The My Turn in the weekend paper from the man living in Illinois opposing Alaska’s ranked choice voting stuck a nerve with me. Why is a person from Illinois trying to influence our elections? Ranked choice voting was voted in by the people of Alaska.
The author, Brian J. Gaines, had a very confusing example of why he thinks Alaskans should oppose ranked choice voting.
Here is a simpler example. Candidates A, B and C run as a Republican, Democrat and independent. Candidate A gets 40% of the votes, candidate B gets 35% of the votes and candidate C gets the rest, 25%. Sixty percent of the voters oppose candidate A. Do we go through the long delay and cost of a runoff election or make use of ranked choice voting? Ranked choice gives us a quick resolution and allows people to vote for more than one candidate if they like multiple candidates and to vote across party lines if they care about the candidate and not the party.
Ranked choice voting is simple. Like the old ballots, just follow the instructions on the ballot.
We don’t tell Illinois how to run their state and Mr. Gaines should not be telling us how to run our state.
Gary Miller.
Juneau
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