Ranked-choice voting worked well, state election officials say. So did Dominion voting machines

Alaska’s new “ranked choice” voting system worked well in its first test in the state’s Aug. 16 primary election, Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer and state election officials say, and its second test in the Nov. 8 general election will go just as smoothly.

Elections director Gail Fenumiai said there were a few problems problems unrelated to ranked choice voting that had to do with the 2022 redistricting, and where voters were directed to a different polling location because district boundaries were change. Those issues will be remedied by the time of the November election, she said.

As lieutenant governor Meyer is in charge of elections. He and Fenumiai reviewed performance of the new procedure in a briefing Wednesday, Sept. 21, at Commonwealth North, an Anchorage-based public policy group. Grace Ramsey, co-director of Democracy Rising, an election reform group, also participated.

Meyer said 190,000 ballots were cast Aug. 16, a good result for a primary election where the voter turnout is usually low. Voters felt well informed about the new system, he said. Exit-poll surveys of voters indicated that 95 percent had received information about ranked-choice before voting and 85 percent believed the system was simple and easy to understand, the lieutenant governor said.

Meyer also said the state’s overall voting system worked well, too, including the Dominion vote tabulators that have been used since the 1990s in Alaska. “The Dominion tabulators have worked fine. There was never an issue over them until the 2020 election,” when Donald Trump lost the presidency, Meyer said.

The machines are mechanical devices that tabulate paper ballots and are not connected to the internet, he said.

People get emotional over elections when they are on the losing side, Meyer said. “I ran for election 18 times and I always won, so I think the election system works great,” he quipped. But to assure voters the Division of Elections routinely done a hand-count of a sample of the ballots cast as a cross-check. There is rarely a variance between machine and hand counts, the lieutenant governor said.

Conservative voters in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough have criticized the machines, too after hearing talk about problems, which were not verified, from other states. The borough will do a hand count of votes on Nov. 3 as a backup to the machine tabulation.

Ramsey, who has worked to educate people in the Lower48 on ranked-choice voting for years, said most people find the new system intuitive. There are four choices. “The first is your favorite and the second is a backup in case the first pick doesn’t make it,” she said. The process continues with the third and fourth choices on the ballot.

“Fifty one percent of votes cast is needed to win. If that happens in the first round of counting there is a winner,” she said. If no one gets 51 percent the lowest-polling candidate is eliminated and second choices are allocated, and the process continues until someone gets 51 percent, Ramsey said.

During the first test of ranked-choice voting in the special election held Aug. 16, to fill out deceased Congressman Don Young’s term, “seventy three percent of voters cast ballots for at least two candidates, according to post-election analyses, Ramsey said. “That is close to the 74 percent average in other states,” where ranked choice voting has been done, she said.

Meyer said there are tweaks that will make the voting system better. Some of these were in an election reform bill he backed along with Gov. Mike Dunleavy, but which failed to pass the Legislature.

One change that is needed, Meyer said, is the use of software that can electronically verify signatures on absentee ballots. This would reduce a large number of the ballots that were disqualified because of questions over signatures. Another helpful changes would be expanding the option to vote by mail. The would be important for small rural communities where it is sometimes difficult to find poll workers.

As for the rural vote, the Division of Elections as well as the Alaska Federation of Natives are working hard to make sure voting goes smoothly in small villages. Ballot information is being made available in 12 languages with audio guides to voting available in 11 languages, Fenumiai said.

Ramsey, of Democracy Rising, said ranked choice voting may be creating changes in the way candidates campaign, and that that’s for the better. “Candidates are asking, ‘vote for me’ as the number one choice, but also ‘consider me for second choice,” she said. It’s a more complicated request and that’s difficult in an advertisement or social media message .

“It’s best done through direct contact, in door-knocking,” she said, and this will lead to a greater emphasis on person-to-person campaigning with less reliance on mass media.

Taking partisanship out of the primary election will also encourage more voter participation. “Fifty three percent of (Alaska) voters are unaffiliated with the political party, and this is consistent with the nation,” Ramsey said. Ranked-choice voting did away with the closed Republican primary, which forced people to vote one ballot slate or another.

That rankled an electorate that is mostly independent, she said.

It may also encourage more people to run for office because they won’t have to put a label beside their name on the ballot, which causes voters to focus more on the candidate rather than the label, she said.