Ranked-Choice Voting Could Delay Senate Results
Alaska and Maine's attempt to reinvent democracy confuses voters and ballot counts.
If U.S. Senate elections come down to the wire next month, Americans could wait weeks to find out which party will control the upper chamber while Alaska and Maine take their sweet time recounting ballots.
Maine enacted Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) in 2018, after approving it in 2016. Alaska approved it in 2020 and first used it in 2022. In RCV, voters rank candidates rather than choose one. If no candidate clears 50 percent of first-choice preferences, the system eliminates the last-place finisher. It then distributes the second-choice preferences of voters whose first choice was the eliminated candidate. This continues until one candidate wins a majority.
If it sounds perplexing, that's because it is. This method does not serve the public during the voting or the counting process. It makes voter participation harder and election results less trustworthy.
A few municipalities have joined the experiment, but it has failed to catch on in other states. Seventeen states have passed laws banning it.
How These Corner States Could Mess It Up for Everyone Else
Even if every state runs smooth elections and releases results on election night, the country might still have to wait days—more likely weeks—to find out which party will control the Senate in 2027. The chokehold: a balance pending on Alaska or Maine, where either state's leading candidate fails to clear 50 percent on the first count.
Alaska does not begin RCV counting until all eligible absentee ballots arrive. And it accepts absentee ballots up to 15 days after Election Day. In 2024, it took 15 days to announce Republican Nick Begich as the unofficial winner over Democrat Mary Peltola of its at-large House seat.
Maine's track record is almost as slow. In 2018, its 2nd Congressional District race continued for nine days when Democrat Jared Golden trailed then-incumbent Republican Bruce Poliquin in first-choice votes but won the race after gaining enough second-preference votes to put him over the top. In June, the state did not release its final rankings until 10 days after the primary.
In the far northwest, incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) faces Democrat Mary Peltola and two other Republicans. In the far northeast, incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) faces Democrat Troy Jackson and six write-ins. Because Republicans have the vice president to break a Senate tie, if the count is 49–49 outside of these RCV guinea pigs, Republicans will need one of them to win. If Republicans are down 50–48, they will need both.
The election is on November 3. If the Senate battle remains close, Americans might not know until almost Thanksgiving which party has won the chamber.
An Unnecessary Roadblock to Smooth Elections
An inherent flaw with RCV is that many voters don't understand it. The more confusing it is to participate in elections, the fewer voters do so. A study by the Alaska Policy Forum (APF) and the Maine Policy Institute (MPI) found voter confusion in Maine was so widespread that proponents published a 19-page instruction manual about it.
Some voters just give up. In 2022, Alaska turnout fell to 51 percent of eligible voters, the lowest since 1976.
Others revert to the only way they know how to vote by selecting a single candidate. If their preferred candidate gets eliminated, however, so does their ballot. The APF-MPI study of 96 RCV elections found that 11 percent of ballots were exhausted before a candidate won.
The only theoretical problem RCV solves is preventing plurality winners. Yet, the classic runoff offers a better solution. It forces candidates to win at least 50 percent of the vote without requiring textbooks to teach people how to vote. Most importantly, it doesn't delay results within the count itself.
RCV does not factor prominently in most Americans' political lives because their states have either banned it or shown no interest in it. But if Senate control hinges on second and third preferences in Juneau and Augusta, people will see how that system in one or two states can affect the entire country. This year it's the Senate. Next time, it could be the Electoral College.
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