Alaska did something unusual in 2020. It threw out party primaries, replaced them with a single open primary, and adopted ranked choice voting for general elections. Six years later the state is being asked to undo all of it. Ballot Measure 2 goes before voters on November 3, and it would repeal both the open primary and the ranked choice general election, along with some campaign disclosure rules.
This is the second attempt. The last repeal effort failed by 737 votes, a margin of about two tenths of a percent, which is close enough that neither side treats the question as settled. Outside money is arriving from both directions. Alaska is small enough that the rest of the country gets to use it as a laboratory, and the people living inside the experiment have opinions about being studied.
What Alaska Actually Adopted
Two separate reforms got bundled into one initiative, which matters enormously for how the repeal is being argued. The open primary puts every candidate on one ballot regardless of party, and the top four advance. The general election then uses ranked choice voting, where voters rank candidates and lower preferences get redistributed until someone holds a majority. You can like one half and dislike the other. The ballot does not let you split the difference, and that packaging is itself part of the fight.
The Case For Keeping It
Supporters make a structural argument rather than a partisan one. Under closed primaries a candidate could win a safe seat with a small slice of the most committed voters and never face a broad electorate. Open primaries plus ranked choice force candidates to talk to people outside their base, because second and third choices decide close races. Advocates also point to less scorched earth campaigning, since alienating your opponent’s supporters costs you the rankings you need. The claim is that the system rewards coalition builders over base pleasers.
The Case For Repealing It
Opponents make a legitimacy argument, and it is not a frivolous one. Ranked ballots are more complicated, and complication is not evenly distributed. Voters who fill out only their first choice can see their ballot exhausted before the final round, meaning they had no say in the deciding count. Results take longer, which erodes confidence in an era where slow counts get treated as suspicious. And critics argue that stripping parties of their primaries removes a real associational function from private organizations.
Nobody Is Arguing Honestly About The Data
Here is my read. Both camps cherry pick. Supporters cite polling showing most voters found the ballot easy while skating past exhausted ballot rates. Opponents cite exhausted ballots while skating past the fact that runoff systems discard voters too, just at a different stage. Reform debates almost always become proxy fights over specific results people did not like, and once a system produces a winner somebody resents, the methodology critique tends to arrive dressed as principle.
Follow The Money, But Follow It Both Ways
Outside megadonors are funding the repeal campaign and its opposition alike. It is tempting to treat national money as automatically illegitimate, and both sides do exactly that about the other side’s checks. The more useful question is whether the funding changes what Alaskans get to decide. It does not. It changes how loudly each argument reaches them, which is a genuine problem, but one that predates this measure and will outlive it regardless of the outcome.
Why The Rest Of The Country Is Watching
Alaska is the highest profile statewide test of ranked choice voting in the country, and reform advocates elsewhere have pointed at it for years. A repeal would be read nationally as proof that voters try the system and reject it. Keeping it would be read as proof that the system survives contact with reality. Neither conclusion would actually be supported by one state’s vote, but that is how the result will get used, and everyone involved knows it.
Six States Are Voting On Citizenship Requirements Too
Alaska is not the only election mechanics question on ballots this fall. Voters in six states will decide measures specifying that only United States citizens may vote. Supporters frame these as clarifying existing law. Critics call them redundant, since noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal, and argue the practical effect falls on local elections in the handful of municipalities that allow it. If you read ballot measures carefully, this is a busy year.
What I Would Want To Know Before Voting
I am not going to tell an Alaskan how to vote, and anyone who does is selling something. But I would want three numbers. How many ballots were exhausted before the final round, and in which races. How many candidates advanced from the open primary who would not have survived a closed one. And how many voters reported confusion versus how many reported feeling their vote counted for more. Those are answerable questions. Both campaigns would rather run on feelings.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is ranked choice voting?
Voters rank candidates in order of preference. If nobody wins a majority of first choices, the lowest finisher is eliminated and those ballots transfer to their next ranked choice, repeating until someone holds a majority.
What would Ballot Measure 2 do?
It would repeal Alaska’s open primary system and its ranked choice general election, and repeal some campaign disclosure rules. A yes vote repeals, a no vote keeps the current system.
When do Alaskans vote on it?
November 3, 2026, on the general election ballot.
Did Alaska already try to repeal this once?
Yes. A previous repeal effort failed by 737 votes, roughly two tenths of a percentage point, which is why organizers returned with a fresh measure.
What is an exhausted ballot?
A ballot that runs out of ranked preferences before the final counting round, so it does not factor into the deciding count. It is the most substantive technical criticism of the system.
Is ranked choice voting used anywhere else?
Yes, in a number of American cities and in some other countries, though Alaska remains the most prominent statewide example. For more on how federal processes work, see our explainer on Senate confirmation hearings.
