Alaska's screwy 'ranked choice' election system

 Washington Examiner:

In the late hours tonight, Alaskan election officials will begin the tedious process of tabulating the results for the state's at-large congressional special election. The process will be especially tedious because this will be the first Alaskan statewide election in which ranked-choice voting is used.

Instead of party primaries followed by a general election between the various party nominees, the normal procedure in most states, Alaska will be holding a contest in which voters rank the candidates based on their preference. After one round of counting first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest will be dropped. His or her voters' second choices will then be awarded their respective votes. This process will then be repeated until someone has a majority.

Does ranked-choice voting improve turnout? There is no evidence of this. Does it improve the process? Not really. Alaskans were convinced that this was somehow better and adopted it in a 2020 referendum. Tonight's experience may cause them to think again.

"It just makes the process more complex," Jason Snead told the Washington Examiner last summer. "It does not do anything to improve voter turnout or bolster voter confidence in the elections, and it is truly an unnecessary reform."

This is absolutely true, and all on its own, it would be enough reason to oppose ranked-choice voting. But there are two further considerations. The first is the confounding delay in tabulation that ranked-choice voting inevitably brings. Vote counting in Australia, where this type of voting is common, is known to drag on interminably.

Last summer, New York City provided an illustration of the needless complexity and confounding logic involved in counting ranked-choice votes. In the Democratic primary, now-Mayor Eric Adams was the first choice of far more voters than anyone else. But over the course of two weeks and seven rounds of redistributing the votes of also-rans and write-in candidates, he won by the skin of his teeth.

The second reason is more theoretical and also perhaps more important. Ranked-choice voting actually assaults the very notion of "one person, one vote," which the Supreme Court established decades ago as the standard in elections. Under ranked-choice voting, people who choose candidates with less support effectively get a second and perhaps even a third bite at the apple during the vote count. One person's votes for fourth place can override another person's first-place votes. In New York last June, those voting for other candidates besides Adams were given second and third chances to overcome the leader.

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They need to rethink their vote for this system for election.  Runoffs make much more sense.