Alaska Campaign Decries ‘Dark Money’ While Using It To Preserve Ranked-Choice Voting
The main group leading the charge to keep ranked-choice voting (RCV) in Alaska has made stopping outside “dark money” in elections a big part of its campaign message. So why is it accepting large swaths of it to ensure the disastrous system remains in place?
A newly released campaign finance report shows that the “No on 2” campaign has received millions of out-of-state funds from left-wing dark-money organizations to help defeat the Last Frontier State’s Measure 2 ballot initiative in the 2026 midterm elections. The initiative seeks to repeal the state’s ranked-choice voting system and eliminate “campaign finance provisions that require persons and entities that contribute more than $2,000 that were themselves derived from donations, contributions, dues, or gifts to disclose the true sources (as defined in law) of the political contributions,” states Ballotpedia.
Under RCV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.
RCV was narrowly adopted in Alaska in 2020, thanks in part to backing from liberal Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s allies in the state. The system allowed Murkowski to survive a primary challenge in 2022 and has now put the Last Frontier State’s 2026 Senate race and other contests in play for Democrats.
An initiative to repeal RCV made Alaska’s 2024 ballot, but was defeated by fewer than 700 votes after a wave of out-of-state dark money flooded in to defeat the measure. Those forces are now once again dumping money into the Last Frontier State to kill the 2026 repeal efforts. (Read more from “Alaska Campaign Decries ‘Dark Money’ While Using It To Preserve Ranked-Choice Voting” HERE)
