Lori Townsend: Alaska's new voting method is getting a robust test in the upcoming special election.

And in November's general election, your combined ballot will also feature ranked choice voting.

Unknown: You'll be asked to pick which candidate is your favorite, second favorite, third, favorite fourth.

And if you want to vote for write-in, there's space for a fifth option, you'll be voting for all of the races this way.

Lori Townsend: What else do you need to know about the upcoming elections and the ranked choice system?

We're discussing it right now on Alaska Insight.

Election season is underway.

Alaskans voted to institute a new election system in 2020, and this is the first year it's being used.

So how does an open primary and ranked choice voting and the general election actually work?

Our media partners at KTOO and the Anchorage Daily News teamed up to help explain it.

And a note: this video was produced before the special election was announced.

Unknown: Hi, I'm James Brooks, a reporter with the Anchorage Daily News.

Alaska has a new election system this year, and you probably have some questions about it.

Here's how it works.

First things first, all candidates for each race must enter by June 1.

And this time around Governor and Lieutenant Governor run as a single team.

After everyone signed up the next step is the primary election on August 16.

In the past, you might have been asked which ballot you want when you go into the polling place.

This year, there's only one ballot and all of the candidates regardless of party are on it.

You'll vote for one candidate per race, the top four vote getters will head into the general election.

If there's four or fewer people running, then all of the candidates advance after the primary.

We'll get a few more months of campaigning before the general election, which this year is on November 8.

In that election, you'll be asked to pick which candidate is your favorite second favorite, third favorite, fourth, and if you want to vote for write-in, there's space for fifth option.

You'll be voting for all of the races this way -- governor, state house and senate, congress.

This will be the first time Alaskans are voting like this using a system called ranked choice voting.

Here's what the ballot looks like.

Let's talk about how to mark it.

Imagine Elk, Polar Bear, Penguin and Owl are running for office.

You prefer Elk and you're definitely anti-Penguin.

She doesn't even go here!

So maybe you'll fill out your ballot like this: Elk, Polar Bear, Owl and Penguin.

You could also choose to only partially fill out the ballot and just leave off Penguin entirely.

If more than half of the voters mark Elk as their first choice, Elk wins.

But if no one has more than half the votes, the candidate with the fewest first choice votes gets eliminated.

So goodbye, Elk.

Now that Elk's eliminated, everyone who voted for Elk first then has their vote counted for their second choice.

So if you voted for Elk first, then Polar Bear, Owl and Penguin, now your ballot goes to Polar Bear first, Owl than Penguin.

Election officials will count again.

And the process starts all over.

If a candidate has the outright majority, they will be declared the winner.

If not, the process is repeated until a candidate wins.

If you try to pick two first choices, say Elk and Polar Bear, that vote won't be counted at all, though your ballot was still count in other races where you voted correctly.

There will be other things on the ballot that don't use ranked choice voting: the normal ballot measures, the constitutional convention question.

Those will be yes or no questions.

All of this tallying could delay the election results.

More likely than not, we won't know who's won until 15 days after Election Day.

And even then there still might be some doubt.

Because in Maine when ranked choice voting was used for the first time, a losing candidate sued, arguing that the new law was implemented unconstitutionally.

The same thing could happen here and that would delay the results.

So if you have any more questions about this, drop us a line.

You can read more about how we got here at ktoo.org and adn.com.

Lori Townsend: Joining me tonight to further clarify how Alaska's new voting system works and why supporters thought it needed to be changed.

Or Jason Grenn, the director of Alaskans for Better Elections, and also with us this evening is the director of the Alaska Division of Elections -- excuse me -- Alaska Division of Elections Gail Fenumiai.

Welcome, both of you.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Jason, I want to start with you.

Let's start with the first state ballot voters will encounter this year, there are four dozen candidates in the special primary to fill the remainder of Congressman Don Young's term.

Do you think that the new election system is at least partially responsible for this glut of candidates and and is it good for democracy to have so many candidates in a pick one primary?

Unknown: Yeah, it's a great question.

It's something that we've been talking about a lot since this special election has appeared before Alaskans.

You know, our campaign and our team asking for better elections.

You know, we talk a lot about more choices and more choices leading to competitive campaigns.

And that leading to voters being able to work with candidates and find a candidate who they really, really want to support.

And 48 people were very confident that Alaskans are going to find one of those candidates, someone who they really want to support and are going to be enthusiastically voting for just one person out of those 48.

The new system obviously is set up different in a way that in the previous system, a special election, where parties would be behind closed doors and able to select their candidate and would put them forward here now with these with an open primary and an opportunity for Alaskans to enter the race without any sort of party gatekeepers.

I think you're seeing that reflected in the amount of candidates but also the range of type of candidates.

