Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is in the middle of a competitive race as he seeks re-election this year in red-leaning Alaska in a midterm showdown that’s one of roughly a dozen that will determine if the GOP keeps control of the Senate.
Working against Sullivan as he runs for a third six-year term in the Senate is not only a rough political climate facing Republicans but also Alaska’s unique electoral system, which includes four candidates from an open primary advancing to the general election and ranked-choice voting.
Alaska is the only state in the nation to have a “top four” primary system in which candidates advance regardless of party affiliation. And it’s one of only two states, along with Maine, to use ranked choice voting for statewide and federal races.
Defenders of the system say it gives independent voters more choices, weakens party control and encourages candidates to appeal beyond their base.
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Alaska GOP Chair Carmela Warfield has repeatedly referred to the state’s electoral system as a “MESS” in social media posts.
“It’s hurting the Republican Party,” veteran GOP strategist Mary Marslender told Fox News Digital.
Sullivan is battling former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola. The two candidates combined received over 90% of the primary vote.
But Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher and registered Republican whom Marslender and supporters of the senator call “Decoy Dan” is also on the general election ballot.
A conservative nonprofit group, Americans for Public Trust, claimed that the other Sullivan, who is not related to the senator, was working with Democrats to confuse voters. The Peltola campaign and Daniel J. Sullivan both denied the allegation.
The Alaska Division of Elections disqualified him from the ballot, but the decision was overturned first by an Alaska Superior Court judge and later by the state Supreme Court.
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There is also a third Republican on the Senate ballot: Gerald Heikes. He advanced to the general election when the fourth-place primary finisher, Democrat David Leslie, withdrew from the race.
Marslender claimed that the current system has “become an easy way for the Democrats to game the system.”
Pointing to Daniel J. Sullivan’s inclusion on the general election ballot, she said, “That never would have been allowed in the previous old system. … But because there’s an open primary, he was allowed to be on the ballot.
“Republican primary voters under the old system wouldn’t have voted for him, and he wouldn’t have been in there.”
With ranked-choice voting, voters rank candidates by preference, and if nobody receives a majority of first-choice votes, additional counting rounds occur until someone reaches a majority.
Marslender said there’s a perception that Republicans would unite around the incumbent senator in the general election.
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But, she said, in Alaska, which is the nation’s largest and most remote state, “It’s really hard to get a statewide message out” due to “the geographical challenges.”
Alaskans for Better Elections, which supports the system, has been holding events to help voters better understand how it works.
“Alaska’s election system celebrates our independence, giving us the freedom to vote for the person who is best for the job,” the group highlights on its website.
The Senate race wasn’t the only contest impacted by the current system. There were also eleventh-hour withdrawals that rocked the races for governor and the U.S. House, which also cast a shadow on the state’s unique voting process.
Alaska voters get to weigh in when they cast general election ballots to either keep or scrap the current system.
Matt Schultz, a Democrat who suspended his congressional bid before the primary, supports keeping the system. But he told the AP, “We need to make things much more transparent and predictable and understandable by the general public so that we can truly have trust in our democracy again.”
Republican Lesil McGuire and Democrat Tom Begich, former state lawmakers who were both eliminated in the primary for governor, defended the system.
“Let’s be clear: We would have faced challenges and might not have advanced in a traditional closed or semi-closed primary. Our election system was not designed to guarantee anyone a win. It was designed to solve a problem: elections in which a narrow, more partisan slice of voters decided the November ballot, resulting in hyperpartisanship that limited progress,” they wrote in an opinion piece in The Anchorage Daily News.
“We don’t support our current system because it was good for us as candidates; we support it because it’s good for us as Alaskans.”