Liz Ruskin

We now have an open, nonpartisan primary.

That's where all the candidates appear on the same ballot.

And the top four of any party or no party advance to the general election.

The primary is pick one.

The general election gives you a chance to rank them.

And as a rule of thumb, everything that people think they love or hate about ranked choice voting in Alaska is actually about the open primary.

The open primary makes a huge difference.

And ranked choice voting, there are very few instances where a come-from-behind candidate has been put in the number one spot through ranked choices.

Every time that she votes against one of President Trump's priorities...

I see on social media people saying, primary her, primary her.

And I think, ah, you are not from Alaska because you would know that you can't really primary someone like that.

Senator Murkowski picks up in the primary.

She gets the votes of people from all over the political spectrum.

And then in the general, in the last one, there was a relatively weak Democratic candidate.

She had no campaign votes.

to speak of.

A lot of Democrats voted Murkowski number one.

Some of them voted for this relatively unknown Democrat as number one and Murkowski as number two, but that doesn't matter.

A Democratic candidate does not act as a spoiler in that situation.

Sometimes there's like a dozen names, or if there's only a few, it's just not likely that the person named Murkowski is not going to finish somewhere in the top four.