You have, you have a whole range of experience a range of age, a range of race and cultures and experiences.

So I think that this, this ballot is going to look like Alaskans, and I think Alaskans are are pretty excited for the opportunity to have so many great choices.

Lori Townsend: All right.

Thanks for getting started there.

Gail, I want to turn to you now, as we noted, our first statewide election this year will be the special primary to elect someone to serve the remainder of the late Congressman Don Young's term in the US House.

There's 48 candidates.

It'll be the state's first experience with an all male in election, correct?

That's correct.

Yes.

And a talk about the logistics of ramping that up.

Unknown: Well, it definitely is a lot of work involved.

We made this decision not lightly.

There would not be a possibility in our mind to have been able to have done an in person election considering how many people need to be involved and hired and trained and shipping equipment back and forth.

So the logistics involved with the by mail election are securing a ballot printer and a mailing company that can mail our 500 plus 1000 ballots out to voters.

Because we have never done this on a statewide level before we did find a vendor.

We have a contract and ballots proofs have been sent to this printer.

And we feel extremely confident that they will have the ballots in the mail as projected starting on April 27.

And then we will be hiring additional absentee and review board members and each of our five regional offices to be prepared for a larger than normal volume of by mail ballots.

And then the counting process will remain that will take place in our regional offices.

So once the ballots are printed and mailed, logged by staff reviewed by the absentee review board then counting will take place.

Lori Townsend: Gail, as we heard in the explainer, all candidates must enter by June 1 in the regular election, turning to that now, I'm sorry.

Are there other deadlines that voters should be aware of right now?

Unknown: Well, another deadline, the first deadline is May 12.

This the day to register to vote for the special primary election.

If you're not already registered, you have to be registered by May 12.

And you'll still be able to get a ballot timely to vote for the June 11 special primary election.

June 1 is the candidacy filing deadline.

candidates interested in appearing on the August 16 primary election ballot need to file their Declaration of Candidacy by that date.

Those, and then, of course, the June 11 is the date ballots must be postmarked in order to be eligible to be counted in this June 11 special primary election.

Lori Townsend: All right, thank you.

Jason, turning back to you.

In this new system, the Governor and Lieutenant Governor run as a team.

Why is that, in your estimation and improvement over what we had in the old system?

Unknown: Well, one, I think logistically would have been incredibly tough to run open primaries where the top four candidates move on, and then having to match those candidacies up.

You know, if you had a governor who was number one in the primary and the lieutenant governor, who was number one, but they were separate parties.

So logistically, it wouldn't really, it'd be incredibly tough and probably add more confusion and consternation of voters.

Under this new system where a governor and lieutenant governor get to match up, I think you've seen most of the gubernatorial candidates have had their team in place for several months.

That allows them to talk to voters as a team, fundraise as a team, just generally campaign together as a team.

And Alaskans get to make that decision, if they're excited about them, if they have more questions much, much earlier than what the August primary allowed up until the November general election, so only about two or three months.

But you'd get to see people working as a team together.

Now with these gubernatorial candidates matching up together months, months in advance, I think Alaskans get a better opportunity to learn more about them, learn about their platform, and really see them work as a team much earlier than they would have under the previous system.

So I think that's that's a benefit to the voters just to be able to have more information and have a better choice.

When it comes to really their preferences.

It was ranked choice voting ballot.

Lori Townsend: The explainer video cited a case in Maine where a losing candidate said the new law was implemented unconstitutionally.

Do you know the status of that challenge?

Unknown: I think that's been resolved.

And I think in many cases, court cases at the state level and even federal level regarding ranked choice voting, open primaries, things like that, time after time, all of these court cases tend to resolve back to what the voters intended with their ballot measure.

In that case, in that particular case, I think it was resolved and the losing candidate still ended up losing.

Lori Townsend: All right, Gail, ranked choice voting has been referred to by supporters as more efficient because there are no separate primaries, no runoff elections.

Will this new system save the state money?

And do you have a budget for educating voters on how it will work?

Unknown: I don't really necessarily think it is a cost saving measure, because the state never had a runoff provision, post any election.

If there was a tie, there are other methods in statute, how you deal with ties, or there was never a majority percent required.

And if you didn't achieve that, then it would require a special runoff election.

Those provisions have never been in state law.

We do have the equipment and resources available that we need to conduct this and be able to perform ranked choice voting in the general election.

Lori Townsend: Has your office, Gail -- what kind of questions have Alaskans had has?

Has your office feel that a lot of calls from Alaskans who are confused about how they'll vote this year or suspicious or angry about the new system?

