Does Ranked-Choice Voting violate the Equal Protection Clause?
September 30, 2026
By Jeffy Samuel
Alaska has a unique electoral system, combining two popular political reforms into one election system. The first reform is a nonpartisan primary, often called a “jungle primary” elsewhere, in which all candidates from the various parties are placed onto a single ballot. In Alaska, the four candidates with the most votes in this nonpartisan primary then move on to the general election. The winner is then decided by eliminating the candidates with the lowest preferences and transferring their ballots to voters’ second or third preferences, until there are two candidates. The candidate with the most votes in this final round is elected. This system is called ranked-choice voting (RCV).
The nonpartisan primary has been lobbed with complaints, such as how it causes the Republican vote to split in a GOP-majority state, or how it has twice allowed an imprisoned felon to make it to the general election ballot. However, the greatest criticism of Alaska’s system comes from its use of RCV.
A potential constitutional concern regarding RCV comes from ballot exhaustion, wherein voters do not rank all possible candidates, thus “exhausting” their ballot and removing their vote from consideration for the final winner. Opponents of ranked-choice voting claim that the “rounds” of elimination actually constitute different elections, which would thus violate the Equal Protection Clause. This would be because voters would be locked out of influencing the final winner unless they were lucky enough not to have their ballot exhausted once the election was in the final round. This is as opposed to two-round elections, in which all voters may participate in the runoff election. However, courts have not accepted this argument. In Dudum v. Arntz, the Ninth Circuit held that RCV did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Each ballot is counted equally in the first round, and “exhausted” ballots are merely votes that do not elect winning candidates. The problem of “exhausted” ballots can also be analogized to votes for third-place candidates in First Past the Post races; a voter is not disenfranchised for not having voted for the winner or the first runner-up. The Dudum case dealt with an implementation of RCV which restricted voters to ranking three candidates, regardless of how many candidates ran. Given that the general election in Alaska involves four candidates, with no similar requirement, exhausted ballots in Alaskan elections only reflect a voter’s indifference between the final two candidates. No group is systemically disadvantaged by this practice.
The future of RCV in Alaska remains unclear. Political forces in Alaska have attempted to repeal this electoral system, citing the above concerns. After barely failing to pass in 2024, Alaskans will face yet another ballot initiative attempting to return Alaska to FPTP elections. The 2024 initiative had only failed by 700 votes, despite the anti-repeal side outspending the repeal campaign by a ratio of 100-1. Unlike its counterpart in 2024, 2026 Alaska Measure 2 would also roll back Alaska’s strict dark money disclosure requirements, which were passed in the same referendum as RCV. Elon Musk has donated $1.5 million towards the repeal effort.