Letter: RCV gives us a voice

Updated: 12 Hours ago Published: 12 Hours ago

Donald Craig Mitchell’s opinion piece on ranked choice voting was apparently designed to confuse voters and get them to abolish ranked choice voting if the issue comes to a vote in November. His piece was full of math to show how ranked choice voting could impact elections compared to the old primary system. But his binary view of the electorate ignores the fact that 44% of us are registered as “U” (undeclared). Registered Democrats and Republicans together make up just over 37%. 13% of us are registered as nonpartisan, and the remaining 6% of us have chosen party affiliations that match our ideologies.

Obviously, Alaska voters who choose one of the major national parties are in the minority. Why should the majority of Alaska voters be forced to choose between candidates from parties we do not want to join?

I agree with Mr. Mitchell’s assertion that Alaska tends to lean more from the center-right to the far right, but that is based only on the election results of the old system, which gave us only two choices. With RCV, we elected the center-right candidate, Lisa Murkowski. With Mary Peltola, we elected a center-left candidate instead of the far right. These were not aberrations, but the system worked as intended. RCV finally gives the majority of us a voice. I wish we had this system statewide.

— Jen Huvar

Anchorage

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a wide range of viewpoints. To submit an article for consideration, email comment(at)adn.comSend posts with less than 200 words to [email protected] or Click here to submit via any web browserRead our full guidelines for letters and comments Here.