A sore foot in the offing

Alaska Democrats will be able to pick from among 12 – that’s right, an even a dozen – presidential candidates in the state party’s crowded primary election.

Any way you cut it, that is a lot of candidates.

Even better, the winner will be chosen in the closed primary by mail-in, ranked-choice balloting.

The candidates include former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Michael Bennet, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former Rep. John Delaney, and former Gov. Deval Patrick.

Also on the ballot: former Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Pete Buttigieg along with businessmen Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang.

The 2016 Alaska Democratic primary was conducted by caucus, and Sanders won. This time, with ranked-choice voting, we wonder whether the outcome will be different.

At the Democratic National Convention in July the winner will be chosen by a majority of the delegates.

No matter what happens in Alaska, some voters in the Democratic primary are going to be hugely disappointed because of the machinations involved in ranked-choice voting, which, in essence, takes a fairly simple voting apparatus – and complicates and confuses it beyond recognition.

Make no mistake, ranked-choice voting is a terrible idea. You could end up having your vote go to somebody you would never vote for in other circumstances. In a general election, the final vote could come down to a choice between two Republicans or two Democrats. In a Democratic primary, a Bernie supporter could end up voting for Warren.

The Heritage Foundation says ranked-choice voting is nothing more than “a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win elections.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is no right-wing crazy, nor is former Gov. Jerry Brown. Newsom vetoed ranked-choice voting in runoffs, saying it “often led to voter confusion, and that the promise that ranked-choice voting leads to greater democracy is not necessarily fulfilled.” Brown vetoed a bill expanding it, saying: “Ranked-choice voting is overly complicated and confusing. I believe it deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.”

While we abhor even the notion of ranked-choice voting, we are loathe to interfere when Democrats want to shoot themselves in the foot. We suspect there will be more than a little hollering when the balloting is finished.

Pass the popcorn.