“Find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can.”
That instruction, uncovered in The New York Times investigation into Democrats’ efforts to manipulate Alaska’s U.S. Senate ballot, should give every legislator considering ranked-choice voting pause. It exposes a problem too often overlooked in debates over election reform: Before voters choose among candidates, political operatives can work to determine which choices they will face.
According to The Times, operatives aligned with Democrat Mary Peltola spent months recruiting candidates who might draw votes away from incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan. Their efforts included finding another Dan Sullivan, encouraging a competing Democrat to withdraw, and exploring the creation of a new political party. Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee deny involvement in recruiting candidates, but The Times documented the operation through interviews, text messages and other records.
Perhaps most revealing were messages in which campaign advisers discussed voters they believed would be susceptible to their strategy. The operation was not simply about offering more choices; it was about exploiting how voters might interpret them.
Alaska’s election system combines a nonpartisan primary that advances four candidates, regardless of party, with a general election in which voters rank those candidates. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the lowest-finishing candidate is eliminated, and ballots transfer to their next eligible preferences.
These are distinct stages, but they operate together. The primary determines which choices appear on the ballot. Ranked-choice voting determines how support moves among them. Political operatives understood that shaping the first stage could influence the second.
Supporters argue that ranked-choice voting gives citizens more opportunities to express their preferences and reduces the influence of spoiler candidates. But ranking candidates cannot correct every problem with the choices presented to voters.
Consider someone intending to support the incumbent Sen. Sullivan who mistakenly selects the namesake candidate and leaves subsequent rankings blank. If the namesake is eliminated, that ballot cannot transfer to the intended candidate. Ranking the incumbent second could preserve the voter’s support, but only if the voter recognizes the distinction the reported strategy sought to obscure.
While Alaska’s ballot includes identifying information that can help voters distinguish candidates, the investigation reveals an effort to exploit the possibility that some voters would not.
The broader concern is the imbalance between political professionals who understand the system’s mechanics and ordinary citizens expected to navigate them.
Campaign operatives can spend months studying election rules, recruiting strategically useful candidates, and modeling possible outcomes. Voters encounter the results of those efforts when they cast their ballots. An election system should minimize opportunities for that imbalance to interfere with voter intent.
Yet ranked-choice voting introduces additional decisions and rules that create their own opportunities for error.
A peer-reviewed study examining approximately three million cast-vote records found that, across 165 ranked-choice races, roughly one in twenty ballots contained an improper mark. Most were still counted, but comparisons between ranked and non-ranked contests on the same ballots found much higher rejection rates in ranked elections.
Alaska’s own rules illustrate the challenge. Assigning multiple candidates the same ranking or skipping two consecutive rankings can prevent subsequent preferences from counting. Even a properly completed ballot stops transferring once all of its ranked candidates have been eliminated. Some voters deliberately decline to rank additional candidates. Others may misunderstand the consequences of incomplete rankings. Election officials cannot supply a preference the voter never recorded. These are not reasons to question voters’ intelligence; they are reasons to question what government asks voters to do.
Ranked-choice voting should be prohibited, including where it is already used. Single-choice ballots would not prevent deceptive recruitment or guarantee that every voter recognizes every candidate. Strong candidate-identification rules, transparency, and accountability remain necessary. Still, single-choice ballots would eliminate ranking-specific errors and transfer rules from the voter’s task. They would preserve a straightforward relationship between the candidate a voter selects and the vote recorded for that candidate.
That simplicity is a concrete benefit. It should not be dismissed merely because a more complicated system offers additional ways to express preferences.
Before adopting or retaining ranked-choice voting, lawmakers should demand evidence that those benefits outweigh the burdens imposed on voters. Election reform should be measured not by the sophistication of its procedures, but by how reliably citizens can express their intended choices.
The Times investigation began with political operatives searching for a useful name. It should end with lawmakers asking whose work election reform makes easier: the professionals arranging the ballot, or the citizens trying to use it.