OPINION: I am a conservative and I vote to maintain ranked-choice voting.

Like 60 percent of Alaskans, I am not registered with any political party. I am an independent conservative, so I am strongly in favor of open primaries and ranked-choice voting.

I have lived in Alaska for over 44 years and have felt disenfranchised by the party primary system and a process that forced unaffiliated voters to choose between the lesser of two evils. The party primary process inherently lends itself to candidates who appeal to more extreme ends of the political spectrum. The result is general election ballots with few good choices and victorious candidates who bear little resemblance to the people they were elected to represent.

Open primaries and ballot referendum voting were not the result of political advocacy for a particular candidate; they were the response to a system that was irreparably broken and in need of reform to better reflect the independent nature of Alaska’s political landscape. However, some believe that the old way was and is the only way to conduct an election. Therefore, after just one election cycle under this current system, Ballot Measure 2 aims to turn back the clock to restore a broken system.

There have been many superficial arguments thrown around by those who support Ballot Measure 2 and oppose open primaries and ranked-choice voting. One argument is that the system benefits Democratic candidates. As proof, they point to the 2022 election results. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the 2022 results either, but there is no inherent bias in the system that favors Democrats or Republicans. If Republicans had been able to get out of their own way, stop fighting each other, and adopt “ranked-choice voting” sooner, the results might have been very different. Open primaries and ranked-choice voting don’t favor one party or the other; they give more voice to the 60 percent of us Alaskans who don’t identify as Democrats or Republicans.

Another argument is that majority-choice voting is too difficult or confusing. Really? Picking your preferred candidate in a primary election from a list of people who have demonstrated the courage and willingness to serve is too difficult? So in the general election, ranking the top four primary finishers in order of preference is too confusing? Maybe I’m missing something or I’m just old school, but I remember learning to pick our favorites and rank things by preference in kindergarten.

But the argument that bothers me the most is that of political parties claiming that they have the “right” to select the sole candidate who will appear on the ballot to be the standard-bearer for their political ideology. Nowhere in the Alaska Constitution or any other state law are political parties and the party system given the exclusive right to serve as the gatekeeper of who can and cannot be on the ballot. The state Supreme Court has weighed in on this issue and has concluded that open primaries under the current system “properly decouple the State’s electoral system from the political parties’ process of selecting their standard-bearers.”

In the open primary and ranked-choice voting system, political parties still have the right to support their preferred candidate through whatever mechanism they wish; they simply cannot do so by limiting the choices of the electorate or limiting who can participate in the primary process. The party can still choose its preferred candidate, but in the open primary and ranked-choice voting system, the party can no longer choose mine. That is why I support open primaries and ranked-choice voting.

Randy Hoffbeck is an evangelical pastor and former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Revenue. He lives in Eagle River.

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