Begich honestly had no realistic chance of winning under either system, which sucks. I’m willing to bet, though, that Begich might have won if he had run directly against Mary. But no way would Sarah ever offered to step down to let that happen.

[@ExpertAdviceTV]

It’s a conspiracy!

[@rockstarofredondo]

Bingo!

[@RA-om8ck]

This sounds like a scam! So confusing and so much work, and to make matters worse it would take longer to know the winner! This is creating room for fraud.

[@user-bq3bf5ev6v]

Alaska voters voted 60 percent for a republican yet lost the election! Explain that result in a way that makes sense.

[@tavroaar8173]

When do republicans care about the popular vote lol

[@jhonklan3794]

No they didn't. Palin got 30% whereas Peltola got 36%. I know math is probably hard for you, but Peltola got more votes overall.

[@eyescreamcake]

Because RCV is undemocratic.

[@eyescreamcake]

@@jhonklan3794 54% of the voters preferred Begich over Peltola, according to the exit polls. RCV elected the wrong person, again.

[@Br0nto5aurus]

You're thinking with parties, which makes sense if there was just one candidate per party. There were three candidates, rather than one candidate from each of the two major parties. Palin and Begich were the Republican candidates, Peltola was the Democratic candidate. Palin and Begich hate each other, which means their supporters hate each other. A portion of Begich's supporters (enough to swing an election) hate Palin so much, they would rather see a Democrat in office than Palin if Begich lost. In other words, Begich was the penguin, once he was eliminated, they looked at the ballots that put him as their 1st choice, and counted their 2nd choices. Once those votes were counted for the 2nd choice rather than the 1st, 51.5% voted for Peltola, and 48.5% voted for Palin, so Palin lost, and Peltola is Alaska's first Indigenous Congresswoman.

[@gussuk11]

STOP THE DAMN COMMERCIALS!

[@dancooper3066]

Sounds like there's a scam in there somehow.

[@eyescreamcake]

There is!

[@Adam.Rushing]

The issue with this system is the 50% requirement. I.E. Elk had 49% in the first round. In the second round, he didn't...but that's because everyone that really wanted Elk put him as their 1st choice. The fact that those are discarded is BS! This system is easily fixed by getting rid of the 50% threshold. Simply put the top 4 on there, and let everyone vote between them. One Round, winner take all. Simple. Fast. Efficient. Thoughts?

[@delonlier4214]

I think you are completely confused, watch the video again. If Elk got 49% in round one he WOULD NOT get eliminated in round two. It is literally impossible for a candidate with 49% and get booted out in round two (unless one other candidate got 51% and then the election is over). Everyone who is not booted KEEPs their 1st choice votes. only the candidates who loose have their 2nd and 3rd place votes allotted to other candidates.

[@Adam.Rushing]

@@delonlier4214 Yup, I was...terribly. I was actually looking for this comment to fix it, but I couldn't remember which video it was on. Thanks!...and...I still hate this system lol In the end, I don't disagree with having more people on the ballot, but it should be limited to parties...meaning each party holds it's individual primary, then each party sends it's best representative to the main ballot. This is just garbage - it's a way for mediocre/bad candidates to stand more of a chance...that's all.

[@ethohalfslab]

@@Adam.Rushing The whole point is to make people feel comfortable voting for less popular candidates. If only 2 candidates have a reasonable chance of winning in a normal election system, then voting for anyone other than those two basically means your vote doesn't count. With this system, you can safely put your favorite candidate as #1 without risking your vote.

[@Adam.Rushing]

@@ethohalfslab Gotcha...so even our elections are about feelings now. Not trying to be a d*** to you here, not at all....but how else can you see mary peltola getting elected? She wouldn't have in the other system...imo

[@ethohalfslab]

@@Adam.Rushing Sorry, I used the wrong word in my comment. When I said "make people feel comfortable voting for less popular candidates", what I meant was in old systems it is literally against your best interest to vote for the candidate you feel alines best with your views. If a candidate isn't in the top 2 popularity wise, then voting for that candidate is practically a vote for the candidate you dislike the most among those top 2. Ranked choice tries to fix that by making there be no risk for voting for unpopular candidates. Once those unpopular candidates get eliminated, your vote would still count towards your second most favorite candidate. Does that make more sense?

