With all the post-election analysis, one fact has escaped much publicity. When the fate of ranked choice voting (RCV) will be decided by only a few votes, and the decisive margin shrinking with recent updates, why did thousands of Alaskan voters ignore a topic that filled mail boxes and media with “Vote No On #2” ads?<\/p>\n
Do some voters turn out for presidential elections, but really do not understand or care about so-called down-ballot issues? That’s for someone else to analyze, but voter turnout of almost 55% is a good thing in spite of the ignorance\/apathy crowd who didn’t know or care about these statewide ballot measures.<\/p>\n
Comparing the two, RCV had 19,000 voters ignore it, while Ballot Measure #1, about minimum wages, etc., had 23,000 voters decide not to decide. Go to the state elections website; do the math. I used round numbers from 11-19.<\/p>\n
While in the Lower 48, voter registration is often a problem, but Alaska’s PFD program helps ensure that is not a concern here. Who wants to refuse free money?<\/p>\n
What about turnout? Lots more people vote in Juneau’s local elections when taxes are on the ballot. Maybe focusing so much on the next president really did help ensure that down-ballot measures did not get full voter recognition.<\/p>\n
For a statewide issue that attracted millions of outside dollars along with party-line pro and con arguments, it’s hard to discern a clear mandate when so many voters decided not to decide RCV.<\/p>\n
Mike Clemens<\/p>\n
Juneau<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With all the post-election analysis, one fact has escaped much publicity. When the fate of ranked choice voting (RCV) will be decided by only a few votes, and the decisive margin shrinking with recent updates, why did thousands of Alaskan voters ignore a topic that filled mail boxes and media with “Vote No On #2” ads?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":113773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,8],"tags":[97,106],"class_list":["post-113772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","category-opinion","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\n