Ranked choice voting is on life support

The complicated electoral method was thoroughly rejected in November.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Thinking Minnesota magazine.

On Nov. 5, 2024, Donald Trump won his second presidential term. But that day was important for another reason: Ranked choice voting was soundly rejected — except in Washington, D.C., where bad ideas live forever.

In 2020, Alaskans approved a 25-page initiative full of vague promises to improve elections and eliminate “dark money” influence in campaigns. The initiative, backed by national progressive groups funding Alaskans for Better Elections, passed by a margin of about 3,700 votes (one percent) and instituted ranked choice voting.

Alaska’s version is a choose-one, nonpartisan primary where the top four vote-getters advance to a ranked-choice general election. If a candidate receives over 50 percent of first-choice votes, the candidate wins. If no candidate earns enough first-choice votes, counting begins in rounds where the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Voters whose highest-choice preference was eliminated have their vote transferred to their next-highest preference.

When U.S. Rep. Don Young died suddenly in 2022, Alaskans got their first taste of ranked choice voting. Forty-eight candidates entered the special election primary, and the top four advanced to the general election (though only after some legal questions about eligibility). The two Republicans split their first-choice votes, tallying 60 percent together, and the so-called moderate candidate, Mary Peltola (D-Alaska), won.

Believe it or not, confusion about ranked choice voting decreases voter turnout. The Alaska Division of Elections spent millions on education efforts that failed to clear things up for voters. According to the state’s official website, voters were to “rank as many or as few candidates as you would like.” That misleading advice conveniently ignores ballot exhaustion, which happens when all of a voters’ ranked candidates are eliminated before the final round. If a voter chooses not to rank a second, third, or fourth-place preference, their ballots are at risk of being discarded and the voter may be disenfranchised.

There’s an important distinction between a majority of votes remaining and a majority of votes cast in ranked-choice systems. Discarding exhausted ballots means that the eventual winner often fails to receive a majority of votes cast, even when a candidate gets a majority of votes remaining.

The October 2020 report, “The Failed Experiment of Ranked-Choice Voting” published by Alaska Policy Forum (this author’s former employer) and Maine Policy Institute found that of 96 ranked-choice races nationwide, the eventual winner failed to receive a true majority 61 percent of the time. Despite the often-used narrative, ranked choice voting doesn’t seem to elect moderate, “consensus” candidates. A working paper from the American Enterprise Institute, “Beyond the Spoiler Effect: Can Ranked Choice Voting Solve the Problem of Political Polarization?” published in August 2023, simulated ranked choice elections in every state and found that it “tends to produce winning candidates who are more divergent ideologically from their state’s median voter” and “the effect is most pronounced in the most polarized states.”

Back to 2024, when Alaskans voted on Ballot Measure 2 to repeal the state’s ranked choice voting system, the ballot measure failed by a mere 743 votes — a narrower margin than when it passed in 2020. After a recount confirmed the results, advocates of repeal have filed a new ballot initiative to try again in 2026.

Given a flood of out-of-state donations against repeal, it’s amazing that it was that close. The supposedly “citizen-led” campaign names its top three contributors as Unite America, Article IV, and the Action Now Initiative. Opponents raised $14 million against supporters’ $150,000, flooding Alaska’s tiny media market with the backing of big names like Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Ads falsely suggested that veterans would be “forced to join a political party in order to vote for the candidate [they] want.”

What’s that about dark money, again? In 2022, Nevada approved Question 3 to institute open primaries, with the top five candidates advancing to a ranked choice general election, by 52.9 percent. However, to modify the state’s constitution, it needed to be approved again in 2024. The Nevada Voters First PAC raised $22.9 million in 2022 and $19.9 million last year, with the help of familiar suspects, yet Nevadans voted against Question 3 with 54.4 percent of the vote.

Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon considered and rejected ranked choice voting in 2024. Opposition was overwhelming in Idaho, where 70 percent voted against Proposition 1: Top-Four Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative. Montana’s constitutional initiatives, or CI 126 and CI 127, failed as well. Had they passed, it would’ve been up to the Montana Legislature to determine a method to ensure candidates win a majority, with likely choices being ranked choice voting or runoffs.

Even Colorado and Oregon — hardly hotbeds of conservativism — rejected Proposition 131 and Measure 117 with solid majorities. Missouri voters even approved a constitutional amendment to prohibit ranked choice voting by 68 percent. The only major jurisdiction that adopted ranked choice in 2024 was D.C., which approved I-83 with 72.7 percent and gave Kamala Harris 93 percent of the vote.

Ranked choice has delivered Alaska confusing ballots, long tabulation times, and worsened polarization. Other states have taken notice, even if the Beltway hasn’t.