Democracy, as a system of leadership and governing, has been around for several centuries. Since it was first adopted into the American constitution in 1788, it has undergone a lot of changes for it to become a system of governance that fully serves the people in its entirety. However, even now, a lot of variables have to be in place for a democratic government to work as intended. One such element is how leaders are appointed into office.

As one of the first regions to recognize the room for improvement in the current voting system, the state of Alaska has put considerable effort into exploring how things can be better done here, especially for non-partisan voters. This has ultimately led to the introduction of rank choice voting – a system that produced its first elected candidate on August 31, 2022.

Before the introduction and approval of this new voting system by Alaskan voters in 2020, the state used plurality voting. This system encourages voters to cast their vote for just one candidate in an election with multiple choices. At the end of the day, the candidate who has secured the highest number of votes wins. Some noted benefits of plurality voting are that it reduces the complexity of the voting system, it’s cost-effective to implement, and actively discourages tribal politics. But it isn’t without its drawbacks as it encourages tactical voting and may not always reflect the people’s true intent.

With rank choice voting or #RCV, voters are given the option of choosing their preferred voters in order of ranking. This way, the candidate who gets the most #first-preference vote wins. This #voting method makes it easier to identify the candidate with the highest support from the people and promotes #civil campaigning. It also significantly reduces wasted votes and removes the need to hold multiple elections. On the flip side, it’s complicated to understand and directly violates the “one person, one vote” mandate. In addition to this, there’s also the possibility that the candidate with the most votes can lose and that a voter’s ballot might be declared “exhausted.”

All of this makes it clear that plurality voting and RCV both have glaring merits and its own set of challenges. This raises the question, is rank choice voting the most non-partisan way of electing a candidate, or should AK return to plurality voting?