Unknown: I think we've had a variety of inquiries and questions about both the new nonpartisan top four nonpartisan primary in the ranked choice voting general election, people, I think have at first were made perhaps a little confused when the primary was referred to as a top four nonpartisan kind of alluding that perhaps they could vote for candidates.

And that's not the case.

So we've changed our messaging to just talk how it's an open nonpartisan primary, and it's still definitely just a vote for one only in each race.

The second thing would be with ranked choice voting, wanting to know if they have to rank all candidates, or can they just rank one or what happens if they want to rank one candidate all the way for all rankings?

So those are just some of the questions we fielded?

We do have we developed an FAQ on our website.

I think we started getting the message out really soon to people.

We have also been letting people know that this is not the division of elections doing this was a result of a citizen initiative.

And our job is just to excuse me implement the law as passed by the will of the voters and or the the legislature.

Lori Townsend: All right.

Thank you, Jason.

One benefit that's been touted by supporters of ranked choice voting is less vitriol in campaigns.

Talk about why you think there will be less mudslinging between opponents in this system.

Unknown: Yeah, and you know, truth Wait, that's up to the candidates themselves to choose how they operate.

But in jurisdictions where ranked choice voting is used, it's it's been proven and shown, you know, anecdotally, that campaigns that kind of stuck, they stick to the issues, and they talk directly to voters, and they quit with the negative advertising, they tend to do a lot better.

Because as a candidate, unless you're earning that 50% plus one in the first round, to win, it's it's incredibly important that you gain much support from the second choice, and the third choice selections on the ballot.

And that means you have to go to voters directly, you have to talk and you have to kind of broaden your outreach than maybe you've done in the past.

And what happens is, if you start talking negatively about another candidate, and then you go to someone asking for their second, their second choice vote, they're gonna look at you a little differently going, Wait, you're going to trash like my number one vote, but now you want my second, my second choice.

And voters are smart, they pick up on that.

And so what tends to happen is a savvy candidate, a savvy campaign will just stick to the issues and talk about solutions and talk about, you know, what they're going to do in Judo or DC, as opposed to, you know, that negative, that negative talk that mudslinging on their opponent, because it is important to earn that second and third choice voters voters are going to pick up on on anything that might make them feel like you're you're talking to them when you're also talking to their candidate, when you're when you're in that negative advertising.

So a lot of jurisdictions a lot of places have seen negative advertising decrease after ranked choice voting is implemented.

Lori Townsend: I was trying to figure out how many states states used ranked choice Maine passed it in 2016. used it in 2018.

Alaska, of course, but are there other states that you're aware of that use it on a statewide basis?

I did find a number of cities and county elections that use this, but I couldn't find any and let me know if this is correct.

I couldn't find any that use Alaska system combining an open pick one primary with ranked choice voting in the fall.

Is that correct?

Is Alaska.

Alaska is the first?

Unknown: That's correct, Alaska.

As you mentioned, Maine uses it for some of the races at a statewide level.

But Alaska is the first state that's implementing a an open nonprofit, nonpartisan primary combined with a ranked choice voting general, which is made Gail's job a little bit harder, you know, in some ways, you know, we are setting the path for this.

But there's a lot of places that that use ranked choice voting so and Gail can speak to this, you know, regarding software and, you know, ballot machines that do ranked choice voting, but there's many, you know, they're states in the South that use it for their overseas and military voters.

As you mentioned, there's dozens and dozens of cities across America that use it 23 cities in Utah just used it for the first time this fall.

New York City used it for the past summer for their mayoral primary race.

And there's many states actually that have it on their ballot to implement in future elections as well, there, I think there's four or five states, looking at a similar system to Alaska, where voters gonna vote for this system, perhaps later later in the year.

Lori Townsend: So how, where did you come up with the idea to combine this system?

And what did you model it after?

Unknown: Well, there's a lot of great academic research and political scientists and pundits who are looking at ways of, of what we've talked about earlier, of negative advertising, of gridlock of the partisan politics getting in the way of finding solutions, especially in our state legislative level.

And there's there's some great leaders in this election reform space, who are really kind of showing the the benefits of combining a top four or top five primary combined with ranked choice voting, because really, it leads to competition.

And some of these reform leaders talk about competition in business, you know, if you go to the grocery store, and you only had two choices of bread, well, that's that's not what we like, as Americans, we want more choices.

We want more.

We want more people talking to us directly and telling us how how, how important they are, how great they are and why they should vote for them.

And more, the more the merrier.

And so one of one of the leaders in this reform space, wrote a book with some, some Harvard professors.

She was a business leader.

And this book really has kind of laid out a great foundation for this sort of innovation.

And so we took that we kind of modeled it, what would what would work for Alaska?

Would it work for Alaska?

