Republicans Issue Statements Against Ranked Choice Voting After Alaska Election

Republican lawmakers have taken aim at the ranked choice system used in Alaska after former governor Sarah Palin lost to Democrat Mary Peltola on Wednesday in a special election.

Peltola, a former state lawmaker, defeated Palin by three percentage points at 51.47 percent to fill Alaska’s only U.S. House seat. Palin received 48.53 percent.

The results mean that Peltola will finish the remainder of the term of Republican Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), whose seat was left vacant after died in March this year. Young’s term expires at the end of this year.

However, GOP lawmakers took to social media this week to slam the voting system used in the election, with some calling it a “scam” that “disenfranchises voters.”

“Ranked-choice voting is a scam to rig elections,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote on Twitter after Wednesday’s results. “60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat ‘won.’”

Republican National Committee (RNC) national press secretary Emma Vaughn said in a statement to The Hill that the Alaska special election results “prove what we’ve known all along—ranked-choice voting disenfranchises voters.”

“Our Republican nominees earned nearly 60% of Alaskans’ votes on the ballot, and now every single one of those voters lost their voice to choose their representative in Congress. Alaskans deserve an equal and fair process, two things this special election were not,” Vaughn said.

‘System is Convoluted, Confusing’

The voting system used in Alaska allows voters to list candidates in order of preference on the ballot. If a candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, then the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated.

Wednesday marked the first time that Alaskans used the ranked-choice system after voting to adopt it in 2020.

According to the Alaska

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