More bad ideas

A group calling itself Alaskans for Better Elections, financed almost entirely by Outside groups such as Represent.Us, FairVote Action Fund and American Promise, are pushing an initiative that would saddle the state with so-called ranked-choice voting and open primary elections.

Both are incredibly lousy ideas.

Ranked-choice voting is touted as allowing the election of more independents. Independents, we have noticed in Alaska, tend to be that in name only. They generally have caucused with Democrats and run on the Democrats’ tickets with the party’s blessing.

Ranked-choice voting, in reality, appears designed to elect more Democrats, no matter what they call themselves.

Here’s how it works, according to the Heritage Foundation: You would rank candidates, from one to however many you choose, on your ballot. In the first round tally, if none is chosen as the number one pick by a majority of voters, then the candidate with the least number of votes would be eliminated from the ballot. If you selected that candidate as your top pick, your vote automatically would go to your second choice. The tally would be recalculated again and again, until one candidate wins a majority as the second, third, or even fourth choice of voters.

You could end up having your vote go to a candidate you never would dream of voting for in our traditional system. It gets worse.

“Not only is ranked choice voting too complicated, it disenfranchises voters, because ballots that do not include the two ultimate finalists are cast aside to manufacture a faux majority for the winner,” the foundation concludes. “But it is only a majority of the voters remaining in the final round, not a majority of all of the voters who actually cast votes in the elections.”

As for opening primary elections to any and all comers? From where we sit the idea appears aimed at destroying political parties. Primary elections, adopted to end candidate selection behind closed doors in the smoke-filled rooms of yesteryear, allow party members to vote in an open election to decide their party’s nominee.

In Alaska, the Republican primary is closed; the Democrats’ is open.

Allowing anybody and everybody to vote in primaries, regardless of political affiliation, thwarts a party’s choosing its strongest candidates. It happens everywhere there are “open” primaries; one party stacks the other’s primary with votes for that party’s weakest candidates.

In the end, open primaries dilute a party’s ability to field candidates who adhere to its platform.

Both ideas, ranked-choice voting and open primaries, strike at the very heart of our elections and are being promulgated by folks clearly more interested in electing fringe candidates and Democrats than in furthering democracy.