Ballot Measure 2, an attempt to eliminate Alaska's ranked-choice voting and open primaries, won slightly as election results continued to emerge early Wednesday, with about 93% of Alaska's precincts counted.

Wednesday's results showed Ballot Measure 2 ahead by 4,703 votes out of a total of more than 254,000 ballots cast. That's a margin of about 2 percentage points.

The other Alaska minimum wage increase initiative on Alaska voters' ballots appeared to be headed for victory by a 13 percentage point margin.

Loren Leman, a former Republican lieutenant governor who worked on the campaign to end ranked-choice voting and open primaries, pointed out that the Ballot Measure 2 campaign was outspent 100 to 1.

“I think just the fact that the numbers are so close, even after spending all the money, shows that Alaskans don't really want the complexities of ranked choice voting. This is confusing and unnecessary for a lot of people,” Leman said.

The full results can be found here.

Anchorage attorney Scott Kendall, an architect of the 2020 ranked-choice voting law and opponent of the 2024 Ballot Measure 2, said he was positive because the results showed the margin between “yes” and “no” votes narrowing downsize late Tuesday.

“We knew it was going to be a close race,” Kendall said. “But when it comes to outstanding voices, it’s like real estate: location, location, location. It is remarkable that there are very few voices in our strongest core of support in rural Alaska.”

Alaska residents narrowly adopted the voting method in 2020. She was first used in a 2022 special election for the U.S. House of Representatives, which Democrat Mary Peltola won.

Proponents of the system say it promotes bipartisanship and gives candidates an incentive to appeal to a broader electorate.

But opponents, particularly conservatives and the state Republican Party, never liked it.

Jeff Fenske, waving campaign signs before the polls closed in Midtown Anchorage, said he doesn't trust the tabulation process and is really annoyed that repeal opponents are able to raise so much money from outside the state to maintain ranked-choice voting .

“It doesn’t help the conservative cause at all,” Fenske said. “You know, they just made up a lot of stuff and they had so much money for these ads that they were able to manipulate people's opinions.”

The new system abolished partisan primaries. Instead, candidates from all parties and stripes appeared on the same ballot in August. The top four finishers – or more, in the case of presidential elections – advanced to the November ballot.

In the general election, ranked choice gave voters the opportunity to participate in an “immediate runoff.” Voters could choose their favorite and also rank the remaining candidates to indicate where their ballot would go if their first choice was eliminated.

Toby Ovod-Everett of Anchorage waved “No on 2” in rush hour traffic. He said the open primaries and ranked-choice voting resulted in “less arguing and more governing.”

“I would like to see more centrist candidates, candidates that I would agree with less but that I feel like they might start to push back against this hyper-partisanship that's taking over the country,” Ovod-Everett said.

No on 2 ran a $14 million campaign and framed the issue as “voter freedom” — that is, the freedom to participate in a vote that included all primary candidates, regardless of party. Some of their ads suggested that veterans would be “forced to join a political party in order to vote for the candidate we want.”

Before the 2020 election reform, the Republican Party restricted access to its ballots but still allowed independent voters to vote in its primaries. Leman called the No on 2 claim misleading because no one is forced to join the Republican Party to participate in the GOP primary.

“It was an open primary, or you could say a semi-open primary: it was open to all voters, 80% of Alaska voters, except those who chose to register with another party,” he said.

The Yes on 2 campaign barely raised more than $150,000.

Thousands of ballots remain to be counted over the next 15 days, but if Ballot Measure 2 passes, parties would regain the right to close their primaries to the extent they wish.

If voters approve Ballot Measure 1 at the end, the state's minimum wage would gradually increase to $13 an hour in 2025, $14 in 2026 and $15 in 2027. The initiative would also require the state's minimum wage to be set at least $2 higher than the federal minimum wage and require paid sick leave for many workers.

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