[@runtelthat_tv2639]

Stupid system

[@eyescreamcake]

Final-Four Voting is two bad ideas rolled into one. It's seriously frustrating how people jump headlong into supporting systems like this without doing even a little research into the alternatives, how they work, or what their actual consequences are. Open primaries with single-mark ballots don't fix polarization; they amplify it. They encourage multiple candidates to run against each other, but only allow voters to express an opinion about one, so if there are many good representatives, they will all be eliminated through vote-splitting, leaving only unusual, unrepresentative candidates to survive for the second round. Using Approval voting in the primary would be a much better idea, allowing voters to express support for as many candidates as they consider acceptable. Then the second round is held using the instant-runoff variety of ranked-choice voting, which is a broken obsolete voting method that people keep pushing in the US without understanding how it works. Under IRV, a candidate can win even when a strong majority of voters said that they preferred someone else on their ballots. Yes, the voters can _express_ all of their preferences between candidates on their ballots, but because of the way IRV eliminates candidates based only on first preference votes, many of those preferences aren't actually counted while deciding the winner, making the result undemocratic. There are much better options for the general election, such as Condorcet Ranked Choice systems (which always count all voters' preferences), STAR Voting, Balanced Approval Voting, etc. Please learn more about other voting methods and some of the basics of social choice theory, these flaws have been understood for hundreds of years. The goal is great, but this solution doesn't actually achieve those goals.

[@crisp_like_dylan]

How exactly is IRV ranked-choice voting a broken and obsolete voting method? Specifically, how is it worse than the current general election process in the US, where casting a vote for a 3rd party candidate is literally wasting your time and energy? I admit there may be technically better methods out there, but insisting we jump directly to those is letting perfect be the enemy of good, imo. To be clear, I agree that open primaries with single-mark ballots are terrible and I would much rather see IRV ranked-choice voting for those as well (or a potentially better method that you have suggested).

[@eyescreamcake]

@@crisp_like_dylan Casting a vote for a 3rd party candidate under IRV Ranked Choice is also throwing your vote away. Despite all the FairVote marketing propaganda you've probably heard, it is not actually safe to vote your conscience under IRV. Voting honestly can help the greater of two evils win, while voting tactically would help the lesser of two evils win, just like under our current system. If I proposed adopting Supplementary Vote, claiming that it's marginally better than our current system, would you go along with it, so as not to "let the perfect be the enemy of the good"? Or would you argue that Supplementary Vote is mediocre at best, and advocate for something better?

[@crisp_like_dylan]

@@eyescreamcake I'm no expert, but based on my research IRV ranked choice is pretty resistant to tactical voting. Under IRV ranked choice voting, casting your vote for a 3rd party candidate rarely results in you actually throwing your vote away. It might end up producing a result that you didn't expect or want, i.e. 3rd party candidate you voted for (1st choice) beats your second choice in 1st choice votes and your second choice is eliminated, then on the recount, your third/last overall choice wins the election. But even when that happens, you didn't throw away your vote (you gave your favorite the best chance to win) and the candidate with the most overall support won. If the 3rd party candidate had more support from your second choice's 1st choice voters, they would have won and that would be awesome to even have the potential for a 3rd party candidate to win. The instances of potential tactical voting with IRV ranked choice seem like just that, potential, and would require hindsight knowledge of how the votes shook out in order to pull off. Yes, I would support adopting Supplementary Vote, because change and progress often has to be done incrementally, as painful as it is. The same concept prevails for adopting IRV ranked choice vs the potentially better systems you suggest. IRV ranked choice is being used successfully in a couple places already, making it much more possible to adopt. Our system of representation is utterly broken and elections are one of the things we need to fix to make politicians actually listen to the people (not just the special interests and billionaires). The people in power are rightfully resistant to any change because the status quo is actively good for them. Fighting against incremental change because it's not the best thing we could ultimately do is not helping us get closer to our goals.

