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Alaska’s ranked choice voting: Six years of experimenting and its biggest test yet

The system that remade the state’s politics is back on the ballot, and so is a candidate it has both carried and sunk.

Halina Bennet's avatar
Halina Bennet
Sep 09, 2026
∙ Paid
Senator Lisa Murkowski departs from a lunch with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on August 6, 2026. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Alaska is in its sixth year — and third election — of an unusual ranked-choice-voting (R.C.V.) system that was created in a 2020 ballot measure that also included dark-money disclosure rules.

The campaign that…

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