The Alaska Division of Elections added about 4,000 new votes to the election results on Monday, erasing the lead that the conservative-backed effort to repeal the state’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system has had since election day.
Monday’s update gives the “no” side of the repeal a 192-vote lead out of 314,056 votes counted on the issue. If the trend of absentee, early and questioned ballots continues for the remaining ballots, Alaska will not return to the partisan primary system that has largely favored more conservative candidates.
The repeal’s lead has continuously dwindled since election day, but the question was whether it would be erased by the time absentee, early and questioned ballots were all counted. The latest round of absentee ballots came from Anchorage and broke nearly 2:1 against the repeal, with more than 2,400 voters against the measure and 1,300 in favor.
A little more than 5,000 ballots are expected to be counted between now and the end of Wednesday, which is the final day for overseas ballots to arrive. Regardless of the outcome, the narrow margin will trigger an automatic recount.
Down the ballot, the additional votes didn’t flip any race standings.
Republican congressional candidate Nick Begich’s lead over Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola narrowed by about 1,000 votes (48.53-46.29). Peltola has a shot at making up the roughly 7,000-vote gap if the remaining votes and ranked-choice voting tabulation both break in her favor, but it’s a longshot.
In the legislative races, East Anchorage Democratic Rep. Cliff Groh has put some breathing room between himself and Republican former Rep. David Nelson. Groh now leads by 25 votes out of 3,530 cast. He had been up by just ten as of the last count.
About open primaries and RCV
Alaska voters adopted the open primary and ranked-choice voting system as part of a slate of election reforms in 2020, which included anti-dark money provisions. The system has all candidates run in an open primary, with the top four finishers advancing to the general election regardless of affiliation. The general election is then conducted with ranked-choice voting — essentially an instant-runoff system — so candidates from the same party don’t automatically play spoiler, and the winner has a majority of voters’ support.
In elections conducted under the system, moderate and centrist candidates have had more success. In districts that once produced reliably conservative Republican candidates, voters have since opted for more bipartisan-minded Republicans who are less beholden to the party, more likely to support things like school funding and are disinterested in culture-war issues.
Those voter choices are why the Alaska Legislature is already set to be organized into two bipartisan-led majorities when it convenes in January.
Conservatives have railed against the system, arguing that it undermines the control that conservative primary voters once had over shaping state politics.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