[@eyescreamcake]

@@crisp_like_dylan Yes, it's resistant to tactical voting because of the undemocratic way that it eliminates candidates. Voting for a candidate may help them, or it may hurt them. Voting against a candidate may hurt them, or it may help them. The arbitrary randomness of the process makes it difficult to know whether a tactical vote will help or hurt your candidate, but that's a bug, not a feature, since voting honestly has the same problems. Yes, you can still throw your vote away under IRV. If you vote honestly, you can help the greater of two evils win, while voting tactically for the two party system would help the lesser of two evils win. It works just like our current system, disincentivizing votes for third parties and perpetuating a two-party system. Then why aren't you advocating for Supplementary Vote? It's already used in other places, too. FPTP is used in even more places, why don't we go with that, if popularity is what matters? Yes, our system of representation is broken. We need to fix it. IRV does not fix it. It suffers from all the same problems and perpetuates the status quo, which is why the people in power support it. It's a fake reform that makes it seem like it's safe to vote for independents and third parties, but then throws away those votes and transfers them to the main two. It _protects_ the two-party system from spoiling by third parties.

[@crisp_like_dylan]

@@eyescreamcake I don't think that IRV is anywhere near as arbitrary or random as you claim it is. I would be interested to see some case studies or in-depth analysis supporting your position, but that's not really the point I want to discuss here. I don't believe that either major party in the US has mine or the general peoples' best interests at heart, so my main objective is to make it possible for 3rd party candidates to have a snowball's chance in hell to play spoiler. I will support anything that moves us closer to that goal, including Supplementary Vote. What voting system would you recommend to best accomplish the goal of opening elections to 3rd parties and why would it be effective?

[@JIBtacos]

That's a stupid voting system. It's not fair. Someone could get 49% of 1st choice votes and 30% of 2nd choice votes, but still lose to one of their opponents who got 10% of 1st choice votes, but 51% of 2nd choice votes. Voters should get one choice and whoever gets the most votes wins. Why is Alaska making things more complicated and unfair?

[@moonman239]

Actually, the system is fairer. Imagine if Bear got 40% of the votes under your proposed system and the rest got 20% each. Bear wins, but he represents the interests of only 40% of the electorate. RCV ensures the other voters' interests are at least somewhat more represented by whoever wins. We can even increase the representation in some races by increasing the number of spots to fill - for example, instead of 1 legislator representing a district, we could have 3 or 5 and then a single transferable vote system to determine who fills the seats.

[@JIBtacos]

@@moonman239 Fairer to who? Not to the people who voted for Bear in your example. You're throwing a bone to the losers in the election. RCV is not the way an election should work. Even if one candidate gets 40% of the votes, as long as that's the majority of the votes, then they should win, period. When the candidate that a voter chose wins the majority of the votes, they shouldn't be forced to compromise and say, "Well, even though my candidate got the majority of the votes, let's instead elect this other more moderate 3rd person just so that more people are less upset they lost." That's not the way elections should work. Elections aren't about compromise. They're about majority rules. There's no point in having a vote if it's not going to count.

[@alitlweird]

@@JIBtacos It’s a convoluted way to ensure that donkey wins every time. It’s like common core voting.

[@Kenzie_-xe9dk]

Imagine if 60% of voters prefer penguin, polar bear and owl over elk. And in this case 40% of voters prefer elk over the rest. In this case, majority of voters do not want elk to win. But their vote is split over 3 candidates. So each polar bear, penguin, and owl get around 20% of the vote. Elk has more votes in the beginning, but a majority of people don’t actually want him to win. So once the rank choice voting process occurs, elk loses. I think that this process can expand our democracy from a two-party system. Because as it stands now, if you vote 3rd party, you are pretty much throwing away your vote. I think this voting process could decrease political polarization in the US.

[@JIBtacos]

@@Kenzie_-xe9dk In your example, the majority of people didn't want penguin, polar bear, or owl to win either. Elk should win. And if a 3rd party wants to compete with Democrats and Republicans for votes, then they need to come up with a platform that appeals to people more than the platforms of Democrats or Republicans.

[@phil3924]

This system is so bizarre.

