What are your thoughts on the Alaska Primary?

Their voting system sucks and Alaska is mostly a welfare state

Ranked choice voting was put into place SPECIFICALLY FOR Murkowski.

From my post in the other thread.

It's slightly different in Alaska.

First, Alaska already had a fierce independent streak and most of its registered voters are independent or undeclared. This is why the ranked choice voting group lobbied so hard for it after Maine passed it (Maine is more liberal than Alaska, but also is pretty independent).

Second, Murkowski always has a decent chance of winning in this contest because Alaskans LOVE to keep in long-term members of Congress. Don Young is a great example of that. Most of Alaskans only care that they can get more and more Fed monies given Fedgov owns most of the land in the State (and has a large military presence and Native presence).

The way that Alaskans get money in spite of their smaller State population is by continually electing folks that at LEAST meet this bare minimum requirement (get lots of money). The longer the member is in Congress, the better chances are that they have a senior chair seat and advocate for Alaskan positions.
For folks looking for examples,

Ted Stevens (R) term length 1968 - 2009,
Frank Murkowski (R) term length 1981-2002,
Lisa Murkowski (R) term length 2002-present,
Don Young (R) term length 1973 - present,

Hell, Dan Sullivan (R) has been in Ted Steven's senators seat since 2015 and just won another 6 years. He beat his Democrat opponent Al Gross by 13 points in 2020.

The phrase "timing is everything" will come into play here. major scandal about Murkowski will be revealed. stay tuned.

The theory of ranked choice is good.

In practice, it will be the Dems voting for their own guy first and the most lefty Republican second, which means that any right of center candidate will be at a severe disadvantage.

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Their voting system sucks

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I never knew anything about it until yesterday and it is asinine. I cant understand how you ever expect to get anyone elected that stands for something.

And the left of center candidate does?

The entire point of having a runoff is for someone to get 50% plus one vote or more so that the person winning had an actual majority of votes.

The way it works for this, it means everyone games the votes and you still have to trust that the tabulations of ranked votes are on the up and up.

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Why? Ranked choice is far better in every way over the traditional primary system, which sucks balls and panders to the extremes. Plurality districts are also awful. No one should be winning elections to congress with 38% of the vote in their constituency.

I don’t get the hate for ranked choice other than you guys hate Murkowski.

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I don't get it either. Ranked choice is the best way to defeat the uniparty/two party system. It eliminates the problem of RINOs splitting the vote. Any disadvantages it gives Republicans, it also gives to Democrats -- which is the point for advocates, to loosen the grip of the two party system.

If we had it in '92, the Bush/Perot split would never have happened, Clinton would never have been elected, and the Clinton machine wouldn't exist.

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I don't get it either. Ranked choice is the best way to defeat the uniparty/two party system. It eliminates the problem of RINOs splitting the vote. Any disadvantages it gives Republicans, it also gives to Democrats -- which is the point for advocates, to loosen the grip of the two party system.

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except it hasn't done this in either State (Alaska/Maine) that it currently operates in

Both of which should be IDEAL environments for electing Independents because of the large independent voter pools.

It's inconclusive in Maine because Maine has voted for long-term independent candidates at the Federal level even before ranked choice voting was voted on in 2016.