UPDATE: Effort to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system in limbo until March

The political action group behind the effort to repeal Alaska’s controversial and confusing ranked-choice voting system says it doesn’t expect to know until March whether voters will get a chance to ditch RCV at the upcoming November general election.

Last month Alaskans For Honest Elections submitted nearly 43,000 signatures to the Division of Elections to put the question on the 2024 ballot. On Feb. 2, the group sent out an update on its efforts.

“The State has already done an initial count and has accepted 41,895 signatures,” the update notes. “Now they are verifying that we have 30 [out of] 40 House Districts, which is 75% of the total House Districts with at least 7% of the voters from the most recent election.”

Essentially, Alaskans For Honest Elections has cleared its first hurdle of gathering signatures from at least 10% of the total amount of voters from the most recent election. The group only needed 26,700 signatures, and the state has accepted nearly 42,000.

Now the group is waiting to see if they have at least 7% of signatures from the total number of voters in 30 of 40 House Districts across the state.

“This process will take the state 60 days, and they intend to take the entire 60 days, so we will know if we are on the ballot in March,” the group stated. “We believe we have 35 [of the] 40 House Districts.”

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