SAVED BY THE BALLOT — For House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, the 2022 primaries have been a bloodbath. Four of the 10 lost their primaries. Another four decided against running again. Just two made it to the November ballot. The two primary season survivors, Reps. David Valadao of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington, have something in common — both ran in states that use a top-two primary system rather than traditional partisan primaries. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump but advanced to the general election Tuesday night, was also the beneficiary of an alternative primary format. Her survival in Tuesday's election was almost certainly due to a top-four ranked choice voting initiative that passed in 2020. (We're still waiting for results from Alaska's special election to fill late Republican Rep. Don Young's seat; the election will likely come down to Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Mary Peltola.) At a time of rising political polarization and growing frustration with the two-party system , Trump's impeachment revenge tour has put these alternative voting systems in the national spotlight. It's clear that voters are fed up and ready for serious change. This July, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that 58 percent of voters believe our democracy needs "major reforms" or "a complete overhaul." New ways of voting for our elected representatives promise a more accurate representation of the will of the people — or at the very least a fighting chance for politicians who don't gravitate toward extremes. "Candidates who do well in ranked choice elections tend to be those who connect with the widest group of voters possible," said Deb Otis, the director of research at FairVote, an advocacy organization focused on electoral reform. "Our current elections often appeal to only one niche base of voters." Otis' organization has taken up the cause of ranked choice voting, a system gaining traction around the country that will get a big test in Alaska's Senate race in November, where Murkowski and her Trump-backed GOP challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, and two other candidates will face off. The system is fairly simple: You rank your preferred candidates in order. After all of the ballots are cast, the candidate with the lowest first-place vote total is eliminated, and the remaining candidates divvy up their second-place votes. This continues until one candidate reaches a majority of votes. According to Jeanne Massey, an RCV advocate based in Minneapolis (where the city has held RCV elections since 2009), the system can quickly usher in a new era of politics. "It immediately changed three things [in Minneapolis]: who decided to run, how campaigns were run and who could be elected." As Massey tells it, candidates are forced to run more positive, honest campaigns, because they want second- and third-place votes in open elections with more participants. The system can also deliver surprising results. In Maine — which passed an RCV ballot initiative in 2016 — Democrat Jared Golden defeated Republican incumbent Bruce Poliquin in the largely rural 2nd Congressional District by the slimmest of margins in 2018. He did so thanks to ranked choice voting — while Golden was trailing by about 2,000 votes on election night, the second-choice votes of independents broke toward Golden, giving him a final victory of over 3,000 votes. Murkowski is hoping that Alaskans can similarly coalesce around her as a moderate alternative to Tshibaka. She's looked to attract a cocktail of moderate Republicans, Democrats and independents in order to win in a red state. "It's easier for moderate and centrist candidates to do better under these alternative primary methods because it makes the candidates accountable to all voters, instead of just primary voters from one party," said Otis. This November, as Alaskans use ranked choice voting to determine their next senator, another state may be added to the RCV roster. A ballot measure in Nevada will ask voters in the key swing state whether they want to establish a top-five RCV format similar to Alaska's. A recent poll found voters in favor by a 15-percentage-point margin. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @calder_mchugh.
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