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Comment by nindalf | Hacker News Reader

Alaska got Ranked Choice Voting and after every election cycle where a Democrat wins they're up in arms about how it's bad. This time the repeal effort got within a whisker of succeeding, while the Democrat (Mary Peltola) lost her congressional seat.

RCV encourages moderation, meaning candidates like Peltola and Senator Murkowski (R) win statewide office. This distresses people who feel like such moderates are very far from their own views.

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Ranked choice isn't the only alternative voting system that encourages moderation. Approval voting is vastly simpler to understand and implement and also accomplishes many of the same benefits.

Simplicity is an underrated value when it comes to elections. People are more likely to trust that which they can easily understand. And ranked choice, fairly or not tends to cause a lot of confusion.

Unfortunately, I rarely see people who hate IRV/RCV because they want it replaced with approval voting. Usually it's that their candidate/party of choice would fare worse under it.

approval voting is also just more accurate and resistant to tactical behavior.

https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig

> This distresses people who feel like such moderates are very far from their own views

It pisses off people who don’t understand compromise.

They don't want to compromise, agreed.

But they know they live in a state where any presidential candidate with (R) next to their name can win by 10-20 points. So they wonder how such a state can elect a Democrat without something underhanded going on. A working theory is that the RCV system is "too confusing" for some folks and it leads to the D candidate winning an "undeserved" victory.

The Duchess of Alaska is a "moderate" only insofar as her first and overriding loyalty is to the what the permanent Federal Civil Service in DC wants. She'll agree with anyone of any ideological stripe so long as she knows the will of the bureaucracy is being carried out.

Unlike most states, Alaska is heavily dependent on the federal government due to the massive defense footprint and ANCSAs.

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