And you know, given our large number of nonpartisan registered voters, our long history of indepence And didn't and third party elected officials, we thought that this model would would work great in Alaska, especially for our type of voter that we have here who tends to look at the person before they look at the party label.

And we thought that this system would work well.

And I think that's what really responded with voters when they when they passed it back in 2020.

Lori Townsend: All right, Gail.

I hope that I'm understanding what happens on August 16, that day, voters will go to the polls, they'll rank the four candidates in the special election to fill the US House seat.

And they will also get ballots for primaries across the state.

I imagine that many of those primaries are going to have a lot of candidates.

So that August 16, ballot might be quite voluminous, does that cause any problems?

Unknown: Well, obviously, we would like to try to contain the ballot to be an eight and a half by 11 inch ballot for the primary election is it's easier to mail.

It's easy, it's less costly to mail, it's easier, it takes less paper to print.

And doesn't cause you know, issues perhaps with scanners, because sometimes you see when there's longer ballots, they take longer to scan.

So we're still working on, you know, mock ups for the primary slash special general election to see what that ballot will look like and obviously won't have the final answer until after the withdrawal deadline for the primary election, which is June 25th.

Lori Townsend: And for the U.S. House seat, will we be voting in the general for the special election to fill out the existing term, and also the primary for the regular house election at the same time?

Unknown: That is correct.

We will have our regular primary election for United States Senate, United States representative, governor, lieutenant governor, state house, state senate and then also they will be voting to in this special general election to to finalize who will fill out the vacancy left by Congressman Young for the remainder of his term.

Lori Townsend: Gale, if if you make two first picks, as we discussed earlier, your vote in that race will not count.

But the rest of your ballot will be valid if you filled it out correctly.

What if a voter chooses only a second or third choice?

Would that be valid?

Clarify what that would mean?

Unknown: So you're saying that they skip a first choice?

And their first choice is actually their second choice?

Yes, I guess -- That actually would become their first choice.

So okay, that's the way that it will Well, let me think about that.

Because on election day, the ballots are scanned, and it's going to scan the first choice ballot.

And if there's no first choice, then their ballot would not then come into play until the actual tabulations take place for that specific race.

Lori Townsend: Okay, so they really should be making a first choice if they want it to count in that Unknown: Well, first choice, I mean, if you think about it, your first choice in that situation, is really no different than marking your first candidate as your second choice.

But we are encouraging people, no matter how many candidates you want to rank, start with your first choice ranking and and work your way across the ballot, as far as you feel comfortable doing.

Because it just logistically, it just makes sense.

As far as following the order of the ballot -- rank one, rank two, rank three, rank for vote for a write-in.

It's totally up to the voter's choice.

Lori Townsend: Absolutely.

Jason in November, all races on the ballot will be ranked choice voters don't have to make four selections.

But would you argue there's a reason that they should?

Unknown: Well, the one of the main benefits of ranked choice voting is that it empowers voters to think about candidates differently.

And think about kind of the nuance and think about, you know, who reflects your philosophy and your passion for for certain issues.

And with with more candidates on a on a on a race, the hope is you can find more than one.

In fact, you know, you might love someone, you might like someone you might be okay with someone, which is different, a different way of thinking for a voter than in years past.

You know, you have two choices.

Maybe they're both it's too extreme for you on the left and the right you don't know what to do and you might skip one or you might just hold your nose and pick one that that maybe you don't mind at all, but with ranked choice voting with more candidates.

It allows a voter to really show that their their, you know, their passion for different issues and their passion for different candidates.

There might be some races where you only like one of the three or four people on the race.

There might be another race where you kind of like all four and you can see yourself voting for all four.

And what we encourage people to do is show support to candidates who you want to support, obviously, filling out, you know, all four makes sense in some races.

But if there's a race you only like one person, that's great too.

But you're gonna have to your expression as a voter now to fill out that ballot as you wish, as much as you wish, but really to use the ballot in a way that reflects your own philosophy.

Lori Townsend: Thank you we'll have to leave it there.

Thanks so much, Jason Grenn.

And Gail Fenumiai.

As you heard this evening, if you have questions you can reach out to the Division of elections about the new system, who you decide to support in upcoming elections is your decision alone to make, but there is no denying the power of your vote.

And that's the beauty of a democratic system.

You have an equal say in who gets elected and the vote by those of us with little or no political or economic power matters just as much as those at the highest levels of power in the nation, believe it and cast your vote.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Be sure to tune in daily to your local public radio station for Alaska Morning News and Alaska News Nightly every weeknight, a part of important conversations happening on Talk of Alaska every Tuesday morning, and visit our website, alaskapublic.org, for breaking news and reports from across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our free daily digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

We'll be back next week.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.