[@Eggheadpancake]

Why?

[@paulaspagnuolo8285]

So if Elk had 49% how does that eliminate him? This is a horrible system in my opinion you end up with the least 'hated' candidates. Good luck Alaska.

[@crisp_like_dylan]

You are fundamentally misunderstanding the system. "If no candidate has more than 50% of the 1st choice votes, the one with the LEAST 1st choice votes is eliminated." If Elk has 49% of the 1st choice votes, it is mathematically impossible for Elk to have the least number of 1st choice votes and be eliminated as a result. In this example, Elk is really close to winning with an outright majority (it needs just a couple more votes to break 50% of the 1st choice votes). After the candidate with the least 1st choice votes is eliminated, the voters' ballots who had the eliminated candidate as their 1st choice are recounted using their 2nd choice and those votes are added to the remaining candidates 1st choice vote totals. If enough of those voters had Elk as their 2nd choice, Elk could get enough votes to push it over that 50% threshold and Elk would win the election. If that doesn't happen, you repeat the process of removing the candidate with the least 1st choice votes and retotaling the votes until their are only 2 candidates left and one of them inevitably has greater than 50% of the 1st choice votes. The video didn't do you any favors by rapidly going from an example of Elk winning outright by having greater than 50% of the 1st choice votes straight into a totally separate example of Elk being eliminated from having the least out of the 3 candidates in a situation where no one has more than 50%.

[@eyescreamcake]

Not true. This system can actually eliminate all the best candidates until only the two most hated are left. It's poorly designed junk and I don't understand why people keep pushing it in the US. It's like they hear of one voting system and then immediately marry it without considering alternatives.

[@Toadyru]

@@crisp_like_dylan In the future there will be only two people on the ballot (One GOP, One Democrat)...... More than one candidate representing your party means you lose.

[@Toppro]

@@Toadyru but that's exactly the system we have now 99% of the time. One Democrat, One Republican.

[@ishanbhatt1123]

ELK WOULD NOT BE ELMINANTED!!! THE LEAST LIKE CANDIDATE WOULD BE ELIMENANTED. SO THE PENGUIN!!

[@carlaevans7957]

This confusing system is bound to create mass confusion on an epic scale. I think that’s the point.

[@Eggheadpancake]

What was confusing about what he just explained? A 4 year old can rank their favorite toys. An adult should be able to rank their political candidates.

[@eyescreamcake]

Its purpose is to perpetuate the two-party system while fooling people into thinking it's a reform.

[@eyescreamcake]

@@Eggheadpancake Most people who promote RCV don't really understand how it works. They think it "fixes the spoiler effect" or "makes it safe to vote honestly for your true favorite without wasting your vote" or "reduces polarization" but none of those are actually true.

[@Br0nto5aurus]

What's confusing about it? You put the person you like first and the person you hate last, and sort everyone else somewhere in between. There are videos that explain it with ice cream, candy, sticky notes, pick your medium.

[@eyescreamcake]

@@Br0nto5aurus The ballot isn't confusing; the elimination process is confusing. There are dozens of different methods for choosing a winner from ranked ballots, and they all can choose different candidates. Most people who advocate RCV have only a superficial understanding of how it works.

[@morriem]

Election "Day!" not election week! Questionable about it changing from fail to pass overnight!

[@crisp_like_dylan]

I'll get behind this as soon as "Election Day" is a national holiday and all citizens have equal access to the polls. Until then, waiting a couple days/weeks after the actual election day for dedicated poll workers to carefully tally votes and certify the election results is a small price to pay for closer to equal voting rights.

[@gryoluther7242]

You, my friend, need to be more patient. It's not a perfect system but it is leagues better than voting for the lesser evil.

[@eyescreamcake]

@@gryoluther7242 You still have to vote for the lesser evil under RCV, or you could waste your vote. Don't believe the lies used to market it.

[@arthurfonzarelli9331]

So you're being asked to vote for people you don't want or only getting one vote? Sounds fair and reasonable.

[@rockstarofredondo]

Correct. It gives some voters multiple votes which violates the 14th, and forces you to undermine your own first choice.