Aside from (obviously) the presidential contest, one of the big issues in the 2024 elections was ranked-choice voting (RCV.) It failed almost everywhere it was tried. But here in the Great Land, RCV was put in place by ballot in 2020, and while a repeal made it onto the 2024 ballot, that measure narrowly failed by a little over 700 votes. Tons of dark money flowed into the state from Outside to keep this system on the books, and now, with the recount concluded, it looks as though the repeal has failed. For now.
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Election officials finished recounting the results of Ballot Measure 2 on Monday, and the outcome remains unchanged.
Alaska will keep ranked choice voting and open primaries.
The repeal effort failed by 743 votes, or about a quarter of one percentage point, according to the Division of Elections. That’s almost exactly the margin reflected in official results certified late last month, which showed the measure failing by 737 out of more than 300,000 votes.
The Alaska Republican Party requested the recount and monitored vote-counting alongside the anti-repeal campaign, No On 2.
Still, Alaskans are nothing if not stubborn. Phil Izon, who was one of the driving forces behind the repeal effort, has vowed to put it on the ballot again in 2026.
Izon also said he plans to submit a petition to place a similar ballot measure before voters in 2026. He said he was encouraged by the failure of ballot measures in other states this year that would have implemented election reforms similar to Alaska’s system.
“Against all odds and with just a fraction of the resources, we stood toe-to-toe with the giants [who] out-funded us 100-to-one and came within a whisper of victory,” he said by phone. “With renewed energy and a belief in our cause, we can turn that razor-thin loss into a decisive win.”
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While the RCV advocates can be expected to dump a lot of Outside money into the 2026 race again, there are some key differences in a mid-term election.
See Related: Alaska and Ranked-Choice Voting: It Ain’t Over Yet
Ranked Choice Voting Fails Bigly Almost Everywhere – Despite Backers Spending Big Bundles of Cash
First, turnout is typically lower in a mid-term election. If the pro-repeal side can fire up their proponents and get them to the voting booths, they may be able to overturn that narrow margin of loss from 2024. But there’s a catch; the ballot initiative petition process in Alaska requires signatures from a certain percentage of voters from the last election. In 2024 the previous election had been a mid-term, and a low-turnout one at that. This time? Not so much.
Second, RCV was a major issue in the 2024 election. It’s not clear yet whether it will be as big a deal in 2026, and if Alaska is the lone holdout, the big dark-money groups that poured bushel baskets of cash into Alaska in 2024 may not be as anxious to pony up in 2026. That shouldn’t make a difference, but it does.
Alaskans are nothing if not stubborn. Phil Izon and the rest of us who oppose RCV aren’t going anywhere. We’re going to try again, and again. The fat lady may have sung a solo, but it was only closing the first act. This opera has a long way yet to go, and as a famous American once said, we have not yet begun to fight.
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