# Ranked-Choice Voting **Ranked-choice voting** asks voters to rank candidates in order of preference instead of picking one. If no candidate holds a majority of first choices, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots transfer to their next ranked choice; the count repeats until someone clears 50%. It is also called instant-runoff voting. ## Why it appears on this wiki The system changes which candidates can win, and that shows up repeatedly across the election pages here. Alaska pairs it with a nonpartisan top-four primary, so a candidate who loses a party primary can still reach — and win — the general election. That is how [[Lisa Murkowski]] held her seat in 2022 against a Trump-endorsed challenger who had beaten her in the primary, and it is part of why a cross-party endorsement such as her 2026 backing of [[Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins]] carries a low political cost in Alaska and would be disqualifying in a closed-primary state. The general pattern: ranked-choice ballots reward candidates with broad second-choice appeal and penalise candidates with a high floor and a low ceiling. That is the opposite of what a closed partisan primary rewards, which is why the system has become a target of state-level repeal efforts. ## See Also - [[Lisa Murkowski]] - [[Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins]]